Go on go on go on go on go on
Oh that made me laugh, because actually beekeepers are a competitive lot. There’s an annual honey show, prizes galore. Not just for the honey, but for wax creations, baking and more. I got a first for photography - a trophy and a book token.
There’s also a more subtle competition over the amount of honey produced, success in splitting colonies, managing to get colonies through winter, fewest stings. It’s great.
I learned about that mystery just yesterday from another Lemmy post - really fascinating!
Hungarian, so I could have a good conversation with my lovely stepfather, whose English isn’t great.
Cantonese and/or Mandarin for chat with Chinese friends and relatives.
What I really want though is a babel fish - you put it in your ear and it acts as a universal translator. Any language, Earth or alien.
You will not be “too frail” to enjoy life at 65, or even older. Don’t let that thought poison your present. I took up a competitive sport in my 60s, as well as beekeeping, and I’m not an outlier.
I’ve been using Zorin for a couple of years and recently installed it on my desktop. It’s free.
I like my Oppo. It was a good price for the specs and the fast-charge battery is still going strong a couple of years on. Made in China.
Here’s the thing: I used a manual typewriter for years and never got RSI. I didn’t know anyone who had an RSI from typing. Then in the 1980s I started working with computers and bingo, we all had RSI. At one point I had my wrists in splints.
Eventually the experts figured out the ergonomics and it wasn’t such an issue, but it was hellish in the early days. It turns out that the movements used for a manual typewriter - smacking the keys right down, carriage return, rolling in a new sheet of paper - weren’t as repetitive as just tick-tacking away on a computer keyboard for hours.
Yup, myPhonak. They’d better be mine, given the cost!
Travel. Where are you going next, what’s your favourite country, all that. Met someone yesterday who’s going to Vegas, and has booked a helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon and tickets to a Barry Manilow show. She hasn’t been there since the 80s and is pretty excited. She and her husband usually holiday in Turkey.
I’m finding this discussion so interesting! It’s honestly something I’d never thought of at all, but it’s an excellent exercise for my brain. Gannets have evolved special protection for their brains when diving, btw. They hit the water at 60mph. I wish we’d evolved some cooler attributes than opposable thumbs and walking upright. Gills, for example. Ah well.
Not even just the hereditary peers - there are also the 26 Anglican bishops, and the politically appointed lords, eg Mandelson. Senators for life, basically.
Yes, that’s true. But it’s more a stumbling waddle than a walk. I looked at some videos of gannet colonies, and hardly any of the tens of thousands of birds are walking. I think like most of these diving seabirds their feet are set well back.
This is a really nice vid of a Canadian colony: https://youtu.be/g9bzWqfIu2Y
I would vote for the gannet as able to fly and swim. They dive incredibly fast to catch fish, so they go deep, and once down there, they use their wings to swim after fish.
Great article here, with photos: https://www.naturettl.com/underwater-world-gannets/
Too late for me. But thanks for telling me my computer wasn’t good enough for Win 11 and forcing me to install Linux. It was a breeze, and computing is fun again.
I live near a big estate that breeds pheasants for game shooting, and for several years my garden was visited by a succession of male pheasants. Eventually they’d be tame enough to eat from my hand, and sometimes they’d bring their lady friends along. One day there were 15 pheasants in my garden.
I don’t see them any more because I stopped feeding birds altogether, after one of my neighbours got a predatory cat and I started finding corpses, mainly small songbirds. These days it’s just wood pigeons and magpies, none of which seem inclined to make friends.
Carrots are dirt cheap where I live. I buy a kilo, peel them, chop them into batons and store them in the fridge in an airtight container. Satisfying crunch and full of vitamins. Dip into humus for extra yum.
Microsoft drew the line. They wanted me to buy a new computer for their new OS. Not happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harnaam_Kaur
Meanwhile I’m making do with two black hairs on my chinny chin chin.
Mate, I know people who died as babies, as teenagers, a friend was murdered in her thirties, life can be over in the snap of the fingers at any age. My own father died in his fifties; that has had a huge effect on how I live my life. I take risks, I stretch myself.