This felt close, in a way: in May 2014 I flew UK to NZ on Malaysian Airlines. One of their planes had gone missing in March that year, so I came in for some joshing over my choice. I flew out of NZ on 22 July. The Kuala Lumpur-Amsterdam leg had a slight change of flight path because on the 17th a Malaysian plane on that route was shot down over Ukraine.

(I felt so sorry for the air crew - some of them may have lost friends and colleagues on those flights, and here they were, smiling away and bringing us drinks.)

Good chunks of my youth. When I look back I think, those kids were not your friends.

Are unfertised human eggs a thing? Like, the chicken eggs we eat aren’t fertilised. I’m imagining something like an ostrich egg. Lots of omelette in that … um, definitely-not-a-baby.

One of my favourite eggcorns.

Egg colour is down to genetics - some breeds, eg leghorn, lay white eggs. Others lay various shades of brown. It’s what’s inside that counts, and that depends a lot on what you feed a chicken.

Ski goggles. https://sfstandard.com/2022/12/25/the-worlds-only-private-ski-resort-where-mark-zuckerberg-and-bill-gates-hit-the-slopes/

Some of my non-techie friends were complaining about how rubbish Google search is now and I suggested Duck Duck Go. They couldn’t get past the name. I know it’s based on some childhood game in the US but it makes no sense to anyone here in the UK.

“The proof is in the pudding.”

The actual phrase is: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won’t know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.

“The proof is in the pudding” doesn’t mean anything.

I’m in my 70s, soooo pretty much everything I own. Sigh.

Agreed, sadly. I mean look at Moses. Seriously, read the chapters about him going up the mountain, coming back with the big list of rules, then ordering the killing thousands of the people who’d followed him into the desert, because they didn’t obey the rules while he was away getting the big list of rules. Psycho.

Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.

I bet it’s bacon. The siren song of sizzling bacon always drags me away from vegetarianism in the end.

Photo editing and uploading, maintaining my sports club’s website, video calls to family members, watching films and TV. Do word puzzles count as gaming? I do Quordle and Octordle every morning. I also have an ancient laptop running Linux; I’m trying to work myself up to switch the computer over come October.

Aquaducts aren’t new. Granted this is a novel design, but it’s still just an aquaduct. https://waterways.org.uk/about-us/news/canal-aqueducts

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/trump-resumes-sending-2000-pound-bombs-to-israel-undoing-biden-pause

Back in the 80s TV where I lived used to show Bollywood films at about 1am, which was when I got home from work. So I started watching this film, which was apparently a romance. Sparky career woman rejects advances of handsome fellow. Everyone starts singing and dancing. Ok, a musical then. Thugs burst in and shoot the place up. Woman’s father is killed, she swears vengeance. Uh ok… Local politician tries to shut down newspaper our heroine has just inherited, handsome fellow intervenes. More singing and dancing, ending in fireworks! which is apparently Bollywood for hot sex. Plot twist, handsome fellow is actually a baddie! I had to stop watching at 4am, no idea how it ended up.

Do viruses and bacteria count? Antibac resistance is building. I imagine a virus that fritzed our brains would give animals some advantage.

One Thing After Another.

Culture in general was much more monolithic

That’s interesting - I didn’t experience the advent of the internet like that, probably because I’m from a fairly multicultural background and travelled at lot at that time. I lived near DC for a few months in 1976 and went on a three-week road trip around California in 1990 and did notice how isolated from the rest of the world Americans in general seemed, especially outside the big cities. I was a real novelty, exotic even, and I’m a white cis het woman. Just with a funny accent, from a country they’d never heard of.

Written by LG Lazarus, lol.

Look for volunteer opportunities. In my town I found a litter-picking group that met once a week. Then through members of that group I joined another one that maintains flower beds and planters around the town. Then joined an effort to rehabilitate an environment project on a nearby farm, and ended up in the beekeeping team. Another group I was in for a few years organises gentle walks for elderly folks. I learned a huge amount from all these things, and none of it cost me anything but time.