Thread 1 - Lifeboat Muster Point for TalkExiles

[Kucinghitam]

Gather here all ye refugees from the foundering ship of JTT, if ye be in need of "How the heck do I format my post?" "Why can't I edit my typos?" "What do those acronyms mean?" and most importantly, "Where is everybody that I used to know?"

Or just to chat randomly.

The back paws looks especially threatening!

@TassLeHoff the formatting doesn't like line breaks, you have to do each line separately.

That is a great cat.

Ta!

@Ginmonkeyagain , yep, I was not unhappy by seeing different views, in fact I welcomed them in that I wanted to see how they could believe and to try to understand that. I knew I couldn't change their minds, and they couldn't change mine, but robust debate would be fine. Except we weren't allowed to put our side, it seems. Their views were passed as fine, ours weren't.

Thanks, Sinner!

Here's The Robin collecting mealworms outside the door. He took these a short distance and gave them to his mate.

I love robins! Though my local ones are, I feel, excessively critical of my gardening talents. As well as the classic tilted head, they seem to convey an air of 'Really?' at my efforts.

Our local robins are unusually shy, for robins, but I'm gradually making friends with one by supplying regukar mealworm on my office windowsill.

I need robins in my life. There are a couple in our local beer garden who are super tame and love crisps.

I'm really not feeling it today. I've just written up a set of minutes from our research committee last week, and while all accurate, I've pulled no punches. I did suggest to the chair he may want to edit, but hope he doesn't, they are only for internal use....

I love Robins and am very impressed by your bird charming skills.

I'm not very good at caring for our garden birds, they never seem very interested in our bird table. Our neighbours have a cat which may scare them off. We don't live too far from an RSPB nature reserve though, so at certain times of year get the most amazing murmurations and even flocks (?? - what is the right collective noun?) of bats over our garden.

I fully accept that the views we have were uncomfortable for many people and weren't endorsed by the site owner, we all knew that we were talking about that under sufferance. But I could live with that. It's a site for grownups and you know, grownups can see the same thing and have wildly different views about it. The fact that talking amongst ourselves fairly freely was tolerated despite the disagreement was, to my mind, as much as you can really expect on a site with a single owner who has a different point of view.

Very interested in that email exchange excerpt.

Now, however, I just feel that even the principle that adults can disagree but so long as nobody is being threatened or inciting anything, are free to speak as they see fit isn't accepted very widely, especially if women are doing the talking, I can't.

Loving all the cats, dogs, robins and octopi. Here's my dopey boy.

I was going to post a long screed about the more serious topic but frankly it's too depressing that actual adults have behaved in such a way

Lovely dopey boy.

Sleepy kitty, Vic 😁

Winterborne, the main way we charmed the birds was by letting them know we weren't trying to sneak up on them. Usually by saying 'It's okay, birds, it's only me'. They'd relax when they heard that.

It backfired a bit during the hot dryness this summer because, every time we went outside, we'd be all but mobbed by hungry birds asking for mealworms and however carefully we put them out, they'd fight over them.

Is the word "floof" common usage for furry pets? I didn't know that. We've been calling Daph "floof" since she was a ball of fluff.

I would never have believed that we'd have a small dog and find her such a complete joy. All the character of a big dog in a tiny package. My son, who is a huge tattooed hunk, is completely besotted.

That blighter EZ demonsised them as "yapper-type dogs", further confirming my recent views in that regard. Hope I'm not the only fan of small dogs here.

My main issue with small dogs is that their owners don’t treat them the same as they would a big dog - carrying them around, allowing them on furniture, babying them - and they become far too big for their boots.

FFS yet another professional organisation of which I am a member has sent out a 'diversity' questionnaire. and guess what: it asked me about my gender identity and my sex at birth.

It asked few other divesity-related questions - it asked my age and a weak question about disability, but nothing about class, education, pregnancy: everything else was about my relationship to the organisation.

The Chief Executive has therefore had a strongly-worded email of complaint. It's a global organisation with members all over the world, usually in tax haven-y places. They'll be a bit bemused, I suspect

Spot on, Mavis. Dogs are bad enough about getting to the top of the pack as it is. I'm quite sure she'd never get away with some of her behaviour if she was a big 'un. Fortunately, our other dog, a mutant giant yorkie, keeps her in her place most of the time.

I have no pet pictures on this laptop, might have to share a couple of "perky" (asleep) greyhounds later if I remember.

My experience of small dogs is that they LOVE yapping at my enormo-dogs, and I get very nervous if the small dogs are charging around off lead, especially as one of mine sees them as deliciously small and tasty. Or would given the chance.

I'm trying not to look at the old place tbh, it's too depressing.

What's going on there, Splatter?

Nothing new, just some nasty comments confirming to me why we left. That was a couple of days ago though, they're probably moved on by now.

just some nasty comments

That's almost expected now. I'm glad I left...

What a glorious garden Mavis..

I've created a Boggle Drool & Sneer thread, as I think I wasn't the only refugee who liked it.

Anyone started venturing outside the threads yet? I've commented in a few place and people seem very nice.

There's a folder devoted to the weather, which is good as someone there does regular updates. www.mumsnet.com/talk/weather

@PoppySeedBagelRedux
It's difficult to know how to respond to the multiple and badly phrased surveys like this these days. My least favourite are ones which just ask for gender (or say sex) and give male/female/long list of others. I prefer ones which ask for sex and gender identity separately as they're at least acknowledging a difference and how people think of their gender identity can be relevant in many situations, even if I don't believe in it. However, then you can come up against the 'assigned at birth' irritant. Plus there isn't usually an option with gender identity to say none, so you either have to confirm you have a gender identity as a woman or you have to tick prefer not to say. I recently ticked the prefer not to say box on a work survey, as it felt nearest to saying 'none', but was dismayed to find that this category was automatically interpreted as only meaning 'am too oppressed to say'.