Thread 6 - TalkExiles: "Yup, still round."

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 5).

Gather here all ye refugees from the JTT Flat Earth Society, welcome to the reassuringly oblate spheroid of MN! Ye all already know the answers to the questions "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?"

So really we're all here just to chat randomly.

LOL Crows!

NotDrowningJustCrowing· Yesterday 22:14

I need to write a sitcom!

Daisy May Cooper springs to mind as a lead for that!

I love her, @SinnerBoy and that reminds me that I need to catch up with her new thing on BBC2.

It rained most of the day here. It's still raining. Luckily I had done a reasonable shop yesterday and though I wanted to go and pick something up today it wasn't essential so I just stayed indoors and watched the rain with one or another cat on my lap. Or alone when they decided to remove themselves to my bed and cuddle up with each other.

I've been actually enjoying a discussion at the old place in Issues - a spirited, ruthless dissection of Christianity through the agesdelivered by OldBathrobe and others.

https://www.justthetalk.co.uk/issues/52913/religious-legacy-in-state-institutions/1

This is why I used to love the place in the past. I spent literal years discussing this sort of thing with OldB (he used to be evenkeel and OldProfanity) and also some stuff about alt medicine. We disagreed on just about everything at the time, and they were good discussions that contributed to my understanding.

I always assumed he 'used to be' someone, but those two names don't mean a thing to me. It's a hopeless argument, though, the idea of 'Christian values' is so built into Western consciousness that arguing against it seems futile. It's certainly a great way of falling out with people in real life.

Every so often I see threads on here about how infuriatingly unreliable tradespeople are (especially in just communicating). I'm very much in the mood to start just such a thread right now, as I sit here at 11am with a nearly finished bathroom and a distinct lack of builders (who'd cheerily said "see you tomorrow!" as they left yesterday evening...

They'd reckoned it would be finished today or tomorrow. Guess not, then.

It's when they turn up at 8.00 in the evening and you dare not turn them away for fear of never seeing them again but have no idea when or if you'll ever be able to go to bed.

Though come to think of, I have changed electricians so maybe that will never happen again.

8pm? Bloody hell!

Honestly, I find everything to do with house maintenance/renovation absolutely distressing. And this house seems to constantly have stuff that needs repairing/replacing/updating.

If there's ever a next house, it's going to be a blank new-build box.

A sad day for me, as my lovely Alfa is going to webuyanycar in exchange for a small bag of magic beans. Still the best car I've ever owned. But two cars and a bike is a ridiculous extravagance, and the robbing bastards wanted over 400 quid to insure it! The neighbours will be pleased with a bit more parking space at least. Also, I can move my considerable NCB to my other car.

Is it a classic tax free model?

No, 54 reg.

Watching Great Expectations sent me down a rabbit hole reading about conditions on convict transport ships. Nicer than you'd think - at least on some of them: https://freesettlerorfelon.com/convict_ship_earl_grey_1838.htm

Another (which had a school, and exercised prisoners by getting them to walk 4 miles a day round the ship, with the band playing to accompany them) had the following treatment for scurvy: "As soon as symptoms of scurvy were detected, the sufferer was put on the special diet. - a pint of chocolate at 6am, with an ounce of lime juice and an ounce of sugar, and porridge, a pint of thick gruel with a gill of wine at midday, porridge again at 4pm, chocolate at 6pm and gruel with wine in it at 8pm."

That actually sounds rather nice...

Pint of chocolate sounds great. The pint of gruel would be followed by a pint of vomit however.

Gruel's okay, it's just thin porridge. Having it with wine would be interesting.

The robin who comes to the mealworm dish on my office windowsill has been joined for the past few weeks by a second robin. And now they have changed their feeding behaviour. Instead of eating their fill and flying off they are now carefully examining the plate, eating some broken worms, and then filling their beaks with 4 or 5 whole ones before flying off.

I think I can safely announce the arrival of chicks.

Robin chicks sound wonderful. I don't think I've ever seen one.

They look like adults robins except smaller and with brown feathers. Very sweet. These two were out and about in August a couple of years ago.

I love baby robins - haven't seen any yet this year, but the adults are very confident and glossy. I did see a goldcrest just outside my kitchen window earlier - that was a treat.

In my head, convict transportation ships were akin to slave ships. When I think of slave ships I'm always amazed that any slaves got across the Atlantic alive. It beggars belief.

I’ve been depositing Kasper’s fluff out and about for the past few weeks in the hope some chicks will get to benefit from a luxurious cashmere-soft nest lining.

I’m so tempted to make a scarf from it.

There were certainly bad ships - not quite as awful as the slave ones, but 12ft square cells with multiple layers of bunks to hold 20 men - particularly prior to the 1820s. But it looks as if prison reform ideas took hold at sea well before they made much headway on land. Ship surgeons seem to have been a driving force in improving ventilation, space and diet. And quite a few of the captains seem to have had remarkably enlightened ideas about education (again ahead of land-based schools - almost half a century before the Education Act made schooling up to age 10 compulsory, transport ships had 'schools' for convicts up to age 16).

There's probably also some bias from the better boats being more likely to be willing to write down the details and allow observers on board. Whereas bad boats are only recorded if they had a convict on board willing to risk an official complaint.

Kasper fur would definitely make for a very high-class nest.

Those pictures of slave ships with people crammed in next to each other are something else.