Thread 7 - TalkLair: “In fact it’s an oblate spheroid”

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of previous threads (thread 6).
The new lair of JTT escapees is all cosy and homey; we have truly settled here. Outside, the garden is blooming with spring flowers. Inside, the hearth is glowing, pictures are up on the walls, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Sorry, posted without the link:

Good work mouse, I’d cynically assumed you always planned to resell the things you didn’t want so didn’t even think to suggest it.

@Britinme - what VPN are you using? I’ve tried to do Very Important Things like watch Eastenders when on holiday in the EU and not found a VPN that the BBC will accept.

You can even vote this time, @Britinme !

@Medee - I did! Cost me nearly 20 euros for 20 votes.

@bignosebignose - this is Express VPN which has several choices of servers to connect to in the UK. As it happens I pay for my son's TV licence so I have no qualms about registering my account with the BBC using his postcode.

One thing I have found though is that you need to start with nothing open and connect to the VPN before you fire up a browser to connect to the BBC. Also sometimes I have to start with live BBC before it will let me connect to iplayer.

I had a little buffering watching Eurovision but not hugely.

Wrong result, IMO.

And I've been loving the binturong misunderstandings.

I like the winner better on a second hearing. Bit am I imagining this or does it bear a resemblance to an Abba song but maybe shifted to a minor key?

Sorry - you guys are probably asleep but we're still watching Eurovision.

You're not imagining it. They've lifted a significant part of the tune directly from The Winner Takes it All. I'm reasonably sure the oo-oo-oo bit comes from something as well, but I can't pin down what.

It's a decent tune, and she gave a good performance, but it's not original and there were several much more interesting songs tonight.

What is it with asteroid measurements? Half a giraffe was bad enough, but this makes no sense at all even if you know who he is.

www.irishmirror.ie/sport/ufc/enormous-asteroid-size-74-conor-29961181

Did Sweden win?

The main thing I've had from Eurovision being held in this country is the amount of stuff about it is bigger than usual and as a result I have had "I Wrote a Song" as an earworm for most of this week.

Alas, I had to miss all the madness to see Mike Wozniak's one-man show, Zusa and it was an absolute hoot. Apart from the two women, two rows in front, who spent most of the show talking to each other. On the way out one of them was saying, "His knowledge of the history of world war two was so good." Bitch, you weren't even fucking listening. He could have said Hitler was the first man on the fucking moon and you wouldn't have known any different." Snoop and I both wanted to ask them to stop but frankly, they were a little beefy and we didn't want to be punched in the face. I seriously considered it because I thought that maybe lovely Mike Wozniak might comfort me. Plus apart from being aware of their bad behaviour throughout the second half because a couple of people in the row in front left during the interval so I could see them out of the corner of my eye the whole damn time, I didn't want to miss a moment of the show. Spoiler alert, Hitler was not the first man on the moon.

@MouseMinge - yes Sweden won but Finland was a surprise jumper-up to second with the strength of the audience vote. The UK didn't come last.

Only second-last, hooray!

I only watched it from the first recap when the voting began. They only played about 5 seconds of each song, impossible to tell if they were good songs or not. Given how we couldn’t even get a “thanks for hosting!” gratitude vote, it just highlights how brilliant Sam Ryder must have been last year to do so well. Tonight was much more normal-for-UK.

Didn’t know you had no horse chestnuts, @Britinme . Is that just in Maine? Is it the cold?

My Dad had a gorgeous pink-flowered one on his street but it suddenly died and the people who came to cut it down told him there’s some disease or other killing off the horse chestnuts, they’ve had to cut down loads in his (Herts) town. Must say when I was there last weekend I saw loads of white (cream) flowering ones along the roads and in town, so maybe it’s just the pink ones that are affected.

There used to be horse chestnuts but there was a fungal disease that killed them all off :-(. That might just be in the north east though.

I'm surprised the British song did so badly. It's insanely catchy.

I didn't hear Sam Ryder's song until after the fact last year and I didn't even realise it was a Eurovision song because it sounded too good. He has such a lovely smiley face.

MavisMcMinty · Yesterday 14:45

I have honestly thought for all these years that Bint’s name meant “Bint - U R Wrong”.

She will no doubt remember me saying exactly that in the old place. Until I took my daughter to Hamerton Zoo...

I think horse chestnut trees are being attacked by two things (a fungus and something else, a beetle maybe). They sometimes seem to be doing well but then the leaves go brown in July and that’s not good.

They’re such beautiful trees: really stately and proving excellent shade.

Leaf miner moth is a regular enemy, and yes, the leaves often turn very early, although it’s also the first tree to get dressed in spring. We rarely get any conkers even in good flowering years, but I suspect that’s because the next nearest one I know of is almost a mile away, so it presumably doesn’t get pollinated.

It’s my favourite tree, it weeps skeletally in winter, and looks like a Victorian Christmas tree when covered with its candelabra flowers.

There are plenty close by me and I haven't seen any sick looking ones. That said, they are an invasive pest, supporting very little other life, unlike oaks.

The Swedish song was OK, but there were definitely better tunes IMO, Finland for example. We actually really liked the UK entry, from the point of view of catchy-poppy-dancy-upbeat entertainment.

Re: leaf miners on horse chestnut, this gives me the excuse to dig out the microscope pictures we took a few years ago. They show the moth larvae eating out the contents of the leaves in between the upper and lower epidermal layers; you can see that actually the epidermal layers are uncoloured and translucent because all the leaf colour comes from the internal tissue. I think the brown detritus in the void where the larvae are mining, must be poo. (I tried to put an arrow on one of the images to show the larva but I chose a particularly tiny and pathetic arrow which looks like a bit of fibre.) We also excavated a larva from a leaf so we could have a good look at it - as you can see, it's basically just a boring tiny grub thing.

Are they on horse chestnut, too?

Catchy, and good with studio assistance, but not a great performance on the night. The one that's earwormed me this morning is Switlzerland - which I didn't think was a top one on first hearing.

That's this years that wasn't a great performance on the night - not Sam Ryder.

Also earwormed by the New Zealand one.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn Also earwormed by the New Zealand one.

??? Do you mean "Two Hearts - Eurovusion" - I think if they'd entered that, they'd have won!