Up a bit early to drop the hired hedgecutter back before work. Need to check a few things for storm damage, then most of the day is a really long meeting, followed by another short one before home time.

In terms of geographic culture, I am British, or English or East Anglian, depending on who I am speaking to.

I don’t think that volunteering is necessarily considered to be a particular civic duty or anything in the UK, but it clearly is more common here than in some parts of the world.

I did not engage in any volunteering during my educational career - which was a long time ago now - but have a lot since: mostly in wildlife and conservation related roles, but a selection of others too. In fact I changed career and got my first paid position in conservation largely on the back of the volunteering that I had already done.

I then went on to lead volunteer teams for much of that career - which is where I came to realise that volunteering really wasn’t something that many incomers from non-European backgrounds were as familiar with or expected to engage with. Obviously socio-economic background is going to play a part here too, not just geography: in the UK, at least, folk with middle (and upper) class backgrounds are over-represented among volunteers, with working class backgrounds being less well represented, often for very clear financial reasons.

Yes, text for me too, for the same reason.

Typically a lie in, some gaming and a few chores in the morning, then some garden work (raking the meadow area today, after the annual cut a few days back), or DIY or errends or something in the afternoon, then film night.

Pomodoro.

You can do just about anything for 20 mins. So set a timer and read for 20mins. Then you get to stop. Then set another timer and take 20 mins off. Then 20 reading again and so on.

One you are in the groove with that, then you reduce the off-time to 15 mins, then 10 and finally 5 mins - so 20 mins reading and 5 mins break and repeat.

You can abuse your body a hell of a lot up to that age without too many issues. Those issues will start hitting home within the next decade or so though. Make a change for the better while you can.

Do you have any examples that would support that? I can’t say that I have seen any tendency myself. If anything, dark comedy tends to come from marginalised groups, I’d say.

UK - local authorities are busy un-declaring climate emergency, nationally they are blaming the wildfires on re-wilding done by lefties and anyway, they say, it is no worse than the summer of '76.

Is this a cooling behavior, perhaps similar to when dogs pant?

Yes, that is exactly what it is.

Noetic pollution.

I hate to be that guy, but it should be Physiological needs at the bottom, not psychological.

Welfare unit for the contractors working on the street works project. It will have a loo, a break room, a kettle etc etc.

‘Economical retribution’?

I associate this with fascists and right-wingers going back a few generations as being broadly equivalent to ‘woke’ these days: i.e. anything vaguely progressive that they didn’t like.

So, without additional context, my reaction would be to assume that the person saying this was a fascist - and therefore to treat any further interactions accordingly - and to wear the term with honour.

I have my driving licence, work ID, a first aid quick reference, postage stamps and one of those Swiss army knife credit card sized things as well as cash and bank cards.

I’d imagine that whereas you can guess at confusing cursive letters in words from the others around them, you can’t do that with digits.

Dark Mustard

Films that I saw, on TV or at the cinema, prior to the age of 16 or so that had a major impact on me - in the approximate order in which I saw them:

• The Amazing Mr Blunden
• Jason and the Argonauts
• Mon Oncle
• Star Wars (before it became A New Hope)
• The Third Man
• The Omen
• Stalker - which pretty much marked my transition to adult SF

Bite my shiny metal ass!

I have read comparisons in the past. I don’t have them to hand, but the conclusion was that dishwashers were more efficient in terms of water use and energy. However, the type of hand-washing that it was being compared to was itself a very inefficient style of washing (tap running continuously? two full sinks for rinsing? I can’t recall, but not the way that we do).

So handwashing the way we do is probably more efficient but it seems that there isn’t THAT much in it either way, and given the time taken and that we cook from scratch almost all the time, we use a dishwasher for the vast bulk of stuff.