GreyShuck

joined 1 year ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago

Aliyev's comments are short-sighted, delusional bollocks but... have you never had a candle as a gift?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

From Nov 24th, we progressively decorate the house, one item per day, throughout Brumalia - the old Roman/Byzantine winter festival - in preparation for Saturnalia.

Otherwise, we'll have a pair of candles going for the eight sabbats themselves, regardless of anything else that we do for them, but I don't think that candles alone really count as decorations.

[–] [email protected] 138 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Yes, fun idea. No problem with that but... that 'flag' is a sail. They're different things.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Facilities manager for a wildlife and heritage charity. I lead a small team looking after health & safety, compliance and building maintenance and repairs.

Ninety percent of my time is spent at the keyboard, but since I am peripatetic and move around the properties that I cover, I have a different, and usually beautiful, view out of the window each day of the week. When I am not sat behind a desk, I will be crawling through an attic or have my head down a sewer or something.

My time is spent arranging contractors for routine servicing or repair projects, reviewing fire risk assessments and dealing with outstanding actions, writing client briefs for renewable energy projects, chasing people to do workplace inspections, advising on risk assessments, updating our compliance tracker, arranging asbestos surveys, ensuring that everyone who needs training has it up to date, proving to utility companies that their meters are wildly inaccurate and need to be replaced, working out why the biomass boiler/sewage treatment plant/water heater/automatic gate/car park machine/phone system/greywater pump/security alarm/whatever isn't working and getting it fixed and so on.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
  • A grass snake seems to have taken up residence under our compost heap. Hopefully it will be a suitable hibernation spot.
  • New seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks and Shrinking are out.
  • My SO and I went for a good walk in a nearby woodland nature reserve. The autumn colours are really coming though now.
  • I now have some cosy fleece pyjamas. I haven't owned pyjamas for decades, but can see will that they will revolutionise my weekend mornings. I don't know why I didn't get some years ago.
[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago

Checking the ones that I usually buy the ingredients are:

  • Butter

Or, if I go for salted versions:

  • Butter
  • Salt
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Recently went to a screening of the 1922 Nosferatu with a live accompanist creating an improvised soundtrack on violin, piano and waterphone - which was not an instrument that I had not encountered before, but evidently features in the score of The Matrix, Aliens and a range of other films. I can certainly see why - it was extremely atmospheric. I had seen Nosferatu a couple of times before - as well as the 1979 Herzog version, and Shadow of the Vampire (2000) - but this definitely added something new.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn't seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Not quite a scrotum pole, but there is certainly an interpretation of this statue of Cybele where what we are looking at are not multiple breasts, but actually the scrota of her eunuch priesthood.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

It's my turn to cook tonight. I'm doing a shakshuka.

 

...so that the browser will open the desktop version of that particular site?

If there is a way of doing this in some other browser, I'd also be interested.

 

Chemical weedkiller will continue to be used in a city's parks and on footpaths after an effective alternative could not be found.

Sunderland City Council said it had hoped to stop using glyphosate herbicide over health concerns linking it to cancer.

However, after three years of trying other treatments, it said the chemical was the most "effective and less expensive" solution.

The authority also said it had halved the use of the herbicide on its land in the last three years, from 203 gallons (925 litres) to 106 gallons (480 litres).

A council report found that alternatives were "less effective, more expensive and had a greater detrimental environmental and ecological impact".

 

He captured some stunning images of the Northern Lights above the south Wales valleys last month.

But for his latest shots of amazing natural phenomenon, photographer Lee McGrath did not need to look up at the sky.

Instead he stared down at the waves lapping the shores of Dunraven Bay, Vale of Glamorgan, where bioluminescent plankton were lighting the water an incredible electric blue.

Captured in the early hours of Friday, it is thought to be the first sighting of this magical occurrence in Wales in 2024 and the kind of shot which features highly on every photographer's bucket list.

 

The Earl of Shaftesbury has said he would like to transfer his estate's ownership of Lough Neagh "into a charity or community trust model, with rights of nature included".

But Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, said the proposal “may take time”.

It comes as the Lough Neagh Report is due to come before the Stormont Executive again later next week.

Writing on the online platform Substack, the earl said he felt he was "an easy target and a useful excuse for failings in proper governance", external.

The Shaftesbury Estate owns the bed of Lough Neagh and the earl has previously said he was willing to explore options.

 

“When it comes to wolves,” says rewilding pioneer, Derek Gow, “what's required is courage; political courage. Even though the animals can be radio-satellite collared so we know the location of every wolf, I doubt that the powers that be in Scotland and Nature Scot will have any interest in this at all.

“They will do nothing until they are explicitly politically told to do something. Politically nothing will happen until there is a groundswell of public opinion for this animal.”

Gow lives on a 300-acre farm on the Devon-Cornwall border, which he has been rewilding with wild boar, white stork and beavers, as well as, within a large enclosure, lynx - having previously reared sheep and cattle. But the story of his passion for nature, and the wolf, begins in his Scottish childhood, near Biggar, at the edge of the Southern Uplands.

What sparked both Gow’s new book about the predator's history, Hunt for the Shadow Wolf: The Lost History of Wolves in Britain, and his young imagination was a story that his grandmother told him of a place near his childhood home, called Wolf Clyde, said to be the site where the last wolf was killed on the Clyde. In her tale, the wolf was killed by a woman with a griddle pan.

 

Swimmers and surfers have said they are scared to go in the sea due to fears about sewage.

Ahead of the general election, activists said they wanted to see change because "people are getting ill".

Surfers Against Sewage said it was hearing about "alleged illegal spillages" almost every day.

 

An increase in winter storms during the 2023-24 winter led to an increased in washed-up seabirds in Jersey, a report has found.

Between November 2023 and February 2024, a total of 124 beached birds were reported on the Channel Island, a figure higher than the average for this period.

The data comes from an annual study conducted by the Birds on the Edge partnership and the Ornithology Section of the Société Jersiaise.

 

Thousands of people marched through central London to urge political leaders to take more decisive action in tackling the UK’s wildlife crisis.

The protest on Saturday culminated in a rally outside Parliament Square with speeches from prominent figures including the naturalists Chris Packham and Steve Backshall, and poetry readings and performances from Billy Bragg and Feargal Sharkey.

The actor Dame Emma Thompson called on politicians to “act now” on the climate crisis as she led thousands on the march.

 
 

A range of projects working to restore Scotland’s threatened temperate rainforest are set to bring economic benefits to some of the country’s most rural communities.

The equivalent of 40 new full-time roles will be employed through projects linked to the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest (ASR), a voluntary partnership of organisations committed to collaborative action for the benefit of Scotland’s rainforest.

The new roles will tackle landscape-scale restoration work in what’s known as the rainforest zone, a climatic area in the west of Scotland where temperate rainforest can form.

 

Britain’s biggest conservation charity has signed up to i’s manifesto to Save Britain’s Rivers and called on all the main political parties to back it in full.

With 5.7 million members from across the political spectrum, the National Trust’s intervention adds to the pressure on Labour and the Conservatives to sign up to the pledges to protect Britain’s rivers from sewage and other forms of pollution.

As one of the UK’s largest charities, the National Trust has significant influence over nature policy and the conservation of Britain’s green spaces and heritage sites.

 

A FAIRLY rare summer visitor to the Isle of Wight — the Ocean Sunfish — has been spotted and snapped off Gurnard Bay.

In the UK, sunfish may be seen between June and September and are most often spotted off south-west England.

The fish species, known scientifically as Mola mola, was photographed in The Solent by County Press reader, Amy Ferrier, yesterday (Thursday, June 20).

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