But but but it saves users from doing “gymnastics with their eyes”!! Jaysus, what a load of bs.

I hate algorithms, they narrow everything down, desperate to squeeze you into a little box. FB knows how old I am, so while I’m stalking my nieces it shows me ads for incontinence pants, tea towels and comfy shoes. It became a complete turn off with Netflix, it’s part of the reason I cancelled. Don’t miss it.

I remember my poor niece saying, “I can’t believe they let us leave the hospital with her! She’s so tiny and fragile! We don’t know what we’re doing!”

Cheese and marmalade, the sharper both are the better. Mmm.

I’m on a combo binge. Recently I read an obituary for CJ Sansom, a writer of historical detective fiction. I’d never heard of him, but the books sounded good so I started reading them. Next thing I see there’s a TV series, Shardlake (Disney+), so now I’m watching that. Pretty well done, and the lead actor is great. (On to the third book in the series now.)

Where I’m from it’s called “squeezing the lemon”. Mash that pedal! Ha ha. The best bit is when you catch up with them stopped at the next set of lights.

The dark side of the moon isn’t dark, btw. It gets as much light as the other side.

For me olives were an acquired taste.

The first time I ate in a restaurant I was about 12 I think. It was a fancy Italian place. When I saw the dishes of (green, pimento-stuffed) olives on the table I was excited to try one. I’d only ever seen pictures of them in American magazines - this was mid-60s New Zealand, Coca Cola was exotic. I put one in my mouth, and almost gagged, the flavour was so completely awful. I spat it into a napkin.

Fast forward to today, and I would gladly hoover up the whole dishful and ask for more. My favourite olive is a big fat juicy Kalamata. I also love tapenade made with black olives. The only olives I dislike are the flavourless cardboardy lumps sometimes passed off as olives.

I still use my iPod Classic. I can plug it into my car for when I’m out of FM range, and I have a Bluetooth adapter for it that plugs into the headphone socket & lets me listen via my hearing aids. It’s better than a phone for me, because the mobile signal is weak where I live, and most of my garden is out of WiFi range. It fits all my music and still has room for podcasts.

iTunes sucks though, ugh.

Almost all the ads I’ve seen on Prime video are for other Prime movies. They never appear during a natural break in whatever I’m watching, just burst right in in the middle of a scene. They elicit zero positive emotions, and I am about to cancel my subscription.

I do hug my friends (and family when they visit from far, far away), I’m very huggy. Cuddling is another level of intimacy though. I do miss it, a bit.

My farts are so loud you probably heard me earlier and thought it was a car with engine trouble.

Why thank you!

Single about 25 years. I’m 71 and I absolutely love my life. I have lots of friends and a very active life, but I love coming home and being alone there. Before menopause I had a strong libido and terrible taste in men, so I had a lot of truly awful relationships, with endless drama.

It’s kind of by choice I guess, though I don’t get offers. A few years ago a guy gave me the eye and I contemplated it, until I caught sight of his bare feet. Oh dear god no. Self-care is important mate, you need to see a podiatrist.

The main con of being single for me is not enough hugs and cuddles. The pros are too many to give up for that though. I get to decide everything and make plans based on what I want. I can fart loudly, talk to my potplants and be lazy without Someone rolling their eyes, it’s bliss.

No, not attractive. That’s a man who spends a LOT of time in the gym, looking at himself in the mirror. He eats and drinks weird stuff and possibly is on drugs that make him angry. Not my cup of tea.

My experience tells me that if you eat it, you’ll spend the next several hours vomiting. Your friends who also ate it will go out dancing and have a fabulous time.

I was going to suggest proper orthotics as well. Mine were expensive but have served me well for years. I move them into whatever shoes or boots I’m wearing. They don’t work with sandals sadly.

I do beekeeping with an educational project and my bugbear is hygiene. Bad habits had set in before I joined the group - not cleaning hive tools or beesuits, not properly cleaning and storing feeding and honey extraction kit, it was all pretty filthy and gross. They tease me for being a martinet, but we sell the honey FFS! And the bees themselves deserve protection from people casually risking the spread of disease.

I visited Egypt a few years back and it was like that. It made for a nice visit, because none of the temples, tombs etc were overcrowded, though that meant the souvenir sellers were desperate. Cairo Museum was almost empty. Our tour guide there said was going to give up and start a restaurant with some friends. She spoke several European languages and was learning Mandarin, but was struggling to make a living. She hated the Islamist revolutionaries for damaging the tourism industry.

A view of the Arab Spring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-56000950

Well that unlocked a memory. I was on a road trip around California and stopped off in a small town to do my laundry. An elderly gent was already in the laundromat and the washing machine window showed bright, bright blue. He said he recalled that his late wife used to use blueing tablets to get the sheets etc white. “I couldn’t find any at the store, but these toilet cleaning tablets are blue, so figured I’d try them.”

This is what my late mother used: https://www.retonthenet.co.uk/vintage-washing-laundry-reckitts-bag-blue-reckitt--coleman-hull-dolly-bag-1960s-nos-dolly-blue-5487-p.asp

The one eclipse I saw was in cloud, and I was surprised at how intense the experience still was. At the moment of totality, all the light seemed to suck away quite suddenly, even though it had obviously been getting darker gradually. It felt very eerie and a little frightening.

I was in Cornwall in the UK, and the amusing thing was seeing the sparkle of people’s camera flashes going off all along the stretch of coast. I’d love to see those photos. “This might look like a picture of a fence taken at night, but trust me, it was 11am in summer…”

I remember when all the controversy started I thought wow, this must be exaggerated somehow, and sought out what she had actually said. Oh. My. Fucking. God. When she was challenged she didn’t just double down, she quadrupled down, and then some. Loathsome woman, just awful.