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.
Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.
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.
I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.
Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.
I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.
I probably get one a month or so on my work number.
Basically all of them.
A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:
I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.
I have no reason not to speak to any of these.
At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.
Not before.
My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!
First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.
That implies that the others have got complete maps - which I find much more surprising. Every time that I have had any dealings with any utility companies - which I do as part of my job - it becomes apparent very early on that they don’t have anything like accurate maps in whatever area I am looking at. And not just for old lines that they inherited - as seems to be the issue here - but for things like fibre optics that I saw them lay myself just 18 months earlier.
I’m off to Cornwall in a few weeks. Pretty much every year I go there with friends - we stay for a fortnight in a chalet that one of them has.
I hope that my SO and I will be able to get another week or so in in September. It’ll also be in the UK - maybe Yorkshire this time.
We might spend a few days camping somewhere too - maybe north Norfolk.
Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.
Yes, definitely. Why you are doing it makes all the difference.
There is - in my experience - a good deal of how you - and the organisation in general - do it too, and that accounts for much of the cultural difference. Charities tend to treat staff (and volunteers - since so many depend on vols) as people rather that resources much more, although there is also a tendency for the cause to outweigh everything, which can lead to staff, particularly, being expected to commit totally around the clock, and sidelined if they don’t. I have only encountered a few organisations that do this to a problematic extent really though.
I did in my late 20s after working in IT. I didn’t know what I wanted and wasn’t planning on non-profit or anything as such, but jumped ship, did a range of random things before spending some time volunteering (at something that was not in any way IT related)- which was the critical thing. That put me in a spot to A) show some commitment and B) get some training as it was offered. A paid post followed in due course after that.
That is a very simplified version, but volunteering was definitely the critical element for me.
Since then, I met plenty of other people who made the jump. Some simply moved with their existing skills to an equivalent role in a charity - and there are plenty that need project management skills - whilst others have taken the same route as me and spent some time volunteering.
Volunteering means you don’t get paid for some time, of course, so you have to either live off savings and/or find a live-in role and/or work part-time or something and you probably need to downsize one way or another, but people find a way and make it work.
Of course once you are in a role with your chosen cause, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be away from being overworked, stressed and given more and more responsibility. It is a trope that working for a charity means that you don’t do it for the money and you work waaay longer than the official hours say.
Certainly my role at the moment, with a large charity, is the most demanding I have ever had and there is basically nothing left at the end of the month for savings: I am just keeping afloat. For all that though, there is no way at all that I would go back to a for-profit role, and I have never looked back for a moment. The culture is totally different and leagues better.
My main requirement is that it has to be available on my heavily locked down work phone and work laptop as well as my home ones. If it isnt in my face whenever I look at a screen, it isnt going to work. So it ends up being Google tasks.
Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.
I am - in the UK - and I think that it should be opt out rather than opt in.
Definitely in favour myself - and my SO is the same. We have discussed it more than once and we would both like this option to be available to us in the UK as and when the time comes.
The biggest issue, I think, is the kind of circumstance where an elderly parent or relative is bullied or made to feel like a burden by their family and that they ‘should’ choose this option. If that goes on long enough and subtly enough, they may internalise it and come to feel that they have made the choice freely themselves. However, as my wife (who has a background in counselling) has pointed out, distinguishing that kind of situation from a genuinely choice is similar to other major life choices involving medical intervention - all of which involve professional counselling specifically aimed to distinguish between the two. With the right kind of questions it usually doesn’t take long for distinctive patterns of thought and speech to reveal the roots of the choice that someone says they have made.
We have used ALS Testing in the past. More recently Latis Scientific. Both have been good, we swapped just because of some internal admin thing at one point.
I’m in my 50s. This is not something that I have ever encountered in the street.
Perhaps, when walking through a park or similar, when I was in my teens or twenties, some kids might have kicked a ball in my direction a couple of times, with the hope/expectation that I would return it, but that it about as close as I have experienced.