My little reader enjoyed “The Wizards of Once” by Cressida Cowell.

They did study the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. They just thought they were better.

Oh, look! It’s Henry I and his big brother, Robert of Normandy.

Yeah, in between the gold rush in San Fransisco, and the gold rush in British Columbia.

Fossicking and skerrig are related to mining activities, so may be more localized to areas were the gold rush was big. I confirmed they’re actual words.

My parents emigrated from Aus/NZ just before I was born, so I inherited a bunch of weird down-under, outdated vocabulary.

“What are you fossicking around in the pantry for?” “Did you find a few skerrigs of chocolate?” “I need to use the dunny.” “That guy in car dealership was apoplectic.”

Lots of other turns of phrase, but - with the possible exception of “dunny” are legit words.

EDIT: OK. A few others, I still use ‘blasted’ as an adjective. If my kids do something ridiculous, “Jesus wept, child,” sometimes comes out of my mouth. Then a bunch of, “running around like a sprayed blowfly,” or, “wandering around like a lost soul.”

Second one looks good. She has got a bit click-baity, but I found a lot of Thais Gibson’s “Personal Development School” channel on YouTube to be really accessible. She has links to tests, but it’s also useful just listening to her video overviews if the different attachment styles and seeing if you recognise yourself in any of the descriptions. Certainly I was at a loss, watched them, and was like, “Oh shit! Her description of anxious preoccupieds and dismissive avoidance is almost verbatim what I’m dealing with!”

If you are dismissive avoidant, don’t read the comments. There are a lot of butthurt anxious preoccupieds out there. They really do experience DAs like that, but they’ve got their own shit to work out and contribute to the dynamic.

Nosing (instead of reversing) into a parking spot. You always pick the conditions of your arrival, but not always your departure. Also, reversing into traffic is ridiculous and illegal in some places. Parking nose-first is dangerous and lazy.

EDIT: Love how you’re all justifying your bad driving habits. Camera? Still can’t scan for incoming traffic. Bad weather only on occasion? It’s more than bad weather that can make reversing out of a door dangerous.

… and I HATE angle parking.

A thumbs down is also non-aggressive. The middle finger is escalating and can be considered provocation. Thumbs down is just an expression of disapproval. It’s less inflammatory and cuts deeper.

I’m totally struggling with the mixed units here: potential energy being compared to power. “How much hp does your car have?” “A tank of gas.” Wut?

This line right here: “battery storage equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear reactors.” I suspect the author has considered GW with GW/hr…

Some nice and ancient trees there!

I always get concerned that somehow I have packed hard drugs (I don’t do hard drugs.)

Canadian politics: red, Liberal party (center); blue, Conservative party (right); orange, New Democrat party (left); green, Green party (was kinda conservative, then had a meltdown around identity politics); BQ are kind of French separatists.

I’ve had members of the Métis community tell me to use “indigenous” with a mixed group because in Canada the Métis and the Inuit don’t fall under the Indian Act.

Never trust a Campbell.

It’s other common name is the European Fat Dormouse.

I don’t see why the need to shame. Some of us like our dormice with some fat on them.

“Had a relationship with …”

Sex with a minor. Hmm … sex with a minor. I could swear we had a word for that.

I often cringe a bit at the rhetoric coming out of the men’s rights corner, but the gender bias around sex with minors in so consistent.

Hydroelectric dams. Pump water uphill when the energy isn’t needed for something else. Hydroelectric is a good variable energy source too. Probably not very efficient, but simple.

Motivation.

Is it? There are plenty of Jews and plenty of Muslims who are not involved in this and see it as wrong. Plus, that’s such a broad statement as to be meaningless. We could equally say government is the problem, but there aren’t many advocating for anarchy. Or people are the problem. I’d be more inclined to say tribalism is the problem, the very foundation of an “us” vs. “them” mentality. Sometimes assholes pick a fight and call it religious. There’s a strong case to be made that war has become much more brutal and far reaching since the Napoleonic wars and the rise of the nation-state. I mean, we can blame religion … that certainly erases the need to look within ourselves and ask why humans do this to each other.

It’s a bit like pretending Nazism was a German problem and pretending like the same dark forces don’t exist now and in many people everywhere.

There are definitely some religious dickheads, but there are dickheads of all stripes.

If religion is so vile, how do we hold in tension the fact that religious people are often behind the most charity towards the marginalised and disempowered? Atheists talk a good game, but rarely leave their armchairs to do anything positive. Religion can become a tribal marker, but it also is one of the main forces working against tribalism.