Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you
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Strange goings-on at the beach.
A man and women were carrying what looked like a homemade, large but lightweight rectangular frame down the beach and into the sea, standing it upright. They then took it back up the beach then down, up, down and back up.
The man then donned what looked like a bright red hazmat suit, complete with hood. The suit was inflated a la Michelin man. Now fully ballooning, he proceeded to waddle down, arms outstretched, to the shoreline, stood on a rock and looked out to sea. After a while, he went up the beach, removed the ‘hazmat suit’, and they continued with their frame antics.
A Welsh custom? Perhaps. As I heard no singing and crucially saw no sheep, I’m doubtful, but intrigued.
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Think it should be in the art thread (is the lower case title deliberate?).
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition1 -
If it is art, he should probably find another vocation.
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New Order have re formed. I hope they don't use dynamic ticket pricing.
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Antony Gormley considering updating his skinny beach statues in line with the obesity epidemic?
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It's a new way to get illegal immigrants across the channel.
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I'm intrigued by how this can be new news.
Surely with our knowledge of eye movements while reading, linguistics and cognition, the idea that our brains process one word at a time has long since passed. They just seem to be confirming a theory I've been aware of for some time that, because of our experience of the world (context) and grammatical structures, there is a fairly limited number of possibilities for 'what is going to happen next' in any sentence, and as long as there are no major surprises to trip us up (e.g. "I'll do that yesterday"), we can whizz along. I'm absolutely sure that I don't normally sound out words in my head as I read, especially when I'm reading at speed.
OTOH, I think my slowest reading speed is when I'm reading about phonetics and accents, as I always find myself having to try out loud every word cited.
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Does every generation think they invent everything? Has speed reading just been "discovered"?
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Speed reading as such has been de-bunked. It is actually skim reading, followed by winging it. I do this for a living.
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Hearing a radio ad for one of those directory enquiries premium rate phone services that were massive about 20 years ago (118 118 etc.). Who is actually still phoning them to make it worthwhile them providing the service now that most phones have internet access?
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Dilemma resolved: I put up my annual Facebook "It's less than seven weeks till the evenings start drawing out!" cheerer-upper along with a link to the article, so I know that my friend will see it, but it's not shoving his face in it. I know he'll just dig in with his hatred of all things winter (with two replacement hips and sparse snow anyway, he can't even look forward to skiing), but hey ho.
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Sent a message yesterday to my usual skiing buddy about getting something sorted for the coming season. That cheered me up, as did the reply that he's up for a trip.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]1 -
Sounds like there's been some good early season snow up high. I will wait to see if my hot Christmas lunch at 1100m is in T-shirts and shorts weather, like the last two years, or something more seasonal.
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Good news, although will probably check there is enough of a base before committing. That said, we usually go for the higher resorts just in case.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
That was my first thought as well!
You're the light wiping out my batteries; You're the cream in my airport coffee's.0 -
Why, in French, Valencia is called Valence, given that there's a place in France called Valence. You'd have thought it might be easier to give it its Spanish name so there's never confusion.
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They were both called Valentia by the Romans. Different suffix, but this has been lost.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Also, annoyingly, Facebook Translate always translates Valence to Valencia when translating back to English, which occasionally bemuses English friends. Mind you, they got a bit more alarmed when it said I'd been eating "venom" sausages rather then venison.
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Exeter in total gridlock at 1pm today... the sort where roads are full of stationary cars in both directions on all the approaches to the city centre, as people try to skirt round one jam and find themselves in another. Obviously I was on my bike, so just sailed around all of them and sallied forth to the Teign Valley.
What's intriguing is that I can't find any report of what was the cause.
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Probably bloody cyclists
- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
Nah, they'd just push the corpses off to the side of the road and carry on.
When traffic goes wrong in Exeter, it goes wrong big time, thanks to the lack of road crossings of the Exe... apart from the M5, there are only two between the centre of Exeter and the Channel, so once they come to a standstill, all the radial roads leading to them quickly back up too, with no alternative. When you're not driving, it's quite schadenfreudely funny, all those tin boxes completely useless.
Less funny when flooding is involved, like in Valencia. Currently 200+ dead.
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Woke.
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It intrigues me how absolutely fucked the gear cable outers on the winter bike were, despite my changing them not that long ago. It's no wonder the gear changes were both slow and very approximate.
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A bit concerned that I used 6.5p of electricity between 7 & 8pm. (Still intrigued why EDF couldn't get the data off my smart meter, and thus lost a customer. Also, on the plus side, Octopus's website is 100x better.)
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Always intrigued by the way these dual flush buttons operate in every hospital I have visited. The Large button is for a short flush and the Small is for the solids. I always think it should be the other way round, no?
Sometimes. Maybe. Possibly.
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What? Your diet?
Sometimes. Maybe. Possibly.
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Exactly!
Sometimes. Maybe. Possibly.
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