General Discussion Thread

[Róisín]

Yay for the festival being on! I hope you are having a great time and managing the stair climbs okay. I have never liked living in places like that, glad my house has only one floor, except for the dining room being down two steps from the rest of the house.

Who is on at the festival?

[dmeck7755]

Wavewright, that's just shocking. I'm glad you're all right.

I've had an odd pairing of events over the last two days.

Yesterday I was heading home by tram when I chanced to see a young woman who was apparently sitting on a Myki card (our variant of an Oyster card). I asked her if the card was hers and yes, it was, it had fallen from her pocket! So that ended well.

Today I was returning home from a doctor's appointment. I was sitting at the far end of the tram, behind a trio of young students who were talking at length about esoteric subjects (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle was mentioned, and the discussion turned to the question of making an accurate simulation of the Universe). A few minutes later, after the students had left the tram, I changed seats, and saw a small leather wallet on the seat where the students had been sitting. I picked it up and found that it was crammed with IDs of different kinds; driving licence, student card, Medicare, and others. Thinking that the owner would be panicking when he found out the wallet was missing, I searched through it but found no contact number. I gave it to the tram driver to hand in, but first I took a snap of the licence, and when I got home, I googled for the name, which was an unusual one, and found a Facebook page. So I sent an IM that I'd handed the wallet in and the owner replied promptly expressing his relief.

Losing your ID in these days would be a nightmare; I'm glad I was able to get it back to him quickly.

Losing one's ID is a frightening thing

It is also quite interesting how easy it is to find people now.  It is good the person was re-united with their wallet.

It is also a bit disconcerting that you no longer can truly hide.  (In the state where I live they have this program for victims of abuse.  It allows them to have an address, but it is an alias.  Considering how easy it is to find people, it may not be enough)

[Athena]

I think it's just a good time to return. It's a new year, Minna apparently posted another comic (?), and the world feels more sideways than usual. This place is safe and nice, though.

I feel similarly! I recently realized that I had lost any sense of being connected to a large online community, and missed that... I largely left this forum for Twitter when I lost interest in Minna's works, but that ended up being bad for me (did have some nice folks around there, but modern social media is so terribly designed to addict and honestly drive out any good content). After being on and off that and eventually settling into a couple private discord groups for the past few years I realized I had no avenue for meeting new people online, only ever conversing with the same.

This place seems as nice as ever. It's nice to be part of something relatively slow and down-to-earth while still being rather large and public, allowing new people to appear. Hope you're all well.


Wavewright—I hope the worst of the flooding has passed by now! Sounds like a lot to deal with but it seems you're keeping in good spirits. What sort of festival was it?

[Jitter]

We work hard to keep this place safe and friendly as always!

Although truth be told, it’s not much work for the moderators really, we don’t need to do much. Everyone is being nice on their own accord for more than 99% of the time.

We are very happy to have you back!

[Eich]

Eich!



What strange winds are blowing, and bringing many back to us? Haiz was around just a couple of days ago! Lenny at least we are fortunate enough to see from time to time.

It’s good to see you, and good to see we have managed to keep this a friendly place. We try hard to!

It me! And yeah, Len mentions now and then that they're checking in, and it makes me happy. I've also avoided Twitter and discord like the plague. I don't think their systems are for me. Twitter scared me away years ago because of all the vitriol, and discord felt rather insular. I was thinking about posting artwork on Twitter but now the whole site's gone bottom up so I'll find somewhere else.

Also, Len and I have been sick all week. \o/Not all bad; we managed to get the new God of War game and have been playing through that together. There's so much dialogue and ALL of it is good. Really wonderful so far. And honestly I think I needed the time to slow down. I've been out of energy completely, since December, and work has been draining me. So I got kicked to the curb, but the curb has nice cushions. It's been good, lol.

[Jitter]

Good to hear you have been able to get some rest.

We have a ”ban on being flexible for work” as a union action (predecessor to work stoppage or strike) and its a surprisingly healthy feeling to be forced to actually STOP working when the day’s hours are full.

So, silver linings, eh?

[wavewright62]

Gosh, Athena, it's good to hear from you again, too!  And thanks for the good wishes - the festival was a folk festival - mostly in the English, Irish, Scottish and American traditions, but also with touches into others such as Romanian, Chilean, and elsewhere. Most of the dance programme got scrubbed because they needed the hall for the headline acts.  (Róisín, rather than a listing, perhaps it's best to link you into the page - AFF 2023 Lineup - you may have encountered some of these, such as Kerryn Fields?)  My favourites this time were Criu and of course Albi and the Wolves, who remain an amazing live experience.  I missed Butter Wouldn't Melt, but my daughter said they were great.

I am reasonably lucky to have escaped most of the damage from the flooding, except for the lifts in my apartment building, which have been out of action for over a week now. (I live on Level 6, ouch.  I try to limit myself to only one trip up the stairs daily.)  Many buildings suddenly need the same parts to repair lifts, so there's no ETA on when it will be fixed.

[Róisín]

Wavewright, thanks for the info! Looks really interesting. Wish I could still get to folk festivals, but these years I am too vision-impaired to still hold a driver’s licence, and Star is too bedridden to drive. I have outlived all three of the friends with whom I used to go to such events when I didn’t have a driver, so folk festivals are no longer an option. Still, hearing about them suggests new music I can listen to and enjoy.

Keep Looking, I hope the latest WA earthquake wasn’t too near you. I have heard from several friends who live in that area letting me know that they are okay, and one of them asking if he can come and stay here for a week or so. Fine with me! We get earthquakes here, but usually they have been quite minor.

[Keep Looking]

Yes, Wave, it's good to hear that you're alright despite the floods and that the festival was still able to happen! Although the floods sound really bad.

Keep Looking, I hope the latest WA earthquake wasn’t too near you. I have heard from several friends who live in that area letting me know that they are okay, and one of them asking if he can come and stay here for a week or so. Fine with me! We get earthquakes here, but usually they have been quite minor.

I'm far enough from the earthquake that I didn't feel anything and in fact didn't know about it happening until just now. I'm glad your friends in the area are okay. I do remember the couple of earthquakes that happened in 2018, which were close enough to me that I could feel the vibrations, but not so close that any damage was done.

The main big thing that's been in our news lately is that a teenage girl was recently killed by a shark in the Swan River. I didn't know her, but I know other people who went to her school or knew some of her friends. Shark attacks don't happen in the river very often but it's really tragic and scary that this has happened - I think particularly since it's happened to a teenage girl in the river and not a surfer or spear-fisher out in the ocean (which is the usual shark attack demographic). If you're going out surfing or spear-fishing you should be going out acknowledging the risk of sharks. But swimming in the river usually you think things are going to be okay.

[Róisín]

Yeah, bull sharks really don’t feel like a fair test, do they, with their ability to survive and attack in fresh water. Down the years I have heard of a number of cases in which bull sharks came tens or even hundreds of kilometres upriver from the sea, or got into lakes and canal systems quite far inland and attacked humans and horses in areas where nobody had expected to find sharks. Scary.

[thegreyarea]

Yeah, bull sharks really don’t feel like a fair test, do they, with their ability to survive and attack in fresh water. Down the years I have heard of a number of cases in which bull sharks came tens or even hundreds of kilometres upriver from the sea, or got into lakes and canal systems quite far inland and attacked humans and horses in areas where nobody had expected to find sharks. Scary.

First, I'm really glad that you, Keep, Wave and anyone else are ok. 

Second, yes, to think there may be sharks on a river is scary. But that's Australia. I would be afraid to get into the woods because a tree could try to eat me.

[Jitter]

Oh no the plants don’t eat anything human-sized even in Australia. They just sting you leaving you in agony for days, or are toxic when ingested or sometimes when just touched. So no worries!

[Keep Looking]

Second, yes, to think there may be sharks on a river is scary. But that's Australia. I would be afraid to get into the woods because a tree could try to eat me.

Hey, at least we don't have bears!

In all honesty, relatively few things here will try to eat you unless it's a shark (which are just an ocean thing generally) or you're in crocodile country. The main thing we have is a weirdly large number of creatures with very potent venoms who mostly want to mind their own business but could definitely kill you if you accidentally stepped on them.

[Róisín]

Keep is right about that. Also we do have plants like the Dendrocnide stinging tree which when the leaf of one brushed my face in the jungle, the skin hurt furiously for months after, whenever it got wet. Which in Far North Queensland in the wet season was often. The worst injury I have ever had from a plant was a bad cut from a jagged broken branch, though I have seen people take far worse hurt from a falling tree. And the huge cone of a Bunya pine which fell on my tent one dark night fortunately landed between me and my friend who was sharing the tent. Our biggest carnivorous plants can’t take anything bigger than a mouse, and most of them eat mosquitoes.

[thegreyarea]

Jitter, Keep and Róisín, thanks for the explanations! I feel much more relieved!

Anyway I see that one must be carefull out there in AU. Luckly someone at the Sidney Airport decided it was a good idea to remind people about it...