I highly recommend Science Vs, 99% Invisible, and Cautionary Tales. Pretty good if you’re into nerdy stuff. I also recommend Endless Thread if you’re interested in stories about the internet. What audiobooks have you enjoyed recently?

It’s funny you reversed your game controls since, as a lefty, I have adapted to default controls pretty easily. Never even crossed my mind to change them. Definitely lateral thinking on your part.

Now I’m even more confused

I’m not surprised, I’m pretty sure they’re wetland birds too.

Australian white ibises. They’re kinda like the Australian equivalent to a raccoon in the US; they eat rubbish and their roosts stink because they tend to congregate in a single tree and then shit everywhere. But they are quite unique looking birds: long beaks, black heads and white plumage. So the tourists find them quite interesting and the locals call them bin chickens.

/ˈkwestʃɘn/

For a municipal supply it’s worth the effort, it improves oral health for a whole community at the cost of some fluoride and a dosimeter. For a private supply it’s not worth it. Fluoridated toothpaste and mouthwash will give you a good dose of fluoride.

21, nope. I’ve heard of a rocky training montage, but would have no idea what you meant by a rocky montage with no other context.

With the side benefit of providing a fast lane that emergency services can make great use of

Not necessarily a mastodon app, but I’d love to see consistent application of markdown. The client I use doesn’t seem to support spoilers, and I’ve seen others that implement headings differently. It would be nice to have all clients implement it the same way.

Mmm, fair.

And they looked the same, no cover or anything??!!

They have their pros and cons. I wore a uniform to a public school (Australia) and it definitely meant that I had one less thing to worry about every day: being judged by what I wore. As an adolescent that meant a lot, and getting the freedom to wear whatever as an adult has meant that:

1. I got to learn what’s appropriate before I got that freedom and

2. I had the maturity to not care what others thought about how I dressed.

Out of curiosity, why do you say you’re really pro AI? I feel like I’m stuck in an anti-AI bubble ATM.

Can’t remember what the article was, but it was a local one for an area I don’t live in (I think it was a Canadian one). Anyway, ate the onion in a large discord server I had just joined. I was mostly just trying to become part of the community. Nobody corrected me for a couple of hours until some smug bastard said something along the lines of “…at least I know it’s a satiric publication.”

I’ve struggled with this for a while too, and I’ve found that the only ‘secret’ is to go to sleep earlier so that you either wake up earlier, or wake up feeling more refreshed. You should also do this in conjunction with getting up and out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off. I’ve got an alarm that doesn’t turn off until I go into the kitchen and scan a barcode because otherwise I’ll turn the alarm off and go straight back to sleep. Someone also suggested opening your blinds which works really well if you don’t need the privacy and you wake up after the sun rises.

I’d say AM radio is a better safety feature for Australians at least, since the ABC broadcast emergency warnings via their AM stations.

Until Bezos buys her too

Similar, except both types of Australian agency do the firefighting and rescue work as well as the support work and some of the recovery stuff. The main focus of volunteer training though is on rescue/firefighting.

The State Emergency Services of Australian states. Basically, they’re state government funded volunteer rescue agencies that focus on floods and storms. They also provide other rescue services outside of major population centres, like vertical rescue and road crash rescue. I think it’s a great idea because we get enough severe storms and floods that a specialist agency is worthwhile, but there can be years between large scale events, so having the surge capacity of a volunteer agency is great.

It’s a similar story with the CFA/CFS/RFS/NTFRS¹/TFS¹/whatever’s happening in WA¹, but instead of rescue they do firefighting. Their main (“combat”) role is fighting bushfires, which happen seasonally so surge capacity is important. However, in country areas they also provide structural and vehicle firefighting services. I’m aware that the US have a similar situation with volunteer firefighters though, so I’m not so keen to teach grandma to suck eggs.

¹These agencies are metro and rural firefighting agencies, so their combat role is all fires, not just bushfires.