MrsDoyle

This is in the middle of Christchurch, NZ, where a set of steps run down to the river. Office people eat their lunch there and feed the eels.

There's a few left.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0l5xnenek7o

The victim, like others, was contacted by Morgan and her co-conspirators in 2006, who purported to be an exclusive group of financial advisers with an opportunity to invest money in Europe with huge returns within months at low risk.

Greedy and dumb, just like his Beloved Leader.

Hello! Fully atheist 79+ over here. I grew up in a Protestant Christian home, even taught Sunday school, but somehow never really caught the bug. I flirted with a mother goddess/earth spirits flimflam for a while when I was in a hippy phase, but soon came to my current stance: I'm glad some people find comfort in myths and fairy stories, but I don't buy any of it. Death is the end, there is no soul (I mean, look around you!), no afterlife, no heaven or hell. It's all methods of social control or (at best) self-soothing.

Luckily I've never had to deal with being ostracised for my atheism. The closest I've come was a friend chastising me for blasphemy. I pointed out that you had to be a believer for it to count as blasphemy. She also tutted about some Mexican-style skull decorations in a cafe, and I had to break it to her that it was some weird Christian thing, a bit like the Roman torture device she was wearing, lol.

My friends and I call it "sniper's alley" - you keep moving, people are dropping around you, falling to cancer, heart disease, accidents, and you keep going, hoping not to catch a bullet. It's easy to get downhearted - so many bloody funerals! - so we make sure to have fun too. My friend group is fantastic, I'm very lucky.

Good luck to you going forward!

Yes, thanks, I'm aware. I'm very active, fear not (mainly walking, rowing, swimming, gardening, DIY). Healing takes significantly longer. But I'm not sitting around waiting to get better - the reason for the torn meniscus was doing the post-surgery exercises a bit too vigorously. It does seem to be healing ok.

Ha ha, I'm no good at maths but have two microscopes, so I knew Van Leeuwenhoek but not Euler.

Sad to say I agree. I had a serious knee injury this year (ruptured patellar tendon) and after a few months I started getting sharp pains in that knee. The consultant said it was probably a torn meniscus - "It might get better, it might not."

I'm 73, so yeah, it might not. I can walk unaided though, so I've got that going for me.

Recently I was having a problem with my banking app and phoned for help. The robot who answered had a helpful suggestion: download the banking app. Then it hung up. I rang back and tried demanding to speak to a human. "All our agents are busy at the moment. Please wait..." While on hold I had a look at the website, and in the small print learned the humans all go home at 6pm. No-one had thought to tell the robot.

When I spoke to a human the next day, she advised me never to speak to the robot, not even to ask for a human. "Don't say anything, and eventually you'll be put through."

Yes, I'm a normal person, and yes, I hate this bullshit. The bank's human person probably hates this bullshit too, because she has to deal with the aftermath.

(I wrote a letter of complaint and got £50, so it wasn't a complete bust...)

The names translate as Glaswegian (from Glasgow) and Edinburgh.Reekie means smokey, the city used to have a serious smog problem.

It's the same with Scottish accents - the English think there's just one, but there's an big range. Living here for 30+ years I can identify Orkney, Highlands, Western Isles, Weegie, Reekie (posh and non-posh), Aberdeen and Galloway. That last one is odd, it sounds almost Geordie and the locals call it "Galloway Irish".

What I find wild is that the slogan Nunc est bibendum means "Now is the time to drink". Imagine pitching that today as a slogan for a car tyre company.