From Nov 24th, we progressively decorate the house, one item per day, throughout Brumalia - the old Roman/Byzantine winter festival - in preparation for Saturnalia.

Otherwise, we’ll have a pair of candles going for the eight sabbats themselves, regardless of anything else that we do for them, but I don’t think that candles alone really count as decorations.

Yes, fun idea. No problem with that but… that ‘flag’ is a sail. They’re different things.

Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.

Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.

By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn’t seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.

Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.

I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.

I probably get one a month or so on my work number.

Basically all of them.

A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:

• Doctor
• Dentist
• Sister
• Wife
• Close friend

I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.

I have no reason not to speak to any of these.

Doctor who (2005) s01e07 - Kronkburgers on Satellite 5 in the opening scenes.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.

My main requirement is that it has to be available on my heavily locked down work phone and work laptop as well as my home ones. If it isnt in my face whenever I look at a screen, it isnt going to work. So it ends up being Google tasks.

Without looking for sources - so I could be totally wrong - I believe that it did darken proportionately and that light meters would register that. However, human eyes are not light meters and adjust to the dimmer light without you knowing.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.

I am - in the UK - and I think that it should be opt out rather than opt in.

I don’t know whether it was you, but I have responded to this same question on Lemmy before.

Yes. We had a coal fire when I was growing up - in the 60s and 70s -, so it was an everyday thing during the winters.

We have used ALS Testing in the past. More recently Latis Scientific. Both have been good, we swapped just because of some internal admin thing at one point.

In my case, I approached our usual plumbing contractor who have a couple of labs that they usually used. I now go directly to those labs.

I manage utility services - among other things - for a group of properties - and have had the mains water analysed for chemical and biological contamination at various times. The results have always been absolutely fine. Not just with EU limits, but far, far, far within them for almost everything and definitely well within them for all measures.

I’ve got no issues at all with drinking tap water in the UK, even given the state of the rivers etc.