Since his sister died so unexpectedly 3 weeks ago I took Ares for a precautionary checkup at the vet. Plus he’s lost a little weight and has a bit of a cough. All seems OK but the vet took blood and urine to be on the safe side. Ares was very staunch. 🐈
Whew, just spent an hour writing a case for why a sister community organisation should NOT dump its website and move to Facebook. I was sticking my oar in, but it’s been haunting my brain since I learned of the plan. Maybe now I can get my brain back.
Venus and crescent moon at dawn.
Thanks to @patrickrhone for linking to this:
Rural Studio’s $20K House has such innovative design that it’s changing the entire housing system–from mortgages to zoning laws.
The main problems are legal — mortgages, building codes, zoning etc.
the [fishing] company claims it cannot afford to pay workers the living wage, which is due to increase to $21.15 in September. … Moana New Zealand has reported a net profit after tax of $21.4 million for the year ending 30th September 2018.
One of the things I love about getting up early is watching Venus lead in the dawn.
This year New Zealand’s road toll is dreadfully high already— 136 fatalities so far this year. Sharon Murdoch, cartoonist extraordinaire, sums it up.
It’s a rare day when you find even a strand of seaweed on Waikawa Beach. After yesterday’s storm though there are clumps of it every 10 or 20 metres. Some kelp, some other stuff. Oshi managed to photobomb. 🐶
Every morning Sasha likes to come on the bed for a big cuddle. Usually Oshi pushes in, but today he was elsewhere. 🐶
Catching up on reading. Take Control of Siri has added considerably to the uses I’ll make of Siri. Some capabilities are extraordinary, eg, Photos app on Mac:
“Show me pictures of roses”, “show me pictures of shags”.
Today’s forecast was for almost 21mm rain — and very welcome too. Actual rain to 2pm-ish: 43mm. That gives us nearly 3,000 litres of water in the tank! Our rain forecasts are almost always way off…
Interesting item about human composting (rather than burial or cremation):
Microbes … work within a large vessel … that fits a single body along with alfalfa, straw and wood chips. Over …30 days … decomposition destroys the body, along with most pathogens and pharmaceuticals
It seems New Zealand’s roads have been particularly deadly this month.
April began with … a crash that killed five people from the same family. … The crash was about 10km from … where [yesterday] eight people were killed north of Taupō after an SUV and a van collided head on.
The first really solid rainfall in several months. There’s about 30 mm forecast for today.
In January we drove north to visit friends in Whangārei. We rounded a corner on the road north of Auckland and there was a pair of huge sculptures on the horizon!
Tom Scott has made a 2+ minute video about the Gibbs Farm Sculpture Park. It's worth a watch.
Such an interesting episode of Death in the Afternoon: Maggots Holding High Carnival:
The American Civil War left roughly 700,000 dead … With millions of pounds of rotting human flesh on the battlefields, burying the dead was a daunting, sometimes insurmountable task.
There are plenty of -isms in the world, but the only one that affects all of us, especially if we’re lucky enough to survive, is ageism. Ashton Applewhite explains it superbly well in this TED Talk. Her book is excellent too and helped form my ideas.
I really enjoyed the Indian movie Bucket List.
40 year old Madhura looks after her family, but the heart of a 20-year old killed in an accident transforms her life as she sets out to fulfil the donor’s bucket list.
Now that Ares is a lonesome kitty I’m trying to spend more time with him. This is very tricky with our dogs. Here’s Ares on the bed this morning. 🐈
Well, thanks to the superb Take Control Of Your Browser book I’ve installed 2 handy browser extensions, checked / changed a few settings and downloaded 2 new browsers to experiment with. And I understand a bit more about a few things. I recommend the book.