The slightly worrying part is though, that they apparently were in an ionized state before… 😬

Blizzard: WHAT THE HELL?

Wouldn’t that not just be British spelling meaning the same and coming with the same ambiguity?

Well, anyway, better stay away from high level electrostatic fields, just to be on the safe side! ;-)

That is great news! Workers unite!

Although I actually came here to tell what a strange word “unionized” is.
I am an engineer and at first I was like “They have WHAT???”
Took me some moments and actually reading the article to figure it out. :-)

No, I am the guy that just a few weeks ago got told that he can’t open the window of the joint staircases anymore to let out the stale summer heat, because then the pigeons would fly in.
I am the guy that can’t use the easternmost quarter of his balcony any more because it is constantly covered under shit from the pigeon-meeting-place above.
I am the guy whose car is covered in off-colour smudges because the pidgeon-piss from the tree above has corroded the paint.

I am pretty sure that most of the people here that like pidgeons would think completely different when they had to live with them in close quarters and have their quality of live noticeably reduced.

Other birds are great, though! We have sparrows, tits, blackbirds, dozens of other types. All great!
Occasionally a pair of crows is visiting. Those are impressive birds! Intelligent as fuck, don’t give a shit but stay out of your way if you don’t want to interact. And, double Bingo: the pigeons don’t like them!

So the more a shame that most times we leave them to their grim fate in the urban hell we brought them to with us!

Given the fact that they mainly were a food source instead of noble mail carriers, perhaps having been abandoned in reality has not been that bad a fate…

🤪

Well, more metaphorically and limited to densely populated areas. I mean, rural pigeons are great!
But their city dwelling cousins are mostly poor beasts, malnutritioned, disease plaqued, often invalid: half blind, missing leg, barely enough feathers to fly even short distances.
On top of that a public health issue. So the rat comparison mostly holds, I am afraid…

And if we are talking about other birds than pigeons - totally different topic!

Happy about airborne rats?
Seriously?

Not only the U.S. grid is weak compared to China’s… Strategically China seems to be outpacing the U.S. on many fronts, being much more stringent and focused on long term goals than the chaotic U.S. at the moment. I really don’t like the idea of living in a world with China as the leading nation, but it increasingly seems like the most probable development in the mid to long run. And transition will likely not be smooth…

That surprisingly wasn’t that hard, actually.

One side of the family already settled on Threema for communication years ago, the other side I had to first show Signal to and help with installing it, but now they are even using it in other contexts.

And apparently I live in a bubble that is quite open to Signal, so most of the people I know at least use it in parallel to WhatsApp. And for the rest there is still RCS.

The actual hard part are (since I became a parent) all the WhatsApp groups that exist for most kinds of organized child activity, including distributing much of the crucial information regarding school.
Also at my wife’s work WhatsApp is standard for coordinating with the colleagues.

For that purposes we use an old customized WhatsApp-only smartphone, that is used by the family like some old-fashioned fixed phone-terminal, only for messaging…

It’s not just weird hobbies here, but basically all that are somehow organized.
Also a lot of relevant school information is only shared within parent groups on WhatsApp.
My complete WhatsApp-boycott lasted exactly until the first of my childs entered school… :-(

No, in a very private part of the Cloud, so don’t be afraid!

Hey, didn’t you read? It uses “Meta’s Private Processing technology”!!1!

Also:

original message: “Please don’t leave dirty socks on the sofa.” The AI then offers “funny” rewrites, such as: “Please don’t make the sofa a sock graveyard,” “Breaking news: Socks found chilling on the couch. Please move them,” and “Hey, sock ninja, the laundry basket is that way!”

Am I the only one that thinks the “funny” ones in the given example are much more offensive than the original one?

Nice, another reason to not use WhatsApp…

Thanks, didn’t know that existed.
Although their website is inaccurate, as it seems not to be available on f-droid.

Sure you do… BONK!

You mean Hannah Fry? No, I think this isn’t her.

I am pretty sure it is normal cat behaviour. Basically all cats that I have met or owned (with the exception of some very relaxed Persians) randomly behaved that way. Some more, some less.
Eyes go suddenly wide with hyperfocus, tail starts wiggling and you now have 2 seconds left to react to the sudden change of mood… Or play along for some serious pretend-fighting :-)