Are unfertised human eggs a thing? Like, the chicken eggs we eat aren’t fertilised. I’m imagining something like an ostrich egg. Lots of omelette in that … um, definitely-not-a-baby.

One of my favourite eggcorns.

Egg colour is down to genetics - some breeds, eg leghorn, lay white eggs. Others lay various shades of brown. It’s what’s inside that counts, and that depends a lot on what you feed a chicken.

Ski goggles. https://sfstandard.com/2022/12/25/the-worlds-only-private-ski-resort-where-mark-zuckerberg-and-bill-gates-hit-the-slopes/

Some of my non-techie friends were complaining about how rubbish Google search is now and I suggested Duck Duck Go. They couldn’t get past the name. I know it’s based on some childhood game in the US but it makes no sense to anyone here in the UK.

“The proof is in the pudding.”

The actual phrase is: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won’t know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.

“The proof is in the pudding” doesn’t mean anything.

I’m in my 70s, soooo pretty much everything I own. Sigh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36389581

Agreed, sadly. I mean look at Moses. Seriously, read the chapters about him going up the mountain, coming back with the big list of rules, then ordering the killing thousands of the people who’d followed him into the desert, because they didn’t obey the rules while he was away getting the big list of rules. Psycho.

Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ ” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.

I bet it’s bacon. The siren song of sizzling bacon always drags me away from vegetarianism in the end.

Photo editing and uploading, maintaining my sports club’s website, video calls to family members, watching films and TV. Do word puzzles count as gaming? I do Quordle and Octordle every morning. I also have an ancient laptop running Linux; I’m trying to work myself up to switch the computer over come October.

Aquaducts aren’t new. Granted this is a novel design, but it’s still just an aquaduct. https://waterways.org.uk/about-us/news/canal-aqueducts

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/trump-resumes-sending-2000-pound-bombs-to-israel-undoing-biden-pause

Everyone has sleep paralysis every time they dream. It’s a mechanism that stops you acting out your dreams. What happens occasionally is that you come out of the dream state enough to become aware of being paralysed. You’re not awake, so your unconscious mind is grappling with the horror of paralysis.

My own experiences were nightmares where I was being threatened by an unseen figure, but couldn’t move to escape. I had a lot of them, some really horrible. Then I read an article with the above explanation, and I haven’t had one since. It was like once my unconscious knew what was going on, it stopped freaking out.

We protect it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

Years ago I had a job where we had a “graveyard” shift. It was a solo gig, started at 11pm and finished at 7am when the morning shift took over. You’d work it for seven days and then have seven days off. We shared the shift, so that everyone did it a few times a year. You’d think with seven days off it would be popular, but no. No-one wanted it.

I hated it. The worst part was the isolation. There were duties to carry out, but it was mainly checking things. Alone. It was difficult to sleep when I got home and it messed with my head, I felt like a zombie. I’d meet up with friends in the evening and struggle to make conversation. It took up to five days to recover. Very, very unhealthy.

More recently I worked mostly 5pm to 2am, and that was much more manageable. We were a team, and we often met up during the day for sports or a movie. It was awkward socialising with other friends though; I’d be working when they weren’t.

Also Scottish. I recently came into an inheritance that I had to pay some tax on. It was a wild ride working out how much. After a good long while in a phone queue I was directed to the correct online form, gathered all the relevant documents etc and just worked my way through it. It turned out I owed a lot less than I thought, hurrah! Everyone I spoke to was lovely and helpful, and although it was difficult (I’m crap at maths) it was a weirdly positive experience.

I had that exact conversation with a friend the other day, almost word for word. Spooky.