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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 5, 2018 19:00:12 GMT
Thalys Train was nearly 3 hours late yesterday. Suicide on the tracks. Bad for us for the delay worse for him/her. Worst for the family. Suicide is one of the worst - everybody feels guilty at one level of another. And yet I'm sure that just about everybody filled out the form for a refund of the fare. After all, we are not given the option of having the amount of the fare given to the family of the deceased -- and on top of that we don't know if anybody else even deserves the amount.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 5, 2018 21:09:16 GMT
I'd certainly fill it out; it is the rail company paying for it. I'm certainly not indifferent to suicide. I've worked at seminars about the suicide epidemic among Indigenous communities (in Canada). Sometimes I was so upset that I walked all the way home (about 8 km, I think). Not that the distance was very great, but it was November and chilly. And dark.
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Post by whatagain on Jul 7, 2018 13:53:55 GMT
Friend of my daughter was so plastered she couldn't open the door of the house she stays in and banged on it. 3 am. An old door with a single glass pane in an oval frame that you could open. Ugly as hell. Anyway she broke it then went up the stairs panicked. Blood everywhere making it look like a crime scene. Police ambulance and neighbours all arrived.
In the course of event the dog my daughter was dog sitting ran away. Was eventually found by the police.
We can count on our daughter to make our life more interesting.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 7, 2018 17:09:31 GMT
That's not a peeve. That's a trauma!
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Post by questa on Jul 12, 2018 0:30:53 GMT
Sorry, whatagain, but I had to laugh at the whole scene. I'm glad it turned out OK but it must have been like a TV script at the time.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 17, 2018 17:08:00 GMT
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Post by rikita on Jul 31, 2018 8:42:15 GMT
when you decide to eat pizza because that is what one person in the family says they want - and you order two for the three of you, and one of those two is a margherita, because that is what said person insists on (even though the other two would prefer something more adventurous) - and then said person ends up taking three bites and then claims they are full.
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Post by rikita on Jul 31, 2018 8:42:36 GMT
what is wrong with interactive museums?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 31, 2018 9:31:06 GMT
So often they're not really interactive -- more some lame sound & light presentation. Or, as in the case of the Amsterdam Museum, it's too many things together that seem to have no relationship to each other, plus silly-ass clickbait things to press on to see something unenlightening. I definitely see the point of having well-designed interactive elements for children -- things that engage them and make then curious about the subject. But adults generally want to be informed and enriched in a cohesive, fluid manner.
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Post by rikita on Jul 31, 2018 11:42:56 GMT
ah ok, so not the interactivity itself, but the way it is done. there i agree - it can often be done better (same for non-interactive, really) ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 31, 2018 12:07:52 GMT
They have closed the sewer museum in Paris for the next two years to modernize it. I hope it becomes interactive.
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Post by mossie on Jul 31, 2018 15:39:57 GMT
But adults generally want to be informed and enriched in a cohesive, fluid manner. Is this how you want it Kerouac, so the sewer turns round and s*its all over you
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 31, 2018 16:16:37 GMT
I am thinking more about a swarm of virtual rats.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 4, 2018 20:45:10 GMT
I remember when the dumbed-down Amsterdam Museum was the Amsterdam Historical Museum - fusty, and we loved it. Not interactive at all. I remember a small exhibit on correspondence between Anne Frank (and other members of the immmediate family) with relatives in Germany and Switzerland. At the time I read and understood German much more than Dutch, and since most of these letters were in German, it was both a treat and filled with foreboding. The new version depresses me.
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Post by rikita on Aug 13, 2018 14:39:14 GMT
when you end up going to the playground with a friend of your kid, so for once she plays without you - and you forgot to bring your book (and the battery in your phone is also low...)
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Post by Kimby on Aug 13, 2018 15:10:10 GMT
(I guess we’ve stopped numbering these...)
Even more than jet skis (Personal Water Craft), I am peeved about power boats with loud stereo systems. They have to be loud to be heard over the roar of the motor, but that makes everyone within earshot an involuntary attendee to your “concert”.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2018 19:54:04 GMT
Let me expand that peeve to include anyone anywhere who feels entitled to share music (or loud conversations, for that matter) with everyone else.
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Post by Kimby on Aug 13, 2018 20:01:14 GMT
I figured that one had probably been done long ago, bixa, so chose the more specific boat stereo to whine about!
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 13, 2018 21:02:24 GMT
You touched a nerve because a neighbor across the street from me sells jello & various -ades & boiled corn on a table in front of her house. To do this it is necessary for her to drag out a 2-foot+ high speaker on a stand to blare out the shriller musical hits directly toward my home and my ears. I'm fighting down the urge to go over there & forcefully jam earbuds into her earholes, since she's apparently unaware of that wonderful invention.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 14, 2018 0:25:15 GMT
Oh dear. Neighbours here from Central America and the northern (semi-tropical) countries of South America tend to do that. Not my Mexican neighbour, by the way, nor people I know nearby from Chile and Argentina. Probably not a worthwhile sample.
Riding around with boomboxes seems popular in many parts of the world.
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Post by bjd on Aug 14, 2018 6:28:28 GMT
In the coastal village in Colombia where my son's in-laws have a house, the trend was for each house to blare vallenato music as loudly as possible through open doors. My daughter-in-law's brother claimed it had been worse before but I still found it awful, both the musical style and the noise.
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Post by rikita on Aug 14, 2018 8:29:55 GMT
while waiting for the boat to the st. mary monastery in the mljet national park recently, a group of young men carrying something with loud music arrived. they were also talking loudly, carrying beer bottles, and proceeded to take off their shirts and jump into the water at the pier, right next to the "no swimming" sign ... to our embarrassment, after a while we noticed they were speaking german (not that it should matter - but somehow you always feel like it'd reflect on you if it is someone from your country) ... fortunately they did not get into the same boat as we did, it was too full and they had to wait for the next one ...
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 23, 2018 22:41:23 GMT
huckle, I have no idea how much hearing loss you have, but want to suggest earphones. I have a friend who really has trouble hearing & earphones changed her life as there are many things she wished to enjoy for which captions weren't available. I don't have hearing problems, but like using earphones as they generally make the sound clearer and richer than that of the speakers on a tv or computer. Since I do all my tv watching on the computer, I use wired earphones, mainly because they're the ones I already have. But my friend watches tv from her sofa, so chose the bluetooth kind. The earphones also cover up annoying ambient noise.
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Post by Kimby on Oct 23, 2018 22:48:36 GMT
Headphones for the TV have saved our marriage! I like to watch the news when I cook dinner, and wake up early and turn on the news then, too. My headphones are wireless, so I can move around the house and yard while using them. And Mr. Kimby can have the peace and quiet he craves. And when we’re both watching the same show, I can control my own volume while he listens off the air.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 24, 2018 2:26:21 GMT
The men's voices would not be louder through earphones. To me the earphones just seem to deliver a more pure sound -- none of that diffuse blurriness that speakers produce. That's what makes me crazy about tv speakers. Turning them up usually makes everything louder, but not more clear. If you try listening to something like an interview or a roundtable through the headphones, you'll see that the men's voices will not be any louder than those of the women.
And yeah -- there are some actors who seem to think they're one half of a ventriloquist's act. Enunciate! Let the words out!
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 24, 2018 16:43:19 GMT
A young friend was sitting quietly in a pub with his chum and their partners. Loony smashes a glass in his face and hurls abuse. It's all on cctv and its obviously unprovoked ..bouncer hustles thug away and the victim taken to hospital for severe lacerations to his mouth and jaw. The pub has refused to release the cctv footage to the police so that they can identify the thug and prosecute him. The pub says that releasing the footage will damage their reputation!
Ridiculous.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 24, 2018 17:31:07 GMT
"I'm not going to the police rat pub!" It all depends on what sort of customers you want to cultivate.
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Post by whatagain on Oct 26, 2018 20:07:13 GMT
Pet peeves of the week : - having to pay for parking when you go to the hospital (one that is in the middle of nowhere) - having to pay to take a piuss at a rest area at belgian german border - having your former boss tagging along when for dinner with some excelleznt friends - having the daughter crashing her car (and yes having to buy another one in near future) - going to southern France with shitty weather forecast
Don't know, I fell like I'm in a bad mood ;-)
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 26, 2018 20:55:32 GMT
Get ready for the snow! And don't forget that the beach is totally polluted due to the recent oil spill.
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Post by whatagain on Oct 27, 2018 8:26:09 GMT
I had forgotten that. Anyway. Going to see second hand cars. Perfect timing. We are broke and have to pay our trip to Myanmar. I like to complain about money ;-)
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