I’ve read the books and thoroughly enjoyed them and am now thoroughly enjoying the show. The emphasis of the show is different, certainly, but in this case I am happy with that. After the first episode in which I was all ‘It’s not that way in the book…’ I am taking as it is.

My SO has not read the books and is also thoroughly enjoying it. It is probably her favourite show at the moment.

Yes. Why do you ask?

Not specifically for the eyes or posture, but for overall approach and attitude to situations like this:

• Marcus Aurelius’ quote: Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. - and stoicism in general.
• Imagine them sitting on the toilet. You can’t take them too seriously like that.
• Take a longer perspective: consider whether this interaction will be of any significance at all in 10 years time?

No. I’m not interested in interaction when I am buying or selling something. Nor playing games, or getting or giving social strokes or whatever. I will do that on separate occasions.

I will pay the price asked or I will look elsewhere.

A satsuma. The penultimate element of my lunch.

The ultimate will be a banana, in a few minutes.

1177 B.C. The Year Civilisation Collapsed- Eric H Cline. I think that meets your criteria - although ‘narrator isn’t annoying’ is obviously wildly subjective. I listened a while back and found it very interesting. I will be listening to After 1177 B.C. sometime soon.

Chumbawamba’s discography - or even just this one on repeat.

Cornwall. Same group of friends as the last 30 or so years, in about 6 weeks time.

I’m in the UK. I worked at a couple of places in the '90s - sysadmin and IT trainer - where this was considered perfectly acceptable at the time, but I definitely wouldn’t now. I’m no longer in IT at all, but I don’t think that it is seen as acceptable very widely anywhere now.

Read using REadEra, play Forge of Empires - plus Lemmy via Voyager.

I had the usual lessons at primary school, but at the end of those myself and one other in the class still couldn’t swim. In the half century since then I have never found the need or the desire to try again.

Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

In my experience, there are three types:

• Alive and well, as here - they are up at 6am, clearing up, making breakfast, rolling other people out of the way to vacuum etc.
• Still hungover, as here - the ones being rolled out of the way etc
• Still partying - arrive at 6:am straight from another party, hoovering up leftover pizza, talking at both the above types and keen not to stop the party until Jan 2nd at the earliest.

We don’t do Christmas, but had friends over for solstice pizzas. My wife announced a ‘no politics’ rule at the outset - not because of likely arguments, but just because it can get very repetitive and depressing.

It was a cosy and enjoyable evening after that - as they usually are.

Back a long way when I was living with my family we didn’t talk about politics anyway: partly since it was widely understood that one didn’t, but mostly since none of them were consciously political anyway. Christmas meals were generally free of arguments in general. The only point of contention was the mysterious presents that appeared for the children that actually came from dad’s side of the family - with whom he had long-since fallen out and dropped all contact - and that consequently had to be disguised or kept under the radar one way or another. That didn’t always work.

I am a pagan. There are pretty much no widely accepted texts within paganism that make any statements about subject. In my experience most pagans are quite happy to coexist with other religions in general - and given that in almost all circumstances pagans will be in a small minority that makes perfect sense. On the other hand, most pagans that I know are far less happy to coexist with the more bigoted and hateful varieties of religion.

There is a strong feminist trend within paganism and this - particularly linked with the ahistorial but often assumed heritage of witchcraft, and the associated history of hanging and burning of witches - does not lead the more patriarchal end of the Abrahamic religions to sit well with a lot of pagans - and I know a lot who are far happier about visiting the roofless moss-covered shell of an abandoned church, with a hawthorn growing in the apse than they are visiting an occupied one (unless it is in search of a sheel-na-gig etc).

On the other hand, there is a strand of Norse paganism that crosses into white supremacy and neo-nazism, so that brings its own hate, bigotry and patriarchy. I do not know what their stance on other religions is.

Awkward because encephalitis is caused by HIV.

From the NHS website:

Encephalitis is most often due to a virus, such as:

• herpes simplex viruses, which cause cold sores (this is the most common cause of encephalitis)
• the varicella zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and shingles
• measles, mumps and rubella viruses
• viruses spread by animals, such as tick-borne encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, rabies (and possibly Zika virus)

Encephalitis caused by a virus is known as “viral encephalitis”. In rare cases, encephalitis is caused by bacteria, fungi or parasites.

Not sure about the whole idea of being proud of something. It seems to me that it is a concept that evaporates when you look closely at it.

However I am pleased with the role that I played in getting some meadows that were going to be sold off for housing included a nature reserve instead when I was the ranger for the site.

I’d created some good toad breeding habitat nearby and then I put in a lot of my own time in building a volunteer group and recording in detail where the toads went and how they used the land - including the area that was going to be sold - over the course of a few years. It turned out to be the largest recorded toad colony of its type in the UK one year. The data was a critical point in the final decision by the local authority.

The thing about being proud is that it seems odd to be proud of something over which you have no control. Well, OK, I did have control here: I chose to spend my time in doing this, certainly. But I can be quite determined about things like that - that is down to my temperament. Do I actually have control of my temperament - or was I just born that way? Even if I have developed my own temperament over the years - wouldn’t that simply be because I was born with the capability of developing it? And so on and so on. Ultimately it always seems to boil down to something over which I really couldn’t say that I have any control.

But I can be pleased at any of those, no matter what.

This article is from 2009, of course.

In addition to the reasons suggested in several of the comments here so far, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben is extremely critical of the concept of human rights since they are a legal and political construct, and the same legal and political systems are used to create ‘exceptional’ circumstances in which the rights are deemed not to apply to certain groups. Relying on these rights is flawed, in his view, since they will be suspended when most needed. The Philosopize This Podcast did an episode on this just recently.

I think that any of these, and probably a dozen others, may be relevant definitions in certain circumstances.

However, for a more general definition, from my own perspective, I would say that identity is the sum of my experiences and the patterns or propensities that i have developed as a result.