Yeah, I thought the same when I wrote the comment. I’ve read a bit more about him and what he was charged with. In the UK he wasn’t convicted of grooming - they prosecuted him for it but he was found not guilty. I think it was a consensual relationship, but of course a 19 year old having sex with a 12 year old is rape regardless of consent in the UK and he was (rightly) convicted of that. In the Netherlands however the law is different, it wasn’t considered rape but something like “morally offensive actions”. So from the Dutch pov he’s not actually a rapist, which might explain why the Dutch Olympic committee don’t seem to think it’s that big a deal. Despite that, I still think a convicted pedophile rapist should not be allowed to compete in the games, but that needs to be made clear in the eligibility requirements by the IOC, rather than the wishy-washy “role model” contract.

All Olympic athletes sign a declaration saying they’ll strive to be a role model or something similar. I’d say a convicted rapist shouldn’t be considered a role model and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to compete.

Don’t worry, I have a life threatening illness and reduced life expectancy anyway. And I’m not suicidal. It was already my preferred way to go, this ordeal with my mum just made it crystal clear in my mind. Thankfully I have access to everything I need already so I wouldn’t get anyone else in trouble and my loved ones understand my decision and feel similarly. It being legal would be a bonus, but I’m not letting a law stop me.

My mums been in hospital for 10 weeks. She only 62 and was admitted for a fairly routine infection after chemo for breast cancer. Since she’s been in hospital I’ve lost count of all the things that have gone wrong but the most distressing thing is the hospital delirium she’s developed. I’d never have believed my mum could become so violent and abusive, it’s like she’s a completely different person. She has absolutely no agency over her body at the moment, she can’t even sit up unaided. It’s so horribly undignified that it’s completely cemented my decision to commit suicide once I get a terminal diagnosis (or a diagnosis that I know I couldn’t deal with graciously). I can’t have children so it’s a small comfort that I won’t inflict the pain and heartbreak I’m experiencing from my mum, but I don’t ever want to treat my partner how she’s treating my dad. I’m going out on my own terms if at all possible.

It touches on it briefly, but refeeding syndrome is a killer and is very hard to treat even in hospital not in a war zone. Even if the war stopped tomorrow and food was abundant, there’s nowhere to treat patients who have been starving - more will die.

I wish I could watch sports matches on demand, not just live. And I wish ad-free podcasts were available to pirate. It’s an unrealistic dream.

It’s a fairly niche sport, but Amazon had the tennis rights here in the UK. They’ve gone to sky now and the very minimum you’d need to pay is £30 p/m for much less choice in the way you watch matches. As for prime music, they have a good amount of ad-free podcasts, including everything from wondery. I only have prime for the free next day shipping and free returns by collection, but the tennis and podcasts were a really great extra.

I’m in the UK but I’m largely housebound. Prime is life changing for disabled people like myself. I won’t cancel my subscription but I’ll probably pirate anything I want to watch on prime video in future, which isn’t much now they don’t have the tennis rights in the UK.

Yeah, this guy didn’t have a leg to stand on. There’s an independently owned cafe opposite sarhole mill (inspiration for “the shire”) on the street JRR Tolkien grew up on called “the hungry hobbit”. It’s been called that since 2005 - before the release of the hobbit film. A production company sued this tiny sandwich shop, sitting on a roundabout 3 miles south of Birmingham for the unauthorised use of the word “hobbit”. That was completely egregious imo. It’s now called “the hungry hobb” - they just took down the last two letters on the sign. I really should grab a sandwich from them one day.

I don’t turn airplane mode on and I haven’t jailbroken it. I download all my books from Anna’s archive on my phone and then send them to my kindle email address. The books appear on my kindle in seconds. No DRM issues. I have the oasis because I’m a big reader and I highly recommend it.

I downloaded some stuff on the Disney app on my iPad for my flight to Greece last month and it worked perfectly.

I’m gonna say no, it doesn’t count. Mainly cos I can move one with just a twitch from the other and I’m not special at all.

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Could you send it to me too please?

Yep, increasing the text size helped a little, but adjusting the spacing, alignment and margins helped a lot. I keep the margins thin/small, the alignment left justified and the spacing moderate-wide. Those adjustments plus the more legible font has made reading almost as easy as before my eyesight was damaged. I do have to focus more though, or the words/letters in the centre of my vision go walkabout!

I was able to show that people who stutter “stutter” when they read silently, as well as reading aloud! Although pressure/stress also makes stuttering worse, as you said.

That anticipation you mentioned - it’s called your phonological loop. It’s a cognitive process that happens subconsciously when we form words in our heads before speaking or as we’re reading. One school of thought about the cause of stuttering (and what my research supported) was that people who stutter are over vigilant in their phonological loop. Everyone analyses their speech before it’s articulated to a certain extent, but people who stutter seem to over analyse it like they’re almost expecting an error due to their stutter. That over analysis increases cognitive load and makes you even more likely to stutter; a self fulfilling prophecy, as you said.

I’ll take a look at my literature review later if I get a chance - I’ll let you know if I can find a paper about the effect of fonts.

I sustained damage to my macular last year and switched my kindle font to open dyslexic (as well as make the text larger and more spaced out) after reading became harder. That font helped to “anchor” the words down, particularly in the middle of my vision. Someone suggested a hyperlegible font which works almost as well but is better looking. From my very limited experience, I find the Cyrillic alphabet harder to read than the Roman alphabet - but that could just be my lack of familiarity with it. I learnt a little Ukrainian but only using duolingo.

I don’t know if this little nugget of info might help you, but years ago I was doing a PhD in psycholinguistics. I vaguely remember that different fonts can have an effect on comprehension and recall. I briefly considered an experiment to see if stuttering could be induced by different scripts. That was a long time ago though, I don’t know if that’s still the accepted case.

I’ve been here since Apollo stopped working and I created some communities I missed from Reddit. I’d never been a mod before but it was really easy to set up and get it going. Like someone else said, post it in !newcommunities when you’ve created it. Post every single day for 2 weeks or more so there’s a decent amount of content. People will come in time, you just have to do the heavy lifting at first. And if you’re really passionate about koalas then it’s not hard work at all. Good luck!

You’re welcome! I forgot to say, if it helps in future I did find some decent live coverage on IPTV, much better than sky sports and ESPN imo. The Australian channel Stan had a dedicated channel for every court (Stan sports 1-19), commentary on every main draw match and no adverts. It was better than the live sports streaming websites. Have a good one 👍🏼

Hey! I had no luck finding sports replays on demand from an IPTV. But I did find a work around for this event - ESPN via YouTubeTV. It’s an American service so you need a VPN and US zip code - 11108 worked for me. It has a 21 day free trial and has all the EPSN channels (except plus) live and on demand. It wouldn’t let me sign up with my UK based PayPal, but it happily accepted my UK debit card with the American zip code.