Watching the birds on the bird-feeders in the garden. I get a good mix of finches and their colours are great - not up there with tropical parrots or exotic waterfowl but still a joy to see.
I support a British charity called something like 'Save Our Songbirds' - £25 a year. It's money well spent. Also, Sainsburys let you order foods for wildbirds and get them delivered with your groceries so that's handy - keeps my 'wild pets' happy, keeps me happy :-)
I always have a jar in the pantry but I rarely eat it these days. When I want the meaty taste but meat-free hit, I prefer miso.
My main way of eating marmite was on buttered toast. But I switched from vegetarian to vegan about 20 years ago and never found a way to replace cow butter and get the same dopamine rush.
I recently discovered Lurpak vegan spread which is almost edible. In general, I hate all margerine - yuk! - but this product is not too offensive. Haven't tried it on toast with marmite yet as I do not want to be disappointed.
One great way to eat marmite is on spagghetti - cook pasta as normal, meanwhile heat a bit of butter in a pan until melted, add dollop of marmite and a bit of boiling water, let it simmer until it emulsifies. Drain cooked pasta, pour on marmite sauce, stir, serve. Very tasty (and cheap!) I still do this after going vegan but use extra virgin olive oil instead of butter - you can get some very mild olive oil that tastes very buttery - 'gordo' olives are the type I mean (avoid the strong oils like Italian Tuscan). Be careful and taste the oil first - some 'mild' olives are so sweet they taste like strawberry jam which wont go well with marmite I imagine!
I am a new lemmy user. I am also feeling a bit lost and noticing there are gaps in the fediverse. I assume if a resource does not exist, I need to create it but I am not able to be a mod of a new community, too ill to volunteer the hours as I cannot predict my health beyond a day or so. So, it seems I need to first find a potential community by posting in general communities like this one, find others interested in making a community (including volunteers willing to mod the community), then together we make a community. I am willing to help create a community on disability/accessibility with you if you are interested?
I have disabilities (mainly communication but also mobility) and accessility issues (cannot talk or use a telephone, house-bound) my problems crop up mainly in offline life but sometimes online. I would like to help create a place where people can (1) describe accessibility problems (2) describe solutions they found (3) describe how they challenged the ableism behind accessibility problems, who supported them, and what push-back they experienced and (4) work out an effective politics for empowering disabled and making access a government priority. I'd like to welcome participation from anyone, anywhere, not have content limited to a specific nationality/language or first world (depending on having mods that can work in different languages - perhaps something to aim for down the road if there is enough participation?)
I am also interested in history of disability and access - I attach a photo of a dish I own. Bought for £5 from eBay. It is from late C18th/early C19th, about 200 years old. The porcelein body was created in China and imported to Europe and reflects both cultures in a complex intersection I cannot fully comprehend. The decoration uses western 'transfer' technology and eastern hand-applied colouring. It shows a family group in a garden including an elderly lady in a wheeled-chair. I am intrigued by this object/image because I cannot work out if this is a Chinese representation of a European disability aid, or a European representation of a Chinese disability aid or a cross-over hybridisation of both. I collect ceramics and never saw this design before. I wonder how common it was to put disabled people on crockery intended for an internation trade mass market. I wonder if this decoration was accepted because the disabled person was 'exotic' and it was 'Chinese ethnicity' that was being consumed by western buyers and they did not see the 'disability', or if they were focused on the 'disability' in the image and overlooked ethnicity, or if the mix of novelty, exoticism, orientalism, eroticism, gender, ethnicity, racism, disability and loads of other stuff was in the relationship people had to each other and symbolised in making, trading or owning this curious object and it was never easy to pin down its 'meaning' for anyone, at any time, in any culture. I sense there is an academic paper waiting to be written about this. I welcome discussion on such 'high brow' topics. Maybe I need to help create two new communities - one for 'activism' and another for 'cultural studies / woke disability studies'?
I could see a role for 'elder statesmen and women' as a chamber of cousellors i.e. they offer advice when asked but are not 'hands-on'. Instead, they step down at a retirement age (about 60 years old say) and their juniors step up. That way you get the best from all generations and no generation selfishly dominates decision-making.
Very clear statement, very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct in your analysis. I know that one reason I play video games is to help myself become aware of my 'ethics' (derived originally from my Roman Catholic childhood and still full of that mentality despite decades of 'personal development' and consciously trying to break free from false religiosity) and to start questioning them. I am a vegan, literally avoid hurting insects let alone humans. I recoil from violence ... and it makes me easy to abuse and exploit. I have been trodden on all my life one way or another because I am too 'nice' - I am not a Christian but I still 'turn the other cheek'.
I play Skyrim and one story arc allows you to be an assassin who eventually assassinates the Emperor which, as a republican who finds monarchy morally offensive, is fine by me! But before you kill him, you have to kill a list of 'ordinary' people and it is hard to justify doing so as most of these targets are just eccentric or annoying rather than political threats deserving of execution on behalf of those they oppress. I struggle to do this mindless killing (which the game presents as a cultish sacrifice on behalf of a 'daedric' demi-god and/or service performed for pay/capitalist commodity) and as I play the game I am trying to understand my anxieties about 'killing' pixels, and trying to achieve a visceral sense of it being okay to use violence in specific situations, to feel good in myself about using my own power/agency, so I am not constantly second-guessing myself and thus conceding the initiative to others who are bad actors. I do not find it easy.
I am currently playing The Outer Worlds which is explicitly about the act of rebellion or revolution against tyranny. One of the characters revels in killing the evil corporation's mercenaries. I am like a child, looking on and trying to understand the lessons, trying to imagine feeling the same about the work of liberation. It is ironic that capitalist products are helping me become a revolutionary but everything can be a learning experience and whatever the developers think they are creating, the players make their own experiences.
I tried creating a Steam account and was blocked by the revolving captcha security thing - took days to try to get help from their customer care and by the time they got back to me I had lost interest. I spent the waitjng time researching Valve and I decided they are not an ethical business. Made me sad as I loved the idea of a customised-for-gaming-on-console linux OS and liked the look of the hardware. But Valve is a monopolist and has too much market share and too many users and thus too much power - USA politics today shows how big a risk that is. Valve supports unethical business models like 'rent game to play', AI-generated junk games and IP violations so it debases game development and hurts indy developers, live-streaming games which is bad for environment. It promotes 'easy access/always on gaming' and is thus profiting from addiction-to-gaming, which ix a MASSIVE problem and few gamers admit it. It's an American corporation and I distrust American corporate culture. Most of which might be said of other console/platforms so its not just Valve/Steam, I feel wary of but the whole industry. I bought a second-hand Switch so did not help Nintendo/Japanese corporate power directly. I bought a bundle of 2nd-hand games on sd card with minimal download content (except for 'No Man's Sky' which constantly updates). I am trying to be an ethical gamer - limit my time gaming to stop me becoming an addict etc. But I admit I am compromised - I spend too much time gaming, being retired its easy to lose track of time. Honestly, I feel like a vegan who wraps bacon in thick wholemeal sandwiches and pretends they are not really eating pigs since its mainly bread. I am 'a work in progress'.
I taught myself Mandarin and found it quite do-able, especially reading it whereas speaking it is harder. Then I tried learning Japanese and gave up. I think you need to know more about Japanese culture and the unspoken meanings to really get the hang of it and use it correctly/politely. All I now can remember of Japanese is 'maramoto' (? spelling) which means 'cute little thing' and is Japanese for 'guinea pig' and 'chrissimassy cakeo' which, you'll never guess, is Japanese for 'Christmas cake'! I try to imagine myself visiting Japan and trying out my language skills - walking into a hotel and talking to reception by improvising with my only vocabulary - 'Maramoto, (greeting with a polite bow). Chrissymassy cakeo? (pronounced with accompanying hand gestures so as to convey 'do you have a room with view of the sea and en suite?')' I imagine being politely but firmly shown the door! Ha!
What is HEMA?