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.

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.

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.

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.

From Nov 24th, we progressively decorate the house, one item per day, throughout Brumalia - the old Roman/Byzantine winter festival - in preparation for Saturnalia.

Otherwise, we’ll have a pair of candles going for the eight sabbats themselves, regardless of anything else that we do for them, but I don’t think that candles alone really count as decorations.

Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.

Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.

I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.

Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.

I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.

I probably get one a month or so on my work number.

Basically all of them.

A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:

• Doctor
• Dentist
• Sister
• Wife
• Close friend

I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.

I have no reason not to speak to any of these.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

My first computer was a ZX81 - in 1982 - which, with my brother, I built from a kit and was astonished when it actually worked. We eventually added the 16k ram pack too: how could anyone possibly use all that?!

First phone. I think it was a Nokia 5110 or similar in 2000.

Biggest one for me was swapping from setting the alarm as late as possible and then rushing to get out of the house, to setting it an hour earlier and using that to read, do a little qi gong and have a leisurely breakfast.

My main requirement is that it has to be available on my heavily locked down work phone and work laptop as well as my home ones. If it isnt in my face whenever I look at a screen, it isnt going to work. So it ends up being Google tasks.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.