I reset my phone earlier this year and lost my WhatsApp messages because I didn't have backups turned on. So if they are doing this, it's new in the last few months.

Have you double checked the settings on the account in question?

It looks like a silverfish to me, but I've never seen them bigger than about 1cm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverfish

They don't hurt humans or pets. They'll also tend to hide, given the opportunity.

They do like to eat paper, however. One silverfish isn't a big deal, but if you see them often it's worth looking into deterrents or pest treatment. When there are lots, you'll start to notice holes in notes, books, etc — most particularly (in my experience), loose pieces of paper left undisturbed for a length of time.

Cats aren't pack animals, but they do socialise with humans, other cats, and other animals. They don't all have the same personality and some will tend to be more social than others.

In general, I would say that if a cat normally has human company most of the day (e.g. a human who doesn't work or works from home), human company can be enough (circumstances vary). But in general, if the human(s) are gone a lot of the time then it can be lonely for a single cat. In that case it's worth getting them a four-footed companion.

We had a cat who preferred having us to herself rather than sharing us with another cat. But we could see that she got lonely when we had to leave her by herself, so it seemed better that she had a companion cat even if she didn't want a friend.

At our current house, the yard is open and various neighbourhood cats will come into the space. Our boy accepts two of them. I don't know if they are "friends", but they come to visit and he's chill with them. Any other cat coming into the yard, he tries to fight off. Some fascinating cat politics going on.

I moved from USA to Australia for university, then got permanent residency and later citizenship. I had a pathway because of (1) having completed my tertiary degree in Australia, and (2) having a close relative who was a citizen and could sponsor my application.

Without those things, my only viable option if I wanted to stay after uni would have been to go back to the USA to work for several years in my field of study, then apply for residency on the basis of being skilled in an in-demand industry. Australia maintains a list of in-demand skills, and if your field is on the list then that pathway is open to you - but you would also need to line up a job with an employer willing to sponsor your application ( I think this is mostly just about showing that you will have employment in the relevant field, not a financial burden on the employer, though I could be wrong about that).

My advice would be to make a short list of countries you would consider living in, and then look up their immigration websites and find out which ones you might have a pathway in to (each country is going to be different). If you have family with citizenship in any other countries, begin your search there.

Facebook and Instagram.

10 years ago they were very helpful for keeping up with friends I didn't see very often. Now, Facebook is full of sponsored posts and politics rather than the personal updates I want; and the Instagram feed has more posts from people I don't follow than from people I do.

I stepped away from both a year ago. In the main, I don't miss them. The unfortunate part is that Facebook is the only place local community stuff is posted, so I can't quit entirely. But I no longer have the app on my phone; I just open it in Firefox when I need to look do a specific thing.

Some things are going to depend on your climate, so what has worked for me may not be a good fit for you.

That said, things I've had success with as a lazy gardener in a cool temperate climate:

• beans: pick every few days and eat fresh; keeps producing through the season
• lettuce: choose a variety from which you can pick a few leaves at a time rather than harvesting the whole head
• silverbeet/chard and spinach: pick leaves as needed
• Jerusalem artichokes: takes all season to grow, but produces an abundance of tubers; use them like potatoes
• leeks and spring onions: use the green part, leave the roots in the ground and it will regrow
• radishes: quick to grow, can be eaten fresh or cooked
• beets: can pick occasional leaves to eat while the roots are growing
• perennial herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, chives)
• parsley
• Asian greens (pak choy, choy sum, tatsoi, etc)

Mostly those things have grown with little attention from me apart from water when it's dry. Many of them can be grown easily from seed, which is cheaper than seedlings but takes longer.

Let a plant go to seed and you get more for free. Leeks, spring onions, radishes, leafy greens, parsley are very easy to do this with. Save a few Jerusalem artichoke tubers for next season's crop. Let a couple of bean pods dry on the plant, save the beans and plant them next season.

If there is a community garden near you, that's a great place to ask for advice about what grows well in your area. They may also be able to help you get started with seeds or cuttings.

Regional Australia (New South Wales).

Petrol prices are the highest I've ever seen. I guess that's true everywhere.

But also, on Weds when we went to Canberra we drove past two petrol stations with their signs turned off (suggesting they were completely out) — one in the city and one in the country. I've never seen that before. The country station was back on when we passed again a couple of hours later.

My brother-in-law is a doctor working for NSW Health. Here are a few of his comments when he told us about the strike:

Pretty huge. Never fancied myself a unionist. Never thought I would go on strike.

I told my boss I will be participating. I will not be doing anything elective, which given my current role is 95% clinics and elective day admissions, means on 2 of the 3 days I won't go to work at all. I will continue to be on call for acute consults from the inpatient teams, so that acute care isn't compromised. But for the 15 odd families who's appointments will be cancelled it's going to be mighty inconvenient. I hate that.

But I can't see another way. NSW Health has given up even attempting to negotiate on our Award, their most recent proposal was a copy paste of our current award with a few areas in which they have enhanced their ability to sack people for a range of things (including if you get sick and are unable to do your job, without needing to have sick leave expire or anything), and zero concessions to any of the things we asked for.

But apparently we are greedy doctors who don't care about people, or we would just accept it.

But here's the thing. I did a double shift yesterday (8am to 10pm) because they can't manage to hire enough people to staff our roster. Why? Because no one in their right mind would choose to work in NSW if they had the choice to work for any other state health service. Comparison of the awards makes the decision a no brainer.

There were some broken package dependencies which I had to fix manually (a non-issue on my own device; a major red flag for this device). And after one set of updates, it needed about three tries to boot successfully (requiring hopping into recovery mode to smooth out the wrinkle - again, a non-issue if it were my own device, but...).

As best I can tell at the moment, it's working fine with Mint installed. My concern is what happens next time something is updated or installed and I'm not there to resolve an issue.

But how, when this is the only comfy one?

My current cats have Opinions (capital O) about what is or isn't food. I tried giving them variety, at least in flavour. They don't want it. The want one specific brand of fish-flavored wet food (in jelly, not gravy). They'll eat some kinds of fish-flavored kibble if wet food isn't available. Anything else, they have to be pretty desperate.

At least they both like the same stuff! But the lack of variety is 100% on them, not me.

(My previous cats would eat most things. These two are just weird.)

I honestly don't know how I'm going to vote. Something is needed, but is it this?

I agree with a concern from the 'no' camp, that this ends up being a bandaid or virtue-signalling; and if it passes then "job well done" and we don't keep moving forward.

Otoh, I very much fear that if the result is 'no', we have collectively just affirmed racism - the overt, the systemic, and the subtextual.

I have family planning to vote both ways, and they have put considered thought into their positions, not just gut reactions.

But I don't know, for me. I don't think I can in good conscience vote 'no', but I have not yet convinced myself that I can vote 'yes'.

Tbh I would be amazed if anyone in the government knows that Lemmy exists. But we'll see.

As of Nov 5, this is as far as the list of sites affected goes:

Services that eSafety considers will be age-restricted social media platforms

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Kick
• Reddit
• Snapchat
• Threads
• TikTok
• X (formerly Twitter)
• YouTube

Services that eSafety considers will not be age-restricted social media platforms

• Discord
• GitHub
• Google Classroom
• LEGO Play
• Messenger
• Roblox
• Steam and Steam Chat
• WhatsApp
• YouTube Kids

https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions/which-platforms-are-age-restricted

Wow - thanks! Very informative.

This morning I have opened: Lemmy (aussie.zone), Discord, WhatsApp, Bluesky, Messenger, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube.

None of them have asked me to verify my age, neither the ones that said they would nor the ones explicitly exempt nor the ones about which we know nothing.

My Facebook and Google accounts are probably old enough that they don't need to verify. All the other accounts are too young for that to work.

Bluesky asked me to enter my date of birth, but did not require anything to substantiate the date I entered.

I'm a Millennial, so my age isn't an issue. But I don't want to give anything identifying to any platform. (I like the approach aussie.zone is taking.) So I am relieved that thus far my accounts are unaffected.

But I'm also feeling a healthy dose of "where's the boogeyman we were promised?" and wondering when the shoe is going to drop.

This.

And there are options that store the data locally on your phone rather than on a company server. This is the safest option.

I can't see how The Silmarillion could work as a single film, given how it is structured.

Would really be best done in several discrete films, and they don't even need to be named "Silmarillion". Heck, you could probably make several films just from the Morgoth wars, never mind the other stories... Plenty of material without stretching it too thin like they did to The Hobbit.

If it's their original thought, or I'm including their comment on the thing they shared, then I include the username.

If they've just reposted an image with no extra commentary, I only share the image and not where I found it. Since "where I found it" is not the original source, no attribution is necessary imho.