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Today I paddled 7.5km in the sea and only panicked once!
A woman wearing a wetsuit and buoyancy aid is paddling a blue kayak on the sea towards some large rocks. The sky is mostly blue with a few clouds. A bird flies overhead.
A woman is draped over a blue kayak looking at the camera while holding a paddle. She is learning to remount her vessel. Behind her is a fort with turrets and above it a blue sky with only a few clouds.

Felt angelic. Might demon later.
A woman with glasses and long hair standing in front of a grey wall. The sun is directly behind her, creating a halo effect.

OK, ā€œfantasticā€ isnā€™t quite the word I would choose, butā€¦
On a starfield, 8-bit text in green reads ā€œNOW IT IS THE BEGINNING OF A FANTASTIC STORY ... LET US MAKE A JOURNEY TO THE CAUE OF MONSTERS. GOOD LUCK !!ā€ Two creatures are apparently suspended in bubbles below.

A flotilla of swans on the river this afternoon šŸ¦¢
A river scene. At the top of the picture a blue sky is punctuated with trees, some a little thinner with green leaves than others. The sun shines through the trees on the right, casting a warm glow over the scene. On the water, all of this is reflected in ripples while a family of swans swims by. Two are adult white swans. Two are younger and grey. One of the cygnets seems to have darker plumage
A swan turns to inspect my kayak. In the background its mate and one of its cygnets swim idly

If you see this post... Quote post a bridge.
(If you can be bothered emulating a quote post). This is the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford, presumably so called in despair at how much less good it is than Cambridgeā€™s queer.party/@sparrowsion/11335ā€¦

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2024-10-23 19:39:09


If you see this post... Quote post a bridge.
(If you can be bothered emulating a quote post)

Had to go back to 2019 to find a picture of a bridge in my collection, but it's a very fine bridge (Penmaenpool)

Re: mastodon.social/@womump/113358ā€¦ from @womump (although I saw @xanna 's first but wasn't in a position to get at my photos then)

A very gently arched wooden bridge, with black supports and white railings. It is crossing a broad lazy river (actually the upper reaches of an estuary). On the far bank, low wooded mountains rise to a blue sky filled with fluffy white clouds.

Comet!
Night mode view of a garden fence with a blue sky above. In the blue sky, centrally just above a low bank of cloud, is a comet

@BeeCycling Jettison Pod
A picture of a hand with one finger on the third of five buttons. The first two buttons are labelled ā€œALERTā€. The third is labelled JETTISON POD.
@BeeCycling

What I really like about the Greater Anglia trains that do the run from Cambridge North to Liverpool Street? The seat back trays have little grooves in for your phone or tablet (or here, Kindle).
The back of a train seat with its tray folded down. The tray has grooves in that rub from left to right. In one of the grooves an electronic book is propped up against the back of the seat. On the right of the tray is a cup of coffee.

A walk in the park with @Zoƫ O'Connell and @Sarah Brown - Ow, I hurt.
strava.app.link/6L22fcPhTMb
A map of a hike in the Peak District. Itā€™s labelled ā€œAfternoon Hikeā€ like itā€™s a gentle thing one might do before tea. The distance was 34.5km, gained elevation 749m, and time taken 8h 28m
@Sarah Brown @Zoƫ O'Connell

A good walk in the Chilterns with @Zoƫ O'Connell in preparation for Nine Edges (about twice as long) next weekend.
Me, wearing a white T-shirt, black trousers, rucksack and walking boots, looking down a small slope towards the photographer. Signs point in various directions saying FOOTPATH. The one pointing towards me has an acorn on it and says RIDGEWAY FOOTPATH
A map of a hiking route in the Chilterns. The route goes anticlockwise from the National Trust Visitor Centre at the centre of the map, heading up to Beacon Hill in the north before returning south via Ringshall and Ashridge Golf Club The distance was 19.5km, elevation gain 389m, time taken 4h 31m
@Zoƫ O'Connell

@RSPB Met this fluff ball while kayaking on the Cam a couple of days ago.
Amidst lots of reeds and leaves stands a small fluffy black blob with a small fluffy black head and a red beak with a yellow end.
@RSPB

@Paris Marx @Lazarou Monkey Terror šŸš€šŸ’™šŸŒˆ ā€œGrimes, who had three children for Muskā€. Is it me or is that a very weird choice of preposition?
@Lazarou Monkey Terror šŸš€šŸ’™šŸŒˆ @Paris Marx

Pint or n with @Conor Mc Bride who is enjoying their pint more than the expression suggests!
Person in a golden dress holding a pint of golden fizzy beer.
@Conor Mc Bride

Am I upright or inverted conical flask?

New tenants! And theyā€™re HUNGRY!
A shot inside a bird box. Toward the bottom are several wide open yellow beaks attached to small birds.

Ok Boulmer
A shipping village between a grey blue sky and white topped waves

Ok boomer.
A white and brown bird with a big beak against a background of grass and reeds

@Rich Stein (he/him) Theyā€™ve at least got them temporarily bodged to show white.
@Rich Stein (he/him)

@Dreadnought Holiday They made a bit of a mess of it. (Taken from a yacht yesterday morning)
A structure on three pillars. On of its railings hangs mangled
@Dreadnought Holiday

I did not expect to be hoisted up a mast, or to enjoy it!
Looking down from the top of a 14m mast at two boats moored in green water. On the left hand boat several people are waving up at the photographer.

Can a swan be a birb? I canā€™t do polls on Friendica so you will have to reply either birb or the appropriate noun of your choice
A large white mute swan stands on a brown dirt bank. Its neck is turned towards the camera, showing off its vivid orange beak. Behind it a younger swan still has some brown feathers and is preening so appears to have no head.

@Alisdair Calder McGregor Doesnā€™t look like they did that though
A bar chart on telly. It reads: BEJA RESULTADOS PS 31,7% CHEGA 21,6% AD 16,7% CDU 15,0% BE 4,4% ABSTENƇƃO 35,4%6 CONCELHOS 14/14
@Alisdair Calder McGregor

I was watching the Portuguese election coverage last night. Ignore the Chega TV banner in the top left; they were just rebroadcasting RTP3ā€™s coverage. What struck me was where in the UK we report turnout percentages, in Portugal the media report the opposite: the percentage of voters who stayed at home (abstenĆ§Ć£o in the bottom right). I wonder if thereā€™s something about the political history of Portugal that makes this so.

An ouster clause expressed in sufficiently clear language.
The Peanuts ā€œfootball gagā€ - Charlie Brown is yelling ā€œaaugh!ā€ Having run at the football which Lucy has pulled out of his path.

Nanoleaf bulb is a rhombicosidodecahedron
A lightbulb. Its surface is composed of pentagons, squares, and triangles.

If you use a laptop with a trackpad which you can scroll with two fingers, and you donā€™t have a pinkie related disability, does your little finger do this?
A hand is resting on a laptop touchpad. The first and second fingers are side by side on the touchpad. The third is slightly elevated. The little finger is raised in a slight hook position

In accordance with tradition, +1, thanks to @Sarah Brown
A folding bicycle propped up against the washing machine in a kitchen. There is a jar of marmite nestled behind the seatpost
@Sarah Brown

I dunno, itā€™s going to make it a bit difficult to useā€¦
A cardboard package labelled ā€œmulti pack / do NOT openā€

Brutal. #UKpol
Stormont must be reformed so no single party can collapse institutions - Long In newspaper section ā€œobituariesā€
#ukpol

@ZoĆ« O'Connell Donā€™t think it has a date on it though.
@Zoƫ O'Connell

Playing with the new telescope and trying to get focus and tracking working better. Not huge success, but this is at least pretty.

@xanna Well this is normal šŸ¤Ŗ
@xanna

#cambridge Guided busway claims more drivers who donā€™t notice signs. This car has lost one, maybe two tyres to the car trap. My question is, how are they rescued? Do ordinary rescue companies have vehicles that can get onto the guideway? Does the county council?
#Cambridge

@Mona app notifications from a friendica server seem to confuse Mona on iOS. They all appear as this.

You received a new message.
Error: error: The data couldn't be read because it isn't in the correct format.

@Mona app

Pen fans! I have a Platinum Plaisir with some pink ink which keeps going scratchy on me even though the converter still has plenty of ink in it. Iā€™ve tried cleaning everything out with water and letting it dry and itā€™s a little bit better but it still seems to dry out in use. Any suggestions?

Poor Mark Drakeford. The OU canā€™t even get his name right.

Iā€™m so vain I probably think this post is about me.

Wikipedia also teaches me about: the Duck Curve, the amount of power that must be generated from sources other than solar or wind. So called because it resembles a duck. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curā€¦

Inside you areā€¦

For UK readers desiring a sense of scale, this is the boundary of the Gaza Strip (area 365 km^2, population 2m) rotated so it can be overlaid on the Isle of Wight (area 381 km^2, population 140k).

(Map generated with thetruesize.com)

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