Emma the Curious 🧐 has moved!

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Last Notes

2025-11-19 12:41:48 GMT

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@nprofile…fsxt Ooh, gingerbread!

2025-11-19 12:40:54 GMT

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@nprofile…gxav It’s a way of turning leftover cake into something new, compressed and with the addition of a sizeable amount of Sherry…. Weighs a ton!

2025-11-19 11:53:03 GMT

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@nprofile…gxav My ex-husband introduced me to the concept of Russian cake, which had been a significant part of his childhood. I never took to it, though.

2025-11-19 11:47:54 GMT

OK, hive mind. You walk into a traditional British bakery. It's cosy warm, there's a delicious smell, and the proprietor is jovial.
You spend a few minutes preusing the baked goods inside the glass counter. What catches your eye?

2025-11-19 11:24:29 GMT

Slightly distracted trying to work out what would be the perfect sweets for the snouts.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/polar-bear-peppermint-creams

2025-11-18 08:19:20 GMT

Ryan and I had been catching up on season 2 of Tracker, ahead of starting season 3.
We bailed out last night. It got way too dark.

2025-11-08 08:48:37 GMT

I was obviously feeling a bit poetical a few weeks ago...
✨ The Sparkles ✨
The cloud of ideas/inspiration that surrounds every writer. If this was a movie, they’d be shown as little sparkles of light, or magic, a floating cloud of fireflies. But you can’t really see them.
When one is ready, it darts into the writer, which can produce an exciting, tingling feeling. A flash of inspiration that may – or may not – last long enough to appear on a page.
🧵

2025-11-04 13:17:29 GMT

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Seriously, I just nearly snorted tea out through my nose.

2025-11-01 09:04:27 GMT

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@nprofile…fsxt Well...it was a vanilla maple base plus chocolate chips. We had a tub of vanilla buttercream icing we bought from the reduced section of the corner shop, so we are liberally slathering.

2025-11-01 05:46:00 GMT

Thank fuck that week is over.
On Thursday evening, we baked Emergency Muffins. Because things were that bad*.
*First-world shit. Everyone is fine.

2025-10-23 07:01:16 GMT

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@nprofile…y96a I like the big red string idea. Very analog.

2025-10-23 05:19:38 GMT

When I was growing up, paper magazines and newspapers were a big thing, and it was common to cut articles or pages out and keep them for later.
Now pretty much everything has gone digital, but I’m seriously thinking of printing out the things I find that really resonate, or inspire, and creating a clippings book for those days when I don’t have the energy to wade through the entire internet to find something good.

2025-10-22 07:34:08 GMT

This morning I feel a burning need to explore the history of floating restaurants.
https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/tag/floating-restaurants/

2025-10-19 15:12:55 GMT

Right. I'm sure* that somewhere out there, someone is patiently waiting for the next installment of my Cosy Library story.
*I'm really not.

2025-10-19 15:07:04 GMT

Couldn't resist buying myself a new t-shirt in Newbury this morning:
#ActuallyAutistic
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/401/451/794/658/390/original/460d29c8cbb3242e.jpg

2025-10-17 16:04:20 GMT

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@nprofile…y2nt I would say yes. My husband would disagree.

2025-10-17 09:50:23 GMT

"If you look closer at the building stones, tiles and pavements of the big city, you can find a hidden world of geology and history, from fascinating fossils to unusual rocks."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251017-urban-geology-how-to-find-fossils-and-other-discoveries-in-your-citys-buildings
#fossils #geology

2025-10-16 16:00:21 GMT

Politicians and the media have spent years twisting concerns about women’s safety to push an anti-trans agenda. But data consistently shows that transgender people are far more likely to be victims of violence than they are to be perpetrators.
It’s time for women and allies to speak up. To say ‘not in our name’ to the discrimination and exclusion of trans people.
Add your name today to stand with trans people.
https://notinourname.org.uk/petition/not-in-our-name-women-in-support-of-the-trans-community/

2025-10-13 14:53:57 GMT

My colleagues are communication professionals.
You would think that this makes it easier to communicate with them.
It does not.

2025-10-10 04:22:37 GMT

I’d heard of the Navajo code talkers who used their native language to pass secret messages during WW2 that couldn’t be decoded by the Nazis.
TIL that there were actually code talkers from 20 different tribes.
https://americanindian.si.edu/why-we-serve/topics/code-talkers/

2025-10-07 08:38:43 GMT

I'm not sure how we went from the 1950s optimism that modern technology would mean the end of work and a happy life of leisure for humans to the 2025 pessimism that AI will mean the end of work and most of us will starve without a paycheck.

2025-08-27 12:16:53 GMT

RAIN!
BIG RAIN!

2025-08-26 09:34:55 GMT

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@nprofile…cw2k 😂

2025-08-26 08:17:59 GMT

Gah! One of my colleagues has written a 5-point procedure, in which Point 5 has to happen before Point 4.
🤬

2025-08-25 05:18:56 GMT

Oh.
#otrovert
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/087/705/362/200/090/original/26e5d5b2f1a3f761.jpeg

2025-08-24 07:04:11 GMT

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@nprofile…ugza My mum hated the first house I owned, because she thought if she parked in the street her car would be "up on bricks" when she got back to it.
I lived in that neighbourhood for ~10 years. The worst thing that happened was a teenage neighbour breaking his own window with a football during a spat with his mum.
Some teenagers accidentally broke our wall (it was ancient and crumbly) and came to apologise.
My mum is a regular chuch goer.

2025-08-24 06:11:16 GMT

'Not all her colleagues have appreciated Ellen Schagerström’s extrovert nature, but she has never felt vulnerable about performing and speaking in public. Perhaps that has something to do with
the subject.
“It would have been different if I was working with seals and cormorants,” she says. “Grumpy old men don’t care about kelp.”'
#WomeninSTEM
https://universitetslararen.se/2025/05/26/making-people-laugh-about-seaweed/

2025-08-23 14:25:26 GMT

After five days of continuous noise, I am disappointed in my neighbours who decided that yesterday evening was the perfect time to vacuum their car noisily in the car park, and that this afternoon is the perfect time to mow their bloody lawn.

2025-08-23 13:48:29 GMT

"The Case of the Llama Raising Librarian" may just be the best book title ever.

2025-08-21 07:39:12 GMT

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The noise continues. In fact, it's worse, because they are digging up the road nearer to the house now.
it seems to be taking forever, and I suspect it will be for longer than the 2 weeks originally mentioned.
Access to the car park is now via metal plates over a trench, which make a booming noise every time a car goes over.

2025-08-20 08:55:05 GMT

"Just this year at The Sanctuary, they’ve had the first salamanders return. Several varieties of vital mycorrhizal fungi are again permeating the soil. Praying mantises — non-native but indispensable in fighting spotted lanternflies — are arriving in force. Beech and holly trees are springing up in parallel, the latter resistant to the former’s toxins. Everything is still changing, evolving, reaching for balance."
https://ambrook.com/offrange/perspective/the-sanctuary

2025-08-20 08:52:35 GMT

"Mark Brown is part of an informal network of independent growers who are cultivating garlic from true seeds — referred to, among garlic people, as TGS — to increase its resilience and diversity, to develop distinctive calling-card varieties, and to simply see what’s possible."
https://ambrook.com/offrange/crops/so-you-think-you-know-garlic

2025-08-19 14:24:42 GMT

Personal bugbear - people who send images by pasting them into a PowerPoint file (or a Word document). 🥴

2025-08-18 13:54:22 GMT

"In South Africa you can walk on the scour marks left by ice blocks as they dragged along the seabed 300 million years ago when the region was underwater and much closer to the South Pole."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-f4de435a-d215-4a7c-86e9-9b838701c993

2025-08-15 07:50:25 GMT

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@nprofile…c9mp Groundhog Friday

2025-08-15 07:34:44 GMT

Didn't we do Friday already?

2025-08-15 05:29:41 GMT

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@nprofile…um0w Well, the pain is the only reason he sought medical help. He refused to let my mum take him to the doctor after he fell over 😢

2025-08-14 15:04:51 GMT

Day of contrasts.
👍 My niece got the A-level results she needed to go study zoology in her first-choice university.
👎 And my 80-year-old dad found out he broke 5 ribs when he fell over on Tuesday (which I'm just hearing about now.)

2025-08-13 09:58:44 GMT

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@nprofile…r3jw Well, they are quite portable....

2025-08-13 08:57:30 GMT

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@nprofile…r3jw In the middle of a heatwave, so we have no choice but to have the windows open and endure the noise.

2025-08-13 08:56:50 GMT

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@nprofile…r3jw ooh, Yonder looks like fun. I have added it to my Wishlist.

2025-08-13 08:54:55 GMT

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@nprofile…r3jw Ryan showed me one of his games yesterday - Reserve. It's all about building little ecosystems. I had a quick play with the demo, and it looks good, so I will give that a bit more time at the weekend (fortunately Steam Family means I can play his games).

2025-08-13 08:34:48 GMT

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This morning there is the noise of someone using a power tool to... cut through the tarmac?
It's going to be a long two weeks. Especially when the neighbours get back from holiday with another car and want to move the one we've parked in the car park which is currently blocked in because there's more cars than spaces and that's why we park on the road (that and they re-paved it with gravel, which is horrendous to drive on).
💩

2025-08-13 08:32:51 GMT

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One neighbour did manage to find someone who knew it is to install a new water main for the new houses they want to build at the end of the road, and the work is planned to last two weeks.
Another neighbour comes home to find temporary traffic lights outside her house with no warning and goes off to complain to the water company.
And someone driving a horse box (we live near a Stud) has to move the traffic lights to get by.

2025-08-13 08:31:13 GMT

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So I text the neighbour, and enquire about a spare car key, which leads me on an authorised quest to go rifling through her bedside drawer where they had been hidden.
And Ryan moved her car into the (increasingly crowded) car park.
And Traffic Light Man set up the lights. And although various people milled around a bit, that was all that was done yesterday.

2025-08-13 08:29:41 GMT

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Yesterday morning, a man arrived to install temporary 3-way traffic lights at the end of the road. He thought it would be for a couple of weeks, but again, he didn't know any more than that.
He said our neighbour's car on the street would be A PROBLEM. But, of course, they have done this with no warning during holiday season and our neighbours are away until Thursday (we are looking after their guinea pigs).

2025-08-13 08:28:14 GMT

Fresh from having the end of the road dug up to install (more) fibre broadband last week, on Monday evening we came out of the house to find a man laying cones down the road - the implication was that we would have to move our cars parked there, for a couple of weeks, although Cone Man didn't know what for.
So we moved our cars into the car park, which involved asking one of our neighbours to stop blocking our spaces.
🧵

2025-08-13 08:25:56 GMT

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@nprofile…r3jw I have Strange Horticulture! I did play it a little bit, but I'm not in the right headspace at the moment. I need something a bit more straightfoward I can dip in and out of. 😀

2025-08-13 08:08:37 GMT

Targeted conservation projects led by Natural England as part of its £13m species recovery programme’s capital grants scheme, have supported the recovery of 150 species, according to findings published on Wednesday.
As part of the work, conservationists relocated more than 15,000 individual animals and plants to expand species’ territories, and bred more than 12,000 individual invertebrates, mammals and birds in captivity for release into the wild.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/13/collective-endeavour-natural-england-tony-juniper-conservation
#GoodNews

2025-08-13 07:39:18 GMT

"Canada’s food history is rooted in ingredients that grew, swam, or roamed freely across this land. Long before refined wheat and industrial farming arrived, Indigenous communities sustained themselves with nutrient-rich staples harvested in tune with seasonal cycles. These were the original examples of sustainable cooking and ancestral cooking methods — systems where food, ecology, and community were inseparable."
https://www.recipesandroots.ca/roots/the-rise-of-indigenous-superfoods-how-canadas-oldest-ingredients-are-inspiring-a-new-food-movement
#indigenous

2025-08-13 07:27:18 GMT

I bought the Tiny Bookshop game yesterday, and I've spent about an hour playing it. It's awesome! Enough going on so that it's not dull and tedious, but the most stressful thing that happens is when you can't find a book to suit a picky customer. But don't worry - they'll be back another day, when you've re-stocked the shelves!

2025-08-12 07:20:07 GMT

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@nprofile…6yyc Right, OK. Won't look at any more of those then!
Thanks

2025-08-12 06:44:36 GMT

I recently read “The Restaurant of Lost Recipes” because I spotted it at the library. Although I initially liked it, I found its structure - a collection of very similar short stories with no overarching plot or character development - didn’t appeal.
Is that a feature of just this series, the author’s work in general, or this genre as a whole?
#bookstodon

2025-08-12 05:53:22 GMT

Three critically endangered Siamese crocodile hatchlings have been reunited with their parents after their birth earlier this year.
Hugo and Rebecca are the proud parents of the little reptile brothers at Crocodiles of the World in Brize Norton, Oxfordshire.
Their eggs were removed from the nest for artificial incubation, to ensure the best temperatures for healthy development.
The crocodiles are "excellent parents" and the little ones are being well looked after.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly33ezyeevo

2025-08-12 05:21:32 GMT

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@nprofile…y9m5 Always 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗

2025-08-12 05:16:06 GMT

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@nprofile…uu0t 😍

2025-08-11 20:09:24 GMT

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@nprofile…fzjv Nice!

2025-08-11 13:27:08 GMT

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@nprofile…aqq5 My particular favourite is the people who basically say that if you're not doing something to help (a particular situation) then you're part of the problem.

2025-08-11 11:00:32 GMT

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@nprofile…ktu4 My dad has been a paid-up member of the Conservative party since before he married my mum (they met at the Young Conservatives).
In the run-up to an election, he likes to argue with leftwing doorsteppers for as long as possible, on the basis that they won't convince him of anything, and he's preventing them from moving on and convincing anyone else... 🙄

2025-08-11 10:58:25 GMT

"In Japan, umbrellas don't just block rain or sun – they're spiritual tools capable of summoning spirits."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20250806-why-do-the-japanese-use-umbrellas-when-its-sunny

2025-08-11 10:57:16 GMT

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@nprofile…c9mp Skirting board, essentially. Very Beatrix Potter.
I was reading something yesterday about umbrellas having a spiritual function in Japan. I wonder whether we all need one to metaphorically deflect the deluge of shit.

2025-08-11 10:55:02 GMT

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@nprofile…ktu4 😍

2025-08-11 10:07:07 GMT

Sometimes Mastodon seems like a giant bunch of people exhorting me to DO MORE to fight every injustice in the world.
And today I'm like "I'm not a f*cking superhero, I'm just a regular person struggling to live a decent life."
I just try and find/share some joy and wonder, and I think there are plenty of people who could use that right now.

2025-08-10 18:40:04 GMT

We are guinea pig sitting while our neighbours are away. They have a hutch in the back garden, but they move indoors when it’s very hot.
So, in anticipation of Heat Wave No.4 we have just moved them inside, with the help of a big bucket.

2025-08-10 14:42:19 GMT

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@nprofile…um0w I try to get more as ebooks these days, but it’s not the same, and really ai spend too much time staring at screens anyway.

2025-08-10 14:34:10 GMT

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@nprofile…um0w I don’t generally buy much stuff, but books…. Hubby buys a lot more. It seems like every day a new parcel arrives for him, but his ADHD makes that a hard thing to tackle. So we have to do this together, because he’s not going to do it on his own, and I would like to see the living room floor sometime this century 😂

2025-08-10 09:17:15 GMT

New projects don't tend to stick around for long at the moment, but hopefully this one will, because with two people who work from home (one of whom has ADHD), the house has got unbearably cluttered and that really needs to change.
#decluttering
https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/taming-chaos/

2025-08-08 08:33:26 GMT

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@nprofile…uxf3 We like a potato salad which is essentially just boiled potatoes in mayonnaise with chopped mint.
But when I had lots of mint, I also made a slightly more elaborate carrot salad:
https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/space-mint-carrot-salad/

2025-08-08 08:18:01 GMT

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'Brash ice is a mixture of free-floating ice of less than 2 m across. A group of icebergs is often called a flotilla or armada, and smaller groups may be called a fleet, cluster, drift or litter. A mixture of frozen sea ice, bergy bits, icebergs and brash ice at the margin of a calving glacier in a fjord is called an ice melange.'

2025-08-08 08:17:41 GMT

Learning about icebergs today.
'Icebergs range in size from small “growlers,” to medium or large “bergy bits,” all the way up to true “icebergs”. Growlers are the smallest, reaching lengths up to 2 m, whereas bergy bits have lengths between 2 and 5 m. Anything larger than a bergy bit is considered an iceberg, and they can be several thousand square kilometres in area.'
https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacier-processes/glacier-types/icebergs/

2025-08-07 15:33:54 GMT

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@nprofile…qqx9 A lot of them are on a media server, but not all of them.

2025-08-07 15:33:39 GMT

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@nprofile…vg8l We don't have the boxes anymore, although we could replace them. Also, we'd need a bigger house.

2025-08-07 15:13:41 GMT

Dear Hive Mind,
How do you store your DVDs and Blu-Rays?
Ryan & I have quite an extensive (and growing) collection, which - as it involves two personal collections merged together - is a bit chaotic.
A previous attempt to get some order and save some space means a lot have been moved into big storage folders, but they're not catalogued and we can't easily find anything. (There's not much logic to it.)
There has to be a better way?

2025-08-07 14:45:51 GMT

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@nprofile…uw2c I found that in my experiments with NotebookLM. The male voice did most of the heavy lifting, and the female voice did most of the "wow, that's awesome".

2025-08-07 08:41:29 GMT

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Unknown to him, however, the local residents were planning many devious ways of “putting a sock in it”, so they could finally get some peace.

2025-08-07 08:41:15 GMT

The Adventures of Beepy McBeepface: Day 4
Beepy got an immense amount of satisfaction from knowing that this job – helping to lay new fibre optic cables – was important to improve the infrastructure for local residents.
His clear and penetrating voice sang out loudly and proudly, protecting his human co-workers from unfortunate interactions with his exoskeleton whilst he was manoeuvring around the trench he had dug.
1/2

2025-08-07 08:16:33 GMT

"every morning, I drink a cup of tea and it helps me with all the thoughts I have to smother.’”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/aug/07/sometimes-i-overshare-adam-buxton-on-fear-fun-finance-and-falling-out-with-friends

2025-08-06 09:22:24 GMT

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@nprofile…6yyc I am exhausted.

2025-08-06 09:21:03 GMT

I just had a work meeting with a lovely colleague, in which I was forced to be relentlessly cheerful for 30 minutes.
I have drunk an emergency cup of tea, but I fear I may never truly recover.

2025-08-06 07:57:57 GMT

Gardeners have been urged to work with their neighbours to support moths and hover flies after research found them to be particularly sensitive to urban landscapes.
While bees get most of the attention when it comes to supporting pollinators in our cities, researchers found that their less glamorous – but no less important – counterparts from other orders are even more acutely affected by urbanisation.
#gardening #insects
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/06/gardeners-urged-to-collaborate-to-help-moths-and-hover-flies-thrive-in-cities

2025-08-05 14:58:00 GMT

I saw a post here a while back and it linked to a page on a website that was filled with disinformation - intended purely for poisoning the AI well.
Is that... bad? Are there... guidlines... for doing that? How would one ensure that it doesn't fool humans?
[Asking for a friend]

2025-08-05 10:21:27 GMT

Um.
"A zoo in Denmark has appealed to the public to donate their healthy unwanted pets as part of a unique effort to provide food for its predators.
Aalborg Zoo has asked for donations of live chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs, which it says are "gently euthanised" by trained staff."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r7z2ynd2lo

2025-08-05 08:43:57 GMT

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Not liking this trend.
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/975/270/385/136/859/original/1d2781768d27a055.png

2025-08-05 07:33:53 GMT

“Peering into chimneys, scaling rooftops and even dodging sparks at an electricity substation, one woman in Cornwall is rescuing swarms of bees destined for extermination by pest controllers. Her reward? Buckets of golden honey so good, it has won awards.”
#bees
https://www.positive.news/society/buzzing-with-purpose/

2025-08-04 10:39:41 GMT

Fun short film about "Petramosaurus Cavator" and its relationship with humanity.
Little bit NSFW.
https://vimeo.com/173380727

2025-08-02 05:19:41 GMT

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@nprofile…9fu4 Dragon! 🐉

2025-08-01 08:06:04 GMT

Damned by faint praise. Welcome to Friday.
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/952/471/604/461/736/original/be18a1f624392d5d.png

2025-07-31 09:27:22 GMT

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Aha! Found it, no thanks to the BBC.
🏄

2025-07-31 09:22:40 GMT

Personal bugbear - news items that refer to "a study", but neither link to it nor provide enough information to find it.

2025-07-29 14:13:10 GMT

"The modern world was built and shaped by optimists. We owe it to them to carry the torch. Optimism for the future is not only justified – it’s a weapon in the fight for a higher future, and a moral obligation to ourselves and to future generations."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2025/jul/29/global-future-challenges-optimism

2025-07-29 10:54:33 GMT

Scientists today still make use of Mary Banning’s research, examining the same mushrooms that she located, preserved, and packed away for posterity.
https://hyperallergic.com/1029741/mary-banning-woman-scientist-and-artist-who-revolutionized-the-study-of-mushrooms/
#herstory

2025-07-28 14:31:31 GMT

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@nprofile…zkmr Cool, thanks!

2025-07-27 06:13:23 GMT

Slightly random news item, but no doubt part of a larger project.
“Gardeners from a town's Nepalese community have been taking part in a study into the quality of their homemade compost.
Scientists from the University of Reading, in Berkshire, found that mustard plants grown in composts, created from kitchen and garden waste, grew better than those in shop-bought alternatives.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2q8ezen94o

2025-07-26 19:36:55 GMT

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@nprofile…a5jy I used to work at Diamond Light Source 😀

2025-07-26 09:58:13 GMT

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@nprofile…ewfp Probably 2-2.5.

2025-07-26 09:21:48 GMT

Ryan and I live near Didcot. We've lived here a while now, and were fairly local for a while before that.
We are BORED of it all - there's nothing to do here that we haven't done a million times before.
Can you suggest places in reach of a day trip that would give us something new to look at? We like history/heritage (but not National Trust-style old houses) and animals/nature (but Ryan has hurt his foot, so long walks are out) and science/engineering.
Quirky shops.
We don't have kids.

2025-07-25 07:59:53 GMT

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@nprofile…96v8 @nprofile…ewfp My husband would say that doughnuts are made from flour and flour is made from wheat, so yes, doughnuts are a vegetable.
He's also fond of cider being one of your five a day (it's apple juice!) and of the opinion that chicken (and other animals) eat plants, so technically they're made of plants and therefore vegetables.
🙄

2025-07-25 07:58:12 GMT

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@nprofile…96v8 There was no problem with photos per se, just that the guide really wanted the group to stay together, with everyone in sight.
I can understand when there's kids in the group, but (iirc) there weren't that day.
This was a few years ago, too. Must have been 2018.

2025-07-25 05:39:57 GMT

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I was having some luck moving away from the herd to take plant photos from a safe distance, then my dad wandered over to stand by me and we both got told off. As an ethnobotanist, it was a very frustrating experience.
It was less fun that approaching a buffet with a microbiologist 😂

2025-07-25 05:36:58 GMT

When I was in Tesco earlier this week (never a good idea, but a necessity), I spotted that LJ Ross has written a DCI Ryan mystery called Poison Garden, which centres around the Poison Garden at Alnwick.
I’ve never read any of her(?) books and I’m slightly tempted because I used to be fascinated by the Poison Garden.
But then I visited and it was… awful. All health & safety “don’t touch” with a guide who watched everyone like a hawk and was all “drugs are bad, people.”