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He wouldn't even be safe there, as something like John Ford's The Searchers (1956) brilliantly challenges that particular narrative stereotype. It's arguably John Wayne's best performance.

Surely they were off piste all the time 😉

One of my neighbours had a bike pinched from outside his house this week and a black fixed/single-speed with a flat front tyre appeared in the alley on my road. I think it's a Charge Plug . Has anyone had one stolen in Sw London (wimbledon/merton) ?

I'm ashamed to say that I had to look him up to see your point.
Having done so I'm none the wiser.
Perhaps there is no point.
Perhaps that's the point.
Continue in the same vein.
Repeat.
Invoice.

Yes I take the point that assuming that someones right just because I agree with them is a slippery slope ! I seem to be having regular depressing conversations these days with various relatives/inlaws about the reliability of news outlets and I'm grown increasingly protective of both the BBC & The Guardian as a result.

'It's a difficult conversation to have frankly on a public forum because I still have a mortgage to pay, I could be a lot more open over a beer!' - If they ever let me out I'll take you up on that one

Interesting -are you saying that the Guardian journalists are less exact than others ? You don’t really provide anything other than personal anecdote . Were you working in PR or as a Journalist?
Thanks by the way for the faintly patrician suggestion that only those who’ve worked for the Guardian are able to gauge the quality of the journalism. There is so much wrong with that and I don’t like to be rude. In the spirit of this friendly forum I’m happy to discuss civilly via PM if you wish and if not we can agree to disagree.

It has to be said that these days the Guardian is often just sloppy. Well meaning, but sloppy, with some often super crap journalism.

I’d disagree but am interested to hear why you think that. Can you give examples

It’s a really good year for Amethyst deceivers

All mushrooms are edible

But some only once

Brilliant 🤣

‘The vast majority of 'inedible' species either taste like shit, have a horrible texture, or will make you feel rough - you have to seriously fuck up to be at any real risk of dying or being hospitalised from wild mushrooms.’

Hmm - I’m not convinced about that as I’m sure that Amanita phalloides fried up with some garlic and parsley would be delicious. I wouldn’t rely on taste as a diagnostic for toxicity. The Roman Emperor Claudius apparently enjoyed what was to be his final meal. More recently Nicholas Evans ended up on dialysis after misidentifying Cortinarius as edible. Professional mycologists I know suggest the only way to be sure is spore prints and microscope but that’s going a bit far for most folks. I used to pick multiple baskets with ceps at a National Nature Reserve many years ago but it was a lot quieter than it is now and not only was nobody else interested I was regularly warned that I would almost certainly die. R. Gordon Wasson (the ‘rediscoverer’of psilocybin) suggested that there was a distinction between mycophile cultures such as the Slavic ones and the Anglo- Saxon mycophobic ones. I’m not convinced but it’s an entertaining suggestion .

One of my faves - they look otherworldly 😁😁

As I've said before, I strongly suspect that Neanderthal populations were always small, certainly much smaller than the populations stemming from the sub-tropics of northern Africa, where I suspect populations exploded in size at some point (conditions there probably being ideal for humans until the environment began to deteriorate), or at least caused sufficient overpopulation to cause waves of migration--the main reason why there was such a long gap between the migrations of groups who made up the Neanderthal population being the Mediterranean.

Yes although they were extraordinarily successful as a species with a timeline of close to a million years - so we have a way to go yet .

My own take on it is that it absolutely shouldn't require a designation of 'personhood' to stop animal abuse, although I'm very sympathetic to extending our 'circles of meaningful responsibility' based on similarity, especially to Great Apes. It just strikes me that anchoring it in personhood is a pragmatic idea based on the legal systems that exist, and that even were we to extend it to Great Apes, that would implicitly legitimise the slaughter of animals denied the designation. It might well eventually be extended further outwards, but I'd rather we first understood why animals are worthy of a protected status, and I don't just mean mammals, but also birds, fish, and insects.

Yes it's a very interesting idea is the extension of ethics. There's some provocative thinking around animism that I've been thinking about - It's defined as 'recognising that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others. Animism is lived out in various ways that are all about learning to act respectfully (carefully and constructively)towards and among other persons...Persons are those with whom other persons interact with varying degrees of reciprocity. Persons may be spoken with. Objects by contrast are usually spoken about. Persons are volitional, relational, cultural and social beings. They demonstrate intentionality and agency with varying degrees of autonomy and freedom'. That's a challenging definition of personhood to work with of course !

No doubt there were differences between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and 'Sapiens' (and I've never understood why differences in brain case size are considered significant), but what I'm mainly concerned with here are definitions, i.e. how much difference is possible within a 'species'.

Brain case size was a metric/shorthand for intelligence and there is a correlation between cognitive abilities and size/ complexity so early hominids ( think Lucy and the Australopithecines ) did not have the same level of complex reasoning ability that Sapiens, Neanderthals and all the other undiscovered relatives undoubtedly did.
They were however different species albeit very closely related whereas obviously all living human beings are members of the same species.
There is evidence of relatively low interbreeding ( I’m going to stick with that as it’s the scientific term, although I share your distaste of its appropriation by those trying to ‘scientifically’ justify their racist nonsense) between Sapiens & Neanderthals shown by the genetic transmission of Neanderthal genes - less than 2% . ‘ We find that observed low levels of Neanderthal ancestry in Eurasians are compatible with a very low rate of interbreeding (<2%), potentially attributable to a very strong avoidance of interspecific matings, a low fitness of hybrids, or both‘.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1107450108

I think establishing beyond doubt that there have never been any really significant differences between people would help to some extent with the fight against racism.

Yes absolutely agree and in fact would qualify this to extend the notion of personhood to other forms of life and outwards from Homo Sapiens who as you point out are significantly the same but that is of course another debate

I was taught by Chris Stringer when I did an Anthropology degree. This was before they had the genetic evidence but the thinking was that there probably had been Sapiens and Neanderthal interbreeding. Technically the article is correct in referring to Denisovans and Neanderthals as different species - I don’t think it’s meant to be derogatory and note that Neanderthals had larger brain cases than Sapiens. There was a famous site where they’d buried a child with flowers which I remember being haunted by as a student so the standard image of the brutish caveman was discredited a long time ago but it’s still a persistent myth. William Golding’s novel The Inheritors is a rethinking of that caveman myth and implies that maybe the ‘wrong’ human species made it to the present.

Thanks John

I've forgotten how to upload a photo again - sigh

If anyone is looking for a weight bench. This is tatty but functional. Collect from Wimbledon.

Ha - yes it’s one step before the knackers yard / too old/incompetent to be on the tools Re Hawfinch - They are about but generally very scare although there were hundreds in Surrey over the winter of 2018.

👍🤣🤔

I can counter that with ‘while up a tree last week on business I saw a hawfinch at 20 ft away’. To preempt speculation I’m a tree inspector and they are very elusive in the uk so was quite a big deal. Huge in fact .

Sadly just brought in by the cat from the garden 🤬🤬

Yes I’d be interested if still available

My pleasure -