Zombiepirate

I'm currently using a trick on my Windows 11 work machine to get the old UI for file explorer by going through the control panel and going up a directory.

I'll be so pissed the day they strip it out, because their new design language is ridiculously slow and terrible for the sake of "cleanliness."

Pound by Mr. Mime.

I wholeheartedly agree!

One of the things out group does is play for dancers at reenactment events. The dance steps were recorded for a lot of the Renaissance period pieces, and it's pretty incredible to be able to coordinate the tunes for the same dances from hundreds of years ago.

It really changes the atmosphere of an event to have music around; it's a living connection to history.

Here is a video of a professional Renaissance recorder consort in lower voicings (the lowest I believe being contrabass) that shows how great they are. They do get a bad reputation because it's easy to make them squeak really badly as a beginner (and especially as a young person with no musical training). They really are a great introductory instrument into early music though; you can get a plastic tenor for about $40 and it'll be the same one professionals practice on regularly.

I got started in early music on modern guitar with a book of tabs, and it was a great way in. I later met up with a local group who pointed me towards some great resources, and I loved it so much that I wanted to go deeper by learning to play an actual period instrument. I did some research and talked to a bunch of people for advice on what to buy and finally picked one up and took some lessons at the beginning of the year. It's a lot harder to get into than guitar, but it's also incredibly rewarding.

I play early music as an amateur, and I've seen a few fun older instruments around.

I'm currently learning the renaissance lute, a bowl-backed six to 8 course precursor (sort of) to the modern guitar. It has a large period repertoire that can be played pretty accurately due to the surviving tablature and plentiful treatises on technique and style. It is a plucked instrument, they really weren't strummed much like a modern guitar.

The older variant, the medieval lute, was primarily a strummed instrument; the musician would usually hold a quill or similar tool as a plectrum. The notation at the time was not as complete as what we are used to (and there are also far fewer sources on how to read it), but there is some very good scholarship in the field that gives us a pretty decent guess on how the repertoire sounded.

The recorder went through a kind of revival in the early 20th century, as it was a fairly easy folk instrument to mass produce while also being beginner friendly (since you don't really need to develop your embrasure to make a passable sound). The modern variety is known as the baroque recorder, and has a standardized fingering with a more mellow sound than it's earlier counterparts. Incidentally, flutes are likely some of the oldest instruments that humanity produced, with the oldest known example being a cave bear bone flute probably made by a Neanderthal.

Maybe worth looking into alpha-gal syndrome?

Exactly.

Everyone knows you drink it.

Learning to write is how a person begins to organize their thoughts, be persuasive, and evaluate conflicting sources.

It's maybe the most important thing someone can learn.

Ah, the old merge and commit genocide.

Seen this before, we don't need a sequel.

Baked beans are amazing, and even better if you make them yourself in the crockpot; we eat them with barbecue.

I wish I could get a full English breakfast around here though.

-an American

Dubai port operator DP World wound up with majority control of the startup, and pivoted its focus to cargo in early 2022, cutting half the staff at the time and dropping the Virgin moniker.

It makes sense that they'd drop the name Virgin after DP world took over.

Yeah, it's not an inherently bad thing.

A big part of the problem is that people run to journals without understanding their purpose; publication is just the first step in peer review.

And then when people do a ctrl+f to search for a "gotcha," they also eliminate all of the nuance and caveats that really explain the potential finding.