No, I am the guy that just a few weeks ago got told that he can’t open the window of the joint staircases anymore to let out the stale summer heat, because then the pigeons would fly in.
I am the guy that can’t use the easternmost quarter of his balcony any more because it is constantly covered under shit from the pigeon-meeting-place above.
I am the guy whose car is covered in off-colour smudges because the pidgeon-piss from the tree above has corroded the paint.

I am pretty sure that most of the people here that like pidgeons would think completely different when they had to live with them in close quarters and have their quality of live noticeably reduced.

Other birds are great, though! We have sparrows, tits, blackbirds, dozens of other types. All great!
Occasionally a pair of crows is visiting. Those are impressive birds! Intelligent as fuck, don’t give a shit but stay out of your way if you don’t want to interact. And, double Bingo: the pigeons don’t like them!

So the more a shame that most times we leave them to their grim fate in the urban hell we brought them to with us!

Given the fact that they mainly were a food source instead of noble mail carriers, perhaps having been abandoned in reality has not been that bad a fate…

🤪

Well, more metaphorically and limited to densely populated areas. I mean, rural pigeons are great!
But their city dwelling cousins are mostly poor beasts, malnutritioned, disease plaqued, often invalid: half blind, missing leg, barely enough feathers to fly even short distances.
On top of that a public health issue. So the rat comparison mostly holds, I am afraid…

And if we are talking about other birds than pigeons - totally different topic!

Sure… a typical setup strictly for growing “lettuce”. Nothing else to see here…!

Happy about airborne rats?
Seriously?

That surprisingly wasn’t that hard, actually.

One side of the family already settled on Threema for communication years ago, the other side I had to first show Signal to and help with installing it, but now they are even using it in other contexts.

And apparently I live in a bubble that is quite open to Signal, so most of the people I know at least use it in parallel to WhatsApp. And for the rest there is still RCS.

The actual hard part are (since I became a parent) all the WhatsApp groups that exist for most kinds of organized child activity, including distributing much of the crucial information regarding school.
Also at my wife’s work WhatsApp is standard for coordinating with the colleagues.

For that purposes we use an old customized WhatsApp-only smartphone, that is used by the family like some old-fashioned fixed phone-terminal, only for messaging…

It’s not just weird hobbies here, but basically all that are somehow organized.
Also a lot of relevant school information is only shared within parent groups on WhatsApp.
My complete WhatsApp-boycott lasted exactly until the first of my childs entered school… :-(

No, in a very private part of the Cloud, so don’t be afraid!

Hey, didn’t you read? It uses “Meta’s Private Processing technology”!!1!

Also:

original message: “Please don’t leave dirty socks on the sofa.” The AI then offers “funny” rewrites, such as: “Please don’t make the sofa a sock graveyard,” “Breaking news: Socks found chilling on the couch. Please move them,” and “Hey, sock ninja, the laundry basket is that way!”

Am I the only one that thinks the “funny” ones in the given example are much more offensive than the original one?

Nice, another reason to not use WhatsApp…

Sure you do… BONK!

You mean Hannah Fry? No, I think this isn’t her.

Basically all the Lego games (although 13y olds might already find them to child-like, depends…).
They all have split screen, so are suitable for couch (or desk) coop.
Also the slightly older ones are quite inexpensive when buying them during sales (a few €).

Special recommendation: Lego City Undercover.

Another fun couch-coop-capable game would be SuperTux, a Super-Mario-Cart like game.
This one is OSS and therefore completely free!

They are not that common here in Germany in general, but my city has in the past years put up a dozen or so, mainly in public parks.
They are maintained by our municipal utility service and are basically always in perfect condition.
At least during summer. Being outdoor installations they are shut down (actually completely removed) during the winter months.

Other than that I only had one in elementary school 30 years ago, which also worked and a lot of actual natural springs with drinking outlets that are often maintained by rural communities.

Our city also has one of those natural water drinking fountains, but as it is the (still maintained and monitored) remains of a thermal baths project from a hundred years ago, it is not so suitable for actually quenching your thirst. Full of crazy salts and minerals with a faintly sulfuric aroma on top - but supposed to be healthy :-)

So, in general: no complaints where I live.

Oh no, this is getting increasingly complicated… from a combinatorical perspective alone I now already see the potential of mortally insulting 3/4 of the people I will be meeting… 😯

Ok, this is bonkers. Although the risk of contamination with foreign insects via transit is real (we e.g. imported the Tiger Mosquito from the US via tire shipments from the U.S. into Europe some years ago…), using that as an excuse to search passenger cars is quite a stretch…

California has done searchs for ‘bugs’ before but don’t know if the still do.

I guess that is not “Bugs” as in butterfly?