UK based here.

I was in scouts, and my little minion is now also in the lower levels.

I personally think it fills a critical need for a lot of kids. Schools are locked hard into the national curriculum, and don’t have time for the more character and skill building events. Scouts cover this nicely.

Regarding my local group. So far, my experience has been excellent. The kids adore it and they are doing a lot of fun learning. E.g. recently they did fire lighting. Learning to use matches, and basic fire safety around candles etc is an important skill. Learning as a group also means they learn from each other’s (minor) mistakes.

The group is also mixed gender. While it’s mostly boys, there are enough girls that it’s not intimidating for either gender. Its activities are “boy focused”, so most of the girls are of the tomboy mindset.

There are a few religious aspects attached to it. The pledge/promise mentions God. In practice it’s mostly non religious. What religious elements there are, are quite inoffensive. I’ve also noted that the older groups have a choice of pledge, including a non-religious/atheistic option.

Also, regarding some of the scandals, the UK government now has quite rigorous procedures in place to protect children. Enhanced DBS checks are required for adults in a supervisor roll. While not perfect, these checks stop someone jumping from area to area to avoid their past acts. Parents, teachers and other helpers are also a lot hotter on spotting minor discrepancies before they can escalate. It’s just done calmly and quietly, to avoid accidental witch hunts.

Basically, my minion loves scouts, and I am completely comfortable with them attending.

UTC is designed to be unambiguous, not convenient. I’d imagine most companies would either remap to local times for convenience, or have calculated windows when meetings are reasonable between various parties.

Months have less variation. In the north, it’s “traditional”, in the south, it’s inverted, in the middle, it’s climatic (tied to monsoons etc). The northern hemisphere has been dominant in recorded history for a LONG time, so sets the reference. The inverted mapping is nice and clean to remember. While the tropics have no clean mapping.

The traditional calendar won because we need a consistent global reference, and a local reference wasn’t worth the hassle.

At which time, UTC covers the job perfectly. It’s also great for keeping computer logs consistent.

As someone who travels quite a bit, that would be hellish.

It provides a consistent reference for information sharing. E.g. you move to a new area of the world. Assuming a 9-5 work time is a reasonable baseline. Assuming a kids bedtime is 8pm is also reasonable, etc. Without timezones, you would have to relearn all of those.

You would also be required to memorise those details for friends and relatives who live abroad. E.g. if a friend moved from the UK to new Zealand, you just need to memorise the time offset. That way it becomes easier to catch them before work, or before bed, rather than in the middle of work, or while they are asleep.

Ultimately, both in parallel is likely the best option. Local time for local events, UTC for global level events or referencing.

We have that. It’s called UTC.

The problem is that time zones are convenient for most people. Most of the time you are only interested in local time, not global time. It’s rare to regularly have to coordinate across multiple time zones.

Our subconscious contains a huge number of reflex loops, some hardwired, others soft. By the time your conscious mind is aware of the situation, it’s often over. Martial arts (and other forms of fast competition) aim to significantly rewire these responses e.g. the instinct to protect the face becomes a structured rising block.

As for the snake one. I’ve had a few occasions where it, or something related has triggered. Mostly it’s a false positive, but not every time. I’ve had it go off for a grass snake (harmless) and a mouse before. I was well clear before my conscious brain caught up and could assess and react.

The days are long, but the years are short. My childhood took a huge amount of time to pass. My child’s seems to be flying past at warp speed.

They rapidly become far more of a fully fledged person when they hit school age. Mines a few years ahead, and they are now awesome to interact with.

Depending on how I measure it, either becoming a dad, or founding a community group that has changed quite a few people’s lives for the better.

The horrors persist, but so do I!

It would technically be false imprisonment in most places. Kidnapping would require taking you away/hiding you.

The other option is “Jon Withanhache”. You can then complain they spelt it wrong too.

Not infinite. Eventually they begin to overlap and are no longer distinct rainbows.

It’s related to the number of total internal reflections inside a raindrop. The 2nd rainbow is actually inverted, colour wise. The 3rd inverts again, and so is normal. Each reflection loses more light however, so it gets dimmer. 3 is the practical limit in the sky, with our eyes. In the lab version, at least 18 rainbows can be detected, even by undergraduate level students!

I remember when the smoking ban came in. A lot of local pubs had to do emergency renovations. It turns out, without the cigarette smoke, people could smell how bad the carpet etc were!

I watched a documentary on it a while back. Basically, baby talk actually follows a lot of rules religiously, that often gets blurred in normal speech. This lets babies lock on to the rules faster. The sounds are also emphasised. This makes mouth movements more obvious, and gives a better reference for practice. It also includes a lot of repetition, which also helps with practicing hearing words, rather than just sounds. The sing song nature also acts as an indicator. This talking is for you to learn from.

Once they start speaking however, you want to transition to full sentences. The sing song nature can hang around, along with slightly simplified language. Think of it like training wheels. Great for early learning, but a detriment if left in use too long.

Mine was reliably responding to commands at around 3 months. About 6 months for first words. They were talking in full sentences happily about 18 months (I think. We didn’t get full night sleeping till gone 24 months. The period is slightly blurry.)

Baby talk has its place. It’s structured to help with learning to talk. It also acts as an indicator “pay attention to this”. The mistake most parents make is continuing it too long. Once they start talking, shift out of it to full sentences etc.

That said, if they only hear you talking baby talk, you’re doing them a disservice. They need both.

In the OP, the baby likely just wanted more attention. Non-baby talk = less attention, in their mind.

It’s not for everyone. The continuous grind is exhausting. However, having a little bit of your soul outside your body, and vulnerable, has an incredible effect on your motivation. I find myself happy to push through exhaustion to set something up for my little minion. For them it’s a fun activity for an hour. For me, it’s several hours of work to give them a fun experience.

A relative was caught out recently. They pretended to be the bank. I missed the beginning, but what I heard sounded extremely professional, and exactly like a bank employee. It was only when they seemed confused I paid more attention. I jumped in rapidly when they gave them a code they got via text. By that point they had practically forgotten that the scammer called them, not them calling the bank.

I immediately put a stop to it. Even when ending the call, they were calm and professional. I told them that we needed to call them back on a confirmed number. And got a bunch of details in case it was real. I still wasn’t sure at that point if it was actually a scam or just our bank having a REALLY bad procedure.

Long story short, it was a scam, and the bank confirmed it. I don’t know if they managed to cancel the gift cards in time. However it was a credit card, so that was between the bank and the supermarket who sold them.

I personally wouldn’t have fallen for that one. I’ve got a bunch of mental “hell no” filters. Outside of those however, it was more professional than the conversation with the bank’s actual fraud department.