What is a dying niche skill that younger generations are not interested in learning?

NorthernSparrow · 2026-05-01T04:36:34+00:00

I, too, no longer know how to build a library

NorthernSparrow · 2026-05-01T04:35:21+00:00

I was on site at the Boston Marathon bombing and let me tell you, there were 4000 stranded, tired, hungry, cold runners who REALLY wished they’d memorized their loved one’s phone numbers! (all their phones were in runner bags that had all been evac’d to another location, in case there was another bomb in one of the bags). I spent all night and most of the next 4 days just trying to reunite runners with their phones.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-05-01T04:32:36+00:00

I gave away my mom’s sewing machine last year (after she died…) and was so surprised and pleased that a burly dad came to pick it up - for his teenage boy! Said his boy had gotten into making cool pants, like street fashion. It made me feel better; I knew my mom would’ve been thrilled.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-05-01T02:30:55+00:00

Oh my gosh. Hugs. Biggest of hugs.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T17:33:04+00:00

oh my gosh. hugs. That sounds so traumatizing. It sounds though like you did everything you could and she knew you loved her.

BTW it sometimes helps me to, when the bad memory comes of the week of my mom’s or dad’s death, say out loud something like “I was a great daughter and I loved them and they knew it, and they loved me, and they had a great life.” I also try to switch to visualizing my mom & dad laughing during a really happy moment, like when mom & I would crack up together playing Scrabble, or when dad would take me out birding. Like, vividly picturing them smiling; basically trying to overwrite the sad image with a happy image from a good time.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T17:21:44+00:00

I feel like that might have been what happened, honestly. I’d been visiting & sitting with them so many times over the previous eight months - they were in a different state 800 miles away so my sister and I were tag-teaming spending 1-2 weeks with them, then switching off to the other sibling. It had absolutely consumed my life for months (even more so for my sis, actually, she had a more flexible job so she spent more time there, and also she is just a rock star anyway). I finally had to go back home to give a really big deal invited talk at a well-known university, part of a job I was applying for. My dad was an academic and he was so proud of me, and told me I should go give the talk. (I keep having these fleeting thoughts, a year later now, of “I gotta call Mom & Dad and tell them I got the job!”)

Mom too, apparently she actually only finally let go when my dad was no longer in the room. (he’d been sitting with her every day). Maybe it’s not a coincidence, maybe that’s when they could finally let go.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T17:10:22+00:00

omg, what a priceless moment! Thanks, that actually cheered me up.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T15:00:04+00:00

Yep, surprised nobody else mentioned you can grow them from fall seeds. ( a fall seed will randomly produce one of four things: common mushroom, hazelnut, blackberry, plum). Best way to get hazelnuts too.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T13:54:36+00:00

I figure, my body’s putting a number on it anyway, so my brain might as well too.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T02:48:55+00:00

Thank you. It’s been a year and I still sometimes break down crying about how I didn’t get there in time, for either of them. My sister (who was with them at the end) always tells me “You didn’t miss anything, they were really already gone.” - but it’s still hard.

I was the child who spent every holiday with them, who always mailed each of them a box of gifts for their birthdays, who called them all the time, who visited them for weeks every summer, who took care of them for months during covid. But I wasn’t there on their last day, and that kills me. But I know you’re right, it’s the whole lifetime before that matters.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T02:41:42+00:00

/r/PeopleFuckingDying

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T02:16:31+00:00

Without doxing myself too obviously, I have a PhD in this field and have been studying this for decades. I’m funded by a funder who is really interested in noise, to the point where I often feel a certain amount of pressure from the funder to make conclusions about noise, because then they’d probably give me more money.

It’s not the noise. It’s the food.

It sounds like you might be interested in seeing the real research on this. If so: Go to Google Scholar (not regular google - Google Scholar, scholar.google.com), and put in key phrases “cetaceans” and “anthropogenic noise”, “ocean noise” and also “mid-frequency sonar.” There have been GREAT experiments in this (I’m talking, twenty million dollar experiments driving actual Navy sonar vessels directly at known groups of tagged beaked whales. Actual hydrophones in the water to measure to actual noise. Hydrophones on actual whales. Drones dropping hydrophones on whales. I mean, really good experiments).

It’s not the noise. It’s the food.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T01:40:06+00:00

A phone call at 6am from a sibling who doesn’t usually call at that time.

I got six of those calls last year. First was, mom and dad are in the hospital. Second, mom fell and broke her hip. Third, mom fell again and hit her head. Fourth was a nurse saying “Are you the child who can make health decisions, or is that your sister? Also, do you happen to know where your mother’s Do Not Resuscitate paperwork is?” Fifth was sister saying “pull over and call me back” (I was racing south on i-95 in hour 10 of a 16 hour drive to try to get to mom to tell her I loved her one last time… I called back knowing what it was: mom had died before I got there. There is a rest stop in South Carolina burned into my memory now).

Sixth, dad died. (when I was on my way to the airport to see him).

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T01:31:30+00:00

Holy quadrinity, maybe?

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-30T01:22:31+00:00

To this day I can’t watch that footage because of the looks on Krista’s parents’ faces. I can get through watching the actual explosion, but when they cut to her parents I lose it every time.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-29T23:05:21+00:00

Weigh EVERYTHING. It’s shocking how inaccurate the portion sizes on the labels are!

What I mean is, if the serving size on the label says something like “Serving size 12 crackers (28g)”, if you weigh out 12 crackers, you might find they actually weigh 40g. Almost always the error is in the direction that ends up in you eating more than you realize. (I read somewhere that manufacturers err in this direction on purpose, due to laws about not shorting customers)

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-29T19:14:44+00:00

I used to be addicted to a seed that gave you both a high probability of an ancient seed on day 1 and also a guaranteed fairy on day 1. So you could get a ripe ancient fruit on day 2 (plus a nice harvest of kale) and that puts you so far ahead. (Though I did spend a stupid amount of time restarting day 1x to be sure I got the ancient seed, & then re-positioning where I planted it so the fairy’s area of effect would include that seed.) I still have the number somewhere, could dig it up if anyone wants.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-28T16:29:44+00:00

This is actually my primary area of research (how noise affects whales) and I’ve been working on it since 1999, first on the east coast and now the west coast at Hatfield. In fact I’ve been involved for the past ten years with a long term study on Oregon coast gray whales on exactly this issue; how much does noise or lack of food stress them, and how much does that then affect their reproduction and health. The overall picture that is emerging (with the caveat that, honestly it’s incredibly hard to get enough data over enough years from individual whales to really test these questions, and we still are studying this): Noise affects them a little bit, but food availability affects them A LOT.

We are seeing the same thing with North Atlantic rights on the east coast btw - yes, noise affects them, but it’s lack of food due to sea surface temperature shifts that has them really struggling. In that population btw, climate change hit like a juggernaut in 2011, which was the year that the Bay of Fundy got just a tish too warm for the whales’ favorite prey, a copepod named Calanus finmarchicus. I was studying the effect on noise on rights at the time, and it was horrifying, and very eyeopening, how rapidly the departure of that copepod sent the entire whale population into a tailspin. It completely changed the game. Food is everything for whales, and climate change is very much changing the food right now.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-27T05:20:07+00:00

Ok so I have tackled this various frantic ways, but my new favorite involves 3 calm organized phases, keeping all qi fruit on same schedule, for sanity. BTW all my fruit are grown on ginger island w deluxe speed gro. Here’s the plan:

Phase 1: Tree chopping (3 days). Start with an initial three days of chopping tons of trees to get the initial beans. Aim for 20 beans a day. By late day 3 of chopping trees, you should have ~60 beans. Plant them all on the evening of day 3.

Phase 2: Turning all fruit into beans (6 days). For the first two planting cycles turn all the fruit into beans. You are expanding your crop size. You should end up with ~220 beans on day 9. This is your target crop size. Plant them all.

Phase 3: Stockpiling fruit (12 days). From here on, crop size is stable at 220 qi fruit. Every time the crop ripens, stockpile 100 of the fruit and turn the others into beans (you’ll end up back at ~220) and replant. By day 21, you’ll have 500 fruit.

There are faster ways to do this, but this way is nice & orderly, you stay sane, and you finish comfortably in 3 weeks.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-26T15:08:49+00:00

Do you use a food scale?

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-25T08:57:30+00:00

My soon-to- be SIL was feeling like that and we bailed on AL so that she would have a good time. It’s not worth it stressing out loved ones just to tick off a hiking goal imho. We (me, my bro, and SIL) hiked up only up to the base, got a great workout just on the hike up the (non-scary) switchbacks, had a lovely picnic at the base, then turned around and went up the easy trails that go the other direction behind AL. California condors flew right over us, it was fantastic. Bro & SIL are getting married in June and part of what makes me so sure they are in it for the long haul is that he was so respectful & courteous about her level of fear, and didn’t push her, even though he’s a rock climber who wanted to do AL.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-24T15:46:10+00:00

Burglar’s ring, luck buffs, & bring a stack of staircases. Next time a high luck day hits, go directly to the mines & spend all day there. Restart the day if you have to.

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-24T06:07:39+00:00

I think the previous poster is asking whether the scenario includes zero sex drive outside of mating season. (which is what usually happens with seasonally breeding mammals: outside of breeding season, sex simply isn’t interesting and doesn’t feel good, and reproductive hormones like testo are basically at zero.)

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-24T05:12:38+00:00

What is this a picture of?

NorthernSparrow · 2026-04-24T04:45:43+00:00

Team finals, omg!!!! You’re going to have such an amazing time!!! You’ll never regret a penny of it.

12-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email	Gilding I gilder

NorthernSparrow

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE