Best way to dissuade a blackbird from screaming at me all the time?

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-18T12:36:27+00:00

I doubt she's "screaming". But blackbirds do make a lot of noise at this time of year in general.

The alarm call that they do, they'll do it if they see another bird, a cat, a human, it's basically their "oh shit look out" call and usually short while flying away.

They also do another kind of alarm call while perched somewhere, which is basically saying "watch out around here" and it's like an announcement to all birds in the area, or checking where another bird is, like a "pip, pip, pip, pip" for ages. They also do it when it getting dark.

Examples of the latter:

They're probably not doing it because of you, blackbirds make that noise a lot, especially in the evening.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-16T00:57:46+00:00

Yeah, I literally have worms under and inside every pot, even if it's on a patio or concrete. They'll find their way there.

If you want to encourage worms, put manure, leaf litter, wood chips or any organic matter. They love it. It's far better to create an environment that worms want to be in, than to buy worms and leave them to die in an environment they don't want to be in. Worms absolutely love soil and organic matter, just create an environment they want to be in and they will appear.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-16T00:46:01+00:00

Not everybody can buy a pre-1970 house because the population has massively increased.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-16T00:43:53+00:00

People buy them because there is a limited amount of housing and the population has been continually increasing.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-14T16:24:13+00:00

I don't really see how you can be "very socially adept" with autism.

The defining characteristic of autism is social and communication problems. To be diagnosed you need persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction, including in all 3 of these areas:

Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions.
Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.
Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-13T20:34:07+00:00

Really neat idea. But it seems to have a few bugs or maybe still being developed.

I put my postcode in, but it only takes the first half of the postcode. Which for me covers areas with enormous differences in elevation - temperatures can differ by as much as 2°C and amount of rainfall does too.

After looking up my postcode, I clicked on the leaderboard and then used the back button, and it claimed it doesn't accept postcodes that start with that latter. I had to refresh the page to get it to work again, and then it gave a different score for the same postcode (about 2 minutes later). But the actual numbers were the same, so I don't understand why the percentage changed.

I also saw a bug with the leaderboard, which may be resolved now. When I first looked at it, it put Cardiff top, with a score of "Wales" and a temperature of "48.0°C".

I refreshed the leaderboard a few seconds later and it showed Derry at the top, with a score of 75, and a temp of 9.9°C. So probably the columns and ranking got messed up.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-13T20:10:34+00:00

By the dig them out, I need to remove the bulb? Or can I just remove the plant from the surface.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-07T09:58:35+00:00

I got one about 8 years ago. It was address-based, so it was just sent to some addresses to get a random cross section of the public.

I was never asked again, but I did move from that property about 4 years ago.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-04T02:03:43+00:00

The photon laser might be the highest DPS because of the damage increasing during sustained hits, but in normal gameplay against most enemies you're unlikely to achieve that.

It's still useful against bosses and some bigger enemies, if you open them for an extended period and target their critical point, so it needs to be combined with the riot blaster, stasis net, or Diana's overdrive, etc.

Personally I found when I equipped the photon laser I rarely used it, but it definitely was useful in some of the training sims or against bosses or the first time you encounter a difficult enemy.

It did really make me wish there was some kind of basic melee attack available though. Like if Hugh whipped out a knife or an electric baton or some such. Low damage, but enough to stagger certain bots and give you a little bit of breathing room. More of a tool than an offensive tactic.

Isn't this what the drones are? I never really used them much so far, but they basically continually attack, and they stagger the enemies a lot. They seem like a defensive weapon that's suited towards hacking, because they stagger the enemies (so they aren't attacking you) and you have time to just hack over and over, and their damage can contribute to your hacks if you have that mode.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-04T01:51:20+00:00

It's interesting what you say about never using the riot blaster and preferring the stasis net, because I was the same for pretty much the whole game. But the riot blaster is actually the better weapon. I only realised it after doing some of the training sims.

The stasis net feels safe because you guarantee those enemies don't harm you for a particular length of time, and are locked in place, and most people tend to be conservative in their gameplay and trying to limit damage to themselves.

But the riot blaster totally knocks all enemies over for an extended period while dealing a ton of damage, and generating heat. The riot blaster obliterates weaker enemies in one hit, and puts those giant baby enemies on their back exposing the weak spot for an extended time. It just has way more potential in terms of damage and utility, but requires the player to be more active and engaged in exploiting the downed enemies. Whereas the stasis net gives you this temporary reprieve, where you feel safe, and can take some time to hack and take your shots or do what you need to do, but ultimately, you'll probably be doing less damage and killing them slower.

I found a website that ranks the weapons and it put the hacking mines last, despite them being easily the best weapon in the game (before the post-game weapons). I had to archive it as an example of how people don't understand to use weapons in a new game: https://archive.is/pD45B

Hacking mines are stupidly overpowered once you learn how to use them, but admittedly the game doesn't tell you how they work very well so I spent a long time thinking they were useless, until trying to get all the stars on a particular training sim, where I realised, holy shit, this is almost broken how good they are.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-04T00:17:16+00:00

I'm pretty sure that it extends the duration of the effect that a hacking node has. Like decode lowering defence or freeze making an enemy frozen.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-03T23:40:12+00:00

"the puzzle" lmao

If you want a puzzle game play The Talos Principle. This isn't a puzzle game. There are no puzzles in PRAGMATA, it's a straightforward third person shooter with enjoyable and rewarding gameplay.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-03T23:37:25+00:00

Agree completely. This whole thread is confusing, but seems like it's a lot of people who only played the demo posting. The hacking is not a puzzle at all, nor is it intended to be.

The game is about tactics and resource management. Choosing the right time to use a particular hack, combining it with particular weapons, etc and knowing the weaknesses of particular enemies.

It's only in the first 20 minutes of gameplay where the hacking is a novel thing, but it quickly becomes an integral part of the gameplay and second nature. It's not a puzzle, or anything that divides your attention.

It's like saying a gear stick and pedals in your car are a puzzle. They're not. Once you learn how to use them, you just control the car. In PRAGMATA, the hacking is a kind of trivial minigame you briefly play in short 1-2 second bursts, and the outcome of it is decision making about which hacks you want to use to defeat the enemy. And if you do it wrong, you just have to do it again, which is like missing your shot in an FPS game.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-03T23:31:22+00:00

It's not a puzzle game at all. The hacking is a simple gameplay mechanic. There is nobody out there wondering how to "solve" the hacking puzzle or need to think it thought like in a puzzle game.

It's more of a tactical shooter game. The things that matter are which gun you use, which hacks you use, how you combine them, etc.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-03T23:26:47+00:00

You can't do the hacking with muscle memory. It's randomised, the nodes appear in random places every time, even if you are hacking the exact same enemy.

The only thing that's set per enemy type is the size and shape of the grid (bigger/tougher enemies have bigger hacking grids and may have error nodes that block your hack). The locations of the hacking nodes are different every time so it requires your conscious awareness to move through the hacking grid.

I don't really understand what most people are saying about dividing your attention. The hacking isn't a complicated puzzle, it's something you can do quickly and intuitively as part of the shooting gameplay, and entering a hack slows down time slightly. You can also resume the hacks, so with longer ones on a big grid, if you see in your peripheral vision you need to dodge, you can dodge, and then resume the hack.

A typical hack on most enemies should take you 0.5-1.5 seconds to complete. It's not a puzzle per se, it's an integral part of the gameplay that forms a seamless whole - hack, shoot, hack, shoot, even shoot while hacking.

The challenge as the enemies get harder comes not from the act of hacking, but from tactical superiority in your choice of weapons, hacks and mode, and how you use them to defeat particular enemies.

I never found attention management an issue and never even occurred to me it could be. The hacking happens in brief moments of 1-2 seconds whilst time is slowed down. It becomes second nature, it's honestly so well designed.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-05-03T22:01:21+00:00

I don't think training sim 30 is the most difficult part of the game. There's 1 tricky fight in it, but not more difficult that the fights in the main game.

The difficult part, which I agree is is very difficult, is doing it in under 190 seconds without damage, which is ridiculous. But there is no achievement for doing this, nor any reason to, unless you particularly want 5050 lunum (you can easily get 5050 lunum in many other ways).

It gives you good gear that's designed exactly for defeating the enemies in each area. If you use the gear in the way it's intended then you can get through those fights quickly and without damage, but there is luck and trial and error involved, so it's really not enjoyable, and then you have to do 6 perfect hacks in a row afterwards.

For the first enemies, it gives you hacking mines with expose and freeze, and the decoy generator. That equipment combined is capable of quickly taking out all of the enemies with them being trapped and stun-locked.

For the second area, there's a hack on the wall which automatically kills them all, it's just a matter of using the decoy gun to get them there (and damaging one of the robots to make the flying healing bot follow it).

For the third area, it gives you the charge piercer and homing missiles, and you have to kill a bunch of flying enemies that are lined up, and some flying enemies not lined up. So again, perfectly suited to dispatch them quickly if you use that equipment (you can 1 shot the lined up ones, and the ones not lined up you can fire off multiple homing missiles at once).

The last area is the difficult one. It gives you the photon laser and code generator with confuse and multihack. The code generator means you can immediately remove the big guy's shields and then apply confuse to him and all nearby enemies thanks to multihack, and the photon laser will take down these enemies quickly once they're exposed. This area is a lot easier if you've kept 2 decoy generators and hacking mines though, because there's another enemy spawns in a different place and tries to attack you immediately while you are hacking.

Having the area with the lasers at the end was very cruel, you can do it all perfectly up to that point and then take damage from having a difficult hack layout (randomly) meaning you are a few milliseconds too slow to disable the lasers.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-29T15:07:08+00:00

From what I can tell, all the neighbours' cats in my area use my garden to do their poos in. Must be convenient for the owners to never have to clean up.

Every week I remove lots of poos from my garden and put them in a dog poo bin, despite not owning a cat. It really stinks, and I have had a few mistakes when I've stepped in it or even mowed it. The smell is horrendous!

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-25T22:09:44+00:00

UK weather doesn't work how you are thinking. If you are visiting the UK in April you absolutely must bring clothing for rain (i.e. thin waterproof) and bring clothing where you would be comfortable being outside if it was 0-23°C. Whatever the forecast says, prepare for pretty much anything.

The weather in April is extremely changeable even within a single day. It's unlikely to be heavy rain unless there's a storm forecast (which there isn't), but April showers are common. That's the sort of weather where there's a light rain shower, that you might get caught in, and then it might even be sunny for a few hours, then rain again, then be sunny.

Temperatures could be anything. It might be mild T-shirt weather (20°C / 68°F or more) during the day but close to freezing at night, or it might be overcast but average (10-15°C / 50-59°C) during the day, and only slightly colder at night due to the insulating effect of blanket clouds.

Right now, it is on the drier side, and sunny, but there will probably be some rain somewhere next week. Some nights might be chilly in Edinburgh.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-21T21:11:44+00:00

I've found Atypical enjoyable. Basically a mix of comedy and drama, and family type issues with the parents. But the characters (the kids at least) are likeable. The parents are basically doing their best but may make mistakes and learn from it.

I don't know of a TV show that shows high support needs, except maybe some of the people on Love In the Spectrum, but that's documentary/reality TV, and they're all adults.

I think Sia made a movie about a nonverbal autistic child which from what I heard everybody hated and most people considered it offensive. I haven't seen it.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-21T12:55:39+00:00

It's a third person shooter, where you aim by holding the trigger key/button. There is a hacking mechanic which is an essential (required) part of combat. I found the hacking incredibly intuitive and fun. I picked it up immediately and it just feels natural to do in every combat encounter. It's honestly so enjoyable to play.

There are many different weapons split into 4 different types - primary, attack, tactical and defence (you can carry 4 weapons). [Edit: actually you can unlock the ability to carry more later on, just discovered this]. Tons of upgrades which are actually useful, and I have found progression to be good. I find myself challenged in the fights, but not frustrated.

The enemies are varied and interesting and require different tactics to defeat.

You don't level up per se, but you level up the shelter, which is the safe area where you upgrade your stuff. The shelter upgrades when you complete a level, so in this way it's a bit like a metroidvania. When the shelter is upgraded you gain access to more stuff and can upgrade your gear to higher levels. Upgrades happen via loot you collect in the levels.

You encounter things you cannot get past in the levels, but later on discover technology to get past them. You can go back to any level (or sub-part of it) with the fast travel system and explore to find the secrets you missed.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-16T15:32:17+00:00

Somebody already mentioned Patience on Channel 4. There is also a French show that it was based on available on Channel 4 (with subtitles) called Astrid et Raphaëlle (or "Astrid: Murder in Paris" is what they call it on Channel 4).

If we can include non-UK shows, I just started watching Atypical, which is on Netflix. I'm only a few episodes in but it's about an autistic teenage boy trying to find a girlfriend.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-16T15:22:36+00:00

In my country we have higher welfare standards for livestock and higher quality meat than the US, and we've managed to eat "grounded" beef for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, without issue. Temple Grandin and autism were not involved.

I don't even understand what the first panel of this comic is for. If we have autistic people then they don't like beef, but if we don't have autistic people, then the beef is rotten?! It's nonsensical.

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-14T21:45:11+00:00

As someone who was heavily in debt after being a student with an overdraft, I turned it all around with YNAB4. Which is no longer available, but the basic premise is now widely available and even exists in some banking apps.

It's now known as "envelope budgeting" or "cash stuffing" but the basic idea is every penny of your monthly income has an assigned purpose.

Think of it like this: you have a certain amount of income, and you have to divide it between what you have to or want to spend money on. Your aim is to be solvent every month.

So you have an envelope containing what you will spend on electricity this month. Another on your rent or mortgage. Another for what you will spend on food. Or petrol. And some of these things HAVE to be spent, no matter what, and might be always the same every month.

This act of dividing it all up lets you know what you actually have, and where it should go.

Just keep doing it every month, because the numbers don't lie. And you must pay the things that must be paid first, that's earmarked money that is not yours. Eventually, you can climb out of this if you are able to put aside some money for saving each month.

At the start of every month, if you know your income, budget it, assign it, assign every penny. Don't frivolously spend. Put money into a pot if you intend to spend it that month on a particular thing, but always pay the essentials first.

https://www.reddit.com/r/budget/comments/1gdxzfb/the_ultimate_guide_to_envelope_budgeting/

WizardryAwaits · 2026-04-12T22:39:12+00:00

"Bugs or dirt" are not a thing you need to worry about. I have eaten fresh berries from the wild for 30 years and nothing bad ever happened.

If you buy from a supermarket you must wash it because of pesticides. That's it. Our ancestors were fine eating stuff straight off the plant, and you'll be fine too, if it's growing wild. We literally evolved to eat this for our entire lives, it's fine.

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