As a Heliboard enthusiast and pretty happy with it, I would like to ask you what you find wrong with it, what you miss from the original ?

Happy cake day ! Many thanks for all your time making this instance so great. I just love being part of this community.

yep but nothing prevent you from using an hosting service, there are plenty on the web, or you can selfhost

The issue with the current time zones in Europe is that they are far from being natural… The more you go to the west the later the sun is raising and setting, the more you go to the east, the opposite. Current western European time zone is too large… There are initiatives to improve that but will it be done ?

For example: https://timeuse.barcelona/what-we-do/permanent-time-zones-eu/

Nuclear war: a scenario, by Annie Jacobsen

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll take a look.

Just finished Nuclear war, a scenario by Annie Jacobsen. This nonfiction book about a fictional scenario about what a nuclear war would be really shaked me. I strongly recommend it. Read it in a few days because it was really gripping (ok this week have been a bit hard with the few sleep hours each night).

Not yet found what I’ll start reading now but something lighter for sure (perhaps a crime/mystery/thriller, has been long since I read a good one). If you have some recommendations, they are welcome.

Thank you for your dedication in maintaining us a great instance. Very much appreciated, I’m really happy that my initial instance closed and that I choose (mostly out of luck) this one.

I would add for the search suggestion to work (replace searx.be by your instance URL), use this URL in suggestion URL field in firefox

https://searx.be/autocompleter?q=%s

It’s indeed noisy, we schedule it to run when we’re not at home.

A bit on the costly stuff but I find the vacuum cleaner robot (not sure it’s called this in English) very useful. The house is cleaner to be vacuumed every day (even if it’s not as efficient as manual vacuuming or cleaning). Especially with pets and children.

Indeed, being Belgian and an adept of the real French fries (double cooked) I was not convinced at all. In the end, I still prefer real fries but I find the air fryer very practical to cook (or warm up quickly - unlike microwave oven it does not make stuff soft) all sort of food.

Removed by mod

The institute, by Stephen King

The gathering, by C.J. Tudor

Just finished The gathering, by C.J. Tudor. Really loved it, through a vampire fantasy novel, she achieved to approach very actual and important topics like euthanasia, genocide, fear of difference, tolerance and so on. One of her best novel in my opinion.

Restarted on my Tolkien cycle with The hobbit (of course a reread in English - read the French translation about 25 years ago).

Yes this is what is difficult, so many characters (and sometimes named differently based on the language). I had to use websites to help me keeping track.

• Just finished The Silmarillion, by Tolkien. Difficult to read but this is really a must read for better understanding of Tolkien universe. I, of course, read several times LOTR and the hobbit but first time for this one.
• Started The Gathering, by C.J. Tudor which was just published a few days ago.

I’m volunteer to donate because of I accidentally die, rather that it deserve someone who would have more luck than me rather than no one.

Now in Belgium it works a bit differently. Everyone is, by default, considered as a donor.

You can then register to either refuse it or to impose it whatever your family says.

This is because the law is that the doctors must always ask the family if they are ok to give organs from diseased family member even with the “by default donor”, with the registration you can say “don’t ask my family and just do it”.

This can be used in two situation in my opinion, the first one being family that have different conviction and may refuse despite the opinion of the diseased. The second situation (mine) being not wanting to worry grieving family with one more difficult decision to take.

Coming back to this after a while trying out. Qwant is indeed very nice in Europe at least. I tested it and adopted it, I also like the fact it have a map based on OSM which is nicer than the Apple thing in DDG.