Hi there!
Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the **Daily Slow Chat.**
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4 comments
Happy May Day to everyone!
Did you know that the distress call used in English…’Mayday’… actually comes from French? Originally it was ‘m’aider’.
I read this morning that Paul Auster has passed away. I have read a few of his books, and especially enjoyed Mr Vertigo, but then kind of stopped because they’re rather heavy, depressing books. Maybe I should read more of them. I saw that he wrote some nonfiction, too.
Are there any authors that you have read all/most of their works of (this sentence gives me a headache but I don’t know how to write it better. Feel free to correct)? I think for me they’re Jane Austen, Jared Diamond, Tolkien (didn’t read the letters, though), Umberto Eco, Ursula Le Guin (I may be missing 1-2, not sure. I did read most of them), Stanislaw Lem, Isaac Asimov, Anton Chekhov (stories and plays) and Dostoyevski.
I don’t know if it’s an international phenomenon, but Birdlife Finland has a “100 species” challenge, where the idea is to spot all the birds from a list they’ve compiled. I started a couple of months ago and am now at 39. Feels super satisfying to realize you’ve spotted a certain species for the first time in your life, especially if it’s a relatively rare one. The last one I saw was the common moorhen (Gallinula chloropus), of which only 50 to 200 pairs are estimated to nest in the entire country.
I made a [bit of an impulse buy](https://imgur.com/a/hECb8P9) on the flea market 😅 I was wondering 1) does anyone know how best to get rid of the rust on junk 2) what the weird contraption in the second and third photos is?