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3 koalas sleepily snuggled together spoon-fashion in a tree-fork at Sydney's Taronga Zoo.

Weekly Open Thread with Spooning Koalas

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These three koalas keeping warm in Sydney’s winter morning chill are featured this week. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

Post by 702 ABC Sydney.

Image Description: three koalas snuggled up together in the fork of a tree. Image caption reads: Taronga Zoo keepers spotted Sydney, Milli & Tucker spooning happily together. This is one way to beat the cold start to Winter. Photo by Ellen Wilson

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

39 thoughts on Weekly Open Thread with Spooning Koalas

  1. My siblings helped me out with my plane ticket, so now I’m going to leave for the Bay Area in a week or so. I’m excited. My therapist also referred me to another therapist in the area I’m moving to, and she’s a woman, which I think is going to be really helpful for me.

  2. Finally left New York – had a wonderful four months there and already want to visit again at some point in the future. Worked in the Bronx and lived in West Harlem, Morningside Heights and Upper West Side, so got to see quite a bit of the city, as I attempted to figure out the subway system.

    Now back in the UK, and already miss the opportunity for pizza slices at any time during the day or night. Thanks to those for earlier suggestions about where to go. I managed to get quite a few touristy things done while I was there.

    p.s I’m half Kurdish and a little dark skinned, and thought it was amusing that quite a few white people would say ‘gracias’ in the supermarkets, assuming I was Hispanic.

    1. Glad you enjoyed the city! We’re nicer than we get credit for, generally…in my opinion, at least…

    2. I’m glad you enjoyed it. 🙂 New York City residents are nice. That’s cute about the “gracias”.

  3. If my asshole downstairs neighbors blast music and throw parties deep into the night, 311 doesn’t respond, and my management company is being less than helpful, are there any real downsides to setting off a loud alarm in my apartment at 7AM that I let loop? I already know management and 311 won’t do shit, but I’d like to figure out a way to direct the noise only down instead of up (I don’t think think the lateral apartments can hear anything from one another).

    If I go down and bang on their door every five minutes, can they call the cops on me for harassment? Any way they’d be sympathetic to the paper trail I’ve been leaving about the noise complaints?

    Fucking three years in this city, 2 in Saint Louis, and 4 in DC. Imagine how bad the noise has to be that I’ve literally never once been unable to sleep through the night in all this time.

    1. Have you talked to them about it? I hate doing that kind of thing, but it might work. Otherwise the only thing I can suggest is using earplugs and/or noise-cancelling headphones until the lease is up…or consulting a tenants’ rights lawyer, I guess…

      1. I finally got ahold of my landlord who says she’ll contact both the resident and their guarantor. That’s right, I just tattled on my neighbors to their parents. I’d feel bad if I ever really felt comfortable in my own apartment. Fingers crossed!

    2. If the police are nonresponsive then generally, the steps are:

      1) Ask
      2) Ask/demand via certified mail, both landlord and tenant
      3) Get a lawyer.

      Steps #1 and 2 only should be done if they can be done safely. Because this is an issue of state law, you’ll need a lawyer (or a local tenant rights group) to tell you what rights you may have. Depending on where you live, you might be able to place at least some responsibility on your landlord.

  4. Eeee koalas!

    I’m within a few inches of finishing the sleeves on my Fleur jacket.

    There’s a mass union rally planned for the 12th in Melbourne, protesting against the fuckawful brutality of the Federal budget. Weather and time of the month permitting, I might go in and add to the numbers.

  5. Delightful to see that Amelie Mauresmo will be coaching Andy Murray for the grass court season. It’s especially pleasing, after all the undeserved troubles of her playing days, to read:

    [And you won’t find a single person who comes into contact with her who doesn’t absolutely love her.]

    1. Do you have another link? Cute as it is, the link just leads to the home page. I want to see your coat! 🙂

    1. It’s hardly the first such cruise, as the link claims — Amy Bloom wrote a (rather unpleasant, in my opinion) article about such a cruise for The Atlantic back in 2002 called “Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses” (and discussed it later in her book if I recall correctly), and I’m sure there have been others for years.

      I wish your friend luck, but whoever’s putting that cruise together ought to learn that emphasizing to “transgenders” (not a noun!) and crossdressers that this “is a straight cruise” (no homosexuals!) might be viewed as a little homophobic, and decidedly old-fashioned, in this day and age. But I’m sure there’s still an audience for that kind of thing, even though I wouldn’t be caught within 1000 miles of it. (Then again, I never even attended a trans conference.)

    9. Pheeno: my deepest sympathies. I am on a pet loss chat room (and message board) and it’s been very supportive. It’s a 100% safe space, and a second family for many of us. Please join us if you want. There is also a Monday night candle ceremony, @ 10PM Eastern in the chat room.

      You don’t have to register for the chat room, the message board you do. My user name is the same as here. I’m so sorry Pheeno.

      http://www.petloss.com/newchat.htm

  9. Something really adorable happened last night. I was in a restaurant and I took my little step-brother (4 years old) to wash his hands in the men’s bathroom. He saw the sign and then looked at me and said “Why are we going in the guy’s bathroom? Are you a guy or a girl?” I was totally shocked to hear that from him, so I just said nothing and proceeded to lift him up to help him reach the sink. As he was drying his hands, he asked me “Am I a girl or a guy?” I told him “You can be whatever you want!” to which he responded with “Okay, I’m a girl then!” Little things like that brighten my day.

  10. I have to ask a completely random question which I have been wondering for ages:

    Where do you get your pictures? Who chooses them?

    Every time you post an open thread, someone manages to choose an unusually hilarious or otherwise excellent picture, which is always NON-viral enough that I’ve never seen it before and neither has anyone else that I show it to.

    Do you have some “open thread pictures” website somewhere?

    1. It’s my weekly excuse to go sieving through the goog for images/videos that catch my eye (although sometimes I’ll just come across something in my social media feeds). This week I holidayed on the coast where there were lots of pelicans, so I looked for pelican pics with a Creative Commons license for the new thread that’s just gone up.

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