Dalesdipstick

I lived in Japan for a year. Most of my experiences were exhausting in ways I’d rather not get into, but this one still makes me laugh. I was on the train in Osaka, minding my own business, when I noticed a group of school kids a few seats down. They were whispering, glancing at me, then whispering again. They kept passing a folded piece of paper between them as if they were planning something top secret. I watched this go on for two stops. Finally, one of the kids was pushed forward by the others. He walked over to me slowly, like he was approaching a wild animal that might bite. He stopped right in front of me, bowed politely, and held out the folded paper with both hands. I opened it. Inside was a handwritten note in careful English: “Hello. We think you are a very cool person. We are practicing our English. We hope this note is correct. Please give us a score.” At the bottom, they had drawn a literal grading box, out of ten. I looked up. Seven pairs of eyes were staring at me as if their entire semester depended on my response. I pulled out a pen, wrote “10/10” in the box, and added a note: “Perfect English. Well done.” The boy carried it back to the group. They read it together… and absolutely lost their minds. High-fives, jumping, and one kid even pumped his fist in the air. Their teacher, who had been pretending not to watch from the end of the car, was biting her lip, trying hard not to smile. I rode the rest of the journey grinning to myself. That’s the Japan I always remember.

This is Charlie Gee. He's a 23 year old British stonemason who restores cathedrals using the same tools that medieval craftsmen used 800 years ago. In 2023, he helped rebuild eight pinnacles on Cologne Cathedral's spire. It was the first restoration of its kind since World War II, when 14 Allied bombs hit the Gothic landmark and it somehow remained standing while the rest of the city was flattened... Cologne Cathedral, seen in this video, took 632 years to build. Construction began in 1248 and it was finished in 1880. To put that in perspective: it took longer to build than the United States has existed as a country. The first master builder, Master Gerhard, fell from the scaffolding in 1271, never seeing a single spire finished. Generations of stonemasons were born, worked, and died on that cathedral without seeing it completed. Then in 1473, the money ran out. Work stopped for more than 300 years, and a half-built cathedral with a wooden crane on top stood over Cologne for centuries. In 1880, their descendants finished it... and it became the tallest building on earth. The German poet Heinrich Heine was once asked why we no longer build such things. His answer may be the most precise diagnosis of the modern condition ever given: "In those days men had convictions, we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral." A civilization gives its heirs the benefit of socially accumulated knowledge. To preserve that knowledge, you have to know your history. Gothic cathedrals are history made of stone: the physical record of a people who believed in something larger than themselves and longer than a single lifetime. Charlie Gee is one of the very few young men alive who still speaks that language... If you're interested in history, I've built a community of over 50,000 members who learn about it every week through the beauty of our world. If that sounds like something you'd like to be part of, join us.

Voyager is slowly going dark. NASA has been forced to shut down one of Voyager 1’s science instruments to keep the legendary spacecraft alive. After nearly 49 years of continuous operation, engineers have officially powered down the Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) sensor on Voyager 1, now located more than 15 billion miles from Earth. The move was not due to instrument failure, but rather a deliberate survival strategy. The spacecraft’s plutonium-powered generators lose about four watts of electricity every year. By deactivating this instrument, mission controllers hope to prevent a critical power shortage that could cause the entire spacecraft to shut down permanently. At this immense distance, communication is extremely challenging — it takes roughly 23 hours for a signal to travel one way between Earth and Voyager 1. Although the loss of the particle sensor ends that particular data stream, two other key science instruments remain active, continuing to send back valuable information from interstellar space. NASA is now exploring even stricter power-saving measures to extend the mission as long as possible. This latest shutdown is expected to buy Voyager 1 at least one more year of operation, allowing humanity’s farthest-reaching explorer to keep sending data from the edge of the solar system and beyond. The spacecraft may be fading, but its journey is far from over.

Coastal cities are replacing concrete seawalls with oyster reefs. The oysters are better at the job. Seawalls begin to degrade the minute they're installed. Waves chew them up, storms crack them, and they have to be repaired, replaced, and rebuilt forever. An oyster reef doesn't break down, it actually grows. The oysters stack, reproduce, and fuse into living rock that gets stronger every year. A mature reef can cut incoming wave height by up to 83%. It traps sediment, rebuilds the shoreline behind it, and shelters fish, crabs, and shrimp in the process. A hectare of oyster reef provides up to $85,000 a year in shoreline protection. Concrete costs over a million dollars a hectare to build and only gets weaker. Oysters were the answer the whole time.

@GenePhysicist @honeymoon250 Nope wrong.

@honeymoon250 Beautiful Jack Plane, similar to one in my tool box.

People keep guessing, but no one gets it right. Do you know what this is?

@honeymoon250 Whoever owns that plane needs stuffing with the rough end of a pineapple 🤦‍♂️

@vxylily In a gay club?

He doesn’t drink He doesn’t Womanise He doesn’t party He stays at home He doesn’t bet Where can I find him??

@CarlBovisNature Nope, not now not ever! they crap over everything in my garden and wake me up at five o’clock every morning they are greedy fat lazy b*st*rds

When I was a kid, you never saw Woodpigeons anywhere other than in woods and on farmland... they were quite shy birds.. Nowadays, they're a common sight in towns and gardens! 😊 I'm happy about that... they're quite handsome and full of character, don't you think? 🥰🐦

@CowboyEastTexas Please steer clear of the politics I’m doing all I can to cleanse my feed of toxic junk from the US and UK and feel so much better because of it many thanks.

Another video from this evening with the bull calf in the pasture. He certainly has come a long way in two days from not even letting me get close to him. Y'all sure do like cow videos. The last one has something like 9k views so far. If I post something political it might get 20 views. I suppose that says a lot and it's likely a good thing. Anyway, another cow video and likely more to come.

@NoFarmsNoFoods Our kitchen window living on a dairy Farm in the Yorkshire Dales we would open the fanlight windows they would stick their heads in as far as they could and stick their tongues out!

The chances of a cow turning up at your house are extremely low, but never zero.

@BestinDogs Good on you mate 💪

So I’m driving down the road this morning and the cars in front of me are driving over a black thing in the road. It’s going between their tires so I’m guessing it’s a box. It’s a kitten just sitting upright shaking like a leaf. And some asshole had spread glue on its paws and stuck it to the road. I thought maybe it walked through glue somewhere but after looking at it, that was totally spread into her paws. She was wet and freezing and literally glued to the road. And NO ONE STOPPED. 😳 What the f$&k people??? I slammed on my brakes and stopped all the traffic and put my hazards on and got out and pealed her off the road. People were honking and all pissy....really??? It’s a kitten glued to the road!! So after a goo gone bath and some food and cream we have a new kitten. Luckiest kitten in the world!

@CuriosityonX What’s that big crack?

What would be the scariest message humanity could receive from outer space?

@London_W4 Nice post mate we need these I’m sick of the chaos and carnage 👍

Good morning everyone. So, I made the mistake last night of looking at the news and got angry. As I’ve said before, the only way to stay sane in this country, is to never look at the news and focus only on pretty things. Talking of pretty things; I was here on Tuesday. I can’t resist this gorgeous little Twinings tea shop on The Strand. A beautiful little corner of England, where you can go in and sniff the many and varied exotic tealeaves. So, if you’re passing and want to give your nose and your mind a treat, go in and for a few moments, England is perfect again.

@oaksandlions Old English joke.. I once see the Queen Mary tossing off Portland Bill.

Along the Dorset coast lies one of Britain’s most remarkable natural wonders. Chesil Beach. Walk its length and something unusual happens. The pebbles steadily change from large to small. At the western end, they are as large as potatoes. By the time you reach Portland, 18 miles away, they are no bigger than peas. For thousands of years, waves, tides, and the shape of the coastline have sorted every stone into place with near-perfect consistency. Fishermen once navigated in fog simply by feeling the size of the stones beneath their boots. A masterpiece of natural engineering we are fortunate to inherit. Have you been lucky enough to walk Chesil Beach? Follow @oaksandlions for more of Britain’s hidden wonders.

@Chazazon @CuriosityonX Ahh the cloud fairy made it all?!!!

@CuriosityonX It really is too much for our minds to comprehend. God is awesome!

The observable universe stretches 92 billion light-years across. The farthest any human has ever been from Earth? 1.29 light-seconds.

@ScipioAfric10 @ProudofusUK Excellent thread nice to see a reasonable interaction on X for a change 👏🏼👏🏼

@ProudofusUK Of course. I read absolutely everything you write. I will read parts 2 and 3 for sure.

Julius Caesar had never lost a war. ⚔️ Britain was about to change that. 🇬🇧 In Gaul he broke nation after nation until an entire continent knelt. In Egypt he walked into a civil war and bent it to his will. Everywhere Rome sent him, he won. He was the most dangerous man alive. And in 55 BC, he decided Britain was next. 🇬🇧 He crossed the Channel with two legions. Hardened veterans. Never been beaten. Britain came down to the beach to meet them. Screaming. Painted in woad. Charging into the surf before the fleet even landed. Caesar couldn't get a foothold. A storm destroyed part of his fleet. He turned around and went home. Rome threw him a triumph anyway. Caesar spent the winter building six hundred new ships. 🚢 54 BC. Eight hundred ships. Five legions. Twenty seven thousand men. All of it pointed at one small island. The British tribes looked at what was coming. And did something nobody had expected. 👀 Part 2 coming soon. 🇬🇧 Together we keep our history alive. proudofus.co.uk/support None of this exists without you. Thank you. Be part of us. Be Proud Of Us.🇬🇧

@MikeMi10843 @plyons45 Hi Mike you will be pleased to know you haven’t hurt my feelings I just think you are an absolute cunt of a human being.

@plyons45 Awww did ur wittle feelings get hurt?

The exact moment this all should have been stopped

It's so lovely to scroll through X and see beautiful Images like this rather than politics and war 🥰

There is a video circulating on the internet that is difficult to watch. A woman sits on a pavement in Louisville, Kentucky. She is wearing a hospital gown. It is 36 degrees outside. Her belongings, everything she apparently owns, are in a plastic bag on the concrete beside her. Behind her, through the glass doors she has just been escorted through, the hospital hums along as normal. The security guards who brought her here have already gone back inside. She couldn’t afford her bill. This is not a scene from a developing nation or a history book. This is the United States of America. The country in which it happens has spent decades telling the rest of the world that it has the highest GDP on earth. Which is a bit like a restaurant proudly displaying its bill on the wall. Enormous number. Terrible meal. The lobster was frozen, the wine came from a box. Europe, by comparison, has spent the better part of a century building something rather different. The food, for a start, is extraordinary. Not in a showy way, but in the way that a simple lunch in Lyon or a glass of wine on a terrace in Lisbon reminds you that eating is one of the genuinely good things about being alive. The wine is the wine that the rest of the world has spent generations attempting to replicate, mostly without success. Roughly 35 percent of Europeans live with a chronic illness. In America, that number is 76 percent. The difference is not genetic. It is architectural. It is the slow accumulation of decent food, walkable cities, actual holidays, and a healthcare system that does not require you to crowdfund your own appendix. Europeans work fewer hours. They have more purchasing power on a smaller salary once you subtract the cost of health insurance, medical debt, and the private school their child needs because the local public one has a metal detector at the entrance. They live, on average, about ten years longer. Not ten years of decline and doctor visits, but ten years of being a person in the world. In the first quarter of 2025, the number of Americans leaving the United States doubled compared to the previous quarter.  Europe was their top destination. Not for a sabbatical or a gap year. Permanently. These are not people who failed. These are people who did the maths. There is a man somewhere in America right now who has worked fifty-hour weeks for forty years, taken one week off when his employer permitted it, and will, statistically, be dead before he sees seventy. And there is another man, not very far away on a map but an entire civilisation removed in practice, sitting on a terrace in the afternoon sun with a glass of something cold and no particular place to be. He has had six weeks off every summer since 1987. He knows his neighbours by name. The first man’s country has the higher GDP. The first man’s country tops the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index. The second man tops the Quality of Life Index (QLI). The better health. The longer life. The afternoon. MAGA America calls that losing. Ask anyone. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

President Trump has posted this picture on social media of himself as Christ healing the sick. I’ve long given up saying how hard it is to think of any previous US president who behaved like Donald Trump, but comparing himself to Jesus puts him on another level altogether.