[HN Gopher] Message in a bottle from Scottish girl found in Norw...
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Message in a bottle from Scottish girl found in Norway after 25
years
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-01-28 20:30 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| teh_infallible wrote:
| I had a Danish roommate whose friend found a message in a bottle
| on a beach in Denmark. It was written in Swedish, and it said,
| "Fucking Danes"
| progre wrote:
| I imagine it probably said "Danskjavlar". Just some neighborly
| love from across the strait.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I wrote a message in a bottle when I was young. I still have very
| dim memories of being excited at the possibility that somebody in
| another country years later would find it. According to my folks,
| however, there were some issues. First, I was four years old and
| couldn't write, and second, I threw the bottle into a small pond.
| But my parents didn't want to dampen my enthusiasm at the time.
| koolba wrote:
| I had a similar experience at the beach around 6 or 7 but it
| ended with me getting yelled at by some surfers for littering.
| sshine wrote:
| What, ponds don't have edges?
|
| An interpretation: Being told the details as a grown-up, you're
| the finder of that bottle. Probably not many would appreciate
| the drawing you did as much as you can appreciate being
| enriched with the memory of yourself as a kid.
| agumonkey wrote:
| heh, beside the joke, I remember being utterly excited just
| seeing people talk over long distance ham radio by using
| atmospheric reflections.. someone in california randomly
| bumping into a russia far of Siberia after minutes of white
| noise.. super eerie.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| I love when I do something that comes back around years later
| after I've almost completely forgotten it. Probably my coolest
| version of this was on a popular run/race in Arizona where I
| bumped into someone who remembered a software project I did a
| decade earlier. As I finished a segment, they gave me a high five
| and left a bewildered but soon amused runner behind.
| Rphad wrote:
| The dog :(
| vmception wrote:
| > found bottle in 2020
|
| > The Norwegian sent a Facebook message for Joanna, but the
| former Peterhead schoolgirl did not spot it until Monday [January
| 2022]
|
| This pretty much sums up Facebook/Instagram inboxes.
| tempestn wrote:
| It feels somehow significant that the Facebook reply ended up
| being its own message in a bottle.
| vmception wrote:
| Savage. But accurate. We should start making articles about
| that. Person checks their nested nested spam, other inbox on
| Facebook and finds endearing highly relevant message from the
| turn of the decade.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Look how neat that handwriting is. None of that nonsense scrawl
| they introduce in KS2 now (I believe Americans call it cursive)
| derbOac wrote:
| In the US they've stopped teaching cursive, at least in some
| areas.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| In the right hands and with the right practice, cursive is
| beautiful and a work of art.
| iso1210 wrote:
| And the rest of the time it's illegible scrawl and has no
| place in basic education.
|
| Even [0], the US declaration of independence, is horrendous
| to read compared to this 8 year old girl's handwriting.
|
| https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-declaration-of-
| independenc...?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It is, in essence, a different dialect of writing. It is
| not illegible, you just don't know how to read it.
| Deposit yourself in Edinburgh, Appalachia, or rural
| Minnesota and you'll have various levels of difficulty
| understanding how people speak, is their speech wrong or
| is your knowledge of their language lacking?
| pcrh wrote:
| That is perfectly legible. Many modern fonts are less
| legible than that.
|
| I am curious about the opposition to cursive script that
| some people demonstrate, mostly in the US. In Europe
| cursive script is the norm; block letter writing by an
| adult is considered a mark of poor education.
| retrac wrote:
| The chancery/round hand style used in the Declaration of
| Independence is not a style of cursive much used in the
| last ~150 years. So it's potentially quite difficult
| without some practice.
|
| A major part of why we teach (or taught) writing cursive
| is because it also helps teach you to _read_ cursive. You
| may not need to write much, but until recently you would
| encounter written cursive all the time. In my experience
| it 's still common enough. It'd be awkward to be unable
| to read the New Year's cards from my older relatives.
| Someone wrote:
| Apart from the low resolution of that scan, I find that
| easy to read.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Yes, skilled penmanship and calligraphy is wonderful. But
| in my personal life, the majority of times I encounter
| cursive, I can not even read the handwriting, which is, to
| put it lightly, bad.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm equally skilled at illegible writing in block letters
| or cursive, thanks.
|
| My third grade teacher thought I'd turn out ok, because
| I'd have a secretary. Sadly, secretaries were out of
| fashion by the time I graduated college.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I find it interesting that I only ever hear that kind of
| complaint from Americans. Here in Europe, cursive/script
| is the basic way you learn writing, you automatically
| transition to something other later in life ... and we
| have zero hate for either variant.
|
| As for lack of legibility: I would guess US teachers not
| enforcing good style in preschool and elementary school
| contribute to that.
| dmix wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I wrote anything long form
| without a keyboard. Is that still a thing enough people
| do to have strong opinions about this?
| vmception wrote:
| Good riddance. If people want to learn those arts they can
| always go to the monetary with their sensei.
| pcrh wrote:
| The writing on the message isn't cursive.
| tempestn wrote:
| If we're honest, most of the actual content of the first
| 5-7 years or so of schooling is unimportant and ultimately
| forgotten, save for reading, writing, and basic arithmetic.
| Ideally some basic computer use too. But it's not like
| every moment spent on cursive writing in primary school
| would be a moment taken away from some critical, core
| subject. Aside from those few key building blocks, most of
| what you're doing in early school is learning socialization
| and 'how to learn'.
| Lammy wrote:
| Maybe forgotten in an active sense, but those years are
| critical for instilling the passive behaviors and
| expectations which help make us into productive human
| resources to serve the economy as adults. Things like
| learning not to talk until called upon, learning to ask
| before being allowed to use the restroom or for other
| bodily functions, learning to be identified by an ID
| number, learning to answer a daily roll-call, learning
| that our personal possessions will be confiscated at any
| time, learning to walk through security checkpoints and
| metal detectors, learning to expect the presence of a
| School Resource Officer whose job is to perceive students
| as a possible threat and protect the institution,
| learning we must dress a certain way, learning to buy our
| own school supplies necessary to complete our assigned
| work units, learning that being poor isn't an acceptable
| excuse for not having supplies, learning that food won't
| be provided for free even though we're required to be be
| at school for eight hours straight, learning it is never
| acceptable to leave school grounds once we check in for
| the day until officially released at the end of the day,
| learning that disruptive individuals will be separated
| from their entire social circle and sent to a stricter
| alternative facility, learning that authority figures
| will discuss you with each other behind your back and may
| form prejudices based on gossip or on your familial
| relations, learning how it's best to surpass our peers
| and that we can't get the highest grade unless others
| fail, learning not to read ahead of our current place in
| the curriculum, learning never to read from unapproved
| sources, learning that truth is whatever the curriculum
| says is Officially True, learning how authority figures
| will punish or shame us for questioning the curriculum or
| beyond the curriculum because they are evaluated on how
| accurately we know it and thus must defend it to survive,
| learning how cooperation is cheating except for group
| projects where it is instead a thing to dread, learning
| to expect no privacy, learning to sit inside all day and
| only have free time once the sun sets, learning to be
| punished as a group for the actions of an individual,
| learning to tell on our peers for gold stars from
| authority, learning that a bell controls our daily
| schedule but individual authority figures can decide to
| keep us late anyway, learning to get up uncomfortably
| early and do a daily commute, learning to survive on less
| sleep than we need, learning we will be equally punished
| for tardiness as for absence, learning somebody else
| needs to write a note to acknowledge when we are sick
| before it's believed, learning to be segregated based on
| sex, learning to be segregated based on seniority and
| that the oldest cohort will be regularly pushed out with
| no say in the matter, learning we must find a clique for
| social defense because loners are weird and deserve
| bullying, learning how punishments are decided by
| administrators who don't know us individually, learning
| how rewards and punishments may be arbitrary depending on
| social status within the microcosm of the school,
| learning that we must also think about school in our free
| time and use that time to prepare for what's due
| tomorrow, learning that "extra-curricular" work is
| basically a requirement if everyone else is doing it too,
| learning to walk in long silent alphabetically-sorted
| lines with our hands clasped behind our backs, etc. You
| know, important life skills.
| vmception wrote:
| I dont want to optimize a curriculum, I dont want them to
| bother with that. Glad to read other decision makers
| reached the same conclusion.
| tempestn wrote:
| Personally I'm glad I learned cursive in school, even
| though I'm terrible at it. Far more valuable than
| learning about the various species of local turtle, or
| 1000 other things we did in primary school that I've
| since forgotten.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Learning about a load of random stuff in primary school
| is incredibly important. How else do children find out
| what they're interested in?
| carbocation wrote:
| It looks like D'Nealian[1], which is designed as an
| introduction to handwriting that facilitates learning cursive.
|
| 1 = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian
| scoot wrote:
| I have to agree - my first thought was that the writing
| looked "pre-cursive". As a late teen I abandoned cursive in
| favor of something that I could read.
|
| These days about the only thing I write by hand is my
| signature. It's a squiggle.
| OJFord wrote:
| Has it really changed? Or do we just not keep up with it
| outside of/after leaving school any more? I'm a bit younger
| than her and was certainly taught properly (in KS1, not 2, if
| my quick search is correct that KS2 starts at form/year/grade
| 3) - I just quite quickly stopped using it and _now_ my writing
| is an only-half-joined-up 'nonsense scrawl'.
| iso1631 wrote:
| My kids are in year 2 and 5. Year 5 had perfectly legible
| handwriting (not quite as good as the stuff in the image, but
| pretty good) until they forced the joined up shit starting in
| year 3.
|
| Looking at other words on the wall confirms this is normal -
| writing goes back severely in KS2 because of this 1960s view
| that you have to be able to write large amounts of prose at
| speed.
| gavinray wrote:
| I was born in 1997, I recall a faint effort being made to
| teach us cursive in about 5th grade, but neither myself nor
| anyone my age I know can write it.
|
| I can only write print. I don't see the use for cursive,
| and I said as much when I was 10 (I already had a personal
| computer, if I was going to write something long it'd be
| faster for me to type it).
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Some people, including some commenters down thread seem to
| think cursive is about being fancy. It's not, it's an
| efficiency play for writing faster. That's of course useless in
| modern day with so little actual hand writing. So it's less
| common in schools
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-01-30 23:00 UTC)