[HN Gopher] Message in a bottle from Scottish girl found in Norw... ___________________________________________________________________ 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] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-30 23:00 UTC)