Yes, definitely. Why you are doing it makes all the difference.

There is - in my experience - a good deal of how you - and the organisation in general - do it too, and that accounts for much of the cultural difference. Charities tend to treat staff (and volunteers - since so many depend on vols) as people rather that resources much more, although there is also a tendency for the cause to outweigh everything, which can lead to staff, particularly, being expected to commit totally around the clock, and sidelined if they don’t. I have only encountered a few organisations that do this to a problematic extent really though.

I did in my late 20s after working in IT. I didn’t know what I wanted and wasn’t planning on non-profit or anything as such, but jumped ship, did a range of random things before spending some time volunteering (at something that was not in any way IT related)- which was the critical thing. That put me in a spot to A) show some commitment and B) get some training as it was offered. A paid post followed in due course after that.

That is a very simplified version, but volunteering was definitely the critical element for me.

Since then, I met plenty of other people who made the jump. Some simply moved with their existing skills to an equivalent role in a charity - and there are plenty that need project management skills - whilst others have taken the same route as me and spent some time volunteering.

Volunteering means you don’t get paid for some time, of course, so you have to either live off savings and/or find a live-in role and/or work part-time or something and you probably need to downsize one way or another, but people find a way and make it work.

Of course once you are in a role with your chosen cause, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be away from being overworked, stressed and given more and more responsibility. It is a trope that working for a charity means that you don’t do it for the money and you work waaay longer than the official hours say.

Certainly my role at the moment, with a large charity, is the most demanding I have ever had and there is basically nothing left at the end of the month for savings: I am just keeping afloat. For all that though, there is no way at all that I would go back to a for-profit role, and I have never looked back for a moment. The culture is totally different and leagues better.

What they found is a mastaba, which were used as tombs - and pretty much for nothing else - for thousands of years in Egypt, in an area that was used for other tombs.

So, this would be like finding an arch shaped stone with a name on and flowers in front in a modern day cemetery. How do you know that it is a grave stone? You don’t, but it would be a pretty good guess, and if you guessed that it was anything else, you’d probably be wrong.

Instead, we’ll never know what silphium is like.

From my point of view, the vast majority of the internet has too many ads, which is why I use an ad blocker. That in turn is why I have no idea how many ads individual sites have: they all have none to me - which leads me to post from here as much as anywhere else.

Art in general doesn’t have to disrupt anything. It can be as conventional and anodyne as you like, but surrealist art - as per the Surrealist Manifesto - was specifically intended to depart from the usual concerns of art - at least at the time:

Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

My emphasis. Conventionally, art does give some consideration to aesthetics.

From the article:

“The issue is not where the money is spent,” says Clark, now president of Defenders of Wildlife. “The issue is that there isn’t nearly enough of it.”

That is the most significant part of this.

However, single species conservation work is almost short sighted IMHO. The vast majority of the time the main issue for species that need conservation is loss of habitat.,You need to be conserving that habitat as a whole including the entire flora and fauna community from the ground up.

A couple of high and low points rather than the full list:

• Slow Horses continues to be the highlight.

• Revisited an episode of Blackadder the Third - Nob and Nobility, in fact. I really enjoyed these at the time. I had trouble disentangling genuine enjoyment from the nostalgia value this time around though. Not sure which was predominant.

• Such Brave Girls has had a LOT of good reviews. Only seen the first episode so far. This is properly ‘dark’ humour. Not edgy or shock value. This is humour found in the banality of depression, desperation and denial. I’ll stick with this one.

• Top Hat (1933) - you don’t watch a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movie for the plot. I know that. I have seen a scattering of these in the past: my mum was a fan. I have not seen one recently though. There was a plot of sorts, but it was so weirdly handled that, as straightforward as it was, it was largely nonsensical. Are they all like this? I really can’t remember. Astaire’s character was smug and annoying, but at least he was given one, unlike Rogers. Obviously the dance numbers were great. The humour was… let’s just say hit and miss. Set design was functional, camera work merely ok. This is apparently one the best for Fred and Ginger. Presumably for the dance routines and Berlin’s music alone, though, since there really is nothing else of interest here.

Yes, Krampus is American - with a few subtitles for a German speaking character in one early scene.

The character of Krampus seems to have captured a much wider, more international, imagination in recent years. I would like to see a German film version - or appearance in some media - that sticks to the root of the story from that perspective. However, the US version does a pretty good job.

TV

• Slow Horses - easily the best thing that we are watching at the moment. Oldman’s Lamb is my role model.
• Doctor Who - Wild Blue Yonder was great. The Giggle was middling at best. RTD’s sickly sentimentality dominated the conclusion.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - the first three episodes have been surprisingly good. This - the fourth - was basically dull.
• Krapopolis - wasn’t sure about this to start with, but it has grown on me. Waddingham’s Deleria is the obvious inital draw, but the rest of the main characters have been fleshed out to the point where I will be looking forward to season 2.
• Enemy at the Door - from 1978, although I can recall nothing at all of it from back then. Set in the German occupied Channel Isles during WWII, each episode centres around a moral dilemma relating to loyalties, duty, consequences for the bigger picture etc etc from both sides. It holds up remarkably well.

Film

• Krampus (2015) - which has become something of a tradition for us on Krampusnacht, and continues to be enjoyable.
• I Know Where I’m Going (1945) - a Powell and Pressburger that doesn’t hit the heights of A Matter of Live and Death or The Red Shoes etc but is still a stylishly told tale. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Webster’s intended husband only through a staff card, a printed itinerary and a disembodied radio voice.

I’m a pagan, so it is all about the solstice for my SO and I.

We will typically go somewhere for the sunrise that morning. I have been to Stonehenge and a couple of other stone circles in the past, camping out overnight beforehand - and more recently have watched the live stream from Newgrange. For the last few years we have also celebrated Brumalia - a Roman and Byzantine winter festival that started (in its later period) on Nov 24th. So we progressively decorate the house with lights or holly, ivy, pine cones etc each day from then until the start of Saturnalia on Dec 17th. I have also made an advent-style calendar with chocolates in matchboxes that runs throughout Brumalia - Nov 24th to Dec 25th.

On Dec 5th, which is Krampusnacht and also a Faunalia festival, we will hang a Krampus figure up and have taken to watching the 2015 movie for the last few years.

During Saturnalia itself we will have at least one meal or party with friends - which usually has some element of mis-rule. On the solstice itself, as well as watching the sun rise somewhere or another (probably a local beach this year, as we are on the east coast), there is a local Mummers’ play that we usually go along to in the evening. The solstice is also when we do our gift-giving.

On the 26th, there is a Cutty Wren ceremony locally that we will go along to and then there is some morris dancing at another location on new year’s day.

It is the Federation’s we do not discuss it with outsiders thing. It confuses time travelling Klingons.

Whilst I am sympathetic to the overall aim of this, things like this:

She would have expected people to name figures such as Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who became governor of Roman Britain

…do stand out as being a a bit unrealisitic. I mean, how many governors of Roman Britain of any race or nationality can the typical Briton actually name? I’d be surprised if it was more than 1 and probably less than that.

And if the expectation is that anyone would know of this guy only because his chief contribution to history is “being black” then I am not sure what we are gaining here.

The video wasn’t about a Neanderthal child either - or at least the video I am seeing. Both the video that I can see and the article are about a 10,000 year old post-Neanderthal grave in the cave, where previous excavations had discovered earlier Neanderthal activity.

No, I can’t find a link to that video itself, but this is to a Livescience article on the same find.

Most of my volunteering has been I wildlife conservation, but it has also included direct action with Greenpeace, FOE and others, running Stop The War stalls, organising coaches for protests in London, helping our at day care centres for the elderly, giving illustrated talks, undertaking bat surveys ( I have literally just finished one tonight) and dormouse monitoring, reenactment and storytelling for a local museum, car parking and running tea stalls at festivals, was a local secretary for a social organisation for about a decade and probably various other things that I can’t recall just now. And i have been on a variety of committees for various organisations over the years of course.

A few of the experiences have been tedious, a few have been outright depressing due to the negativity and simple apathy of the public, but the overwhelming majority have extremely rewarding and positive experiences. I have been to some amazing places that I had no idea existed before, I have met plenty of knowledgeable, enthusiastic and caring people - some of whom became long-term friends - and I changed career and ended up working in conservation, leading volunteer teams for several years, as a result of my own volunteering.

Overall, i have found it to be beneficial physically, mentally and socially, with basically nothing negative to say about it other than the need to set limits and know when to disengage. It can take over entirely otherwise.