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I don't read the daily mail. Try again. Maybe be less partisan.
Page 3: "Carly 32D, 21 from Ipswich, thinks EU regulations on conkers is against British traditions"
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I used to play conkers at school in England, however my children didn't. The reason? Schools have banned the game of conkers due to health and safety reasons. I asked my 17 year old this morning and he had never even heard of the game of conkers. So I think the age of conkers is passing, alas.
It's much more likely to have died out because of smartphones. The boredom of the pre-smartphone era led to all kinds of ingenuity. Kids were bored so they found ways to not be bored. Nowadays everybody is addicted their phone, simple pleasures such as violently smashing two nuts together no longer have the same pull.
I never really played it when I was a kid, but knew all about it from The Beano and Oor Wullie.
Is this game well-known enough in Britain and Ireland that readers will know what on earth is being alleged just from reading this article? Or are you expected to have to google it? Apparently it’s a game where you take turns swinging a chestnut on a string and trying to hit the opponent’s chestnut and break it. Yes, I can see how a steel fake chestnut would be an advantage here, though I’m amazed it wouldn’t be inst…
The British are living proof of the fact that amazing things[1] can be achieved when the place you live in is extremely boring. [1] For varied definitions of "amazing", such as "conquer countries 10x your size", "invent 20 sports the entire world plays", etc.
> invent 20 sports the entire world plays
I mean, the two are kind of related, causally...
This article on hackernews reads the same as "Advancing Theorem Proving in LLMs through Large-Scale Synthetic Data" would on conkernews.
I'm also pretty disturbed by it being here. Even worse on place #1.
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> The 23-year-old said: “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen … I’m suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organisers.” It seems the suspicious was pretty quick.
It’s just crazy that someone would cheat at something so low-stakes with such a high probability of being caught, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
Is this game well-known enough in Britain and Ireland that readers will know what on earth is being alleged just from reading this article? Or are you expected to have to google it? Apparently it’s a game where you take turns swinging a chestnut on a string and trying to hit the opponent’s chestnut and break it. Yes, I can see how a steel fake chestnut would be an advantage here, though I’m amazed it wouldn’t be inst…
I used to play conkers at school in England, however my children didn't. The reason? Schools have banned the game of conkers due to health and safety reasons. I asked my 17 year old this morning and he had never even heard of the game of conkers. So I think the age of conkers is passing, alas.
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I understood that was a myth created from a few isolated instances and the medias general desire to wind people up. I don't know why it has died out mind.
Not a myth. I went to school during the twilight of the conker. It absolutely died because risk-averse teachers banned it, to howls of protest from us kids.
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They are also able to swing their wings quite rapidly while charging you. In this way they can throw a surprisingly hard punch. But not break bones in healthy humans - kids included. https://outdoorswimmer.com/coach/myth-busting-can-a-swan-bre... The beak is probably more dangerous, or at least give you a nasty pinch or nibbing.
Black Swans in Perth, herdsman Lake and elsewhere, in the 1980s during breeding season (and likely still today) fully charged people and had the mass to knock over more than one kid or small teenager .. and scare the bejeebus out of many adults. As I said, and supported by your link, I can't see a swan directly breaking a human bone - but they sure as hell can knock one arse over by charging and causing a step back f…