Shouldn't it be easy to attach a sensor at the belly of the turtle that alarms staff when it happens. Sounds like an actual no-brainer use for modern technology.

How did these animals survive as a species for millions of years with this flip-over bug in their genes? Why hasn't evolution solved it, for example, by eliminating flip-prone individuals from the gene pool and giving better survival chances to those who can right themselves?

Life would be so much more magical and special if attempting to penetrate your mate could result in a slow death of dehydration and starvation, if not being torn to shreds by a passing bird of prey.

Cloudflare has no part in this beyond providing the technology. There are various alternative "security check" pages that are used by others; cloudflare's is the best of the bunch IMO, though still annoying.

This page isn't cloudflare's, cloudflare stopped using google's captcha some years ago. It says ray id at the bottom, idk what's up with that, but it's clearly different.

Real question: Why are you using a VPN?

I tried selling a VPN service once called TurtleSpeed

I have no idea why no one bought it

I can't find the originals (flagged out of Algolia?) but this story was interesting.. slight tangent Oldest known tortoise still alive, as reports of death revealed as hoax (6 points, 7 months ago - but there's healthy discussion somewhere, think the original news was 2026-04-01) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620163

Yes, this is mentioned a couple of times in the article and in Jonathan's birthday song featured in one of the videos on the page. :)

My father was the dentist on St Helena from 1998-2022. I visited, taking a military jet from Brize Norton airbase in the UK to Ascension Island, and then a 3-day boat on the RMS St Helena. I never took the 5-day boat from South Africa. It's a hilly and rugged place, and very green. I was a student when I went there, and I was with my twin brother and we met another set of twins who were visiting at the same time. They were our age and we all got pissed and shared the cheap cigs. My bro and one of them climbed Jacob's Ladder late at night after many beers, and they took ages while we waited at the top. They kept having to stop to vomit. That was an excellent Christmas and new year.

St Helena has "recently" (inside last decade) got an airport and a weekly service from Johannesburg, South Africa via Walvis Bay, Namibia.

Before that it was only accessible via an infrequent ship which took 3 days out of Cape Town, South Africa.

But given the air link it is a lot more accessible now.

Tristan is still only accessible via sea, and even if you make it there, there's no guarantee you can land. There is no port, so ship-to-land transfers are via small boat, so the whole process is very weather dependent.

Both islands though have a really interesting history, and are well worth reading about, even if you never get there.

And these days you can get a flavor of local life via the local newspaper online. https://sthelenaonline.org/st-helena-independent/

I'd like to see Ascension Island too, but it is apparently quite restricted.