I feel like this is something I’d hear discussed on the Park After Dark podcast (Trailer Park Boys thing, now with 100% less Bubbles for obvious reasons)

Herein lies the rub - it is very difficult to determine if a given metal health condition is truly irremediable, to the point that the state should authorize physicians to help patients suffering from treatment-resistant cases end their lives, compared to other conditions.

I’ve always been torn about MAID in this regard. I do truly think that the ability to end one’s own life is a question of the right to bodily autonomy, a fundamental right from which all others spring. And obviously, it’s better to accomplish this in the least painful, most dignified way possible if someone makes that choice.

But at the same time, how many people who have had treatment-resistant mental health conditions but eventually found a successful course of treatment, and are living content lives today, would no longer be with us if we set the bar too low? What diagnostic criteria can be set to definitively state a given patient will live this way and suffer the same or worse between the time they ask for MAID and the time of their natural death?

I don’t know - I wrestle with the ethical implications here. Happy to hear others’ perspectives on this.

Just when I thought I was done with it forever, back to topics in Digital Humanities I go. Surely differences in generational attitudes towards AI art is something someone in a DH department has been diving deep on these days…

‘Ordinary’ is doing a lot of work here. I can think of a lot of ordinary people I’ve met who hate AI art. Seems more accurate to say that not everyone is put off by it.

Does seem to be a generational element though, with older generations not caring as much. Case in point is one of the pinball places here. The owner’s been an AI art enthusiast for a while, younger folks hate it to the point that they’ll actively avoid the place, the older ‘I was a pinball wizard in the 80s’ crowd don’t seem as bothered.

I have a soft spot for Creed sometimes, but it’s not exactly like they disprove this statement.

Edit: huh, apparently they aren’t a Christian rock band. Could’ve fooled me.

How I do it: Make text, create a new background layer, make the same text but slightly bigger in the colour you want your outline to be, align background text as needed. Save as .png and import into new image if you’re looking to add the outlined text to somewhere else (though I suppose you can just merge layers, I do my crap in fits and spurts so I often prefer having the little pieces as discrete files so it’s easier to come back to it. Also I’ve fucked up and merged when I probably shouldn’t have a LOT).

Takes some futzing about for sure but that’s part of the fun for me.

Edit: Super shitty outline done just by doing the same font size bolded in black. Can obviously be done much better but you’ll get the idea.

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I do too, now.

What bugs me is now whenever the term trucker is used, especially by Canadian news outlets, I pull in all of these associations that don’t necessarily have any bearing on or relation to the facts at hand. And (the part where I might just be losing my mind/being paranoid) it sort of feels deliberate.

I recently encountered someone that really seemed like they were prodding for how easily I could be influenced to agree with or engage in some really wacky shit. It was a very similar feeling to when I see these terms. And I’m just trying to figure out when and if that feeling, when it pops up in a media context or just irl talking with your craftier brand of crazies, is justified or just paranoia.

Sorry - doesn’t really have that much to do with the article, the word in this context just triggered that same feeling. And this whole “how to tell when you’re being influenced and what to watch for, while not succumbing to paranoia or just taking comfort in your personal biases” thing has been something rolling around in my brain the past couple of weeks.

I also know that I’m part of a demographic (at the moment) that has some pretty wacky stuff targeted at them online (lot of manosphere stuff, for example, finds great targets in recently separated/divorced dudes in algorithmic media formats), which lends more personal interest to the topic. Idk, might just need to touch grass more.

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sudden memory of camping near a logging site, when someone’s less than stable friend got their hands on an unsecured flamethrower

I mean we kinda already do. We could more so, though.

It was a weird realization that part of why my English degree got dunked on is that in the real world, no one seems to actually read anything. That includes contracts, technical documents, FAQs, reports, literally the text adjacent to sign in fields, etc.

(Sort of joking, but the amount of times I’ve heard “Wow, how did you know that/figure that out?” and had to respond “It was in the document you sent me” over the course my career is too damn high).

Where do all the (old) weirdos hang out???

There’s two answers to this:
A. “If you find out, let me know. I’ve been hanging with younger weirdos, and my does it get weird.” (We have an underground afterhours club scene, apparently. This caught me quite off-guard, haven’t been able to stay up late enough to see it in person yet but it’s on my ‘do it once then never again’ list).

B. Real talk? Fetish community and their adjacent activities (board game meetups, crafting sessions, etc.) I honestly don’t know what it is about kinky folks and board games. Beyond this, some maker spaces, poetry/lit scene events, art galleries or related spaces (some cool af people with studio space at Enriched Bread, for instance), many outdoor related activity groups, etc. Most of the people at these others things aren’t that weird, but some try. Oh, and the Ottawa burner contingent that goes to satellite events like Sideburn (putting aside larger concerns about Burning Man, the folks who party near Napanee every year are wonderful and bizarre creatures. It’s often older folks who build/bring the really cool stuff too). Also live music venues (Red Bird, Irene’s, and Rainbow in particular re: older folks). Also pinball arcades, depending on the night (that crowd definitely has some characters but is generally pretty chill).

I will say re: people hanging out in parks, nice weekends at places like Dow’s Lake/The Arboretum, Mooney’s Bay, Britannia Beach, Westboro Beach, the greenspace by the MUP along the river, Stanley Park, various spots around the canal, etc. can get pretty busy.

Idk - I feel like there’s a lot of stuff to do here and a lot of interesting characters, but you have to poke around to find them a lot more than places like Montreal or Toronto.

Note to self: If I remember where I saw someone discussing a nug exchange group for growers, send deets to arcanepotato. Know it exists, and I imagine you’d probably vibe with the kind of folks involved, but I only remember seeing one mention somewhere and literally nothing else.

I’m curious what you mean by hollow. I like Ottawa because of all the green space (when it’s not fuckin’ frozen), cool if comparatively small music scene, decent museums (love having the National Gallery here), etc. That people can be a little cold in public, and many of them retreat to the suburbs immediately after work, and our transit system is a joke are my only real complaints.

We aren’t very showy for a national capital though, I can’t argue with that.

sad OSCAR noises

In an effort to fight modern techbros, all modern human writers start churning out Oulipianesque texts, and reading books is cast once again as a passtime for weird (perhaps dangerous) nerds.

…actually, there’s some half-decent stories you can tell and ideas you can bat around with this frame informing both format and content. The title Samizdat jumps to mind when thinking about some of them (I know there’s a contingent on Lemmy who might not be thrilled about the connotations, but it’s a good word). Hmm.

Oh shit, I guess that wasn’t a microdose…

Ngl, I’d watch the fuck out of a movie about juggalos toppling a surveillance state. Culminating in the cinematic final showdown I’ve always pictured in my head when listening to I Want My Shit..

I almost feel like someone needs to do a write-up of the 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone debacle - while not a 1-for-1 example (it wasn’t a migration attempt that functioned the exact same way as it would with PieFed), it’s a good case study for userbase-community owner-instance dynamics that should be considered, specifically the bit in your last sentence.

Out of curiosity, have you got a link or something for these workshops (and are they done in English or French)? I’m out in Ottawa, seems like a useful thing to have in my pocket to share with folks since there’s a lot of movement between the two cities (and if online geography isn’t a barrier).

If not, no worries and keep up the good fight.