Fucking competence. I wish I was bumbling fool with severe Dunning-Kruger more often than I care to admit.

Am middle-aged(ish) nerd, can confirm this would work.

-Neutral name (sorry SJW)

Boo this person! (I kid, don’t boo them, they’re doing good work and I understand if not everyone wants to be a sh.it.head)

Naw, screw that - we need more people trying to make this place fun. If by some chance it is Ottawa, I’m sure they’d find receptive folks at The Dom/House of Targ/Arts Court/The Mayfair/Rainbow/AskAPunk/Tuesday Club/PROBE/One of the festival committees (except poutine and rib)/Spectrasonic/Awesome Ottawa/Canada Council for the Arts/White Rabbit/SPAO/One of the Zine collectives/Gladstone Theatre/Ottawa Little Theatre/Brass Monkey, for some reason/T’s Pub/Swizzles/Enriched Bread/Absolute Comedy/Cafe Dekcuf/that one house in Barrhaven (iykyk)/CKCU/CHUM/probably quite a few others I’m not aware of. Heck, you could bug the Night Mayor, what exactly is he up to these days?

It all really comes down to what you consider fun. Are you going to have the same degree of options as you would in Montreal and Toronto? No. But if you want fun, there’s things to do, places to check out, people to meet and a not-insignificant number of folks who want more of these.

Off the top of my head:

1. Start researching your local ordinances and bylaws. Like someone mentioned here, there might be a reason your town dies after 2200.
2. Think about the kind of things you want to see in terms of nightlife. Does that mean live music? Block parties? Techno night at the clurb? Kink stuff (seriously)? Theatrical performances? Hash and coffee socials (sort of a joke, but thinking through the logistics of such a thing has been my daydream du jour recently)? Etc.
3. Find others who would be interested in the kind of stuff you’d like for nightlife activities. Start talking $ and logistics - are there any grants you could try and apply for? Fundraising activities? Where are you going to do this stuff? What do you need in terms of insurance? Do you need to address any pesky bylaws, and can start working with your local government to try and tackle that? And so on.
4. Make a plan and act.

The big starting point is really just defining one or two things you want to see, and working to get to the point where you see them. In the course of this you might be surprised by what you find (someone mentioned good ol’ Ottawa, ON as an image of the place you’re describing - but there’s actually a decent amount of stuff, both above- and underground, you can find when you start poking around).

What up, fellow Ottawan?

Trying to dive into the local music scene was my approach - mostly because I suck at trivia.

If you are are doing any kind of learning (as a citizen or registered student) your local librarian, particularly your local academic librarian, is your best friend and you just don’t know it yet. Introduce yourself, and come with questions.

But don’t neglect your public librarians either - that light I saw in their eyes when asking about an obscure service they offered stuck with me.

I’d ask how you define evil in this case. To me, an act is evil when the net detriment to the planet and its contents (including humans) is greater than the net benefit it creates, and the actor pursues said act knowing this. I’d argue it scales with the nature and context of the act. It’s hard to say this isn’t real. But yes, we all have the capacity for evil, and also can be complicit in other evils by dint of normalized behaviours (without necessarily being ‘evil’ ourselves)

I do agree that an absolute Evil doesn’t exist, the same way an absolute Good doesn’t exist. But we’re a pile of writhing meat puppets on a moist, moldy rock - we don’t exist on that level in the first place.

I am equally, if not more embarrassed to say this is an excellent idea and I need to steal it.

Eh, the hype around it maybe, but it can be a useful/unique experience for some - at least if you’re not the type where it’d be acutely painful, in which case do whatever gets you through the flight/whatever.

Think about modern life - how often do you find yourself in a position where there are no acute demands, no expectations for how you need to spend your time, and you can just sit with your thoughts for a few hours? Unless you consciously carve out some time for that, IMO it’s pretty rare. Multihour travel as a flight/train/bus passenger affords that time with no special effort.

I like at least attempting it for a chunk of the trip, if not the whole time - imagination starts running wild in cool ways, which otherwise doesn’t happen as often as I’d like it to. Though in fairness, if it’s a plane the cabin noise usually puts me to sleep during the attempt.

I’ll put it this way - if you’re the kind of person that finds the idea of isolation tanks appealing, depending on why you may enjoy raw-dogging flights or other passenger travel. 100% not for everyone though, and that’s fine - different strokes and all that.

My main counterpoint is for those of us who’ve acquired the taste, the rituals around beer (out at a nice place, away from your home/office, listening to decent tunes and drinking something cold, foamy, and a little bitter) are such that you can get that loose and relaxed feeling without the alcohol.

I’m not the biggest fan of getting drunk anymore, so I find myself grabbing a non-alc beer pretty frequently these days. Sometimes just that, other times once I’ve already had two normal beers but want another drink.

I could grab a soda, but I don’t like how sweet it is most of the time.

Get a regular deck (maybe slightly wider than you usually skate), some risers and bigger/softer wheels, and see how that feels.

Alternatively there are some ditch skating boards probably a little closer to what you’re thinking about (think Landyachtz sell some).

Longboards feel very different to me in an unpleasant way, opting for the kind wheels more commonly used by filmers was a nice middle ground.

ChatGPT reaches the same conclusion thousands of teenagers who’ve ingested a psychedelic compound have reached at some point. Now here’s Tom with the weather.

MSN was for your friends and friends of friends, ICQ was gamers and pre-MSN friends, IRC was for pretending you were a 17 year old girl from California.

The only thing that’s weird to me about this is, why divorce in that case? There’s no law that says you need to live in the same domicile as your spouse. Could’ve lived separately and kept stuff like shared insurance benefits and whatnot.

It’s rare, granted, but it is a thing. Unless they wanted to separate their financial lives entirely and keep getting down, I guess.

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Used to love it, had too many weird promptless experiences, unplugged it and now it’s gathering dust on a shelf.

Though it was nice to say “Hey google, tell me today’s news” and get a few different news updates while making coffee.

Edit: Out of sheer curiosity, have you tried factory resetting it?

No need to apologize, was just curious - figured folks is gender-neutral as is, never saw an alternate form of it before.

Sincerely, thanks! Didn’t know this was a thing for anyone.

Off-topic, but if you don’t mind me asking, why folx over folks?

I. Fucking. Love this.

Thank you so much for sharing!!