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.

I’m more than a little convinced that if Jesus walks the earth today, he is really into EDM and you’re only really coming across him on the festival circuit.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but I’ve met a small number of disabled people who do exactly this, for similar reasons.

Wouldn’t offer it as a suggestion though, kinda feel like people have to come to that decision on their own.

Want to second “Talk to the career counseling office” - you are paying for it, and they really want you to get a good job so it can add to your school’s/programs clout. Use it!!

If you have an issue with a given community, find or start an alternative one on another instance. If you have an issue with how your instance deals with anyone, sign up for a different instance.

I urge you to consider this before giving up on Lemmy entirely, it’s kind of the beauty of the federated services.

Brain - Candied
Tapeworm - Fed
Heads - Crushed
Chicken- Ladied

Take that, atheists 😎

One Christmas, my mother-in-law gave me an unopened bottle of whisky they had in their cabinet for a while. It was some of the best whisky I’ve ever had. About halfway through the bottle on Boxing Day, I took a moment to look up the cost (it’s since gone up in price, but you’ll get the idea)

https://dekanta.com/store/suntory-hibiki-30-years-old/

I. Was. Horrified. I have exactly two ounces left, that I will probably consume with my wife on my deathbed.

Thing is, I 100% believe you. Cannabis can help with these kind of problems too, depending on the person.

My only gripe is when people say “Lol, no one gets withdrawl symptoms when they stop smoking weed”. It’s true that not everyone experiences it, but a) when I have stopped cold turkey for anything more than a few days, I personally have these problems, with a fairly predictable timeframe/duration, and b) I don’t seem to be the only one who does*

Want to make it clear that I really like cannabis, and it can legitimately be a game changer for some people’s conditions. But it’s important to balance out the actual good and the actual bad when talking about it - cannabis is neither 100% perfect for everyone every time, nor is it the Devil’s Lettuce that will lead to doing bumps of heroin on a pile of dead babies and an unhealthy love of freeform jazz. The truth’s in the middle - it has benefits as well as downsides, and different people experience both to different degrees.

*There is, of course, an argument to be made that people who get ‘hit hard’ with withdrawl effects do so because they were self-medicating for some unrecognized condition. I don’t necessarily buy that for all cases, but it’s worth thinking about.

Irritability, sleep problems, night sweats, appetite issues, etc. These are 100% withdrawl effects for some heavy or frequent cannabis users who stop cold turkey.

Is it cocaine or heroin withdrawl? Absolutely not. But we don’t do anyone any favours pretending that people don’t experience these symptoms when stopping (though, on the other hand, not everyone does. Depends how heavy/long you’ve been imbibing and individual differences in body chemistry).

Yep - single 10 mg gummies are a thing. Less common than 2 x 5 mg but there’s a couple.

The Health Canada cap is problematic - how much of this biomass could’ve been used to produce varying higher doses of edibles that actually match what most consumers want? (aside from cannabis newbies dipping their toe in - anecdote, not data, but those are the only folks I really see buying these. Everyone else makes their own or buys higher dosed ones off the unregulated market)

This was my first thought, too.

Ah, hospitals. I feel for you.

I haven’t read the comments here yet, but scenario 1 and a modified scenario 2 in combo sound like the best approach. DO NOT TELL PEOPLE TO CALM DOWN, IT WILL ALWAYS MAKE THEM ANGRIER. The best way to do it IMO is to model the behaviour you want to see - remain calm. Explain (to the degree that you’re authorized to as a nurse) why they can’t do the thing, and the potential outcome of doing the thing. While trying to calm them down, have the more vulnerable target disengage and make the call to security. Remember that your duty is to your patients’ health and safety - make it as clear as possible that you’re not doing this to be a power-tripping douchebag, but to make sure their father gets the best possible care they can so they can go home ASAP.

My work experiences are not exactly the same, but similar in some respects. I’ve found it useful to consider the following - in a healthcare-related scenario, the person who is super pissed and aggressive is usually more scared/freaked out than angry. If you address the fear they will usually calm down pretty quick (or at least the anger turns to other, less dangerous expressions of fear).

Does your hospital/union offer any training on descalation techniques? They’re not a cure-all but it’s vital stuff to know in a high-tension environment like a hospital.

Edit: Misread the OP and thought patient was the daughter of the aggressors, fixed to say ‘father’.

You, my friend, are my favourite sh.it.head. The feelings you have about life are the precise ones I try to keep in focus. And regardless of the ultimate outcome of your condition (I truly hope one with a solid recovery path!), this is a beautiful sentiment and a wonderful idea.

I have no suggestions regarding tech for going about this, aside from whatever method you choose, occasionally make hard copies for long term storage. There’s many ways to make a robust digital archive, but paper is there should it fail.

Zydrate comes in a little glass vial.

(Love this movie)

You should totally question the validity, but I’d pause before dismissing it entirely. It’s supposedly based on an opinion survey of psychiatrists and a group of ‘independent experts’ (footnote incoming) published in the Lancet in 2007. Edit: I said things that weren’t true about the Wikimedia image that I have removed - it’s based on the table near the bottom of the article.

DOI is 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4

You should ask our friend ANNA if she’S heard people talk about this during her time in the ARCHIVEs.

It’s not a completely objective harm/dependence measure, for sure, but the opinions of experts aren’t meaningless - it’s worth reading the article and judging the authors’ claims rather than this image. Though I will say the number of participants seems really low.

On LSD,

1. the opinion thing should be underlined and considered heavily (particularly in the UK, where rave culture is/was more top of mind than other places and LSD is/was in the mix, albeit I don’t think to the same degree as MDMA and other compounds), but also

2. as crazy as it may sound, dependency can develop in some users. I’d argue it looks VERY different than dependence to other substances (frequency is obviously much lower, given rapid tolerance, and some people may not call once a week or every two weeks dependency*), but it still exists. Given that this is basically an expert opinion poll it’s actually placed more or less where I’d expect to see it.

*Though in online discussion groups for folks interested in such compounds, those folks often do call that level of frequency a sign of dependency. Should note I’m talking specifically about macrodoses, not microdosing.

(Footnote) from page 1049: “These experts had experience in one of the many areas of addiction, ranging from chemistry, pharmacology, and forensic science, through psychiatry and other medical specialties, including epidemiology, as well as the legal and police services.”

I’d say legalization is actually better in this case, as you can provide licenses to pharmaceutical manufacturers subject to QA regulations, lab accreditations, etc. Decriminalization just means that guy with 1:1 cocaine:fentanyl is probably getting a ticket rather than arrested.

[Was going to put a ‘doesn’t help when the guy overdoses’ comment here, but thinking about it now people do overdose (and die) on just cocaine too. One of the factors that make this a different conversation than cannabis. Don’t know the thresholds for overdose re: just coke, though]

This was my thinking as well, plus addressing the ‘solution for those without IT experience’ bit. Search for video/article on removing wireless connectivity hardware, grab your screwdriver and get to work.

Still takes some work, obviously, and a lot of people are scared to void warranties/open up consumer electronics, but from the outside it sounds more straight-forward than futzing about with network settings. IMO worth it if concerned about the connectivity bits, willing to do it and the price is right for the TV as a dumb TV.

Alternatively, use used dumb TVs for as long as you can.

Serious question: How much of a brick risk is opening up one of these smart tvs and ripping out the wifi card? Can’t connect to the internet if you don’t have the hardware to do so.

(Obviously pretty high if legit caveman-style ripping out. Could also be really hard, I have no idea).