I’m a big proponent of suicide in humane ways. I mean if you really honestly do actually want to die, at least do it in a way that doesn’t irreparably traumatize people around you… including whomever has to clean you off the sidewalk… they don’t need that.

If I have any say in the matter myself, I want to go with neutral gas asphyxiation when my medical state gets too bad to keep existing. Nitrogen would do it, but I’d probably go out with helium. It’s wasteful sure, like balloons, but I’d have a great time on the way out. Build myself a positive pressure chamber for my head and just ride the silly on out. Ideally with friends to silly with me.

Because it’s never if you die, it’s when and how, and if we know how to choose that, what’s honestly wrong with choosing that? I don’t believe in higher powers, just you here now and those you care about… and if you have a valid reason to want to check out, nobody can stop you, but we can make sure we let them go supportively (including just giving those people some damned support first… most people who get assisted suicide meds never take them, they just want the option)

When I get decent sleep, I often lucid dream. I didn’t really practice, I’m just usually aware that I’m dreaming (maybe because I’m on drugs to suppress nightmares, so I’m just really aware of dreams).

I have a dream town I frequent, it’s… usually interestingly mundane though. I don’t need excitement often, just things I can’t do in real life, like taking stuff I want (collectibles!!), playing free at the arcade, eating free in fancy places, drinking free in the nice socializing bar, breathing underwater or flying sometimes if it fits the exploration…

It’s a really consistent sort of place that just grows over time, as more places are added and incorporated as welcoming spaces to explore. There’s even a glass water garden/aquarium/pool that reminds me of some final fantasy shit. And recently a massive underground transit structure was added on that has high-speed shuttles to different large attractions, and a whole new residential tower (for some reason I have a room on the 4th floor, it might be a college dorm), so that was an excellent confusing dream to have for several days.

There’s a house in it that’s sort of my landing pad. A mix of a lot of places I’ve lived or been that just keeps growing over time. It’s got dozens of spaces to explore that mix in things I want and things I know, and just some creepy huge empty spaces that will probably get filled in later but are just full of weird junk I haven’t unpacked at the moment.

I like to just explore the town and surrounding areas, and do things with random people. I don’t really do that in life anymore, so. I’d love to build it in VR but I have no idea how to do that. It seems perfectly suited for it.

I used to get a lot of false awakenings when I pushed too hard to control the story or environment, and I found those to be wildly unpleasant (nightmare reasons), so I don’t exert much control now. I can, but it’s more fun to go with the fantastical and let the adventure play out, fully aware that this new space I’m dreaming about is going to be a recurring space I can explore again in different ways later.

My parents referred to my siblings and I as “ketchup kids” because we were a little bit of everything mixed together at some point, so even being as fully American melting pot as possible, there’s a heritage identity there. It’s just something we tend to be conscious of.

My step dad is Irish and was adopted here when he was 4, but that’s the only person in my family with a direct single ethnic lineage for at least two generations.

Not only that, lots of things that sound like official medical titles aren’t. As such they aren’t protected at all but do mislead the public.

In some cases sure, but even then, like… why is that so easy to do? And why are there countdowns? And why can it be intentionally triggered? That’s the real weird one. None of those things are even remotely realistic. There should be layers upon layers of safeguards to prevent the super expensive ship that took years to build from blowing up.

I mean we already have auto-shutdown processes for all sorts of explody and dangerous energy sources on earth; we even have auto-shutdown processes to prevent damage to the generator/facility. I’d assume those used to power ships would be among the safest, especially if we’ve made it to real manned exploration technology.

I love the totally illogical idea of self-destruction in space travel.

Like we don’t have self-destruct bombs on ships or planes or research stations on earth (I’m sure there’s an exception or two, but they prove the point), why the fuck would we have them in space, which is a much more fragile environment to exist within…?

Computer shutdown procedures sure, but what possible use is a bomb that’s made to blow up your own vessel? Just so silly.

The only charity I participate in is donating food and toys to animal shelters. It’s somewhat self-serving, as I donate foods and toys my pets don’t like/wont use. But all the same, I’ve donated thousands worth this way.

I like thrift shops, but I don’t really consider resale to be charity even if proceeds are used for charity (that aspect isn’t relevant to me). I used to donate more to stuff but I just feel used now… why do you need my $5, which I also need, when you have 20 million other dollars for stuff?

I’m firmly of the opinion, as you are, that charity directed at supporting humans shouldn’t exist because the government (either local or national) should be handling it. The fact that that isn’t the case says a lot about us as a society.

Also fun runs specifically should be outright banned. It’s just a bunch of pretentious healthy assholes blocking traffic all day every weekend because there’s fucking always a fun run somewhere. “I know, let’s support some dispersed group by massively inconveniencing everyone around us, because that makes us good people!!” Fuck you. Go exercise on your own street. Nobody needs to see you doing it.

But creatures of the night often have superior vision…? Bats even have normal day vision.

Ruining jokes since 1984.

My cats ran a mouse up the door for me this morning. I woke up to both of them just going bananas at my patio door and when I collected myself I went “oh, a mouse, that’s a weird place… how did it even get to the second hinge…? whatever man…” and scooped it into a big jar and took it outside.

I wish they were slightly better at their end of the bargain…

The person on the right is from my deer friend, right?

Is it any good? I thought about downloading it for being comedy, but so many things listed as comedy frankly aren’t, and that’s all I know about it.

I think you might have missed something in your zeal, which is fine. We need more passion about such things. Just directed the right way.

But the point being made before your comment was that anyone should be allowed to sleep -at least in their own- car, which you seem to agree with. And any public parking places where a car can sleep should be fine for a human to also sleep within said car, which you also seem to agree with.

This isn’t about having a car or not, and its not really about sleeping in a car you find, it’s about how it’s used if it is owned by the person who wants to use it that’s being discussed. So if someone already owns a car and wants or needs to live out of it, we can agree that’s ok (everyone involved in this thread is agreeing here). And if there’s a place that is appropriate for cars to be whether anyone is in them or not, that place should be fine with people sleeping as well. (Pretty sure everyone is agreeing with that, too)

So, everyone agrees, yay! No need to condescend when everyone agrees with you :)

If you want to expand the topic to shelter wherever you find it, that’s a great conversation to have. It’s just not actually the one being had.

Semi-relatedly, but totally tangential:

I have a dream town that I visit pretty regularly (but randomly, unfortunately). I’d love to make it a VR town, but haven’t the skills. I think it would be perfect as an exploration experience, since it’s pretty fleshed out, but I’m not sure if the tech is really there yet, and if it is idk how to use it.

It has all the qualities of a real town (but a lot more… grand? In some ways), tho as far as I can tell many of my residents are homeless as there simply isn’t enough space for all of them to have their own place (it’s never been rendered by my mind, so it doesn’t exist)… It’s authentic mostly because I typically experience it the way I do the world; first person recluse (tho I do have a mini-map sort of sense for the layout, so that absolutely wouldn’t be out of place). For example, when I go to the mall, school, or a restaurant or something, most of the people are doing normal people things and have no real interest in interacting with me. They will if I bother them, but like real people, they get annoyed, or it’s a passing interaction. It’s a small town vibe sort of place (loosely based around a mesh of every town I’ve lived in), so you start to recognize people from where they hang out, and can interact with them from there. I have one older gentleman I talk to quite a lot, and a variety of very nice employees of the places I frequent. But bar patrons don’t bother me. Like I said, dream.

Unfortunately it’s really a slice of life town, nothing interesting ever happens, it’s sort of an exploration escape, and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to happen there if I tried. It would be great for collectibles, though. The house is really the fun bit for me, because while there, I understand that this is -my- house even when I’m in a new room I’ve never seen before. And then once I figure out where it belongs in the structure (often a landing room that has several stairways and doors) that room just is part of my house forevermore. Same thing happens with the round mall; some features are permanent, everything else gets added on and becomes cannon.

And I have no idea how to create it in VR… if I did, that would be awesome, especially if I could make it grow with time (dlc?), like my town does. I think a lot of people would enjoy exploring it, and maybe even identify with my weird labyrinthian house (it canonically has three floors officially but about a dozen representationally, and don’t even get me started on the weird college and dorm towers I’ve come up with…), or the circular mall with a free-use sports arena in the middle, and an arcade in the basement. Or any of dozens of local shops and eateries.

I wish AI was better so if I ever did figure out how to build a whole town and make it interesting to explore, the people could stay interesting. But I’ll never overcome the “how to build in VR” portion, so it doesn’t matter.

If it’s anything like what we did, it’s to allow the sled to get up to a decent speed before hopping on. If you are in the sled, it’ll be sunk further into the snow, and the dogs have a much much harder time getting going.

Instead, you run along with them, encourage them to get moving, then when the sled catches up to you, you hop on.

We had a “sled team” when I was young, and this was how we always did it in winter. (really, we had rescue huskies and trained them to pull for exercise, because they had a lot of energy). The summer bike rig was much easier to get them going on.

So you’re telling me I get part of a country and the locals get me tripping balls?

Fuck yeah sign me up!

I keep my place at 15.5c in winter because it’s super drafty. (I’m getting the siding redone soon, I really hope that helps, but ultimately we have the same climate as Siberia so there’s only so much to be done) even at 15.5, it’s still about $200 USD/mth to heat, but at 18c it more than doubles in cost.

I’m like your wife; made for warmer climates. My ideal temp is around 30c, and I’m cold at 23, but I have heated mattress pads on my bed and couch (much much much cheaper to run than furnace) so it’s not too bad overall. They are a bit pricy up front, but definitely worth the spend.

Perhaps that sort of thing would be a good compromise for you two; a couple heated chair covers or couch cover or something to bring her temp up while keeping the overall temp lower.

Thanks :)

The print is from this set, I have 5/8 (don’t have Rosetta, Galileo, or new horizons)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/historic-robotic-spacecraft-screen-print-series#/

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She was like 6-8 weeks old here, so she sort of was just a ball of fur 😊 and a fat potato belly.

Counterpoint: there are so many things a person could be doing that are far far more valuable to society than bullshit “profitable” work, and those things don’t pay, or pay very poorly. You think being required to earn basic existence in life is better, even though the vast majority of jobs are entirely pointless and/or could easily be automated? Such a shameful waste of human potential.

If people had all the time in the world to do what they wanted, most people would still work at least part time, but it probably wouldn’t be for shitty megacorps that treat employees like trash (and those companies deserve to die). Some people would choose to only do community improvement stuff, though, like beautification, guerrilla gardening, or helping to build/remodel community spaces. And that’s actually awesome. We need way way more of that, and less of developers/companies coming in and doing whatever they can to extract money from the community.

They do it now, when they have time or it’s directly beneficial to them, but volunteering is an inherently privileged activity. Poor people don’t have time or energy because they have other shit to do to be able to afford to survive.

Here’s the inflatable kangaroo at least. Can’t help with the rest, but this one is giant!