My gut says fuck no. My brain says have a frank, balanced discussion with your kid and decide from there.

I know my own answer would still be fuck no, but I don’t know you or your kid.

So I like where you’re going with this, and it’s the kind of thing that’s been bubbling in my brain for a bit now, but question: I’ve been to a few soup kitchens in different areas of my own country. Never once have I witnessed or heard of anyone having to renounce anything to get served. You show up, you get fed - there’s Jesus freaks in the wings who may use the opportunity to try and convert you, sure, but if you walk away from them it doesn’t mean they take your plate.

Do you have any specific examples you can point to where this isn’t the case? If nothing else, helps name and shame.

It’s normal, and frankly as old as the internet (any of y’all remember the term ‘flame wars’?). A lot of people here have made great points as to why it happens.

My suggestion? Ignore the attacks, and speak to the content in as even a tone you can manage if you feel the topic is worth discussing. If it gets to a point where the meat of the discussion is lost in the attacks, disengage. Recreational discussion on the net doesn’t need to be a combat sport.

The worst you’ll get with this approach is an accusation of ‘sea-lioning’, which makes some assumptions around intent you can’t really correct all that well if someone’s decided that’s what you’re doing. Though I welcome any suggestions - good faith is hard to prove online when people are so used to attack/counterattack discourse.

Big subgenius energy in anon’s post.

The subgenius MUST have slack!

On a CRT? Sure, probably a lot haven’t seen it. On a modern TV? Still possible for some - mine does this if I hit the channel button rather than volume accidentally.

420/Yes please/Your mother’s bedroom

(I understand the curiosity, but come on now)

Quick shoutout for Trail Sense for Android. Designed to function offline, lots of cool navigation/basic tools I haven’t used outside of the GPS and compass, reasonable permissions, etc. One of those “You don’t know how useful it is until you don’t have connectivity” things.

(All jokes aside, fuck anyone who does this)

Fuck that, give me another version of Pokemon Master Trainer.

My take has always been that we have strong regional cultures over a unified Canadian cultural identity. The U.S has a little bit of this as well, but not in the same way/with more stuff to point to in terms of national identity.

Edit: Actually, here’s a good experiment for anyone who wants to think about this more. Take a look at some of the Canadian TV shows and movies that have actually been successful, and people abroad may point to as representative of Canadian culture. What about them is distinctly Canadian, over [x]-Canadian? Can start with the obvious (Trailer Park Boys, Letterkenny, Schitt’s Creek, Kim’s Convenience, FUBAR), but I’d bet folks may find this holds across some less obvious ones too.

Not a local, but as someone who joked “We could go to Regina! There’s…” and trailed off as I saw stuff on Google Maps, here’s some suggestions:
-The Regina Floral Conservatory.
-The Mackenzie Art Gallery
-The RCMP Heritage Centre
-Government House
-Royal Saskatchewan Museum

There’s some other stuff too, particularly if you’re willing to drive out of town. Enough to make me go “Huh, that could be mildly fun/interesting”.

At the same time though, this kind of thing is the best sort of learning. Take your assumptions and make a theoretical model, go out and test it, and learn first hand what elements you didn’t account for.

My opinion is that once your kids hit a certain age, your role is more support and providing guidance to avoid/recover from really bad outcomes (see: if your son’s plan had a flaw that would’ve left them stranded. They made it there and back, if exhausted and slightly [but from the sound of it not unrecoverably] poorer. Shitty, but they probably learned some valuble lessons.)

Edit: This may just be copium from my own “I’m gonna move to the middle of a different province with my homies” adventure that left me with just enough cash for a bus ticket to supportive family if I survived on Corn Flakes for two weeks. Ah, to be 19 and know everything again…fuck that would suck.

Thank you for the cat tax, though I’m sorry to hear you got bit.

I completely understand re: campus being too far to be practical, but 100% recommend giving the library a shot. Given that it’s coding, the whole ‘use an organization’s device rather than yours’ thing is tricky (unless you can put everything you need on a remote/web-accessible IDE or something - I remember screwing around with something like this but as decidedly not-a-coder, it may not be practical). Still, the library has the whole other humans being around aspect going for it, with the benefit that said humans aren’t going to go out of their way to distract or push you. Sometimes people just being there, but doing their own thing, is enough to help folks buckle down a bit. But it might not be, and that’s ok - at least you’ll know.

If all else fails, pay more attention to my first post and the others like it here than the second one. It’s certainly worth trying for progress while waiting on meds, but if it’s just not happening focus on well-being. I obviously don’t know you well enough to offer more practical advice on trying to get the project done, but definitely think meds will help if your psychiatrist agrees.

Hang in there buddy.

No problem my friend. On the project side of things, a couple of thoughts. This is assuming it’s a project for school, if it’s not either see if any of this can be adapted to your situation, or otherwise discard it without any guilt.

0. 100%, do whatever is in your power to expedite things with your psychiatrist. Ignore my caveat above on this one.

1. If possible, do one thing a day that moves the needle a little bit. It can be tiny - like, write 2 sentences - but just something where you can say “I did something”.

2. If you need to use a computer for some project tasks, go to campus (or a library) and use theirs. Sometimes being in an environment where folks are doing focused work (or at least pretending to) can help people stay on task a bit better. Turn off wifi and mobile connectivity on your phone, and keep it in your bag.

3. Set timers for doing project related tasks in increments - 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5, whatever makes sense for you. Try your best to just do something project related for that increment. If the end product is you wrote a sentence, that is still something.

4. If you find you’re lapsing into doom scrolling instead of project work, give yourself permission to stop ASAP and go do something else (see prior comment). If you’re not going to be productive anyway, at least do so in a way that isn’t causing you as much distress.

5. If you need to review sources, print them out over just viewing them online. Go through them with a pen and a highlighter and take physical notes.

6. [should probably be higher on the list] Set a meeting with your prof and be brutally honest about your situation. Let them know your struggles with the project, and what you are trying to do about it. See if an extension is an option at all. It may not end the way you want, but having that conversation is something you can control (if not the ultimate outcome).

7. Be gentle with yourself. You’re in a hard spot, and you are trying your best while working to get the professional assistance you need. Maybe you do or are doing all of the above, and you don’t feel like it’s getting the results you need. That’s OK. When you get the professional support you need, you can revisit. Prioritize your well-being.

I hope you find at least some of this useful.

Do yourself a favour: put the phone down. Stay away from your computer screen. Do literally anything else - some chores, a hobby, counting the number of people walking by your house, fill pages with drawings of squares, take several really long walks, find a pond and skip some rocks, whatever floats your boat. The point is not trying to accomplish anything, but to shift your attention. If something you’ve been putting off gets done, that’s a nice side effect, but not the point - so don’t worry too much about the result.

You have no control over the outcome of the U.S. election whatsoever. It is not worth your health to obsess over something that you can’t control that fills you with negative feelings. So block it out - if anything, try to summon some gratitude that you have the option to do that (though it’s ok if you find that hard to do).

I know this is much easier said than done. But you’ve got this. You’ll be ok. I’m pulling for ya.

Honestly, now that I know Pee Pee island is in the mix, I’m sold on a trip to Newfoundland. Dildo was almost enough to make that happen as it was.

Edit: There’s campsites at Dildo Run Provincial Park, btw. Do with that information what you will, people.

We got the Subproject 68 expansion set here.

Out of curosity, how was the weather in your end of the world? We had the same thing happen this year, but mostly because it was unseasonably warm.

Granted, it was also 'cause we had a fog machine this year, but the weather played a big part.

I don’t know if it was actually under rated or unrecognized where it aired, but as someone who was trawling for TV to watch that you don’t see in North America, I fucking love Monkey Dust out of the UK.

Dark comedy animated sketch show.

Huh. Can’t help but wonder if this is connected to why a significant amount of people find asses sexually attractive across gender lines - something about signs of a good persistance hunter (likely quite overstated by base monkey brain), and therefore ability to provide for spawn.

Probably not, but makes ya think. I also accept that I’m thinking about it from a heteronormative, sex as biological imperative for spreading genes POV - so limited and overall probably wrong.