megane-kun

A source close to the Pope told CNN that the phrase could also be understood as there is a “gay climate” in the seminaries.

I wonder why… Surely it isn’t because a seminary is a good place for a confused, self-hating homosexual to be in, right? Surely it isn’t because being gay was seen as so anathema in Catholic-dominant societies that the seminary seems to be a sanctuary, right?

“Going into Happyland” sounds like a great euphemism. I’m going to steal it if you don’t mind.

And that’s perhaps the most peaceful peace. A‌ peace only nothingness can bring.

There are other options other than this one that requires permission. The article mentions her reasons to choose this method.

From the article:

She had thought about taking her own life but the violent death by suicide of a schoolfriend and its impact on the girl’s family deterred her.

Whether we agree with her or not, it’s her decision.

And while I don’t think that’s exactly what you meant, it’s how it comes across. Almost all of your points are some variation of who’s gonna pay for their treatment and take care of their physical needs.

Indeed, that’s not what exactly what I meant. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt.

My main point can be summarized in that second to the last paragraph, which I doubt has communicated things adequately.

To reiterate: it won’t be initiated by the medical professionals. They’re simply there to ensure that someone applying for this procedure are indeed “proceeding of their own accord and have made sure options have been considered”. The waiting period is there to make sure that not only they’ve arrived at this decision after careful deliberation, but also to force them to consider and try out the options available to them. The process can be terminated at any point by the patient, and the final step will not proceed without their permission.

My point is that mental illness is much less understood than physical illness, and I wouldn’t trust any diagnosis that said the condition could never be resolved.

I accept this point. This is why I‌ put the emphasis on the decision of the patient. And this is where I think our positions fundamentally differ. Promising treatments may or may not be there, may or may not be there in the immediate or far future, but it’s on the patient to consider. The medical professionals are there to ensure that the patient has considered available options, and have exerted reasonable effort to improve their situation. Whether or not the patient has made “the correct decision” isn’t the point—but rather whether or not the patient has made an informed and well-thought-out decision.

I share your opinion that in an ideal world, this shouldn’t even be needed. That even though the option would be there for anyone to take, no one will take it in an ideal world. But we are not in such an ideal world. We can strengthen our social safety nets to help people suffering from the debilitating effects of mental illness (among other sources of suffering), and that will do a lot of good, but until we arrive at a society which no longer needs a dignified exit because no one ever wants to exit, I am of the opinion of giving them that option.

I share a lot of your questions about this, but the following parts made me uncomfortable agreeing with you:

People who are seeking death are rarely in the kind of headspace where I think they are able to meaningfully consent to that?

And this feels meaningfully different than the case of a 90yo who’s body is slowly failing them. This is an otherwise healthy young person.

She has the following to say about that: “People think that when you’re mentally ill, you can’t think straight, which is insulting.”

Mental illness is an illness, and can be chronic and progressive. They can cause someone to be unable to carry on living, maintaining a livelihood, afford their own medication, psychiatric visits and therapy that they would need to even want to live in the first place. That’s not even to go into the absolute hell people in such situations can go through everyday.

We can debate on what constitutes “a well-thought-out decision that takes into consideration every available option” and I would actually say that one should give those options a try, but to deny that a mentally ill person can make their own EOL decisions makes me terribly uncomfortable.

In my opinion, sure, there should be a waiting period, to filter out those chronic episodes that lead to spur-of-the moment impulses, or decisions that are strongly linked to temporary conditions. This waiting period can be used to think things through, prove that they’ve tried means available to them, or even give them the chance to try the means they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise (like specialized help, therapy that wouldn’t have been available to them, etc). Now, I think what happens next is up to these medical professionals: do they deem one’s condition to be intractable and no amount of medication and therapy and counseling can make a difference? If they deem the situation to be hopeless, and the patient agrees, then yeah, the patient can make their exit. Otherwise, the medication, therapy, counseling or whatever it is that they’ve been trying should continue. If funds are needed for this to continue, then so be it. Those people who want to be no exits can be counted upon to fund this, right? Those people denying exit should put their money where their mouths are.

If signing up to an EOL waiting list could be the way for people to consider their situation and try out things that might help them, then so be it.

Oh, sorry, I’ve been rambling. My point is, yeah, there should be a waiting period that would double as a chance for people to get the help they need (but don’t have access to or maybe the motivation to). And more importantly, that anyone, and I mean anyone (okay, there’d be a triage system in place, but just allow everyone in, and sort them out once they’re in) can sign up.

The way I imagine things would go is I can just walk into some office, inform the person in the counter that I want to have a passport to neverwhere, and they’d ask me to file some paperwork and after a few days, I’d be in a clinic where someone would perform a psychological check-up on me, and do some interviews. Then after a few more days, some doctor will be informing me of my diagnosis and options—or perhaps just flat out saying I’m completely mentally healthy and my petition is denied (if I’m lucky maybe given a list of people to contact to help with my problems). If I’m continuing the process, then I’d choose which option I want, go with the treatment or other, and like, hopefully continue until I can manage my situation with minimal help!

Do we really need people to sign up for a passport to the great beyond just to get the help they need? No, in an ideal world, there shouldn’t even be a need for this. But in this kind of world we live in, I think allowing people to safely cross the streams with dignity and peace of mind (after giving it a good try, and concluding that it really can’t be helped) is a small kindness society can give to the suffering.

EDIT: Some proofreading.

This one, right?‌ https://micro-editor.github.io/

Reading about it, it’s to Kate what is Nano is to… hm… Notepad? 😅 Just looking at the screenshots, I could easily confuse it with something like VSCode.

I’m probably one of those weirdos who use VSCode, Kate, Nano, and sometimes KWrite all in their different niches.

I do most of my programming work in VSCode, but most of my shell scripting in Kate. When I edit configuration files, I’m usually using the command line and thus use Nano (sorry, I’m too stupid to use either Emacs nor Vim, let alone Vi). When I’m just looking at text files (or doing a quick edit) via my file manager, I use KWrite. With the exception of VSCode, they’re all provided in my installation by default.

Having said that, trying out different editors will enable you to pick the editor that better fits your requirements. Kate is too powerful for what I use it for, but since it’s already there, the additional features are nice to have. I actually had to explore a bit before I‌ settled on VSCode for my programming work, and while there’s probably one that better fits my needs, my workflow has already adapted to working with what I currently have.

Isn’t that making the problem worse though? If you have a tool that resolves your problem for you, wouldn’t that make you dependent on it, and thus, be even more helpless when moving to another ecosystem (like, yeah, Arch)?

Arch is built for a particular kind of Linux user though, btw. It’s probably the worst choice for a “not a computer person” move into, issues of dependency hell aside.

Having learned how to use computers via MS-DOS, then growing to mostly use Windows machines, and then moving to daily-drive Linux in the past handful of years, I think the problem is more about context. If I see an error message, it’s not that I don’t read them. ‌Rather, if I lack the context to understand what it is trying to tell me—and more importantly, what I‌ can do to resolve the problem I’m having, I’m out of luck and I’d have to ignore it.

It was when I switched to using Linux that I’ve picked up the habit of searching the error message online, and then browsing the various pages (mostly Stackoverflow, sometimes Arch Linux wiki pages) which might or might not lead me to the context behind the error message. If I get lucky, I could find a clue to resolving my problem on top of understanding what the error message is about. Other times, I end up being even more confused and give up.

And then there’s the monstrosity that is the logs. I’m pretty much illiterate when it comes to them, and reading them might as well be reading arcane records of eldritch daemons keeping my machine working (in a way, they indeed are). Copy-pasting some snippets from them into an online search is a crapshoot. I may find something that fits my context, but a lot of times, it’s for a different problem. It might not even be for my OS/distro/package/version.

I was actually thinking of something like markdown or HTML forming the base of that standard. But it’s almost impossible (is it?) to do page layout with either of them.

But yeah! What I was thinking when I mentioned a LaTeX-based standard is to have a base set of “modules” (for a lack of a better term) that everyone should have and that would guarantee interoperability. That it’s possible to create a document with the exact layout one wants with just the base standard functionality. That things won’t be broken when opening up a document in a different editor.

There could be additional modules to facilitate things, but nothing like the 90’s proprietary IE tags. The way I’m imagining this is that the additional modules would work on the base modules, making things slightly easier but that they ultimately depend on the base functionality.

IDK, it’s really an idea that probably won’t work upon further investigation, but I just really like the idea of an open standard for documents based on LaTeX (kinda like how HTML has been for web pages), where you could work on it as a text file (with all the tags) if needed.

I was too young to use it in any serious context, but I kinda dig how WordPerfect does formatting. It is hidden by default, but you can show them and manipulate them as needed.

It might already be a thing, but I am imagining a LaTeX-based standard for document formatting would do well with a WYSIWYG editor that would hide the complexity by default, but is available for those who need to manipulate it.

My comment is self-documenting, I swear!

Because my work tends to have me working on a wide variety of features, and thus operating on vastly different parts of the codebase, I make it a point to comment out every change I make complete with the ticket that requested the change, and what the intended effect of the change is.

Cue me returning to piece of code I made (after the inevitable bug has arisen) and me staring at my own code changes in bewilderment, wondering what past me really wanted to do. Hahaha!

So when it comes to things like this, the main considerations are accuracy in transmission and comprehension of the message.

Ah, I see. That’s why the encoding you detailed in your previous reply is such.

making physical signals a far easier method of communicating “HELP!!!” than becoming a kegel master.

This made me laugh out loud. But yeah! I was so fixated on making a butt plug-mediated communications protocol that I overlooked a far low-tech, but more effective method. And if detection is a danger, the gestures used can be changed up and agreed upon before the match. One match might have massaging the forehead as the signal, another match could have scratching behind the right ear.

And my theory about the butt plug being able to be smuggled through a metal detector is not based in a proven fact, but rather the assertion that if you could get one through a metal detector, which may or may not be possible, there would be no other checks in place to prevent a player from entering a hall with one.

I see. So we’re both coming from the assumption of “if it were possible, how might it go?”

More complex cheaters (who do not use an accomplice) have in the past gone to the washroom to find a stashed chess computer, plug in the position, see what the computer thinks, and come back.

Isn’t this easy to catch though? Inspect the restrooms players have access to and periodically inspect them when no one’s using it. Of course, this doesn’t stop a determined cheater stashing a small device inside a pack of wet wipes, for example. Heck, if I were in that situation, I’d probably just stash a smartphone inside a supposed pack of wet wipes. It’s boring, not as sensational as a butt plug for sure, but if it works, it works!

I would have wished my horrible mental image was just a figment of my imagination, lol! Reality is stranger than fiction, indeed.

A horrible, horrible mental image entered my mind: a priest dunking an infant into the baptismal font during a baptism ceremony and then proceeding smoothly to a requiem prayer as the infant drowns in holy water.

My analysis didn’t really go deep (pun unintended) into the details of how the information might be encoded, but taking a cue from what you’d said, position can be encoded into six bits: 000;000 would be a1 (white king’s rook starting position, right?) and h8 would be 111;111 b4 would then be 001;011. Perhaps we can save things into just three bits (there are just seven unique pieces in chess: pawn, rook, knight, white bishop, black bishop, queen, and king) if we just need to communicate which piece is to be moved. Maximally, the accomplice can communicate both the piece and the destination in nine bits, though following this discussion, it seems there’s not much need for it, and it’d introduce complexities that would hamper comprehension (like having to distinguish between the three cases so far: position of the piece to be moved, the piece to be moved, or the piece to be moved and the location of the destination).

As for how to send information (as opposed to receiving), there’s only one signal that would be needed, if the accomplice is watching a live feed of the match: “Help!” which would be a continuous anal clench, or something fanciful as clenching SOS to avoid any random anal clenching to be mistaken for a call for help.

Now, as for a cheating device inside a butt plug not triggering a metal detector, I don’t know for certain, but I’ve got no reason to disbelieve you. If there’s someone that manages to pull it off though (the entire thing, sneaking in a device up their butt and using it to cheat at live chess competitions), I’d love to hear about the details.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Ah, yeah~ I actually wasn’t really into chess, but I was intrigued about how it might actually work in practice. Like, perhaps a code taken from chess notation, and then optimized to keep messages to a minimum. Such messages are then composed of bursts of vibration, some longer and less intense, and some short but intense. This is where my mind went to bandwidth, lol! How fast can you alternate “dots” and “dashes” such that they would still remain distinct from one another, and not be perceived as just one long buzz session?

they’ll either use some form of chess computer that they sneak away to use, or have an accomplice and a one way method of communication.

It’s the first case that I thought about when I first heard of this. Kinda like braille, but for butts. And then rather than use your fingers, you clench your butt. That way, one can operate a chess computer while seated in a tournament. At the end of it, I was like “that’s some serious kegel action!”

An accomplice sending the necessary hints/information would be more plausible, I think. And now that I’m thinking about it, electrical impulses (through the skin, like in the small of the back, another sensitive area) might do the trick as well, perhaps going full braille action this time.)

But yeah, I just enjoyed overthinking about something like this. No offense meant to anyone. I’m just like “maybe it’s stupid enough to work?”