Contra dancing is distinctly not my thing (I don’t want to be told what to do), but I have done it and everything in that blog post is in line with my experience.
If you’re concerned about difficulty, I think merengue or bachata are great starter dances.
Otherwise figure out what music you like or makes you want to tap your toes and search out the dance that goes with that.
A specific partner dance (not contra) is my favorite hobby and when you click with a song and a parter and drop into flow state is just magical.
I have a weird attraction to the look of fairly hot things. I have always wanted to eat the orange coals you get at the end of a campfire. I would also take that orange gooey looking lava.
"Carr said that since Track 2 MAiD was implemented in 2021 – which allows patients who are not terminally ill to be euthanized – people with disabilities are targeted “for medical assistance in dying when they are not dying” and “that has certainly changed people’s interactions with the health care system quite dramatically.”
She said: “People with disabilities are now very much afraid in many circumstances to show up in the healthcare system with regular concerns because often MAiD is suggested as the solution to what is considered to be intolerable suffering that happens to be caused by some of the things that this committee addresses like poverty and the situations that people with disabilities disproportionately find themselves in compared to other Canadians.”"
MacAulay walked the committee through what his department knew, thus far, saying the first case that came to light occurred last summer where the caseworker repeatedly pushed the notion of MAID to an unnamed veteran who had called seeking help with post-traumatic stress.
A second occasion reported happened last May where the same caseworker provided assisted dying information to a veteran.
Another incident is alleged to have happened in December 2021, said MacAulay. It involved a veteran who contacted the department to ask questions about MAID. The committee had already heard testimony about that event during a previous hearing last month.
The fourth known case apparently happened in 2019, where a veteran called VAC specifically asking for information about assistance in taking his own life.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investigation-1.6663885
First of all, this is a personal position not something I’m trying to enshrine into law.
Second of all the ability to recognize that you need help/assistance, actually ask, and be receptive to receiving it is a large part of my reason for including that. It shows a level of maturity to go through that process and yes I think that people who don’t do it are child-ish.
I’ve thought about this a lot since the prior social markers are less useful these days. For me it’s being someone who has the resources and abilities to navigate the things needed for day to day life.
I just got a SCOBY!
Sounds like the community land trust portion of moms 4 housing
I’m someone who has multiple degrees including a clinical doctorate (think similar to optometrist, pharmacist etc). I think that the things you just listed (except maybe working in a group) were less developed or tested in my degree programs than they have been in my hobby spaces. I really wish it were possible for me to submit the afghan that took me two years to complete over my associates degree.
Very rarely and usually only in cases where it is either exceptional or awful.
So basically if I ignored all impacts of using it I would be ok with it as a first pass at some sort of information gathering if I was willing to check deeper.
When I used it, I asked things like “change the tone of this writing” or “make these bullet points include key words to match this job post”.
That said, it does have impacts and I’m not willing to incur them for my passing curiosities or to speed up job applications.
One of my hobbies seems like it should be be easy for AI to move into. Crochet patterns are often fairly mathematically based. However every generated pattern I’ve looked at has been nonsensical garbage. Images that look cute and plausible at first pass are basically imagination. It used to be really easy to spot but it is getting harder/more subtle.
I used to work in healthcare and when I first got access to chat GPT I asked it some simple differential diagnosis questions. It gave a few very common possibilities for the symptoms I gave but completely ignore an important red flag that even a first year med student should (probably would) keep in mind.
Ohhhh, let me tell you about partner dancing.
There’s a bunch of people who are weirdly fascinated by a particular piece of hold music. I think Kaiser used to use it. NPR searched out the composer and I have a file of the whole thing.
This is actually a great thought experiment. Some philosopher (I forget the details) suggested that a culture/society could be judged how willing people would be to take the place of any random person within it. Like when people are like “American culture peaked in the 20s/50s/etc”, but you can point out that only counts if you’re a white man. The experience of pretty much everyone else is unenviable for a multitude of reasons.
You’re suggesting that yeah there may be some positions that are better than others, but pretty much any of them would be good.
I used to work in healthcare and bad news, the last 10 years the shit show has become even shittier in a way that feels like an acceleration. I left because I just couldn’t deal and feel better working for a tech company that is at least transparent what they do. However, somewhere in the middle of my career I had a patient with an aggressive brain cancer that took him from being a middle class working guy to basically unable to move without assistance. However, when I met him he was not receiving chemo or radiation or any specific care because he was diagnosed with cancer after collapsing at work. He was diagnosed and directly lost his job. He had to wait for a new month to be covered by the insurance his family purchased through the ACA market place. He had already earned too much that year to qualify for Medicaid. He sat around for three and a half weeks loosing function and possibly metastasizing because no one would treat him.
I have two photo books from high school, so maybe 30 pictures of me and friends or family from then. There’s a bit of a gap due to using poor back up practices. Recently I’ve been having a book of pictures printed to save the highlights of my year. I’m not naturally a picture taker so knowing I want to have pictures for “the book” has been a bit of a motivator.
The last two years, I’ve also gathered photos of my nephew and made a similar book which runs from birthday to birthday for him.
Fair. It was the California Bay Area
I know of plenty of people who go monthly/weekly and have been for years. The pleasure is probably less in the learning and more in the doing of the thing. incidentally I feel similar about my other hobby of crochet. I have been doing it for literally decades and still mostly do beginner rated patterns because I just like making a thing with yarn.