Good choices so far! A few other ideas:

-Museum of Science and Tech is an obvious kid-favourite.

-One I don’t see mentioned as often is the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum at the Experimental Farm. Haven’t actually been in the museum myself, but they do have live animals as it’s a working farm, and I did see kids getting a kick out of that. It’s also across the road from the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, which connects to Dow’s Lake/The Arboretum if the kids have energy and patience enough for a little hike.

-Unless you really want to do a full river/canal boat tour (which admittedly is a good time), if you want to give the kids an ‘on the river’ experience you can take a water taxi from the locks to the Museum of History.

-For a less structured day/period, Mooney’s Bay has what I believe is the biggest public playground in Canada. You can also toss the kids in the water if it’s really hot (depending on water quality and comfort level). Keep an eye out as there may also be festivals going on depending on when you come (all pretty kid friendly as I remember them). Edit: Can also take them to see the Hog’s Back falls while you’re there, it’s close by.

-House of Targ, like 2-3 blocks south of Lansdowne, has all-ages family freeplay on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 8:00 PM. Bunch of pinball machines and arcade cabinets. Have seen elementary age kids having a grand time there when I’ve showed up early for a band/adults only freeplay.

-Depending on scheduling and available time, the Mayfair Theatre has a Saturday Morning Cartoons program, with cereal and people in PJs, once and a while. People and their kids seem to love it. Bookmark their website and watch for advance tickets, it sells out FAST.

-We have a baseball team - the Ottawa Titans [edit: NOT Giants]! They play at the old Lynx stadium on Conventry. If the kids like baseball/sitting in stands drinking soda and cheering on something they don’t understand, they may enjoy it. Also have soccer and football at Lansdowne.

-If you want to get the kids into nature, Gatineau Park is a no-brainer.

-Vincent Massey Park is nice as well.

Might add some others as I think of them.

You poor son of a bitch.

(Kidding, I like it here. Let me know if you want any recommendations!)

45 and flight?

There’s a few people I know who use it for boilerplate templates for certain documents, who then of course go through it with a fine toothed comb to add relevant context and fix obvious nonsense.

I can only imagine there are others who aren’t as stringent with the output.

Heck, my primary use for a bit was custom text adventure games, but ChatGPT has a few weaknesses in that department (very, very conflict adverse for beating up bad guys, etc.). There’s probably ways to prompt engineer around these limitations, but a) there’s other, better suited AI tools for this use case, b) text adventure was a prolific genre for a bit, and a huge chunk made by actual humans can be found here - ifdb.org, c) real, actual humans still make them (if a little artsier and moody than I’d like most of the time), so eventually I stopped.

Did like the huge flexibility v. the parser available in most made by human text adventures, though.

If it’s any consolation (I had a ‘what exactly constitutes a counterculture in 21st century Canada’ moment a while back, and eventually, unhappily, landed on the same conclusion), it means that a lot of the progressive values that used to be considered countercultural are now mainstream. Generally a good thing, I think.

Granted, many of those have been coopted and watered down to the point that they don’t constitute a legitimate threat to established power - or at least, that impression exists - so that’s not great.

That said, a counterculture is never a monolith. Just a personal project while the world burns, but I kinda want to revisit that rabbit hole a bit now that I’m writing this.

There’s enough worry about Canadian sovereignty and enough people who aren’t maple MAGA idiots/grifters but don’t immediately ignore what Trump says that, if they don’t think about precedent that much, this could swing.

I don’t really know or care what Trump’s intent was, even while I have some guesses, but I do know it’s being used as a talking point in the Conservative propaganda machine. “Lol, you think Carney’s going to defend our interests, but Trump just endorsed him. Hope you like being the 51st state. If carney wins, Canada loses. WEF, Ghislaine photo, Axe the Tax, etc.” The gambit is that all of this convinces more undecideds to vote Conservative than Conservative voters to vote Liberal (or NDP, or Green, or Bloq, but you get my point).

You and I, and I hope enough others, see through this particular tactic. But coupled with points like “Carney said he’d get rid of the carbon tax and GST on homes - those were PPs ideas”, there’s enough going on that I could see people getting swung. No one is truly immune to propaganda, and the machine do be churning.

Former Post Millenial writer - shocker.

Just a note for anyone here: the CAF reserves involves an average one night and one weekend commitment per month, not including your BMQ/SQ and trade-specific training. Getting the time off for training might be tricky, but most reservists work full-time civilian jobs or are students.

As someone else pointed out, this is what the CAF is, but IME this specifically describes reservist roles to a tee, which are intended for domestic scenarios (though if for whatever reason you wanted to, you do have the option of applying for deployments).

Completely understand folks who are ideologically opposed to military service, or who (quite reasonably) are concerned about some aspects of CAF culture to date. But this may be of interest to some of you, and if so you should look into it. Have a feeling, based on Lemmy demographics, some of you might find what the Royal Canadian Engineers does interesting.

OR-LEANS is the only version I’ve ever heard in the wild.

Thanks for the Tall Boyz recommendation, I’ll be checking that out.

…sigh…I miss Picnicface… need more Canadian sketch comedy in my life in general.

If you’re not daily driving Arch, btw, did you even join Lemmy?

I know you’re not daily driving Arch because you didn’t mention it.

(Jokes, obvs. Congrats on the self-discovery!)

The Youtube ads are wild - did you know Jagmeet Singh was arrested? I didn’t, and apparently neither does any reputable news source I can find.

IIRC Saint Pierre and Miquelon basically exist to retain French access to the Grand Banks for fishing, or at least those were the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris (it traded hands a couple of times after that). Very little strategic military value today.

Many men were disappointed when arriving at the Ram Ranch to find Trudeau wasn’t there.

But they made due.

Two One can o’ beer a day and that’s your bleeding lot

(Sorry, saw it was Moosehead and this immediately popped into my ex-Bluenoser noggin)

With respect, fuck this asshole. He is equating Canadian nationalism specifically with our history as a British colony. The ‘other’ groups he brings up are just as Canadian as someone with British or French ancestry. Hell, my own ancestors came here over 100 years ago, from Norway. Think about all of the Ukranian-Canadians across the prairies? Chinese-Canadians, many of have deep roots in our country? Are they any less Canadian than someone with the surname “Tremblay” or “Martin”?

This “post-national” nationalism is the sense of nationalism I have always had. Broad strokes, if you call this country your home; work to make it a good place to live within your capacities; treat your fellow countrymen (gender-neutral sense) with respect and tolerance regardless of their religion, creed, ancestral origin etc.; and respect the fact that your own beliefs and lifestyles may differ from others, and tolerate that difference; I am proud to have you count yourself as Canadian, and I hope you share in that pride.

We are a nation with many, many skeletons in our closet. Many of us have, very often, not lived up to the stuff I’ve written here - individuals and institutions alike. But IMO these are the ideals we should be shooting for, and where we fail, it is a call to work harder.

What I feel is that my own sense of nationalism, and what it means to be Canadian, is not “post-national” but instead nationalism premised in what we actually are and can be - not what some guy may have wanted when we were British North America.

Give this a shot maybe? I know there’s some other archive collections as well you could try digging into.

https://geocities.restorativland.org/

There are definitely folks who come out of psychedelic experiences with strong delusions of grandeur, they usually just don’t have the money or influence to become this big a nuisance over it.

“I am [God]” v. “I am of god/a node in Indra’s Net” or whatever privileged I v. communal I conception that can pop up.

Intention and pre-loading is important, folks!

The U.S. has some cool shit to see as a tourist - even aside from the obvious stuff (example: I really, really wanted to check out Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo Texas. It’s literally just a bunch of Cadillacs half-buried and absolutely crusted in spray paint).

But yeah, right now even the legit draws for tourism aren’t worth it. And there’s a scarily good chance it never will be again.

Thanks for saying this. There’s literally a gay sex shop called One in Ten in my city, for this reason, that’s been around forever.