Non-alcoholic gin and tonics are the shit. If you’re legit looking for non-alcoholic drinks and like G&Ts give it a try.

Probably just poor writing.

I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.

I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.

If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn

Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.

One of the following ideas, in order of how likely I could get it running (given I wouldn’t have the foggiest what I’m doing):

1. Forward the 1-800 calls to a free VoIP voicemail service, inviting callers to leave to leave the date, their location, and a message. Print stickers with the number, slap them on however many payphones I can find, and see what happens. I could do this tomorrow if I wanted.

2. Same idea, but routing to a FreePBX set up with whitelisting. While slapping up stickers, dial an echo number (don’t think that’s the right term - one that just reads back the number you’re calling from, not one that echos what you’re saying to test latency), add number to whitelist. That payphone is now activated. Activated payphones get to leave a message, anyone else gets ‘Good bye’ and disconnected. Some reading suggests this is possible, but with many, many things to learn between now and then (especially whitelisting). I’d be starting from 0 knowledge.

3. The above, but when you hit # to end your message, you get access to some automated menus with some fun/weird stuff (qotd, show times for upcoming bands I find interesting, a party line would be cool, etc.). See all comments demonstrating ignorance.

Why? It’s pretty dumb, but seems like it’d kill some time and could garner some interesting/weird audio. I do like the idea of whitelisting payphones only, both to cut down on bot call vectors and to push the like 3 interested people to use the disappearing comms anachronisms around town.

I can’t believe it took me two days to ask the obvious - as someone toying with some goofy project ideas themselves, what was yours?

Two chicks who call that number and independently report they’d be down for a completely anonymous FFM three-way - and follow through?

It could happen, life’s a weird thing, but there’s unicorns and then there’s this. If everyone leaves without a disease and with all their kidneys they should probably go buy lottery tickets.

One, anything else is pure decadence (unless you have a neck issue or something).

If it’s indeed no to what I’m describing here, it’s not an interesting answer, but it is an honest one. I can respect that.

Not a lot of people, but there are retrocomputing hobbists who’d probably be stoked to find something like this.

Apparently you can tunnel through using a VoIP device, but it’s not great. Or get a cellular modem (do not know what kind of connection quality you’d have in 2024, or if it’s even a real option).

The other option would be finding an old payphone that works with an acoustic coupler. See here (Wayback link as on my phone, direct one doesn’t seem to work on all browsers, fine in Firefox but host pretends the site doesn’t exist in my default one that opens in Jerboa*)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220520161806/http://wrybread.com/WryRoad/gadgets/coupler.htm

I am admittedly a giant dork, but a quest to try and find a payphone that still exists AND you could actually do this with sounds fun. Seeing someone sitting next to a payphone with a buncha wires and a computer would be some high weirdness I can get behind.

*Sidenote: Anyone know how to change the default brower Jerboa on Android uses?

Assume you are given a 1-800 number for your own use - people can call it and reach whatever you set up (you directly, a voicemail box, a phone menu set up, a dialup connection, whatever). The number is free and your minutes are unlimited.

Would you use it? If so, what for?

Magically permanent if you want it to be/give some “Yes I’m still using it” feedback to the shadowy organization giving it to you. Otherwise it’s active for one year.

And yes, 100% free in this magical scenario, no paying for the number, minutes etc.

I’ve been thinking about phones a lot lately - payphones in particular.

Warning: link to novel-length rambling follows - like to the point I’m giving little section names, a title and everything, and had to toss it into a pastebin thing (but not pastebin, it looks like they didn’t like my use of the word fuck or something) rather than this comment like I intended.

Basically, it’s an invitation to waste some time. It can be summed up by “Idk, I’d make a weird voicemail or PBX system and leave the number at remaining payphones, I guess. That could be fun.”

https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn

That sucks - though depending on the provider (I’ve been digging around on this), there are some that offer unlimited minutes as part of their monthly/annual package. Not all, though, and those seem to be on the pricier end (though in the grand scheme of things, not crazy expensive).

Let’s say you have a 50/50 chance of getting your choice of a vanity number or a randomly assigned 800 number - what do you do in either outcome?

Yep - single 10 mg gummies are a thing. Less common than 2 x 5 mg but there’s a couple.

The Health Canada cap is problematic - how much of this biomass could’ve been used to produce varying higher doses of edibles that actually match what most consumers want? (aside from cannabis newbies dipping their toe in - anecdote, not data, but those are the only folks I really see buying these. Everyone else makes their own or buys higher dosed ones off the unregulated market)

This was my first thought, too.

All I remember is that it ran Windows 3.1 and had a ‘Turbo’ switch on the front. To this day I have no idea what that did, but was told not to touch it.

Ah, hospitals. I feel for you.

I haven’t read the comments here yet, but scenario 1 and a modified scenario 2 in combo sound like the best approach. DO NOT TELL PEOPLE TO CALM DOWN, IT WILL ALWAYS MAKE THEM ANGRIER. The best way to do it IMO is to model the behaviour you want to see - remain calm. Explain (to the degree that you’re authorized to as a nurse) why they can’t do the thing, and the potential outcome of doing the thing. While trying to calm them down, have the more vulnerable target disengage and make the call to security. Remember that your duty is to your patients’ health and safety - make it as clear as possible that you’re not doing this to be a power-tripping douchebag, but to make sure their father gets the best possible care they can so they can go home ASAP.

My work experiences are not exactly the same, but similar in some respects. I’ve found it useful to consider the following - in a healthcare-related scenario, the person who is super pissed and aggressive is usually more scared/freaked out than angry. If you address the fear they will usually calm down pretty quick (or at least the anger turns to other, less dangerous expressions of fear).

Does your hospital/union offer any training on descalation techniques? They’re not a cure-all but it’s vital stuff to know in a high-tension environment like a hospital.

Edit: Misread the OP and thought patient was the daughter of the aggressors, fixed to say ‘father’.

You, my friend, are my favourite sh.it.head. The feelings you have about life are the precise ones I try to keep in focus. And regardless of the ultimate outcome of your condition (I truly hope one with a solid recovery path!), this is a beautiful sentiment and a wonderful idea.

I have no suggestions regarding tech for going about this, aside from whatever method you choose, occasionally make hard copies for long term storage. There’s many ways to make a robust digital archive, but paper is there should it fail.

You should totally question the validity, but I’d pause before dismissing it entirely. It’s supposedly based on an opinion survey of psychiatrists and a group of ‘independent experts’ (footnote incoming) published in the Lancet in 2007. Edit: I said things that weren’t true about the Wikimedia image that I have removed - it’s based on the table near the bottom of the article.

DOI is 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60464-4

You should ask our friend ANNA if she’S heard people talk about this during her time in the ARCHIVEs.

It’s not a completely objective harm/dependence measure, for sure, but the opinions of experts aren’t meaningless - it’s worth reading the article and judging the authors’ claims rather than this image. Though I will say the number of participants seems really low.

On LSD,

1. the opinion thing should be underlined and considered heavily (particularly in the UK, where rave culture is/was more top of mind than other places and LSD is/was in the mix, albeit I don’t think to the same degree as MDMA and other compounds), but also

2. as crazy as it may sound, dependency can develop in some users. I’d argue it looks VERY different than dependence to other substances (frequency is obviously much lower, given rapid tolerance, and some people may not call once a week or every two weeks dependency*), but it still exists. Given that this is basically an expert opinion poll it’s actually placed more or less where I’d expect to see it.

*Though in online discussion groups for folks interested in such compounds, those folks often do call that level of frequency a sign of dependency. Should note I’m talking specifically about macrodoses, not microdosing.

(Footnote) from page 1049: “These experts had experience in one of the many areas of addiction, ranging from chemistry, pharmacology, and forensic science, through psychiatry and other medical specialties, including epidemiology, as well as the legal and police services.”