Interesting Links for 20-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Want to make your own train announcement system? Now you have all of the pieces. (Who's making the hardcore techno remix?)

(tags:trains audio viaPatrickHadfield )

2. My Year of Grief and Cancellation (By the person behind Your Fave Is Problematic)

(tags:Tumblr society celebrity )

3. South West Water boss trebles pay with huge bonus as beaches are shut due to raw sewage pumped into sea

(tags:water money )

4. Edinburgh council warns condition of city's roads will get worse over the rest of this decade

(tags:roads Edinburgh fail Doom )

5. Canada's euthanasia laws go too far

(tags:disability euthanasia Canada )

6. Piracy is preservation, reflections on the HBO animation cull

(tags:animation HBO piracy TV )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

5. “In an era where we recognize the right to die with dignity, we must do more to guarantee the right to live with dignity,” she said.

Shivers. In any country with high health care costs / limited provision there is a hideous pitiless logic in pressure to choose death. I wonder if life insurance pays out in such cases? Also the avg cost of failed suicide attempts comes into that breed of abhorrent arithmetic.

Exactly what makes life unbearable to continue IS however, extremely personal, and I don't think others should get to judge (assuming basic mental competence).

Attitudes of the majority/fortunate to supporting the less fortunate are critical if any society is to be truly civilised and compassionate. Taxes are often too blunt a weapon, in any case too often poorly aimed. As a person who pays chunky lots of tax yet sees people not supported when illness or other misfortune strikes, it's very frustrating. I'm not sure how it should work, but clearly it's not, in most places that I know of. 😢

[lilysea]

There have been instances recently of people in Canada calling *suicide helplines/crisis lines* to say "I'm Disabled and can't get my accomodation needs/Disability needs met, help!"

and being asked "Have you considered MAID?" [Medically Assisted Dying]

which... !!!!!

Source: I follow a lot of Disabled people on social media. There has been A LOT of discussion about the way MAID is being misused as an excuse to not adequately fund support for Disabled/chronically ill people.

[dewline]

Affirming that. It's a legit complaint of Canadian disabled folks, this stuff about MAiD being pushed at them when it would be easier to just pay them what they need instead.

[andrewducker]

That's just awful.

[symbioid]

LOL - too much mid-00s geekery for me... the twitter link about the train files being 'opened' and "Scotrail" and think :

SCOtrail? SCO? Santa Cruz Operations? Good luck being "open"? with that. Then realized it was ScotRail, not SCOtrail.

[andrewducker]

I haven't even thought about SCO in years!

[anna_wing]

As a matter of curiosity, how is this different from capital punishment, which I believe Canada claims to oppose on moral grounds?

[andrewducker]

It's awful, isn't it?

[anna_wing]

It does seem very slapdash and unregulated. Part of why I would have a lot of concerns about euthanasia, or indeed assisted suicide as a social policy is precisely because of the risk of both murder and undue influence. The latter would especially be the case in an Asian country, where pressure on people to not be a burden on their families would be very great.

[foms]

I don't want to say nothing about medical aid in dying but there is too much.

I am in Canada. My father received help to die, last year. I advocated for it, at his request. This was not the first time that I have investigated it, for three different people.

The laws keep changing. The pendulum may swing. I definitely see that people who are oppressed and/or in distress my be more influenced by authorities than is best.

I would prefer not to return to an environment, like until the last few years, when the subject was sufficiently taboo that I often felt that others thought me legally and ethically suspect for being willing to talk about it. I also don't want to hijack your comment thread without invitation.

[andrewducker]

You're not hijacking by taking part.

And I am totally in favour of people having a right to die. I just worry about it going from "This person hasn't got long to live, their quality of life is terrible, and there's nothing we can do to help them, so it's okay to relieve their suffering." to "This person has a shitty life, society isn't going to even try and help them, we'll just tell them to kill themselves."

And I've had examples of the latter over on the Facebook page, which worries me a great deal.