it's a big world out there

FREE HUGS Hi! I'm Hale, or Heather, your friendly local bi ace. Or as I like to call myself, double unicorn. (Geddit? Because I don't exist twice over? No? Ok.) She/her or they/them. Perpetually lonely. Massive geek. Feel free to pop in and chat, and I'm...

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

idk if I’ve posted about this before but by far the strangest things that’s happened to me in retail was the time someone’s total came out to my birth-year and I said “hey! that’s the year I was born!” and then the next customer’s total came out to like $12.57 and just bc I’m a weirdo I said “hey! that’s the year I was born!” and without missing a fucking beat this like, 70+ year old man said

“Ah! Another like me! We’re few and far between these days, aren’t we?”

And I was like oh man this guy’s sense of humor really aligns with mine! And I laughed and made some other joke about being immortal and thought that was the end of it,

but this man.

He stood by the register for five more minutes. Maybe more. Which let me tell you is an EXCRUTIATING amount of time for something like this to happen.

And he just kept upping the ante!! He starting talking about some REALLY specific details regarding day-to-day life in the 1300s to the point I started getting worried that I’d misled a genuinely immortal being to believe I am also immortal.

He eventually politely left when I got too busy with other customers to awkwardly respond.

Who the fuck was that guy.

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

I think it’s also important to mention this happened at Cracker Barrel.

[piperholmes]

#savage

[faetoof]

i enter the web design class

h1 {     font-family: “Comic Sans MS”;     font-size: “50px”;     font-color: “magenta”; }

[catgirlnips]

[juju-smithschuster]

The West Wing – Someone’s Going to Emergency, Someone’s going to Jail (2x16)

[untexting]

THIS

[fivekets]

someday, in the distant future, humans will once again be capable of hearing the phrase “what is love” without also feeling the primal urge to  respond with “baby don’t hurt me”

[megparsec]

So at that point, people will say “baby don’t hurt me”…no more?

[iwantasecretgarden]

I tried to scroll past I really did

[kintsugifox]

people who dont even care about language: how can you just CHANGE grammar??? add new wORds?? unacceptable!!! language must never change!!!!!11 kids these days cant even spell!!

people who study language: ANARCHY!! ANARCHY!!!! LANGUAGE IS FLUID AND WORDS AREN'T REAL!! change! the! grammar! rules!! burn a dictionary!!! NO ONE CARES!!!!!

[dieselpunkisdad]

Survivorship Bias

I have posted about survivorship bias and how it affects your career choices: how a Hollywood actor giving the classic “follow your dreams and never give up” line is bad advice and is pure survivorship bias at work.

When I read up on the wikipedia page, I encountered an interesting story:

During WWII the US  Air Force wanted to minimize bomber losses to enemy fire. The Center for Naval Analyses ran a research on where bombers tend to get hit with the explicit aim of enforcing the parts of the airframe that is most likely to receive incoming fire. This is what they came up with:

So, they said: the red dots are where bombers are most likely to be hit, so put some more armor on those parts to make the bombers more resilient. That looked like a logical conclusion, until Abraham Wald - a mathematician - started asking questions: 

- how did you obtain that data? - well, we looked at every bomber returning from a raid, marked the damages on the airframe on a sheet and collected the sheets from all allied air bases over months. What you see is the result of hundreds of those sheets. - and your conclusion? - well, the red dots are where the bombers were hit. So let’s enforce those parts because they are most exposed to enemy fire.  - no. the red dots are where a bomber can take a hit and return. The bombers that took a hit to the ailerons, the engines or the cockpit never made it home. That’s why they are absent in your data. The blank spots are exactly where you have to enforce the airframe, so those bombers can return.

This is survivorship bias. You only see a subset of the outcomes. The ones that made it far enough to be visible. Look out for absence of data. Sometimes they tell a story of their own.

BTW: You can see the result of this research today. This is the exact reason the A-10 has the pilot sitting in a titanium armor bathtub and has it’s engines placed high and shielded.

[white-aster]

If you want to think scientifically, ALWAYS ask what data was included in a conclusion. And ALWAYS ask what data was EXCLUDED when making a conclusion. If they have excluded information because “it doesn’t exist” or “it was too hard to get” or “it was good data but was provided by people we don’t like”, then that is a BIG RED FLAG that the analysis was flawed.

[meret118]

Another example of this is originally doctor’s thought smoking protected people from developing dementia until someone pointed out it was because smokers didn’t usually live long enough to get the most common forms.

[deadaccountsorrygaymers]

I’m watching a doc about judy garland and wow gay men love her

[damianmcgintleman]

fun fact gay men used to refer to themselves as “friends of dorothy” when it was still illegal to be gay because garland was so popular in the queer male community but ONE TIME the NIS was investigating homosexual affairs and they kept coming across the term and they thought there was some mysterious figure, some woman named dorothy, and they were like “we gotta find her and convince her to tell us which members of the navy are gay!” and essentially began a manhunt for dorothy from the wizard of oz

[nannycanes]

#we’ll get you my pretty #and your little gays too

[sherbies]

“i am a full-time student working hard to get my degree in design and pursue a career in animation, graphic design, or illustration.”

[sherbies]

i finished him

[sherbies]

update: my portfolio professor wanted him in a series

[sherbies]

i think i’ve done some good work today

[borderlands-disorder]

I hope you’re never hired anywhere

[arizonamuchomango]

I hope you get the job of your fuckin dreams.

[isacknewton]

psa to all the dogs out there:

hello i love u and i will pet u eventually do not worry

[quadlutz-deactivated20190102]

my top anecdotes that sound fake but aren’t:

the time i accidentally picked a girl up at a club because i thought she was someone i knew

the time i lost my virginity because of truth or dare on prom night under a ping pong table in someone’s basement

the time i worked at summer camp and my boss was the guy who stole my first girlfriend at that same summer camp when i was 14

that year that two of my sisters had unplanned pregnancies and my third sister got married all within like 6 months

my sister the professional poker player in vegas

the time i answered a trivia question at sea world and got to go backstage at the penguin exhibit and pet a penguin

the time i went to buy cat toys in azerbaijan and ended up alone in a pet store at night surrounded by birds while an old man read my palm and told me i would get married in 2016

the time i slept with a guy in eastern siberia at a creepy russian sex motel and i tried to tell him i was bisexual and he thought i was just really bad at speaking russian

that i have seen the seal from that gif where the seal turns around in the pool and plays the saxophone, i have seen that seal irl

the time i was personally snubbed in a hallway by 2010 olympic figure skating champion evan lysacek 

the time i made out with a guy at a wedding and then realized we were related (HE WAS ADOPTED IT’S FINE)

when @sunbeamdean told me she would buy me a drink if i said “fill me with your pups” to @lambergeier during sex so i did

the time i got so high my friend put on a movie i’d seen like 20 times before and i got convinced i was psychic because i knew what people were going to say before they said it

the time i was at a small feist concert at a christian college and she held an impromptu talent show for members of the audience to come up and show off what they could do and i went on stage and played a regina spektor song on the piano and feist gave me a hug and then on monday my math teacher told me he’d been at the concert too and handed me a disc he’d burned of the audio he’d recorded so i had a memento

[quadlutz-deactivated20190102]

i forgot the time i was supposed to take a eurostar train but they fucked up my ticket and when i complained they bumped me up to business class so i had like a full fancy cheese plate and half a bottle of wine for free and shared a compartment with the first female attorney general of australia and borrowed her cellphone to text my mom internationally

[science-sexual]

How

[anxious-kimchi-deactivated20180]

Funny Story...

So I was at the pharmacy and needed to ask one of the pharmacists some questions about my birth control as I had switched to a new medication. I walk over to the consultation window, pills in hand, and some man arrives at the pick-up window, which is right next to it. 

Because at least one mention of menstruation is necessary to discussions about the pill, I unashamedly started to talk to the female pharmacist who was no more uncomfortable than I in getting my questions answered.

However, the man at the window seemed offended by my concerns about my feminine health, saying as an aside to the person behind him that “there is a time and a place for that gutter talk”.

NO FUCKING SHIT, MISTER. THIS IS THE FUCKING PLACE. I thought to myself, mortified not because of the conversation but because this man thought he ought to shame me for this. I exchange a look with the pharmacist, who seems to be having the same thought. Raising her voice slightly above what was considered necessary in a quiet CVS, she pressed for more details on my period, which I happily obliged to supply. And I am POSITIVE the woman assisting him took her damn time just so he would be subjected to imagery about consistency, flow, and duration of my last three periods.

Menstruation is not a dirty word and I will BE DAMNED if a man wants to police it, especially when IT DIRECTLY CONCERNS MY HEALTH, because it makes him feel uncomfortable. I can’t help having a period, but you can help being an ignorant son of a bitch.

[thewriterchick]

100% here for passive aggressive pharmacists who choose their patients health over whiny baby-men behaviour.

[42believer]

reblog if you’re gay because of ghosts

[42believer]

the best part of this image is that the website it’s from is dead fucking serious

[did-you-know]

On 4/20/17, the Wyoming, MN, PD tweeted this photo with the caption ’…traps have been set… #Happy420’ to call attention to substance abuse. They also offered help for those in need, and promised that accepting it would not result in jail time. Source Source 2

[real-thick]

[owlphallacies]

#the swollest part of them….is their friendship muscle (sashayed)

[knightofleo]

This is Superman.

Superman is a tiny tiny little rooster who unfortunately was a little bit stunted in the growth area when he was a little chick.   

Brother and sister, born at the exact same time.

He eventually caught up but by then the flock had basically bullied him so much for being tiny he’d been entirely ostracized and turned into a complete loner so now he has to live all by himself over with the cows, but he doesn’t care one bit because now he’s the leader of four big brown four legged chickens and honestly who can say that.

Also he’s super-cuddly.

[dr-dendritic-trees]

I love him.

[bog-dweller]

my name is Cow i haf to bend so i can see my tiny frend he cares for me and all the herd  i care for him i lik the burd

[highlybread]

@bookhobbit