My Dreams Are Better Than Reality

She/Her, Pisces, and perpetually tired.

[thedailypositivityblog]

Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile

Click here and follow to get more daily positivity on your dash!

[godisafujoshi]

With the holidays here, thought this is worth sharing

[momkat]

This website is still here and some of the asks are heartbreaking. Like “Jamie wants a new pair of jeans because he’s never had new clothes before”. Or “Kayla wants a bag with her name on it for when she moves foster homes again.”

A lot of these kids ask for brand name clothing and it sounds pretentious but having one nice new fashionable piece of clothing means a lot when all your previous clothes have come out of black trash bags from charities.

[silvermoon424]

Btw, you can filter wishes based on gender, age, price, etc to help you find the perfect wish for you. This charity is LGBTQ-affirming (unlike a lot of religion-based charities that are unfortunately homophobic), so you can even look for nonbinary kids to donate to.

Also, I would really encourage people to be open to granting wishes made by older foster kids (14+) or young adults who aged out of the system and still lack family support. They’re so often forgotten.

[specialagentartemis]

If you don’t have a lot of money but still want to help give a kid a nice Christmas, there are lots of wishes that are $24 for stocking stuffers as well, or $15 for a sqishmallow!

https://www.onesimplewish.org

[seananmcguire]

I just want to add that right now, there are so many pending wishes for food. Kids are asking for food from the universe (and yeah, “kids” includes young adults just entering the work force–eighteen and hungry is just as morally wrong as eight and hungry).

[thirteendaysintaunton]

i would also like to add that USPS also runs a similar program each year for christmas called Operation Santa where you and/or a group of your friends can read letters that kids (and even some adults!) send to Santa and then adopt the letter and send them anonymous gifts in the mail.

https://www.uspsoperationsanta.com

they are currently accepting signups for this year and if you’re going through hard times it’s not too late to send in a letter to Santa to ask for what you need! simply put a stamp on your letter’s envelope and address it to:

Santa 123 Elf Road North Pole, 88888

[bitchesgetriches]

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology's screwups.

Delicious. We love to see it.

[tobaeus]

@ralfmaximus

[ralfmaximus]

Ultimately, she spent 20 hours redoing the copy from scratch — and with her $100-per-hour rate, that meant her client was shelling out $2,000 for copy that likely would have ended up being far cheaper had a human just written it in the first place.

I love stories like this.

[tacofriend]

Get peer reviewed!

[lierdumoa]

[luna-azzurra]

Funny Dialogue Prompts!!

⟢ "I have two moods--Hungry and aggressively hungry."

⟢ "I wasn't eavesdropping. I was just standing nearby with excellent hearing."

⟢ "You invited me to a 7am meeting. Our friendship is under review."

⟢ "I'm not clumsy. The floor just hates me personally."

⟢ "I said yes before you finished the sentence because food was mentioned."

⟢ "My love language is sending you memes at 2am without context."

⟢ "I'm an acquired taste. If you don't like me, acquire better taste."

⟢ "I cleaned the whole house. Guests are coming. I will not be taking questions about my normal state."

⟢ "You said it would take five minutes. It has been forty five. I aged."

⟢ "I don't have a problem. I have a lifestyle that concerns other people."

⟢ "I wasn't sleeping in the meeting. I was processing with my eyes closed."

⟢ "Sorry I'm late. I didn't want to come and it took longer than expected."

⟢ "I'm a delight. Exhausting, but a delight."

"⟢ You made a budget. Adorable. How long did that last."

⟢ I have the emotional range of someone who was raised by dramatic people and I'm thriving."

[partywithponies]

Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???

[urlocalpyshcopan]

as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name

[brainsforbabyjesus]

for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!

[infamousbrad]

I think I know how this works.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.

[kagedtiger]

Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm

[ninahufflepuff]

Claim your ticket guys:D

[silvaurum]

basketball dracula isn't real dude he can't-- *sudden squeaking noises from the shadows*

[silvaurum]

*two pool toys having sex tumble by in the wind* oh thank god

[silvaurum]

*thunderous slam dunk noise*

[fallout-lou-begas]

Visit Original Link

[snoleopard7]

[socialmaya]

Occasionally forget people genuinely think capitalism is thousands of years old

[sylestial]

One time I was talking about Robin Hood with some coworkers and one guy was like “he was bad because the people he helped learned to expect handouts” and I wanted to be like… okay can you explain how that flawed capitalist propaganda applies to feudalism

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

reminder that capitalism was literally invented in the 16th century

[tayefeth]

That’s an exaggeration. What was invented in the 16th century was mercantilism. Capitalism really dates for the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and cash crops over artisans and merchants. Vulture capitalism, with the notion that companies have no duties other than generating profit, is even younger.

[antique-scarecrow]

Capitalism is only 200 years old and I have to say, they have not been an impressive 200 years

[downtroddendeity]

I think a lot of this comes from the fact that most people don’t know the formal definition of capitalism. We all know the word, we’ve all seen the jokes, but very few people bother to actually define it unless they’re talking about political theory and philosophy, so it’s easy to end up with the impression that Capitalism = Money Can Be Exchanged For Goods And Services.

Capitalism is the economic system where most of the means of production (i.e. everything people need to have to make the stuff that everyone wants) are owned by private individuals or corporations, who then hire people to provide the labor necessary to produce things, with the intent of selling the output at a profit. It’s the difference between “you’re a carpenter and you make a chair and you sell it” and “you’re Richard Q. Richington who owns a chair factory, and you pay people to sell the chairs you paid other people to make and then all the excess money goes back to you.” There have been Richard Q. Richingtons on and off throughout history, but that being the norm for every single industry is a pretty recent development.

[antiterfbutch]

An alarming amount of people seem to think capitalism = all trade, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

[phoenixyfriend]

"Haha, I'm a procrastinator, I sometimes take several days to do an easy task!" is true but like

I am consistently late to work. Because I am sitting on my bed, picking at my legs or watching videos or just staring at the floor.

I do not want to be late to work. I do not want to be late to doctor's appointments. I do not want to be late to things I volunteered to do for fun. I do not want to leave work two hours late because I was just sat at my desk, staring at my phone, unable to convince myself to get up and leave even though my work day was over. I do not want to be sat in my car, doomscrolling for half an hour as my car loses heat to the literal freezing temperatures, because I'm just incapable of making myself move.

But I am! I am always late to things! I am so incredibly bad at getting to things on time and it's partly executive dysfunction and partly a bad sense of time and partly just. Something deeply wrong with me.

IDK I also register the 'took weeks to do an easy task' thing (I haven't cleaned my room in uh. months?) (my dirty laundry is in multiple piles) but I feel like sometimes the cutesy 'single task' thing gets paraded around and the 'oh god I'm ruining my own life because I can't fucking move' is swept under the rug.

[ooo-silly-worms]

Pottery sounds terrifying to me. Every post I see is like "Here's this awesome art I made!! Pray for me that it survives The Kiln™ :')" I don't think I could cope with making art that could quite easily blow up and I have no way of controlling that. You guys are true heroes.

[claypigeonpottery]

@bazanite you are so correct

[meangirlnurse]

oh my god

[meangirlnurse]

[plumslices]

If we don’t microdose delusion we won’t make it through this reality babe….

[leebrontide]

So I remember reading about this study in grad school where they have a bunch of clinically depressed people and a bunch of non-clinically-depressed people a game that was partially chance and partially skill, and asked them to estimate how much control they had over the outcome.

The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.

Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.

Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.

When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.

Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.

The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.

I think we do microdose delusion because sometimes that little overestimation of our chances, of our luck, keeps us swimming that little bit longer, just in case something good happens. And sometimes, that little margin really does make the difference. 

[vanwolffen]

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.

[syn0vial]

hey, don't just leave the quote there! the last line is what MAKES it!

"YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE.  HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?"

[revizyonist]

med people are so annoying "This family's 8 year old child who was about to go through a major surgery and kept crying that she was hungry so they pitied her and gave her food, she then had a heart attack in the surgery. They're so stupid 😒" girl they didn't know that could happen or why it happens. it takes so little time to explain to them that will happen instead of telling them "no food" with no explanation 10 times

[revizyonist]

"Before surgery, your body’s reflexes that protect your airway are relaxed by anesthesia. If there’s food or liquid in your stomach, it will near certainly come back up and go into your lungs, which can cause choking, a severe lung / heart infection or even a heart attack. That’s called aspiration, and it is life-threatening. It's hard, but it's only a single day to prevent near certain death. Not eating or drinking beforehand massively lowers the risk and helps prevent these life threatening situations under anesthesia." <- TIP: patients have brains which allows them to receive information just like you

[ancelineonline]

I have four kids. I’ve had one or another of them need some kind of surgical procedure that requires anesthesia four or five times over the past 15 years.

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

I’m not stupid. I understood that just fine. Hell, my kids would have understood that just fine. But no one bothered to tell us.

[bowditch]

i did know this before having kids (i have six). we have a kid that's needed multiple procedures requiring anesthesia. and every single time, i am asked multiple times if i'm sure he was not given any food or water after a certain point.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

"maybe some people will get nervous and refuse surgery" okay so they need more counseling about risks and anxiety, not less information in a way that actually does endanger their child or themselves!

[arctic-turtle-cassiopeia]

Reblogging to save a life and teach medical professionals basic communication skills

[quakerjoe]

[xx-k1tsun3-k1d-xx]

my fav pokemon fact is that 25% of marill are canonically trans masc

[xx-k1tsun3-k1d-xx]

the gender ratio for azurill is 75% female whilst for marill it’s only 50%.

also look how much happier he is post transition! go on king <3

[xx-k1tsun3-k1d-xx]

happy pride month to transgender marill pokemon <3

[shiverandqueeef]

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

[parkayquarts]

hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

[parkayquarts]

somewhere out there is a guy who meticulously takes screenshots of every individual frame of his favorite tv shows and then painstakingly etches each one onto a roll of film which he puts into his old timey projector and recreates the footage as a silent film with his own lavishly hand-lettered dialogue cards and original score that he plays on his upright piano and charges audiences one shiny penny a play. at last, big media has finally outsmarted ol' Zachary Zoetrope

[theheroheart]

PSA for everyone who doesn't know, explained simply

this is NOT because of blocking screenshots, it's because of HOW streaming sites use your computer's hardware to optimise performance, which means the thing rendering the video and the thing capturing your screen aren't the SAME thing. so they can't talk together.

you can fix this by going to your browser settings, searching for "hardware acceleration", and turning that off.

[team-thickness12]

This also fixes screen sharing to other screens. It has been GODSEND

[lucarleigho]

type this in the toolbar to find this setting in firefox: about:preferences#searchResults

[mctreeleth]

ol' Zachary Zoetrope is back in business!

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.