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Less-Than-Chaos Theory

@redline-the-senses / redline-the-senses.tumblr.com

"Either I will find a way, or I will make one." she/her pronouns
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Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

Thank you this is the first post about self love that hasn’t made me want to throw things

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leebrontide

This one. This one’s a game changer.

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Happiness Will Come To You.

when tho

When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March

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wizardshark

reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!

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zac--efren

I reblogged this last year and I hung out with blink-182 backstage on March 30. Reblogging again because it worked the first time.

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scientiablr

honestly, last year one of the best days of my life happened in late March

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hi i just created an excel sheet where i can pick a meal and have it autopopulate the ingredients i'll need as a shopping list

i have never felt so smart

OH MY GOD I CAN MAKE THEM DROP DOWN LISTS

THIS IS TRUE POWER

I NEVER HAVE TO DECIDE WHAT TO EAT OR MAKE A GROCERY LIST AGAIN

I CAN MAKE THE MACHINE DO IT FOR ME, AND ALL I HAVE TO DO IS PICK A FOOD FROM A DROPDOWN LIST

OH MY GOD I'M THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE GAME

HI IF YOU WANNA MAKE THIS

I DID IT IN GOOGLE'S EXCEL BC THAT'S WHAT I HAVE ACCESS TO ON MY PERSONAL DEVICE. I IMAGINE EXCEL EXCEL IS PROB SIMILAR.

hi, to make this easier, i made a google account just to make a shareable link for the original i made.

it's viewer only mode, so you can't edit the link itself, but i tested it out, and all you have to do is copy/paste it into a doc of your own, and then you'll be able to edit it no problem.

this way, the only thing you'll need to do is input your own dishes and ingredients and all the formulas will already be good to go.

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the older i get and the closer i am to reaching 30, the more the people around me try to deny me my age. it’s a constant ‘oh you’re just turning 29 again teehee 🤭’ or ‘dont tell your SO that, he’ll leave you for a younger model 😉’ and i just???? hate it?????????

i spent my entire teenaged years fighting for my life. i crawled through the deepest pits of my depression to cling to the promise of a life beyond that pain. i was so convinced that i was going to die young, that i would never see the grace of my age starting with a 2, let alone 3.

so im going to turn 30, and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do to stop me from loving it.

this post was up for like five minutes and already im being told how wrong i am

fuck you, you can kiss my 30 year old ass

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this site has one setting

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jenroses

I’m laughing, but there’s a super useful corollary, which my husband calls “the Red Balloon.” He was a defense lawyer and had a fair number of drug addicts come through, and there is a thing where if you’re like, on your first offense, they’ll do a thing where you can go to treatment and if you complete it they’ll take the conviction off your record.  And he would tell his clients, “Look, everyone’s going to tell you not to do drugs. They’re going to say it over and over again. And it’s like, if people tell you not to think of a white elephant, you’re going to think of a white elephant. But the trick to not thinking about a white elephant is to think of a red balloon. So you need to find your red balloon. For some people it’s yoga. For others it’s woodworking. For some people it’s scrapbooking or gardening or any of a long list of things to do. They focus on that, it’s a lot easier to succeed in ignoring the white elephant.” So yeah, “watch yourself” is one thing… but the better idea is to watch something else. (Even if it’s fanfic about werewolves fucking.)

It’s a form of productive dissociation, and is super, super helpful. It’s easy for me to get bogged down in how much pain I’m in… but some of the most painful periods of my life have also been the most productive, writing-wise, because writing is one of my red balloons. 

There is a phrase I use A LOT in my parenting and my son gets very sick of it, but it’s true:

The thing you practise is the thing you get good at.

You may not intentionally be practicing “being grumpy” but if you don’t put effort into practicing “not being grumpy” then I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing. It’s hard! It’s really hard! Sometimes, for some things, it’s pretty much impossible and that sucks!

But being carefully aware that you are going to get good at the things you do most of is a good way to be more careful of what those things are. If that makes sense.

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bogleech

You gotta appreciate sometimes how tumblr works in such a way that everyone who wants to reblog this interesting or useful psychological advice is also forced to reblog the thing about werewolf fucking

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how much fun are we having in this timeline folks?

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nicki0kaye

Time to download and run all your works through Nightshade before posting them anywhere. Poison the data sets.

GLAZE ALL YOUR ARTS BEFORE YOU POST THEM ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET

Okay but this isn’t just about art either. They’re using your Facebook and Instagram photos. The ones of you and your family and friends.

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fact 1: when playing rpgs i always make up a character and then do my best to rp them. makes a playthrough more interesting

fact 2: this can become a problem if im playing, say, a bethesda game, that often doesnt actually support rping in any meaningful way. if im playing a well written rpg, the problem becomes that none of the pcs i make are idealists prone to helping randos, bc thats whatd theyd have to be in order to justify doing all the side quests im doing

fact 3: this is not a problem in the outer worlds, bc while my captain is not an idealist prone to helping randos, they are a normal person personality wise, which is all you have to be if you wanna help indentured randos in a capitalist hellscape

my captain shutting down the edgewater cannery despite the malnourished masses whining over being out of a job:

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one of the best academic paper titles

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

I still don’t understand

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

  • Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR
  • Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

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HEY DISCORD USERS!!

unfortunately, discord continues to be the Worst Messaging Company Of All Time with its updates, and this time, its one that is not only a privacy violation, not only enabled by default, but ROLLED OUT SILENTLY, MEANING YOU MUST KNOW IT EXISTS TO TURN IT OFF.

i am talking about "clips", an exciting new feature /s that allows people to record you in voice chat without your knowledge or consent! Wow!

fortunately, you can turn this off, but its kinda shitty how they didnt tell you this existed at all, yeah?

settings > clips> the button should be clicked to turn it off

a screenshot of the sidebar of discord's settings screen, reading "my account, profiles, privacy & safety, family center, authorized apps, devices, connections, clips, friend requests"
ALT

(note that it should be ON by default, you will have to click the button to turn it off)

thanks, discord, for Telling Us This Violating Setting Exists In An Update And Making Sure It Is Off By Default. /s.

reblogs are appreciated to spread the word.

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FOLKS, PLEASE…DO YOUSELVES A BIG BIG FAVOR AND STOP USING TURBOTAX!  IT IS USELESS NOW!!!

THE IRS website will let you fill out and file your return THERE ON THE IRS SITE.  You pay like $12 for the actual electronic filing process, and THAT’s IT!

Unless you have tremendous amounts of Schedule D stock shit, TurboTax is NOTHING BUT A RIPOFF!!!

The IRS website is EXCELLENT.  They allow you to look up your past returns, and have every bit of information you MIGHT POSSIBLY NEED!

FUCK TURBOTAX!

LIBERATE YOURSELF FROM IT!!!!!!!

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shammerham

Friendly reminder as well that if you’re making less than $66,000 a year, you don’t need to pay to file your taxes and also all tax-paying softwares (eg rhymes with FurboFax) have a free filing option hidden in their websites. 

Have at it kiddos:

You can also use Freetaxusa Very user friendly.

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luny0

IF THIS MAKES YOU MAD: In 2024 the IRS is testing a new direct tax filing tool that is basically a government-made and -owned TurboTax for people in 13 states

This is a HUGE deal, made possible by funding from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. TurboTax et al are SUPER mad and trying to stop it, which is how you know it’s a great idea :)

This is a huge step towards the end goal of being able to log on, see how much the IRS thinks you owe, and then just confirm or deny - so if you’re eligible, please give it a shot!

Participating states are: Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New York, Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.

The tool will be mobile-friendly and available in Spanish, and the IRS is hiring dedicated customer support to help people via live chat or phone if you need help!!

It’s going to be a limited pilot with a phased rollout, so won’t be immediately available to everyone in those states, but will slowly open up so that they can make sure everything works. They’ve pulled this together on an INSANELY fast timeline, so please give them a round of applause :)

One flag: because of various security rules that the IRS can’t do anything about, the tool will say that you have to verify your identity through facial recognition. YOU CAN OPT OUT OF THIS so please don’t let it stop you.

The Biden admin is working to update these rules (with a huge focus on equity) but unfortunately that takes a while - and in the meantime, the IRS is legally obligated to be super super careful about who gets access to your data! (One of many reasons they’re a better bet than TurboTax)

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