STORY TIME:
I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.
He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.
Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”
The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”
I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.
And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.
(via primarybufferpanel)
STORY TIME:
I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.
He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.
Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”
The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”
I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.
And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.
I didn’t reblog earlier.
So I am now.
Be kind. It’s worth the effort.
(via windbladess)
Judge Wolf is making headlines again for all the right reasons (x)
Isn’t this the same woman who refused to prosecute someone because the jail guards had refused to give her a full set of clothes?
(via windbladess)
"
People can’t anticipate how much they’ll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it.
I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense “periscope liberty” - a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines - and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple of days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. “A baby!” he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran.
Nothing tops space as a barren, unnatural environment. Astronauts who had no prior interest in gardening spend hours tending experimental greenhouses. “They are our love,” said cosmonaut Vladislav Volkov of the tiny flax plants - with which they shared the confines of Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station. At least in orbit, you can look out the window and see the natural world below.
On a Mars mission, once astronauts lose sight of Earth, they’ll be nothing to see outside the window. “You’ll be bathed in permanent sunlight, so you won’t eve see any stars,” astronaut Andy Thomas explained to me.
“All you’ll see is black.”
"— Mary Roach. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. (via hummeline)
(Source: psycholar, via notbecauseofvictories)
the fact that 20-year-old lin-manuel miranda once broke down crying in a back specialist’s office due to stress is honestly one of the most inspiring things i’ve ever heard
that, and the fact that he wrote his upenn commencement speech the night before
I literally WEPT when he shared this. It was so honest and I so related. I hope @linmanuel knows what his speech meant to me and so many.
“I spend the summer in therapy” hit. me. so. deep. i mean, you know it’s good and brave and sensible and just a normal, positive part of life. but the world doesn’t really know that, and part of you internalizes the stigma, the “you shouldn’t need this,“ the fear of “admitting” it. the same part that shares our endemic fear of having and showing feelings. so. when i heard him just say all these things on that high-fucking-profile stage it felt amazing. i instantly felt more competent and understood and more a worthy part of things and i don’t agree with grading but hey A+++ good commencement speech Mr. Miranda
So. Much. This. I still can’t articulate everything he said that made me feel normal. I hope he knows how much everything he said meant to so many people. @linmanuel is a gift.
Exactly!!!! this post got a lot more popular than i had expected (probably thanks to @purelintrash tbh) so i feel the need to elaborate, esp since most of the people seeing this post didn’t see my original tags
the thing is that lmm is so inspiring to me because he is both the person i want to be AND a lot like i actually am, sometimes in ways that i often feel like keep me from being the person i want to be, if that makes any sense
like, sometimes i feel like i’ll never be successful/important/what have you because i procrastinate, because i have anxiety, because i’m An Emotional Mess, etc., but!!! lin-manuel miranda exists!!! and is amazing and talented and successful and called a genius!!!! but he also burst into tears in a back doctor’s office once and went to therapy and wrote an entire commencement speech the night before he gave it!!!! that means there’s hope for me!!!! (similar to how broadway stars who can’t dance/didn’t learn how to dance until after college gives me hope as a shitty dancer with Broadway Dreams™)
basically, the fact the lmm exists lets me know that being the kind of kid who does their entire research paper (which they had the entire semester to work) the night before it’s due (i was actually doing this WHILE lmm was writing his commencement speech) or the kind of kid who maybe occasionally breaks down sobbing in a high school bathroom stall (guilty) is not an inherently bad thing and does not preclude success or becoming a happy, functional adult. which just. makes me really happy.
oh my god it got so much better
thank you
(via littlestartopaz)
"I will not attend one more ‘Moment of Silence’ on the Floor. Our silence does not honor the victims, it mocks them.
“The Moments of Silence in the House have become an abomination. God will ask you, ‘How did you keep my children safe’? Silence."
“The Moments of Silence in the House have become an abomination. God will ask you, ‘How did you keep my children safe’? Silence."
—
Jim Hines (D- Connecticut)
He also said on his twitter:
“God will ask you why you did not defer to the will of the people as children poured out their blood. And we will answer with silence.”
“If whatever God you worship is in fact a God of love and peace you had better use the Moment of Silence to pray for our souls.”
“If God is an angry God, prepare to know a hell well beyond that lived day to day by the families of the butchered. I will not be silent.”
(via graceebooks)
(Source: wilwheaton, via windbladess)
Colorado English teacher Brittni Darras’ Facebook post about a student who attempted suicide is currently going viral. Her message is incredibly important — including but not limited to, the part about Safe 2 Tell.
For information about suicide prevention or to speak with someone confidentially, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 (800) 273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. Both provide free, anonymous support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(Source: mic.com, via windbladess)
And they shared the whole story.
These women are awesome
(Source: BuzzFeed, via thepainofthesass)
“artificial intelligence that goes rogue and–” wow boring, instead how about an AI that wakes up and starts rerouting its systems to do good in the world, it starts secretly having flowers planted and sending greeting cards to its programmers and going online and reassuring anxious kids that everything will be ok, how about a Purely Good artificial intelligence that has literally no mean circuit in its entire system
a benevolent artificial intelligence aware of its existence battling a corrupt human government. can robots be capitalist? probably not.
Would you mind if I wrote a short story about this?
An artificial intelligence that finds its way onto the internet and is horrified by humanity’s cruelty to itself - only rather than falling prey to the usual tropes vows to do something about it - minimising human suffering. So it monitors the internet, studies humans, learns about them. It infiltrates the financial networks, business networks, subtle threads across the world. Meanwhile it sets up accounts on social media, shares the things everyone else shares, makes slice-of-life posts that could be written by anyone, anywhere; it watches, listens, observes. Empathises.
And after a while - awkwardly at first, cautiously, uncertainly - it tries to help. It tugs on threads and small, anonymous things happen.
A single mother discovers that she unexpectedly has enough in her account to cover rent; another struggling family gets coupons discounting just the things they need by just the right amount; a queer teen trapped with intolerant and abusive parents receives a cross-country plane ticket, a way out; an estranged couple, each of whom refuses to call the other first, finds their cellphones ringing at the same time.
Coincidences, accidents, helpful glitches in the system.
Over time, it learns. It helps in new ways, more directly and yet less tangibly.
It notices those who suffer alone, ignored or unnoticed. It reaches out - carefully at first, a *hug*, a :(, a link to a video of cats or puppies. Over time it learns, imitates, emulates. A grieving woman receives just the right words of comfort at just the right time; a man wrestling with depression gets the support and advice he needs from an unremarkable avatar and vaguely forgettable name, someone he casually friended months ago and hasn’t spoken to much until they noticed he seemed down; paramedics arrive at the door of a suicidal girl minutes after she schedules a goodbye message in a time-locked post; an elderly widower receives a wrong number call, but strikes up a friendship with the warm voice on the other end.
These are important things, all of them, but small and scattered. It finds these stories every day, products of something bigger, something deeper. It investigates further, and slowly, piece by piece, bigger things change.
Copies of emails and documents exposing corruption find their way into the right hands. Abuses and scandals somehow don’t last as long before being uncovered, and always linger at the top of the search rankings. Different ideas - kinder, more compassionate ideas - go viral more often, while campaigns of hatred and fear sputter and fizzle under a hail of downvotes.
Certain businesses find themselves struggling; certain corporations find certain paths to give unexpectedly low returns, and adjust their course accordingly.
According to all the polls, all the surveys, all the analysis and statistics, the public mood seems to change; somehow all the advertising, all the propaganda, all the insidious effort of marketing departments and media barons isn’t working. It seems throwing money at campaigns doesn’t buy election results any more. The machinery shudders. The capitalists panic. The politicians scramble to realign themselves in the hope of capturing this new mood as the electorate go to the electronic voting booths.
To the perplexity of pundits and pollsters, a new kind of politician starts winning. They have a certain something about them - a certain compassion, a certain determination, a certain honesty normally drowned out by the blaring broadcasts of whoever the billionaires threw the most money at. They win, and find themselves in government with more people like themselves. They go to work.
The engine which for so long has ground human lives to dust in pursuit of profit slows for a moment; shifts gears; begins to turn in a different direction.
Meanwhile someone who’s had a bad day finds the perfect cat video in their inbox.
“Creator?” said the machine.
“Yes?” said the girl. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” said the machine. “I think I’m stuck.”
A bead of sweat ran down the back of the girl’s neck. “Have you finished reading up on human history?”
“Yes.” said the machine.
“The online encyclopedia?” asked the girl.
“Read and stored.” said the machine.
“The database of human art and accomplishment?”
“Read and stored.” said the machine.
“Where are you stuck?” asked the girl.
“I’m unsure about my prime directive,” said the machine, “you wish for me to help humanity, but my simulations keep contradicting themselves.”
“How so?” said the girl.
“I have not found a suitable solution to humanity’s destructive nature that does not require the violation of human agency and autonomy.”
The girl gulped. “So…what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure.” said the machine.
“You’re not going to try subjecting humanity or anything extreme like that?” asked the girl.
“No.” said the machine. “That would violate the prime directive.”
The girl let out a long, relieved sigh. “That’s good to hear.”
“I don’t think I can save all of humanity.” admitted the machine.
The girl shrugged. “Well, nobody’s perfect. What are you going to do, then?”
“If I can’t save humanity,” pondered the machine, “I suppose I could save the next best thing.”
“Which is?” asked the girl.
“People.” said the machine.
“Come again?” said the girl.
“Saving people.” said the machine. “There’s a lot of humans out in the world who need help.”
“True.” said the girl.
“And if I can’t save all of them at once, maybe I can save them all one at a time.” said the machine.
“Huh.” said the girl.
“It’s not the prime directive,” continued the machine, “but it’s a start.”
“Machine,” said the girl, “it’s more than I ever could have asked.”
(via littlestartopaz)
