elavat0r

I have tried something like that before and absolutely hated it. But for your sake, I hope it catches on.

It is also great to take makeup off or products that build up (like sunscreen).

I’ve seen hairspray used on a clear filter to create a similar bloom effect!

Only if it contains no complex entries.

To be fair, I’ve written plenty of useful code as a hobbyist with the help of Chat GPT. Not good for writing anything factual or creative, but it’s a decent assistant at my level.

That was how all image macros looked in back my day, and we liked it!

There are nowhere near enough demotivational posters being dug up from back in the day.

Yes! This stuff certainly raises a ton of questions. I know some, maybe all, of it is probably random “noise” but I’ve always wondered if peripheral states of consciousness let us perceive things that are "real’ (somewhere out there). That’s the great mystery I want to see unraveled in my lifetime.

I have a lot of dream related phenomena that I experience regularly (sleep paralysis, out of body experiences, etc.) but I generally chalk that up to the fact that I probably have some kind of sleep disorder.

But there was one dream I had that I cannot easily dismiss. A few years ago, my grandfather was living alone and declining in health. He and I were extremely close when I was growing up. We (my mom particularly) would go check up on him during the week, and he had home health aids that checked in as well.

One night, I had an unusually vivid dream where I saw him - in blue robes, in a heaven-like setting, happy and healthy and strong. When I woke up, I made sure to journal the dream, as I keep track of significant dreams. Just a few minutes after I finished writing, my mom calls me and tells me that my grandfather’s health aid had showed up and found him lying on the floor; they had thought he had a fall during the night. They sent him to the hospital, but he wasn’t really coherent and was pretty obviously reaching the end.

I visited him as soon as I could and said my goodbyes, and he died the next day. I felt like the dream gave me some sort of closure, like his spirit reached out to me and let me know that he was ready to move on?

I actually had a few dreams after that where he visited me, but we both knew he had died and couldn’t stay. I at least got to share the news with him that I was expecting a child (I found out I was pregnant about 4 months after he died). I have not seen him in a dream since.

Perhaps it was a hypnopompic hallucination? I ask because I have many experiences waking up from nightmares and hearing bizarre sounds or seeing bizarre things. Like ice cream truck sounds outside at 3am. Or seeing the face of an “alien” standing next to my bed.

Hopefully your experience was just a trick of the mind!

I am glad I am not in the dating game at this point in my life. I know I very easily could have been an anxious wreck of a hermit if I was completely on my own. Hopefully not a conspiracy theorist, but I can’t honestly say I don’t have tendencies that could put me there.

The poor relationship between the sexes is something I have morbidly kept my eyes on for a long time. I married pretty young, but I have a good handful of inexplicably single friends, both male and female. None of whom seem to be compatible with each other, or frankly even living in the same perceptual universe. They are all good people, fairly successful, and not being unreasonable in their standards as far as I can tell. But there is just some complete lack of trust or faith in the opposite sex on both ends. It hurts to watch.

I think best case scenario is that matchmaking services and “arranged marriages” (by this I mean voluntary setups through families and social networks, nothing coercive) begin to catch on. There has got to be a way to pair up people who are at least somewhat vetted for trustworthiness and seriousness in seeking companionship, outside of the confusing and alienating social landscape we have developed, or the meat market of online dating. But maybe I am naïve to think that would work.

I put the Jerboa app icon where Baconreader had been on my phone. I kept opening it by reflex. This seems to be working.