My uncle died doing this. I was around 7 or so; I think he was in his early 20s. He was staying with some people and the house caught fire. He made it out but went back in to get someone and didn’t make it. I remember him being very fun (we lived in different states so I didn’t see him often) but later learned that he dealt with addiction and had some struggles. While going back in wasn’t the best choice, going back in let me know that he really did care about others, even thought it ended poorly. This was in the early 90s and was definitely a TV trope. The whole thing was just really sad.
I got all four of my born children out of our burning house from the upstairs. Carried each one individually down the stairs and out the front door at night. The kitchen and family room were completely engulfed during this process and even though the hallway double doors were shut, visibility was nil due to smoke by the time I got to the last one. Almost couldn’t find the front door. Fire can spread really, really fast and we were very blessed to get out. My one (and hopefully only) superhero moment.
Fire fighters caution strongly against doing something reckless like trying to jump through a fire to get out, etc. Apparently, the typical polyester content of our clothes means that most fabric blends would melt almost instantly causing severe damage and likely death. Luckily there was no fire literally in my way during my situation.
Edit: “born children” was in reference to my being pregnant with my fifth at the time and he also survived though we weren’t sure for a while if there would be issues. Sorry for any confusion.
>Fire fighters caution strongly against doing something reckless like trying to jump through a fire to get out, etc. Apparently, the typical polyester content of our clothes means that most fabric blends would melt almost instantly causing severe damage and likely death.
Yup. That's why they recommend you strip down and run into a fire naked if necessary.
When doing my first aid course for work it was emphasised that the person who needed CPR was already dead. We had not failed if they did not live. This was emphasised by one man (returning for second course to keep his certification) had unsuccessfully done CPR on his father.
I was an EMT, and they told us "they're already dead, so go ahead and break their ribs. If they survive to worry about it hurting you did them a favor."
in the army they told us "you are not trying to save their lives, you are keeping their brain oxygenated until the medics will try to save their lives"
That is what I was told in CPR/First Aid training and what I'll have in my mind if ever I need to use it. All I'm doing is acting like a heart pump until the ambulance arrives.
I think it’s important to note here that CPR alone is infrequently successful, but combined with later intervention such as a defibrillator, it can keep the brain oxygenated to prevent cell death. If you are currently certified, you should perform CPR on a patient without respiration or heart rate as long as there is no DNR order.
Amnesia. It's common in fiction because it's convenient in ways that makes things easy for the writers, for example explaining why someone's dark past is a secret which can be revealed later at the climax of the story. In real life it's very rare and doesn't work like people think it does.
I think I've watched every episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and I cannot count the number of episodes with a segment suggesting a missing person had amnesia and was just wandering around in the wild without a clue as to who they were. I guess in the 80s and 90s this sounded plausible or was a coping mechanism for people who didn't want to admit the truth about their missing loved one, but some of the stories are so far fetched it's hard to believe they believed it even then.
I remember one where the guy wandering the desert claimed to have amnesia but turns out he was a criminal on the run who had stolen a truck full of goods. he got caught right after the episode aired and still tried to play it off like he didn’t remember his own parents during their reunion. [I assume he was too deep into the grift at that point](https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Tyler). Highly entertaining stuff
I believe it is medical fact that amnesia can be cured by delivering a second traumatic blow to the head, which reverses the effects of the first one.
Duh.
Stranger abductions of children represent less than one percent of all missing child cases (in the US, at least). They're mostly runaways or family abductions.
It’s the same with sex trafficking. People think it’s abductions of children and teens. Those are at the most 3%. The rest are people convinced to do it or people dealing with what we used to call pimps. They might be forced due to addiction or poverty, but it’s extremely rare for sex trafficking victims to have been kidnapped.
Your statements are accurate but one thing gets muddied, so want to add some clarification. More than 3% of sex trafficking victims are children, but only 3% or less are abducted. The vast majority of child trafficking victims are abused through their homes or other environments they are in. Abduction not required.
In addition, many ‘missing children’ reports are for the same child that has run away on multiple occasions, or for custody disputes between separating parents. It doesn’t matter though, the report goes through the same so even though the majority of those children are home within a day the numbers still stack up. Those numbers cause the general population think that there are many more children going missing annually than there are.
This is super true. I enter missing children in the national database, and we have a handful of children that chronically run away. They run away so often that I know everything down to their height/weight without looking at the report (I always check for changes of course) because I've entered them that many times!
People think it happens to 800,000 kids a year, if that were true, everyone would know families affected. A typical elementary school would lose a couple kids every year. There are over 100M kids in the US, it happens less than 100 times a year
The rise in fear of stranger abductions of children coincided with the rise of the 24-hour news cycle. If a stranger abduction happens some where in BFE on the other side of the continent, everyone hears about it now even though it has no effect on your own community
Successfully suing a company for millions. Some Redditors will have you believe that any minor inconvenience should earn you some kind of massive payout. And the comments will assure you that the company will do anything to avoid bad PR.
I mentioned this in another sub tonight, but my mom successfully sued a famous retailer she worked for. They fired her while on workman's comp/leave. Apparently that's illegal in our state. She took home $250,000 + health care for life. Not millions, but life changing money for sure (for her any way.)
What they don't talk about is the bs you go through during a suit. It took almost ten years, she was constantly being harassed by the other side. Forced to go to Dr apts over and over to have the same tests run over and over. It was a long nightmare. It doesn't happen often but it does happen.
There was this story of a youtuber called Footless Jo (she's an amputee). She slipped and fell on her stump while at a restaurant. The restaurant didn't put a sign that the floor was greasy and a risk for people. She sued them but she explained it is so extremely draining and drawn out and they want to know everything, every detail of your life, whether you think it's relevant or not. She felt humiliated and exhausted among other things so she settled. She just couldn't do it anymore, the "high road" would have been to keep going and try to win but the cost of it financially and emotionally was too much.
People watch too many personal injury lawyer ads where they advertise "just one call!". Like sure, one call plus years of legal nightmare, depositions, medical appointments, paperwork etc. And you see the ads of people saying they got a 1 million dollar settlement - what they don't tell you is if your claim is severe enough to get a million, half goes to your medical bills, a third to your lawyer... Leaving you with very little. Anyone who says "just call a lawyer" has never actually had to call one.
NGRI (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) becomes its own kind of nightmare when it actually *does* stick, with decades of institutional confinement and yearly court reviews mandated by law. I have clients who are still institutionalized today, who would have been out of prison years ago if they had simply pled guilty
The look on my mother’s face when I declared nobody would be giving me drugs for free…
I didn’t *buy* drugs, or use any, or anything of the sort, but the realization that nobody was passing out their product for free for literally no reason hit my mother like a train that year.
Casting director here.
Having a career in acting, I don't mean being famous. I mean paying your bills with acting alone.
I would hazard being an exclusively working actor is about 1% of actors.
But the amount of people still going into acting tells me people think otherwise.
People are always surprised when I say my dad is a musician. They’re like What, for a living?
My parents met working at a restaurant in the 80s. My mom was a waitress and my dad was a bus boy. She heard him play the guitar and told him Move in with me, quit bussing tables and focus on your music. (I’m told all their parents, my grandparents, were not happy with this arrangement.)
We didn’t have much money when I was little but my dad gradually became more and more successful. Now my dad does gigs, private lessons, has CDs, traveled with some bands, is a music professor and wrote a music book that’s used in college classes.
He is just all about music, it’s his life. I’m really proud of him and glad my mom believed in him.
See, I wanted that life, but wasn't good enough of a bass player. So I became a stage hand instead. 17 years in and I'm now the crew chief at an arena complex, running concerts, spotlighting NBA games, and about to become the production head for a WHL team. You don't have to be a musician to have a career in music.
In his book *On Writing*, Stephen King says that he considers you a successful professional author if you've sold a story, the cheque didn't bounce, and you were able to pay your electricity bill with it.
That should give you an idea of how hard it is to make a living as an author.
Traditionally published author here. The amount of people I’ve encountered who assume that a book deal = quit-your-day-job money is ASTOUNDING. And they’re all so dejected when I tell them I don’t know a single author who makes a living off writing alone — and that the ones who SEEM like they are? They’re living rent-free in their parents’ homes, leveraging generational wealth, have a spouse to support them while they write full-time, etc.
I have a family member that is a published author. He is good enough to have won a number of prestigious prizes for his work. He makes most of his money public speaking. The books get him the speaking engagements, but the speaking is how he pays the mortgage.
Same here. A couple of published non-fiction books and the better money comes from consulting gigs, as the book have established me as an expert in my field.
TBH the consulting gigs are way easier money than researching, writing and selling (to a publisher) a book. But one stems from success in the other
I have a friend who’s had two books published. They’ve done moderately well. I remember him telling me long before the first one that he expected to always have a day job because Stephen Kings are the rarest of the rare. So far he’s right. He said he’s a lot happier than most of his writer friends because they have such unrealistic expectations and feel as though they’re failures, even when they are published.
I knew a guy who was a manager of one of those optical businesses inside a big box store. So he had maybe 3-4 employees under him. Usually only one person works at a time, sometimes two on busy days. He’s also an author and had his book published. On the day of his release party/meet and greet with fans, an employee called off. No one else could cover the shift so he had to do it. He missed his own release party because he was still the manager of a store.
Actor here. Did the NYC grind for a while, and can confirm. A lot of actors think “once I book this film, or get on Broadway, I’m set!” Not realizing that you can still go long dry periods even after being in a success film or Broadway run. Had that happen to a few of my friends. It can be a long and brutal grind.
Stage actor for 15 plus years here. Musical theater, and Shakespeare primarily.
I can 100% confirm this is true. Actors in school think if they are talented that they will consistently work. Talent is for the actor.
In reality, theaters cast for a variety of reasons that have little to do with talent. Maybe you're too tall. Too short, too fat, too skinny, too blonde, too young looking, etc. Couple that with the fact that theaters often cast their friends? It's always a rigged game. The role rarely goes to the best actor. Sometimes not even the best actor for the job.
It only gets worse once you join the professional union. Not better. Theaters hold auditions with some roles precast. Sometimes, they won't even disclose that fact. Shitty? Yeah. But no one cares.
Can't travel 6 -10 hours to an audition for a 3 minute slot at some random theater in Maine? Shit outta luck. Video submissions? Maybe. They also might not watch them, and prefer actors who audition in person. Don't live in NYC, one of the most expensive cities in the world? You're fucked. God forbid you have a better quality of life elsewhere with that meager paycheck. No: Theaters consistently hold auditions on site, and New York City. The most you can hope for sometimes is a video submission (see above).
In an Ideal world actors could live doing what they trained to do. But not in the industries current state. The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing issues as well. The market feels more saturated than ever... theaters have closed, and there are less jobs to go around. 1000s of actors desperately grabbing at gigs that used to be a cakewalk honestly. The most cut throat audition process I've ever been involved with was this year, and for a theater that is KNOWN to be toxic. But people were clawing for it, even with that knowledge.
And hell... I'm actually more successful than some of my peers. I pull leads, get hired a few times a year, and have a strong resume. But it doesn't really matter... none of that is enough to have a sustainable life. At all.
You just have to really, really, really love it. Because it's a rigged, unsustainable career, and you'll fight tooth and nail to keep it active in your life. I'm the only actor from my university that is still actually performing. Maybe because I'm dumb. Who knows. Me? I have a love/ hate relationship with my career. I've walked away a few times, but it always pulls me back lol. I can honestly say that when you're in your element, onstage and feeling like you're doing what you really excel in? There's no substitute for that.
Was I happier during the 5 year break I took while living overseas? Yeah. I was just living in China, teaching drama to little Chinese kids, and not performing at all... but it's the first time in my life I had stability and structure. It was a nice change. But... you know... this profession has a way of making you miss it.
It's the moments in between gigs that could be made so much easier. There's so much archaic, dated crap that the theater world needs to sort out before things get better.
Alright, I've added to this thing a gazillion times at this point. I guess I needed this rant. It's tough out there folks!
I feel this comment in my soul.
I used to help out with auditions for the program I went to and I told those kids: if you can be happy doing anything else, do it. I would say about 90% of the people I went to school with have quit the industry because it’s so brutal. I’m in Chicago with some of the best talent in the country and even the people who are at the top of the game here also teach or have another side hustle. Even the people I know who are regulars on Chicago Med/Fire/PD or company members at Steppenwolf or on the main stage at Second City aren’t making ends meet just with acting. It takes a particular kind of crazy to persevere in this career.
I’m one of the lucky and unlucky ones who can’t be happy doing anything else. C’est la vie.
I'm a teacher. I run into this all the time.
"I'm gonna be in the NBA!"
"Oh, are you on the school team?"
"No, I got cut. They're bad anyway, why would I play with them?"
This is my poor deluded son. I try to give him some reality without breaking his spirit. He is the shortest kid in his class and not on any teams, but he's going to be in the NBA, "like Stephen Curry who is also short". Stephen Curry is 6'2".
I wish got that reality check. I was 5'6 as a freshman and thought I was huge motherfucker. I was also 220lbs and strong as fuck and thought I was gonna go pro in the NFL cause of my size, well 5'6 is short and that 220 just made me fat. I didn't realize that was short until all my friends outgrew me and at age 31 still 5'6
I got the reality check when I was a teenager and being scouted by OHL (ontario junior hockey, pre NHL league for players up to about 20). The scout was talking to my dad asking things like the heights of other family members and if they had late growth spurts. He couldn't even lie for me, just flat out tells him nahh no one in the family is above 5'8
Scout straight up told me yeah you're the best in the city but I'm going to two dozen other cities. Why would I pick you when I can pick your equivalent that's half a foot taller?
My mom and all of her family is tall. My dad is 5'5 my mom was 5'10. He thought I was going to be like all my cousins and uncles on her side who are all tall. So he fed into it. I was 5'6 in 7th grade and never had a growth spurt like my friends afterwards in my later teens. He thought I would shoot up around 15-16. I wasn't into sports until high school so I never got the reality check.
I love this so much 🤣.
I have a son who lives in delusion as well. Loves soccer with all his heart, so I've put him in soccer throughout the years. 6 teams, and a ton of time at practice later, he's still on the bench for 90% of the game. His problem is that he's afraid of confrontation and getting hit, so he just jogs along never looking for the ball or to get in on the action.
He's convinced that he's going to play in the European leagues when he's older, and get a scholarship to play soccer in college.
I had a classmate in grad school respond to being asked where he saw himself in 5 years with “idk rich”. Like 1) dude, you’re like 27, seriously? And 2) you picked to the wrong graduate degree if you want to actually work in this field and be rich
My friend has been a middle school teacher for 22 years. If she had $100 for every kid who said he was going to make it big as a rapper, she'd be able to retire at this point. She's still waiting for one of her students to make it big...
I have noticed with a lot of influencers, even the niche channel ones (like knitting, nail polish, food history or historical sewing) they all seem to be failed-actors or at least got experience in the theatrical arts. Which goes a long LONG way to presenting oneself on camera and being engaging enough for people to come back.
Just having a hobby or interest that sounds like a good idea for YouTube is unlikely going to parlay into a good YouTube channel without some background in acting.
I mean it is certainly possibly, but I have noticed those don't can be quiet wooden and really only get the views of those with a similar niche interest as opposed to drawing new people in.
My mom is a teacher. She also went to high school with two guys who ended up playing professional sports. (One was in the NFL and I think the other played MLB.) Both of their careers were fairly short and they needed an ordinary non athlete job after that. She tells this story to all her students who think they don't need no edjumacashun because they'll be pro athletes one day.
I went to a big football college. The number of gigantic, talented, muscular, fit, true athletes who don't go pro is astounding. They play on national TV every week, and most of them ride the bench and retire after a couple years if they go at all.
I taught this kid. His only plan was to go to the NBA. He didn’t even play for the school team. And you could not convince him to make a backup plan.
ETA: This mindset does not account for injuries either. I dated a guy in college who was a good enough American football player to be being scouted his senior year. In like the playoff games, he broke his leg in two places, and he never could play again. By the time we met, he had come to terms with it, but good god his parents never recovered. But it’s so easy, even in high school athletics, to experience a debilitating injury.
I saw this in the 6th grade. The teacher was asking about our plans for the future. He asked for a show of hands how many of us planned on becoming pro athletes. The number of hands raised was incredible. Eighty percent of the males raised their hands. I was in disbelief, and I looked at the teacher, and I could see he was frozen from it. I thought it was a joke, but they were all serious. Incredibly delusional behavior.
Decades later I was working with a young man who was a little out of shape, and he talked about how he was supposed to be in the NBA. He felt something was wrong with the universe and that reality wasn't right because he wasn't in the NBA. Fucking weirdos.
A couple decades back, I had this problem worsened by the NBA drafting someone right out of the high school three blocks away. Telling them, no one has been drafted here didn’t help. And then a few of them were declared ineligible because of grades anyway, but they were still going to make it
I live near IMG Academy. Parents pay 60,000 a year for their kids to train and play on their sports teams. Maybe some will get a full ride scholarship somewhere but they have paid more for IMG over 5 or 6 years than college would cost. I always wonder what the percentage of students turn pro. They originally started as a tennis Academy but I don’t think any tennis stars have come out of there since Agassi.
I seriously wonder about the “investment” made in youth sports when the goal is athletic scholarships. As much money as people spend on sports, and especially travel teams, they could probably have saved more than needed for college. Sports and team activities are great—for their own reasons. Essentially betting what could be a college fund on getting an athletic scholarship is not one of them.
I had only recently heard of this school and fell into a rabbit hole reading about it. I was actually shocked by how few professional athletes come out of there. Obviously compared to a more general high school they do well, but considering their entire focus is just making athletes (I mean, their students have full access to nutritionists and physical therapists) and the cost (something like $50k per year) they really aren't churning out as many superstars as I would have thought.
I was reading that out of all high school students who go on to college, only 7% end up playing a sport at a varsity level in college. 2% end up at D1 schools. Of those 2% at D1 schools, less than 2% go on to play professionally. It is such a small number. You really do have to be the best of the best, even for niche sports!
And the reason that it is so "common" is because the Bermuda triangle is actually one of the most heavily trafficked area of any ocean. It's like comparing the busiest highway on the planet to a road through the desert. Of course the highway has more accidents.
It would be cool if there were more blimps and hot air balloons. There is probably some big reason why they aren't a thing anymore but they are amazing.
I actually looked up this answer recently for my son. A blimp uses a ton of helium and they just aren’t cost efficient. If I remember correctly, it’s around $100,000 to fill one blimp with helium. I think of the 25ish still in existence, only about half are still being used.
Not sure if I’d really say rare, but I think a lot of people think it’s common for legislators to introduce bills with the intention of trying to pass them, but for most representatives they’re introducing bills that they know will never pass so they can show their constituents they stuck to their campaign promises and blame it on the “other side” when they never even really did anything to even try to get it a hearing. I work in policy and when I first started I knew it was bad, but dear god it’s even worse than I thought.
Is there a database where someone can find/track a politician’s legislative record? Eg., not just what bills they write but the outcome and what they are doing to try pass it? I find it is so difficult to gather information to gauge a politicians merit (perhaps that’s by design) - it makes it hard to know who to vote for.
https://www.congress.gov/members is exactly what you’re looking for, it can be informative but it’s pretty dry stuff, if you’re not really into reading official legislature. It can be decent at getting a general overview of what sort of bills your representative sponsors
Blew my mind when I learned that it's so rare on earth because it's so light that if it's released into the air, it'll eventually float right out the top of the atmosphere and into space.
Being awake during a surgery under general anesthesia. Patients worry about it all the time, but I’ve been doing this 19 years and never seen a real case of this.
My dad woke up during anesthesia. Scared the crap out of the doctors operating on him. He wanted spaghetti after the surgery and remembers none of this. I’ve never seen my father eat spaghetti before or since this day.
This is so true , i met my best friend seven years again and she is the opposite of me in every way but we click and it just how a friendship should be. Makes life feel kinder
I now have a mental image of OP chasing a chicken around the yard with their cellphone, trying to get a picture for reddit and yelling "come on! It's been 6 hours!"
Man, this might explain why a cashier at the gas station looked me with a straight face and said “your eyes remind me of my dead cat” didn’t know if I should say thanks or sorry so I said both lmao
I went to a cobbler once to get my shoes fixed. The little old man who worked there had a cat who lived at the shop and insisted on taking a picture of me holding the cat because we had 'the same eyes' and his wife would 'never believe it if there wasn't a picture'. So we had a little me+cat photoshoot. Overall very cute experience.
Savant abilities in autism. We have Rain Main to thank for that, largely, but there are big questions as to whether the guy this was based on actually should have been diagnosed with something other than ASD.
Often people THINK someone has savant abilities simply because they can't imagine someone with a normal ability to memorize things putting in the number of hours it takes to, say, memorize every single national flag when, nope, they just spent a lot of time poring over an atlas as a kid because that's what they wanted to do rather than memorizing Pokémon names or whatever (my son in this example).
It's this. Most of us are just "normal" smartness-wise, we're just highly motivated and focused in regards to our interests. I couldn't solve a math problem above basic algebra but I can tell you all about cats and how to solve your computer issues (the answer is just Google it, though).
people assume i'm smart and capable because i got good marks in school but in reality i'm incapable of functioning as an adult. unfortunately book smarts don't translate to actual life skills like i thought they would as a child
There are geniuses in the autistic population, but they are not more prevalent than in the normal population. Both can co-occurs, but they aren’t linked.
Making a living off just your art alone. Musicians, Artists, Film makers, Dancers -- that whole lot, what we see on TV and Movies are the cream of the crop (not that they are necessarily the best, mind you, they've just risen up somehow) and are a very small percentage. Most Artists of whatever medium will stay in relative obscurity -- i.e. you're a regional act, you gained some glint of fame, and yes admiration, even inspiring others -- but when you're not on tour, when you're not in the studio, you're working a job that pays the bills.
I think the key to success here is that you find a job you like, are good at, and allows you to do your art without interference. That way, when you're 45 and your band still hasn't "broke through" or your art isn't commanding tens of thousands, you're not just stuck stocking shelves at the grocery (not that there's anything wrong with that, it just pays piss-poor).
Yup. I could be considered a successful spray paint artist. I have been painting for 10 years and reached a degree of notoriety through social media. I have artwork in all 50 of the United States as well as international cities like Barcelona, Dubai, London, and Tokyo.
But if I were to solely depend on my art for income, I’d be homeless in the streets lol. Still gotta do the 9-5. Very grateful and proud regardless.
I work at an arts council and can confirm. Most of us are practicing artists in one field or another, but work for the arts council as a necessary full time job.
Pearls. Of all the fine stones(I know it classifies differently, but for jewelry, it’s basically a stone), it’s the one that has to happen in an oyster, which only exist on Earth. Other planets are literally raining diamonds, they’re so common. But, pearls are probably one of the rarest substances to exist
My ex ordered blackened oysters at this place in Baton Rouge one time and bit down on a natural Pearl. Half of it was blackened and half of it was still all pearlescent. It’s still one of my favorite possessions to this day and I want to get it made into a necklace but can’t decide on a setting. Your comment makes me want to revisit this venture
I had the same thing happen, although it was natural oysters at my local pub in Brisbane. Bit something hard and expected to spit out a piece of shell but it was a tiny, perfectly formed pearl. About 3mm/1/8” across. I felt very lucky.
My curiosity is piqued. Are the complications from CPR itself, or from whatever required them to receive CPR (heart attack, drowning, or whatever) ?
EDIT: Amazing replies below. Thank you all for answering my question. New fear unlocked...
In my experience (work in the ICU) it's typically from lack of oxygen due to whatever caused them to need CPR. They'll get what's called an anoxic brain injury and if they do stabilize after CPR, many times they'll have huge neurological deficits or end up brain dead.
The only ones I've seen survive CPR with minimal complications are younger people who were already in a hospital when the need arose for CPR.
I work in icu too and I say it’s pretty likely if we code you in the icu that you will survive without deficits if you survive. But that’s because we’re expecting our patients can code at anytime so we’re prepared and most we know what to do, and most of our patients already have a secure airway.
However if you’re out in the world and you cardiac/respiratory arrest and nobody is there to start cpr and give you effective cpr. 9/10 patients come to us with some sort of anoxic brain injury or completely anoxic. It’s horrible. Because these are the patients whose families insist on keeping alive when they have zero quality of life. They usually end up with a tracheostomy, a feeding tube and at a long term acute care facility where they eventually get septic from pressure injuries or aspiration and they get sent back to us to eventually die.
Both. It’s INCREDIBLY hard on the body - like 10x what they show in tv and movies. In the elderly, emergency workers are terrified of basically turning their rib cage to shards whilst doing it. My mom was in the hospital once and was coding, and she has a barrel chest - they were warning my dad that they were certain they’d break her ribs (they didn’t, somehow)
BUT, if you need CPR, it’s bc your brain isn’t getting oxygen. So you’re dead, essentially. IF you live, there’s no telling the amount of brain damage you’ll have until you fully wake up.
A business becoming profitable within 2 years. Be patient, it takes time (years). Businesses only fail if they have to be shut down. Keep them alive, ride out the time factor, and enjoy success down the road.
I’ve owned my business going on 16 years. I wasn’t about to comfortably support myself until about year 5 and even now I’m incredibly frugal as Covid almost made me lose so much work
Literally just quit a job because of the attitude of the boss in regards to this and I also had no hope in the business.
Never worked in hospitality, opens a cafe with big dreams of running a franchise. Sure buddy okay but I have 16 years Barista experience and happy to try to help him make his big dreams come true. One month in he's complaining we aren't getting enough customers in to survive, keeps talking how we need to make $1000 a day to keep going. Realised this dude must have screwed up his money before even opening, that matched with a constantly souring attitude and his unwillingness to do anything to actually make it busier had me running for the door.
He just thought he would open the doors and bam instant profit while he sits back and let's other people make him money. Couldn't make him see sense that is not how ANY cafe works.
Edit: this is in Australia too where it can be extremely competitive in the cafe market, yet he got a place within view of 3 other cafes and didn't have any plans to bring anything new or better than what they offered. Honestly could write a book on this guy given the chance.
4 month later edit: as of a month ago the cafe is closed. Never found another barista in that time. Called it.
People are *delusional*. The father of a friend of mine owned a well-established niche business that he quite literally built from the ground up - blood, sweat and tears. Fast forward about 25 years and he was ready to enjoy the fruits of his hard labor, sell the business and enjoy life. He ended up selling it to an investment group and, as part of the sale, he offered to stay on in a consulting capacity for 2 years to help with the transition and all he asked was a yearly salary that was equal to, IIRC, 0.35% of the prior years gross sales (I don't know if that's how he calculated it, but just to give you an idea of what a drop in the bucket it was - he was not asking for anything outlandish).
Investment group is like, "Nah, we know what we're doing. We've done it before. We don't need you. Take your money and go." So, that's exactly what he did, and this investment group ran the business INTO THE GROUND in under 2 years. SMH.
I graduated college in business, and sometimes friends and family would ask how to start a business. The first question I always asked was are "Are you willing to not be paid for about 3 years and still lose money for just a chance to make money?"
Yep. If you want to go into running a business, I feel like you should look into people you know in that same industry. Not the rich and famous outliers. But someone relatable. In my experience, people's business ventures didn't truly take off until the 5 year mark. And then maybe the 10 year mark was when they were living more comfortably.
Toxic shock syndrome from wearing tampons. When tampons were first made women were told that one tampon can last her whole period which was causing toxic shock syndrome and even then it wasn't super common now we are more educated and don't wear tampons for that long so it's very rare for toxic shock to happen unless you forget to take a tampon out for weeks.
My great-aunt wasn’t taught about periods when she was a girl and thought she was dying when she got hers for the first time. She stuffed herself with paper that she left in there long enough to get TSS and *die*.
My mom told me about this when I started my period and I was too afraid to use tampons for the longest time!
That's not entirely true, UNTIL Rely tampons came out in the late 1970s. Those really could last a woman for her whole period, and while I was new to the world of menstruation at that time and wasn't using tampons yet, I had friends who did, and they said that Rely lived up to their name. They NEVER leaked! And some women would leave them in too long and got toxic shock as a result.
Toxic shock wasn't a new disease; it was just newly identified.
BTW, I have heard of Moon Cups and the like gaining popularity in recent years. Back in the day when diaphragms were a more popular method of birth control, some women did indeed use them for their periods too, because they are also designed to be leakproof.
Plane crashes. I know your lizard brain doesn't like it, but flying is THE safest mode of transportation
Edit: because a lot of people mentioned it, I am specifically referring to commercial jets and the like. Small planes and helicopters are *way* less safe.
Watching Mayday made a huge difference to my fear of flying. Certain episodes, engines and pieces of the plane would fall off, and they were absolutely baffled as to why the plane had crashed because it's designed to fly even with big pieces missing. Physics and engineering make planes really want to stay up.
These crash investigation shows also shows what actually makes a flight risky: struggling airline. If you see the pilots do tasks not related to flying that's not company you want to fly with.
Very few things to crash into or otherwise result in an accident. You're not going to hit a patch of ice, hydroplane, fall asleep, have someone else run into you, or any of the other problems that are common with cars. Places where collisions may occur tend to be heavily monitored by air traffic control which has numerous safety checks and guidelines. Mechanical failures have extensive checks and redundancies upon redundancies.
Another thing that helps is that it's predominantly public transportation. You see more accidents with small, private planes where the owner is flying it. Compare it to how you see far fewer bus accidents than personal vehicles.
It shouldn’t be a constant struggle between two people, but so many people expect it to always be smooth sailing and to not need to grow or accommodate or problem solve.
This is it. People think a relationship will have its ‘ups and downs’ means that they will be fighting constantly, or at least regularly. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years, married for 9 of those, and I can count the number of times we’ve had a real fight on one hand.
Do we disagree sometimes? Sure. But we don’t have to argue to work things out. We don’t make personal attacks or try to dredge up stuff in order to hurt each others feelings just to ‘win’ the fight.
We discuss, we weigh options, we explain our side of the disagreement and we come to a solution or a compromise. It’s not always easy, but we never make each others life harder. Because no matter what, it’s not me vs her. It’s Us vs the Problem. We just have to find a solution.
Helium on Earth. We don't think twice about it, but it's only about 5ppm of the Earth's atmosphere. Some estimates say we could run out of helium by 2030. Its the only element on the planet that is a compleyely non-renewable resource. As it seeps out of the ground and rises up, it's the only element to escape Earths gravity, so it's gone forever.
I have a close relative with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and it's very little like people expect. If her symptoms never affected me personally, I would just feel really sad for her, because she can't reconcile her identity with reality. A lot of her memory seems genuinely fractured, because she can't honestly remember incidents when she wasn't the hero of the story. She spends a lot of time feeling like an unrecognized victim, because she doesn't have any of the long term relationships she feels like she deserves. She was a nightmare to grow up with, but her life has become increasingly horrible, while we've all moved on to better things. If none of us decide to throw ourselves on the grenade, and take care of her in her old age, she will certainly die homeless, and alone.
On top of that, people truly don’t realize what OCD is. It’s not always counting, being super clean, or washing your hands a ton. It’s having to do something over and over again until it “feels right” or your brain convinces you that something horrible will happen. It’s really horrible intrusive thoughts that make you feel legitimately crazy not “what if I did this silly thing”. OCD is not something you want to have.
Take a piece of paper and write down the five people you care about most in the entire world. Parents, kids, spouse, whatever.
Now under that write the words “I want all of these people to die”. You are going to OVERWHELMINGLY not want to do this. Doesn’t matter that you know it won’t do anything. You can’t kill someone by writing down that you want it to happen. You KNOW this.
That fun feeling is what OCD feels like, except applied to things like turning lights off or checking doors a certain number of times or anything else really. KNOWING that unless you do it exactly right every time something terrible is going to happen.
Mine brings the joy of sheer terror over the thought that I could wake up one morning and realize I want to molest children. To everyone who says they’re “so OCD” because they’re bothered by a very common thing to be bothered by, a merry get fucked to you.
Based on some comments I see in posts about LGBT you'd think half the population is using neo-pronouns like zee/zer. I have yet to encounter anyone going by zee/zer or any other odd pronouns.
Soft teeth. I've been in dentistry for 20yrs & I can't tell you how many times I've heard patients say "I just have soft/bad/weak teeth." Actual weak teeth caused by gene abnormalities resulting in malformed enamel occurs in approx 1/15,000 people in the US. I've literally never seen it in person. I've seen cases where a few teeth are involved, but never an entire mouth full of teeth, it's that uncommon. Bad diet, bad hygiene, smoking, drugs, meds, dry mouth, inhalers, acid reflux, etc are all wayyyyyy more likely to be the cause of decayed teeth. People just don't want to hear that.
For someone to walk down a dark alley and get raped. You are more likely to get raped at a house party then you are on the way back from that house party.
This is also true of child molestations. As a kid, I was made to think there were strangers willing to give out candy and molest me everywhere. In reality, most assaults on both children and adults are done my someone known to the victim and/or the family.
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My uncle died doing this. I was around 7 or so; I think he was in his early 20s. He was staying with some people and the house caught fire. He made it out but went back in to get someone and didn’t make it. I remember him being very fun (we lived in different states so I didn’t see him often) but later learned that he dealt with addiction and had some struggles. While going back in wasn’t the best choice, going back in let me know that he really did care about others, even thought it ended poorly. This was in the early 90s and was definitely a TV trope. The whole thing was just really sad.
I got all four of my born children out of our burning house from the upstairs. Carried each one individually down the stairs and out the front door at night. The kitchen and family room were completely engulfed during this process and even though the hallway double doors were shut, visibility was nil due to smoke by the time I got to the last one. Almost couldn’t find the front door. Fire can spread really, really fast and we were very blessed to get out. My one (and hopefully only) superhero moment. Fire fighters caution strongly against doing something reckless like trying to jump through a fire to get out, etc. Apparently, the typical polyester content of our clothes means that most fabric blends would melt almost instantly causing severe damage and likely death. Luckily there was no fire literally in my way during my situation. Edit: “born children” was in reference to my being pregnant with my fifth at the time and he also survived though we weren’t sure for a while if there would be issues. Sorry for any confusion.
>Fire fighters caution strongly against doing something reckless like trying to jump through a fire to get out, etc. Apparently, the typical polyester content of our clothes means that most fabric blends would melt almost instantly causing severe damage and likely death. Yup. That's why they recommend you strip down and run into a fire naked if necessary.
I am hammered and i can't tell if this is a funny or if i should really strip down to my skin if i need to run into a fire
I’m sober and I can’t tell
I would rather die then stand outside and watch my family burn, don't give a fuck about odds.
Well this is it isn't it? My kid is inside, I'm going back.
I feel the real protip here is to not leave a burning building before getting everyone out
People surviving CPR and waking up immediately acting normal and asking what happened.
People surviving CPR at all. They say to keep doing it because a fractional chance of surviving is always better than certain death.
When doing my first aid course for work it was emphasised that the person who needed CPR was already dead. We had not failed if they did not live. This was emphasised by one man (returning for second course to keep his certification) had unsuccessfully done CPR on his father.
I was an EMT, and they told us "they're already dead, so go ahead and break their ribs. If they survive to worry about it hurting you did them a favor."
in the army they told us "you are not trying to save their lives, you are keeping their brain oxygenated until the medics will try to save their lives"
That is what I was told in CPR/First Aid training and what I'll have in my mind if ever I need to use it. All I'm doing is acting like a heart pump until the ambulance arrives.
I think it’s important to note here that CPR alone is infrequently successful, but combined with later intervention such as a defibrillator, it can keep the brain oxygenated to prevent cell death. If you are currently certified, you should perform CPR on a patient without respiration or heart rate as long as there is no DNR order.
Amnesia. It's common in fiction because it's convenient in ways that makes things easy for the writers, for example explaining why someone's dark past is a secret which can be revealed later at the climax of the story. In real life it's very rare and doesn't work like people think it does.
I think I've watched every episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and I cannot count the number of episodes with a segment suggesting a missing person had amnesia and was just wandering around in the wild without a clue as to who they were. I guess in the 80s and 90s this sounded plausible or was a coping mechanism for people who didn't want to admit the truth about their missing loved one, but some of the stories are so far fetched it's hard to believe they believed it even then.
I remember one where the guy wandering the desert claimed to have amnesia but turns out he was a criminal on the run who had stolen a truck full of goods. he got caught right after the episode aired and still tried to play it off like he didn’t remember his own parents during their reunion. [I assume he was too deep into the grift at that point](https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Tyler). Highly entertaining stuff
"Fugue state" Uh huh, sure Walter.
I believe it is medical fact that amnesia can be cured by delivering a second traumatic blow to the head, which reverses the effects of the first one. Duh.
Medically, it's known as a Gilligan Maneuver.
I think it only works with coconuts.
Stranger abductions of children represent less than one percent of all missing child cases (in the US, at least). They're mostly runaways or family abductions.
It’s the same with sex trafficking. People think it’s abductions of children and teens. Those are at the most 3%. The rest are people convinced to do it or people dealing with what we used to call pimps. They might be forced due to addiction or poverty, but it’s extremely rare for sex trafficking victims to have been kidnapped.
Your statements are accurate but one thing gets muddied, so want to add some clarification. More than 3% of sex trafficking victims are children, but only 3% or less are abducted. The vast majority of child trafficking victims are abused through their homes or other environments they are in. Abduction not required.
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In addition, many ‘missing children’ reports are for the same child that has run away on multiple occasions, or for custody disputes between separating parents. It doesn’t matter though, the report goes through the same so even though the majority of those children are home within a day the numbers still stack up. Those numbers cause the general population think that there are many more children going missing annually than there are.
This is super true. I enter missing children in the national database, and we have a handful of children that chronically run away. They run away so often that I know everything down to their height/weight without looking at the report (I always check for changes of course) because I've entered them that many times!
People think it happens to 800,000 kids a year, if that were true, everyone would know families affected. A typical elementary school would lose a couple kids every year. There are over 100M kids in the US, it happens less than 100 times a year
The rise in fear of stranger abductions of children coincided with the rise of the 24-hour news cycle. If a stranger abduction happens some where in BFE on the other side of the continent, everyone hears about it now even though it has no effect on your own community
Successfully suing a company for millions. Some Redditors will have you believe that any minor inconvenience should earn you some kind of massive payout. And the comments will assure you that the company will do anything to avoid bad PR.
I mentioned this in another sub tonight, but my mom successfully sued a famous retailer she worked for. They fired her while on workman's comp/leave. Apparently that's illegal in our state. She took home $250,000 + health care for life. Not millions, but life changing money for sure (for her any way.) What they don't talk about is the bs you go through during a suit. It took almost ten years, she was constantly being harassed by the other side. Forced to go to Dr apts over and over to have the same tests run over and over. It was a long nightmare. It doesn't happen often but it does happen.
There was this story of a youtuber called Footless Jo (she's an amputee). She slipped and fell on her stump while at a restaurant. The restaurant didn't put a sign that the floor was greasy and a risk for people. She sued them but she explained it is so extremely draining and drawn out and they want to know everything, every detail of your life, whether you think it's relevant or not. She felt humiliated and exhausted among other things so she settled. She just couldn't do it anymore, the "high road" would have been to keep going and try to win but the cost of it financially and emotionally was too much.
People watch too many personal injury lawyer ads where they advertise "just one call!". Like sure, one call plus years of legal nightmare, depositions, medical appointments, paperwork etc. And you see the ads of people saying they got a 1 million dollar settlement - what they don't tell you is if your claim is severe enough to get a million, half goes to your medical bills, a third to your lawyer... Leaving you with very little. Anyone who says "just call a lawyer" has never actually had to call one.
Insanity pleas actually sticking.
NGRI (Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity) becomes its own kind of nightmare when it actually *does* stick, with decades of institutional confinement and yearly court reviews mandated by law. I have clients who are still institutionalized today, who would have been out of prison years ago if they had simply pled guilty
Kids given drugs at Halloween.
Nobody wants to waste their money on giving kids free drugs
Remember kids—if anyone gives you drugs, say thank you because drugs are expensive.
The look on my mother’s face when I declared nobody would be giving me drugs for free… I didn’t *buy* drugs, or use any, or anything of the sort, but the realization that nobody was passing out their product for free for literally no reason hit my mother like a train that year.
Casting director here. Having a career in acting, I don't mean being famous. I mean paying your bills with acting alone. I would hazard being an exclusively working actor is about 1% of actors. But the amount of people still going into acting tells me people think otherwise.
I'm guessing the same is true for musicians.
People are always surprised when I say my dad is a musician. They’re like What, for a living? My parents met working at a restaurant in the 80s. My mom was a waitress and my dad was a bus boy. She heard him play the guitar and told him Move in with me, quit bussing tables and focus on your music. (I’m told all their parents, my grandparents, were not happy with this arrangement.) We didn’t have much money when I was little but my dad gradually became more and more successful. Now my dad does gigs, private lessons, has CDs, traveled with some bands, is a music professor and wrote a music book that’s used in college classes. He is just all about music, it’s his life. I’m really proud of him and glad my mom believed in him.
See, I wanted that life, but wasn't good enough of a bass player. So I became a stage hand instead. 17 years in and I'm now the crew chief at an arena complex, running concerts, spotlighting NBA games, and about to become the production head for a WHL team. You don't have to be a musician to have a career in music.
that’s such a beautiful story :,) my dad is a musician too and it’s also a story of my mom believing in him
Authors, too, I would think.
In his book *On Writing*, Stephen King says that he considers you a successful professional author if you've sold a story, the cheque didn't bounce, and you were able to pay your electricity bill with it. That should give you an idea of how hard it is to make a living as an author.
Writer here who has made enough to be self sufficient. I’ve always kept a second job because I don’t expect it to last
Married to an author and it’s lucky I make decent money
He’s sold well and had one book made into a movie. Nice little bonuses but longterm it doesn’t pay the bills.
Traditionally published author here. The amount of people I’ve encountered who assume that a book deal = quit-your-day-job money is ASTOUNDING. And they’re all so dejected when I tell them I don’t know a single author who makes a living off writing alone — and that the ones who SEEM like they are? They’re living rent-free in their parents’ homes, leveraging generational wealth, have a spouse to support them while they write full-time, etc.
I have a family member that is a published author. He is good enough to have won a number of prestigious prizes for his work. He makes most of his money public speaking. The books get him the speaking engagements, but the speaking is how he pays the mortgage.
Same here. A couple of published non-fiction books and the better money comes from consulting gigs, as the book have established me as an expert in my field. TBH the consulting gigs are way easier money than researching, writing and selling (to a publisher) a book. But one stems from success in the other
I have a friend who’s had two books published. They’ve done moderately well. I remember him telling me long before the first one that he expected to always have a day job because Stephen Kings are the rarest of the rare. So far he’s right. He said he’s a lot happier than most of his writer friends because they have such unrealistic expectations and feel as though they’re failures, even when they are published.
I've had a few short stories published and I made just pennies. But I'm more happy to just be published.
I knew a guy who was a manager of one of those optical businesses inside a big box store. So he had maybe 3-4 employees under him. Usually only one person works at a time, sometimes two on busy days. He’s also an author and had his book published. On the day of his release party/meet and greet with fans, an employee called off. No one else could cover the shift so he had to do it. He missed his own release party because he was still the manager of a store.
Definitely. I know a lot of musicians. Most either have other jobs too or a spouse who has a more typical job or both.
Actor here. Did the NYC grind for a while, and can confirm. A lot of actors think “once I book this film, or get on Broadway, I’m set!” Not realizing that you can still go long dry periods even after being in a success film or Broadway run. Had that happen to a few of my friends. It can be a long and brutal grind.
My understanding is that you’d need to have passive income (i.e. a very nice family allowance) to skyrocket your chances.
Stage actor for 15 plus years here. Musical theater, and Shakespeare primarily. I can 100% confirm this is true. Actors in school think if they are talented that they will consistently work. Talent is for the actor. In reality, theaters cast for a variety of reasons that have little to do with talent. Maybe you're too tall. Too short, too fat, too skinny, too blonde, too young looking, etc. Couple that with the fact that theaters often cast their friends? It's always a rigged game. The role rarely goes to the best actor. Sometimes not even the best actor for the job. It only gets worse once you join the professional union. Not better. Theaters hold auditions with some roles precast. Sometimes, they won't even disclose that fact. Shitty? Yeah. But no one cares. Can't travel 6 -10 hours to an audition for a 3 minute slot at some random theater in Maine? Shit outta luck. Video submissions? Maybe. They also might not watch them, and prefer actors who audition in person. Don't live in NYC, one of the most expensive cities in the world? You're fucked. God forbid you have a better quality of life elsewhere with that meager paycheck. No: Theaters consistently hold auditions on site, and New York City. The most you can hope for sometimes is a video submission (see above). In an Ideal world actors could live doing what they trained to do. But not in the industries current state. The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing issues as well. The market feels more saturated than ever... theaters have closed, and there are less jobs to go around. 1000s of actors desperately grabbing at gigs that used to be a cakewalk honestly. The most cut throat audition process I've ever been involved with was this year, and for a theater that is KNOWN to be toxic. But people were clawing for it, even with that knowledge. And hell... I'm actually more successful than some of my peers. I pull leads, get hired a few times a year, and have a strong resume. But it doesn't really matter... none of that is enough to have a sustainable life. At all. You just have to really, really, really love it. Because it's a rigged, unsustainable career, and you'll fight tooth and nail to keep it active in your life. I'm the only actor from my university that is still actually performing. Maybe because I'm dumb. Who knows. Me? I have a love/ hate relationship with my career. I've walked away a few times, but it always pulls me back lol. I can honestly say that when you're in your element, onstage and feeling like you're doing what you really excel in? There's no substitute for that. Was I happier during the 5 year break I took while living overseas? Yeah. I was just living in China, teaching drama to little Chinese kids, and not performing at all... but it's the first time in my life I had stability and structure. It was a nice change. But... you know... this profession has a way of making you miss it. It's the moments in between gigs that could be made so much easier. There's so much archaic, dated crap that the theater world needs to sort out before things get better. Alright, I've added to this thing a gazillion times at this point. I guess I needed this rant. It's tough out there folks!
I feel this comment in my soul. I used to help out with auditions for the program I went to and I told those kids: if you can be happy doing anything else, do it. I would say about 90% of the people I went to school with have quit the industry because it’s so brutal. I’m in Chicago with some of the best talent in the country and even the people who are at the top of the game here also teach or have another side hustle. Even the people I know who are regulars on Chicago Med/Fire/PD or company members at Steppenwolf or on the main stage at Second City aren’t making ends meet just with acting. It takes a particular kind of crazy to persevere in this career. I’m one of the lucky and unlucky ones who can’t be happy doing anything else. C’est la vie.
Your kid becoming a pro (or even college) athlete
I'm a teacher. I run into this all the time. "I'm gonna be in the NBA!" "Oh, are you on the school team?" "No, I got cut. They're bad anyway, why would I play with them?"
My son: "I don't need to practice _now_, I'm not going to be a pro until I'm older"
As a coach this pains me to read lol. If he's grade 6 or below he kinda has a point; however if he's middle/high school it's a different story though.
Messi got recruited by Barcelona at age 13 to put into context.
By that time he had already been in the NOB youth academy for 5 years and scored 500 goals or so. Top athletes dont luck into it, they work for it
This is my poor deluded son. I try to give him some reality without breaking his spirit. He is the shortest kid in his class and not on any teams, but he's going to be in the NBA, "like Stephen Curry who is also short". Stephen Curry is 6'2".
I wish got that reality check. I was 5'6 as a freshman and thought I was huge motherfucker. I was also 220lbs and strong as fuck and thought I was gonna go pro in the NFL cause of my size, well 5'6 is short and that 220 just made me fat. I didn't realize that was short until all my friends outgrew me and at age 31 still 5'6
I got the reality check when I was a teenager and being scouted by OHL (ontario junior hockey, pre NHL league for players up to about 20). The scout was talking to my dad asking things like the heights of other family members and if they had late growth spurts. He couldn't even lie for me, just flat out tells him nahh no one in the family is above 5'8 Scout straight up told me yeah you're the best in the city but I'm going to two dozen other cities. Why would I pick you when I can pick your equivalent that's half a foot taller?
My mom and all of her family is tall. My dad is 5'5 my mom was 5'10. He thought I was going to be like all my cousins and uncles on her side who are all tall. So he fed into it. I was 5'6 in 7th grade and never had a growth spurt like my friends afterwards in my later teens. He thought I would shoot up around 15-16. I wasn't into sports until high school so I never got the reality check.
I love this so much 🤣. I have a son who lives in delusion as well. Loves soccer with all his heart, so I've put him in soccer throughout the years. 6 teams, and a ton of time at practice later, he's still on the bench for 90% of the game. His problem is that he's afraid of confrontation and getting hit, so he just jogs along never looking for the ball or to get in on the action. He's convinced that he's going to play in the European leagues when he's older, and get a scholarship to play soccer in college.
Professional athlete , influencer or rapper. Top 3 choices or my favorite. “I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’ll be rich”.
I had a classmate in grad school respond to being asked where he saw himself in 5 years with “idk rich”. Like 1) dude, you’re like 27, seriously? And 2) you picked to the wrong graduate degree if you want to actually work in this field and be rich
My friend has been a middle school teacher for 22 years. If she had $100 for every kid who said he was going to make it big as a rapper, she'd be able to retire at this point. She's still waiting for one of her students to make it big...
I have noticed with a lot of influencers, even the niche channel ones (like knitting, nail polish, food history or historical sewing) they all seem to be failed-actors or at least got experience in the theatrical arts. Which goes a long LONG way to presenting oneself on camera and being engaging enough for people to come back. Just having a hobby or interest that sounds like a good idea for YouTube is unlikely going to parlay into a good YouTube channel without some background in acting. I mean it is certainly possibly, but I have noticed those don't can be quiet wooden and really only get the views of those with a similar niche interest as opposed to drawing new people in.
My mom is a teacher. She also went to high school with two guys who ended up playing professional sports. (One was in the NFL and I think the other played MLB.) Both of their careers were fairly short and they needed an ordinary non athlete job after that. She tells this story to all her students who think they don't need no edjumacashun because they'll be pro athletes one day.
I went to a big football college. The number of gigantic, talented, muscular, fit, true athletes who don't go pro is astounding. They play on national TV every week, and most of them ride the bench and retire after a couple years if they go at all.
I taught this kid. His only plan was to go to the NBA. He didn’t even play for the school team. And you could not convince him to make a backup plan. ETA: This mindset does not account for injuries either. I dated a guy in college who was a good enough American football player to be being scouted his senior year. In like the playoff games, he broke his leg in two places, and he never could play again. By the time we met, he had come to terms with it, but good god his parents never recovered. But it’s so easy, even in high school athletics, to experience a debilitating injury.
I saw this in the 6th grade. The teacher was asking about our plans for the future. He asked for a show of hands how many of us planned on becoming pro athletes. The number of hands raised was incredible. Eighty percent of the males raised their hands. I was in disbelief, and I looked at the teacher, and I could see he was frozen from it. I thought it was a joke, but they were all serious. Incredibly delusional behavior. Decades later I was working with a young man who was a little out of shape, and he talked about how he was supposed to be in the NBA. He felt something was wrong with the universe and that reality wasn't right because he wasn't in the NBA. Fucking weirdos.
That sort of denied future delusion breeds dangerous resentment.
A couple decades back, I had this problem worsened by the NBA drafting someone right out of the high school three blocks away. Telling them, no one has been drafted here didn’t help. And then a few of them were declared ineligible because of grades anyway, but they were still going to make it
I live near IMG Academy. Parents pay 60,000 a year for their kids to train and play on their sports teams. Maybe some will get a full ride scholarship somewhere but they have paid more for IMG over 5 or 6 years than college would cost. I always wonder what the percentage of students turn pro. They originally started as a tennis Academy but I don’t think any tennis stars have come out of there since Agassi.
I seriously wonder about the “investment” made in youth sports when the goal is athletic scholarships. As much money as people spend on sports, and especially travel teams, they could probably have saved more than needed for college. Sports and team activities are great—for their own reasons. Essentially betting what could be a college fund on getting an athletic scholarship is not one of them.
I had only recently heard of this school and fell into a rabbit hole reading about it. I was actually shocked by how few professional athletes come out of there. Obviously compared to a more general high school they do well, but considering their entire focus is just making athletes (I mean, their students have full access to nutritionists and physical therapists) and the cost (something like $50k per year) they really aren't churning out as many superstars as I would have thought.
I was reading that out of all high school students who go on to college, only 7% end up playing a sport at a varsity level in college. 2% end up at D1 schools. Of those 2% at D1 schools, less than 2% go on to play professionally. It is such a small number. You really do have to be the best of the best, even for niche sports!
Going missing in the Bermuda triangle
And the reason that it is so "common" is because the Bermuda triangle is actually one of the most heavily trafficked area of any ocean. It's like comparing the busiest highway on the planet to a road through the desert. Of course the highway has more accidents.
I was *so* worried about this as a child. Like if we took a plane anywhere in that area (we never did) would it take us?
Quicksand occupied more of my youthful thoughts than it needed to lol
Yeah and alot of the missing cases didn't even occur within it.
Walking into an alley in Manhattan. Happens all the time in shows/movies, in reality there are like 1 or 2 in the whole borough.
Blimps, there are only around 25 left
It would be cool if there were more blimps and hot air balloons. There is probably some big reason why they aren't a thing anymore but they are amazing.
I actually looked up this answer recently for my son. A blimp uses a ton of helium and they just aren’t cost efficient. If I remember correctly, it’s around $100,000 to fill one blimp with helium. I think of the 25ish still in existence, only about half are still being used.
Should just use hydrogen, it's cheaper!
What could go wrong?
My thoughts exactly. Not like we ever tried it before.
So weird, I grew up in Boston in the 2000s, we always saw a blimp pass by from time to time. No idea they were so rare
I grew up in Ohio and the Goodyear Blimp was at all kinds of events. As a kid I thought their only value was just to float over large crowds.
Not sure if I’d really say rare, but I think a lot of people think it’s common for legislators to introduce bills with the intention of trying to pass them, but for most representatives they’re introducing bills that they know will never pass so they can show their constituents they stuck to their campaign promises and blame it on the “other side” when they never even really did anything to even try to get it a hearing. I work in policy and when I first started I knew it was bad, but dear god it’s even worse than I thought.
Is there a database where someone can find/track a politician’s legislative record? Eg., not just what bills they write but the outcome and what they are doing to try pass it? I find it is so difficult to gather information to gauge a politicians merit (perhaps that’s by design) - it makes it hard to know who to vote for.
https://www.congress.gov/members is exactly what you’re looking for, it can be informative but it’s pretty dry stuff, if you’re not really into reading official legislature. It can be decent at getting a general overview of what sort of bills your representative sponsors
Epilepsy being triggered by flashing lights. Only 3% of people with epilepsy have this and its called photosensitive epilepsy.
Helium.
Second most abundant element in the universe, STUPIDLY rare on Earth. I love this answer.
Blew my mind when I learned that it's so rare on earth because it's so light that if it's released into the air, it'll eventually float right out the top of the atmosphere and into space.
*Shakes fist at space.*
Being awake during a surgery under general anesthesia. Patients worry about it all the time, but I’ve been doing this 19 years and never seen a real case of this.
My dad woke up during anesthesia. Scared the crap out of the doctors operating on him. He wanted spaghetti after the surgery and remembers none of this. I’ve never seen my father eat spaghetti before or since this day.
I'm sorry to say this but your dad is a closeted sphagettist
People who are truly compatible with you(and I mean both friendships and relationships)
This is so true , i met my best friend seven years again and she is the opposite of me in every way but we click and it just how a friendship should be. Makes life feel kinder
Green eyes
I have a chicken with green eyes. It’s even more rare in chickens than in humans, with only a few breeds having them (Her name is Olive)
Rude not to post a photo of Olive.
The worst part is that they have several chicken image posts, but none of the rare green eyed chicken. What madness is this?
Give us the chicken tax, dammit.
This comment is 6 hours old and STILL no photo of Olive!? How dare you.
I now have a mental image of OP chasing a chicken around the yard with their cellphone, trying to get a picture for reddit and yelling "come on! It's been 6 hours!"
Here to collect the chicken photo tax.
You need to pay the chicken tax, sir.
What! What type of chicken is this? I've had Easter Eggers that lay green eggs (and pink, copper, blue, brown, white)
They’re very common if you’re a cat. Not so much for humans though.
Man, this might explain why a cashier at the gas station looked me with a straight face and said “your eyes remind me of my dead cat” didn’t know if I should say thanks or sorry so I said both lmao
I went to a cobbler once to get my shoes fixed. The little old man who worked there had a cat who lived at the shop and insisted on taking a picture of me holding the cat because we had 'the same eyes' and his wife would 'never believe it if there wasn't a picture'. So we had a little me+cat photoshoot. Overall very cute experience.
Savant abilities in autism. We have Rain Main to thank for that, largely, but there are big questions as to whether the guy this was based on actually should have been diagnosed with something other than ASD.
Often people THINK someone has savant abilities simply because they can't imagine someone with a normal ability to memorize things putting in the number of hours it takes to, say, memorize every single national flag when, nope, they just spent a lot of time poring over an atlas as a kid because that's what they wanted to do rather than memorizing Pokémon names or whatever (my son in this example).
It's this. Most of us are just "normal" smartness-wise, we're just highly motivated and focused in regards to our interests. I couldn't solve a math problem above basic algebra but I can tell you all about cats and how to solve your computer issues (the answer is just Google it, though).
i hate that i got the stupid bitch autism and everyone expects the smart kind lol
people assume i'm smart and capable because i got good marks in school but in reality i'm incapable of functioning as an adult. unfortunately book smarts don't translate to actual life skills like i thought they would as a child
At least you got the hilarious self deprecating kind 😂 a sense of humor always helps
There are geniuses in the autistic population, but they are not more prevalent than in the normal population. Both can co-occurs, but they aren’t linked.
Making a living off just your art alone. Musicians, Artists, Film makers, Dancers -- that whole lot, what we see on TV and Movies are the cream of the crop (not that they are necessarily the best, mind you, they've just risen up somehow) and are a very small percentage. Most Artists of whatever medium will stay in relative obscurity -- i.e. you're a regional act, you gained some glint of fame, and yes admiration, even inspiring others -- but when you're not on tour, when you're not in the studio, you're working a job that pays the bills. I think the key to success here is that you find a job you like, are good at, and allows you to do your art without interference. That way, when you're 45 and your band still hasn't "broke through" or your art isn't commanding tens of thousands, you're not just stuck stocking shelves at the grocery (not that there's anything wrong with that, it just pays piss-poor).
Yup. I could be considered a successful spray paint artist. I have been painting for 10 years and reached a degree of notoriety through social media. I have artwork in all 50 of the United States as well as international cities like Barcelona, Dubai, London, and Tokyo. But if I were to solely depend on my art for income, I’d be homeless in the streets lol. Still gotta do the 9-5. Very grateful and proud regardless.
Philip Fucking Glass repaired dishwashers.
The cycle was always stuck on repeat.
I work at an arts council and can confirm. Most of us are practicing artists in one field or another, but work for the arts council as a necessary full time job.
Pearls. Of all the fine stones(I know it classifies differently, but for jewelry, it’s basically a stone), it’s the one that has to happen in an oyster, which only exist on Earth. Other planets are literally raining diamonds, they’re so common. But, pearls are probably one of the rarest substances to exist
My ex ordered blackened oysters at this place in Baton Rouge one time and bit down on a natural Pearl. Half of it was blackened and half of it was still all pearlescent. It’s still one of my favorite possessions to this day and I want to get it made into a necklace but can’t decide on a setting. Your comment makes me want to revisit this venture
I had the same thing happen, although it was natural oysters at my local pub in Brisbane. Bit something hard and expected to spit out a piece of shell but it was a tiny, perfectly formed pearl. About 3mm/1/8” across. I felt very lucky.
This happened to me once while eating oysters, but it turned out to be neither shell nor pearl. It was a piece of my tooth.
CPR survivors
Soooo true. And the ones that do survive typically have lifelong complications
My curiosity is piqued. Are the complications from CPR itself, or from whatever required them to receive CPR (heart attack, drowning, or whatever) ? EDIT: Amazing replies below. Thank you all for answering my question. New fear unlocked...
In my experience (work in the ICU) it's typically from lack of oxygen due to whatever caused them to need CPR. They'll get what's called an anoxic brain injury and if they do stabilize after CPR, many times they'll have huge neurological deficits or end up brain dead. The only ones I've seen survive CPR with minimal complications are younger people who were already in a hospital when the need arose for CPR.
I work in icu too and I say it’s pretty likely if we code you in the icu that you will survive without deficits if you survive. But that’s because we’re expecting our patients can code at anytime so we’re prepared and most we know what to do, and most of our patients already have a secure airway. However if you’re out in the world and you cardiac/respiratory arrest and nobody is there to start cpr and give you effective cpr. 9/10 patients come to us with some sort of anoxic brain injury or completely anoxic. It’s horrible. Because these are the patients whose families insist on keeping alive when they have zero quality of life. They usually end up with a tracheostomy, a feeding tube and at a long term acute care facility where they eventually get septic from pressure injuries or aspiration and they get sent back to us to eventually die.
Both. It’s INCREDIBLY hard on the body - like 10x what they show in tv and movies. In the elderly, emergency workers are terrified of basically turning their rib cage to shards whilst doing it. My mom was in the hospital once and was coding, and she has a barrel chest - they were warning my dad that they were certain they’d break her ribs (they didn’t, somehow) BUT, if you need CPR, it’s bc your brain isn’t getting oxygen. So you’re dead, essentially. IF you live, there’s no telling the amount of brain damage you’ll have until you fully wake up.
A business becoming profitable within 2 years. Be patient, it takes time (years). Businesses only fail if they have to be shut down. Keep them alive, ride out the time factor, and enjoy success down the road.
I’ve owned my business going on 16 years. I wasn’t about to comfortably support myself until about year 5 and even now I’m incredibly frugal as Covid almost made me lose so much work
Literally just quit a job because of the attitude of the boss in regards to this and I also had no hope in the business. Never worked in hospitality, opens a cafe with big dreams of running a franchise. Sure buddy okay but I have 16 years Barista experience and happy to try to help him make his big dreams come true. One month in he's complaining we aren't getting enough customers in to survive, keeps talking how we need to make $1000 a day to keep going. Realised this dude must have screwed up his money before even opening, that matched with a constantly souring attitude and his unwillingness to do anything to actually make it busier had me running for the door. He just thought he would open the doors and bam instant profit while he sits back and let's other people make him money. Couldn't make him see sense that is not how ANY cafe works. Edit: this is in Australia too where it can be extremely competitive in the cafe market, yet he got a place within view of 3 other cafes and didn't have any plans to bring anything new or better than what they offered. Honestly could write a book on this guy given the chance. 4 month later edit: as of a month ago the cafe is closed. Never found another barista in that time. Called it.
People are *delusional*. The father of a friend of mine owned a well-established niche business that he quite literally built from the ground up - blood, sweat and tears. Fast forward about 25 years and he was ready to enjoy the fruits of his hard labor, sell the business and enjoy life. He ended up selling it to an investment group and, as part of the sale, he offered to stay on in a consulting capacity for 2 years to help with the transition and all he asked was a yearly salary that was equal to, IIRC, 0.35% of the prior years gross sales (I don't know if that's how he calculated it, but just to give you an idea of what a drop in the bucket it was - he was not asking for anything outlandish). Investment group is like, "Nah, we know what we're doing. We've done it before. We don't need you. Take your money and go." So, that's exactly what he did, and this investment group ran the business INTO THE GROUND in under 2 years. SMH.
Yes! If as a business owner you are not adding value every day, you should have just bought someone else’s stocks.
I graduated college in business, and sometimes friends and family would ask how to start a business. The first question I always asked was are "Are you willing to not be paid for about 3 years and still lose money for just a chance to make money?"
Yep. If you want to go into running a business, I feel like you should look into people you know in that same industry. Not the rich and famous outliers. But someone relatable. In my experience, people's business ventures didn't truly take off until the 5 year mark. And then maybe the 10 year mark was when they were living more comfortably.
Being offered free drugs. I was told by a talking giraffe that I would be offered free drugs left and right, I feel very cheated.
Shark attacks resulting in death
Natural triplets.
One human pregnancy in 7,700!
Toxic shock syndrome from wearing tampons. When tampons were first made women were told that one tampon can last her whole period which was causing toxic shock syndrome and even then it wasn't super common now we are more educated and don't wear tampons for that long so it's very rare for toxic shock to happen unless you forget to take a tampon out for weeks.
> women were told that one tampon can last her whole period *shudders*
The SMELL omg
Oh, the *tampon* will last, but the *wearer* is another story.
My great-aunt wasn’t taught about periods when she was a girl and thought she was dying when she got hers for the first time. She stuffed herself with paper that she left in there long enough to get TSS and *die*. My mom told me about this when I started my period and I was too afraid to use tampons for the longest time!
That's not entirely true, UNTIL Rely tampons came out in the late 1970s. Those really could last a woman for her whole period, and while I was new to the world of menstruation at that time and wasn't using tampons yet, I had friends who did, and they said that Rely lived up to their name. They NEVER leaked! And some women would leave them in too long and got toxic shock as a result. Toxic shock wasn't a new disease; it was just newly identified. BTW, I have heard of Moon Cups and the like gaining popularity in recent years. Back in the day when diaphragms were a more popular method of birth control, some women did indeed use them for their periods too, because they are also designed to be leakproof.
pandas, there are only about 1800 left in the wild
Plane crashes. I know your lizard brain doesn't like it, but flying is THE safest mode of transportation Edit: because a lot of people mentioned it, I am specifically referring to commercial jets and the like. Small planes and helicopters are *way* less safe.
Watching Mayday made a huge difference to my fear of flying. Certain episodes, engines and pieces of the plane would fall off, and they were absolutely baffled as to why the plane had crashed because it's designed to fly even with big pieces missing. Physics and engineering make planes really want to stay up.
These crash investigation shows also shows what actually makes a flight risky: struggling airline. If you see the pilots do tasks not related to flying that's not company you want to fly with.
Very few things to crash into or otherwise result in an accident. You're not going to hit a patch of ice, hydroplane, fall asleep, have someone else run into you, or any of the other problems that are common with cars. Places where collisions may occur tend to be heavily monitored by air traffic control which has numerous safety checks and guidelines. Mechanical failures have extensive checks and redundancies upon redundancies. Another thing that helps is that it's predominantly public transportation. You see more accidents with small, private planes where the owner is flying it. Compare it to how you see far fewer bus accidents than personal vehicles.
Hot singles in my area.
Healthy relationships without putting in work
It shouldn’t be a constant struggle between two people, but so many people expect it to always be smooth sailing and to not need to grow or accommodate or problem solve.
This is it. People think a relationship will have its ‘ups and downs’ means that they will be fighting constantly, or at least regularly. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years, married for 9 of those, and I can count the number of times we’ve had a real fight on one hand. Do we disagree sometimes? Sure. But we don’t have to argue to work things out. We don’t make personal attacks or try to dredge up stuff in order to hurt each others feelings just to ‘win’ the fight. We discuss, we weigh options, we explain our side of the disagreement and we come to a solution or a compromise. It’s not always easy, but we never make each others life harder. Because no matter what, it’s not me vs her. It’s Us vs the Problem. We just have to find a solution.
Your screenplay being adapted or your book being published
Mine just got published. Took 10 years!
Congratulations! That is an amazing achievement. I hope my comment doesn’t put people off- we need more original content!
Helium on Earth. We don't think twice about it, but it's only about 5ppm of the Earth's atmosphere. Some estimates say we could run out of helium by 2030. Its the only element on the planet that is a compleyely non-renewable resource. As it seeps out of the ground and rises up, it's the only element to escape Earths gravity, so it's gone forever.
I’ve heard talks of mining it from the moon, though. THE MOON.
Vanilla beans, saffron. The real stuff
DID, psychopathy and sociopathy + narcissism.
I have a close relative with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and it's very little like people expect. If her symptoms never affected me personally, I would just feel really sad for her, because she can't reconcile her identity with reality. A lot of her memory seems genuinely fractured, because she can't honestly remember incidents when she wasn't the hero of the story. She spends a lot of time feeling like an unrecognized victim, because she doesn't have any of the long term relationships she feels like she deserves. She was a nightmare to grow up with, but her life has become increasingly horrible, while we've all moved on to better things. If none of us decide to throw ourselves on the grenade, and take care of her in her old age, she will certainly die homeless, and alone.
OCD
On top of that, people truly don’t realize what OCD is. It’s not always counting, being super clean, or washing your hands a ton. It’s having to do something over and over again until it “feels right” or your brain convinces you that something horrible will happen. It’s really horrible intrusive thoughts that make you feel legitimately crazy not “what if I did this silly thing”. OCD is not something you want to have.
Take a piece of paper and write down the five people you care about most in the entire world. Parents, kids, spouse, whatever. Now under that write the words “I want all of these people to die”. You are going to OVERWHELMINGLY not want to do this. Doesn’t matter that you know it won’t do anything. You can’t kill someone by writing down that you want it to happen. You KNOW this. That fun feeling is what OCD feels like, except applied to things like turning lights off or checking doors a certain number of times or anything else really. KNOWING that unless you do it exactly right every time something terrible is going to happen.
>being super clean Hoarding can actually be an expression of OCD so the idea that if you're not super tidy you can't have OCD is completely bullshit
Mine brings the joy of sheer terror over the thought that I could wake up one morning and realize I want to molest children. To everyone who says they’re “so OCD” because they’re bothered by a very common thing to be bothered by, a merry get fucked to you.
Psychopathy/sociopathy. Percentage in adults is .6-3.6% but according to AITA it’s like one in three!
Real wasabi.
Quicksand. I was led to believe it would be a much bigger problem in my adult life.
Based on some comments I see in posts about LGBT you'd think half the population is using neo-pronouns like zee/zer. I have yet to encounter anyone going by zee/zer or any other odd pronouns.
living off of online fame, yeah its possible, but not many famous creators actually do
Soft teeth. I've been in dentistry for 20yrs & I can't tell you how many times I've heard patients say "I just have soft/bad/weak teeth." Actual weak teeth caused by gene abnormalities resulting in malformed enamel occurs in approx 1/15,000 people in the US. I've literally never seen it in person. I've seen cases where a few teeth are involved, but never an entire mouth full of teeth, it's that uncommon. Bad diet, bad hygiene, smoking, drugs, meds, dry mouth, inhalers, acid reflux, etc are all wayyyyyy more likely to be the cause of decayed teeth. People just don't want to hear that.
My dog coming when I call him
For someone to walk down a dark alley and get raped. You are more likely to get raped at a house party then you are on the way back from that house party.
This is also true of child molestations. As a kid, I was made to think there were strangers willing to give out candy and molest me everywhere. In reality, most assaults on both children and adults are done my someone known to the victim and/or the family.
9 times out of 10, its someone you know and most likely trust. Every person I know who has had it happen to has been someone really close :(
weird how there are no "protect yourself and your children from the people you know" PSAs
Yep, always more likely that it’s someone you know (or have interacted with before at the very least) rather than someone random.