Don't get your hopes up @chaotic-uncreative - Tumblr Blog

Posts

oysters-aint-for-me

do me a favor and plz reblog with your five most recently used non-face, non-hand, non-heart emojis

chaotic-uncreative

🍇↘️↗️🍑↔️

leebrontide

Ok so my kid had an ear infection, right? As kids often do.

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

May this knowledge find its way to someone else who can use it.

musefortheages

This post is super cute and all but like.... This isn't practical advice. I called the AG???? And they got involved over a $200 bill. Maybe because you yourself are a medical practitioner. Not just your knowledge but also your status.

Civics class wouldn't help most people in this case because the AG will not take on all these cases and most people cannot afford an attorney in this instance or more importantly, the hit to their credit.

The issue is not education over the system, it is the system

leebrontide

I agree the system is a mess but I think education does matter because people seem not to know that this is actually perfectly routine AG office stuff. I’m not the only person who’s done this- this is just what they do?

Were they going to get into a lawsuit over my $400 bill? No obviously not. But they printed up a letter on fancy letterhead to say to stop and it worked. They followed up with me the next day to be sure, and so ask how much money they had saved me.

They use dinky cases like mine to track habitual misbehavior of large scale companies to build cases they could actually go to court over.

And because people are shocked- I never spoke to the AG of my state directly. He operates mainly by overseeing a whole crew of people. And this is what those people do.

This didn’t happen because I’m special because of my tiny therapy practice.

This happened because this is what the AG office is for.

“The problem is systemic” doesn’t mean “and there’s nothing you can do”.

This is a systemic problem but that doesn’t mean there are no resources to help.

ktempestbradford

Thank you for clapping back on this. I'm here to reinforce. Yes, you CAN call your state Attorney General office when an entity is doing something illegal, even if it's "only" for $400. You think they don't care a hospital is doing a crime because it's not a big enough crime?

Then you've been trained well by "The System".

Yes, that System you say can't be fought? Where did you get that idea, huh? Who taught you that "small" acts of illegality don't matter? Who made you think that there's no point in fighting back because it will all come to nothing?

Might it be the same entities that benefit if you believe all that?

Gonna pause and let you ponder.

Never. Ever. EVER.

EVER.

Let companies or corporations or hospitals or organizations or any business big or small get away with screwing you over without a fight. Maybe you personally don't win every fight, but you lose 100% of the time you don't try. You'll win more often than you think you will. I know cuz I've done it.

So have others. Attorneys General offices bring lawsuits against businesses all the time. They do so because citizens contacted them to say "someone is doing a crime" and the crime doers did not stop when told and got into way more trouble than if they'd just stopped. FAFO. The Find Out can't happen if you don't even bother to report the Fucking Around.

On that note, as OP said, please know your rights! And, in a situation where you don't but suspect something is hinky, ask! The people of the internet can help! So can librarians! So can many others. Find out what is and is not okay for them to do. If it's not okay, report them! See something, say something.

Don't let the System win by default.

Fight, damnit!

themardia

Additionally, pay attention to State Attorney elections! Here in Minnesota, our AG Keith Ellison has made it a POINT to go after slumlords, has created an entire UNIT in the AG office dedicated to wage theft, and gone after debt relief for people who were conned by those scummy fake universities. And despite MN being a blue state, one of his elections was a fucking NAIL-BITER.

Absolutely fight the system, absolutely go to your AG office if you’re being screwed over, and also pay attention to the people running for AG in the first place.

sabra-n

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people only works if the people make it work. That's you! You're the people.

"Don't bother doing anything because nothing will happen" confused cause with effect: it's really "Nothing will happen if you don't bother doing anything." Yeah, I know, it's a travesty that they don't hand you psychic powers when you take your oath as a civil servant, but until we fix that clear defect in our democracy: you're serving the public, too, when you report fuckers like this.

ktempestbradford

Not gonna leave this in the tags:

mxlabradorite

Suspicion of The System™️ is one of the ways The System™️ perpetuates itself.

If you believe The System™️ is only for Them™️ and not you, it will only ever be so.

Know the rules so you can make them work for you. Or better, how to break them in ways that hurt The System™️ and help you.

isuggestrevolution

this is helpful but i still suggest a new system, one without the profit motive at all

crabussy

just saw a chair so photogenic I had to reevaluate my feelings towards plastic furniture

crabussy

do you see this. beyond ridiculous

crabussy

what are our thoughts

I understand your feelings for the chair robin crabussy

unpost this right now you strange strange man

Voting ended onAug 12

crabussy

I hired a wizard to cast png on it. effervescent

chaotic-uncreative

Vergil moment

one-time-i-dreamt

And why did the value plummet, Marissa? Why did it plummet?

red-mercer

Would like to know how exactly she wouldn't fuck up Netflix or Hulu

sreegs

Yahoo thought Tumblr would be the next PDF

They didn't really get it.

noctumsolis

What does that even mean? PDF as in Portable Document Format?

sreegs

i cannot stress enough that i dont think yahoo even knew what a pdf was

virdigrishammer

you left out the best part of that article. the poor yahoo emplyees at those meetings were just as confused as the rest of us.

ralfmaximus

Everyone is right to dunk on Yahoo and "tumblr is the new PDF" because yeah, everything about that era was stupid.

But the PDF thing kinda makes sense. Bear with me.

But first, some context.

See, in the 1990s before PDF files there was almost no way to generate a document on a Mac and read it on a PC. Or vice versa. Businesses struggled with how to email important documents around and guarantee they looked the same on the other end, regardless of what computer & software the recipient had.

Adobe changed all that with PDF.

Since Acrobat Reader was available (and free!) for Windows & Mac, suddenly the problem went away. Everyone knew how to read a PDF. Adobe became a universally recognized brand overnight even if you'd never heard of Photoshop, because everyone had goddamn Adobe Reader installed.

Because of that, every tech company yearned to be just like Adobe: invent something universally desired, used by billions of people.

Fast forward to a Yahoo/tumblr meeting sometime in 2013/2014.

Tumblr development staff demonstrates how the back end of tumblr works, which (honestly) is revolutionary as compared with how any other social media site worked at the time. Each tumblr post is composed of blocks of data, any one of which can be text, sound, an image, a movie... anything. These blocks of data are threaded together into what looks to the user like one cohesive message (a single tumblr post) but under the hood it's magic.

Further, the mechanism for doing this can be standardized. In other words: tumblr could, if they wanted, publish the standard as a way for ANY social media site to manage its data.

If other sites did that, then they could trade messages with tumblr! Imagine posting a message on tumblr and reading it on Instagram. Or see twitter messages natively on your tumblr feed. I mean personally, that's a horror show. But the concept is interesting.

(In fact, that's how Mastodon and the Fediverse work in 2025. Each Mastodon post is a standard chunk of data that any website can read & display, assuming it understands the underlying ActivityPub protocol and plays by its rules.)

So the Yahoo executives attend this technology demonstration and one of them quite visibly has a light bulb wink into existence over their head. The light bulb is an old school incandescent, 300 watts at least, and glows furiously bright.

The Yahoo exec stands up. His chair knocks backwards.

"OH MY GOD," he stammers. "This tumblr thing could revolutionize social media. It'd be like the new PDF!"

Then blood shoots out of his nostrils and his head explodes, but all anyone ever remembers from that meeting is "PDF".

@sreegs or @cyle or @jv can probably explain it better, but that's what I remember hearing at the time. Please feel free to correct me.

cyle

the details here aren't correct, but as i've said many times, yeah, the PDF thing was in direct response to the Neue Post Format, which is how post and reply content is stored on tumblr. it's not as dumb as it sounds. (without that context, it does sound dumb.)

hugtheteadrinkthekitten

Can't believe over a decade later we're finally getting an explanation for the PDF thing.

rainbowgod666

TEN

FUCKING

YEARS

vettir

Anyways, they fucked it up because they brought unnecessary censorship onto the platform, and killed a lot of the draw for it.

erikag59

puppetcastle

hi everyone, puppet again, terminated while it was sleeping.

as always, its a homeless and disabled trans woman living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating it every single day. paypal here if you can help, anything is greatly appreciated.

please reblog to help it out.. remember, puppet loves you..

tamamoland-of-the-deep-abyss

tumblr passed over the transmisogynist pornblogger making insulting comments on people's body hair who has straight-up porn videos on his blog and the transmisogynist going around doing nothing but harassing and suicide baiting people and calling them slurs that is going on 3 weeks now without any action taken after being reported to instead fully nuke the account of the suicidal homeless disabled trans woman who relies on donations for the 35th+ time since the start of pride

tamamoland-of-the-deep-abyss

two months and counting and they just terminated me for appealing the sexually explicit flag on a photo of a fucking gachapon toy which they denied my appeal on so it's really awesome that the pornblogger that wanted to kill me for being transfem is still there with his blog full of photos and videos of dudes' cocks

tamamoland-of-the-deep-abyss

but these fuckers get a free pass to do whatever huh

chaotic-uncreative

Tumblr is doing chud shit that I'd expect from twitter. I was under the impression this wasteland of wokeness wouldn't do that but I guess not.

pukicho

I have animalized you. Now, roam free:

heebyjeeby-doesnt-do-anything

mgrrrroaaaaaahhg

pukicho

Go on, don’t be shy

chaotic-uncreative

I don't want to...

dhovorei-remake-deactivated2022

batman villains are funny bc they all end up in arkham over and over so its just like

killer croc, painting a beautiful and sensitive portrait representing his inner turmoil: i had no idea (insert plant) was an invasive species in gotham

poison ivy, painting a photorealistic fern: they are! they’re so widespread that its almost impossible to contain, and it really hurts my heart

joker trying so fucking hard not to call them homophobic slurs because the therapist told him he’d get extra joker mush if he behaved for once in his fucking life:

dhovorei-remake-deactivated2022

at this point the toxic waste he fell into fucked him up so bad he wont eat anything that hasnt been mashed up and irradiated so the arkham doctors just throw random shit in a pot and mash it up for him. he loves it

i-cant-think-of-anything-to-say

hunting down tumblr posts i see on pinterest part 1184

estro-boi

chaotic-uncreative

Spock, your assessment of gun violence is plausible, but are you counting or not counting gang related violence?

puppetspirals

hi everyone, puppet again, terminated for no reason. this time tumblr nuked the whole blog, completely deleting our new aid post.

as always, it and its partner are homeless and disabled trans women living purely off donations from tumblr as they keep terminating us both every single day, and we still badly need support as we're going to be fully on the streets of seattle again in less than a month. please keep reblogging this aid post, and its paypal is here.

please, if you know anyone in seattle or anywhere nearby, ask for help? or help us? we dont want to be on the streets fully again, we're not ready.

remember: puppet loves you! people have been disappearing from its tumblr en masse but its always here if you'd like to say anything.

bowlby4

positivelyqueer

”I have this artistic idea but not the skills to achieve it to the standard I want.”

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

Don’t let the fear of it not being perfect on the first try stop you from being Weird About It!

jaseroque

Please view Hokusai's gradual working towards The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, over a period of 39 years.

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

It's all there; Mt Fuji, the ocean, the wave. The boats are gone, but replaced with birds, flying with the wave instead of fighting against it. It's not as famous as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, but that's not what motifs are for -- each successive work does not have to surpass the previous in terms of success, especially in terms of external success. They're there for you to keep playing with, keep remixing and re-experiencing, for as long as you think you have something to say.