To The Barricade!

Think your poor? Think your free? Follow me! Follow me! No seriously people hit the follow button

[zoctopode]

im so used to tumblr that i forgot some troglodytes on reddit wouldnt be even surface level familiar with the concept of the robot lesbian

[zoctopode]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[blanketfortarchitect]

[rebloggingistheenemy]

[inviernodel95]

Thank you. I hope everybody thinks this

[hamletthedane]

I love that Les Misérables is one of the most profound and devastating historic-tragedies ever written, but also has chapter names reminiscent of a Percy Jackson novel

(iykyk on the last one)

[uservik]

- v. hugo

[goth-queen]

[sorrrowfull]

[beardedmrbean]

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real: Nature.com

I'm a bit frightened for the time when someone less ethical than the person that did this decides to repeat the experiment but leave out the part where they come in later and announce that it was fake and people wind up diagnosed with the fake condition and all kinds of wacky hi jinks ensues.

[valtsv]

the worst thing about writing or any kind of craft is having an idea you're really excited to make a reality but then you sit down and realize how much work it's going to take to get to that point and suddenly you feel like those two little gay guys in the mountain in the lord of the rings

[valtsv]

do you remember how good it was in our head mr frodo

[forthegothicheroine]

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

[selavy]

as someone who is partially a classicist, this is a better analysis of Greek mythology as a whole than 99.95% of the takes I’ve seen on here (and a substantial number of the takes I’ve seen in ~academia~)

[edgebug]

happy 20 year anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes!

though every rat is special, it's a wonderful and unusual thing for their accomplishments to be remembered and cherished by so many people so many years later. we're all so fortunate to know about the rat who banged out the tunes!

thank you to all the people who sent me reference photos of their beloved rats for this piece!!! credits under the cut!

@joe-spookyy Ben and Socrates

@gooseontheinternet Chamomile and Beefy

@runawayy-rat Bartholomäus and Emo

@theunholystromboli Macrogryphosaurus, Xenoceratops, and Graciliraptor

@techlecticwtch Solas and Dorian

@merlyn-bane Roslyn and Rizzoli

@logictoinsanity Luna and Buttercup

@hagsthehag Orphie, Psyche, Calypso, Ariadne, and Eury

my sweet ladies Bonnie, Mira, An, and Tula

and of course, the irreplaceable

Neil,

who banged out the tunes

[viralthings]

Brother and Sister trying to race a train on their horse in Chiapas, Mexico

[creaturefeature333]

Photographer is Don Bartletti

Don Bartletti “Chiapas Racers” – PhotoCulture, Inc

[everythingscomingupmillhouse]

[Image ID: a picture of a dark-skinned boy and girl riding a horse at a gallop. The background has blurred into a sea of green, as they race. Both children are smiling at the camera. / End ID

Link ID: the artist’s info page for this photo, titled Chiapas Racers.]

[elamarth-calmagol]

How do you do that? How do you focus on the horse?

[benepla-deactivated20180521]

male entitlement in academic spaces is so boring. can’t tell you how many times i’ve been in a class and a girl gives a short, insightful analysis, and then a dude raises his hand and says “jumping off of that…” then says literally the same thing she said but longer and worse.

[zurizaldun-deactivated20241104]

I hate to be that guy, but it doesn’t just happen to women. The assholes who do that will do that to anyone who’s analysis isn’t sufficiently complex and long winded for them. 

Been done to me by people of both genders. 

Also I have been guilty of doing this, so I apologize. Because I was overly excited and just couldn’t wait to talk…. yeah. 

(Nothing is ever clear cut eh….) 

[benepla-deactivated20180521]

dude.

[221cbakerstreet]

this is art

[korra-of-the-watertribe]

#a fun fact about tumblr is that if you dare to complain about a mundanely frustrating type of person#that exact type of person will appear in your notes as if summoned via a ouija board

[draconym]

do you think two pennies is still enough for the ferryman or has inflation driven up the fare

[draconym]

if he makes me use an app I am simply not crossing the river Styx.

[the-toastr-rat]

I know it's a little early, but it's good to let people prepare!

[rlyehtaxidermist]

one of the best academic paper titles

[rlyehtaxidermist]

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

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

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

[imightbeobsessedwithsocks]

I still don’t understand

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

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

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

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

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

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

[zzalina]

I'm case you were having a bad day, here's Spanish eposette

[winderlylandchime]

I’m seeing a bunch of posts that make me think most USAmericans don’t know about The No Surprises Act.

It was passed in 2021 (thank you Biden) and essentially states that if you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover a service you need (or want) you are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate of the cost of care. (If your insurance does cover the service, you should be able to estimate the cost of care based on your deductible and co-pay.)

As a healthcare provider who does not accept any insurance, I am very careful to not violate The No Surprises Act. Why? Because for every penny more than $400 that the Good Faith Estimate was “off” (or if it wasn’t provided), you are entitled to a refund for that amount.

Y’all. Ask for a Good Faith Estimate. Get it in writing. Compare it to what you are paying. If you are not provided an estimate or if it’s wrong by more than $400, demand a refund.

[whimsyandmayhem]

I’m reforging this for the second time in five minutes because I needed to add that part of this is also about what your health insurance provider is required to do. They’re required to tell you what your out of pocket cost will be. If you contact them and they say actually they don’t know but your copay is X%, you can ask them to call the provider and get the codes they plan to use to bill for your services. If the provider is in network they’ll have negotiated rates in place so the insurer will know exactly how much you can be charged for that service and then they have to tell you. No surprise huge medical bills even if you are insured.

[colesabi]

Adding onto this. If you have a surgical procedure that involves anesthesia, the No Surprises Act also accounts here. Most anesthesia companies/providers are OON (out of network) with most, if not all insurances. If your service is performed in an in-network facility, they are REQUIRED to bill as in-network due to this law.

[breelandwalker]

This alongside demanding an itemized bill for any and all hospital stays, surgeries, and procedures, including the outpatient ones.