All My Obsessions @oopsistartedthinking - Tumblr Blog

Les dances à travers le monde

This is a literal "Hammerhead" shark created by artist Matt Sanders.

The sculpture is made from 685 reclaimed steel hammer heads and weighs 500 lbs (about 227 kg). It took approximately 2,500 hours of work to weld together. Sanders even used sledgehammers for the eye sockets and ball-peen hammers for the eyes to give it a realistic look.

It was displayed at the Aquarium of the Pacific in California and remains one of the coolest examples of upcycled art out there.

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.

scurviesdisneyblog

Character designs for Robin Hood (1973) by Ken Anderson

nattousan

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

nattousan

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

nattousan

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

nattousan

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

nattousan

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

nattousan

Madam....

nattousan

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

nattousan

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

nattousan

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

nattousan

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

nattousan

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

nattousan

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

nattousan

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

nattousan

thanks for the reminder, kid

nattousan

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

depsidase

barkingbarghest

Here is an article from NPR about it (May 22, 2026):

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model. Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

When Google first started implementing AI-assisted results, news publishers warned of “catastrophic” impacts on the industry, much of which relies on Google search to drive users to their websites. Last year, news websites saw significant traffic declines as chatbots increasingly replaced Google search as the primary way to find sites and ask questions. Small businesses also noted drops in traffic to their sites from Google, which has traditionally delivered customers. Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy & research at Amsive, a digital marketing agency, warned as early as last year that Google’s planned changes to search are “going to have a devastating impact on the Internet.” “It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivize content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more,” she told Technology Magazine.

the-crying-bitch

cythraul

This is you reminder that, even in Google's own Chrome, you can set the default search to DuckDuckGo.

1000-life-hacks

treehuggeranonymous

In all the criticism I’ve seen of SOTR, I haven’t seen anyone talk about how fucking dumb the addition of Scrip was in District 12.

For starters, it doesn't appear to be used around the 10th Games or the 74th so it's just a thing that seemed to randomly appear for a decade around the 50th Games (Do not tell me that Katniss is such a gatekeeper she wouldn't tell you about Scrip - money and food are two things that Katniss cares about and she would absolutely tell you if there were some people paying for things in a different currency).

But the larger point is that if District Twelve is a "Company Town" then the company in question is the Capitol. The Capitol doesn't need Scrip to control the workers of District Twelve: The Capitol already controls the currency. The Capitol can limit who can hold a business license and therefore what sort of stores exist in Twelve. They can limit the supplies to Twelve and therefore the cost of goods in Twelve. They control the movement of people in and out of Twelve. The Capitol is the government - there are so many levers and regulations that a government can use to control the economy before resorting to Scrip. So what exactly would be the purpose of the Capitol issuing Scrip?

There is, of course, the non-exploitative purpose: Scrip can be useful when there isn't a lot of government issued legal tender available. Except if this was the reason for Scrip then it would make more sense to be something that exist earlier, following the Dark Days when they were still establishing things, not randomly appearing 40-50 years later.

Also the company is the government so Scrip is still government issued legal tender ...

I can kinda get behind Scrip being there to enforce segregation between the Town and Seam, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Some of the stores won’t accept Scrip, but that seemed to be for non-essential goods (like the Donner’s candy store) so wouldn’t be that big a deal. Also if it was being used to segregate Seam and Town there would be other signs of segregation - separate schools, segregation during the Reaping etc.

Scrip serves no purpose except for you to go 'oh my gosh it's scrip like a Company Town'. But Twelve was always a Company Town and we didn't need a literal Company Store to see that.

oopsistartedthinking

All really good points that I hadn’t thought on before. You got me thinking about a few things now:

Perhaps the Capitol/Panem is recovering from a recession that Snow and friends pushed onto the Districts so the Capitol citizens wouldn’t notice it? Haymitch does see some Anti Immigrant sentiments. We know it’s a fragile facade.

Although this wouldn’t explain Katniss not seeing the scrip—unless all of 12 is scrip by her time.

The Pound Sterling £: The Bank of England currency is good across the UK/crown dependencies. However, excluding Wales (and then England), the others are able to issue their own currency too. Channel Islands Jersey and Guernsey each have their own but freely circulate together with BoE notes. The Isle of Man has their own. Oversea territories like the Falklands mostly have their own.

Which is to say, maybe the Capitol switched to giving the poorer Districts like 12 their own money for whatever reason (at the very least it’s a dividing quality). The only people really impacted would be Peacekeepers who try to send money home from their assigned District, someone who has to order in goods, and maybe train crews.

Katniss and Peeta never buy anything in the Capitol. 13 has their strict rationing. Peeta’s promised sharing of the Victor’s winnings become a bit of a ? but no one ever really talks about getting paid in the year they win.

Effie and the Capitol reaping team probably have everything taken care of and don’t need to deal with currency in the Districts.

Yeah the Scrip inclusion is unnecessary because it would be something Katniss mentions in her economic struggles if the same system was in place for her which means Collins has created questions she doesn’t need. Either for Katniss or Haymitch. Perhaps she could have gotten the same effect by having the miner’s money be dirty and that’s made into a problem? Or done a better job of explaining the economic transition?

#the company town details just got me singing 16 tons in my head instead #and if you want to talk about £s please don’t rely on this post alone #sotr #district 12 #the hunger games #sunrise on the reaping #thg #katniss everdeen #haymitch abernathy #the Capitol #the uk #pound sterling #suzanne collins #world building #thisiswhathappenswhenistartthinking

davidhudson

Happy 100th, David Attenborough.

In 1955 with his son Robert and a coatimundi.

I do think it’s a shame no one had the idea to buy a white gown or suit and some markers then let some young kids (like their kids maybe) go crazy and wear that to the Met this year.

Fashion is Art.

#maybe a little guidance idk #met gala #met gala 2026 #fashion is art #fashion #thisiswhathappenswhenistartthinking

thatdisasterauthor

I don’t think we talk enough about how, despite the presence of multiple globes, PotC takes place on a flat earth, ice wall included.

patrickdiomedes

I'm gonna need some elaboration here

thatdisasterauthor

They literally sail over the edge of it after passing through a hole in a wall of ice. They fall off. They get back to the other side by passing through the whole ocean.

But also there’s a globe on, like, everyone’s desk.

andthentheywilleatthestars

#it's like lord of the rings#it's only flat for pirates

thatdisasterauthor

You get it.

finalvortex

No, but this is actually (sort of) canon.

See, part of the conceit of the PotC trilogy is that all myths are true. Nearly every supernatural element in the franchise has a root in some real world mythology or pirate lore, although some of them are mashed together.

Another thing is that they take place at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the more the map gets filled in, and the more the Royal Navy takes power, there less room there is for the mystical and supernatural in the world. This is explicitly called out in At World's End with the death of the kraken:

Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place. Jack: The world's still the same. There's just... less in it.

The only way to access the world of the supernatural is through the supernatural itself. You can only get to the Isla de Muerta with Jack's compass that points to whatever you desire, or if you already know where its is. You need Tia Dalma's map to find the edge of the world. To access the supernatural, you need to already be immersed in it.

The pirates world isn't flat, it's round - but because the edge of the world exists in myth, it therefore exists in reality. The pirates are able to find it through supernatural means, but if, say, someone like Norrington just sailed in the same general direction, he wouldn't end up in the same place.

nitewrighter

“Pirate” is a mage subclass fueled by word of mouth, rule of cool, The Power of Belief/Love/Friendship, and rum.

dailyadventureprompts

If you look at it in a particular way, the Pirates specifically function by FAIRY RULES: obscure codes of law and formality that they are irrevocably bound to abide by...except when you get the wording wrong.

When we go to Tortuga (or any pirate controlled space) we leave behind the sensibilities of the real world and enter this bizarre perpetual revel of debauchery and violence that could never sustain itself in a world bound by sense.

That makes Jack our Puck character, a trickster of tricksters who can invert your fortunes just by letting him talk to you.

It also makes Will into a changeling, born of the fairyworld, adopted by mortals, and fated to return to it in what makes for a doomed love story. Hell, one might say that the reason Will's swords are SO GOOD is because they contain an element of myth about them: they're the IDEA of swords, true to how they would be in myth.

nasa

Night and (Earth) Day

This image, released in celebration of Earth Day, shows the terminator – the line between night and day – on Earth. The Artemis II astronauts captured this view on April 2, 2026, during their journey to the Moon.

NASA science improves life on Earth every day. We provide insights on our home planet that can only be gathered from space, which can then be used for disaster response, farming, and more. In addition, our observations of Earth and the technologies we develop provide the foundation needed to explore and sustain human life on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Download this year's Earth Day poster.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!