NASA: A polyamorous asexual luxury rewards program @pint-sized-crab - Tumblr Blog

Posts

puppygirldick

Jacek Yerka - Tsunami --

starlightxraven

Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry.

appalachian-werewolf

"Google AI Overview court loss in Germany could spell doom for AI search industry."

It fucking better.

mrsjdavis

Like to charge, reblog to cast?

spicyvampire

The way all the 2020s have done so far have been making me categorically against every new generation of tech that comes out is insane. Like I'm from a technological boom generation, saw the first portable phones, nokias & blackberries & flipphones etc, and the first smartphones, and the first ipods & ipads & tablets in general while still having cassettes & DVD & MP3 players around so I know how all of it work, I had computer classes in high school, I did the transition between home desktop computers to laptops and back to gaming computers. But then they started to put internet in your printer & microwave, everything has ads & AI now and every update is worst than the last. I literally loved technology and they ruined it

fanartbympka

Slumbering Power

#botw #lovely art

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!

itsady

hanging things in the new apartment

magneatio

came across this image on pinterest and straight up almost burst into tears…. vibes for JUNE

huariqueje

Loon Gathering - Mia Bergeron , 2026.

American , b. 1979 -

Coloured acrylic on flat panel , 6 x 6 in.

thunderstruck9

Mia Bergeron (American, 1979), Loon Gathering, 2026. Colored acrylic on flat panel, 6 x 6 in.

#lovely art

jimmyhoffathecat

Unfortunately Pickles did not win the magazine photo contest so we shipped him off to the oil rig 👍

mariacallous

magicallydelicious618

The reason the FDA exists in the United States is because some guy buried in the cemetery behind my old house drank so much doctor-prescribed radioactive water in the 1920s that his jaw fell off

77pink-prin-cess77

My reaction to that information???????????

magicallydelicious618

Oh yeah, it’s a wild story. His name was Eben Byers, by all accounts he was a really talented golfer up until he fell off a train and broke his arm. His doctor prescribed Radithor for chronic pain, which was literally just radioactive salt dissolved in water. I think there’s some dispute as to exactly how much he drank but the most common number I’ve seen is something in the ballpark of 1400 doses in 3 years.

Now the thing with that radioactive salt is that it wasn’t just radioactive, it had radium in it, which is extra kinds of radioactively nasty. When it’s ingested it actually ends up getting sucked into your bones because your body will stick it wherever it’s actually supposed to be using calcium, so not only are your bones suddenly weaker because they’re made of stuff that doesn’t belong there, that stuff is also constantly dosing radiation directly into your organs, even after you stop ingesting more of it.

Anyway Byers died about a year and a half after he stopped drinking the stuff and the reason they don’t know exactly how much he drank is because when scientists exhumed his body I think in the 1960s he was *exactly as radioactive* as they would have expected him to be on the day that he died, so the suspicion is that he may have consumed more than was originally reported. He’s buried in a lead-lined casket because his body is going to be radioactive for something like the next several thousand years or so.

The precursor to the FDA (I believe it was the FTC at the time) did technically exist before the 1920s, but it was very limited in what it could actually do in terms of food and drug regulation. Byers’ death ended up being one of the big driving factors in strengthening what the FDA was able to regulate and was one of two big events that led to the end of the ‘radium fad.’

tl;dr some dude drank too much radium and that’s why it’s illegal to sell over the counter radioactive medicines now 👍

gwydionmisha

Regulations are written in blood. They exist to protect people from corporations.

Remember this every time Republicans try to sell you deregulation and cuts to regulatory agencies like the FDA and EPA.

#some dude drank a lot of radium AND many women dying of workplace related radium poisoning fought in court for years to get it recognized #they were fighting for years before he died but it was only after he (a white mildly fanous man) died-#-that they were able to start actually pinning full blame on their previous employer in court #check out Radium Girls. It's a book and documentary based on the book

peri-dot-j

BOTW's story works a lot better than TOTK's story because of the difference in their driving questions.

For BOTW, the main question you ask from the start is "Who am I?" and also "What happened to Hyrule?" You learn the answers to these questions over time as you journey across the land and remember things about your past. The answer to "who am I" is "I am the chosen hero," and the answer to "what happened" is "We failed to save everyone." When you learn that, the goal changes from "go and do the quests because the old lady said to" to "Do what you couldn't do back then and save everyone."

In TOTK, the question is "Where the heck is Zelda?" and it's not your question, it's everyone else's. All the NPCs want to know where she is and you're just kind of standing there while everyone discusses it. And then the game throws you an early game side quest where they tell you exactly what happened to Zelda, and then you just have to putter around for 99 years and watch everyone run blindly towards Fake Zelda while you just follow them without saying anything until the final hour.

And then they force you to listen to the exact same spiel about the Imprisoning War, 4 separate times, without changing a single word. Whereas in BOTW, you get to learn about the Champions and who they were and their relationship to you, and explain the Calamity to you in one cutscene.

Plus, they don't expand on anything from BOTW in TOTK. Link and Zelda are just living perfectly fine in society despite having basically been dead for a century. And instead of expanding on the Sheika mythos, they just try and pretend they never existed and put the Zonai in their place as the Ancient Precursor Race with all the Ancient Technology That's Been Lost To Time.

So yeah, I'm a little bit disappointed in the story of TOTK. BOTW had an interesting narrative that meshed well with the open world format and was executed perfectly. TOTK just had an excuse plot with no substance.

#real #I didn't even realize I was at the end of the main questline because all of it felt like a precursor to something actually important #but it was just. bland and uninteresting #i enjoyed the gameplay and new mechanics but the actual story was shittt

the-moon-loves-the-sea

Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook. (ETA: Gaining inspiration from other authors is great. Lifting passages and avoiding giving credit isn’t.)

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here and here .