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@madcatcapers

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Interesting how every day is 1000 hours long but also 10 minutes long but also there are no individual days they all blend together and suddenly 3 weeks ago was yesterday and 3 years from now is in 5 minutes and one hour takes about two months to get through. Kind of crazy
ever since i was a little girl i knew i wanted to deny location sharing and turn off personalized ads and reject all non-essential cookies and not set up siri and face ID
Can I be honest with yall I don't want to hear SHIT against cishets at pride this year
"But it's not FOR them!!!" The biggest military power in the world belongs to a christofascist nation overseen by a felon found guilty of 34 federal crimes and has greenlit a gestapo with more direct funding than the entire military of Canada for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Let Hetero Jessica throw some biodegradable glitter at a municipal parade
At this point if anyone is trying to exclude anyone benignly pro-queer from a pro-queer space I'm just going to assume you're a fed or something idk like something something destabilize the movement from within or whatever

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The sheer energy. The beauty of this woman. The women hugging in the background. The man in rainbow parachute pants. This whole video is art.
XXI. The World
This is what world peace looks like
Sometimes I'll be looking at bullshit online that I know will just rile me up and I have to think of this image to get myself to stop
This reminds me of when I'm tempted to respond to some bullshit online and I have to sing my little song "don't argue on the in-ter-net" and close the tab.
Morwen of Dorālómin
āSince you are my son and the days are grim I will not speak softly to youā¦ā
latest completed commission, featuring Morwen shortly after her arrival in Doriath. a quick shoutout to @outofangband, for their posts on Morwen have had me rotating her in my brain forever and overall very much helped create an image of her that I really drew on for this, especially this post which I really loved, about her general dismissiveness of the elves, most specifically and delightedly, taking a ālol lmaoā attitude to Fingon and Turgon themselves.
commission info etc

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i dont speak japanese but sometimes art transcends language
I love rebloging. Itās the adult equivalent of showing everyone the cool rock I just found.
I havenāt even seen this movie but I need you to see this Letterboxd review of The Housemaid - the discord server Iām in and I have been losing our minds over it
Well now I really want to watch this movie.
Writing like this is something I haven't seen since Livejournal, and that is a sad sad thing. Absolutely stupendous.
they slayed
I want a simple life. I want to get up late, drink tea, and read old books. I also want a spaceship and a pet dragon.Ā

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Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks Iāve known whoāre against single-payer, itās not even funnyā¦
Thisā¦.
This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.
Because theyāve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.
This explains a lot. Ā And itās a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism ā always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce. Ā Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often thatās the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that youāre not even aware of. Ā
And never think youāre too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesnāt work like that. Ā Similarly, donāt think people who are fooled by something are stupid. Ā Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information theyāre given. Ā It doesnāt take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.
I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, itās enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby thatās pretty interesting:
https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2016/01/06/healthcare-in-iceland-vs-the-us-weve-got-it-so-good/
Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, Iām frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and itād be over $100 out of pocket. So I didnāt get my eyedrops.
Iāve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.
Itās the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. Itās downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.
The rest of the world is not like this.
Eat the rich. Resist.
When I was travelling in Germany once, I seriously hurt my ankle. In a few hours, it had swollen to twice its size, and I went to a little ER in a tiny town. I spoke no German and only one nurse spoke English. They ran an X-ray and an MRI to determine what had happened (turned out I had bruised my peroneus brevis muscle and pulled the tendon), gave me a ton of very regulated meds for the pain and swelling, including some supports so I could walkā¦and my poor little 22-year-old ass was sat there, knowing all of this would cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, back in the US. I was shaking.
Iām in the exam room, post diagnosis and with pill bottles in hand, and in walks the one nurse Iāve been able to speak to the entire time. She pats my hand and tells me (and this is verbatimāI will never forget this conversation as long as I live), āIām so sorry. We had to run those tests, and they are expensive. You donāt have insurance so you will have to cover the full cost.ā
I start crying.
She continues, softly, as if telling me someone has died, āItās going to be three hundred.ā
I start sobbing, certain Iāve misheard, certain that I would be absolutely fucked, broke and going into debt in a foreign country. āThousand?ā I clarify.
Her entire demeanor changed, and she looked at me as if I had sprouted four extra heads. āNo,ā she says, āeuros.ā
That moment radicalised me.
My family got charged several thousand dollars for a late-night trip to the ER when I was a kid after an oops at home resulted in a large cut that needed almost 40 sutures. We lived in the US at the time.
Now we live in Canada. Last year my leg got rolled over by one of the front tires on a pickup truck. I spent 3 weeks in hospital, had 3 surgeries, one of which included skin grafting to cover the half of my leg that was degloved in my accident. I had IV antibiotics 4 times a day, I had physiotherapy daily, I was on a lot of meds for pain and having complex wound dressings changed every day. After all that, I had a home care nurse visit me every 1-2 days for 6 weeks to help with my wound care. The greatest expense to us as a family for the amazing care I received was my parents and husband using the parkade next to the hospital, which was like $13 a day. If weād lived in the US, that injury absolutely could have bankrupted us.
This information needs to be part of the US med school curriculum.
I remember the moment that radicalized me.
I went to the UK for graduate school, and being there for that long meant I had to buy insurance for the duration. 18 months was something like Ā£800 (this was in the early 2010ās). I, being American, figured āoh ok, thatās the premium and if I need serious medical care, Iāll get charged deductibles and all other kinds of fees at the time of care), because thatās how it works here.
Some time in the early part of that winter, I got incredibly sick. Iām immunocompromised, so sometimes that happens. But being a broke ass grad student in a foreign country, and dealing with unrelated financial abuse from family members, I figured I couldnāt afford going to the hospital. I figured Iād go to their version of Walgreenās (Superdrug, and yes that is really that storeās name, load up on cough drops, some OTC meds, and try to ride it out as best I could.
One of my friends in my program came over to check on me and offer help. When she got to my room and saw how sick I was, she asked why I hadnāt gone to hospital. I was near tears and said I couldnāt afford it.
This is when I suspect my friend knew she was dealing with an American who was ignorant of how socialized healthcare actually worked, and realized that I couldnāt really be reasoned with. So she said, āIāll pay for it- letās go.ā
Off we went to hospital, my friend did the talking bc my voice was so shot. The receptionist said, āas you donāt have an appointment, you may need to wait quite a bit.ā I heard that and figured 5+ hours was at least what I was in for.
23 minutes later, my name was called.
My friend went back with me, bc I was pretty out of it. The nurse leading us back apologized for the āhuge waitā because having a sick patient wait ānearly half an hour just for medical careā was unacceptable. I was stunned.
The nurse and doc asked some questions, looked at the medical records I had on my phone (bc I was a foreigner with very little medical history in the country), did a few rapid tests. The whole time, Iām seeing an old-timey calculator ringing up charges and freaking out⦠even though my friend said sheād pay, I was so conditioned to believe this would cost a fortune.
About 30 mins later, the rapid tests confirm I have both bronchitis and pneumonia. Doc writes me a prescription for some serious heavy-duty meds. My American ass is thinking, āok, so now I go home, wait for 4 days for the pharmacy to fill it, then go get it.ā The doc tells me that thereās a pharmacy counter on the way out, and I can stop there to collect the meds before heading home.
Iām skeptical but thank him. My friend gets me to the pharmacy counter. I give my name and hand over the paper, fully expecting to be told that itāll take days to fill. The pharmacist turns around, pulls a bag off the shelf, hands it to me. Because my meds were already filled and waiting.
Me: you had them already?
Pharmacist: of course- thereād be no point in sending you home without medication, thatās why you came here. To get medical help.
Me: thatās so fast? (I am very confused)
Pharmacist: well, we expect people to have these illnesses at a higher rate this time of year, so we do our best to stock up on our end.
Me: thatās so nice? Also, what do I owe you?
Pharm: sorry, love?
Me: what do I owe you? For the medication? And the visit. All of it, how much do I need to pay?
Chat, her whole fact changed. She realized I didnāt just sound funny because I was in respiratory distress. I had an American accent. She reached over and patted my hand.
āLove, thatās what the health insurance is meant to be for. Youāve already paid for this. Weāre not taking extra money off you, we donāt do that here.ā
The entire visit was less than 2 hours, absolutely free, and everyone worked to be as efficient as possible in the goal of providing comprehensive healthcare for me, the patient.
Once I got home with the meds, I did actually recover pretty well (and relatively quickly, as far as Iām concerned). I talked to the friend after, and she admitted that she knew it was going to be free, but that I wouldnāt or couldnāt understand that in the brain fog of serious illness, so she said what she had to in order to get my stubborn (and terrified of bankruptcy) ass to the doctor.
Thatās what healthcare should be. A goal of providing comprehensive and compassionate care to your patients, being well-staffed enough that no one waits for hours, anticipating medication needs, ensuring that patients leave with the medical care they sought- and that theyāre not afraid to seek it, because they know medical care wonāt make them homeless.
I love that friend in the story. Yep. Absolutely. Sheāll pay for it.
What no one tells the USians is that in the countries where we get free healthcare, you can usually also get private insurance. Usually from the same companies that offer it in the US.
Here is Spain is basically a parallel health system: they have their own hospitals, their own medical centers. Private insurance is often offered by companies as a perk.
In my experience the private system is a bit less trustworthy than the public system, but itās ok when you want to do some tests and not have to wait to get an appointment, or for example, things that are not that well covered in the public system (getting an official ADHD diagnosis in the public system can take a long long time, etc).
But here is the catch. Iāve just gone to Cignaās website and entered my family data. This is how much it cost to get full coverage for a family of four with Cigna in Spain:
180⬠/ month, for the four of us. Not 180⬠each, 180⬠total.
And hereās the second catch: the concept of deductible doesnāt exist here. When you get private insurance, your deductible is always 0, you never pay a single euro for visits, tests, anything.
This is the same Cigna that works in the US. No one forces them to be in Spain, if they are here is because they make money insuring 4 people, no deductibles, full coverage, for 180 bucks a month.
Iāve done surgeries like, 3 or 4 times and I dont think it has cost my family more than 200$. Maybe a little above, but definitely not over 300$. (Not counting medication)
I take out meds like, every 2-3 months and they cost between 20$ to 80$, depending on what time of year it is due to high-cost protection. If I spend more than 300$ on medication in a year, itāll be free. Of course I cant hoard it, I cant grab as much as I want, but it gets cheaper over the course of the year until the high-cost protection resets.
Seeing Americans be used to 10,000$+ medical bills is pure insanity to me.