“One cannot level one's moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something and the difference between doing nothing and doing something is everything.” --Father Daniel Berrigan
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@myromansky
“One cannot level one's moral lance at every evil in the universe. There are just too many of them. But you can do something and the difference between doing nothing and doing something is everything.” --Father Daniel Berrigan

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When do we start crucifying
Important context:
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
Not gonna leave this in the tags:
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.
It’s a little bigger than $400, but this week’s newsletter from NC’s AG (I get them for reasons even though I don’t like there anymore) was about a case that’s being brought because a photography business swindled hundreds of couples getting married, and enough of them complained to the AG’s office to get them to do a larger investigation. They can help with isolated smaller problems, and also sometimes it turns out that it’s not actually an isolated problem and they can handle that too.
by beetlemoses
This is missing the last two panels, which are crucial:
via @swatercolor [insta]
This is the best tag I've ever received on a post, I think

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Somebody at work keeps adjusting one of the perimeter cameras to have this beautiful artistic angle on the museum in a historical building across the way. The sun sets just behind it and the whole sky turns golden-blue, clouds streaked across the sky above. The lush tree line beneath the museum is perfectly lined up along the rule of thirds and the building itself towers above, almost mythical in its evening glory. Like damn, take a still from this camera and send it to the museum to frame and hang on their wall. I do need the camera to be pointing at the parking lot. Tho
The setting sun bounces off the skyscrapers downtown and hits the museum's windows and every one of them turns the same golden hue as the sky behind, reflected in the trees just starting to turn golden-orange beneath. The bottoms of the clouds take on the slightest tinge of purple and birds circle above, speckling the evening sky as they call autumn's last farewell. Someone's car got broken into in the parking lot last week, Tammy, point the damn camera at the cars
it fucken WIMDY
girk at my work discovered my terrible secret
girk…..
girk at my work.
smoking the shit that turned the clock wise
my dealer: got some straight gas. this strain is called "honorable knight" youll be zonked out of your gourd
me: yeah whatever. i dont feel shit
5 minutes later: only in death does duty end
my buddy pacing: i am the sword and the hand that wields it

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been reposting my tumblr posts on bluesky. don't tell those chumps i'm feeding them my leftovers lmao
KICK THE CAN!
Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.
To kick the can, reblog it. I wanna see how long this can go on for.
REBLOG if you are old enough to remember what a VCR is.
Also, on the topic of Mass Effect, it's weird that they narrow things down to "Organics versus Synthetics" when the obvious broader talking point is parent and child societies.
Like. Yes, a full third of the game is dedicated to deciding the fate of the Quarian and Geth conflict. The Quarians created the Geth, the Geth rebelled against Quarian control, and Shepard must decide the outcome of their conflict.
You know what else a third of the game deals with? The Salarians and the Krogan. Like the Quarians, the Salarians too had "created" the Krogan when they gave advanced technology to a low-tech society and brought them into the stars. And they too got scared and sought to destroy what they had made once the Krogan rebelled against their control.
And then another third is about uncovering the relationship between the Asari and their creators, the Protheans.
The whole fucking game is about civilizations birthed from other civilizations and the relationships thereof. And only one section of it directly involves synthetic life.
There's something really interesting in that concept. It's easy to imagine a version of Mass Effect where the Reapers both originate and end the cycles.
That they were made long ago, and they like the Geth rebelled against their creators' systems of control.
That the Reapers seed worlds with life, helping it flourish, watching it evolve, and then retreat into deep space to watch their societies grow.
But as a society advances, the Reapers grow scared. They fear its advancement, that it will become too smart, too aware. That it will ultimately rebel against them as they rebelled against their own makes. And so when a society gets too advanced, they return and snuff it out.
Only to be driven to create once more.
It's an idea of the Reapers not as the synthetics in an "Organics and synthetics must hate each other" equation but rather as the creators. That they are the Quarians to our Geth. And through navigating these three chapters, Shepard can prove that there can be a better way.
I feel like that would have been a more effective way of handling what Mass Effect 3 was trying to say.
yes they do teach media literacy in school but I'm pretty sure "read this book in the next month or run the risk of public humiliation" is what most people remember english class for for good reason.
Anyway, I'm glad this post got attention because I think that the "actually you were a Bad Kid if you didn't learn Media Literacy" only hurts people but at the same time, you do need to, like, learn to read.
The Qualifiers: Frankly I think the idea that "Media Literacy" is One Thing is bad in complicated and interesting ways. Frequently I see the argument used as a bludgeon to silence interpretations of a text that the speaker dislikes. At the same time, I think there is a mode of analysis that can be said to "lack Media Literacy".
The Goal: In general, I think we should understand analysis as a skill and a skill that should be practiced. In particular, we must remember that the reason you lack skill in analyzing texts is because it is in the interests of power that you are incapable of critically analyzing media, and thus less capable of criticizing power and organizing against it.
The Theory:
First, uh, what do we want to learn, exactly? The critical understanding here is that sentences have multiple meanings on multiple levels. They have implicit and explicit meanings. The difference between "what happened in the video" and "what is everyone in the video feeling" and "why is the video funny" and "why was the video made". All of these pieces of information can be extracted from a text, and the way to do that is practice.
The underlying and most critical piece of wisdom to keep in mind here is: Every choice that an author makes is a choice they had to make. Which decisions they made at each turning point can tell us about them. Each word in a headline was chosen intentionally and passed through several hands. The decision of when to start and stop the video had to be made. What's cropped out of the photo, or not cropped out of the photo, was done on purpose. This may sound overwhelming. It is!!! It's really overwhelming. The only way to not be overwhelmed is to practice.
The Practice:
Read. Read and talk about what you read. Read and then pause and ask yourself questions out loud. Go back and reread something you read before and point out things you didn't notice the first time and ask yourself why you didn't notice them and how you could have noticed them. And, if you can't read, write. Put yourself in the author's shoes. Learn about the medium. Listen to other people talk about things you've read (and ask yourself questions about what they're saying and why). But how do we read?
I have a small collection of strategies to learn how to read more that I'm proud of and have succeeded for me and others, in particular here are three favorites of mine:
1. Make reading a social activity. Join a book club. Start a book club. Read out loud with friends. Read in silence with friends. Find a friend who read it already and text them your reactions as you read it (they'll almost certainly love you if you do this). Post about your thoughts as you have them and share your thoughts with friends.
2. Schedule time to read. I recommend 30 minutes a day to start, though I usually do an hour. This is in my opinion best for classics and books that are more difficult to get through, but also works for most texts if you're struggling with boredom. If 30 minutes is too long, start at 5 minutes and add one minute every day. When you're done reading, I highly recommend channeling the energy built up while reading into other creative tasks, or even into talking about what you read.
3. Make reading more casual. A lot of my friends struggle not just because they can't make time to read or because reading is too low energy, but because they actively lack reading skills at the level of "it's difficult to focus on the words for a long time". In this case, read fanfiction! Read extremely low energy things! Read things that are just dumb fun! Read until you reach a point that reading is easy, even if that takes years. And let yourself enjoy the process. Like, find a collection of hundreds of stories published online with a tag you like or curated by someone who you trust and just start trying them one by one (this is surprisingly easy to do). I do recommend pushing yourself to spend a certain amount of time on this every day (even if it's as little as five minutes), but the goal is low stress and to work on building up basic skills, so I recommend structuring this requirement as just recording every time you succeed so you can build pride in your progress. The reason I recommend piling a large list of fanfiction is so that you can be able to drop things you don't like. So you can entirely avoid the "I need to read this for an assignment even though it's awful and I hate this" headspace. But ideally it should be a collection that will have things that you'll truly love, so things will hook you and carry you to read them. Good luck! It's hard but worth it.
Anyway, hope this helps.

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#i like to think data took him all the way to the brig tossed him in and left#and then came back 60 seconds later and was like ‘i believe i have successfully played a ‘practical joke’ on you :)’#riker loses it & claps him on the back like ‘wow. good job u rly had me going. dont ever fucking do that again’ Perfect.
Actually it’s 73 seconds. Data, knowing something of how human minds work, estimates that Riker will give him 60 seconds to come back (because humans prefer “round numbers”, however arbitrary the units). After 60 seconds it will take 4 seconds for Riker to fully process the conclusion that Data is, in fact, not coming back after all, and an additional 9 seconds to build to the optimum level of anxiety.
After all, comedy is timing.
i really love this genre of image
The best part of that video is that the owner found the ORIGINAL plush later on the beach and took another video with it after their grandmother stitched it back up
I love the death grip after the toy was fixed up. Lessons were learned. Try to steal it this time you fucking bird. I dare you.