hi

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.

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.

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”.

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.

If you believe The System™️ is only for Them™️ and not you, it will only ever be so.

me: yeah whatever. i dont feel shit

5 minutes later: only in death does duty end

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

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.

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.