Fighting/Fairy Type

Hey everyone,

It's Your Local Bardic entity, Gallus Rostromengalus of Bread Jesus and other Weird Tumblr Story Fame.

Despite my best efforts to mitigate mt Terrible English Dental DNA, today two of my teeth broke.

I don't even have a fun story about this, it's literally terrible genetics and stress-grinding my teeth in my sleep.

I just got back from emergency surgery to get the pieces pulled and the hole in my jaw closed so I don't get an infection, but a second reconstruction surgery to give me a bone graft and dental implants will be needed so I can actually chew and use my mouth for it's intended purposes.

I do not currently have dental insurance. I haven't talked about it here much, but my husband was unemployed after getting laid off for almost all of last year. He has a job again, but it pays like 2/3rds of his previous one and the benefits are crap. Like no dental insurance until he's worked there at least a year.

So I'm on the hook for the full cost of Today's emergency surgery, Medication, and the necessary follow-up reconstruction, which my dentist estimates will cost between $5000-$7000. Our dentist has given us every discount she can and we have a payment plan, but losing half our household income has left us with no savings and credit cards at their limits. Even though I only need to come up with $500 this month to go ahead with the reconstructive surgery, I do not have any money to spare. It will also be VASTLY cheaper overall to pay for everything up front rather than pay interest over the months with the payment plan, but literally anything will help me right now.

Link To My GoFundMe

Link To My Ko-Fi

Thank you all so much, Gallus

Holy Shit Guys. Thank you so much. Between this and the Donations I've received on Ko-fi, I am VERY set to cover the costs of this fiasco. I cannot overstate how much of a relief it is to have this taken care of, and how grateful I am for everyone who donated, shared, and helped me trouble shoot this. I am unbelievably blessed to be a part of this community. And as a member of this community, I need to pass this forward: If you're still in a charitable spirit, a friend of mine is facing some pretty dire housing issues and could really, really use your help as well.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

A landmark housing bill automatically became law at 12 a.m. on Saturday after President Trump declined to sign it in protest of the Senate's inaction on an elections bill known as the SAVE America Act. The bipartisan bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is the most comprehensive housing legislation in decades. The measure aims to increase housing supply and bring down costs, including by limiting institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes.  [. . .] Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the chief proponent of the legislation in the Senate, harshly criticized the president's refusal to sign the bill. "At the stroke of midnight, a huge bipartisan bill to lower housing costs became law without the President's signature. Why did President Trump sit on the landmark housing bill for more than 2 weeks? Maybe because there was nothing in it for him personally — no gold-encrusted ballroom, no Qatari jet, no $2 billion crypto deal. Nothing in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing except ways to make housing more affordable," she said in a statement. "Donald Trump couldn't pick up the pen because he just isn't interested in lowering costs for American families." [. . .] [House Speaker Mike Johnson] ultimately expressed confidence that the bill would become law, noting that he had encouraged the president to sign it with "the fattest black marker you have," while telling him the results of the legislation "are going to be very, very good for the American people." "So I hope he does sign it. If he doesn't, it's still law; we'll still celebrate it," Johnson said. "But he's trying to make a point and I think he's making it very effectively." [. . .] The new law includes more than 45 provisions, many of which are aimed at increasing development of affordable housing by removing regulatory barriers and streamlining environmental reviews. It also launches a pilot program to aid local governments in converting vacant commercial buildings into affordable housing, unlocks more federal funding for the construction of factory-built homes and eliminates a rule that requires homes to be built on a chassis — a steel framework used to transport them. In addition, it creates an innovation fund for communities that are increasing their housing supply, supports housing opportunities for veterans and limits the purchases of single-family homes by institutional investors.

I don't know for sure though, that's just what I've been able to find, and I strongly encourage you to do your own research and for anyone with more knowledge and expertise to weigh in.

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.