Pinned
Necklace for Absinthe the Green Fairy Halloween prop project. Pictures are in normal light, blacklight, and the dark in which it glows. Swarovski, Preciosa, vintage, uranium glass, and Aragonite natural glow in the dark stones in black enameled settings. Some crystal has aftermarket coatings to make them glow in blacklight and in the dark.
Don't fall for the tolerance and respect for everyone's opinion if they aren't tolerant and respectful of your EXISTENCE.
Tolerance is not ethics; it's a survival strategy. If people aren't agreeing to cooperate with the mutual survival terms, they're not subject to its benefits.
A political argument you can have in good faith and remain friends: is it desirable to run a budget surplus and pay down the national debt or does the interlocking system of financial entanglement keep world peace
A political argument that you can’t be friends after: do you and the people you love deserve rights and freedom or nah
I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.
A jury has ordered Blue Cross of Louisiana to pay $421m to a hospital specializing in a much sought-after type of breast reconstruction, primarily for cancer survivors. The insurer "preapproved" surgeries for thousands of patients, but then held back 92% of the payments it owed, with CEO Steven Udvarhelyi insisting that "authorization never says we’re going to pay you":
In a characteristically brilliant and deep investigative story, Propublica's T Christian Miller explains how Blue Cross of Louisiana colluded with other Blue Shield franchises around the country to steal hundreds of millions of dollars by denying claims they'd already approved:
The hospital at the center of this controversy is the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery in New Orleans, founded by two surgeons, Frank DellaCroce and Scott Sullivan. DellaCroce and Sullivan are pioneers of an advanced form of breast reconstruction called "autologous tissue reconstruction," which eschews implants in favor of the patient's own fat to construct new breasts. While other surgeons perform this surgery, DellaCroce and Sullivan are acknowledged as national leaders, having invented many innovative techniques and trained many of the other surgeons who perform the procedure. As a result, patients travel from all over America to the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery.
DellaCroce and Sullivan's procedure is extremely precise and labor-intensive, and it comes at a high cost. Accordingly, patients seek pre-approval from their insurer before undergoing the procedure, and in Louisiana, that usually means calling up Blue Cross, the state's largest insurer. Despite pre-approving the procedure, Blue Cross of Louisiana has held back over 90% of the payments it owed to the hospital.
insisting that "authorization never says we’re going to pay you"
THAT'S WHAT A PRE-AUTHORIZATION IS. They don't need to authorize a procedure they're not paying for.
I don't ask permission from my insurance company to get a hair cut or an oil change because INSURANCE DOESN'T PAY FOR THOSE THINGS. I only ask permission for things they pay for because that's what they control: payment.
Hi. Please come with me while I tell you why this is so fucking infuriating.
Part of my day job is to do prior authorizations, appeal prior auth denials, and generally take every bureaucratic step possible to argue with insurance companies until they consent to pay for a thing.
Prior Auths are, by and large, a way for insurance companies to delay payment. It's also an avenue of denial, but this one actually costs them some money on employees etc, so it's more about delay. Delaying payment allows them to post more profits per quarter. The longer they delay payment for more claims, the more "good quarters" the higher ups can show to investors.
It's like this:
Say you fucked up your knee. It twisted weird. There was a 'pop' and now you can't put weight on it. So, you take your insurance card and you go see a doc.
Your doc orders an x-ray. You go get it no problem. The x-ray says that your bones look fine, so you know the problem is soft tissue, which can't be seen on an x-ray well enough to diagnose, so your doc does the reasonable next step and orders an MRI of your injured knee.
It takes a few days to process the MRI orders, and MRIs aren't the most common equipment, there's really only a few of them near you, so it takes them a few days to call you for scheduling. They can get you in in a week and a half. You ask the scheduler if it's covered and they say they don't get all your imaging coverage details so it's best to call your insurance company. They give you a procedure code to give to the insurance company to check.
You think, "OK I will call them tomorrow" because you don't have time today to sit on hold.
You call them, you sit on hold, you give the nice customer service agent the code and they say "oh that needs prior authorization!" so you call the radiology scheduler back, wait on hold for a while, and let them know. They say they're on it.
Somewhere on the back end, someone sends all your MRI info including date and location of service, procedure code, medical justification etc to the auth department at your insurance. It takes them 3 business days to process it.
A few rounds back and forth of your insurance requesting more and more granularity of medical justification ensue, they take about 3 business days to process each response. It likely takes almost that long for your radiology back office folks/medical assistants/nurses to respond because they are:
1) Busy doing medicine or other medicine facilitating things
2) very likely short staffed and
3) going through this process for nearly every patient on their schedule.
The radiology folks call to reschedule you to a day 5 days later than your original appointment because your insurance company is requiring a peer-to-peer. A process where they have a doctor employed by the insurance company call your doctor to discuss whether or not you really, honestly, truly need the MRI.
Your doctor skips their lunch break to do the peer-to-peer and despite their best efforts and medical science being on their side, your insurance company has denied the authorization of your MRI until you try 6 weeks of physical therapy to see if that fixes your problem. If you still hurt after 6 weeks of PT, your doctor can start this process all over again and they'll approve your MRI, they promise.
So, not only did they just delay your MRI by at least 8 weeks (since it took us 2 weeks to even get to this point), they delayed your physical therapy by 2 weeks or more as well (because who knows how long it'll take you to get on a PT schedule in the first place).
Or longer! If you you didn't get the code on that first call, or didn't have the ability to wait on hold for more days, or someone who knows how to do PAs was out sick in the radiology office, or a fax got lost somewhere... Etc. In broken and inefficient systems (like most hospital systems in the country) if the right dominoes fall in the right order, this process can take months.
Or! You could get frustrated with the delays, and being made to suffer through what is likely medically a fixable problem, so you decide to just pay out of pocket. Then they don't have to pay for it at all!
Delays equal profit for insurance companies and thats what the prior authorization process is.
It is well known in the industry that the PA process is only really in place for this.
SO WHEN I SAY THAT WHEN AN INSURANCE COMPANY CEO SAYS THAT "A PRIOR AUTHORIZATION NEVER SAYS WE'RE GOING TO PAY" IT MEANS THEY ARE PLAYING IN OUR FACES.
They ARE ADMITTING THAT THEY ARE DOING MEDICAL HARM TO PATIENTS BY DELAYING CARE FOR LITERALLY NO REASON.
Drag them. Drag them all to hell.
TO. HELL.
Research has shown that pleasure affects nutrient absorption. In a 1970s study of Swedish and Thai women, it was found that when the Thai women were eating their own (preferred) cuisine, they absorbed about 50% more iron from the meal than they did from eating the unfamiliar Swedish food. And the same was true in the reverse for the Swedish women. When both groups were split internally and one group given a paste made from the exact same meal and the other was given the meal itself, those eating the paste absorbed 70% less iron than those eating the food in its normal state.
Pleasure affects our metabolic pathways; it’s a facet of the complex gut-brain connection. If you’re eating foods you don’t like because you think it’s healthy, it’s not actually doing your body much good (it’s also unsustainable, we’re pleasure-seeking creatures). Eat food you enjoy, it’s a win-win.
what
no seriously
what?
PLEASURE IS A NECESSARY PART OF HUMAN HEALTH, BOTH PSYCHOLOGICALLY AND PHYSICALLY
this is why you should be eating your chips with salsa and guac instead of beating yourself up for not eating a salad with tomato and avocado (unless you are a salad bitch like me then enjoy both of them!)
for those of you wondering if the studies cited above are legit and if so where we can read about them, here’s a link to one of the (more than a dozen!) papers written on the topic of nutrient absorption and how you eat your food:
hey look, additional info!
it has been like at least eight years and sometimes I still think to myself, when I am tired, “but I am le tired… well then take a nap! AND THEN FIRE ZE MISSILES” even though in retrospect that is like one of the most embarrassingly unfunny videos to ever come out of the internet
tbh i still start sentences with “hokay, so” at least 3 times a day
same, aggressively so. I also still use “wtf, mate.”
who doesn’t think this is STILL AS HILARIOUS as it was when we all watched it over and over and over again 15 years ago?
I’ve reblogged this before and will doubtless reblog this again because MY ENTIRE GROUP OF FRIENDS WAS SO OBSESSED WITH THIS VIDEO IN 2002/2003 THAT WE COLLECTIVELY BANNED ANY MENTION OF IT EVER AGAIN
AND YET
WE ARE NOW GROWN-ASS ADULTS IN OUR THIRTIES
AND IT STILL GETS QUOTED FROM TIME TO TIME
I HAVE THE WHOLE THING MEMORISED
TO THIS DAY, MY MOTHER REGULARLY SAYS “BUT I AM LE TIRED” BECAUSE OF A VIDEO I SHOWED HER IN FUCKING HIGH SCHOOL
THIS IS AN ICONIC PIECE OF INTERNET HISTORY AND I WILL FIGHT ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERS
my wife and I still regularly say “hokay so”, “but I am le tired” and “and some big meteor’s like ‘well fuck that’.” Fucking iconic.
I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE AND I’M SO GRATEFUL FOR THIS POST BECAUSE I’VE SEEN IT NOW AND I CAN’T STOP FUCKING LAUGHING
God how has it been that long
AND IT IS UNFORTUNATELY SOMEWHAT EVERGREEN 2025
Now what?
red classic tabby with low white spotting
Iconic Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur, who served in the Marine Corps, has had her contribution scrubbed from Department of Defence (DOD) website amid an ongoing purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The actress, born Bernice Frankel, was one of the first women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, as noted by IMDB. As a trailblazer for future female Marines, she attended boot camp and became a typist.
In June 1943, she was transferred to Camp Lejune, where she attended the Motor Transport School, which helped her earn her next assignment as a truck driver and dispatcher in Cherry Point, NC. She was honourably discharged as Staff Sergeant Arthur in September 1945, but her contribution has now been wiped from the DOD’s website.
The DOC website only shows an image of Arthur during her time in the Marine Corps, but information relating to her wartime contribution has been scrubbed. The former link now leads to a “404 not found” page, and the URL begins “DEIbefore”.
The page is back for now as of March 23, 2025. Keep on yelling at these people that have been taking down so many distinguished veterans! And fuck them for putting dei in there because it's clear they mean dei as 'you didn't earn it because you're not a white straight Christian male' not 'hey here's the contributions of someone that's been overlooked due to racism/sexism/etc'.
That’s why any and every son-of-a-bitch we find wearin’ a Nazi uniform, they’re gonna die.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) dir. Quentin Tarantino
hi plz share this everywhere and with everyone immediately thanks
Transcript:
Local Hops For Local Beer
With your help we can develop better hops for local growers and brewers!
Hops have root-like rhizomes just under the soil. You can remove a 2-inch piece of the rhizome without harming the plant. Please seal samples in ziplock bags and mail them in or contact us. Plants will be used to breed varieties adapted to the Northeast for local farmers and other growers. Wild hops have valuable disease resistance traits and environmental adaptations to aid New England production.
Common hops (Humulus lupus): A native species grown commercially for brewing beer. It is a vining plant with a green thornless stem.It will usually have leaves growing in pairs opposite each other with 3-4 lobes. It may also have leaves with no lobes.
Japanese hops (Humulus japonicus): An invasive species harmful to the environment. It can be distinguished from common hops by the stiff hairs on its stem, and leaves with 5-9 lobes.
We are collecting samples under Massachusetts state permit #2025-PI03. Please send us a letter with the location so we can collect samples, and post on iNaturalist so state employees concerned with invasive species can monitor the site.
Please send to:
Noah Williams, 206 Paige Laboratory, University of Massachusetts
161 Holdsworth Way, Amherst MA 01003
Or reach us via: noawilliams@umass.edu
Funding provided by MA Society for Promoting Agriculture and MinuteFund Crowd Funding. Graphic design by Giuseppe Paolini, gpaolini2305@gmail.com.
Between 1971 and 1977, there were 38 rear-end collisions of Ford Pintos that resulted in fire, leading to 27 deaths and 24 non-fatal burn injuries.
The American people made Pintos a national joke.
Between 2012 and 2022, untouched Teslas have had 232 confirmed cases of fires and 83 fatalities worldwide.
People in America believe Elon Musk is going to save our nation.
Education is important.
here's what a Tesla battery fire looks like! (the fire in OP was likely someone giving the car a malatov cocktail)
those huge lithium battery packs burn so hot that fire departments can't put them out
Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.
>:)c
May I present to you, nationalclothing.org?
It doesn't have everything, but it's still my first source when researching traditional clothing from other cultures.
There's also this resource on historical fashion: Claire’s Historical Fashion Reference & Resources
another addition as far as physical media goes there is the encyclopedia of national dress (that i still need to buy myself bc this kind of thing is super important to my sort of fantasy designing) but yes i do agree i wish there was EVEN MORE documentation on this
Reblogging to spread awareness
the goldmine folks
Former federal employees from various organizations who were affected by the Trump administration’s mass firings share with @stephruhle on @11thhourmsnbc the significance of the work they did and their motivations for entering civil service.
If the Democratic Party had any damn sense, they'd be doing this day in and day out. You wouldn't see a D congressperson appearing to make a comment or speech without a fired federal worker next to them. They'd be hammering on this point over and over.
But. You know.
