artemisgarden

[artemisgarden]

Dudes healthcare is so fake. My ADHD meds are $940 without insurance. But they gave me a website of "coupons" which straight up looks like a scam website, and I got it today for $60! Just a coupon from a random website and it was $900 cheaper. America, I am confusion!! America explain!!

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“Please, ma’am.” Lara is using her very best patient civil servant voice. “I realise this is frustrating for you, but I cannot issue a birth certificate for that child!” This is shaping up to be a very confusing Monday morning. It’s not like working for the civil registry is particularly thrilling, but it’s usually quite pleasant at least.

“I don’t see why not!” the mother on the other end of the counter sulks. “He is my son, isn’t he? So I should be able to register him!”

Lara takes another desperate look at the child in question. Child, not baby, because he is standing on his own two feet and looks to be about ten years old. Even if he’s a bit short for his age.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” he asks, a typical child’s frown forming on his forehead, and Lara blinks. The child’s light brown skin has an odd pattern to it, almost like the grain of polished w—

“Nothing, honey,” the mother replies hastily. “This nice lady is just trying to explain something to me.”

Lara feels her cheeks burn. “Ma’am,” she says, bringing her voice all the way own.  “You’re supposed to register children within three days of their birth!”

The mother bristles like an angry hen. “He woke up the day before yesterday! It’s not his fault he wasn’t born.”

Lara stares at her, any sort of reply stuck in her throat. She can’t have heard that right.

She is just about to lose it – in front of a client no less – when one of her colleagues emerges from the copy room. “Is something the matter?” he asks concernedly. “Can I help?”

“All I want,” the woman huffs. “Is to register my child.”

Lara is about to apologise to Collin for dragging him into this, but as soon as he glances down over the counter and sees the little boy, he hastily stands up straight again.

“Ah, yes, I see,” he nods nervously. “No problem at all, ma’am. I’ll just— Asha?”

“Yes?” a voice answers from one of the offices in the back and Asha appears a moment later.

“A special registry for you,” Collin says, a tad sheepishly.

As soon as Asha sees the child, her eyebrows raise so high in delighted surprise that they nearly disappear under the edge of her hijab. “Hello,” she smiles. “How lovely to meet you. What’s your name?”

“Willow,” the boy replies cautiously.

“That’s a great name,” she answers decidedly and promptly turns her smile on the mother, who already looks considerably happier. “If you’ll follow me to the other desk, we’ll have Willow signed in in no time.”

Lara watches them go in silent bewilderment.

“I know,” Collin hums beside her. “It’s always the wooden puppets that come to life, never understood why.”

“…puppets?” Lara gulps. The boy’s hair had looked rather like spun wool…

“Mm,” he nods. “But Asha handles all the special registrations, so you needn’t worry about it. Just smile, nod, and go fetch Asha. That’s what I do.”

Her head is beginning to spin, but Lara nods all the same. “Right. All special cases are for Asha.”

“Exactly,” he smiles encouragingly. “Just remember, when it comes to birth certificates: living puppets, faerie changelings, babies from peaches, logs come to life, that’s all Asha. Oh, and with the marriages we do come across the odd brought to life statue, and they obviously didn’t have a birth certificate to begin with, so she handles those as well.”

Well that’s just too much to process at once, so Lara settles for a dutiful sound of agreement instead of a proper reply. She watches with growing admiration how Asha chats happily with the mother and child from behind her counter. A few minutes later the two of them walk off, smiling proudly, and with the new papers tucked safely into the woman’s bag.

“There we are,” Asha chimes. “No harm done. And another proud single parent.”

“Thank you,” Lara says, the apology clear in her voice, she really wishes she could have handled this a bit more gracefully.

“No problem,” Asha replies warmly. “It’s your first month, don’t beat yourself up about it.”

Lara makes a grateful sound and Asha gives her an encouraging smile.

“I give presentations at the head office, if you’re interested,” she says cheerfully. “Bureaucracy, the Supernatural and You. You should come along some time! Because I’m telling you, with the number of young people stomping off into the woods for some escapism nowadays, there’s going to be a big influx of special cases. Mark my words.”

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer 7.17 | "Lies My Parents Told Me"

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Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), dir. Shawn Levy

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Why are British teenage girls so unhappy? Here’s the answer (Caitlin Moran, The Times, Sep 13 2024)

"The report, by the Children’s Society, found that British 15-year-old girls are the most unhappy in Europe.

British girls aged 10-15 are “significantly less happy” with their life, appearance, family and school than the average boy — and their happiness is still declining.

Boys’ life satisfaction, meanwhile, remains broadly stable. (…)

But I still didn’t have an “aha!” moment about why this so disproportionately affects girls until… I talked to some teenage girls.

It was at a party, and I went to vape with them on the patio. Because I take my nicotine like children do.

“Duh — it’s the boys,” one said when I brought it up, as all the others agreed.

“The boys?” I asked.

My last book, What About Men?, had been all about how much boys struggle these days: their loneliness; their suicide rates. I’d spent the past year feeling very sympathetic towards boys.

“Yeah, well, who do you think they’re taking out their unhappiness on? It’s us,” another girl said.

“One boy at school used to draw a picture every day of how ugly I was,” a third girl said. “Every day for two years.”

“They’ve all got ‘Rate The Girls’ polls on their WhatsApps,” the first said. “They mark you down for weight gain, haircuts, what you say.”

“But then, if you’re hot, it’s just as bad, in a different way, because they’ll be talking about how they want to f*** you.”

The girls discussed coping techniques. Bad news: none of them worked.

“The only way you can stop them is if you become ‘one of the boys’ and hang out with them. But then,” the second girl said with a sigh, “all the other girls call you a slut. Because you’ve gone over to the boys’ side.”

“Surely it’s not all the boys?” I said. “There must be some nice boys?”

“Oh, yeah,” one girl said. “But they keep their heads down. Because… well, look.”

She showed me the Instagram account of her friend. Under every picture she posted of herself — smiling in a new dress; with her dog — dozens of anonymous accounts had replied with the most rank abuse.

“Fat.” “Slut.” “You gonna try and kill yourself again, for attention?”

“They’re all boys from her school,” she said. “And look, this one boy tried to defend her.”

I saw a series of messages from a brave teenage boy, posting things like, “You’re all big men, leaving these replies under anonymous accounts.”

As I could see, this boy immediately became a target too. Mainly accusations that he was “white knighting” this girl: “You wanna f*** her, bro?”

“So,” I asked, “you don’t think it’s social media pressure to be beautiful, or the economy, that’s making girls so sad?”

“Well, yeah, them too,” the first girl said. “But, Monday-Friday, 9-3, I’m not on social media. I’m not… in the economy. I’m just with these boys. And no one talks about how horrible they are.”

I thought about another recent report, showing a 30 per cent ideological gap between Gen Z men, who are increasingly conservative, and Gen Z women, who are increasingly progressive.

I thought about Andrew Tate, who has nine million mostly young male followers — and faces human trafficking charges, which he denies.

And I thought: maybe these girls are on to something. Maybe more people need to vape with teenage girls and ask them for the school gossip."

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THE MUMMY RETURNS (2001) dir. Stephen Sommers

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anyway yeah DELETE YOUR FUCKING ADVERTISING IDS

Android:

Settings ➡️ Google ➡️ all services ➡️ Ads ➡️ Delete advertising ID

(may differ slightly depending on android version and manufacturer firmware. you can't just search settings for "advertising ID" of course 🔪)

iOS:

Settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ tracking ➡️ toggle "allow apps to request to track" to OFF

and ALSO settings ➡️ privacy ➡️ Apple advertising ➡️ toggle "personalized ads" to OFF

more details about the process here via the EFF

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If this pops up while you’re scrolling, I wish you unconditional love and massive success.

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Taught my dad how to navigate ao3 bcuz he wanted to read Venom fanfiction I don't think he knows that it's mostly going to he porn on there and my sister told me not to tell him because he has to have the ao3 experience and find out in his own wish him luck

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WAIT WAIT ITS COMING BACK?!?! I saw am article ages ago that said it was canceled

Darcy’s back in What If… bitches! 🥰

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thinking about how shawn and gus are definitely the kind of friends that have a secret code word for if either one of them get trapped in a groundhog day time loop scenario

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I’ve gone insane and started writing a cliche fantasy novel

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narrator who's terrible at social cues & describes every facial expression as "unreadable"

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netflix subtitles are great for when you want to read a caption with like 50% resemblance to what's being spoken

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I forgot to post it but back around summer I drew Baba Jaga's hut. Try to find the cat!

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