envirogoth

[envirogoth]

[envirogoth]

It’s counterproductive to get bent out of shape over every dumb thing that comes out of his mouth. Try to focus on the things that have a chance of coming true.

[envirogoth]

walkable cities also means sittable cities send tweet

[envirogoth]

I wanted to document my homemade gifts for loved ones again this year! Top three are applique tapestries I made for 3 childhood friends, bottom left is a cross stitch I made for my partner's mom, and bottom middle/right are macrame tapestries (made identical ones for my mom and aunt)

[envirogoth]

Some birds are air Elementals and some are of watery nature and others still are of earthly disposition. If there are fire element birds nobody is quite sure yet.

[envirogoth]

still thinking about this whale sign i saw in cologne's old town....

[envirogoth]

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

[envirogoth]

From Michael Kenna's Book, "Hokkaido" via made_in_wonder

[envirogoth]

thought it was a one-off thing, but i've now seen multiple pictures and videos of red-bellied woodpeckers touching other birds with their tongue at bird feeders. why are they suck little freaks?

[envirogoth]

Crayfish (Cherax pulcher), family Parastacidae, from freshwater streams in West Papua, Indonesia

photograph by Christian Lukhaup | ZooKeys

[envirogoth]

[envirogoth]

Walnut shells cut in half.

[envirogoth]

To anyone wondering if it's worth it to tear down fascist posters or whatever. I spent a few months last year engaged in silent battle with another student at my school who was putting anti trans stickers up everywhere. I had it down to a system where every night I would walk the five block radius they went up in, and tear down all the ones I could reach, and use a stick to put duct tape over the others. Like, within hours of the stickers going up, I would have already purged the whole zone. I knew the basic schedule of whoever put them up based on when and where the stickers appeared. I probably could have found them in person if I'd wanted to. And I told all my classmates and friends what the stickers looked like and got them to rip them down too. And after a few months of this, the stickers slowed, and then stopped forever.

My point is, a lot of this fashy or right wing stuff is one local weirdo. And if you pay attention, and do a little light organizing with your friends, you can basically make their efforts into a giant sisyphisean exercise in misery. You control your streets!

[envirogoth]

I can think of a really easy solution to this problem.

[envirogoth]

youtube is pulling this bullshit again

praying for the firefox gods to save me once more...

[envirogoth]

[envirogoth]

I’m seeing a bunch of posts that make me think most USAmericans don’t know about The No Surprises Act.

It was passed in 2021 (thank you Biden) and essentially states that if you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover a service you need (or want) you are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate of the cost of care. (If your insurance does cover the service, you should be able to estimate the cost of care based on your deductible and co-pay.)

As a healthcare provider who does not accept any insurance, I am very careful to not violate The No Surprises Act. Why? Because for every penny more than $400 that the Good Faith Estimate was “off” (or if it wasn’t provided), you are entitled to a refund for that amount.

Y’all. Ask for a Good Faith Estimate. Get it in writing. Compare it to what you are paying. If you are not provided an estimate or if it’s wrong by more than $400, demand a refund.