annoying when shows set in the medieval period have the women with thier hair just long and unstyled and out . girl go put on your wimple girl 🤦♀️
like there are so many fun medieval hair and headgear options, it’s so boring just seeing loose beachy waves meant to appeal to 21st century beauty standards
put that hot prince in a gay little hood with an ostrich feather or so help me god
Book! (The mode in hats and headdress - Ruth Turner Wilcox)
i am thinking about the sproutinglupine cross-stitch tick tonight
ALT
she’s so beautifully drawn– the colors, the patterning, the curve of the legs– beautiful and respectful in a way that you usually only see for a couple bugs. Butterflies, bees, some particularly charismatic beetles and moths– cicadas, too, recently– but i’ve never seen anybody depict a tick like this! never a tick!
Cattle who have learned to use hand-pumps to get water.
Here’s a new paper on tool use in cattle! It really doesn’t surprise me. I wonder if people who raise animals ever look at studies about them and say, “That’s a new discovery? Bessie does that all the time.”
Challenge #12: Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life.
I'm going to call one person out by name, and hope that I'm not putting her on the spot. beatrice_otter has been my primary beta and person I bounce ideas off of for almost 10 years now and she is endlessly supportive and willing to listen to me flail around, as well as helpful in catching plot holes and telling me when I've lost the plot entirely, and catching my myriad typos and homophone confusions. I'm not sure Pi'maat would exist without her help and occasional gentle head pats telling me it's going to be okay, and I am very glad to have her in my fandom life.
I'm also hugely fond of the people in both the Ad Astra and vuhlkansu Discords for having the sort of deep-dive worldbuilding conversations where, to take an actual recent example, you start out with someone trying to make a better representation of a canon map of an alien planet and end up trying to work out how plate tectonics could produce those mountain ranges and figure out what that sort of water-to-land ratio would really do to the climate.
And of course, Dreamwidth is fantastic. It really feels like a town, small enough to have a genuine community vibe, but not so small that you can't find new stuff from time to time. I genuinely appreciate all of you for being here, for listening to me talk about my various obsessions, and for posting about your own interests and creative pursuits. 💛
A lot of the credit for that has to go to denise and Mark for sticking with this project for 17 years, and sticking to their principles, not taking VC money, not monetizing the community, and generally being pro-social and decent humans, which is sadly not as common as it should be in people who run social platforms.
So, after a number of years on multiple waiting lists, I have my autism diagnosis
I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about it, but there’s a lot of “oh… that explains everything” and a lot of relief that I’m not a bad or broken person.
I spent a long time thinking I was wrong somehow - cold, lacking empathy, too intense about the “wrong” things. It turns out my brain just works differently.
Right now I mostly feel... buffering. Numb, but not in a bad way. Like my system is quietly re-sorting years of memories with new labels.
I’m not ready to be insightful or inspirational about this. I just wanted to say it out loud.
I wasn’t a psycho. I was autistic, without the information I needed.
Liam Ramos, age five, being detained by ICE creeps outside his home Tuesday. He and his father were then flown to an ICE prison in Texas. Photo provided to press by Columbia Heights Public Schools
Here, for future reference/primary voting/rotten vegetable distribution, are those seven Democrats: Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (North Carolina), Laura Gillen (New York), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Washington), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), and Tom Suozzi (New York).
Also, cheers to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) who voted against the DHS funding bill even though she helped negotiate the bipartisan DHS bill, with a few very limited restrictions on ICE, like fewer prison beds, funding for body cameras, and for a bit more training of the goon squads. But nothing to prevent abuses by the stormtroopers or to make them obey the Constitution. She knew it wasn’t sufficient, and voted no.
One Republican, weird Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted against the bill, because “online censorship.” (Fuck it, why not.)
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In addition to providing $10 billion in funding for ICE operations — roughly the same as last year, separate from the ginormous $175 billion bonanza for ICE in the Big Ugly Bill earlier this year — the $64 billion DHS funding bill provides funding for FEMA, TSA airport security, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and a bunch of other stuff.
The DHS bill was part of a package of 2026 appropriations bills that will fund the government through the end of September, when the new fiscal year begins. Now the whole mess goes to the Senate, which must pass the funding bills by January 31 to avoid a government shutdown.
Is there a ghost of a chance Senate Dems will force changes to DHS funding that could really bring Trump’s deportation Gestapo to heel? There’s that supposed power of the filibuster as a means of forcing concessions, but heavens, we wouldn’t want to trigger a government shutdown again, since then there’d be no constraints on ICE, whereas now the bill contains provisions that DHS will completely ignore. Back in a moment, gotta barf.
On a day with subzero temperatures and a wind chill that feels like it’s -40° F, hundreds of clergy members and others knelt in prayer outside the Minneapolis airport, and ICE moved in to arrest them; we’re sure DHS will insist they were all terrorists who support violent criminals.
Here’s a nice tip, if you want to follow what’s happening today, from Naomi Kritzer, a Minneapolis resident and author of one of our favorite science fiction short stories, “Cat Pictures Please.”
May some of Minnesotans’ courage rub off on our electeds, the end.
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Made it to the Mackays factory shop in Arbroath, ostensibly to get more Mrs Bridges morello cherry preserve. But we came away with 7 jars of jam, preserve, marmalade and chutney, plus unplanned fudge! After in Dobbies cafe, then a wander around the plants area. We live very near to Dobbies, and first came to the cafe 25 years ago, after we moved to Broughty Ferry before later Monifieth. Many happy memories. Oh and I was trialling my sturdy soled new Moshulu loafer shoes. Very comfortable.
Very weary after our brief outing, but delighted to have managed it. Dobbies Dundee currently has a semi resident robin singing in the main shopping area! It's been there since Christmas. We thought they were playing very loud bird song through the speakers. But on the way out saw the robin perched near the tills. Attracting a crowd.
It is currently -6 degrees in Chicago right now, but I feel warm and toasty thanks to my electric blanket and the way Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez just absolutely murdered the face off of CVS Health CEO David Joyner during a House Ways and Means committee hearing with healthcare CEOs on Thursday. I watched all three hours of the hearing, and while there were many other good moments, this was the best of all. Not only because she was good, but because as soon as she started in, Joyner’s entire demeanor changed into that of a teenage kid who knows they fucked up and is now getting properly reamed out in the principal’s office.
Truly, it was a thing of beauty.
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Ocasio-Cortez, perky as could be, laid out exactly how the “vertical integration” model allows CVS to have complete control over how much consumers pay for every part of their health care, from their premiums to their doctor’s visits to their prescriptions. Complete with a visual aid designed by CVS itself!
Behold, the transcript
AOC: Mr. Joyner, you are the CEO of CVS Health. Correct?
Joyner: Correct.
AOC: I actually don’t know how many Americans know this, but CVS Health owns Aetna, the health insurance company. Correct?
Joyner: Correct.
AOC: And CVS, which owns Aetna, also owns Oak Street Health Medical Clinics. Correct?
Joyner: Yes, it does.
AOC: And in addition to that, they own, of course, CVS pharmacies and CVS Health, and also own CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit manager, which helps negotiate some of these rebates and prescription prices. Correct?
Joyner: That’s correct.
AOC: And CVS Caremark processes nearly 30 percent of all prescriptions in a given year. And so in other words, CVS Caremark helps determine the prices that patients pay for a third of all prescriptions in the US. In fact, I was following one of CVS’s recent investor calls where they really laid out quite clearly what this means if you are a patient.
This is what’s known as a captive strategy. And CVS, in the investor call, used the example themselves of a patient known as Kate. Kate has an Aetna health insurance plan, right here, which is owned by CVS Health. She then goes to a CVS pharmacy. She’s connected to an Oak Street Health medical clinic. She sees a doctor at Oak Street Health who prescribes her medication and then she goes to fill that prescription at a CVS uh pharmacy. So the price Kate pays for that medication is dictated by Aetna, CVS, Caremark and they also own the drug manufacturer Cordivis. Um, Mr. Joyner, this is quite a bit of market concentration. Wouldn’t you agree?
Joyner: Um no, I wouldn’t agree that it’s market concentration. I would suggest it’s a model that works really well for the consumer.
AOC: Yeah. Um, I think it works very well for CVS. I think, in fact, you all said on the call that you all call it “a fully engaged member.” It’s great marketing there. “A fully engaged member unlocks sizable value for payers and CVS Health.”
She pointed to a sign citing this as a direct quote from someone on the investor call.
And continued …
AOC: So the health insurance gets a cut, the pharmacy benefit manager gets a cut, the drug manufacturer gets a cut, and the patient gets screwed. I think the Federal Trade Commission has also found that health care conglomerates like CVS Health charge more for medications filled at their pharmacies.
We’re talking about thousand percent markups on medications for cancer and HIV. And, you know, I think this is actually an interesting point of common ground that I may have with some of our Republican colleagues here in this hearing because whether you’re a blue-blooded capitalist or a card-carrying democratic socialist, I think corporate monopolies are a problem and this vertical integration is destroying people’s ability to access care. […]
I saw something that was interesting from the opening statement of Mr. Hemsley from United Health talking about how much United spends, what was it, 85 percent on care, Mr. Hemsley? Approaching 90 percent. But the ACA forces you all to spend a decent amount of that on care. But when you own the care, when the insurer owns the pharmacy, owns the PBM, owns the drug manufacturer, you also own the health care cost. You own a big chunk of the health care cost.
And so, you know, a hundred years ago, we had this type of market concentration in our banks and we did something about it when it crashed the economy and we passed the Glass-Steagall Act. We should be considering that in our healthcare system. And if we believe in competition, I think we should put our votes and our legislation in alignment with that and consider breaking up this industry in order to allow the competition that prevents this kind of vertical integration and abuse of power. And with that, I yield back.
BAM.
Now, I have to say, this was one of the most enjoyable House committee hearings I have seen in a while, because I hate health insurance companies and I definitely hate health insurance CEOs and it was just a pleasure watching them get dragged by practically every rep there — including the Republicans! Now, the Republicans were deeply incorrect about what they thought was the solution (giving people who are paying $2000 a month for health insurance $2000 for a year in an HSA they can’t spend on their premium to begin with) and much of the cause (the ACA, they very wrongly insisted), but other than that, pretty much everyone was in agreement with the fact that pharmacy benefit managers are the devil and this kind of vertical integration is bullshit that, very obviously, screws the customer.
(A pharmacy benefit manager negotiates the cost of drugs with pharmaceutical companies and also tells the insurance companies which drugs they should cover and which they shouldn't. They're hypothetically supposed to be in charge of keeping costs down, but they absolutely do not.)
Isn’t that nice? In fact, I’d say only two people sucked all the way through, one of them (unsurprisingly) being Dan Crenshaw, who wanted to get people to “admit” that somehow subsidizing people by giving them money to put in HSAs would mean that insurance companies would make less money somehow.
“I do want to ask one simple question,” he said. “Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to subsidize low-income patients — which is the point of the ACA, right? — subsidize low-income patients directly through a health savings account that it, that they own, instead of subsidizing you, the insurance companies. You can answer that one. Anybody? Does anybody agree with that that concept? Subsidize patients through an, through a health savings account instead of subsidizing insurance companies?”
No one agreed, because of how his question did not make sense except in a case where someone does not actually have health insurance. Several said, generically, that they’d be happy to do anything that “puts the consumer more in control,” which Crenshaw counted as maybes, until one pointed out that “it makes no difference.” Because the patient would still be paying their premiums to the insurance company and likely using the HSA for co-pays and pharmaceuticals.
“Not even our patient advocate?” he asked Ellen Allen, executive director of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, who was there to testify about how her own premiums had increased to $2000 a month without the subsidies. And no, obviously she did not think that was a great idea.
“Um, respectfully, I think that could undermine the healthcare system,” Allen said. Crenshaw, clearly disappointed, responded by dismissing her with an “Interesting, okay, no.”
The other failure was Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Oregon), whose case for HSAs was that they would allow the consumer to “make money” on them (he mentioned interest, although people who are already solvent enough to not actually need to use their HSAs for their actual medical bills sometimes invest them instead) instead of the insurance companies. I looked it up, and $2000 would earn $3 a year in interest in a regular HSA account and $60 in a high-yield HSA account. And that would only be if you don’t actually spend it.
Bentz:
I’m really interested in the float and and that of course is what leads to people calling insurers banks doing a side business as healthcare because of course you charge the premium, you collect the money, you put the money in the bank, it earns interest, and then you pay it out. And so the the float is of extraordinary interest to those of us that support HSAs because a health savings account means that instead of paying the premium to you, the theory is the person with the account earns the money. Uh, starting you with you, Mr. Hemsley, is that true? If if HSAs were put into place, would the patients actually be earning the money instead of the insurance company?
Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, did not understand the question and neither do I, which I assume is the only thing he and I will ever have in common. Is the plan just people not having health insurance at all and just having HSAs? Is that what they want to do? Just … everyone pays out of pocket and hopes it doesn’t come to more than $2000? Because that seems like a terrible idea. Even if it does earn one an extra $3.
So he tried again.
It’s simple enough. If HSAs were put in place and people could put their money into the HSA and have it earn interest from them instead of paying it to you as a premium, they would wait until I guess they had the the problem or or the deductible to pay, would they be earning the money instead of you? That’s the question.
Again, no one understood the question because why would there be a deductible for someone not paying a premium?
He tried again by asking that the insurance companies let him know later, in writing, how much interest they make on denying claims, which still did not make any sense. But hey, you know, he gave it a shot?
Still, there is something ultimately very heartwarming about seeing all different kinds of people find common ground in hating health insurance companies and the executives who make tens of millions of dollars off of our collective illnesses. You don’t get to see that too often, and it’s a gift.
Also a gift is the idea of a Glass-Steagall Act for health insurance companies, which is an excellent idea and should be the next step here (after reinstating the subsidies). Granted, I’d prefer they not exist at all, but if they have to exist for now, this vertical integration shit needs to be burned to the ground.
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Insurgent is an interesting but uneven middle book - one that kept my attention without ever fully winning me over.
I'm very aware that I'm not the target audience for this series, and I think that colours my response here. There's a lot in Insurgent that will work well for readers invested in the characters and the world, particularly the escalating stakes and constant forward momentum.
At the same time, the novel often feels busy rather than deep. The plot is packed with movement, faction politics, and shifting alliances, but emotional beats are rushed through in favour of action. As a result, moments that should land hard sometimes pass by without much impact.
That said, I was intrigued. The world-building continues to raise interesting questions about control, identity, and rebellion, and the series' larger ideas kept me turning pages even when the execution didn't fully work for me. Tris remains a compelling central figure, even if I never felt as emotionally connected as the story seemed to want me to be.
Ultimately, Insurgent is a solid, readable sequel that does what it needs to do to move the story forward. It didn't quite click for me, but I can absolutely see why it resonates with its intended audience.
Current Music:Taylor Swift - Dancing With Our Hands Tied
Rec Category: Jack O'Neill Characters:Pairings: Jack/Sam, Jack/Daniel Categories: het, slash, episode related Warnings: none Word Count: 447 Author on DW: none found Author's Website:AO3 Profile Link:In Which Jack Gets Bicurious in the Time Loop
Author's Summary:
"Let me ask you something. All that time you were… looping. Were you ever tempted to do something crazy? I mean you could do anything without worrying about consequences."
"You know it’s funny, you asked me that before."
Why This Must Be Read:
We all know Jack kissed Sam during the time loop. What about poor Daniel?
Just finished this, my second book finished of the New Year. And it was honestly one of the most powerful and affecting books that I've read for a very long time. A tale of Shakespeare, yet not of Shakespeare, a moving family story, an immersive glimpse of Tudor England. I'm reluctant to say too much in detail to spoil things.
Structurally it was really interesting, different in some ways I gather from the film version. I also found it phenomenally immersive, similar to the effect that Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall series had on me. I wondered if this was due to the present tense used throughout much of the book, but I don't think that's so much the reason, as an acute sense of authorial observation and description. And just thoroughly good writing.
It has big standout moments that are particularly powerful, but also moved me constantly throughout, both by the feelings conveyed, and the power of the writing, which was both lyrical and addictive in equal measure.
Just an incredible achievement. And one that I would recommend without question.
There is no Friday open thread this week, because the snowflake_challenge backlog was stressing me out so much that I needed devote a whole post to catching up with it. That said, if you want to use any of the challenges as a prompt, and respond in some way to it in the comments (either by linking to your own snowflake_challenge post, or by answering it fresh), do feel free to treat it as a Friday open thread.
Title: Workaholic Fandom: FAKE Author: badly_knitted Characters: Dee, Ryo. Rating: PG Setting: Early in the manga. Summary: They’ve only been working together for a few months, but it’s long enough for Dee to have realised Ryo can be a bit obsessive about the job. Word Count: 1592 Written For: Theme Prompt: 241 – Stubbornness at fandomweekly. Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
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denise and Mark for sticking with this project for 17 years, and sticking to their principles, not taking VC money, not monetizing the community, and generally being pro-social and decent humans, which is sadly not as common as it should be in people who run social platforms.
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stargateficrec
