“I’m going to drive through Appalachia, should I be scared of the inbred hill folk and the cryptids? 😱😱😱😱” no bitch, be scared of sliding off a mountain into a valley and not being found for months or years.
they’re going to be insinuating Bigfoot got you in YouTube docs while your Ford Taurus is upside down at the bottom of a mountain
The Western US has guard rails everywhere they could possibly be needed, but in Appalachia, guard rails are for sissies
Something simple to get me out of artblock
ok, them - drawn, in a way, straight outta fairy tales? I'm in tears here...
*breathes deep breath* *slams reblog button*
why is this the funniest thing I've seen all day?
I took that sugar cube as a child. I also remember the March of Dimes sign on the easel at many stores, all with dimes stuck on them.
I've told this story more than once, and I'm telling it again because it changed my life. When I was a kid I was terrified of needles, and hated getting all my shots. I was a sick kid with a lot of undiagnosed disabilities, and my gramp picked up on the anxiety I had and decided to talk to me about it. He offered to take me to get my flu shot for a christmas gift that year, and when I grumbled about getting a flu shot he said, "well, I had scarlet fever when I was your age. My parents didn't believe in doctors so I wasn't allowed to get my shots, and so I got very sick and almost died."
It stopped me in my tracks. I was 6. I had heard from adults my whole life that shots were important, but I didn't really understand the consequences of not getting them. I asked him to tell me why his parents didn't believe in doctors. He said he grew up out in the midwest on a farm, and his parents were "a type of christian" that believed people got sick because god wanted them to get sick, and going to the doctor was going against what god wanted. His parents were terrified of making god angry, which was something I could understand considering I was raised evangelical. But I was confused because he HADN'T died. I asked him how he'd made it this far if he had never been allowed to go to the doctor and he'd been so sick.
And he told me that when he turned 15 he'd run away from home, hopped on a train that took him all the way up to New York, and started asking door to door where he could get these new vaccines he'd heard about. Everyone told him the air force base was the place to go. He went in, asked around, and got his vaccines. At 16, he had his very first annual physical. Shortly after he met my gram, who was the telephone operator for the doctors office he went to every year for his checkups. And he told me as we sat there in the doctor's office that he was the ONLY person on both sides of his family to live past the age of 60.
I was both horrified and amazed. I went in, got my shot, and he held my hand and said he was proud of me because what I was doing was important. I was still very scared of needles, but it was easier to deal with the sore arm knowing I was keeping myself safe. He lived to be 90 years old, and he was proud to be the first person in his assisted living facility to be vaccinated for covid. When we went to visit him for his 90th birthday just before he died I asked him what he was proud of doing now that he was 90, and he said he was proud of living this long because as a child no one believed anyone could survive the things he could. He said he was perfectly happy to have married, had kids and grandkids, and eat his Applebees knowing he'd cheated death 15 times over.
ALT
ALTAn opinion piece I photographed from an 1860s small press periodical from Hartford Connecticut.
Get your fucking vaccinations.
The health insurance industry has a term for this sadistic practice. It's called "step therapy." If the choice is between a more expensive medication that works and a cheaper one that doesn't work as well and might have worse side effects, the insurance company requires that the cheaper drug be used first.
One benefit to the insurance company is that the patient on the cheaper drug might die before they get a chance to use the drug that works but is more expensive. That's money in the bank for the insurance company.
Or, the patient might be so worn down and harmed by the cheaper drug that they just give up the fight to get the drug that will help them. Again, that's bank for the insurance company.
Can't even describe how many times the latter has occurred to me. It's fucking exhausting.
You CAN get exceptions sometimes but the insurance company can just...decide to change their mind, or not honor it, randomly. Or force you to renew it.
My BF gets monthly harassing letters from United pressuring him to go on a medication that doesn't fucking exist. "Friendly" of course, very "Oh heyyy bestie, we're your cute little gatekeepers, tee hee, and we noticed you were on this dumb little druuuug, so icky and expensive. But how about this other one, the generic? Yeah. It hasn't actually been made available yet or anything, this has been an issue for moooonths but it'd be great if you could swiiiitch. We just enjoy making sure you make the best decisions and would love it if you just, like, became unable to hold the job that gets you insured with uuuuuus." *Intense vocal fry*
Good news for people in Illinois, step therapy will be banned starting Jan. 1, 2025! And prior auth for mental health crisis inpatient stays, and junk insurance. It’s the first state to ban step therapy, and won’t be the last (I hope).
And in 2026 will require insurance to cover a name brand medication if the generic is experiencing a shortage.
And a lot of other cool stuff. So, go Illinois!
Uh oh! You are now a were-animal! This means you become a human-sized animal hybrid with uncontrollable bloodlust every night!
Spin this wheel to get your species
How screwed are your loved ones
Not at all! Anyone can fight back against me.
They should be fine with a bit of prep.
Nothing will happen as long as I lock myself in my room.
I'm pretry sure this animal can break down my door, this doesn't look good...
No chance of survival whatsoever.
I'm were-bald (see results)
Komodo Dragon- Pretty sure I’d be the only thing alive at home, yikes! They are already people-sized and can run faster than humans. Venom and sharp teeth! I feel like that’s overkill.
thinking about a long article I read a while back talking about the history of “ultra-processed foods” and how they related to american/western health issues. my main takeaway was a short paragraph buried in the middle of the article, where the guy who came up with the term just says outright “technically by these processing metrics tofu and sourdough fall into the same category as doritos and we’re not really sure how to square that circle” and the article just. moves right past that.
Thank you! Tofu, bread, cheese, cold-pressed olive oil, these are all more processed than bacon or chips! If you have a problem with emulsions, or artificial sweeteners that mimic sugars to enzymes without providing energy, or items kn an ingredients list that you personally don't recognise, then just say those things! Pretending that all processes are equally bad just takes people's justified anxiety about the quality of their food and says it's because of processes are bad. And that's the end of the analysis!
