crime show: well we don’t know what time she was taken but as you can see in this convenience store security footage she’s mouthing something and our lip reading technology tells us she’s saying ‘those three wise men they’ve got a semi by the sea’ which are lyrics to James Blunt’s song ‘Wisemen’ which was playing on that store’s favoured radio station at approximately 3:18PM and she disappears from view exactly five minutes later so therefore
crime show: now see usually we’d manage to get a timestamp from the security footage but unfortunately in this case the cameras only record a live feed and while you would think this means we shouldn’t be able to see the footage at all, luckily a famous Twutch streamer happened to be using it as their background footage while recording yesterday so
yes, but can you blow it up and enhance it?
unfortunately this particular footage is extremely low quality and very grainy but as I zoom in on this super blurry pixelated image you can see the details become much clearer and easier to identify
But what about the extremely specific pollen found on the camera lens?
good eye! originally I didn’t even notice it was there but while combing through the footage I noticed three different people sneezed while in view of the camera. I did some research and found that the particles represent the pollen of this obscure plant life that is native to this particular state, which really doesn’t help us, except that it only ever blooms in the opposite season! So I did some digging and found four nurseries within a 50 mile radius, only one of which sell that plant all year round, which of course means
Hold on just one moment! If the twitch streamer was using the cameras live feed as background, then we should know the time of the crime! The twitch archive should mark how long the streamer had been on by the time of the perpetrators presence onscreen, and if we know when they went live, we will know the time the perpetrator was in the building!
DAMNIT JONES THIS ISN’T YOUR CASE
WELL IT’S MY CASE NOW! The Captain thinks your kidnapping is related to my investigation into that cult up state. So, apparently, we’re supposed to work together. I’m not any happier than you are.
but I hate sharing!
TOUGH SHIT MCNAMARA! Your kidnapping case is somehow connected with that cult that’s been sacrificing its members to in the belief that it will appease the elder god Cthulhu. Now, I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m worse at sharing than a toddler with a new favorite toy, but lives may well be on the line here! Are you willing to put aside our differences, and do what needs to be done?!
Alright, but when we catch the perp he’s mine. I don’t care if he’s sacrificed a hundred victims to goddamn Mickey Mouse! That man may know who killed my father, and I won’t let anyone get in my way – not even someone with your develish smile.
Do you think you’re the only one who wants to find Eric’s murderer?! He was my partner! He was my friend! I know we haven’t worked together before, but this case will have us working together for a while, until we eventually find your fathers killer. And I can see this case taking us a long time, and defining both of our lives for the foreseeable future. But don’t worry McNamara, my years of experience on the force, put together with your grit, tenacity, and loose understanding of the rules will make for a great partnership, with plenty of laughs and sexual tension to go around. Until some being from on high decides the precinct isn’t ready for a same sex couple, and I rekindle my relationship with my previously unmentioned ex-wife. But we, and some unknown watchers of our adventures, will always know we were meant to be together, weirdly large age gap be damned!
Yeah, and while Eric was off playing cops and robbers with you, I grew up without a dad! Do you know how many times I stared at my baseball glove, wishing he was there to throw it to me? You may have lost Eric, but I never even got to have him!
But you’re right. This case will definitely take at least a full year, especially with the fact that we will be constantly interrupted with other, smaller cases, one of which will be halloween themed. We’re working together for the forseeable future, and my playful countenance and morbid wit will very quickly mesh with your hardened attitude and tendency to keep secrets.
And while you go back to your unhappy, stiff relationship with your ex wife, I will be shown having constant meaningless sex with a multitude of beautiful women so that the writers can really get across how Not Gay I am.
It’s gonna be a wild ride, Jones. And there had better be stakeouts.
executive producer dick wolf
This is the best demonstration of the principle of “yes, and” that I have ever seen. They should put this in textbooks.
This is honestly better than most crime shows I have seen 😀
The amount of times I could have been that white girl in the horror movie could honestly be a movie in itself and it’s honestly a waste that my entire life isn’t constantly recorded on film because it would be HILARIOUS
1. That one time I decided to see what was past the old gate in the woods, but when got there it had been smashed in half and there was a decapitated sheep head with no skin just off the trail, so instead I just turned around and went home.
2. That time some friends and I went camping and we found a pile of bones wrapped in a garbage bag buried under a log, but the adult supervisor told us it was nothing, so we just put it back and didn’t talk about it again.
3. The time I was getting chased through the woods at night and I realized “wait it’s dark as fuck” so I just held still until the guy gave up and left.
4. The time this dude said he was in love with me and so he was going to cut my head off and dump my body in a lake, so I told him to grow the hell up, but then he got caught stealing girl’s underwear a day later and I never saw him again
5. That one time in college where I was taking a shortcut on my home at night and a car followed me into a dark alley, so I stared directly into the driver’s side of the window and walked towards it to psych them out
6. The night I was out on a walk and this old guy told me he’d locked his keys in his truck and that he needed someone my size to crawl in through the back window for him, so I told him “you know that sounds super suspicious right” and told him where to find a pay phone for a tow truck instead
7. The one time this random guy on the street said he was in love with me and so he was going to follow me home on my bus, so I clapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he got that close to my bus then I was going to throw him under the wheels, but then this really nice homeless man from Nigeria told the guy to fuck off and then checked to make sure he didn’t follow me onboard
8. That big cat with yellow eyes who I found in a well and brought home who used to put rotting meat in my closet and wake me up by chewing on my face, until I put him back outside and never saw him again.
9. My one cousin who used to come over for the summer who kept calling me ‘piñata’ and hitting me with sticks, until he went back home and was sent to juvie cause he finally got caught torturing animals
10. The time I got lost on the way to a meeting and wound up at a circus tent instead, and got followed by a full-out clown for three vacant street blocks
11. The pet hamster I had when I was seven who would scream all night and eventually escaped by ripping a bar out of its cage and wiggling through the hole. My mom caught it and put it back but it lived another year and a half until one night the screaming just stopped
12. The time I was whistling in the woods and something started whistling back, so I went home
13. That one night at summer camp where a group of girls got together to play ‘bloody mary’ in the lavatory and invited me to come with them so I said “no thanks” and stayed with the camp councillors and drank soup instead.
14. The old abandoned house I just moved into with the door that leads into a big empty room full of dirt and empty cooking pots that I just sort of… locked up forever and never go near
15. Once when I was at an ihop I saw a coffee mug do a full 360º spin with nobody touching it, so I said ‘that was neat’ and never ate there again
16. The time I took a photo of a big old raven sitting on the crucifix on top of the old town church cause it was the most goth thing I’d ever seen, right? But then it swooped down towards me, so I apologized immediately for being rude, and I felt a little silly for a while but the car that hit me on the way home didn’t even leave a bruise so idk be nice to birds
Sorry I know I bring this shit up a lot but sometimes im awake at night and I just. keep thinking
I think the secret to survival is to be good to animals, stay away from men, and say “no thanks” to everything else
America, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Australia are in a surveillance
alliance called The Five Eyes, through which they share much of their
illegally harvested surveillance data.
In a recently released Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption,
the Five Eyes powers have demanded, again, that strong cryptography be
abolished and replaced with defective cryptography so that they can spy
on bad guys.
They defend this by saying “Privacy is not absolute.”
But of course, working crypto isn’t just how we stay private from
governments (though god knows all five of the Five Eyes have, in very
recent times, proven themselves to be catastrophically unsuited to
collect, analyze and act on all of our private and most intimate
conversations). It’s how we make sure that no one can break into the
data from our voting machines, or push lethal fake firmware updates to
our pacemakers, or steal all the money from all of the banks, or steal
all of the kompromat on all 22,000,000 US military and government
employees and contractors who’ve sought security clearance.
Also, this is bullshit.
Because it won’t work.
Here’s the text of my go-to post about why this is so fucking stupid. I just can’t be bothered anymore. Jesus fucking christ. Seriously? Are we still fucking talking about this? Seriously? Come on, SERIOUSLY?
It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging
cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you
want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive,
in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never
saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or
your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography.
Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that
only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have
effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it
with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.
There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of
whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master
key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan
Mayer explained,
adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce
unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security
systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be
airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want
them to be is impossible.
What these leaders thinks they’re saying is, “We will command all the
software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools
for us.” There are enormous problems with this: there’s no back door
that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google
Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies,
criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to
the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal – and like the
high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years),
and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They – and
not just the security services – will be able to use it to intercept
all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of
your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade
secrets you send to your co-workers.
But this is just for starters. These officials don’t understand
technology very well, so they doesn’t actually know what they’re asking
for.
For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians,
Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes
from software creators who are out of their jurisdiction. The very best
in secure communications are already free/open source projects,
maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world.
They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic
signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in
the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high
degree of confidence, that the software you’ve downloaded hasn’t been
tampered with.
Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in
place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of
these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by
which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of
secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.
Australian governments have already shown that they believes they can
order the nation’s ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for
the record, this hasn’t worked very well). The next step is to order
Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and
distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable
technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6,
TCP and UDP is the potential to “tunnel” one protocol inside another.
This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the
white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you
want to minimise the number of “good” sessions you accidentally
blackhole.
More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5
Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in
Apple’s Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single
company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has
blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could,
indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software.
Even there, you’d have to contend with the fact that other states are
unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her
Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all
their secure software intact and send messages “we cannot read.”
But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux
variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile
versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed
to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial
operators – Apple and Microsoft – might conceivably be compelled by
Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in
the future, but that doesn’t do anything to stop people from using all
the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.
More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like
GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for
servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the
engineers and administrators who run the nation’s IT). There is no legal
or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by
its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its
users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited
code.
This, then, is what the Five Eyes are proposing:
* All 5 Eyes citizens’ communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept
* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software
* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes
* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software
* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease –
security research must only take place in proprietary research
environments where there is no onus to publish one’s findings, such as
industry R&D and the security services
* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those
countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and
any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be
dropped
* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software
* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave
* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be
ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only
allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or
give secure software to Britons
* Free/open source operating systems – that power the energy, banking,
ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors – must be banned outright
The Five Eyes officials will say that they doesn’t want to do any of
this. They’ll say that they can implement weaker versions of it – say,
only blocking some “notorious” sites that carry secure software. But
anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on
the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that
“we cannot read”. If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any
of the world’s most popular communications applications, then “bad guys”
will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn’t hard. Downloading an app
isn’t hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is – and
what’s more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation – individuals and
industry – in terrible jeopardy.
That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to
be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the
security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.
Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to
everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home
or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or
read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to
subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the
incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than
anything a tabloid reporter could afford.
If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the
US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks
on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage
travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with
Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a
widely held master key to open them.
What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going
missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into
thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of
theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though
“aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports,
insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the
country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in
airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of
their work areas.
The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing
unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter
holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off
my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after
confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely
destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British
Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as
they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a
form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor,
sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not
liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by
force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me
that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to
have any other communications from the TSA.
Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that
anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce
anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life.
Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications:
cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to
your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online;
and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.
In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words:
“It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double
for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is
unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only
educational institution whose computer science department believes in
“golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your
encryption.
It’s wild to me, the people who are willing to stan things like big pharma and health insurance companies in the US like somehow the cost of things isn’t arbitrary and absolutely made for profit.
Just saw a comment that said “I don’t think people realize how expensive health care actually is, it’s not like pill companies are out to make a profit” like, I’m sorry, my migraine meds which I can get for free or for a significantly lower cost in nearly every other country in the world, would cost me $120 per month in the US if I chose to fill the prescription. And yes, that’s generic. And yes, that’s with health insurance. My health insurance doesn’t cover them.
My epi pens, a literal life saving rescue med, if I can’t get a generic non auto-injector or if I don’t have a coupon, can cost me $600 per pen. And you’re supposed to carry two and replace them yearly.
For that price I can literally fly home to the UK for two weeks and have them replaced for free (I’m a UK citizen before anyone gets their knickers in a bunch about freeloading scroungers), and still have an extra $100-400 to play with depending on the time of year I fly out.
I literally plan trips home based around when my meds need refilled, because it’s works out cheaper than trying to get a pharmacy in the US that takes my insurance and provides generic non automated adrenaline pens.
That’s fucked up.
And it is absolutely because health insurance companies and “big pharma” are in cahoots over how much profit they want to make from tragic events and debilitating illnesses. Meanwhile people die cause it’s a choice between food for their kids or insulin for their diabetes.
But go off I guess.
Another thing that ticks me off is people who go “oh just get new insurance if yours is too expensive” like I didn’t already think of that, and am also not restricted with who will cover me because I’m an immigrant.
Cause oh yeah, that’s a thing.
Anyone that says “well immigrants come here to get free healthcare” are absolutely talking out of their asses.
“Oh but we meant the illegals…” except you cannot get Medicaid or state equivalent without an official alien green card number??? So that’s false???
“But I heard…” well ya heard wrong.
Free health care is such a weird phenomenon to me.
We have state clinics, which are cheaper than private hospitals. You still pay for your treatment though. Medical insurance is ridiculously expensive, and not a “Benefit” with most jobs in my country. You’re lucky if you land that gig.
My husband tore a ligament a year back, we carted him off to the state hospital, he sat in line for 9 hours, had a quick xray to confirm and was sent home with aspirin. That was the extent of the help he got.
I had my wisdom teeth removed in a private hospital. I’m deathly allergic to tramal, which is the painkiller they inject you with after you come out of surgery. Noted on my chart and medical alert bracelet. I felt confident that the doctors wouldn’t inject me with the thing that could kill me.
I guessed wrong.
If I hadn’t asked the doctor what he was injecting me with ( still high on anaesthetic, fyi) he would have killed me. Do you know what he said to me when I told him I was allergic? “HOW allergic?” 😐.
Pharma companies, healthcare in general? No one cares. Pay, don’t pay. You’re going to suffer regardless. All that matters is how much money they can make off of you.
‘Free’ healthcare isnt all its made out to be. The british NHS will do everything they can to blame YOU for anything that is wrong or that you need treatment for. If your BMI is over the optimim 18 to 25 points you’re screwed. Flu? Too fat. Broken Ankle? Too fat. Polycystic Ovaries? Too fat. Asthma? Too fat. Everything you would not have if you lost weight. Oh you have despression and are self harming? Well if you lost weight… do you see where this is going?
Also prescriptions; in Scotland and Wales prescriptions are free. But in England unless you have a medical exemption card you’re paying. I have asthma and regularly have to replace my inhalers for various reason; lose them, break them, they run out. I earn less than £7k a year so i earn less than someone who claims benefits. The one exception is if they are what are classed as ‘life saving drugs’ you dont have to pay.
Doc: If you dont carry your inhaler and have an attack you’re screwed and could die.
Me: Oh ok. So can i get a medical exemption card? These things are getting expensive.
Doc: Nope
Me: But you said if i dont have my inhaler i could die from an asthma attack.
Doc: Exemption cards are only for Life Saving Drugs.
Me: But you just said i have to carry my inhaler or else i could die. It could literally save my life.
Doc: Nope. Inhalers arent considered life saving drugs.
Me: but…
Oh and lets get onto mental health care. I was diagnosed with post natal depression after i lost my first child. That then turned into the fairly rarely diagnosed pre-natal depression when i was pregnant with Superpup.
After he was born the trauma of his birth and the isolation that came with being a new mother tipped me back into severe post natal depression again. I found the strength to seek help and my GP referred me to a state shrink…
I walk into his office and before i’ve even sat down he comments that he wished new mums didnt bring their babies with them. Then he told me (not asked) to tell him the history, asked some very emotionally painful questions before telling me to ‘snap out of it before you get committed’.
He then suggested i would feel better if i lost weight and was happy to write me a prescription for amphetamines that would make me very active and happy.
I told him to fuck off and stormed out.
So no, free healthcare isnt all its cracked up to be.
Oh friend. I got news for you. Private for cost care doesn’t remove any of that shit.
It just means I’m getting charged $500 per 20 minute appointment to be told it’s my fault.
That isn’t a money or cost issue, it’s a systemic ussue of the sexism, the racism and ableism that is permitted to run riot in the medical world, regardless of cost.
So, to sum up, healthcare is fucked everywhere.
Fucked but not unfixable. Likely not to any benefit of my lifetime, but we don’t always get to see the forests we burn down to regrow.
To the person complaining about paying for your prescriptions in England, aye, I don’t care for it myself but it’s kinda a completely different thing?
I have daily meds and a prescription can only be for one month’s supply as it’s a controlled drug (yay ADHD), and you know what that costs? £8.80 for a full month of medication. And if I could get legally get two months at a time that would cost what? £8.80. If it was a 10 day course of antibiotics or a course of post-operative pain medication it would cost £8.80.
That does add up, but before people start thinking you’re screwed if you’re on multiple medications each month: if you have to get more than 11 prescriptions a year you can get an unlimited prescription card for cheaper than that
A prescription prepayment certificate (PPC) lets you get as many NHS prescriptions as you need for a set price.
Costs: £29.10 for 3 months £104 for 12 months
Oh and you don’t pay if you’re over 60, under 16, 16-18 and in full time education, are in hospital, are pregnant or had a baby within 12 months and got a maternity exemption, are on low income, are on income support or are under 20 and dependent on someone one income support as well as several other, more specific conditions.
That…that is not even close to $600 for two epi-pens, if you can afford insurance.
I don’t fully understand the US system but looking at it my medication would cost me $100-300 a month? Anyone who’s on Concerta XL/ER 36mg in the states wants to tell me what they pay I’d be interested.
@underthehedge I’m not on Concerta but I’m one of those nutjobs who enjoys reading fine print and the entire medical plan documents, and it’s super easy for me to look up costs.
I would also like to say I am one of the exceptionally rare Americans with a good medical plan (but of course, provided by my employer, which means if I hate my job and want to quit, I might have to stay because otherwise I can’t afford all the meds I have to take!).
Concerta, in my medical insurance, is $60 a month. Also, you can’t just get a prescription for Concerta. You are required to go through “step therapy” first. What is step therapy?
Some drugs require step therapy. This means that you must try one or more prerequisite drug(s) before a step therapy drug is covered.
The prerequisite drugs are equally effective, have U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and may cost less. They treat the same condition as the step therapy drug.
If you don’t try the appropriate alternative drug first, you may need to pay full cost for the brand-name version.
Also, Concerta is a Schedule II drug (same classification as Adderall, the most heavily restricted legal substance you can get. Everything on Schedule I, like heroin, is illegal). I have been taking Adderall for narcolepsy, and actually changed my prescription with my doctor this morning because in the US, there are stupid red tape rules for Schedule II drugs. The most ridiculous one is you cannot get a refill on Schedule II drugs. My doctor has to write a completely new prescription for every single month. This is a pain because every single bottle I get says I have 0 refills. My doctor will send three months’ worth of scripts at a time, but sometimes he forgets to check a little box in the form that puts a date restriction on them. If the scripts do not have a “not to be filled before X date” note, they cannot legally be filled. What will happen is I will realize one morning that I have one day of meds left. I will call the pharmacy to find out if I have a refill coming up, because they can only provide 30 days of meds at a time, so I basically have to run out every month unless I skip days. The pharmacy tech will get confused because there are *never* refills and I have to explain the law to them. They transfer me to the pharmacist. The pharmacist says the scripts expired. I then have to spend the rest of the entire day frantically calling my doctor’s office trying to get my refill sent that day. My doctor is an ENT (ear, nose, throat), so the nurse gets really confused WHY I think my ENT prescribes ADHD meds??? And I have to explain it’s for narcolepsy (ENTs treat sleep apnea, but typically when you have the flavor of narcolepsy I do, the daytime symptoms are the same and it’s complicated but not that complicated why my ENT prescribes a stimulant), and that I need the refill asap because I don’t want to fall asleep driving, etc. I have to do this ALL the time.
Seems like a great system when the only way to make sure you don’t run out of ADHD meds is to keep super organized and on top of things and anticipate this happening EVERY MONTH. *headdesk*
But anyway, back to the cost. My copay for non-preferred brands is $60/month on my current insurance (which is the best insurance you can get if you’re a normal American). Back when I had not the best insurance you could get (which cost me $350 a month just in premiums), non-preferred brand prescriptions were $250 a month. My maintenance inhaler is a non-preferred brand under patent, so there is no alternative. I had to stop taking it because I couldn’t afford it anymore.
Also fun story: before I was officially diagnosed with asthma, I almost died from an asthma attack. I couldn’t go to the ER because if I did go, not only would I not be able to afford it because I didn’t have health insurance and was unemployed, but I would also get diagnosed with asthma, and this was back when you could get denied medical insurance if you had a pre-existing condition. Fun times!
@nanofishology Thank you that was very helpful and informative. So, on one of the best plans it would be maybe $60 a month: no thanks. Especially as I did hear there was an off brand on the market in the US calling itself concerta that was nothing like it and wildly ineffective.
I have to jump through some similar bullshit hoops for my concerta tbh and the rules differ a bit depending on where you are. The NHS has some minor differences in rules at the local level. Repeat prescriptions here are still a new prescription each time but you don’t need to go in for an appointment you just ring up and they do you another.
In Aberdeen I could just register my repeat prescription with my local chemists/pharmacy and they’d re-order it from my doctors for me about 6 days before the end or something, so when I realised I was running low I would just go in and they’d have it ready. A month was 30 pills, once got 60 because I was going away end of the month and it was easier.
Nottingham I couldn’t get them through the doctors but had to go to the psychiatric outpatients unit at the local hospital to get my prescription, of course these could not be ordered by the pharmacy. A month was 30 pills.
Here in Liverpool I can actually order my repeats online, but I cannot have them sent to a pharmacy, I have to go into the doctors and pick that up myself and then take it to the pharmacy. The local NHS ruling here is that I can only be prescribed a maximum of 28 pills at a time. 🙃
The overarching legal constraints though are that to collect my medication I need to have photo-ID on me and sign like three things each time.
And boy oh boy have I ever done the whole “running around trying to order my meds because I have work tomorrow and I need my brain to work for that”.
Also that pre-existing conditions thing was the most predatory bullshit I could imagine and exactly why you cannot have private companies in charge of paying for individuals medical care. The idea of “can’t get medical care for illness because it’ll screw my access to medical care” horrifies me…
has any song ever gone harder than sweet transvestite tho
i am watching rocky horror picture show for the first time so i might as well liveblog it
so far brad is quite incredibly useless. it’s incredible.
question: how attractive am i meant to find frank-n-furter? because i feel like the answer is ‘not as much as i do’
local man born thirty seconds ago immediately begins elaborate song routine about how he wishes he was dead. relatable content
i’m convinced mary shelley would have loved this
wait what the fuck?? what th fuck??
did meatloaf just drive out of a freezer????
WITH A SAXOPHONE????
frank-n-furter just murdered a man because only they are allowed to do solos. gotta respect that artistic integrity.
“yes i’m afraid so”
he tried it with BOTH of them???? what a fucking power move
fucking riffraff cockblocking brad and frank??? completely unfair. very cruel. not acceptable. let rocky wander naked outside in the rain, he’s fine.
‘i’d only ever kissed before’
well that’s just not true, is it, janet. nobody randomly fucks a spooky man in a corset in a tent for their first time. come on.
also can she please put a shirt on? i’m finding it very hard to focus on like. plot. or whatever. she has very nice rockies.
OH SHIT THE OTHER SCIENTIST IS HERE IT’S ALL KICKING OFF
did they just drive his wheelchair through a brick wall
the way that scary sexy lady bangs the gong and cries ‘dinner.. is served!’ and then stands there looking so incredibly proud of herself for like five full seconds until she’s acknowledged is like. that’s truly a mood right there.
that awkward moment when you accidentally killed someone’s nephew and you’re sitting around with a party hat on trying to ignore it
oh what the fuck frank!!! literally what the fuck!!! why do you have a coffin under the dining table! why is there a body there! frank!! come on!! the people were enjoying dinner!
frank!!!!!!
frank’s an alien?????????
this… should probably not be as shocking to me as it is
HE TURNED THEM INTO STATUES???????????
btw as far as i’m concerned the musical numbers in this film are 100% diagetic. i will not be convinced otherwise.
wait they split a brain between two people? they split a brain? transylvania is a planet?
this film has two modes: no plot for forty minutes and forty minutes of plot in thirty seconds
‘they had both tasted… forbidden fruit’ is a nice way of saying ‘both had ole frank stick it in ‘em’
who even IS this guy
this is literally the only valid remaking of frankenstein
once again, i have no idea what’s happening, but i am most certainly into it
frank is so consistently extra
honestly a role model (except for the, uh… murder)
where did he get a POOL?
is now a good time to admit i did not realise they had been eating eddie until i read the wikipedia page
i guess it’s just like that sometimes
when did the professor get stockings and heels? is that just something that happens with exposure to frank-n-furter? do you like, wake up one day and suddenly you’re in full drag and can’t do anything about it?
“I can explain!” and he whispers in their ears
i honestly thought he was telling them he loved them or to hide or something
no, he was just giving them lighting and sound instructions
we stan a legend
again, a surprisingly canonical adaptation of frankenstein here
had victor been murdered by his fellow aliens, that is
the castle just flies up and into space because of course it does
aaaaaaaaand it’s over!!!
i honestly did not think i would enjoy that as much as i did
but i really really liked it
i’m hopefully gonna go see it in my city for halloween and i’m going to be really disappointed if everyone isn’t crossdressing and yelling stuff at the screen
She gie’d her mammy a cake, she turnt intae a big bear, and her old yin tried tae dae her in. If that’s no pure mess, I don’t know wut is. Simples.
I’ll be honest, I got the first part of that, and the last part. But there is an entire sentence in the middle, that evidently is about her father trying to kill her mother, that sounds completely unintelligible to me. I assumed it was another language – potentially Gaelic but honestly, I’ve never heard that spoken before so I was taking a guess there.
I watched Brave and had absolutely no trouble understanding the entire movie so they’re definitely increasing the accent here for comedic value. But also it’s not just an accent – that second part of the first sentence isn’t understandable even transcribed.
I’m
a weird one though – I grew up in an asian country (not white), and
somehow despite multi-lingual parents and siblings (as is expected in
that asian country), my only and mother tongue is English.
It’s no Gaelic, it is however Scots 🙂
“Big Yin” is a common Glasgow term, and this is important, cause Billy Connolly who voiced her Da, is from Glasgow. It’s also the name was known by during his rise to fame, and is still affectionately known as “The Big Yin”.
It basically means “the big man” (note: a person does not need to be tall or large in stature to be called the big man, sometimes it can mean something else like “boss” or “strong personality”). So yea. Was a nice wee addition to her dialogue, though they’ve made her more Weegie for sure.
Are you saying “The Big Yin” could also translate into “Big Dick Energy”???
– Tony has a wall full of Polaroid photos of him and the people he cares about
– it’s a reminder that not everyone he cares about gets killed or hurt
– and a reminder that he’s obviously doing something right bc these amazing people love him
– and ofc there are old (OLD) pics of Pepper and Rhodey and Happy around at the top of the wall
– with newer ones floating around (he loves these ones so much. it shows how far they’ve all come)
– but the pictures of Peter? they’re special to him. they’re special because his bond with Peter is unique and fatherly
– when he never thought he’d be a father
– so he takes pictures of Peter as well. like Peter’s graduation? damn straight Tony gets that because he’s so proud
– and he gets a picture during one of Peter’s b-day parties? because Peter came to the compound expecting a small thing
– but Tony throws a huge ass party for him and gets him so many things that he just wasn’t expecting? and doesn’t need? but Tony got him these
– these amazing things because he cares so so much
– so Peter isn’t expecting such a huge thing just for him and so many things so ofc he gets teary and hugs Tony
– WHO DEFINITELY HUGS BACK (Pepper and Happy and Rhodey get pics of the hug too)
– and Tony gets out this old Polaroid cam to get a picture of him and Peter
– he loves it so much. they’re so happy and Peter looks so teary and happy and Tony is too
– because goddamn, Tony may be a man of iron but his heart sure as hell ain’t, and he’ll do everything in his power to keep his family safe
– that’s what those four are to him. Family
– tony returns to earth
– and this wall
– this stupidly optimistic wall full of people he will ultimately kill with his blunders
– is still standing
– white edges and snapshots of colour, of life, fluttering in the cool a/c
– ‘not everyone he cares about gets killed or hurt’ is a thought of a naïve man, a man he ceased to be on a planet where the dust is grey and the skies are orange
– the dust seeps into his heart and his brain, and keeps his thoughts in sepia, and his emotions choked dry
– life is just an absence of death, after all, and the universe had decided he’d forgotten, gotten complacent, because tony stark doesn’t deserve a f a m i l y
– and tony can’t bear to look at this child, his child, that he f a i l e d , because tony a l w a y s misses something, he never thinks far enough ahead to stop the important things, but always far enough so that their warnings ring in his ears, too little, too late
– so he takes down the photos of Peter Parker
– and his heart is a little more like iron
– cold and impossible to crack
– and his wall is a little emptier
– just like his heart’s insides
oh
– he could never damage the photos of Peter though
– he takes them down with trembling hands with nails chewed down to the beds and cuts and scratches making every move painful
– but he takes them down so, so carefully, lifting them up from the edges and making sure they don’t rip in the slightest
– because Tony could never damage him even more
– because that’s all Tony has left of him now
– and he’d rather have some in tact photos of something warm and living
– than those last memories of Peter’s hands no longer being there to clutch at him and Peter’s terrified, wide eyes
– he might have taken those photos down from the wall but they’re in tact because goddamnit, Tony isn’t going to kill his only keepsakes of Peter as well
– and those gaps on the wall are haunting
– because the wall is missing something important
– and so is he
I’m sorry I keep making this worse
– it all goes to shit soon afterwards
– with the universe (or what’s left of it) scrambling around and trying so hard to fix the damage
– it gets a little hard to remember who you are (and why you’re still alive when you’ve lost so much. Surely a heart can only be broken so much before it stops)
– and Tony is completely catatonic
– and one day (? night?) he wakes up after passing out
– and right in front of him, untouched for over a year, and definitely not taken by him, is a picture of Peter hugging him
– and it’s just
– too much
– and he just c a n ‘ t
– what’s the point in trying when you’re just going to lose again
– but he can’t bring himself to swipe at the picture or to move it out of the way or to even move himself
– he just looks at it
– stares at it for god knows how long
– and he ran out of tears to cry a long time ago but this is damn close to doing the job
– and Tony wants so, so desperately to be able to reach out and to just see Peter one more time, tell him just how important this kid — his kid — is
– but he can’t
– and for the first time in weeks-months-who knows now
– he just. Breaks down. And it’s ugly and it’s horrible because god, it’s so real and what kind of nightmare could be like this
– and yeah, when he reaches out to the picture, his hand is shaking when his fingers brush against the image of Peter because that’s the best he’ll ever get again
– and that realisation is c r u s h i n g
– he doesn’t even know how he’s still alive (with the pain in his chest being like it is, it’s a miracle his heart hasn’t just stopped yet)
– and maybe then, at some unholy hour of the morning/afternoon/evening, alone in his labs (like he has been for days on end), with that unending pain in his chest and no tears in his eyes, he realises that he needs Peter like peter needed him
– and the world stops being paused and slowly starts back to living for Tony
– because he can’t change jack shit if the world is at a standstill
– and as the world presses play, reality comes roaring in like a winter tide, icy and brutal and unshakeably real
– it washes away the dust in his heart
– it washes away the sepia in his brain
– and he realizes that if you can’t live for yourself
– you live for those who haven’t realized that living isn’t worth it yet
– and so he carefully, oh-so-carefully, sets the picture aside
– (but only in the physical world. in his mind’s eye, that’s all he can see. his kid, sweet and happy and draped in colour, chocolate eyes always looking his way for approval)
– (his k i d , pale and stumbling, pulled to his knees by death, pleading for his life in the quiet. soft hair beneath his palm and then nothing at all and- )
– brews some coffee
– and gets to work on f i x i n g
– because that’s always been his thing, hasn’t it?
– there’s a new wall, now. one filled with strategies, and half baked plans and 3am revelations and pictures connected with red wool because peter had insisted on making one reminiscent of it long, long ago
– “It’s a conspiracy board, Mr. Stark!”
“Da- T o n y .”
“Dad?”
“T o n y .”
– because no one deserves to see their kid die
– and if he has to rip open the gates of hell to get h i s kid back?
– he tucks the picture inside his jacket.
– (keep the people you love close, and your enemies closer. no one ever mentioned the fact that the ones you love can cause you more pain than your enemies ever could.)
– iron hearts dont get burned, and his hands are far too familiar with ash.
STOP GUYS
🙂
– Tony works himself to the bone trying to get peter back
– eating and drinking and sleeping at certain intervals; enough to maximise and make the most of his time whilst keeping himself alive and well (peter wouldn’t want him to work himself to death now would he?)
– and soon enough, it’s done
– Thanos is taken care of
– and everyone comes back, slowly and painfully and where they died
– which leaves Tony on earth, and everyone else on Titan
– and he’s shitting it — how’s he gonna get there, how’s he gonna get to peter now because the ship’s busted and-
– a portal opens near him and it’s enough to remind him that Strange was with Peter and Strange has portals-!
– the guardians step through one by one, and Tony’s shaking from his panic and dread. What if it didn’t work for everyone? What if he’s still lost peter?
– someone calls his name softly, and it’s like they’re preparing to soften the blow and oh, god
– so he turns, heart in his throat and ready to turn away again
– and it’s Strange
– and in his arms? A person, swathed in the cloak
– and suddenly it’s like he’s hearing and seeing everything in person for the first time since the snap, because it’s Peter in his arms and Peter that’s breathing regularly in his sleep
– naturally he runs over to Strange, ignoring everyone around him, and just hovers over peter, not daring to touch him because what if it’s just the reality Stone? What if they lost and it’s just some sick game?
– but he sees Strange, and he sees everyone else, and he sees the Cloak and the Stones and he sees Peter
– he reaches out, hands shaking
– and his hand meets Peter’s hair
– and it feels so real (“it was so real”)
– and that’s convincing enough for him. And sure, it may take a while for Peter to wake up again (and god does it hurt to know that Peter felt every second of his death, and hurts to recognise that Peter’s going to wake up crying for a long time now) but they’re alive
– Tony can work with that, right?
– because if Peter can fix him, he can fix Peter
(friday starts a new digital photo album and Tony starts a new photo wall — both titled ‘family’)
I love this because you have Elizabeth who couldn’t even defend herself in the first one to becoming this master sword fighter and leader of ALL pirates. You watch Will who was just this angsty little brat head over heels for Elizabeth become this grown man who faced all his demons.
and then there’s Jack
“Elizabeth who couldn’t even defend herself”
Do you mean…
Elizabeth who improvised a weapon when pirates invaded her bedroom
Elizabeth who could have run for the exits but instead went straight for the swords
Elizabeth who demanded to speak with a pirate captain and then used the leverage she had to get him to agree to her demands
Elizabeth who CAME AT BARBOSSA WITH A GODDAMN KNIFE and then fucking STABBED HIM when she couldn’t get away
Elizabeth who was trapped on a tiny island with nothing but crates of rum and a man she couldn’t stand and who used those supplies to summon a rescue party for herself
Elizabeth who made a rope out of sheets and climbed down the back of a ship to save the day herself when no one would listen to her about how dangerous the pirates were
Elizabeth who snuck onto the Black Pearl, knocked two cursed pirates straight off their ship, and rescued Jack’s entire crew
Elizabeth who rowed straight back into danger without any backup instead of running away with everyone else
Elizabeth who came to Will’s rescue with a blunt object and a one-liner
Elizabeth who proceeded to team up with Will to take down all the remaining pirates in the cave
Elizabeth who – without being asked or told what was going on – faked unconsciousness to create a distraction for Will’s rescue of Jack
Elizabeth who stepped in front of a ring of muskets, successfully protecting Jack and Will from being shot or captured
Elizabeth may have learned some impressive sword tricks in the later movies, but she was a Badass from day one.
My brother saved this document and everytime he gets angry at our neighbours for being loud he prints it to their wireless printer and you can hear the wife shout “Why the fuck would you print this AGAIN?!” to her son.
every time we serve chicken at work i think of this post
1. If you were wondering, you can type the numbers in the works cited into google and they appear to be medical journal articles about using medical imaging to detect and diagnose a rare form of Gastritis.
2. Please enjoy the offical powerpoint presentation of this paper at an academic conference by the original author, complete with Q&A:
THIS IS GOLD
oh m god please watch the video it’s some of the most contagious laughter on the planet
When I saw this cross my dash tonight, I smiled and thought “yess, the chicken chicken chicken post, I get to reblog it again and inflict it on all of the people that have followed me since last time”, and then I scrolled down more and to my utter delight there was A VIDEO, needless to say my night has been made
I HAVE NOT SEEN THE CHICKEN VIDEO IN TEN DAMN YEARS HOLY SHIT
STILL FUNNY
The bell
The last question
The woman howling in laughter 90% of the time
It’s all beautiful
It’s all
So beautiful
I love that he was absolutely 100% prepared for a question in chickenese.
