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We're in the Second Gilded Age just like the first — when America's wealth was in the hands of a few, conspicuous consumption existed alongside homelessness and hunger, monopolies destroyed competition, big money corrupted politics, unions were busted, and wages were suppressed. Americans are relearning the lesson we learned during the Gilded Age of the late 1890s, when robber barons ran the government and the economy for their own benefit: Oligarchy is incompatible with the common good. I'm hopeful we'll respond with a new progressive movement.

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I know everything is shit fucked sixteen ways before lunch time, but it remains a fact that you should not trust anyone who wants you to feel like the whole world hates you all the time. That's a person trying to sell you something, swallow you whole, or bleed you dry. Especially those times when it feels like they're right.

No one wants anything good from you who wants you always feeling scared and hated. They will wear you out and leave you in the bin the second fashions change. Things are extremely high levels of fucked, but you are not hated like that. It's scary and isolating but you are not alone like that. Worst case, come and shiver like a wet dog with me, I won't say anything and we can dry out.

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Maybe this was just how my family did things growing up but when I was a kid and we saw a lady with chin hairs or a small chest or large feet or a broad shoulders we’d say “it’s rude and mean to pick apart someone’s appearance” and mind our own damn business.

Apart from being reductive, transphobic, and anti-woman, all this “transvestigating” nonsense is just plain bad manners, and I think we should say that more

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Big Insurance Uses AI to Quickly Deny Claims, One Man Fights Back with AI App That Quickly Appeals

"The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back.

When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife’s chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck.

Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter.

“For a doctor to write this, it’s not rocket science, but it still takes hours,” Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don’t know they can appeal, or don’t know on what grounds they can appeal.

In fact, according to Shah’s research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed.

That’s where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that’s created a free-to-use app for claims denials.

It’s all the more critical a service now that health insurance companies, already armed with statewide government-protected pseudo monopolies and duopolies, are using AI to deny claims within seconds of them being filed.

“Before, you used to have a reason you would deny it, and you used to have a doctor review or a nurse review it, but once AI rolled out, they could just have AI deny it,” Shah explained.

For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking through her experience in both the business world and working alongside patients at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

Together, they’ve built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.

Thousands have already logged on; many going on to use the service.

“Sometimes when enough people get loud, enough people put pressure, then I think all of a sudden society wakes up, so I really feel like it’s really about to click,” Shah said.

-via Good News Network, August 5, 2025

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Get. Onto. Your. Representatives.

(And romance fans / writers? THIS MEANS YOU.)

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can I post my rent lowering gunshots

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Yes we know well how comparison will kill you but you know what's an even crueler mistress? Trying to impress people

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so funny when 20yo women belittle women in their late 20s, girl that is gonna be you in a time span that’s gonna feel like 3 seconds

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"if you see someone shoplifting, no you didn't" no but like. i really didn't. i have never in my life seen someone shoplifting because i'm not watching anyone else in the grocery store..? how are y'all noticing things like that. my only goals are enter the store, survive, exit the store

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while i am not denying that so called australia is part of, and complicit in the harm perpetrated by, the imperial core, i would like add a dash of nuance to the "australians complaining about american-centrism is disengenuous because it's just complaining about watching American movies" take going around. this post is not a "you should feel sorry for Australia" post or trying obfuscate this nation's complicity in genocides abroad (Palestine, Papua, etc) and, of course, this nation's own ongoing genocide against Blakfellas. however, Australians complaining about US imperialism isn't just complaining about movies. there are multiple US military bases on stolen Aboriginal land, US intelligence overthrew at least one socialist-leaning Prime Minister in the last 50 years, and American mining companies frequently desecrate sacred Aboriginal sites as well as doing irreparable environmental damage. even if we were to just talk about movies, you wanna look me as a Blakfella in the eye and tell me that Arrival (2016), one of the biggest movies ever, which featured a scene in which a main character refers to Aboriginal people as an "extinct species", is a non-issue? The thing about so-called "soft" US imperialism is that it means, for Aboriginal peoples, our sovereignty is doubly violated by both the US and UK. it means we are twice colonised, and for settlers, it means living in a so-called "democracy" that can, will and has been tampered with by foreign powers on a whim against the will of the people. of course, our domestic federal government bears a significant portion of responsibility in all of this. and again, i am not denying the nation's positionality and complicity in the imperial core. But I simply refuse, as an Aboriginal person, to accept the notion that ppl in so-called australia have no legitimate grievance with US-centricism.

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I haven’t been on tumblr for quite as long as a lot of people but over several years I’ve noticed this interesting gradual sorta,, shift in the general culture? that it went from this mostly depressed, nihilistic outlook where people would regularly joke about hating themselves and being hopeless and depressed, to a wave of vehemence of “STOP hating everything actually the world is Good and you deserve love!!!” type posts, to now, where those aggressive ‘PSAs’ have faded away and instead I regularly see people romanticizing simple things like stars and hot tea and rainy mornings, and waxing poetic about their friends, and just trying to put love out there. and I don’t know exactly what that means (someone who knows more than me could probably say something smart about generational expression and trauma or popular perception of mental health and whatnot), but I do know that it makes my heart very full to see people learn to love the world and themselves by extension, and a whole userbase adopting healthier coping mechanisms, and therefore teaching the younger users to do so as well. I might just be following different people, but I really do think we’ve grown. everyone has grown. five years ago it wasn’t unusual for the next post on my dash to be a scathing commentary on why nothing matters or an anon ripping into someone they barely knew or someone complaining about how pathetic their interests are. now I have mutuals who get excited and spam reblog art of cows and friends I see tagging each other in pictures of frogs and strangers writing paragraphs about how much I matter. it makes me happy. idk. just an observation I wanted to make. I think people are good and everyone’s just trying their best at the end of the day

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it’s so wild how black youth aren’t allowed to have rebellious phases because it’s assumed once we display any sort of criminal behavior that’s all we’re ever going to amount to

meanwhile white kids damn near be doing 5 stars in grand theft auto shit and it’s chalked up to teen angst instead of genetics

it’s not fair and I hate it

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be shocked about everyday acts of racism. Kick up a stink about small incidents of sexual harassment. Be unapologetically indignant about the use of homophobic slurs. Apathy is complicity. It is a dangerous stance to take.

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Super incredibly maddening thing about mental illness:

Fighting your ass off to live a normal life and function as well as you can, and instead of getting credit and having people be proud of you for all the efforts you’re making, having people use your apparently normal behavior as a reason to invalidate you and think you weren’t that sick to begin with.

It takes a lot of badassery to act this normal, but the effort is all invisible 

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psa if you ever meet me in real life I am really sorry for how much I swear like it’s really not a joke I have a mouth on me like a fuckin sailor and I can usually turn it off around adults but if you’re under thirty five I will likely throw one ‘fuck’ in for every three words that leave my mouth it’s shocking

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Opinions aren’t permanent. It’s okay to change your opinion based on new information.