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Seeing as how the Big Beautiful Bill just passed, here's are some websites that offer discounts on medications:

- GoodRx

- SingleCare

- Pharmacy Checker

- WellRx - this one compares prices across different pharmacies

- Cost Plus - thanks to @thedamnqueenofhell for suggesting!

-NeedyMeds - a nonprofit that helps pay for prescriptions. Thank you to @allitdoesispause for the suggestion! They also suggested checking the manufacturers website for a paitent assistance program, which can give you a coupon for free or cheaper meds.

-Ask for a discount card - thank you to @cccshutdown for the reminder!

Stay safe, everyone. Things are about to get much, much worse in the US.

EDIT: if you're worried about doctor/therapy appointments, see if there's a sliding scale clinic near you (and ask your therapist if they offer sliding scale prices)

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Greenhouse Made of Uranium Glass

Artist Victor Engbers built this greenhouse for the Amsterdam Light Festival out of uranium glass. The glass has a nice green tinge, but glows radiantly under a blacklight. Yes, it does contain uranium. Victor Engbers made this greenhouse for the Amsterdam Light Festival. The theme was biomimicry, and he decided to try to come up with glass that emits light. The project led him to this: a greenhouse made of uranium glass. The panes were man blown, and then cut, explaining the circles. You could also enter the greenhouse:

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have you taken pills with anything other than water? yes (tags) no my meds are bald

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when we try to befriend cats we mimic their meows and get down on the ground to their level and try to gently coax them to interact with us right

that horrifying entity mimicking human noises at us maybe just thinks we’re cool and wants to pet us?

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Here is a happy child....

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I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.

But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.

Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.

Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.

Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.

Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.

Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.

Your writing is yours. Take control of it.

It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.

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Alright gang the live action Lilo and Stitch did so well financially they're making a part two. The Switch 2 sold really well. The new Harry Potter series is going to be a big hit, just like the stupid game and the new theme park.

Please take this information and understand the social bubble you've put yourself in on Tumblr is a microcosm of reality. There are billions of people out there not on this site, completely unaware of what your fandom circle thinks is important. And they have money and they spend it.

There are millions of people who live every day unaware of anything going on beyond the tip of their own nose. They see what's familiar and they buy it. They have no expectations of anything being better or new.

So when stuff that's funding transphobia or pushing harmful political messages or making money off of anti consumer practices is successful remember: it's not the people on this website who asked you to abstain that are actually spending their money and you look like an idiot when you imply they are.

"You guys said you were going to boycott this movie but you didn't!" I guarantee they did, a billion people out there who've never heard of Tumblr didn't. Focus your ire and activism appropriately.

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You have just been magically transported into a random ao3 fic!

Spin the wheel of ao3 tags three times to find out what your fic is about. Put in the tags what your fic tags are!

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Liking a character who sucks is silly because yeah I hate him and yeah I want people to bully him and say mean things but if you say the Wrong mean thing I'm going to get defensive

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Hey, if you never hear from me again it is because I got lost getting to/from my hotel room and am now trapped

I’m honestly not sure I captured all the twists and turns

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I worry that today’s generation of kids on the internet have never gotten to develop much digital agency or form safe, empowering relationships with older people. More broadly, I think our current culture of isolating children from all unrelated adults, supposedly in the name of their “protection” only causes them to become more ignorant, lonesome, and vulnerable to exploitation.

There are many ways in which restricting youth access to information technology and training adults to avoid all contact with children makes kids even more powerless and dependent.

If a child cannot post their sexual health questions on Ask Alice or go searching around online, then they have to believe whatever they hear from their parent or priest. If a young person longs to taste the freedoms of adulthood but aren’t given any room to explore, then the grown-up in their DMs telling them that they are so mature becomes a hell of a lot more seductive.

And if a kid never gets to search for sexual content online, learn about adult sexual experiences, or touch themselves and find pleasure in the privacy of their own minds, they may never fully learn that their body is them, for them to enjoy and express themselves however they see fit.

For queer youth, the dangers of isolation are amplified. A study published in the journal Child Protection and Practice in April of last year found that LGBTQI+ children face an elevated risk of grooming and sexual abuse because they are discriminated against by peers, preached against within their religious communities, and mistreated or kicked out of the house by their families — and also, because an adult with no respect for boundaries might be the only person offering to talk with them about queerness or sex.

It’s very difficult to know the difference between a healthy relationship and exploitation when a predatory adult is the first queer person a kid ever knows. If a relationship with an abuser is the only way that a teen ever gets to live out their queerness or explore their budding sexuality, then it becomes immensely difficult for them to walk away — leaving the groomer is like tearing off a crucial part of themselves that never gets expressed otherwise, or even seen.

This is also true of children who have the early rumblings of kinky sexualities, too — when you long to be controlled or tied up, you need a safe outlet to learn and fantasize about doing such things consensually one day. If you do not know that such options exist, you’ll settle instead for abuse. The more options that a child has to learn about sexual practices, to meet other queer people of ages, and to form appropriate relationships with unrelated adults, the harder they become to manipulate, and the more power they have to walk away.

...

Being a minor is a position created by legal oppression, but most people consider a minor’s lack of freedom to be so natural and morally correct they don’t even recognize it as oppression. Instead, they see it as protection, a healthy separation between the world of the human and the not-quite-human yet. Though they would never admit it, a minor is not the same thing as a person to them, for a minor can be thrown out of public spaces, locked away, silenced, disregarded, and left to rot in the ways full persons are not.

I believe that we queer adults are failing our younger siblings by refusing to play a part in raising and looking after them. We have chosen to privilege our individual safety from accusations of ‘inappropriate’ conduct over the need for queer youth to see their own sexualities and identities normalized, envision a diversity of possible futures for themselves, and seek aid and understanding when they are mistreated.

For those of us who’ve had the liberty to escape our ignorant hometowns, get on HRT, have joyous gay sex in dark rooms, or even just dance tenderly with a sexy androgynous stranger’s cheek pressed against our own, we have a responsibility to pour from our filled cups, and to remember what it was like to have no such access. As terrified as we are of losing our documentation, our access to medicine, and our legal rights, we must remember those queer people who presently have none of those things, and do all that we can to extend our aid to them.

I wrote about the troubling culture of the "MINORS DNI" bio, and how it contributes to the mass isolation of young queer people. You can read the full piece or have it narrated to you by the substack app for free here.

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hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

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I've gone full ham with horror. Horror and Scifi. These are all on the To Read list except Monstrilio that I actually bought after I read it, which I rec if you like body horror and horror.

Thanks to @soupandsorcery for tagging me to share the books I'm reading now and want to read soon! Likewise, my tbr is also staggeringly long, and I usually read more than one book at a time because I have a problem, lol. So this is a combo of things I'm reading now and want to read shortly!

I only just started The Spear Cuts Through Water, which fit neatly into the bingo board for my local library's adult summer reading program. It was fresh in my mind because soupandsorcery read it recently, so here it is! The T-Rex one is fostering my dinosaur obsession and need to read non-fiction books, haha.

The Goblin Emperor showed up in the recommendations of another book I read, so I gave it a try. Lots of lore to catch up on as you go, but it's still pretty fun. The Witch and The Tsar was another recommendation, this one from @frightlight! It's in the tbr by order of due date, although the author did botch it with a generic love interest at the end, oops. The rest are either me exploring more of the Pulleyverse or taking up summer reading program "missions".

The books I've purchased outright are waiting in a judgmental stack, but such is life when I check out too many books from the library.

Tagging @dgcakes, @a-gay-bloodmage, and @frightlight in case they've got books they want to share! Of course, any and all folks are welcome to join in too.

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I'm immortalizing the original video on my blog forever cause I forgot that it's not nearly as well known as the taylor swift one. please watch this