iamtoothandclaw

[iamtoothandclaw]

I like to keep an eye out for bumper stickers whenever I'm on a walk. Here are a few of my favorites

[iamtoothandclaw]

Shopping for laptops fucking sucks ‘cause I don’t know shit about computers. I’ve never had a computer with a functional webcam or microphone or the ability to play computer games made later than 2005 or a speaker that could play anything loud enough to hear from more than a foot away. How the hell should I know what I want?!

[iamtoothandclaw]

I made a bad comic and now you have to look at it

[iamtoothandclaw]

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

Here's the link to this organization, by the way. According to their numbers, less than 1% of denials in the US are appealed, but 75% of appeals are approved. This could do so much good.

And another source for validity:

-via NBC News, July 18, 2025

[iamtoothandclaw]

Please buy my prints 🥺

I have three jobs that are all unstable. I live in complete poverty as a sole provider to a family of three in the global south. I am on maintenance medicine for hypocalcemia, type II diabetes and hypothyroidism for the rest of my life. My mother is a full time wheelchair user with very low movement, my father is managing a chronic kidney disease, and my sister is autistic with a low frustration threshold. I am their sole provider, and now dealing with nerve damage post surgery- a quarter of my face, and nearly my entire neck has not healed properly- its numb and painful and makes it hard to work for me as it limits my own movement somewhat. If you've ever taken joy from my art or little posts, I would love your help. I am grateful for this second chance at life, I would like to stay healthy and keep living. Thank you so much!

More than 400 exclusive / early access drawings on my patreon!

If you would like for me to bypass the immense fees on inprnt and patreon and would just like to send me a direct tip, It would mean the whole entire world to me!!

[iamtoothandclaw]

Colors vs Final Illustration <3

I wanted to give folks here a heads up that I've deleted my Redbubble account (they added a crappy fee structure + they've never been good at paying artists fairly), so if you want prints you should use my Inprnt. Thanks!

Commissions are currently open; email at silverthegold@gmail.com for inquiries.

[iamtoothandclaw]

The thing about the "hypocrisy" of conservatives bleating about "pedophiles" but supporting Trump is that to a lot of conservatives, the definition of "pedophilia" is "that which supports young people's autonomy or individuation from their parents/authority."

That's why a children's book that says "Be yourself! Everyone is different! You don't have to fit in!" is "pedophilia," but Trump raping a 13 year old girl isn't -- it was done to her against her will, so it didn't facilitate her dangerous autonomy. That's fine. Like child marriage -- it's perfectly fine, because the parents force it on the children. Parental authority is preserved.

A point my partner has made is that discussions of historical or cross/cultural variations in "age of majority" really underestimate the depth of patriarchy. "At what age is a girl considered a woman?" presupposes that a woman can ever meaningfully be considered an adult, which, in many forms of patriarchy, she really can't.

In the broadly liberal tradition, "children" are, broadly, defined as a class of people denied bodily autonomy and civic rights, but spared from the responsibilities of hard labor and harsh punishment; while "adults" are defined as a class granted bodily autonomy and civic rights, but subject to hard labor and harsh punishment. Which is why ageists (and ableists who infantilize disabled people throughout the lifespan, sexists who infantilize women throughout the lifespan, etc) think they have a real gotcha with "Well if you think young people (disabled people, women, etc) should have bodily autonomy and civic rights, then they have to have jobs! And go to prison! Or else you're Having It Both Ways!"

But many patriarchal authoritarians have never accepted this vague and never-actually-evenly-applied liberal construct in the first place. Everyone should be subject to hard labor and harsh punishment, and no one should have civic rights or bodily autonomy. Everyone should be subject to the authority of the patriarchal order. There is no "contradiction" between "a 14 year old should be married and a 24 year old should not be allowed to transition." They aren't saying that a 14 year old is "old enough/mature enough to decide for herself" whether to get married; and they're not really saying that a 24 year old is "too young/too immature" to transition. Marriage is an obligation and gender conformity is an obligation. Hard labor is an obligation and obedience is an obligation. The concept of being a "child entitled to protection, safety, and support" does not exist, and neither does the concept of being an "adult entitled to autonomy, self-determination, and political representation." They aren't even going to understand "If a 14 year old can be tried as an adult and go to prison, why can't they vote?" as a question. Everyone should be subject to prison and no one should vote. Life is about obligation and obedience, and age has very little to do with it.

[iamtoothandclaw]

On an aesthetic level, I appreciate what's going on when folks draw robot-type characters with penises where the shaft consists of a series of articulated bands; it's a really cool way of visually juxtaposing flexibility and rigidity in non-organic "flesh".

On a practical level, you just invented a dick with pinch points.

[iamtoothandclaw]

I love him so much

(also wanted to compare with an old one!)

[iamtoothandclaw]

Please fucking lie to your employer. Like they don’t need to know your mental health issues or what drugs you do. Ffs

[iamtoothandclaw]

So I’ve been playing a lot of skyrim lately, because it’s video game comfort food, and I decided it was time for my Redguard Dovahkiin to settle down. (Actually I specifically just wanted to be able to adopt some of the random orphans you meet because I felt guilty about them, but you need to be married before you can do that so that there’s someone at home to take care of the kids while you’re off galivanting).

So I travelled around a bit, chatting up likely looking npcs until I found one I both liked and didn’t feel guilty about marrying (I feel bad if I marry one of the warrior adventurer types, making them be a stay at home mum) and settled on an obnoxiously cheerful argonian called Shavee because her life was frankly shit, and I thought she’d probably be good with kids.

So off I go to Riften to the Temple of Mara to arrange the wedding. I book it in for the next day, realise I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, and spend the night before the wedding robbing every house in the city in the search for something to wear. Eventually decide everyone in Riften has terrible fashion sense and break down everything I stole into raw materials and use them to craft myself an outfit and some jewellery that i’m pretty happy with. I even carefully pick out my fanciest looking sword to wear.

(don’t know why I bothered, frankly, shavee turned up wearing a shirt covered in suspicious stains and weilding a pickaxe, it’s like she doesn’t even care about this marriage)

(also for comedy purposes, bear in mind I play with survival mods that mean my character needs to eat and sleep to live, and I literally spent the entire ingame night on this and forgot to eat and drink anything either and then just downed four bowls of wolf stew right before entering the temple so I didn’t starve during the ceremony. also I discovered during the wedding that I am dying of rockjoint, which I contracted from sleeping in a pile of hay on the floor of a skeever infested cave, so even being six foot tall and jacked can’t make up for the fact that I am exhausted, running a fever, and probably covered in wolf which I spilled because my joints are slowly atrophying, and even the fanciest clothes in the world aren’t going to cover that up)

so I enter the temple, and my finance is there, and Lydia my housecarl, and some random NPCs the game thinks are my friends because I did fetch quests for them

One of the random NPCs is Lisbet. Atfter I did her fetch quest, I then did another quest in which I discovered Lisbet is secretly a cannibal and part of a demonic cult that worships the daedric prince of decay by kidnapping priests, sacrificing them, and then eating their corpses. Raw. I think the raw meat is the sticking point for me here honestly.

I ultimately decided not to sacrifice the random priest to a daedric prince in exchange for one magic ring and all the raw human I could eat, because frankly, that doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me. I was expecting there to be some kind of dialogue choice where I could nope out at the last minute, but it turns out there isn’t one, so after they drugged the priest and tied him to the altar, I just got out my sword and started swinging.

I killed most of the cult (including the town butcher, because I had brought meat from him before and was extremely pissed off that he might have been secretly feeding me humans) but a couple of them got away, which I figured was fine because they weren’t trying to kill me.

Except it turns out, if any of them escape, then every time you see them in the future there’s a random chance that they’ll fly into a violent rage and try and murder you.

Lisbet is at my wedding. Lisbet decides that clearly me marrying this random argonian woman with two lines of dialogue is the happiest day of my life, and she cannot allow me that happiness, when I’ve taken so much from her.

So she tries to kill me. Only she can’t, because I’m stuck in a pre-rendered wedding animation, and also she’s sitting next to Lydia, my faithful retainer and owner of a really big axe.

It also turns out that Lisbet is essential, meaning she can be knocked unconcious but not actually killed because she’s needed for some quest or other. And the minute she wakes up from unconciousness, she tries to kill me again, so Lydia knocks her unconcious again, and I’m stuck, I can’t move, because I’m supposed to be in the wedding animation.

Except Shavee has, not unreasonably, see all this and decided that she doesn’t like me enough to risk getting murdered, and has done a runner, leaving me at the altar, but more importantly, leaving me trapped in a broken pre-rendered animation, so all I can do is stand there at the altar, staring at the space where my fiance was supposed to be, listening to the sounds of Lydia trying and failing to beat a cannibal to death behind me.

Okay, I think, clearly this wedding isn’t going to happen, I’m going to go for the registry office option and complete the wedding using the dev commands. I do this. The priest gives me a wedding ring, and I can finally move again. I chase after Shavee, who has an impressive turn of speed on her, and eventually catch up right by the city gates. I try to talk to her.

Apparently using the console has completed the wedding for me, but not for her, because she still only has the same 2 lines of dialogue she usually has.

Clearly this is working, I can’t leave my kids with someone who can only say 2 things and doesn’t even know she’s their mum, that’s irresponsible.

I try loading from inside the temple. I get the same problem.

Eventually I figure out that I need to use the dev controls to disable Lisbet’s entire existence in the universe.

Shavee and me get married. As the priest reads the vows, I stare at Shavee and wonder why she couldn’t even be bothered to put on a clean shirt. I wonder what kind of mother she’ll be.

Once the ceremony is over, and I’m happily married to the dirty green lizard of my dreams, and we’ve agreed that until I can make her recognise my extremely nice modded house exists I will share her single bed in the unheated flophouse in Windhelm she calls home, I re-enable Lisbet, because I’m worried I’ll forget if I leave it too long.

Fun fact about skyrim, it loads in quite a lot of npcs and objects by dropping them from the sky. I have no idea why this is the case, but it’s objectively the funniest way to load in objects.

I re-enable Lisbet. She falls from the sky, clips through the roof of the temple, and lands in the pew beside Lydia, stands up, draws a knife, and is immedately beaten unconcious.

I no longer care, because Shavee now has all the exciting new spouse-only romantic dialogue options like “Could you cook something for me” and “have you made any money lately”, and I know she’ll be a great mother.

I limp to the door of the temple, while around me the guests not involved in the Lydia-Lisbet murder cycle scream and duck for cover.

I open the door to the temple, immediately collapse and ragdoll down the steps, which is how I discover I am dying of rockjoint.

I limp to the orphanage down the street, adopt two kids, and then finally remember that I’m carrying garlic bread, which as we all know, cures all known illnesses.

When I emerge back into the street, full of the joys of motherhood and garlic bread, I find the town in disaray. Lydia is chasing Lisbet through the streets with an axe and a dragon is circling overhead, burning npcs to death. People are running for shelter, screaming, while the guards try to take down an entire dragon using only the worst bows and arrows in the game.

I decide that as a parent, I have to think of my own safety first and leave them to it.

I head out of the city, intent on returning home and figuring out why Shavee refuses to move in with me. A man hanging around the stables challenges me to a boxing match. For want of anything better to do, I agree.

Halfway through the fight he dodges at the wrong moment and I punch one of his horses in the head.

Two guards attack me while I desperately try to surrender. My kids will miss me, but I’m prepared to go to jail for my horse crimes, I’m an honest citizen. Also my horse crimes seem somewhat less important than the dragon.

The guards refuse to accept my surrender. I am stabbed to death. As I collapse in front of the indifferent horse, Lisbet exits the city, followed by Lydia. The last thing I see before I die is Lydia swinging her axe at Lisbet’s face.

[iamtoothandclaw]

Two Gay Little Animals Fox & Bunny

[iamtoothandclaw]

the default way for things to taste is good. we know this because "tasty" means something tastes good. conversely, from the words "smelly" and "noisy" we can conclude that the default way for things to smell and sound is bad. interestingly there are no corresponding adjectives for the senses of sight and touch. the inescapable conclusion is that the most ordinary object possible is invisible and intangible, produces a hideous cacophony, smells terrible, but tastes delicious. and yet this description matches no object or phenomenon known to science or human experience. so what the fuck

[iamtoothandclaw]

[iamtoothandclaw]

Peacemaker (2022-…)

[iamtoothandclaw]

Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?

[iamtoothandclaw]

you can start anytime.

you can brush your teeth in the middle of the day. you can wash the dishes at 2am. you can do things outside the normal times assigned by society.