Did I just employ the “Treat Them Like You are A Kindergarten Teacher Again” method with my insurance company today? I surely did. Did it work? Probably better than intended because I made an actual doctor feel contrite.
So, my insurance has been trying to not cover my SNRI because it is new on the market and no generic available yet, so pricey.
I apply for a refill and the request gets locked for review. Again. For the 3rd time.
This time I call and immediately ask to speak to the actual doctor making these clinical decisions. Very politely. Must be a slow day because they allow it.
ME: [Teacher voice] I’m calling in regards to the SNRI you have placed a lock on. Why was this decision made?
DOC: Well, there are dozens of other medications on the market in that tier, and far cheaper for you and [insurer]. We have sent a request to your doctor to consider alternatives.
ME: I am aware of that. So, can you do me a HUGE favor and look up my prescription history really quickly and tell me how many SSRIs and SNRIs were only filled once in 2022 for me, showing they were poorly tolerated?
DOC: It looks like eight.
ME: Great job! Now, can you please look at my genetic test for psychiatric drug tolerance and tell me how many medications are listed in the safe category?
DOC: Two.
ME: Awesome! Now, can you tell me what type that other drug is that I’m not taking?
DOC: Yeah, totally, it’s an MAOI.
ME: That’s correct, you’re really knowledgeable! Should I be taking something as dangerous as an MAOI with my other medications, or even just in general?
DOC: It’s contraindicated for sure.
ME: It is! So true! So, last question since you’ve been incredibly smart and helpful. Is it less expensive for [insurer] to pay out for the medication knowing they already get a huge manufacturer discount anyway, or is it more expensive for them to pay for me to need potentially long-term inpatient psychiatric care?
DOC: I’ll clear the code, ma'am and flag it as medically necessary. I’m sorry about this.
ME: I appreciate you SO MUCH. You have a great day now.
WALGREENS PHARMACY TECH WITH 5 NOSE RINGS AND PURPLE HAIR STARING AT ME: ……….. OKAY! It’ll be ready in five minutes. You wanna come work here?
I recall when I was driving across country once and was passing through some city (Minneapolis?) and the DJ said something like "and to the Jiffy Lube I stopped at this morning, you forgot to add the oil and my engine seized on the way to the studio"
I first noticed the rodent activity last week (image above) at the place where the driveway meets the garage, so I replaced the gravel in the burrow and made a mental note to do something about it, but by yesterday (below) the process was obviously in an accelerated phase.
The quickest response would be to push all the dirt and gravel back down and then seal the top with an expanding foam, but I was reluctant to possibly convert the burrow into a live burial, so instead I got out our smallest Havahart trap, baited it with a piece of chicken teriyaki, and waited. Within a couple hours the malefactor was in the trap, and I drove him/her to a new homesite near fields and prairie about a mile away.
Then I reset the trap, not sure if this was one guy or possibly two. I captured a second one before evening and drove it over to where the first was released. Then I realized that I don't know that the ones I trapped are a mated pair and the occupants of the hole or just wandering neighborhood residents, so I decided to look up some info on their ecology and when they have their litters. Found this nice infographic -
That was new information for me. I did not realize that common chipmunks would create multiple entrances to their hidey-holes. Now I'm thinking that the risk of sealing a chipmunk family into a live burial horrorshow is unlikely, and that I can just go ahead with the cleanup and closure.
But one advantage of having a blog full of well-read and diversely-experienced readers is that sometimes I can call for help. So I'd appreciate advice from others with backgrounds in rodentology, mammalogy, pest control, or house maintenance.
Before leaving, I'll insert several tidbits from the Wikipedia entry:
The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk", from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" (cf. Ojibwe ajidamoo). The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is "chipmonk", from 1842. Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck", and in the 1830s they were also referred to as "chip squirrels", probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-19th century, John James Audubon and his sons included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the "chipping squirrel [or] hackee". Chipmunks have also been referred to as ground squirrels, (although the name "ground squirrel" may refer to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus).
Eastern chipmunks, the largest of the chipmunks, mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year... Chipmunks construct extensive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m (11 ft) in length with several well-concealed entrances. The burrows are complex and include plugged entryways, nseparate compartments for nesting, multiple food chambers, side pockets and escape routes. The sleeping quarters are kept clear of shells, and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.
Foreigners will never understand how someone like Rawhide Kobayashi would immediately become a beloved local fixture in whatever small American town he ended up in.
every single time someone pulls the “How would you AMERICANS like it if someone came to AMERICA and” reversal, the answer is always “we’d fucking love it”
Your tags summed up the exact feeling I had about this
I just Googled the Swedish-Japanese guy in the OP, and according to this interview, his Japanese name was given to him by the master gardener he was apprenticed under:
“The family name ‘Murasame’ was given to me by my master. The given name ‘Tatsumasa’ is a combination of ‘dragon’ (tatsu), the [zodiac] year when I was born, and one character from my master’s name,” says Murasame.“
So I think maybe it’s less like naming yourself ‘Brandon McFreedom’ and more like moving to the states to work under a veteran car mechanic named Bud McLean, and then having him turn to you after a few years on the job, and say "Son, it’s time for you to become an American so you can open up your shop. And when that day comes, I think the world should know you by a new name: McLeo GM Corvette.”
Named by his superior by conventions one would apply to a super chill stray cat
For anyone wondering, the PhD student’s name is Myra Cheng.
Here’s a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.
Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.
Myra Cheng et al. “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence.” Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).
You asked for it: metal heron tshirts are up for preorder! If you’ve ever heard a Great Blue Heron call, you know how terrifying they sound. Preorders come with a heron sticker!
The idea for this shirt came from a comic I made about Bird Sounds. Many birds make lovely sounds. Herons make furious dinosaur sounds.
when i was 8 i had a very intimidating russian woman as a music teacher- she was both my opera instructor and piano teacher. about a month into piano, she sat me down and said to my mother and i “this child- very beautiful voice, good for singing. i will not allow this child to continue piano. god did not want this child to play an instrument. he told me this in dreams. that is all.”
my mom had it written down on a slip so we could remember the exact words because it was so funny. i HATED playing piano and i was definitely not good at it (i did end up having a good 5 years of opera training and ended up being a pretty accomplished choir singer though) and the idea of god sending my incredibly severe and serious russian piano teacher a dream begging her to stop teaching me piano was probably the funniest way it could have gone.
So a while back I won a cheap eBay auction listing for a collection of love letters from the first world war.
They arrived today, and…the listing was WAY more than I expected for the price I won it for. There’s over 100, and they’re not just from WWI, but from 1906 (earliest I’ve found so far) through to 1915.
Charlie writes to his girlfriend, Gertrude. This is the most beautiful, lovesick stuff I’ve ever read. He sends her so many letters, sometimes twice a day, and lots of poems. He seems to have been an artist, as he talks a lot about small exhibitions of his stuff, and included a flyer for one. He also talks about how her parents don’t approve of them and how he’s desperately awaiting the day they’ll be married.
I haven’t found the latest of the letters, but the fact it’s up until 1915 and then stops…doesn’t give me hope for a happy ending.
This man continuously refers to his precious beloved Gertie as his queen and goddess, and whilst most of it is sickly sweet, there’s some raunchy stuff too, with him talking about how he can’t wait until they have a little house together and can ‘please each other all day’…
There’s. So many.
I’m going to put them in order by date, read them through, and then maybe even transcribe them so we can find out a bit about Charlie and Gertie’s love story.
This man was absolutely lost in the sauce
Y'all he writes about sending her pressed poppies and postcards for her collection 😭😭😭
111 years after Charlie got his dick touched in 1910, I decided to tell you all about it. Sorry Charlie.
Some more finds:
And some CODE!!!
Also all this is poems:
UHHHHH…👀👀👀
This has a lot of notes so I need everyone to know:
They got married 😭😭😭❤ (thank you to @lovesjustachemical for finding this!!!)
Kinda fucked up that you just stole somebody’s mail
Don’t know how to explain to you that acquiring, preserving, and transcribing historical ephemera that would have otherwise just been trashed from people who have been dead for over 50 years and don’t appear to have any living descendants isn’t the same as ‘stealing someone’s mail’ but Tumblr never ceases to amaze me with it’s cold takes.
These are smocking patterns. If you stitch these patterns into flat fabric and then pull the threads to gather the fabric, it will produce these patterns on the finished fabric. Smocking manipulates flat fabric into three dimensions.
The beautiful fabric that looked like dragon scales on costumes in the tv show Game of Thrones were produced by smocking, by sewing a particular pattern into the fabric and then pulling those threads just the right amount to gather the fabric into that pattern.
Posts are selected by humans, processed automatically and queued to post. Click the link for more information about each horse. You can send a link or text to be counted to my ask box.
Aww Tiffin is a grandchild of the Tetrarch, that’s cute!
It’s not that kitty is saying she can’t make the wheel go. Kitty is saying she wants to do the wheel WITH her person. Much the same way many cats won’t wat unless their person is eating at the same time.
This is a request for social togetherness and it’s incredibly sweet
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