Fools Gold Construct, Newly Animated

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
little-boats-on-a-lake
phinarei

I was thinking about Dolly Parton and remembered something about her.

In 2020 I worked a job collecting medical record for insurance companies. It was Covid and there were many, many medical offices that were grieving and angry. It wasn't a fun job most of the time.

But one day I called a hospital in Tennessee. I was supposed to collect records for a NICU patient and their mama. I got to records and the woman in charge of records said there must be a mistake. They never worked with insurance with maternity or neonatal patients because of Dolly.

I asked what she meant and she told me, "Well, Miss Dolly has us send her the bills for any new mothers and their babies, especially if they spend time in the NICU. She never has anyone apply or anything, she just has us send her any bill for those families and she pays them, no matter how big."

I was stunned. I clarified, "Dolly? Dolly Parton?"

"Yes, ma'am! Dolly's been paying those bills since at least 1999 and so we just don't work with insurance here. It's why there's a mural of her in the maternity ward."

I cried harder that day than any other day during the height if the pandemic. For the first time that year it wasn't grief fueling my tears, it was a hope so deep that it hurt to contain it. When Dolly gave a million dollars for vaccine development I just nodded. Made sense to me. That's simply who she was. She saw a need and, if it was in her power, she met it. She loved humanity in a way that didn't require anything back. It was never a question of whether or not it was her responsibility, she just stepped forward and did what needed doing.

I loved Dolly Parton in the same way I loved Mr Rogers. Steve Irwin. Bob Ross. She shaped who I am with her kindness and she was a core part of my world for my entire life.

There has never been anyone like Dolly Parton before. It is my privilege to have lived in a world with her and I will do everything I can to make sure that there are plenty of people like her from here on.

dolly parton story medical billing american medical system
secondbeatsongs
secondbeatsongs

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

secondbeatsongs

tags from @fiercestpurpose: #fascinating point! I did however think this was made from a real in universe perspective so I got very confusedALT

agshjfsj you know what? sure. I can do this from an in-universe perspective too

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to when it was on air.

firstly, you'd better hope it stays up on amazon prime, because it aired 24/7 for multiple decades, so the size of it is astronomical. there's a reason the other streaming services dropped it - the server costs alone are ridiculous. but even on prime there are ad breaks in it that it never used to have, because back then all the advertising was product placement, but modern advertisers want mid-roll ads, and they really break up some of the most emotional moments imo.

(and don't get me started on the music licensing btw - all of the changes are bad, but the song swap in episode 9775 killed me dead. awful)

not to mention that the vhs, laserdisc, dvd, and blu-ray releases have been out of print for years. and if you want to try torrenting it, to get it in even barely decent quality you're gonna need at least 300TB of free space, and that's not including the deleted scenes and director's commentary tracks, which are a whole other thing.

secondly, everyone has this parasocial thing where they feel like they grew up with Truman, because their mom kept it on in the house when they were a kid or w/e, and we need to just. get over it. I mean, he's just a guy. you're not special for liking him; everyone likes him.

like, some of you guys are worse about this than you were with Steve from Blue's Clues, and that's saying something. you've gotta move on.

and people need to be nicer to the actors who played his friends and family, too. like I know the ones who were adults at the start have a lot to answer for, but the kids were pushed into this by the industry just like he was! and they don't deserve to be cancelled on twitter just because their dad got them into acting as a 3yo or w/e. like. come on.

thirdly, because of the way the show ended, we need to actually address the fact that we don't know what happened to him? like, Truman wasn't some actor who quit, he was lied to about his whole life, and now nobody knows where he is! and after the SAG-AFTRA strike when the crew and extras were fighting to get paid for the work they did on that show, did fucking anybody think about Truman? if anyone's owed residuals, it's that guy.

I just feel like nobody's taking it seriously that he's not a celebrity? he's a kid who got shoved into a machine, and after what happened to him, it'd be completely fine if he never showed his face in public again.

(though personally, I want him to just so he can sue the shit out of everyone involved in his upbringing. but that's just me.)

anyway on a fandom level, if you want to help, the Truman Archival Project is looking for some eps that were lost due to corruption, and some scenes that got cut later. there's a list on the wiki, but there are a lot of gaps and old tape formats that need converting, so if you can help, go do that!

and Truman, if you're out there - I hope you're living a good life. whatever comfort and entertainment you bring to people really means nothing compared to the value of you getting to live a normal life. I hope you're having a good time, wherever you are.

when it comes down to it, what was done to you was awful. nobody deserves to have their most private moments shown to millions of people without their consent.

it's probably bad that we've normalized this experience.

unreality the truman show privacy I have been looking for this post! love the shared ending augh
northerlyy
northerlyy

image
image

Eastern Beebandit (Megaphorus clausicellus), taken August 2, 2026, in Georgia, US


A small and overwhelmingly fuzzy robber fly sitting on a tiny leaf without a care in the world! The species of this genus are disguised as leafcutter bees, likely to make their predators think twice before messing with a bee minding its business. Unlike other mimicking robber flies, beebandits don't seem to want to hunt their mimicry subjects. Many larger species of bee-mimicking robber flies will gladly take a bumblebee out of the air, but these guys would rather have small insects like plant bugs to eat!

wow! whata guy! so shaped! eastern beebandit robber fly fly insects nature
photosynthefish-12
tsarina-anadyomene

okay what are some excellent recent poems

m-accost

A. E. Stalling's vilanelle "Burned"

You cannot unburn what is burned.
Although you scrape the ruined toast,
You can’t go back. It’s time you learned
The butter cannot be unchurned,
You can’t unmail the morning post,
You cannot unburn what is burned–
The lovers in your youth you spurned,
The bridges charred you needed most.
You can’t go back. It’s time you learned
Smoke’s reputation is well earned,
Not just as an acrid, empty boast–
You cannot unburn what is burned.
You longed for home, but while you yearned,
The black ships smoldered on the coast;
You can’t go back. It’s time you learned
That even if you had returned,
You’d only be a kind of ghost,
You can’t go back. It’s time you learned
That what is burned is burned is burned.

WOUF The METER of this bad boy!!! fuck yesssss poem poetry story