I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)
Leverage hands down has the best character development I’ve ever seen.
This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).
But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.
Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.
Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.
Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.
[ID: The first part of the post is a Leverage gifset showing Parker sitting in a call center, looking nonchalant as she says, “Yes, hello, Mr. Wallach? This is Alexandra from F.S.A. I’m calling about the outstanding balance you have with…” She looks at her screen, and her expression freezes as she slowly reads, “Amherst On- Amherst Oncology center?”
She presses her lips and sighs, looking pained, before looking around furtively and saying, “Oh It looks like we got disconnected.” She begins to go down her list, saying, “Delete. Delete” repeatedly as lines flash red on her screen.
The last image is a screenshot from the website “Rip
Medical Debt”. Its homepage features art of a smiling Black girl beside
text that says “Eradicate medical debt at pennies on the dollar. Every $100 you donate relieves $10,000 in Medical Debt” above a
button to donate now. End ID]
smthing i can just never believe when ppl (mostly twitter users) complain about a girl character being made to look ‘mannish’ or 'masculine’ and talk about the death of femininity and every time i get excited and think 'oh okay cool did we get a butch character or-’ and its literally jusg a regular fucking woman like you would see at the grocery store. like jusyt a normal woman
i think those people would have an aneurysm and die if they saw how actresses were styled in the 70s/80s/90s……
not that these women are looking super masc lol but the parameters for “acceptable female appearance” in both media and everyday life have indisputably narrowed over the past couple decades :|
i think deciding to love someone continually is like reading the same book again, but each time finding a different line that hits deep and makes you think about something you didn’t realize before. and you decide to read it again and again, knowing you’ll never get enough of it, knowing you’ll always find something new about them to love.
This documentary is up there with the Making of The Long Night featurette from Game of Thrones in the “why the fuck would you release this labour violation lawsuit evidence file as a documentary?” list.
The mismanagement and disrespect of the crews is so evident in both and yet the people in charge released them as a way to show themselves as amazing and triumphant in the face of adversity, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are in fact the very adversity that needs to be triumphed against by their overworked, underpaid employees.
Also I shouldn’t have to say there’s research about this, but there’s research about this (mostly in the healthcare field but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t generalizable). A very strong indicator of burnout is how futile someone feels their work is. Humans do not react well at all to doing work which doesn’t feel like it has a purpose.
There’s a reason this poor animator is so desperately trying to convince herself it will work out. Because I’ll bet the moment she couldn’t anymore, burnout would be on the horizon. Making people do futile work, or mismanaging them to the point where they perceive the work as futile, should be a labor rights problem all on its own.
the les miz movie documentary is exactly like this. watching the orchestra try to record accompaniment for singers who, rather than singing to a click track (basically a metronome) or backing track to follow, had the accompanist follow play to them, so the orchestra has to follow people singing very beat, is GENUINELY TRAGIC
[Video description: a Tiktok video by @ChristyPRN.
Transcript
Christy: I’m about to play for you a recorded phone call with a hospital administrator but before I do that let me give you some context. Most hospital bills contain inaccuracies and the best way to find those inaccuracies is to look through your medical records and itemised bill. Under HIPAA regulations patients have the protected right to be given their medical records and their billing records from the hospital when they request that. The following clip was taken by my partner organisation called Goodbill. They are a team of medical billers and coders, clinicians and lawyers that will look over patients medical records for them, find the inaccuracies and then present them to the hospital and ask that the hospital adjust the bill down to the appropriate rate. So let’s listen to what one hospital administrator had to say when Goodbill was trying to assist patients in getting their itemised bills.
Hospital administrator with disguised voice: If I get any faxes or calls, all faxes will be shredded. We are not responding and we are not taking any sort of settlement. And you are not getting any, any sort of itemised bills. None. Not at all. I don’t care if you send me a HIPAA release.
Christy: Hospitals know that patients are legally entitled to their itemised bill so why on earth would they threaten to shred a request for one.
Hospital administrator with disguised voice: So after reviewing this, they’re not asking for the itemised bill at which they’re entitled to, your company is sending it to your coders and, and doing your feelers out there and saying, “ Hey, you are overpriced and we’re going and we want to settle it. That’s not going to happen. I’m not doing it.
Christy: Hospitals know that medical records are very complicated. A patient who is reviewing their medical record themselves may not know enough to be able to tell when there is a discrepancy. But when the patient chooses to share those records with somebody who knows how to read them, like this company, the hospital knows that they’re gonna be held accountable for any errors, overages, or discrepancies and some of them don’t like that. That being said, a hospital cannot deny you access to your own medical records simply because they don’t like the way that you’re gonna use them. If a hospital is refusing to give you your medical or billing records without an adequate reason, you can file a complaint online with the US Department of Health and Human Services.
[id: a tweet from caranthirs which reads, “if gay people have sex on screen it’s fetishization but if they don’t it’s queerbaiting so to create the optimal mid point you must write a scene so erotically baffling that it is unclear whether sex is happening or not like a black & blue vs white & gold dress of fuck scenes.” /end id]
today im thinking about the huge buff bread guy from kikis delivery service. highly underrated guy
Genuinely just a good man. Wife adopts teenage witch that needs a place to stay in the city? Sure. Even though you got a kid on the way? That’s fine. Cat too? Love cats.
My favorite moment with him is when he goes to get some prepped baking sheets and he does this fancy twirl with them in front of Jiji. Like, there’s no other people in the room, he does this to impress a cat.
I don’t think he ever says more than a whole word the entire movie, and I still love him more than most Disney princes based on this one moment alone.
And the part where he wanted to surprise Kiki by making that beautiful elaborate sign OUT OF BREAD to advertise her business and he was all anxious for her to get home and see it
But then when he sees her coming he gets all bashful and runs away 😭
the most underrated thing about the ghibli movies is how deeply they are love stories to working people, to the small folk, to moments of love and kindness. its not just about magic, many movies are about magic and fairytales. Its not only about the people in the stories, but about stories in the people. And they are just loveable.
Was anyone gonna tell me Vincent Martella, voice of Phineas Flynn on the Disney Channel original show Phineas and Ferb is on some absolute king shit on his twitter or did i just have to see this amazing series of tweets myself?
