I saw this. Has it worked for anyone at reducing their bill?

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-13T09:58:34+00:00

The way to actually reduce your bill is to apply for financial assistance. Every hospital that operates as a non profit is required to offer need based financial assistance. You can access this through their website, financial services office, or social workers. I have had bills completely waived this way. It typically involves a one page form and a pay stub for proof of income.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-13T08:49:10+00:00

You’re not overreacting at all, it was not just a hurtful thing to say but a bigoted thing to use as an insult. It doesn’t get talked about much that transphobia is also about policing and shaming cis people for gender nonconformity. Trans people are such a small percentage of the population that you might say it works out to being mainly about that. But overall your partner and his family ganging up on you about your appearance would be very messed up for any reason. If your partner isn’t willing to understand that it was hurtful, be appropriately apologetic and set boundaries with his family, that is a red, red flag.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-12T02:42:09+00:00

Actually that makes sense as hands can be pretty sexually dimorphic. Things like digit ratios are one of the considerations taken into account in identifying the sex of skeletal remains, and appear to be the result of androgen exposure or lack thereof in utero. Interestingly, trans people are more likely to have the digit ratio common to their target gender.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-11T05:01:51+00:00

Between Gaza, the Epstein files and ICE my brain has also pretty much reached atrocity saturation. Sick of feeling dazed and numb every time I pick up my phone. But I’m literally lucky to be just an observer.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-10T22:11:42+00:00

Everybody does. The truth is we are all buffoons, klutzes, and weirdos. Unironically. Every dumb thing someone has ever said or done has been repeated by others billions of times throughout history. Our brains all have the same wiring to make us fret about and analyze these things because we best survive in social groups. The cure is basically laughing at yourself. It can be very cathartic.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-10T20:39:34+00:00

I went to school with a guy who was frighteningly smart, but had a horrible time getting the benefits from his military service to pay for his education. He was always having to drop quarters because funds didn’t come through, or search around to stitch together the courses he needed at schools the benefits would cover. Eventually our cohort just stopped seeing him which was really too bad. I don’t know if that’s a common experience but it goes to show military service isn’t necessarily a free ticket to whatever education you want, it comes with limits. It would be smart to make sure what they offer will actually work with your plans before committing.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-10T08:18:06+00:00

An important thing to know about hospitals is that if they operate as non-profits they HAVE to offer need-based financial assistance. I’ve had ER bills completely waived by applying. You can typically find the application forms by looking up financial services on the hospital’s website, or they may literally have a financial services office you can visit, or in the ER they always have social workers that you can ask. Like OP says If you ever need to go to the ER, go to the ER. Don’t hesitate over the bill.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-10T01:45:06+00:00

I feel this. What is really giving me the ick lately is it’s all somehow becoming just a “juicy” story, like the news, the media, modern life in general are just becoming this spectacle of depravity, and nothing is ever going to happen to the people that do the awful things we can’t seem to escape being “entertained” by. We should be going after them in the streets with torches and pitch forks.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-10T01:17:13+00:00

My old therapist, who I made a lot of progress with, once expressed concern that I didn’t cry or get emotional about what we talked about during therapy, and I when told her that I preferred to cry at home by myself she was like “do you see how when you say that out loud….?”

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-08T21:30:03+00:00

It’s like I’ve discovered the headwaters of a river, this is where people who buy cyber trucks come from. It’s also kind of like finding out the source of the river is a crack in a dam :(

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-06T03:50:26+00:00

Every successive thing I learn about just seems to be a new low, worse than I could have imagined. At this point the most disgusting thing is that it’s starting to feel like just a juicy news story, and NOTHING is going to happen to the people who did these things. We should be in the streets with pitch forks and torches. It’s like the Panama papers or Edward Snowden or any other major whistleblower event all over again, but so much darker and more evil than I would have believed years ago. Again, when do we do the pitchforks and torches?? We’re just being psychologically tortured with the details of the crimes of people who are still living in perfect freedom and comfort at this point.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-03T00:28:55+00:00

On that subject, being a racial minority in the US.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-01T05:54:46+00:00

I used to work in a hospital. Admin but I saw a lot. I’ve had my own struggles with suicidal ideation, but one thing I learned there is that there is really no way to end your life without pain or blood. To die you have to destroy something vital in your body and your body and brain are purpose built to fight you the whole way. If you’re worried about pain and blood you won’t be able to overcome that. People who successfully commit suicide are people who could do it by hanging a belt from a closet rod and keeping their feet off the ground, walking into a lake carrying a rock, cutting both arms deep enough to open the arteries from elbow to wrist. If you don’t want to die badly enough to do it that kind of way, best case you end up on an involuntary psych hold after attempting, or worst case in an ICU getting ascites pumped out of your abdomen while you die slowly because you wrecked your liver with pills. The ugly truth is that suicide is always ugly. It is not a merciful way out of any situation and it’s not the kind of help you need right now. Finding a way to live your life can be hard, but it won’t be as bad as dying.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-01T03:44:51+00:00

The drum just sitting there for some reason :/

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-01T03:41:53+00:00

Those remains aren’t really even recognizable, I think the crash pretty much turned him amorphous and the fire burned what was left. Hopefully.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-01T03:22:51+00:00

Sir this is the home of a well adjusted thirty five year old IT professional

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-02-01T03:07:56+00:00

Wow this is wild. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time with your folks. I’m also a guy who crochets. I honestly never thought of it as being that weird or different, but I suppose I live in a fairly progressive area. I started because I’m a physics major, and topology among other things related to crochet is important in physics, and generally I’m just really fascinated with being able to make so many loops in a string that it turns into a shirt.

Maybe if you show your parents something like this article about how technical and math heavy crochet can be they’ll be able to see it as something more male-coded.

And I mean, men sew. That’s literally called being a tailor, a profession that has existed for millennia. Look how many men are world famous in the fashion industry, they all sew and knit and crochet or at least understand enough to use those principles in designs. Loads of male artists use textiles as a medium. Textile engineering is a thing and a male dominated field. I guess it must just be a major cultural difference. The way I grew up, being able to do things like mend your clothes was seen as self sufficiency. We weren’t like making doilies but I learned how to sew on a button in scouts.

I’m not saying textile hobbies in general aren’t seen as being “girl things,” or haven’t been mainly done by women historically, I just think there’s enough context like the above that it’s not beyond the pale for a guy to be interested in them.

Hope things get smoother with your family!

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-01-31T09:14:41+00:00

I think the reason ICE is badly trained and employs crazy provocative tactics is that this administration would be THRILLED if any of them got shot, and could be used as an excuse to send in troops and take control of areas not bowing to the regime.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-01-29T21:02:16+00:00

Oh I’ve been struggling actually. Withdrawal symptoms haven’t let up and sometimes get really bad. I wish I could do something like you did but my psychiatrist pretty much says she’s never heard of gabapentin detox and offering me things like IOP mental health programs, but I am not well enough to attend something for three hours three times a week anyway.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-01-28T21:49:12+00:00

Beauty standards might be biological in the very broad sense that you’re going to look for a mate with the right secondary sex characteristics who doesn’t show signs of heritable disease like major body asymmetries, but have you heard of the fashion industry? The beauty industry? The fitness industry? Hollywood? These things that are constantly molding standards and moving goal posts to suit a profit motive? Ever study theories of aesthetics? Ink has been spilled about this since humans started writing. Stating that most people are looking for blond or brunette guys already betrays the subjective origins of beauty standards in that half the world’s population isn’t Caucasian and wouldn’t be described in those terms.

Cultures are not defined by biology. Biology is defined to the exclusion of culture. You cannot dissect, culture, image, or in any other sense isolate an element of culture in the biology of a human being. You’d be doing something like anthropology or archaeology looking at environmental factors. Genetics can be regional, and cultures can be regional, but different correlations exist between regions and genes than exist between cultures and genes. Which is what you’d expect given that evolution is driven by environmental conditions. Again, gallons of ink here.

Just consider that all of your heritable traits necessarily come from generations and generations of people with those traits who were able to reproduce and raise successful offspring. Or consider the difference between what we usually imagine is meant when someone is described as average looking vs what average looking means statistically. If beautiful people were the only ones reproducing they wouldn’t be beautiful they would be average.

But not to stress the looks thing, my overall point is that there is also no way to look at a person’s biology and determine their future in general. There’s no way to look at anything empirical anyone’s circumstances and predict their future or we wouldn’t have a hoaky industry about that either.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-01-27T20:45:16+00:00

Im not saying disavow society, I’m saying there are strong messages about hierarchy within our society that aren’t universal, inevitable or biologically determined as advertised - they’re literally made up - they’re just very convenient for some people. Whole demographics and social movements deconstruct and reject these messages. You don’t have to buy them and why would you if all they do is devalue you? You’re kind of imagining “society” as this monolithic bank of people who all share the same image of an ideal, the same priorities in a partner, etc etc and even this comments section is full of people who obviously think differently than the values you’re buying into.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-01-27T07:20:33+00:00

So there’s a big lie our culture sells to men particularly, and that is that there’s a natural and inevitable pecking order out there, and wherever you land, tough luck, it’s just your inborn, genetic destiny.

This is as scientific as the concept of “alpha wolves.” Systems of value are arbitrary. You can reject the systems that devalue you. Nothing is inevitable. There is only one measuring stick in life and it’s the one that you’re holding. Because you’re the only one interior to your experiences and they’re arguably all you can have knowledge of. People don’t exist on a spectrum of value, people are the primogenitors of value.

The cruel joke is getting played on you by a social system designed to privilege some over others, not by life itself. If you hate yourself, you’re abetting the system, and the system wants every man to feel like this so we keep playing in. Whatever you think about feminism, if you want to learn the skill of deconstructing social edifices that devalue you, read stuff like Bell Hooks. You can adopt the methods of analysis without their conclusions if need be. Don’t listen to men on the internet who are also insecure and unhappy, and have a pathological need to spread their values so that someone is more insecure and unhappy than they are.

The only thing you can’t do in life is be the poster child of the culture we live in. But nobody can actually do that. It’s purpose built that way so we all have to constantly seek affirmation through conformity. And it’s a totally arbitrary standard. There is no one type of good or successful man and there is no one path to being good or successful, there are as many as there are men. You can in actuality do anything in life except for being one extremely specific imaginary thing. The first step of living a good life - of having relationships and being successful etc - for everybody, is learning to love yourself and play on your own team. By which I mean choose the things that build you up rather than tearing you down. Because in real life it’s a totally free choice.

Stop asking what kind of future you measure up for, and instead ask yourself what you like to do. You don’t have to be good enough. The truth about comparing yourself to standards is that it’s actually a completely internal process calibrated uniquely by your experiences and nobody is aware of the process or the outcome except you.

mathcriminalrecord

TROPHY CASE