/ᐠ - ˕ -マ Ⳋ

"bomb that kills all-" "I just don't get bi women bringing their-" "pansexuality isn't a real thing-" "all lesbians-" "trans men really are men bcs they're all misogynistic predators-" "theyfabs-" "pfft aroace people are cringe-" "nonbinary people are actually all-" Instant block. Goodbye. Not listening. It's for both solidarity with your fellow queers AND to protect yourself, because once a person is convinced to hate one group for their immutable traits they can be convinced fairly easily to hate another too, and thus I do not trust them.

in 2019 the FDA approved a drug called trikafta (which is really three drugs in one) for cystic fibrosis treatment. what it essentially does is patch up the malfunctioning proteins that cause the extra sticky mucus. trikafta is effective on about 90% of cystic fibrosis patients.

people who had spent their entire lives in and out of hospitals, on and off of ventilators, suffering from pneumonia and sometimes treated through painful procedures like intubation took this drug, got out of bed, coughed up an entire lifetimes worth of mucus out of their lungs over the course of a few hours, breathed clearly for perhaps the first time in their lives, and now go on to live well into their seventies.

My ward is the respiratory ward - CF is one of the things we specialize in.

Since this med came out we haven't had a SINGLE CF admission to the ward

There used to always be a CF patient spending a couple of months with us at a time

There's a man who is 23 years old who I was sure would not survive his next admission (aim saturations 85% is end stage lung disease)

There's a set of the local frequent flyers that we all know so well

Except

No we don't

On the CF specialist ward (with reasonable staff turnover)

Half the staff have probably never even seen a CF patient

Additionally, it should be noted that metrics like life expectancy are in no way a guarantee of... Anything. There are significant outlier CF patients who are at an advanced age now despite the odds due to a variety of different factors, having lived the majority of their lives before the development of modulators.

That is per month with the most common coupon people are likely to use.

But don't worry, there's grants and patient assistance programs you can apply for. 🤞🫠 Most people in high income countries like the USA can get it "covered" through insurance for fewer thousands of dollars. Or even less if your insurance is good or the manufacturer likes how poor and/or on Medicaid you are! A good social worker will help you with the process, and make sure your yearly reapplications and PAs are done a little early so they have time to think about it before you run out. Jesus Christ.

1. Promise everything.

2. Piss off everyone.

3. Deliver nothing.

It's the "I kept picturing" line listing things that really reveals the nonsensical processing of AI, because choosing visual moments that would make good connected comic panels is more difficult to simulate, and it also attributes "the glimmer of amber scales" to Essek when that is very very obviously Caleb in the fic, and there is a grammar/punctuation issue ("as panels the row") that doesn't feel natural. And for the scam element, the classic unsolicited "reach out to me on Discord" hook should always be suspect.

I decided to check the user's tumblr profile, and what do you know: it's empty, of course, with 0 posts. And their profile banner is literally an AI generated image with the big DREAMS TIME watermark right in the middle. And if this was not enough: all their Likes/Comments are visible. And all of them are on posts with Ao3 links like mine, and every single comment shares the exact same format. A few sentences complimenting themes and moments, followed by "I draw comics, and honestly I kept picturing [that scene] as a panel/series of panels [described]. If you ever want to see a scene as a comic, I'm on Discord at margarita._.morales. This fic really stuck with me, thank you for sharing it." And the time stamp for all these comments are like 2min apart, because the bot is trawling for ao3 link posts that have the tag "Ao3 link".

Most people already know or should know that any comment from a stranger (positive or negative!) that's trying to get you to go to a different platform like Discord is almost always a scam. The laundry list of other flags are also familiar: soulless empty profile, the fact that likes/comments are not hidden, the fact they only follow the default Staff account, the fact some things that don't quite make sense in the message. But before I registered all these things, the effusive specificity of the message initially made me happy. It achieved seeming real at first glance, even if it fell apart immediately under a due diligence mental checklist. And it's because it fed my work into fucking AI.