/ᐠ - ˕ -マ Ⳋ

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.

Cool, so you want natural fiber costumes with no/nuanced corset slander, people wearing colors, historical hairstyles, people wearing hats or headcoverings and long sleeves outside during the day, no potatoes or pumpkins in pre-columbian Europe, actors with textured skin and wrinkles, minimal makeup, consulting HEMA groups and weapons scholars for all the weapons and fight scenes, a good soundtrack that includes traditional instruments?

Second poll will remain open until 50 years from publishing

Bot options share a UUID, making a vote for either count for both

Previously, a vote in the first poll counted for both options in the second

In 1885, almost as early as the formation of Canada as a country, a fee per head was charged to Asian immigrants, to discourage them from entering the country at all and, if they insisted on coming to work (because even for heavily discriminated against workers, there was money to be made in the colonial project), to discourage them from bringing their families. At the time, Chinese labourers were reinforcing the western colonization and their rail building, so the head tax was introduced to prevent the Chinese population from growing and to make more money off of those who could afford to pay it anyway. Even after paying the tax, these workers were underpaid, overworked, and disrespected even by their fellow workers (because nothing splits the working class from itself like letting the white worker feel superior to the non-white worker).

By 1923, the head tax had failed to create an adequately milk-coloured population for the white supremacist society, so a new measure was introduced: The Chinese Immigration Act, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Introduced on July 1st, 1923, the act barred Chinese people from immigrating to Canada, made paper identification cards mandatory for all Chinese citizens (including children), and forbade Chinese citizens from leaving the country for longer than two years, on the punishment of being denied re-entry. Failure to comply with these rules carried a punishment of imprisonment or a $500 fine.

This act was repealed in 1947, but repealing the act did little to lessen the discrimination Asian Canadians faced.

a screenshot from an article with the text "[...] each new Chinese immigrant pay a tax of $50 to enter Canada. It was the first immigration policy in Canadian history to restrict immigration on the basis of race. The head tax allowed merchants, students, diplomats, scientists and tourists to avoid the tax. A 1900 amendment allowed further exemptions for clergymen and their families. The government increased the tax to $100 in 1900 and $500 in 1903. At the time, $500 was equal to about two years of wages for the average Chinese labourer working in Canada."