The Lowercase

last summer my friend who is an amazingly talented artist and i were in this super tall building, and she’s in a wheelchair and i’m pushing her around the room. it’s an art exhibit and some of her art was chosen to be showcased there and so it’s all fine and dandy until suddenly an alarm starts going off

a FIRE ALARM

everyone starts running for the stairs and my friend just looks at me with this forlorn look on her face

“i can’t go down the stairs”

but i’m a stubborn bitch “i’ll carry you”

“what about my chair? it’s too expensive for me to be able to get another one if i can’t get this one back”

“i’ll carry that too”

and i did. we went to the stairs (by then most people from our floor were gone) and i lifted her up in a fireman’s carry over my shoulder and then lifted her chair up and used the ridiculous amount of adrenaline that was coursing through my veins to make it down approximately 20 half-flights of stairs until we met some people exiting lower floors, one of which who kindly took the chair. I changed positions so i was holding my friend bridal-style which was, somehow, easier and the person who took her wheelchair (with her permission to handle it of course) accompanied me to the ground floor and then out the doors

basically there is no real protocol for people who can’t use the stairs in an emergency. it’s up to the people with them, if anyone, to help them or the person to somehow make it down the stairs alone, unassisted

thank fuck that it was just a faulty alarm system, because if i was unable to carry her down those stairs and the building was on fucking fire???? then i don’t know what would have happened to her, but i don’t think it would have been very good.

the fire marshal hemmed and hawed for a while and then said to take the elevator- you’re supposed to leave it free for the fire department to use and they want able-bodied people out fast not waiting for elevators. if the fire alarm has just gone off the building probably hasn’t suffered enough structural damage to make using the elevator dangerous, and modern elevator wells are heavily reinforced. many large and high-trafficked buildings on my campus have fire rated elevators that link in with the fire alarm system so they won’t let you off on a floor with a possible fire. 

if the elevator isn’t working, wait in the stairwell and call the fire department to let them know where you are. modern stairwells are also heavily reinforced- it might not be pleasant but modern building code usually requires fire-resistant stairwell doors in office and big residential buildings, also to help firefighters get in and out safely. older buildings’ stairwells may or may not be retrofitted with fire-resistant doors but a stairwell is generally the safest place to wait if you can’t get out. 

Understand that once you enter the elevator, you could POTENTIALLY be taking your life into your hands there.

It is NOT LIKELY, to be perfectly honest. It’s only in a pretty catastrophic scenario - think the Twin Towers, USA, on September 11th - that the elevators will be compromised and out of service. But there is a NOT ZERO PERCENT CHANCE and you need to understand that and accept it.

As for leaving the elevators free for the firefighters, okay, here’s the deal. Unless your nearest fire station is literally right next door? Your first on scene fire truck is NOT likely to be there on scene and needing that elevator before you get to the ground. It takes us TIME to find the address, gear up, and drive to the building. Then we need to hoof it into where the elevators even ARE, so YOU HAVE TIME to use the elevator to get down to the ground floor... BUT ONLY IF THERE’S NOT A RUSH ON THE ELEVATOR! And THAT is WHY we don’t tell people this shit. That’s WHY we tell people to NEVER USE THE ELEVATOR... because every self-entitled asshole will use it because they don’t feel like walking, and then put YOU in danger by delaying the elevator’s arrival to you.

IF, however, the elevator IS compromised, or you just can’t get it to come for you, or whatever, and you either don’t have anyone with you who has the adrenaline fueled BALLS to be able to toss you over their shoulder and hoof it down the stairs with you - because, let’s face it, that is RARE AS FUCK, then HERE IS WHAT YOU DO:

You call 911 and tell the call taker that you are in the building that has a fire alarm going off, and you are not able to evacuate because of a physical disability, and you tell them what floor you are on, and EXACTLY what stairwell you are waiting at. And the very FIRST thing that the firefighters are going to do once they arrive, if it is, indeed, a REAL emergency, and not a false alarm, is come get your ass and bring you down. Whether that means carrying you down the stairs, or whether that means locking out the elevators so that no one else can override them and coming to get you themselves, they WILL come get you FIRST THING if it is a real event. And if it is a false alarm? You will probably be the first person who is not involved with the building to know, because the call-taker is going to stay on the line with you until you are under someone’s care and out of danger, or until the scene has been sorted out as real or false, and you are out of danger that way.

These are pretty standard operations in the fire service throughout the United States. There may be some minor variations based on specific municipalities, but, for the most part, this is pretty typical: LIFE BEFORE PROPERTY. So, as long as SOMEONE knows where you are - hence why you call 911 - Firefighters will come get you. You are NOT alone, and you have NOT been abandoned. I PROMISE. It’s like, our whole reason for doing the shit we do: to save lives and to break shit. Sometimes, we get lucky enough to do both at the same time.

High rise fires suck ass, and I always hated them. But the very FIRST thing I asked anytime we got one was if we had “any entrapments” - which is what we call anyone who could not self-evacuate for ANY reason. We ain’t leaving you behind. And yes, your friend who doesn’t have the stamina to carry you down can stay with you, too. Because I would never ask that of someone, honestly. 

If disabled and the fire alarm is just happened, you're allowed to take the elevators down but there's a small possibility you could get stuck if the elevators are compromised.

If you can't use the elevators or don't want that risk, go to the stairwell which is reinforced against fire, close the doors, and call 911 to let them know you are in that particular stairwell and can't get down.

Fire will strongly prioritize finding and rescuing people who might be still in the building during any actual structure fire. This is a major component of their job.

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

All of the same pros as above

Entertainment while you do chores or drive

Cons of listening to a recording of your own fic:

sure, but i've spent more on fucking knitting needles than i have on my entire soldering station and it's not even close

> a fair bit of practice

a dyspraxic seven-year-old can do it. do you have better hand-eye coordination than a dyspraxic seven-year-old?

> replacing the battery requires soldering

i'm struggling to think of a single electronic device currently in my house where 1) replacing the battery requires soldering and 2) soldering is the hardest part of replacing the battery. it's all either laptops and larger items with battery connectors, or phones and wireless earbuds and bluetooth speakers and shit where the battery is really solidly In There and either requires gingerly prying out 18 other components to get at, or is just straight up potted in gunk and can't be removed without destroying the whole device.

That said, okay, hobbies are just kind of like that. Knitting is a good analogy in the sense that there's, like, a tacit social contract that it's is either a hobby or a job, and you will never find yourself in a situation where you need to knit unexpectedly -- contrast with sewing which everyone needs a little of from time to time, but it's low-stakes if you screw up and you can muddle through the urgent parts with a garbage sewing kit you bought in a convenience store. I'd be even unhappier if people changed how they designed appliances such that routine maintenance required me to knit!

a dyspraxic seven-year-old can do it. do you have better hand-eye coordination than a dyspraxic seven-year-old?

I mean I have no doubt that I can do it (though I will not presume to judge what percentile of seven-year-olds I beat), but I doubt I could do it well on a blind first try. Again in the relatively short bit of research I did, I found plenty of failure stories from adults, some of which were expensive! It sounded though like the complexity was less in putting things in the right place and more in the mechanics and chemistry of the process and the behaviour of the ingredients.

None of this is really that bad in an objective sense -- I've done lots of things more difficult and expensive -- but it's that tacit social contract thing. Society tricked me into thinking I would't need to solder unless I wanted to go into EE, then changed the rules! If I learn to solder under these conditions, I'm letting the terrorists win.

anyway! thank you for going into depth on the tacit social contract thing. that makes sense now that you've explained it but is definitely not an intuitive mindset to me. (i love it when i have an excuse to learn a new skill and buy tools about it 😔) once you know how to do it soldering definitely feels like much less of a hassle than e.g. prying up things that are glued down, and i think most people who care about Repairable Electronics are unfortunately in that camp, where easy soldering is like a fun quick little task and not an unbridgeable gulf.

my mindset (and this is not necessarily endorsed) is more like: there's a list of tools that Every Adult Should Know How To Use, and if someone mentions they don't know how to use one of them it's like. oh… they let you out of the house like that? and a soldering iron is, uh, one of the things on my list. sorry. i've definitely seen posts on here where people are like that about cooking but i have a disease where i think it's normal to not cook and weird to not know how to use a drill.

It sounded though like the complexity was less in putting things in the right place and more in the mechanics and chemistry of the process and the behaviour of the ingredients.

yeah i think this is directionally correct: successful soldering is mostly about Heat Management. the trick is to 1) put enough heat into the things you want to solder together and 2) not put too much heat into adjacent things; a cold solder joint is fixable but melting the insulation off a wire or lifting surface mount pads off a PCB is game over. this is why everyone cautions you to spend enough on a soldering iron that you can get one with good heat control. relatedly, though, you can prevent Bad Things From Happening at basically any point where it seems things are going wrong by removing the soldering iron and optionally blowing on your work to cool it down. (this is another axis that makes Tasks feel intuitively easy vs. hard to me: if something bad is happening, how easy is it to hit the brakes? i really didn't like oxyacetylene welding because being able to Set Down The Fucking Oxyacetylene Torch required turning off the two gas lines in a specific order, which i had to then remember in a state of panic while holding a live oxyacetylene torch.)

I'd be even unhappier if people changed how they designed appliances such that routine maintenance required me to knit!

"For millions of people managing type 2 diabetes, mornings begin the same way — a needle, a dose, and a quiet mental note to do it all again tomorrow.

That routine just changed.

On March 26, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Awiqli (insulin icodec-abae), developed by Novo Nordisk, as the first and only once-weekly basal insulin ever approved for adults with type 2 diabetes in the United States.

This is not a minor update to an existing drug.

It is the first entirely new class of basal insulin to reach U.S. patients in more than two decades.

Instead of injecting insulin every single day, people with type 2 diabetes using Awiqli will only need one shot per week, on the same day, every week.

That means reducing from 365 injections a year down to just 52.

For anyone who has ever felt the weight of that daily ritual — the anxiety of forgetting, the physical discomfort, the constant reminder that their body needs help — this approval represents something much bigger than a dosing schedule.

It represents relief.

How the Drug Actually Works

Understanding why this injection lasts a full week requires a quick look inside the body.

Most traditional basal insulins are absorbed into the bloodstream and begin breaking down within 24 hours, which is why patients need a fresh dose every day to maintain stable blood sugar levels.

Awiqli works differently.

Its active ingredient, insulin icodec-abae, is engineered to loosely attach to a blood protein called albumin, which is found naturally and abundantly in the bloodstream.

This attachment creates a slow-release reservoir.

Instead of flooding the system and fading fast, the insulin releases gradually and consistently over an entire seven-day period, keeping blood sugar in a healthy range around the clock...

The FDA reviewed and ultimately declined to approve it for people with type 1 diabetes, citing concerns about a modestly increased risk of hypoglycemia in that population specifically.

Some regulatory agencies in other countries, including the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Japan, have approved Awiqli for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, but for now the U.S. approval is limited to type 2...

What Comes Next

Awiqli is not standing alone in this space for long.

Eli Lilly is developing its own once-weekly basal insulin, called efsitora alfa, which is currently in late-stage clinical trials.

If that drug also earns FDA approval, it would give patients and doctors two once-weekly options to choose from, allowing for personalized decisions based on a patient’s health profile, insurance coverage, and individual response.

The broader direction of travel in diabetes care is unmistakable.

Fewer injections, smarter formulations, and better integration with digital tools like continuous glucose monitors and insulin-tracking apps are all converging toward a future where managing diabetes requires less daily mental effort without becoming any less medically precise...

A Small Shot With Large Implications

It is easy to look at a once-weekly injection and see only a scheduling change.

But the science behind Awiqli, the scale of the ONWARDS trials, and the consistent satisfaction reported by patients all point toward something that matters far more than convenience.

Diabetes management has always asked a lot of people.

It asks for daily vigilance, daily discipline, and a daily willingness to confront one’s own condition, sometimes in uncomfortable or inconvenient circumstances.

Anything that reduces that load, without reducing the quality of care, is worth taking seriously.

For the more than 37 million Americans living with diabetes, and the hundreds of millions more around the world, a simpler weekly routine could mean the difference between a treatment plan that works on paper and one that actually works in a person’s life.

That is the real significance of what the FDA approved on March 26, 2026.

Not just a new drug.

A new way of keeping people healthy, one week at a time."

Their emails are clearly written by an ai chatbot because they usually talk about how they think I’d be a great fit for their brand since I talk about AI. I specifically make anti ai content, but they don’t seem to know this.

Here is my new standard email response when these weird geeks reach out to me.