~ Lady Kianna ~

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers, bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

MCCPDC CEO Alex Oshmyansky reached out to Cuban with an idea for a low-cost generic drug company in a cold email. It was launched in January last year. They were motivated in part by “Pharma Bro” Martin Shrkeli’s outrage-producing price hike of the lifesaving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet while Shrkeli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Cuban told Forbes last year the pricing for generic drugs was “ridiculous.” He said he decided to put his name on the company to “show capitalism can be compassionate and to send the message I am all in.” It’s not clear how much he had invested in the company.

—

please note that prices are location dependent on goodrx—it shows you the options at pharmacies near your location. i’m in pittsburgh, pa; if you’re in a different part of the country and you try this, you may get slightly (or wildly) different numbers. 

fluoxetine is generic prozac. thirty 20mg capsules costs $12.80 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $3.90.

atorvastatin is generic lipitor. thirty 40mg tablets is $10.95 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $4.20.

omeprazole is generic prilosec. thirty 20mg capsules is $13.90 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $4.20 at costplus.

aripiprazole is generic abilify. thirty 10mg tablets is $17.73 at the cheapest local pharmacy (and $260.60 at the most expensive—and that’s with a discount, still, yikes); $6.00 at costplus. 

lamotrigine xr is generic lamictal xr. thirty 25mg tablets is $36.59 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $8.40 at costplus. 

maybe that doesn’t seem like a huge discount, but the goodrx prices change *all the time*—last time i used it to buy fluoxetine, which was in the last couple of years, it was $31. also, many people are on multiple medications, or have multiple people in a household taking multiple medications, and $5 off every prescription adds up real fast. 

THE CHEAPEST I CAN GET IT IN PERSON ANYWHERE IS $13 AND THE STANDARD PRICE FOR THE GENERIC IS $82.

TAMIFLU IS ON HERE FOR UNDER $4. IT’S AN ANTIVIRAL USED TO TREAT SEVERE CASES OF INFLUENZA AND REGULARLY COSTS OVER $100.

There is a medicine on here called Valcyte, it’s an HIV medication, he’s offering it for $100.20 which sounds outrageous (and I mean still kind of is but wait for it, wait for it) UNTIL YOU REALIZE ON GOODRX IT’S LISTED FOR $179 AS THE ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST PRICE I CAN FIND AND MY LOCAL WALGREENS SELLS IT FOR $1,009 FOR A MONTH’S SUPPLY.

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Also there’s this

1) Are those stairs up to code?

Just by looking at them: no. Open risers are a tripping hazard, I don’t see any tread grips so they’ll become a death trap in wet conditions, and those treads don’t look thick enough, supported enough, or even level. But hey, maybe it’s just a bad photo. But how far do the railing support posts go underground? Are they below the frost line? Were they properly supported in concrete? Was the concrete prepared right and given enough time to cure properly? Is the wood properly treated for weather resistance? Did he take into account the ground shifting on such a steep grade?

Even IF he did all that and the stairs were 100% up to code, the city has no way to verify that. So no, the city can’t just leave them there.

2) Who cares if the steps are up to code?

I saw a concerning amount of this in the notes. I thought we were all on the same page re: Cities have a moral obligation to make sure their structures aren’t deathtraps waiting to happen, and that’s what codes are for. I promise you, you WANT buildings and structures to follow codes and regulations. But in any case, they definitely have a legal obligation for it, so if they leave those stairs up on public land and someone trips, the city could be on the hook for millions in damages. So no, the city can’t just leave them there.

3) There’s no way stairs cost that much, it’s just the city stuffing its pockets:

$65,000 definitely seems on the steep side to me, and I’d want to see a breakdown of expenditure. But I also don’t know the scope of the project. For a set of stairs like the ones above? Yeah, that’s a lot. To excavate the entire grade and put in a concrete structure that includes stairs, an ADA compliant ramp, and good quality weather resistant material? That sounds more reasonable.

But the city also likely needs to have the following: a ground survey of the build site, architects to draw the plans, civil engineers to OK the plans, and the contractors - typically union, and therefore more expensive - to excavate and then build the structure. All of those steps are going to take a LOT of people and a LOT of time and therefore, a LOT of money.

4) Labor doesn’t cost that much, someone is just giving the job to his contractor buddy who’s inflating the price:

Labor does cost that much. Stop telling people to unionize and demand the value of their labor and then getting mad when people do it.

Anyway, in my city at least, contracts are done by blind bid and the lowest bid wins. Under most circumstances, my city legally cannot take a higher bidder, explicitly to prevent the above circumstance.

TL;DR:

How did Dogma, a relatively low-budget film, manage to have the only good-looking angel wings? Like, even movies with tons of FX dollars tend to fuck them up and they look bad. These are very stylized, and you can tell they’re not real feathers, but they actually look… better than real feathers? They have a balance of curvature and sharp angles that just make for a great silhouette and they move wonderfully. I cannot figure this out!!

e: I looked on The Internet

Ah, fanart. Also known as the art that girls make.

Sad, immature girls no one takes seriously. Girls who are taught that it’s shameful to be excited or passionate about anything, that it’s pathetic to gush about what attracts them, that it’s wrong to be a geek, that they should feel embarrassed about having a crush, that they’re not allowed to gaze or stare or wish or desire. Girls who need to grow out of it.

That’s the art you mean, right?

Sports is a fandom. It requires zealous attention to “seasons,” knowledge of details considered obscure to those not involved in that fandom, unbelievable amounts of merchandise, and even “fanfic” in the form of fantasy teams. But this is a masculine-coded fandom. And as such, it’s encouraged - built into our economy! Have you *seen* Dish network’s “ultimate fan” advertisements, which literally base selling of a product around the normalization of all consuming (male) obsession? Or the very existence of sports bars, built around the link between fans and community enjoyment and analysis. Sport fandom is so ingrained in our culture that major events are treated like holidays (my gym closes for the Super Bowl) — and can you imagine being laughed at for admitting you didn’t know the difference between Supernatural and The X Files the way you might if you admit you don’t know the rules of football vs baseball, or basketball?

“Fandom” is not childish but we live in a culture that commodified women’s time in such away that their hobbies have to be “frivolous,” because “mature” women’s interests are supposed to be marriage, family, and overall care taking: things that allow others to continue their own special interests, while leaving women without a space of their own.

The concept of fanfiction formed and forged the earliest stages of literature in Europe. Because the majority of authors in France, Germany and Great Britain looked at that funky little Celtic dude Arthur and thought “hey, he’s neat. I wanna write about him”.

The entire concept of a book outside of religious purposes was born out of fanfiction in my country.

There is no “first canon” for Arthur where he came as the prince of Camelot, with his sidekicks Lancelot and Merlin and his endgame love interest Gwen.

Arthur was some random hunter when he started out.

Someone’s fanfiction made him a prince.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him a round table.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Merlin at his side.

Someone else’s fanfiction gave him Morgana, gave him Gwen, gave him his swords.

And, to this day, we still write Arthurian fanfiction. Literally last year there was a movie adaptation that is, by all intends and purposes, fanfiction, because it wasn’t even close to a literal adaptation of the source material (The Kid Who Would Be King). Heck, BBC’s Merlin, itself an Arthurian fanfiction, remains one of the biggest fandoms that people today write for on AO3.

You were a joke in the middle ages if you tried to write your own stuff. Who’s interested in your stuff? You were only a respected author if you wrote fanfiction. The most famous medieval German authors are famous because they wrote fanfiction about some knightly OCs they created who served on Arthur’s court. That is the literary legacy of the middle ages. Arthurian fanfiction.

Yet somewhere along the way, this concept of “I find x story/element cool and want to elaborate on it more, shift the focus onto an aspect of this original source material” has gotten this “eh, it’s fanfiction” connotation and lost respect.

Even though this very concept is still being used - even outside of the actual medium of fanfiction - and it is still being used for the very same purpose it was used for in medieval times. Original movies often don’t get as much recognition as adaptations of existing source material that the audience is familiar with. People see a movie about a character they’re familiar with and seem more inclined to buy a ticket to see the 10th new interpretation of Batman or Superman or Snow White. How are these new interpretations of familiar source material that usually add to the lore, reinterpret characterizations and dynamics, any different from fanfiction?

It’s the age old “If thing not make you money, why you care about thing?” that’s so prevalent in the system. Of course some people do make money with their fanart, but I think that is still part of the scorn. 

They really just went and DID THAT

Dildo Generator

Online 3D experiment by Ikaros Kappler which is described as a “Extrusion/Revolution Generator” ….

Created with three.js, you can alter the bezier curves and angle of the form, and is designed with 3D printing in mind (models can be exported and saved, as well as calculated weight in silicone).

I call this one the Megahorny

I was just scrolling and my friend asked why I was dying and i just had shown them this.

It was all just a show, anyway. They did it every year. They brought out a selection of criminals, and the Sorcerer who ruled us showed his power by bringing about their deaths by magic. Just to show, every year, what happened to anyone who crossed him.

There was a time, probably, when the people he executed really were rebels or assassins. In latter days he had to take what the dungeons offered. I was dragged up in chains between a pickpocket, sobbing in terror, and a man who’d killed another man in a brawl. There were few criminals of any note, by then. So instead of choosing the wickedest criminals, they chose based on appearance. The man who’d been in the brawl had a face like a clenched fist, and looked like a ruffian. The pickpocket, aging and with hands beginning to tremble, was a different kind of example. As was I.

“There aren’t many pretty ones, this year,” the man who chose me had said, examining me. “But this one will do. Not young, but not old, a woman, well-favoured enough for the gallows… what was her crime?”

The warder shrugged. “She tried to kill one of the sheriffs.”

The man looked down at me and I shrugged. “I hit him with a washing stick, because he tried to extort money from me, and he was a baby about it.” I refused to treat this as anything but pathetic, even after my sentencing. “I didn’t even break any bones.”

“Treason, then,” the man said, nodding. “Attacking the servants of the law. That will look well on the list. Send her.”

I had been debating ever since what to choose. Something quick? Something painless? I considered demanding that I suffer the attack I supposedly made on the sheriff, but then I realized the Sorcerer would only give me what the man had said I was going to do, and that was not a pleasant way to die. I had all but decided on something swift and relatively painless. Beheading with the sharpest of blades sounded good. It would be quick.