#Collaborations hashtag

[karkatenjoyer]

4/13 birthday hashtag girls (plus little fella with a party hat)

[wickedhawtwexler]

affirmations: i WILL wait until this pizza has cooled to eat it. i will NOT burn my entire mouth just to eat dinner 5 minutes sooner.

[argentum0arbitus]

Is... is this a project pitch? Maybe. Maybe it is.

[piousmuslim]

“If you want to treat your daughter like a Princess, Don’t forget to treat her mother like a Queen.“ . . #follow #islamic #muslims #discoverislam #uae #usamuslims #entrepreneur #freelancer #digitalmarketing #influencer #collaboration #muslim #ukmuslims #hashtags #deen #jannah #sabr #instamuslim #loveallah #followtrain #1 #blogger #islamicreminders (at United Arab Emirates) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9uCZS6BJOc/?igshid=8hye8hafin3e

[jooheonbot]

i feel like being somewhat involved with mx rn while not actively or fully engaging is like being that one meme of the dog surrounded by flames going 'this is fine'

[virtchandmoir]

Alissa Liotti’s Instagram Story (March 8th)

[readymades2002]

[lifestylebuz]

How to Become an Influencer [A Beginner’s Guide]

How to Become an Influencer [A Beginner’s Guide]

The effects of social media are now all angry. Brands want to cooperate with them to enhance their access and drive exchange. On the other hand, followers of influence are looking forward to expert advice and recommendation. Are you thinking how to be yourself? With the popularity of impact marketing, it is just natural that people are becoming increasingly sensitive to becoming an…

[claudioparentela]

[hannie-dul-set]

HAH I FINISHED READING IT. GOT TEARY EYED ON SOME PARTS BC I FEEL FOR YN. LIKE???? I FELT THE STRUGGLES, THE KEEPING-EVERYTHING-BOTTLED-UP-INSIDE-YOU STUFF. I LOVED HOW WELL ROUNDED THIS STORY IS. IT ALWAYS AMAZES ME THAT YOUR WRITING ALWAYS HAS MY ATTENTION FROM START TO FINISH. I never left my spot for the whole 39k words. This world just sucked me right in and i'm loving it 💕

CAN I ALSO SHARE THE FRUSTRATION OF CARRYING A WHOLE ASS GROUP (save for Jaems) ON YOUR BACK? THAT WHOLE PART JUST SPOKE TO ME. BEEN THERE A FEW TIMES AND I FELT LIKE BEING TRANSPORTED BACK. HAHA I MISS COLLEGE BUT I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE REPORTING. ANW MAYBE I'M GETTING OFF TRACK A LITTLE BIT.

I LOVE THE LIL TRIO'S DYNAMICS. IT'S FRIENDSHIP GOALS RIGHT THERE. THE FLASHBACK TO THE PAST IS MAJOR UWU. GIVES ME BUTTERFLIES. AHHHHH THERE'S SO MUCH TO UNPACK FROM YOUR MASTERPIECE OF A FIC BUT I'LL LIMIT TO THESE COS I JUST CANT HELP BUT TO RAMBLE ABT IT. I NEED TO TALK ABT IT I NEED TO LET IT OUT HAHAHA

But thank you for writing this and sharing this to us. Anon cos i'm not like itzy bc i'm freakin shy hahahahaha

EEEP UR ALWAYS WELCOME TO RAMBLE BB GOSH ;o; 💓💞 paragraphs are not only welcomed, they're encouraged HHAAHHAHA bu anyway thank u sm for reading milove<33

[daddys-littlegoddess]

PSA on Britney Spears and the #FreeBritney movement for anyone that needs or wants more information on what is going on with her. It’s a fucking rabbit hole, so buckle up.

A little backstory first. Britney was a child star starting at the age of 4 years old on Broadway, and then worked her way to the Mickey Mouse Club, and eventually the solo career we know today. Her career has been on autopilot her entire life. If you look back at her music, she’s been telling everyone for years she’s too controlled and treated as a product if you listen to the lyrics of most of her hits. Examples include: Lucky, Overprotected, My Perogative, Circus, Piece of Me and Gimme More. Her music videos, social media posts, tour props and photoshoots regularly show her in a cage or in chains. If anyone has ever seen videos of her when she was younger, you’d know her REAL singing voice is very similar to Christina Aguilera’s. Her record label didn’t like it, as they were both on the Mickey Mouse Club and about to release their debut albums at the same time. So they had her voice retrained to sing in the baby voice we all know today because they believed it to be more iconic and would create a brand and career for her instead of her real voice. It’s unhealthy, and it’s been destroying her voice over the years, thus why she is known for lip syncing. She wanted to make an acoustic type pop album in 2006 titled Original Doll and reinvent herself using her real voice. The album was shelved and cancelled once her label realized she would be singing in her real voice. She isn’t allowed to sing live because she will either fail terribly, or she’ll have to sing in her deep voice that she isn’t known for. Her entire career she has been treated like a product meant to sell.

Now, for the real tea.

Everyone remembers the 2007 meltdown. Everyone. Leading up the meltdown Britney was going thru a public divorce, had two children under the age of 2 at the time and was VERY much the focus of the public. We all saw her on every magazine cover. We all also saw the photo of her with one of her kids on her lap while driving. Go on YouTube once and look up ‘Britney Spears paparazzi’. You’ll watch her be chased and followed by hundreds of them, even trying to get into a public restroom to photograph her, videotaping her in tears asking them to leave her alone, and even filming her thru the windows of an ambulance while she was naked being taken away for her final mental health hold.

After the public meltdown, shaving her head, locking herself in her home with her children, speaking in a british accent on regular basis, wearing the imfamous pink wig everywhere, and shopping naked, she was hospitalized twice. After the hospitalization, her father petitioned the courts to be a TEMPORARY conservator to her until she was mentally stable and for only one years time. 2 months after her hospitalization she did a guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother. 6 months after her hospitalization, she drops the Womanizer video and starts to promote her new album Circus with its worldwide tour that grossed $131.8 million. If she’s so unwell, why did she start working right away?

Her father after one year petitioned the courts for the conservatorship to become permanent due to her ALLEGEDLY having EARLY ONSET DEMENTIA in her TWENTIES. It passed and has been that way ever since. For 12 years to be exact.

Now for everyone that doesn’t understand what that means let me break it down for you.

Britney Spears is a now 38 year old woman who is not allowed to do the following without her fathers permission or he can legally lock her up in a mental health facility:

• drive a car

• vote

• get married

• have children

• spend HER OWN MONEY

• see how her money is being spent

• see her children (she has 30% custody of both of her boys due to her dad assaulting one of her sons)

• leave her home

• hire her own lawyer

• have any control over her career

• speak about the conservatorship publicly

• do interviews that aren’t scripted and all final cuts are approved by her father as well

• use a cell phone without being monitored

• use social media unmonitored

• contact ANYONE without being monitored or having them extremely vetted. (Iggy Azalea allegedly had her house searched for drugs top to bottom when they collaborated on a song together)

• go shopping

• go for a walk

• get Starbucks

A conservatorship is meant for people with mental health issues or decaying health. Most likely grandparents or people with actual dementia etc. They are meant for people who literally cannot take care of themselves. If she is so unwell that she isn’t mentally capable of doing anything for herself, why is she still working? Since the conservatorship began 12 years ago she has:

• released 4 albums

• done 3 worldwide tours

• did a FOUR-year Vegas residency

• was a full time judge on X-Factor

• released multiple perfumes and a lingerie line

• made $138 MILLION DOLLARS or so A YEAR

In January of last year, Britney was placed in a mental health facility for 3 months after being seen driving her car to In-N-Out with her boyfriend without permission and for refusing to take the sedating medications her father has doctors prescribing her to keep her under control. She testified to a judge in documents that she was held there against her will by her father. After it was leaked to the press that she was there against her will, the Free Britney movement picked up speed causing a judge to open an investigation into the impact and legality her conservatorship has on her life. Britney’s mother Lynn was also liking and commenting on Free Britney posts saying she agrees that Britney is trapped by her father. Britney’s team had Twitter disable the Free Britney hashtag, and regularly threatens any celebrity that speaks out using the hashtag with a lawsuit if they don’t remove their support for the movement. She was seen shortly after leaving a hotel thru the front door (99% of celebrities park underground to avoid paparazzi unless they WANT to be photographed) stumbling while carrying her shoes, and out of it. Her team used that moment to justify to the public that she needs this conservatorship. She is not allowed to have any say in the hiring or firing of anyone on her team. Every year she pays $1.1 million dollars in fees for the conservatorship to continue, including paying her father a solid $100k+ salary and paying a lawyer she isn’t allowed to choose. She is allowed an allowance of around $1,500 a week for bills, shopping and essentials. Her net worth is $250 million.

So, when everyone sees her on Instagram walking up and down her hallways like it’s a fashion show. That’s all she is allowed to do. She has NEVER had control over her life. I don’t care if you personally like her or her music, NO ONE DESERVES THIS. All this woman wants is to see her children, make the music she wants to make, and go get a frappuccino in her car. She is a light of sunshine in this world, and we must protect her at all costs. So please, do not make fun of her, support the Free Britney movement, and send good vibes her way. She has a court date this month to review the conservatorship and decide if it is abusive or will continue to be in place. There are so many details to this that i left out that would make this post entirely much longer than it is, but a simple search will show you what else is out there. Spread this far and wide. ❤️ Free Britney

[fireandbloodsource]

"What does Your Grace wish to wear?" asked Missandei.

Starlight and seafoam, Dany thought, a wisp of silk that leaves my left breast bare for Daario's delight. Oh, and flowers for my hair.

— A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys IV 

We are very excited to announce our second DAENERYS APPRECIATION MONTH that will take place in NOVEMBER 2022! We are once again hosting it in collaboration with @asoiafdaenerysdaily. Our previous event was a huge success and we’ve received so many incredible posts which led us to making Dany month an annual event! As usual, any form of fanwork is welcome as long as they are based on book canon.

This time we decided to explore a different set of prompts which you can find below. Under the cut you will also find specific metas written by Dany fans that can help you to better understand the prompts and work on them.

Please, make sure to use hashtag #DANYMONTH2022 so we can find and reblog your works! Feel free to send a message, if you have any questions regarding the prompts 💗

Day 1: Politics — including:

Decisions and actions

Intellegence and skills

Military commander

Abolitionism

Social and political changes

Tax policy

Validation of marginalized people

Day 2: Underrated relationships and dynamics

Day 3: The Dothraki — including:

Irri and Jhiqui

Dany adapting to the dotrhaki culture

Appreciation and criticizing of the dothraki

Day 4: House Targaryen

Day 5: Khaleesi (Consort to Khal Drogo)

Day 6: Qarth

Day 7: Underrated visions, dreams and prophecies — including:

The Stallion Who Mounts The World

The Younger and More Beautiful Queen

Quathie’s prophecy

Azor Ahai

The Prince that Was Promised

House of Undying

Return of dragons

Moqorro’s prophecy

etc.

Day 8: Astapor & Yunkai

Day 9: Anti parallels with the current ruling elite of Westeros and Essos

Day 10: Four elements: air, water, fire and earth

Day 11: Dany as a messianic/religious savior and hero

Day 12: The Unsullied

Day 13: Dany being critical of herself and self-aware

Day 14: Culture – including:

Transcending borders

Diversity and adaptability

Cultural dispersion

Cultural customs Dany follows

Narrative of displacement

Cultural amalgamation

Languages

Religion

etc. 

Day 15: Embodiment of hope

Day 16: Meereen

Day 17: Missandei 

Day 18: Longing for a simple life — including:

Motherhood

Rhaego

The concept of home

Family

Lovers

etc.

Day 19: "The human heart in conflict with itself"

Day 20: Perspectives on Dany in ADWD

Day 21: Foils and parallels

Day 22: Sexuality and sexual empowerment

Day 23: Underrated qualities and skills

Day 24: Feminist themes — including:

Female empowerment

Disrupting gender norms

Dany as a survivor

Feminine aspects of Dany’s character

Standing up against sexism

Positive relationships with women

etc.

Day 25: Soft, gentle and humorous side of Dany

Day 26: The Key Five — including:

Arya Stark

Jon Snow

Tyrion Lannister

Bran Stark

Day 27: Humanity, unity and peace

Day 28: Antithesis to the Game of Thrones — including:

Dany’s idea of realm and rulership

Dany and her people

Justice and law

etc.

Day 29: Compassion and modesty

Day 30: Mother of Dragons

Day 31: Dany’s dream of spring

HELPFUL RECOURSES UNDER THE CUT:

etherealdany’s masterlist

aegontheconquerorwithteats‘s masterlist

rainhadaenerys’ masterlist

asoiafdaenerysdaily’s meta tag

marinabridgerton’s essays

khaleesirin’s metas

juliaspiegel’s meta

queen-daenerystargaryen’s meta tag

[salaciousdoll]

Synopsis : Now, we all know about the 2016 Anti album by Rihanna, why not apply it with your faves in a special occupation. This collaboration is really about the people who relate to Anti in some way. Even if you can’t relate, you can admit this album is arguably her best so why not have it with your best interest. There’s no limit to your imagination here!

Rules :

You do not have to follow me to enter!

In order to feel the energy of Anti, you must be 17+ to join if you are writing sfw and sfw alone! When writing about nsfw, you must be 18+ to join. All characters must be of age/aged up, your choice.

Bad bitches may sit here anytime, so light up that joint and relax.

Repeated characters are certainly allowed babes.

Repeated songs are allowed too.

Dark Content is allowed, so don’t be shy. There’s no limit to Nsfw either, again use it to your best interest.

Speaking of best interest, your faves should be assigned the best occupation there is ex. Milkman, Doctor, Therapist, Pornstar, Model, etc. If your fic is super long, add read more

How To Enter The Era :

send in an ask of your chosen character(s) x song choice x occupation.

Once you do that, I’ll add you to the Masterlist and you’ll be all set.

When you are done with your masterpiece tag me and use my maydayanticollab hashtag for a reblog and like from me!

Reblogs are highly appreciated too!

Fandoms I mainly write for : Tokyo Revengers, Jujutsu Kaisen, Kuroko’s basketball, Haikyuu, Attack on titan

Fandoms that can be written for : Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Bungo stray dogs, Gangsta, My Hero Academia, Fire Force, Sk8 Infinity, Dr.Stone, Seraph of the end, Demon Slayer, etc.

Deadline to join: There’s none

Due Date : There’s none, I decided to throw it because I myself don’t even like when stuff is due, it’s too overwhelming

Status : Open

Tracks:

1. Consideration 🎶:

2. James joint🎶:

Underground fighter/gang member! Draken x reader (tr)-@maydayaisha

3. kiss it better 🎶:

Pornstar! Mitsuya x reader(tr)- @suyacore

4. Work 🎶:

Aged up Pornstar! Bakugo x reader( Mha)- @haikyutiehoe

5. Desperado 🎶:

Street fighter!Toji x Fight club owner! Reader(jjk)- @deathskid

6. Woo 🎶:

Psycho! Muzan x Reader( kny)- @hellavile

7. Needed Me🎶:

Doctor! Midorima Shintarou x reader(knb)- @theehcneypot

8. Yeah, I said it 🎶:

Therapist!Choso x reader(jjk)- @pulchritxde

9. Same Ol’ Mistakes🎶:

Biker! Seijūrō Akashi x reader(knb)- @thicksimpx

10. Never Ending 🎶:

11. Love On The Brain 🎶:

Wealthy Executive! Dazai x reader( bsd)- @smucked

12. Higher 🎶:

Pro basketball player!Aomine x reader( knb)- @fleursarchives

Assassin!Sniper Mask x reader( hri)- @eiflawriting

13. Close to you 🎶:

Handy Man!Nicholas Brown x reader (Gangsta)- @dejwrites

Dishwasher!Gojo x Rich Girl! Reader( jjk)- @lawscorazon

14. Goodnight Gotham🎶:

Vigilante Hero! Shoto Todoroki x black!fem!reader( mha)- @sailewhoremoon

15. Pose 🎶:

16. Sex With Me 🎶:

Nurse!Emma x reader( tr)- @simpingforwakasa04

Bonus: Bitch Better Have My Money 🎶

Mob Boss! Kisaki Tetta x fem!reader(tr)- @poohbea

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

‘It’s like a second extinction’: Retraction deepens legal and ethical battle over rare dinosaur

The specimen is in limbo as German, Brazilian partisans square off over scientific colonialism

[Image description: artistic depiction of the Ubirajara.]

In December 2020, a 110-million-year-old dinosaur from Brazil stunned scientists with its furlike filaments and the spearlike feathers sprouting from its shoulders. But Ubirajara jubatus, as the scientists named the creature, is now renowned not just for its striking features. It has also sparked a legal and ethical controversy that has pitted German paleontologists and officials, who claim the fossil, against the Brazilian scientific community, which wants it back in the country. The dispute culminated last week when the journal Cretaceous Research retracted the paper describing the new dinosaur, leaving further study of Ubirajara in limbo.

The retraction, and the fierce campaign that led up to it, has also intensified scrutiny of the hundreds of other fossils—some still undescribed—exported from developing countries in the past, often under questionable circumstances. “I am happy with the outcome,” says Aline Ghilardi, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. “It may help to reduce the interest in illegal removal of fossils from countries that protect their heritage, such as Brazil and Mexico, and [it] definitely will encourage more transparent and ethical research.”

As soon as the paper appeared online on 13 December 2020, many Brazilian paleontologists questioned the legality of the fossil’s export from Brazil. They say the fossil, which is deposited at the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (SMNK) in Germany, lacked proper export permits and demanded its return.

According to a 1942 Brazilian law, collecting fossils requires permits from the National Mining Agency (ANM), and any fossils found belong to the state. A 1990 decree adds that the export of fossils must be approved by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and foreign researchers must collaborate with a Brazilian institution to study them.

In the case of Ubirajara, SMNK paleontologist Eberhard Frey and his co-authors wrote in the paper that the fossil was “brought to Germany along with scientific samples in 1995” and that authorization for the export was granted on 1 February of that year by an agent of the National Department of Mineral Production (now ANM). The permit, which Science has seen, authorized Frey to transport “two boxes containing calcareous samples with fossils, without any commercial value, with the main objective to proceed with paleontological studies” at SMNK. (José Betimar Melo Filgueira, the now-retired official who signed it, told Brazilian news portal G1 last year that the researchers “also needed authorization from the Ministry of Science and Technology.”)

However, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Science, Research and Art of Baden-Württemberg state in Germany, which manages SMNK, told Science last week that press accounts of the 1995 export are inaccurate. The fossil was not brought to Germany by Frey, the spokesperson said. Instead, it was imported in 2006 by a private company and acquired 3 years later, in 2009, by SMNK. Frey did not respond to a request for comment on the conflicting accounts.

The fossil’s publication last year was followed by an intense week of thousands of social media posts using the hashtag #UbirajaraBelongstoBR, accusing the authors and SMNK of illegally taking the fossil out of the country. The journal temporarily withdrew the paper on 24 December 2020 while the controversy played out.

Continue reading.

[bookhousestark]

A reminder that from June 21 to July 15 we will be hosting BRAN STARK APPRECIATION MONTH in collaboration with @asoiafbran & @the-key-five! Join us if you want to celebrate Bran’s character together by posting gifsets, edits, artworks, metas, fics or your favorite moments — make sure to use hashtag #BRANMONTH2022 so we can reblog your works 🍁

You can find the full list of prompts here.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopolists want to create human inkjet printers

Even if you don’t have diabetes, you can’t have missed that there’s something really terrible going on with how Americans with diabetes control their illness. Insulin — a century-old drug whose inventors refused any patents — has experienced double-digit, year-on-year price hikes (1123% between 2009–2017 alone!):

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/desperate-families-driven-black-market-insulin-n730026

Moreover, this is a uniquely American circumstance. In Canada, insulin remains affordable, which is why Americans — especially parents of kids with diabetes — form caravans and cross the northern border to buy insulin from Canadian pharmacies:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/americans-diabetes-cross-canada-border-insulin-1.5125988

It’s why Americans are starting to brew their own insulin:

https://openinsulin.org/

And it’s why California is getting into the insulin-manufacturing business:

https://khn.org/news/article/california-wants-to-slash-insulin-prices-by-becoming-a-drugmaker-can-it-succeed/

Why do Americans with diabetes go into debt to buy insulin? Why do they ration their insulin, risking comas or even death? In part, it’s the US government’s unwillingness to limit pharma price-gouging. But that can’t be disentangled from the monopolization of the insulin market, an orgy of mergers that allowed a small number of companies to corner the insulin market:

https://prospect.org/health/insulin-racket/

Medical technology is a favorite target of private equity rackets, who understand that when you can threaten your customers’ very lives, they’ll pay — and pay — and pay. That’s why one private equity ghoul celebrated the “golden age of older rectums” before embarking on a spree of colonoscopy monopolization:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/golden-age-of-older-rectums/

More than one in ten Americans have diabetes. 96 million American adults are pre-diabetic. Diabetes disproportionately strikes racialized Americans, who have less political capital and can be abused with impunity. No wonder that the entire diabetes supply-chain has been targeted by medical profiteers.

https://www.diabetes.org/about-us/statistics/about-diabetes

Take dialysis: private equity firms have bought and merged nearly all the standalone dialysis clinics and transformed them into charnel houses, where production quotas and cost-cutting produces rampant infections among the undersupervised patients who rely on them. Meanwhile, prices have skyrocketed, and those profits have been mobilized to fight any attempt at regulation:

https://prospect.org/health/dialysis-duopoly-spends-big-protect-profits-california/

The monopolization of diabetes goes beyond dialysis and insulin — it also extends into blood sugar monitoring and insulin delivery — the self-monitored, self-administered part of the disease that diabetes patients have taken into their own hands.

In 2013, Dana Lewis worked with John Costik to refine the code he’d written to access the data from his son’s continuous glucose monitor (CGM); they teamed up with Ben West, who was reverse-engineering insulin pumps, and created a “closed loop” system that could automate insulin delivery.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6610599/

They called this OpenAPS, and called themselves loopers. Organizing under the hashtag #WeAreNotWaiting, loopers collaborated to refine these systems into a kind of artificial pancreas, one that took CGM readings, analyzed them with statistical tools to create individual insulin response profiles, and release appropriate insulin doses.

https://openaps.org/

The movement included a lot of techie people who either had diabetes or parented a young child with diabetes — my friend Sulka Haro, an accomplished technologist, was the first looper I knew, who was using OpenAPS to help his young child maintain safe insulin levels while at day-care.

But looping went beyond the tech world; diabetes is extremely common, and lots of people struggle to get their doses right (not least because it can be hard to think clearly when your insulin levels are out of whack). The looper community grew and grew — over the objections of the med-tech industry, who went to war against them.

These companies had a very weird anti-looping message. They claimed that loopers’ exploitation of the defects in their pumps and monitors was, itself, a security risk. Med-tech monopolists like Abbott abused copyright law to force Github to nuke the code that made looping possible:

https://www.diabettech.com/wearenotwaiting/patching-librelink-for-libre2-clearing-the-fud/

Now, it’s clear that med-tech companies have a security problem. Medtronic’s insulin pumps were insecure enough that security researchers demonstrated a proof-of-concept “universal remote for killing people” that exploited its defects:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/03/turnkey-authoritarianism/#minimed

But med-tech companies don’t just have a security problem — they have a problem with their security problem. Medtronic ignored bug reports until the “universal remote” was presented. Johnson and Johnson downplayed a potentially lethal software bug in their devices:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cyber-insulin-pumps-e-idUSKCN12411L

To the extent that med-tech companies are interested in addressing these amateurish (but incredibly dangerous) security defects in their products, their efforts are aimed almost entirely at shutting down loopers’ homebrew technology. Older tech is now prized for its usefulness to loopers:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/04/looping-created-insulin-pump-underground-market/588091/

Why would med-tech companies be more worried about loopers than they are about people who hijack insulin pumps to harm or even kill people with diabetes? Because open looping systems are a threat to their monopoly plans — plans to create “vertically integrated ecosystems” that lock people with diabetes into buying proprietary insulin for proprietary pumps that connect to proprietary CGMs.

In other words, the market plan is to create an artificial pancreas that works like one of HPs awful inkjet printers — a device that is more concerned with extracting money from your bank account than it is with depositing ink on a page (or insulin in a vein):

https://twitter.com/dustin_driver/status/1534333475062329344

As with other parts of the diabetes supply chain, pumps, CGMs and the algorithms that turn them into a loop are all being sucked into a vortex of corporate mergers, as private equity companies seek to corner the market on your pancreas.

In an open letter to FDA officials, Joanne Milo, raises an alarm about one such merger: CGM giant Dexcom’s bid to buy out pump manufacturer Insulet.

https://thesavvydiabetic.com/open-letter-to-the-us-fda-from-the-savvy-diabetic-re-fda-interoperability-mandate-and-end-user-on-device-continuous-access-to-our-own-data/

As Milo writes, Dexcom CGMs are currently interoperable with a variety of pumps, including Tandem’s. Dexcom has a history of fighting attempts by people with diabetes to access their own data, and the company’s acquisition of a leading insulin pump company will only strengthen their efforts to lock CGM users out of their own devices.

That would be history repeating itself. The 2020 acquisition of Companion by Medtronic triggered an immediate lockdown of Companion’s InPen insulin delivery systems so they’d no longer with with Dexcom’s CGMs. If Dexcom’s acquisition is waved through, the US market will be controlled by three pump/CGM conglomerates. That will be a death-knell for all the pump companies that don’t have a CGM division.

More importantly than these firms’ commercial fortunes is the effect on people with diabetes. The ability of diabetes patients to mix-and-match a pump, a CGM, and an algorithm to moderate their interactions will go up in smoke. If your personal biology isn’t suited to the choices of three giant companies, you’re out of luck.

Milo points out that the baby formula shortage was caused by the monopolization of another key health market. What happens if the market for diabetes tech is gathered into three companies’ hands and they seek “efficiencies” by concentrating production into a few factories and consolidating their supply chains so they depend on just a few offshore suppliers?

That would also be history repeating. Private equity rollups concentrated nearly all production of medical saline drips into one company’s hands. That company closed all its factories save one, in Puerto Rico, where local authorities gifted them with favorable tax treatment. It was great for profits and shareholders, but terrible for America — Hurricane Maria created a months-long, deadly shortage in saline — that is, salty water in a plastic bag.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/hurricane-maria-u-s-iv-bag-shortage/

Milo calls on the FDA to “stop treating people with diabetes as ‘black hat’ hackers, forced to reverse-engineer access to their own CGM data.” She points to peer-reviewed studies on the safety and efficacy of community-based development of multi-vendor looping systems:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00267-9/fulltext)

Though Milo addresses her remarks to the FDA, this is also an issue that Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ, Lina Khan at the FTC, and Tim Wu at the White House should have on their radars. The diabetes crisis is only partially medical — at this point, it primarily economic, a crisis of corporate profit-seeking over human lives.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Björn Heller (modfied) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wearing_pump.JPG

CC BY 2.0 (German) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de

[Image ID: A package of HP inkjet ink; it has been modified to incorporate the word- and logo-marks of Insulet and Dexcom. The image on the front of the box has been replaced with a man's bare stomach; the man is wearing an insulin pump. The sides of the box have been overlaid with a Matrix 'code waterfall' effect. The menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey glares out of the box.]