thespacesay - Tumblr blog

[thespacesay]

i feel like the boeing whistleblower case should radicalize more people. a major airline company is producing planes with less and less regard for safety and it's starting to get noticeable. man takes them to court, which would reduce profit at the cost of public safety. he fucking dies the night that boeings legal team asks him to stay an extra day. if nothing happens about this, i hope it gets through to people that america would literally kill you for a few extra cents

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apartment dwellers, or those with communal laundry situations.

feel free to explain your choice in the tags, especially how polite/impolite you view your choice.

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ID: a story across two tweets by Milo Murph @\DisasterMagnet from 27/10/2020. Punctuation added for readability, but the original tweets are almost entirely one run on sentence.

My toaster caught on fire yesterday, and when i realized it, there was a flame like two feet high almost touching my cabinets. so i panicked and picked it up so it wouldn't catch my cabinets on fire, but then i was just standing in my kitchen holding a flaming toaster, and my dad saw me and didn't say anything, and i didn't know what to do, so I ran outside with it and [and] threw it at the ground, but it was on fire. so i picked it up and threw it again and again until it went out, but then my grass was on fire, so i beat it with a shovel until that went out too. Then I came back inside and my dad was just like, "Watcha cookin Milo"

/ end ID

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Opinion Here’s how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it

When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.

Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people — including pharmacists — are aware of it.

I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars — or even the full list price — to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldn’t be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. “We wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,” the representative said.

Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriber’s name and address and select their insurance type.

All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.

But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)

Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.

Pfizer’s representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.

The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.

Several readers have attested that Paxcess’s process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.

Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.

This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, it’s hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.

Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.

Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But that’s not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.

{source}

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ID: a 7 pointed star with text reading: Virtue of Silence Congrats!!! You probably shouldn't have said anything... and you didn't! I'm proud of you! / end ID

The agonising feel when a character tag is full of shipping that you Simply Do Not Vibe With. The solution is, naturally, to keep scrolling. But the wince, the WINCE.

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hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS

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FYI I just came across a thread on twitter which says that an author shared on google docs an explicit story with a friend for beta reading and google removed the file due to violation of TOS (apparently it has been updated where you are not allowed to share anything with sexual content). Not sure if it’s just this instance or if it’s going to become a widespread thing but if you guys write in google docs MAKE BACK UPS!!

(Instagram link to the screenshots)

Edit: also wanted to add that it seems that Microsoft word has the same language in their TOS so onedrive is not a safe alternative!

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I refuse to reblog callout posts because I'm a prison abolitionist

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"The CBP One phone app, which most migrants use to begin the U.S. asylum process, isn’t accessible to those who are blind, deaf, have mobility issues, or have intellectual disabilities, according to a complaint."

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In writing, epithets ("the taller man"/"the blonde"/etc) are inherently dehumanizing, in that they remove a character's name and identity, and instead focus on this other quality.

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

But these only work if the epithet used is how the narrator primarily identifies that character. Which is why it's so jarring to see a lot of common epithets in intimate moments-- because it conveys that the main character is primarily thinking of their lover/best friend/etc in terms of their height or age or hair color.

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Breaking: Biden Administration stops weapon shipments to Israel, tells Netanyahu that the United States would publicly oppose an invasion of Rafah.

This almost certainly does not happen without the protests, but it remains to be seen how this plays out.

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Robot disabilities. Robot who charges slowly and loses power incredibly fast and is always tired. Robot with malfunctioning lenses and can’t process visual information properly. Robot that can’t process anything too large and at a fast rate or else they’ll shut down. Robot with limbs screwed on too loose/just can’t attach correctly, so if they’re not careful they fall out. Robot disabilities,,,

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ID: a semi-transparent white bottle labeled "EYEWASH". / end ID

As protests start ramping up and violence escalates please remember:

DO NOT PUT MILK IN YOUR EYES FOR PEPPER SPRAY OR TEAR GAS.

It can and will cause infection due to bacteria. Flush with water, distilled if possible, and never EVER wear contact lenses to protests where there may be police retaliation.

Please reblog. It may save someone's sight.

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My friend sometimes brings her six-year-old to our DnD sessions and my husband (the DM) lets her roll for all enemy attacks and sometimes he will show her a few figures and let her secretly pick what creature we meet next. Who needs encounter tables when you have a first-grader around

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Question

you know how people are suspicious of China and assume everything Chinese is fake or propaganda, so much so that it's weird? Like that news story a while back about people thinking Sun Bears are guys in costumes?

Does that occur with Chinese scientific studies? Like Americans being unwilling to believe them because "The CCP probably made it up" or whatever?

Because I keep running into situations where USA research is bamboozled by something where the obvious solution is to see what Chinese scholarship exists about it, and yet nobody seems to have thought of that...

Like with Kudzu

It is a notoriously invasive and destructive plant in the USA, but native to China and has been cultivated as a food and fiber crop there for thousands of years, yet no one has thought of doing that here

Nobody has even thought, "Huh, we should study what this species is like in its native range"

It's super weird

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happy smallpox eradication day to all who celebrate, which is everyone!

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Somebody might need to hear this: hey. That was a really scary thing you had to go through. What an awful feeling to be carrying around. So deep inside where no one can hurt you like that ever again. If no one else has ever told you this before then I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you made it. And I'm so fucking sorry you had to see it to begin with. You absolutely did not need to see that. Not ever.