#Nebulizer Market Demand

[blindmagdalena]

Guilty Pleasures ( chapter two )

18+ 3.8k homelander x plus size f!reader. workplace harassment, stalking, voyeurism, masturbation, lite humiliation kink, lite somnophilia, breaking & entering, petty theft, sublander flavored. nebulously takes place post s1. part 2/4. AO3 link. | Chapter Directory

Homelander is the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants is to be yours.

After spending the majority of your evening and the following morning anticipating being fired, walking into work the next day feels like traversing a thinly frozen lake, each step webbing out in precarious cracks.

Clearly you’re not the only one who thinks so: you clock a handful of surprised looks from coworkers who’d attended the meeting and took note of the tension between you and Vought’s golden boy.

Maybe they’d taken bets on whether or not you’d be coming in this morning.

There’s no sign of Homelander on your way in. Not that you were expecting him–yesterday was the first time you actually saw him in person–but you still find yourself on the lookout. It’s hard to say whether you’re anticipating or dreading him. Part of you is still expecting to open your door and find a letter on your desk politely informing you that they’ve determined you aren’t a good “culture fit” for the company, and that your probation has been terminated.

After all, who in their right mind would take your side over Homelander’s?

You push open your office door, and sure enough, there is a letter waiting for you, but not in the way you expected. You stand in the doorway, staring in quiet incomprehension. The envelope, crisp and bright white, is propped up in a bed of rich red roses sitting in a pretty vase upon your desk. You glance behind you before you step inside, closing the door behind you, and approach the desk cautiously. You pluck the paper out of the bouquet, taking a moment to smell the flowers–they smell as good as they look–before you carefully rip open the envelope, tearing the small american flag sticker that sealed it.

Inside, there’s only one word on the folded piece of paper, scrawled in surprisingly elegant handwriting.

Truce?

You can’t help the incredulous little bark of laughter you give at that. It’s not even an apology. It’s a demand that he expects a gratuitous bundle of flowers will help you swallow, like taking medicine with a spoonful of sugar.

“You’re ridiculous,” you say quietly to the letter, setting it down on your desk. You give the roses one last sniff, testing one of the soft petals between your fingers. You wonder if what you said actually got through to him.

Homelander has no real reason to smooth things over with you: you’re no one. He’s posed no risk to himself by coming after you. He could no doubt have you fired by complaining that your marketing tactics don’t align with his brand. It’s hard to imagine Vought denies him much.

Yet he is apparently negotiating peace. It’s not nearly enough, but it is a start.

Or maybe it’s just more than you expected.

You sit, idly tapping the letter against your desk. You’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t still think him handsome. Homelander wasn’t the first man to ogle your tits while you gave a presentation, but he was certainly the first to fluster you like that when he did. His sly smile had made you want to slap him, but there was a questionable little part of you that thought about kissing it better afterwards.

Taking in a steadying breath, you slip the letter into your desk drawer and adjust the flowers to the side, admiring them a moment before you pull out your laptop.

If Homelander can behave himself enough to let you do your job without public humiliation, you can afford a truce. You don’t need to forgive or condone him to be civil, or even to continue having your own private fantasies. A little guilty pleasure now and again never hurt anyone.

You can’t know that Homelander is observing you throughout this internal conversation, watching through several layers of steel and concrete, his parted lips curving into a slow smile as you accept his offering. You can’t know that you haven’t just acknowledged a truce, but an invitation.

No, you can’t possibly know what’s to come.

Two days later, you diligently change the water that the roses in your office sit in. They’re doing well, the crimson buds having unfurled into a splay of velvety petals. You pinch one between your thumb and forefinger and stroke it absently. Homelander has continued to be a scarcity, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t seen him. Quite the opposite: you spend most of your working hours either looking at or thinking about his face to the point where it’s starting to follow you home each day.

That’s what you tell yourself when you think of him outside of work hours, anyways.

It’s been long enough now that you wonder if the flowers were the end of it. He was simply covering his ass with a half hearted gesture that slightly resembled an apology so that you could both comfortably drop the subject. That was entirely fine by you so long as he actually did improve his behavior.

A familiarly brisk knock at your door catapults your heart up against the cage of your ribs like a spooked hare. It’s the exact same beat, you’re sure of it. You stay quiet, half expecting to be barged in upon, but when nothing happens, you move from your desk and open the door yourself, intentionally blocking it with your body.

Sure enough, Homelander stands tall on the other side. He flashes his signature smile while your eyes narrow suspiciously. “Can I help you?”

“I think I’m the one who can help you,” he says brightly, that spread of teeth downright wolfish. He lifts a handful of papers that have been stapled at the corner, gesturing for you to take it.

Still wary, you take them from him and shift, wedging your foot to keep the door firmly in place while you flip through the pages. Your brows furrow as you recognize chunks of your own presentation. Understanding dawns when you realize that he’s annotated them.

“You read my presentation,” you say, unable to mask your surprise.

“Obviously. It’s my image on the line, right? Got some notes for you, but I have to say: y’mostly nailed it,” he says, reaching out to rest a gloved hand on the doorway.

“Mostly?” You echo, quirking an eyebrow at him as you look up from the pages.

“Yeah, mostly. Again, I have some minor notes,” he says, wiggling his other hand in a vague gesture. “But I figure I owe you praise on a job mostly well done.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Crossing your arms, you abandon your stern foothold on the door in order to shift your weight, your incredulity showing in every inch of your body language.  “What you owe me is an apology.”

Homelander’s grin softens into a smile that’s no less challenging. “Looks to me like you’ve already been enjoying my apology,” he says, leaning slightly to gaze past you, to the bundle of roses sitting prettily on your desk.

You briefly glance over your shoulder, but your expression remains impassive. Unimpressed. “That? That isn’t an apology. An apology would include the words I’m sorry.”

He scoffs a dismissive laugh, swaying back to look away, but you persist.

“I’m serious,” you say, luring his ocean blue gaze back to yours. “I want you to say to me ‘I’m sorry for the way I behaved during your presentation. It won’t happen again.’ “

The two of you hold each other’s gaze with all the magnitude of two gunmen in a duel, hands steady over your proverbial pistols. 

To your surprise, Homelander does not fire back. He raises a dainty white flag.

“I’m sorry for the way I behaved during your presentation,” he says, words slow and measured. You watch his tongue flash over his bottom lip, wetting it attractively. You fight to not let your eyes linger on it. “It won’t happen again.”

You swallow, suddenly finding thought and speech an impossible task. You weren’t prepared for such raw, ready obedience from him, nor the intensity in his gaze that follows it. He reminds you of a charmed snake–docile so long as he is transfixed.

“Good,” you say, the word half a sigh. Homelander’s lips part and he breathes in like he’s caught wind of something particularly delicious smelling. “I accept your apology, and I appreciate that you took the time to do this,” you say, gesturing with the documents in your hand. “I’ll go over them and get back to you.”

He reaches out, bracing his hand on your office door. You half expect him to push it open, but he merely holds it there. “We could go over them together,” he suggests slyly.

“No,” you say, clearly disarming him. He looks as though he’s forgotten the meaning of the word. “I’m in the middle of another project at the moment.”

The leather of his gloves creaks faintly in your ear as he flexes his grip on the edge of the door. While what you’ve said is true, it’s also serving as a test. Words and flowers are pretty things, but only actions always speak the truth.

“At the moment,” he repeats, gears visibly turning in his eyes. “So… Later?” He extrapolates, displaying an uncharacteristic tentativeness alongside his obvious displeasure at the taste of rejection. You even see a glimmer of hope in the mess of his expression.. 

He did pass the test. You suppose you can reward him for that.

“Another time,” you say, giving your door an exploratory push. He relents, his hands sliding down the length of it before falling away as he takes a half-step back. “How about tomorrow on my lunch break? 1:00 o'clock sharp.”

He splits into a smile that looks more genuine than any of his you’ve seen before. “Aaalrighty-roo. Sounds gooood to meeeee,” he says, drawing out his vowels more the closer he gets to actually having to leave. At your silent, amused stare, he claps his gloved hands together with a muffled thump! and takes a few more steps backwards. “Yooooou’ll see me… tomorrow.”

Your smile pinches along with your brows. What a strange way to phrase it. “See you then,” you say, watching as his face is eclipsed by your closing door. You wait a beat and then let out a thin thread of breath from your pursed lips, resting your weight on the door.

Looking down at the papers in your hand, you push off from the door and head to your desk, flipping through them.

Such a strange man, you think, carrying the notes to your desk. You set them down next to the vase of roses and try not to think too much about the unconscious smile your lips keep settling into for the rest of the day.

Homelander’s got you hook, line and sinker. He’s certain of it. He lingers on the other side of your door just long enough to watch you through it while you settle, a charmed smile set on your lips. He can already imagine how those lips would feel against his own, how they’d taste. He swallows thickly and looks around before he departs, already plotting his next move.

The two of you have a date tomorrow, and in order to be at the top of his game, he’s going to have to do a little additional research. Knowing your work was a good first step. The next one will be learning about you.

Following you home is the easy part. It ultimately feels chivalrous to do so once he realizes you walk home even at this time of year, when the sun sets long before the work day ends. He drifts above you, cocking his head curiously. No wonder you walk. The streets are packed as tightly as sardine cans, and your apartment garage isn’t much better. The claustrophobia of it all serves as a stark contrast to the openness of Vought tower.

The interior of your apartment provides an even sharper juxtaposition to his penthouse. It’s tidy, but the comparatively low ceilings and minimal floor space still make it look cramped. Somehow, you simultaneously have too much and yet not much at all, the confinement of a downtown apartment making what minimal affects you do own seem crowded together.

That only becomes more apparent once he’s inside, slipped in through your balcony after sleep has taken you. Why would you bother to lock your balcony when you live on the 8th floor? It works out perfectly for him.

In all fairness, your living room feels cozier once he’s standing in the center of it. Your walls are lined with an assortment of art pieces and photographs, and the shelves are well stocked with books and knick-knacks. You have a decent film collection displayed on your media console, and he can’t help but snoop through it, bending at the waist, examining through the rows. He cocks his head.

Odd. You’d think an employee of Vought would have at least a few VCU films. He runs his index finger along the spines, slightly adjusting them flush as he goes. Pursing his lips, he straightens up and looks at the closed cabinets on either side. The left one yields an untidy assortment of electronic odds and ends, cords and the like. Nothing of much interest other than an indication that while you like to keep up appearances, you aren’t quite as together as you’d like people to think. 

It’s on the right side, however, he finds what he’s really looking for.

“Bingo,” he whispers, smiling to himself as he scopes out your little hidden collection of Vought hero flicks. Specifically, his films. He’s less interested in the handful of others you own (Queen Maeve: Her Majesty, Black Noir: Insurrection, Lamplighter: The Bright World, etc) and more so in the fact that you have nearly his entire catalog tucked away. 

Nearly. You’re missing his eighteen part miniseries, Homelander: Brightest Night.

At least that gives him something to gift you.

Closing the cabinet, he meanders about the rest of your apartment. You have some plants in varying states of decay, with only a few cacti looking to be in decent shape. Either your work keeps you too busy to properly mind them, or you just like the idea of them more than the reality. It tells him that you’re looking–and failing–to fill a void in your life. You want to feel less alone in your home, you want to nurture something. You just haven’t found the right something yet.

Striding into your kitchen, arms folded behind his back, he peers through the cheap wood veneer of your fiberboard cupboards, unveiling an unusually broad assortment of mugs. There doesn’t seem to be any particular theme: holidays, locales, characters, and a menagerie of patterns. 

He hums softly, pivoting out of the kitchen and down the hall, his steps preternaturally light. He listens for the beat of your heart as he draws near, tunes it in alongside the shallow cadence of your breath. Deep asleep. Good.

The walls are lined with pictures of you and others. Friends or family, he can’t say, but you look to have an abundance of both. He rarely sees himself in photos that aren’t promotional material. He pauses to straighten a picture frame, and finds himself so viciously jealous of the man sharing the frame with you–his lips pressed to your cheek, your laughing smile so genuine he can nearly hear it–that he almost knocks it to the ground.

Running his tongue along his teeth, he continues on.

Your bedroom door is open. He slips in silently, pausing just through the doorway. Your bed's a queen, too big for just you. You’re sprawled comfortably amidst pillows, limbs splayed in just such a way that he can easily imagine fitting himself in the empty spaces between them. He can smell the lingering burn of the candle you’d lit when you got home. He picks it up off your dresser, reading the label: Cup ‘o Joe. 

Eugh. He never cared for coffee, and the artificial sweetness surrounding the note is cloying. Your perfume, on the other hand, he doesn’t mind. He notices the bottle alongside a few other of your things and puts the candle down in favor of that, popping the cap off. The smell hits him before he sprays it: vanilla first, then amber and something more woodsy. It’s less impressive by itself than it had been on you.

Still, it’s yours. You chose it for yourself.

Slipping off one of his gloves, he lightly sprays into the inside of it before he sets the bottle back down, recapping it. It won’t be the same, but he’s driven by the compulsion to spirit away any little pieces of you that he can. Just enough to satiate himself until he can have you properly.

That’s when he sees your blouse from today in a careless heap at the top of your laundry basket next to your dresser. Licking his lips, he tests the feel of the garment between his bare fingers. He’s always been sensitive to fabrics, and while the blend of this one is fairly cheap, it’s been worn and washed enough that it’s soft against his skin. He grabs a handful of it and lifts it to his mouth, brushing it along his lips, under his nose, and he deeply inhales your lingering scent mixing with the fresh pump of perfume.

He bites back a moan, screwing his eyes shut. His cock gives a dull little throb. Fuck, the spell you’ve cast on him makes him ache just for the smell of you, makes him salivate. He swallows it back, letting out a rough little breath as he reluctantly puts the shirt back down. Under it, he spies a little flash of something black and lacy. His stomach clenches, and he’s reaching for it before he can stop himself, fishing the black panties out of the heap and twisting the fabric between his fingers.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He can’t afford to overindulge. He won’t be able to control himself if he does, but he also can’t bring himself to put the little slip of fabric back down. He imagines he can almost taste where your sweet cunt had been pressed to it. Christ, he’s practically drooling. Out of sheer impulse, he yanks down the zipper of his pants with a quiet hiss of metal against metal and hastily pushes your underwear into his cup, biting down hard on his lip. He grinds once against his hand, savoring the feel of the fabric against his cock.

He’ll enjoy them far more than you’ll miss them.

Zipping himself back up, he carefully pulls open your top dresser drawer. He curiously pushes the contents around, mindful not to overly disturb, and his knuckles bump something solid. He shifts one of your bras–another near painful pang of arousal at the reminder of your breasts–aside and finds, to his delight, what any good marketing department would describe as  “a large purple massage wand.”

A vibrator. He chews his bottom lip briefly, turning it over in his grip. An exciting find on all fronts. It’s smooth and decently hefty, good quality. You deserve even better. You might be capable of indulging yourself with this, but he could make you scream. You’ll never need a silly little toy again. Not when you have him.

Homelander moves to put it back in the drawer, but–

“Fuck!” He hisses when the button catches on his finger, and suddenly the damn thing is buzzing.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, he chants mentally, jabbing at the buttons in an attempt to silence it, but pressing the same ones only makes the accursed device louder. In a frantic move, he grips the neck and squeezes. There’s a soft crunch beneath the silicone, and as abruptly as it had begun, the buzzing ends. His heart is thudding heavily in his chest. He listens to the silence, to you.

He looks over his shoulder. No movement. Your breaths remain shallow.

Christ.

So much for leaving no trace. He slips the busted toy back amidst your underthings and snatches his glove off of your dresser, tucking it under his arm. He hones his attention on you as he approaches your bed, assuring himself that you really are still asleep. He stands there for a while, admiring the part of your lips and the haphazard splay of your pajamas and where they cling to your body.

No bra.

His bare hand flexes. Being so close is too much of a temptation. He wets his lips with a quick slide of his tongue and bends down. He ghosts his fingers just over your cheek, not quite daring to touch. He can smell the faint remnants of your toothpaste on your breath, your shampoo, and beneath it all, you. It's intoxicating, it's…

Your brows furrow slightly in your sleep and you make a soft noise, interrupting his thoughts. He wonders if you’re dreaming–dreaming of him, perhaps. He’d like to think so. He’d like to think that you’re just as affected by him wanting you as he is, and that’s the real reason you invited him to lunch. He saw it in your eyes when he echoed your words, the thrill that went through you. He could have gone to his knees for you in that moment and had you in giving himself to you.

Desperate for just a taste, he kisses ever so gently between your brows, his own breaths matching the cadence of yours. Divine. You're divine. So effortlessly perfect and so aware of your own power. How could he not want every part of you?

He means to leave it there, to walk away with nothing but the slight salt of your brow on his lips, but the pull is too great. He's greedy, drunk on the smell and the taste of you, on the feel of your panties pressed up against his cock, and he can't stop himself from sampling your lips against his.

It’s the barest hint of touch, and yet the contact lances electricity through him like he’s been struck by a bolt of lightning. Your lips are soft, soft, soft. He knew they would be. Everything about you is so fucking soft. It takes everything in him to pull away, standing back to his full height.

He's aching, yearning so intensely he could rip the covers away and take you just like this, shake you awake, declare himself and have you. Would you scream, or would you have that same look of affronted understanding of him? You see him in a way few are ever brave–or stupid–enough to dare.

Not yet.

He won’t spoil the game. He agreed to play by your terms. As far as you’re concerned, he’ll do precisely that. You’ll be none the wiser in regards to his little reconnaissance mission–anything could have happened to your vibrator–and the two of you can play your little game as if you stand on equal footing.

Sucking in a silent breath, Homelander leaves alone, but not empty handed.

He’ll make very good use of his little trophy tonight.

( chapter three )

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The antitrust case against Apple

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and beyond!

The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Call it "Apple exceptionalism" – the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple's sins are made manifest.

Take the claim that Apple is "privacy respecting," which is attributed to Apple's business model of financing its services though cash transactions, rather than by selling it customers to advertisers. This is the (widely misunderstood) crux of the "surveillance capitalism" hypothesis: that capitalism is just fine, but once surveillance is in the mix, capitalism fails.

Apple, then, is said to be a virtuous company because its behavior is disciplined by market forces, unlike its spying rivals, whose ability to "hack our dopamine loops" immobilizes the market's invisible hand with "behavior-shaping" shackles:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple makes a big deal out of its privacy-respecting ethos, and not without some justification. After all, Apple went to the mattresses to fight the FBI when they tried to force Apple to introduced defects into its encryption systems:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say

And Apple gave Ios users the power to opt out of Facebook spying with a single click; 96% of its customers took them up on this offer, costing Facebook $10b (one fifth of the pricetag of the metaverse boondoggle!) in a single year (you love to see it):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: "feudal security." That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#manorialism

The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison. The fact that you can't install unapproved apps on your Ios device means that when Apple decides to harm you, you have nowhere to turn. The first Apple customers to discover this were in China. When the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove all working privacy tools from its App Store, the company obliged, rather than risk losing access to its ultra-cheap manufacturing base (Tim Cook's signal accomplishment, the one that vaulted him into the CEO's seat, was figuring out how to offshore Apple manufacturing to China) and hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Killing VPNs and other privacy tools was just for openers. After Apple caved to Beijing, the demands kept coming. Next, Apple willingly backdoored all its Chinese cloud services, so that the Chinese state could plunder its customers' data at will:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

This was the completely foreseeable consequence of Apple's "curated computing" model: once the company arrogated to itself the power to decide which software you could run on your own computer, it was inevitable that powerful actors – like the Chinese Communist Party – would lean on Apple to exercise that power in service to its goals.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese state's appetite for deputizing Apple to help with its spying and oppression was not sated by backdooring iCloud and kicking VPNs out of the App Store. As recently as 2022, Apple continued to neuter its tools at the behest of the Chinese state, breaking Airdrop to make it useless for organizing protests in China:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

But the threat of Apple turning on its customers isn't limited to China. While the company has been unwilling to spy on its users on behalf of the US government, it's proven more than willing to compromise its worldwide users' privacy to pad its own profits. Remember when Apple let its users opt out of Facebook surveillance with one click? At the very same time, Apple was spinning up its own commercial surveillance program, spying on Ios customers, gathering the very same data as Facebook, and for the very same purpose: to target ads. When it came to its own surveillance, Apple completely ignored its customers' explicit refusal to consent to spying, spied on them anyway, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Here's the thing: even if you believe that Apple has a "corporate personality" that makes it want to do the right thing, that desire to be virtuous is dependent on the constraints Apple faces. The fact that Apple has complete legal and technical control over the hardware it sells – the power to decide who can make software that runs on that hardware, the power to decide who can fix that hardware, the power to decide who can sell parts for that hardware – represents an irresistible temptation to enshittify Apple products.

"Constraints" are the crux of the enshittification hypothesis. The contagion that spread enshittification to every corner of our technological world isn't a newfound sadism or indifference among tech bosses. Those bosses are the same people they've always been – the difference is that today, they are unconstrained.

Having bought, merged or formed a cartel with all their rivals, they don't fear competition (Apple buys 90+ companies per year, and Google pays it an annual $26.3b bribe for default search on its operating systems and programs).

Having captured their regulators, they don't fear fines or other penalties for cheating their customers, workers or suppliers (Apple led the coalition that defeated dozens of Right to Repair bills, year after year, in the late 2010s).

Having wrapped themselves in IP law, they don't fear rivals who make alternative clients, mods, privacy tools or other "adversarial interoperability" tools that disenshittify their products (Apple uses the DMCA, trademark, and other exotic rules to block third-party software, repair, and clients).

True virtue rests not merely in resisting temptation to be wicked, but in recognizing your own weakness and avoiding temptation. As I wrote when Apple embarked on its "curated computing" path, the company would eventually – inevitably – use its power to veto its customers' choices to harm those customers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Which is where we're at today. Apple – uniquely among electronics companies – shreds every device that is traded in by its customers, to block third parties from harvesting working components and using them for independent repair:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on those parts and uses these as the basis for trademark complaints to US customs, to block the re-importation of parts that escape its shredders:

https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/

Apple entered into an illegal price-fixing conspiracy with Amazon to prevent used and refurbished devices from being sold in the "world's biggest marketplace":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as

Why is Apple so opposed to independent repair? Well, they say it's to keep users safe from unscrupulous or incompetent repair technicians (feudal security). But when Tim Cook speaks to his investors, he tells a different story, warning them that the company's profits are threatened by customers who choose to repair (rather than replace) their slippery, fragile glass $1,000 pocket computers (the fortress becomes a prison):

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

All this adds up to a growing mountain of immortal e-waste, festooned with miniature Apple logos, that our descendants will be dealing with for the next 1,000 years. In the face of this unspeakable crime, Apple engaged in a string of dishonest maneuvers, claiming that it would support independent repair. In 2022, Apple announced a home repair program that turned out to be a laughably absurd con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Then in 2023, Apple announced a fresh "pro-repair" initiative that, once again, actually blocked repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Let's pause here a moment and remember that Apple once stood for independent repair, and celebrated the independent repair technicians that kept its customers' beloved Macs running:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/29/norwegian-potato-flour-enchiladas/#r2r

Whatever virtue lurks in Apple's corporate personhood, it is no match for the temptation that comes from running a locked-down platform designed to capture IP rights so that it can prevent normal competitive activities, like fixing phones, processing payments, or offering apps.

When Apple rolled out the App Store, Steve Jobs promised that it would save journalism and other forms of "content creation" by finally giving users a way to pay rightsholders. A decade later, that promise has been shattered by the app tax – a 30% rake on every in-app transaction that can't be avoided because Apple will kick your app out of the App Store if you even mention that your customers can pay you via the web in order to avoid giving a third of their content dollars to a hardware manufacturer that contributed nothing to the production of that material:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Among the apps that Apple also refuses to allow on Ios is third-party browsers. Every Iphone browser is just a reskinned version of Apple's Safari, running on the same antiquated, insecure Webkit browser engine. The fact that Webkit is incomplete and outdated is a feature, not a bug, because it lets Apple block web apps – apps delivered via browsers, rather than app stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Last month, the EU took aim at Apple's veto over its users' and software vendors' ability to transact with one another. The newly in-effect Digital Markets Act requires Apple to open up both third-party payment processing and third-party app stores. Apple's response to this is the very definition of malicious compliance, a snake's nest of junk-fees, onerous terms of service, and petty punitive measures that all add up to a great, big "Go fuck yourself":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

But Apple's bullying, privacy invasion, price-gouging and environmental crimes are global, and the EU isn't the only government seeking to end them. They're in the firing line in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-wins-appeal-in-apple-case

And now, famously, the US Department of Justice is coming for Apple, with a bold antitrust complaint that strikes at the heart of Apple exceptionalism, the idea that monopoly is safer for users than technological self-determination:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

There's passages in the complaint that read like I wrote them:

Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests.

After all, Apple punishes its customers for communicating with Android users by forcing them to do so without any encryption. When Beeper Mini rolled out an Imessage-compatible Android app that fixed this, giving Iphone owners the privacy Apple says they deserve but denies to them, Apple destroyed Beeper Mini:

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-moving-forward

Tim Cook is on record about this: if you want to securely communicate with an Android user, you must "buy them an Iphone":

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

If your friend, family member or customer declines to change mobile operating systems, Tim Cook insists that you must communicate without any privacy or security.

Even where Apple tries for security, it sometimes fails ("security is a process, not a product" -B. Schneier). To be secure in a benevolent dictatorship, it must also be an infallible dictatorship. Apple's far from infallible: Eight generations of Iphones have unpatchable hardware defects:

https://checkm8.info/

And Apple's latest custom chips have secret-leaking, unpatchable vulnerabilities:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

Apple's far from infallible – but they're also far from benevolent. Despite Apple's claims, its hardware, operating system and apps are riddled with deliberate privacy defects, introduce to protect Apple's shareholders at the expense of its customers:

https://proton.me/blog/iphone-privacy

Now, antitrust suits are notoriously hard to make, especially after 40 years of bad-precedent-setting, monopoly-friendly antitrust malpractice. Much of the time, these suits fail because they can't prove that tech bosses intentionally built their monopolies. However, tech is a written culture, one that leaves abundant, indelible records of corporate deliberations. What's more, tech bosses are notoriously prone to bragging about their nefarious intentions, committing them to writing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Apple is no exception – there's an abundance of written records that establish that Apple deliberately, illegally set out to create and maintain a monopoly:

https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-doj-build-antitrust-case/

Apple claims that its monopoly is beneficent, used to protect its users, making its products more "elegant" and safe. But when Apple's interests conflict with its customers' safety and privacy – and pocketbooks – Apple always puts itself first, just like every other corporation. In other words: Apple is unexceptional.

The Cult of Mac denies this. They say that no one wants to use a third-party app store, no one wants third-party payments, no one wants third-party repair. This is obviously wrong and trivially disproved: if no Apple customer wanted these things, Apple wouldn't have to go to enormous lengths to prevent them. The only phones that an independent Iphone repair shop fixes are Iphones: which means Iphone owners want independent repair.

The rejoinder from the Cult of Mac is that those Iphone owners shouldn't own Iphones: if they wanted to exercise property rights over their phones, they shouldn't have bought a phone from Apple. This is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy for distraction-rectangles, and moreover, it's impossible to square with Tim Cook's insistence that if you want private communications, you must buy an Iphone.

Apple is unexceptional. It's just another Big Tech monopolist. Rounded corners don't preserve virtue any better than square ones. Any company that is freed from constraints – of competition, regulation and interoperability – will always enshittify. Apple – being unexceptional – is no exception.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

[hornithology]

Grayson (2014) live read

join me as I re-read Grayson for research for an essay on it's treatment of eroticism.

love the use of bold pink for issue #1's cover. very much referencing 60's 70's James Bond posters and pop art. I saw a picture of a second printing where the pink was red instead, which could have been an aim at making it more marketable (less queer-seeming, which... lol) or could have been about the print quality on the color? the red with black title is way less striking.

the left variant cover is horrendous. why did you make his face look like that. why are you trying to sell some gritty version of Dick who doesn't know how to properly handle a gun, for a comic in which Midnighter is going to flirt fight with him? deception in advertising!

the right is really great. I wish I could find a better quality image. matches the energy of Nightwing #30 which lead to all of this.

on to the story!

there's something about dead, tortured, martyred Dick...

Looks like we've got a hot one. YES YOU DO, M!!!

"I can read the electrical activity inside your pretty head." "you fight like jazz." stellar dialogue. you can't tell me this is not a little bit of flirting. and Midnighter is a known, canonically gay character, so we are meant to read into his lines. I think it's also pretty established at this point in Dick's character consensus that he's very attractive.

I think this room is referencing Modesty Blaise (1966), a spy parody featuring Dirk Bogarde. I haven't seen it yet. when I first read Grayson I was like... the colorful visuals and patterns in a spy context make me think of Austin Powers—a 90's parody of the 60's/70's parodies of spy films. inspiration multiply removed! I'm fairly confident that the artists looked at some spy movies/posters for their design choices.

although this room could also be inspired by the red room in Twin Peaks. either/and.

the bold colors and patterns in Grayson are fairly important decisions, because they're the artistic decision that is most successful. iirc, we'll see how I feel on this re-read.

I WILL SCREAM AND I WILL CRY. Tim Seely and Tom King... I have questions and demands!!!!

more colors! but it's not actually hypnos because it's not vibrant enough and doesn't contain the concentric circles... or is it???

this is also weird because I'm not sure if like. we're not supposed to think that Helena and Dick were together romantically in the past (Nightwing / Huntress (1998)). that's pre new-52 so... shrug. but do they even know each other here? are they pretending that they have met recently? is Helena's vigilante identity a secret from Spiral? these questions are not relevant to my essay so I shall not be doing that investigation myself :)

ok actually that's Huntress middle row third from left, yes??? edit: no, it's Batwoman. anyway.

that's Grayson #1!

it's a pretty good issue opener, with some unfortunate fatphobia that is completely expected. we get some titilation with Helena, the start of a nebulous power dance that is perfect for the spy genre.

I wish that I liked the art better, since we have these artists for the majority of the run. the combination of Mikel Janín's drawings (not enough gesture) and Jeromy Cox's soft coloring of the figures makes it look like everyone is drawn from a 3D model. there's nothing wrong with using models and references in comics and is pretty much necessary for all DC comic turn around time, but it's really not my preference because you lose the "hand" of the drawing. the drawings in this issue look stiff. I'm not actually positive that Janín is using models.

I like the color choices for the hypnos and action sequences, the panel composition is good, and I like some of the inking. I think they are making smart decisions with the visuals, it's really just the type of drawing that is not my favorite. to each their own!

[mariacallous]

This story is part of a joint investigation between Lighthouse Reports and WIRED. To read other stories from the series, click here.

Mitch Daniels is a numbers guy, a cost-cutter. In the early 2000s, he tried and failed to rein in congressional spending under then-US president George W. Bush. So when he took office as Indiana governor in 2005, Daniels was ready to argue once again for fiscal discipline. He wanted to straighten out Indiana’s state government, which he deemed rife with dysfunction. And he started with its welfare system. “That department had been rocked by a series of criminal indictments, with cheats and caseworkers colluding to steal money meant for poor people,” he later said.

Daniels’ solution took the form of a $1.3 billion, 10-year contract with IBM. He had lofty ambitions for the project, which started in 2006, claiming it would improve the benefits service for Indiana residents while cracking down on fraud, ultimately saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

But the contract was a disaster. It was canceled after three years, and IBM and Indiana spent a decade locked in a legal battle about who was to blame. Daniels described IBM’s sweeping redesign and automation of the system—responsible for deciding who was eligible for everything from food stamps to medical cover—as deficient. He was adamant, though, that outsourcing a technical project to a company with expertise was the right call. “It was over-designed,” he said. “Great on paper but too complicated to work in practice.” IBM declined a request for comment. 

In July 2012, Judge David Dryer of the Marion County Superior Court ruled that Indiana had failed to prove IBM had breached its contract. But he also delivered a damning verdict on the system itself, describing it as an untested experiment that replaced caseworkers with computers and phone calls. “Neither party deserves to win this case,” he said. “This story represents a ‘perfect storm’ of misguided government policy and overzealous corporate ambition.” 

That might have been an early death knell for the burgeoning business of welfare state automation. Instead, the industry exploded. Today, such fraud systems form a significant part of the nebulous “govtech” industry, which revolves around companies selling governments new technologies with the promise that new IT will make public administration easier-to-use and more efficient. In 2021, that market was estimated to be worth €116 billion ($120 billion) in Europe and $440 billion globally. And it’s not only companies that expect to profit from this wave of tech. Governments also believe modernizing IT systems can deliver big savings. Back in 2014, the consultancy firm McKinsey estimated that if government digitization reached its “full potential,” it could free up $1 trillion every year. 

Contractors around the world are selling governments on the promise that fraud-hunting algorithms can help them recoup public funds. But researchers who track the spread of these systems argue that these companies are often overpaid and under-supervised. The key issue, researchers say, is accountability. When complex machine learning models or simpler algorithms are developed by the private sector, the computer code that gets to define who is and isn’t accused of fraud is often classed as intellectual property. As a result, the way such systems make decisions is opaque and shielded from interrogation. And even when these algorithmic black holes are embroiled in high-stakes legal battles over alleged bias, the people demanding answers struggle to get them. 

In the UK, a community group called the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People is trying to determine whether a pattern of disabled people being investigated for fraud is linked to government automation projects. In France, the digital rights group La Quadrature du Net has been trying for four months to find out whether a fraud system is discriminating against people born in other countries. And in Serbia, lawyers want to understand why the introduction of a new system has resulted in hundreds of Roma families losing their benefits. “The models are always secret,” says Victoria Adelmant, director of New York University’s digital welfare state project. “If you don’t have transparency, it’s very difficult to even challenge and assess these systems.” 

The rollout of automated bureaucracy has happened quickly and quietly, but it has left a trail of scandals in its wake. In Michigan, a computer system used between 2013 and 2015 falsely accused 34,000 people of welfare fraud. A similar thing happened in Australia between 2015 and 2019, but on a larger scale: The government accused 400,000 people of welfare fraud or error after its social security department started using a so-called robodebt algorithm to automatically issue fines.

Another scandal emerged in the Netherlands in 2019 when tens of thousands of families—many of them from the country’s Ghanaian community—were falsely accused of defrauding the child benefits system. These systems didn’t just contribute to agencies accusing innocent people of welfare fraud; benefits recipients were ordered to repay the money they had supposedly stolen. As a result, many of the accused were left with spiraling debt, destroyed credit ratings, and even bankruptcy. 

Not all government fraud systems linked to scandals were developed with consultancies or technology companies. But civil servants are increasingly turning to the private sector to plug knowledge and personnel gaps. Companies involved in fraud detection systems range from giant consultancies—Accenture, Cap Gemini, PWC—to small tech firms like Totta Data Lab in the Netherlands and Saga in Serbia.

Experts in automation and AI are expensive to hire and less likely to be wooed by public sector salaries. When the UK surveyed its civil servants last year, confidence in the government’s ability to use technology was low, with around half of respondents blaming an inability to hire top talent. More than a third said they had few or no skills in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or automation. But it’s not just industry experience that makes the private sector so alluring to government officials. For welfare departments squeezed by budget cuts, “efficiency” has become a familiar buzzword. “Quite often, a public sector entity will say it is more efficient for us to go and bring in a group of consultants,” says Dan Sheils, head of European public service at Accenture.

The public sector lacks the expertise to create these systems and also to oversee them, says Matthias Spielkamp, cofounder of German nonprofit Algorithm Watch, which has been tracking automated decision-making in social welfare programs across Europe since 2017. In an ideal world, civil servants would be able to develop these systems themselves and have an in-depth understanding of how they work, he says. “That would be a huge difference to working with private companies, because they will sell you black-box systems—black boxes to everyone, including the public sector.” 

In February 2020, a crisis broke out in the Dutch region of Walcheren as officials realized they were in the dark about how their own fraud detection system worked. At the time, a Dutch court had halted the use of another algorithm used to detect welfare fraud, known as SyRI, after finding it violated people’s right to privacy. Officials in Walcheren were not using SyRI, but in emails obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED through freedom-of-information requests, government employees had raised concerns that their algorithm bore striking similarities to the one just condemned by the court.

Walcheren’s system was developed by Totta Data Lab. After signing a contract in March 2017, the Dutch startup developed an algorithm to sort through pseudonymous information, according to details obtained through a freedom-of-information request. The system analyzed details of local people claiming welfare benefits and then sent human investigators a list of those it classified as most likely to be fraudsters. 

The redacted emails show local officials agonizing over whether their algorithm would be dragged into the SyRI scandal. “I don’t think it is possible to explain why our algorithm should be allowed while everyone is reading about SyRI,” one official wrote the week after the court ruling. Another wrote back with similar concerns. “We also do not get insight from Totta Data Lab into what exactly the algorithm does, and we do not have the expertise to check this.” Neither Totta nor officials in Walcheren replied to requests for comment. 

When the Netherlands’ Organization for Applied Scientific Research, an independent research institute, later carried out an audit of a Totta algorithm used in South Holland, the auditors struggled to understand it. “The results of the algorithm do not appear to be reproducible,” their 2021 report reads, referring to attempts to re-create the algorithm’s risk scores. “The risks indicated by the AI algorithm are largely randomly determined,” the researchers found. 

With little transparency, it often takes years—and thousands of victims—to expose technical shortcomings. But a case in Serbia provides a notable exception. In March 2022, a new law came into force which gave the government the green light to use data processing to assess individuals’ financial status and automate parts of its social protection programs. The new socijalna karta, or social card system, would help the government detect fraud while making sure welfare payments were reaching society’s most marginalized, claimed Zoran Đorđević, Serbia’s minister of social affairs in 2020. 

But within months of the system’s introduction, lawyers in the capital Belgrade had started documenting how it was discriminating against the country’s Roma community, an already disenfranchised ethnic minority group. 

Mr. ​​Ahmetović, a welfare recipient who declined to share his first name out of concern that his statement could affect his ability to claim benefits in the future, says he hadn’t heard of the social card system until November 2022, when his wife and four children were turned away from a soup kitchen on the outskirts of the Serbian capital. It wasn’t unusual for the Roma family to be there, as their welfare payments entitled them to a daily meal provided by the government. But on that day, a social worker told them their welfare status had changed and that they would no longer be getting a daily meal.

The family was in shock, and Ahmetović rushed to the nearest welfare office to find out what had happened. He says he was told the new social card system had flagged him after detecting income amounting to 110,000 Serbian dinars ($1,000) in his bank account, which meant he was no longer eligible for a large chunk of the welfare he had been receiving. Ahmetović was confused. He didn’t know anything about this payment. He didn’t even have his own bank account—his wife received the family’s welfare payments into hers. 

With no warning, their welfare payments were slashed by 30 percent, from around 70,000 dinars ($630) per month to 40,000 dinars ($360). The family had been claiming a range of benefits since 2012, including financial social assistance, as their son’s epilepsy and unilateral paralysis means neither parent is able to work. The drop in support meant the Ahmetovićs had to cut back on groceries and couldn’t afford to pay all their bills. Their debt ballooned to over 1 million dinars ($9,000). 

The algorithm’s impact on Serbia’s Roma community has been dramatic. ​​Ahmetović says his sister has also had her welfare payments cut since the system was introduced, as have several of his neighbors. “Almost all people living in Roma settlements in some municipalities lost their benefits,” says Danilo Ćurčić, program coordinator of A11, a Serbian nonprofit that provides legal aid. A11 is trying to help the Ahmetovićs and more than 100 other Roma families reclaim their benefits.

But first, Ćurčić needs to know how the system works. So far, the government has denied his requests to share the source code on intellectual property grounds, claiming it would violate the contract they signed with the company who actually built the system, he says. According to Ćurčić and a government contract, a Serbian company called Saga, which specializes in automation, was involved in building the social card system. Neither Saga nor Serbia’s Ministry of Social Affairs responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

As the govtech sector has grown, so has the number of companies selling systems to detect fraud. And not all of them are local startups like Saga. Accenture—Ireland’s biggest public company, which employs more than half a million people worldwide—has worked on fraud systems across Europe. In 2017, Accenture helped the Dutch city of Rotterdam develop a system that calculates risk scores for every welfare recipient. A company document describing the original project, obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED, references an Accenture-built machine learning system that combed through data on thousands of people to judge how likely each of them was to commit welfare fraud. “The city could then sort welfare recipients in order of risk of illegitimacy, so that highest risk individuals can be investigated first,” the document says. 

Officials in Rotterdam have said Accenture’s system was used until 2018, when a team at Rotterdam’s Research and Business Intelligence Department took over the algorithm’s development. When Lighthouse Reports and WIRED analyzed a 2021 version of Rotterdam’s fraud algorithm, it became clear that the system discriminates on the basis of race and gender. And around 70 percent of the variables in the 2021 system—information categories such as gender, spoken language, and mental health history that the algorithm used to calculate how likely a person was to commit welfare fraud—appeared to be the same as those in Accenture’s version.

When asked about the similarities, Accenture spokesperson Chinedu Udezue said the company’s “start-up model” was transferred to the city in 2018 when the contract ended. Rotterdam stopped using the algorithm in 2021, after auditors found that the data it used risked creating biased results.

Consultancies generally implement predictive analytics models and then leave after six or eight months, says Sheils, Accenture’s European head of public service. He says his team helps governments avoid what he describes as the industry’s curse: “false positives,” Sheils’ term for life-ruining occurrences of an algorithm incorrectly flagging an innocent person for investigation. “That may seem like a very clinical way of looking at it, but technically speaking, that's all they are.” Sheils claims that Accenture mitigates this by encouraging clients to use AI or machine learning to improve, rather than replace, decision-making humans. “That means ensuring that citizens don’t experience significantly adverse consequences purely on the basis of an AI decision.” 

However, social workers who are asked to investigate people flagged by these systems before making a final decision aren’t necessarily exercising independent judgment, says Eva Blum-Dumontet, a tech policy consultant who researched algorithms in the UK welfare system for campaign group Privacy International. “This human is still going to be influenced by the decision of the AI,” she says. “Having a human in the loop doesn’t mean that the human has the time, the training, or the capacity to question the decision.” 

Despite the scandals and repeated allegations of bias, the industry building these systems shows no sign of slowing. And neither does government appetite for buying or building such systems. Last summer, Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance adopted a decree authorizing the launch of an algorithm that searches for discrepancies in tax filings, earnings, property records, and bank accounts to identify people at risk of not paying their taxes. 

But as more governments adopt these systems, the number of people erroneously flagged for fraud is growing. And once someone is caught up in the tangle of data, it can take years to break free. In the Netherlands’ child benefits scandal, people lost their cars and homes, and couples described how the stress drove them to divorce. “The financial misery is huge,” says Orlando Kadir, a lawyer representing more than 1,000 affected families. After a public inquiry, the Dutch government agreed in 2020 to pay the families around €30,000 ($32,000) in compensation. But debt balloons over time. And that amount is not enough, says Kadir, who claims some families are now €250,000 in debt. 

In Belgrade, ​​Ahmetović is still fighting to get his family’s full benefits reinstated. “I don’t understand what happened or why,” he says. “It’s hard to compete against the computer and prove this was a mistake.” But he says he’s also wondering whether he’ll ever be compensated for the financial damage the social card system has caused him. He’s yet another person caught up in an opaque system whose inner workings are guarded by the companies and governments who make and operate them. Ćurčić, though, is clear on what needs to change. “We don’t care who made the algorithm,” he says. “The algorithm just has to be made public.”

Additional reporting by Gabriel Geiger and Justin-Casimir Braun.

[candaru]

ISAT epilogue thoughts about Loop (cont. of this post)

Love me a dramatic sacrifice, but I ascribe to "a core theme of ISAT is forgiveness of the self + not practicing self-harming behavior," so you know what? Loop doesn't get to die. They exist in a nebulous state for a while, observing quietly like they always do, but after their Craft regenerates, their body starts reforming. They aren't sure if they wished for it or not, all they know is that tangibility comes slowly and learning to walk again is hard.

One day, Odile goes out to the market and is very confused to see Siffrin, who said he was staying at home. Then he freaks out upon seeing her, and acts VERY suspicious, and her detective senses kick into high gear. She returns home and asks Siffrin what that was all about in the market, but they seem genuinely confused by the question. After she explains a bit, however, there's a spark of realization in their eyes and she knows that they know but won't tell her.

Siffrin promises from the bottom of their heart that they aren't hiding any problems from Odile. They think they know what's going on, but if so, it's not exactly their secret to tell. If it happens again, or someone's in danger, they promise to tell her.

The next day, Odile returns to the market at the same time to find "Siffrin" there again. This time, when she approaches and calls them by name, they run—but Odile chases after. They trip and fall. Odile very casually comments on how rude it is for them not to even say "hello" back to her, especially considering they're wearing the face of her good friend Siffrin.

They get very snappy at this observation, and tell her to stop calling them that. Seeing their face again, it only takes her a moment to piece it all together, and she asks if they'd rather be known as Loop.

They respond that they came to the market to get fruit and be left alone. In fact, they demand that she never speak to them again (because they don't know how to handle having emotions). Odile cooly tosses them an apple she bought and says she won't bother them further. She chooses not to bring this interaction up with Siffrin when she arrives home, recognizing the awkward position Siffrin has been put in regarding Loop's right to secrecy.

However, that night, Siffrin himself is woken up by a rapping at his window. He opens it and a doppleganger falls right through, shivering and cold to the touch.

"Loop?! What are you—" "It's freezing outside, Stardust. Move aside."

The bed is forcefully hogged by Loop. Siffrin pouts, but doesn't back away from their cold touch.

(After all, he knows how much they probably need it.)

The awkward part comes when Odile opens the door to Siffrin's room to nag him to wake up and come get breakfast, only to be greeted by the sight of two Siffrins, one still half-asleep and the other clinging behind the other with a fearful gaze. She stares at them for a good, solid minute before—

"Don't tell me this means I'll need to feed two of you now."

...but when the pair walks into the kitchen, three places are set and there's plenty of food for everyone.

[fujomod3r]

Thoughts on Fashion Dreamer

Fashion Dreamer is the latest title from syn Sophia, and sort of spiritual sequel to their previous series Style Savvy (Style Boutique in Europe and わがままファシオン / Wagamama Fashion in Japan). The premise of the game is to become a fashion influencer or muse in a virtual world called Eve. This is done by collecting/copying clothing items from other muses (both pre-set NPCs and player created muses encountered via online features) or by unlocking clothing patterns to craft your own items. These items can then be used to create outfits known as Lookits for yourself and other muses. Some muses request specific conditions such as certain colours, styles or items to complement a particular article of clothing. Completing these requests rewards the player with more currencies to unlock and craft more items. Creating lookits and using the rewards to unlock items to create more lookits forms the central loop of the gameplay. Progress, or perhaps more nebulously, your 'success' as an influencer is tracked by how many 'likes' your lookits receive and how many 'followers' you accrue. In reality these are only virtual scores and not related to the online/social features at all.

It's by no means a perfect game, and I want to share my thoughts on what its shortcomings are, but what really prompted me to write this is looking back on the reaction to the announcement trailer. When the game was first announced during a Nintendo Direct, commenters instantly brushed it off as trite and uninteresting, many demanding it be skipped to show off more Mario or just any other game with a more 'masculine' appeal. Similarly, many streamers and youtubers reacting to the Direct mocked or derided the game for seemingly no other reason than it being 'feminine' coded or "for girls" which is extremely disheartening to see. Before the trailer had even shown any gameplay, thousands of commenters had already declared the game worthless. I'm perfectly capable of just dealing with this anti-feminine attitude, but imagine how comments and reactions like these affect the many thousands if not millions of players who are interested in this kind of game? Players with 'feminine' tastes, interests and hobbies deserve to be catered to as much as any other player. It really sometimes feels like some people never mentally matured past 8 years old, recoiling in horror from 'girly' things as an immature assertion of their own masculinity.

I don't expect all players are going enjoy something like Fashion Dreamer. I just like to imagine the world is wide enough for games like it to exist and not be mocked or dismissed outright as though they're intrinsically less worthy than other types of game. Being marketed primarily at people with 'feminine' coded interests isn't inherently a bad thing and it's truly saddening to see how easily people fall into this immature way of thinking.

With that said, Fashion Dreamer isn't perfect!! Far from it. To put it bluntly, the game currently lacks features and activities outside of creating outfits and taking photos. Previous games in the series had narrative arcs for different characters, shopping and restocking, decorating your apartment / boutique as well as activities like going to music concerts. While Fashion Dreamer allows the player to walk around Eve at their leisure, it lacks detail that would make it feel more alive. The differently themed virtual worlds or Cocoons all have the same small set of activities (that is, a photo booth, a makeup stand and gacha machines) and a collection of more or less random NPCs, meaning they end up feeling like different desktop wallpapers rather than different places. The narrative of becoming a fashion influencer is potentially a very interesting topic for exploration, especially given how relevant social media has become in the fashion world. There is also the potential for an exploration of how social media facilitates communication, expression and friendship, whilst at the same time discussing the negative impacts social media can have on people. As it stands, the game feels empty and lacks the charm of its predecessors.

Gone are the unique clothing brands of Style Savvy, with their specialisation in particular styles or items. Every item in Fashion Dreamer either comes from a single generic default brand, or is created by players. Whilst the ability for players to create their own brand is interesting, this too ultimately feels quite shallow. With all items being drawn from the same pool and with limited options for colours (and basically none for customisation such as rolling up sleeves, opening/closing outerwear etc) there's not really much incentive to 'follow' or even collect items from another player's brand. Especially since you can usually unlock the item for yourself with a bit of effort anyway. Creating your own 'brand' in this way is far less rewarding or sasitfying than creating, customising and stocking your boutique store was in the previous games. Some remnants of that feature are present in vestigial form in Fashion Dreamer, namely a custom showroom where players can display furniture, decorations and fashion items, but there's never any reason to visit your own showroom, much less those of other players. You enter the room, spend 15 seconds admiring different colour variants of the same items you have, mutter 'nice' to yourself then leave. It's unfulfilling to say the least.

It's bad enough that the clothing and brands lack personality, but the characters themselves also seem completely dessicated and one-dimensional. Where previous games had characters with distinct personalities and corresponding tastes, the NPC muses in Fashion Dreamer have much less to say and no strong preferences. Their single sentence barks don't give them much flavour and really only serve to remind you of what their 'gimmick' or 'thing' is supposed to be ("I like surfing! Surf's up! Cowabunga! Can't wait to hit the waves man!!"). Their requests for Lookits don't seem unique to their personalities (the surfer dude has asked me twice for formal suits without even trying to lampshade this by explaining why), and so far I've yet to have any muse object to an outfit or item I selected for them. Again, a comparison to Style Savvy highlights what is absent here. In Style Savvy, goth characters would balk at bright colours, characters preoccupied with elegance and sophistication would turn their nose up at distressed denims or graphic printed t-shirts. It's not as though these personalities were particularly deep, but their preferences had to be taken into consideration when recommending or selling items. Requests from muses in Fashion Dreamer on the other hand seem to be essentially random. Building a rapport with customers by talking with them or meeting them out in the town in Style Savvy felt rewarding as it let you learn more about their personality, and so better tailor your fashion recommendations to suit them. The muses of Fashion Dreamer simply repeat the same barks at every level of friendship and have much less to say about themselves or their lives making them and the world they inhabit feel much more shallow.

While Fashion Dreamer does away with having to worry about money limiting your creativity, it instead replaces one currency with 4. Instead of using money from sales to restock your store, the player must now accrue 'likes', 'keys', 'gacha tickets' and 'coins' which are used to craft clothing, unlock new designs or purchase room decorations and single-use photo props (don't ask why the VR flower evaporates after a single VR photo, it just does). The conceit of being in virtual world evaporates quickly and seems to serve mainly to hand-wave away the various abstracted elements of the game world such as the ability to instantly copy outfits and change on the spot. Grinding for these 4 abstract resources feels far less rewarding than seeing the revenue of your Boutique store increase, allowing you to buy flashier styles and splurge on store decorations.

Again I feel the need to stress that this change in focus from running a high-street boutique to being a fashion blogger in the Matrix isn't necessarily bad, but it doesn't do anything interesting with this theme, serving mainly to provide a poor simulacrum of social media 'number go up' dopamine hits. Gaining 'followers' on Fashion Dreamer isn't a reward for effort, it's literally just a numbers game since almost every action in the game rewards you with followers (which is perhaps more realistic than I'm giving it credit for). The actual social features of the game are simplistic but cute, allowing players to 'follow' one another and create or request Lookits for each other based on their multiple-choice answers to 5 simple questions (or totally ignoring that and dressing them like a Splatoon character). However it all feels quite shallow since you never interact directly with other players and so don't get to enjoy show off your unique look.

Finally, while Fashion Dreamer allows you to now create a masculine avatar (an option sorely lacking in the previous games which simply assumed the player to be a girl), the range of fashion options for masculine body types seems a lot smaller than the feminine options. It also doesn't allow masculine muses to wear feminine clothing (shoes, hats and earrings are all considered unisex, but all other clothing items are locked to a single gender) and vice versa. It's a shame to fall down here because the game has clearly made steps to be more inclusive, with a wider variety of options for skin tone, hairstyle and a 2nd gender (Ghee whizz! How come your mom lets you have two genders?). Further, the range of body shapes is still extremely lacking, with a selection of ~10 slim bodies of different heights. Overall, the game shows a real lack of interest in exploring the world of fashion, and nowhere is that more obvious than its lazy emulation of typical body/beauty standards we see everywhere else.

I know I've probably come across really harsh and critical here, but it's only out of a frustration at seeing what a strong basis there is for a game here. The character models and animations are great, and there aren't enough games that provide players like myself with the ability to indulge in playing dress-up for its own sake. Ultimately, I do want to see this game or others like it succeed because I loved Style Savvy and want developers to continue making games that dare to be unapologetically feminine in what they're about and who they're appealing to. I'm just disappointed overall in the lack of polish this particular game has. It honestly feels unfinished which is why I want to hold back from being too harsh.

Do I think this game is worth buying? Not really at the RRP, but if you're interested in some extremely light and somewhat mindless entertainment theorycrafting fits and taking a few cute digital selfies, just be warned that you won't get much else out of it. The soundtrack will start to grate on you as well, so make sure to line up a playlist of your own.

[kenyatta]

Yes, the tech industry’s loudest guys have all been demanding a “great reset,” where efficiency reigns, where the entitled are not invested in, or are fired, or, let’s be honest, are “put in their place” because the overwhelming sense from these craven ghouls is that they believe that workers got given way too much and were treated too well. It’s also worth considering that the people that invested in these companies, that paid for the luxurious perks at these firms, that fucking hired these people in the first place are the same people that are crowing about them being treated too well.

I foolishly believed that these people were in the minority - that they were not indicative of the larger tech industry - and I was completely wrong. Tens of thousands of tech workers have now been laid off from companies throughout the world, and the nebulous reasoning for firing them - that companies had overhired - is an obvious lie, because most of these companies turned healthy (if not stellar) profits. These companies did not “overhire” recklessly. I believe they hired as many people as they needed to to catch consumer (or business) demand, and the second that said demand shifted back to pre-pandemic levels, they used it as an opportunity and justification to fire people that they deemed expendable.

I also believe that there was a genuine panic within the corporate elite that talented workers suddenly had a degree of power, and this was also a convenient way to put themselves back on top. The whole Quiet Quitting fiasco clearly upset them - the idea that workers would take the same liberties with what a work day was (doing what they were required to do versus working beyond their contractually-mandated hours) that executives do was truly offensive - and the idea that workers could choose where to take their talents was equally noxious. A power struggle had developed, and the drop in consumer spending and the effects of inflation provided exactly the cover they needed.

I realize I sound conspiratorial, but to be clear, I do not think they all got together and planned this. However, I believe that a worryingly large amount of the most powerful people in technology have seen the growth of workers’ rights as a symptom of a broken market. 

[sing-you-fools]

i want to clarify a few things, because i've received a handful of questions in response to this meme and people seem unhappy with how i'm answering!!!!!

first, Neil is a saint specifically for how patiently he answers this shit and i never claimed to also be a saint!!!!! but more importantly:

unlike Neil Gaiman, i do not have a gender, so when you insist to me that gender can't just not apply or that there's nothing queer about not having a gender, you're actually being

✨️🏳️‍🌈directly bigoted toward me!!!!!🏳️‍🌈✨️

so if you're mad, my little chili babies, that i did not hold your hand through a gentle explanation like a kindergarten teacher, know that i am not fucking obligated to when your very question invalidates my existence!!!!!

now. since i would actually like people to understand, i think where people are getting stuck is the

core concept of the word queer.

so here is a very quick breakdown of what that word means to me.

queer isn't a box. it isn’t a label the way the other letters are labels. it's not a synonym for "LGBT+" or "gay" or anything. queer is a word that specifically evokes the nuance of identity.

heaven and hell in good omens, for all their flaws, are a queernormative soceity. in this society, gender is treated less as a box that you fall into when you're born, or even a box you get to choose, but rather as a buffet table. you walk over and decide which pronouns you want (if any), which identity label (if any), how you want to present.

in a world like this, any other labels become extremely nebulous. what is straight, what is gay, what is trans, when gender is a mosaic? when you deconstruct the very concept of gender, it queers everything. when you build a world where the concept of gender is this expansive, you can't shrink the characters down into the boxes our culture uses!!!!!

(now, when queerness is the norm, people within the society likely won't consider individual relationships queer [as many others have pointed out, from heaven and hell's pov, the angel and demon thing is a lot queerer than the both-mostly-appearing-masc thing], but remember we're watching and understanding through an earth 2023 lens and if we're going to talk about it it's going to be in the language our culture uses for such things, because that's how language and communication works. i've read and discussed a lot of fiction that takes place in queernormative settings but i think this is the first time anyone has demanded that i defend my "choice" to consider the relationships within the setting queer.)

you like memes? okay!!!!! queer means:

queer means

queer means

queer means

and i don't have to add or change anything about those last two because that's the point. queer means this entire concept is too big for my tiny human brain!!!!! queer means none of us are using these words in the exact same way. none of us are thinking about gender and sexuality in the exact same way and that's the point!!!!! we shouldn't be!!!!! IT'S NUANCED!!!!!

queer says the boxes aren't always big enough, or small enough, or flexible or permeable enough or close enough to another box you wanna stick a limb into once in a while so let's destroy them and let everyone make their own beautiful artwork to tell us who they are!!!!! we'll keep the labelmaker around for those who like the labels and want to add them but no one is obligated!!!!!

i think the final thing the fans who haven't been alive for as long as Neil and Terry have been writing queer characters aren't understanding is that this book came out in 1990 and THIS WAS NOT DONE IN 1990. THIS WAS GROUNDBREAKING.

YES, THIS MOMENT IS DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOK AND IT'S A HUGE DEAL.

to have a main character - a protagonist - in a book that isn't specifically, explicitly, and exclusively being marketed to The Gays™️ proudly declare himself THE Southern Pansy, simply was not something authors did!!!!! and it especially wasn't something authors who were then going to get mad that people read their characters as queer did!!!!! this was the height of the AIDS epidemic, y'all!!!!!

"but it was a joke" yes!!!!! a positive joke!!!!! an affirming joke!!!!! it's not even a little bit at our expense!!!!!

Aziraphale said oh no i'm not just gay i'm the fucking platonic form of queerness in nineteen fucking ninety and people are frothing because Neil won't use the word you want him to!!!!! and if you don’t think they read like a couple please read some Discworld and get back to me!!!!!

read other queernormative worlds and other older fiction where the queerness could only exist as subtext and try to understand the immense privilege you have had to grow up queer in a world that allows you to look at some of the best representation i've seen in my 36 years and declare it not queer enough for you!!!!!

@neil-gaiman you're a saint

[marketsndata]

Global Respiratory Care Devices Market Size, Share, Growth and Forecast 2031

Global respiratory care devices market is projected to witness a CAGR of 7.07% during the forecast period 2024-2031, growing from USD 23.15 billion in 2023 to USD 39.98 billion in 2031.

The rise in respiratory diseases, the geriatric population, and increased pollution rates are some factors propelling the global respiratory care devices market. Advances in technology, rising investment in healthcare, and the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as well as asthma also drive the demand. COVID-19 underlined the need for respiratory support, investments, and global awareness in respiratory care solutions. This has marked significant growth in the global respiratory care devices market during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Respiratory care devices are used to diagnose, monitor, and treat increasingly common respiratory disorders caused by pollution, aging populations, and lifestyle factors. These devices include ventilators, nebulizers, and oxygen concentrators, and they are all crucial for supporting respiratory function and delivering patient care within hospitals and home settings. Increased awareness about respiratory health has made these devices more in demand, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the requirement for balanced and reliable support related to respiration. Technological advancements with portable, user-friendly devices expand their utilization beyond clinical settings into the home environment for chronic patients to manage symptoms over time. Respiratory care devices are pivotal in effectively managing respiratory diseases while reducing hospital admissions and improving healthcare efficiency worldwide.

Improving product offerings through the innovation of new technology makes companies create substantial value for customers. The growth of the respiratory care devices market fuels overall demand and market expansion. For instance, in August 2024, Oxymed, a brand of Medequip Healthcare Solutions Pvt Ltd., launched the SleepEasy Auto CPAP device. The company’s portfolio also includes i-series PAPs; it has the most advanced technology, including the FlowSens algorithm, at significantly better comfort and at much lower prices than the international brands can offer. These products are CE-certified and accompanied by a quality warranty. This expansion in the product offerings will bring better respiratory care to more individuals in India, improving customers’ satisfaction and the number of orders in the market. 

Strategic Investments in Respiratory Care Devices

Strategic investments in the respiratory care devices market have been developing breakthrough technologies for personalized treatments, increasing the accuracy of diagnostics, and increasing patient compliance. Investments are made in advanced ventilators that will eventually provide a more effective management system for complicated respiratory diseases and significantly reduce complications arising from the conditions. Continuous monitoring devices critical to managing chronic respiratory diseases and those used to detect real-time changes in lung functions are also other investment areas showing large-scale focus. Besides, investments in miniaturization improve patient comfort and enable higher compliance with long-term treatments. Strategic partnerships allow innovative solutions to redefine care standards and contribute to a constantly better outcome for respiratory diseases.

For instance, in January 2023, Telesair, Inc. received Series A funding of USD 22 million from Pasaca Capital, Inc. to launch an ICU-focused Bonhawa Respiratory Humidifier in the market and design a new product to provide safer and quicker patient discharge. 

Rising Air Pollution Levels Promotes the Market

The increase in air pollution levels is driving the escalation of respiratory diseases, such as asthma and breathing difficulties, thereby gaining popularity for respiratory care equipment. As a response, the government is introducing various measures to strengthen respiratory healthcare, including contributing to research in diagnostic as well as therapeutic apparatus. These measures are strengthening the respiratory care market as air pollution-linked health concerns rise, further underlining the urge for proper respiratory care solutions. For instance, in June 2024, HP Ghosh Hospital in Salt Lake City, Calcutta, launched Chest Tree, an initiative for good respiratory health. This project shows the hospital’s commitment to advancing respiratory care using the most up-to-date technology and specialized medical staff. The Chest Tree visually maps all types of respiratory conditions, including COPD, asthma, lung cancer, and other sleep disorders, for easier comprehension of the facilities offered. This thus allows patients to better engage with and understand the treatment options, thereby upgrading awareness.

Rising Awareness of Respiratory Care

With the growing awareness of respiratory health issues, more people are now focusing on their respiratory well-being; hence, there is an increasing demand for respiratory care devices. Nowadays, people are more conscious of air pollution’s impact on their lives, leading to more adoption of products like portable oxygen concentrators and non-invasive ventilators. Therefore, growing awareness is driving the market further towards innovation in home-care solutions as consumers look for easily accessible solutions with friendlier interfaces that can help them cope with asthma. Considering this increased demand for effective personalized respiratory care solutions, manufacturers are innovating to expand their offerings.

For instance, in May 2023, Cipla Limited introduced the ‘Tuffies’ campaign to increase awareness of respiratory care in children across India, especially patient groups with asthma. This would influence the market for respiratory care devices with increased awareness and demand for effective solutions for asthma management in children. Moreover, in October 2022, AirPhysio Pty Ltd partnered with Apollo Hospitals Group and Medsmart and launched its respiratory devices in India. This partnership is set to increase the awareness and demand for these innovative products in India.

COPD Application Segment to Lead the Growth of Market Due to Rising Patient Population

The COPD segment leads in the market for respiratory care devices primarily due to the increased incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Improvement in technology and continuous innovation ensures the development of advanced devices to improve patient results. Partnerships of leading healthcare companies with device manufacturers promote this trend, thus providing a boost to the development and distribution of innovative solutions. Such efforts result in higher adoption of respiratory care devices for COPD. The strategic focus on COPD management becomes one of the key drivers for market growth and addresses the needs of patients with such conditions.

For instance, in March 2023, the University of California, Davis, in collaboration with Propeller Health, launched a remote monitoring program for patients. The program consists of sensors, a mobile app, and personalized support to track medication usage and respiration, which might then be integrated with UC Davis’s electronic health records for enhanced patient care. The program can be expanded to other health systems under the University of California, enhancing chronic disease management, especially COPD.  

North America to be in the Dominating Region

North America leads the global respiratory care devices market due to a combination of factors. The high prevalence of respiratory conditions like asthma, COPD, and even sleep apnea in the region is a major factor driving demand for more advanced respiratory devices. Based on CDC data published in 2023, asthma affects 7.7% of Americans and is more prevalent in adults, at 8.0%, and females at 9.7%. Of the reported 24.9 million affected, 60% of the adults and 44% of the children experience uncontrolled asthma. In addition, an increasing awareness of respiratory health issues through various organizations and government efforts has further led to expanding this market. In the United States, a program called “Healthy People 2030, “initiated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, promotes respiratory health. The emergence of key regional players further hastens the innovation and accessibility of advanced devices. In addition, the well-established healthcare infrastructure, growing healthcare expenditures, and rising adoption of home healthcare solutions in North America further favor the region’s leadership in the global marketplace.

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Future Market Scenario (2024-2031F)

Key drivers for future growth in respiratory care devices are the growing incidence of chronic respiratory diseases, advancements in technology, and the need for home healthcare solutions. Advancements in miniaturization of devices and integration into the digital health platform will expand patient availability, further propelling market growth.

In October 2024, Inspira-Technologies OXY B.H.N. LTD. introduced disposable blood oxygenation kit for all types of life support machines compatible with INSPIRA ART devices.

This innovation will help boost the efficiency of hospitals in maintaining compatibility with cardio-pulmonary bypass machines. This launch is expected to spur growth in the respiratory care devices market by providing cost-effective and versatile solutions for better patient care.

In April 2023, OxyGo HQ Florida, LLC launched a new product for the portable oxygen concentrator, the OxyHome 5L Stationary Concentrator, which is aptly designed to provide constant flow with up to 5L per minute. This oxygen supply is highly recommended for home use. The launch would have a significant impact on the market for respiratory care devices, increasing readily available home-based oxygen therapy options and therefore demand for convenient and user-friendly respiratory solutions in the next few years.

Report Scope

“Respiratory Care Devices Market Assessment, Opportunities and Forecast, 2017-2031F”, is a comprehensive report by Markets and Data, providing in-depth analysis and qualitative and quantitative assessment of the current state of the global respiratory care devices market, industry dynamics, and challenges. The report includes market size, segmental shares, growth trends, opportunities, and forecast between 2024 and 2031. Additionally, the report profiles the leading players in the industry, mentioning their respective market share, business models, competitive intelligence, etc.

Click here for full report- https://www.marketsandata.com/industry-reports/respiratory-care-devices-market

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[credenceresearchdotblog]

The Aromatherapy Market is projected to grow from USD 2,102.34 million in 2023 to an estimated USD 4,936.97 million by 2032, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.95% from 2024 to 2032. Aromatherapy, an age-old practice of using essential oils and natural plant extracts to enhance physical and psychological well-being, has witnessed a surge in popularity over recent years. With growing awareness of holistic health approaches and increasing consumer preference for natural products, the global aromatherapy market has entered a phase of significant growth. This article delves into the current trends, driving factors, and future opportunities in the aromatherapy market.

Browse the full report at https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/aromatherapy-market

Market Overview

The global aromatherapy market was valued at approximately USD 1.8 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2% from 2023 to 2030. This expansion is fueled by rising consumer interest in alternative medicine, wellness tourism, and lifestyle changes driven by stress-related disorders.

Aromatherapy encompasses various applications, including relaxation, pain management, skin care, and respiratory relief. The primary components of this market are essential oils, diffusers, and other accessories such as inhalers and roller balls.

Key Trends Driving Growth

Rising Demand for Natural and Organic Products Consumers are increasingly seeking natural and chemical-free products to maintain health and wellness. Essential oils derived from plants like lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint, and tea tree are perceived as safer alternatives to synthetic pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Expansion of the Wellness Industry The growing focus on holistic health has elevated aromatherapy to a mainstream wellness practice. Spas, wellness retreats, and yoga centers are incorporating aromatherapy sessions to offer enhanced relaxation experiences.

Increased Consumer Awareness The accessibility of information via social media and wellness influencers has amplified consumer knowledge about the benefits of aromatherapy. This has led to a spike in demand for essential oils and aromatherapy devices.

Technological Advancements in Diffuser Devices Innovations such as ultrasonic and nebulizing diffusers have transformed how essential oils are used, making aromatherapy more convenient and effective. Portable and aesthetic designs further appeal to tech-savvy consumers.

Therapeutic Applications in Healthcare Aromatherapy is gaining traction in healthcare settings, particularly for stress management, sleep enhancement, and pain relief. Hospitals and clinics are adopting aromatherapy as a complementary therapy to improve patient outcomes.

Challenges in the Market

While the aromatherapy market is thriving, it faces challenges such as:

Lack of Standardization: The industry lacks uniform regulations and quality standards, leading to variations in the purity and efficacy of essential oils.

Health Risks: Misuse or overuse of essential oils can cause adverse reactions, including allergies or skin irritation.

High Costs: Pure essential oils can be expensive, limiting their adoption among price-sensitive consumers.

Future Opportunities

E-commerce Boom: Online platforms are revolutionizing the retail of essential oils and diffusers, offering convenience and variety to consumers.

Personalized Aromatherapy: Companies are exploring customized solutions using AI and data analytics to cater to individual preferences and health needs.

Sustainability Initiatives: Eco-conscious consumers are driving demand for sustainably sourced and packaged essential oils.

Integration with Smart Homes: Aromatherapy devices integrated with smart home systems offer new possibilities for growth.

Key players

Procter & Gamble

Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC

Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd.

dōTERRA

Young Living Essential Oils, LC

Mountain Rose Herbs

Edens Garden

Plant Therapy

Aurora

Rocky Mountain Oils, LLC

FLORIHANA

Biolandes

Falcon

Stadler Form

Segments

Based on Product

Consumables

Equipment

Based on Application

Relaxation

Skin & Hair Care

Cold & Cough

Others

Based on End User

Home Use

Spa & Wellness Centers

Hospitals & Clinics

Yoga & Meditation Centers

Others

Based on Mode of Delivery

Topical Application

Aerial Diffusion

Direct Inhalation

Based on Distribution Channel

E-commerce

Offline Stores

Based on Region

North America

U.S.

Canada

Mexico

Europe

Germany

France

U.K.

Italy

Spain

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

Japan

India

South Korea

South-east Asia

Rest of Asia Pacific

Latin America

Brazil

Argentina

Rest of Latin America

Middle East & Africa

GCC Countries

South Africa

Rest of the Middle East and Africa

Browse the full report at https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/aromatherapy-market

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[health-views-updates]

2024-2032 Nebulizer Market Outlook: Revenue, Trends, and Growth

The global Nebulizer Market Revenue is projected to witness substantial growth in the coming years, driven by increasing respiratory health concerns, rising incidences of chronic pulmonary diseases, and advancements in nebulization technology. The market, valued at USD 1.45 billion in 2022, is expected to expand significantly by 2030, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.23% during the forecast period.

Nebulizers play a crucial role in the administration of medication directly into the lungs, making them indispensable in managing respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and bronchitis. The market’s growth trajectory is further bolstered by increasing air pollution levels, rising tobacco consumption, and a growing aging population vulnerable to respiratory ailments.

Technological innovations, including portable and user-friendly nebulizers, have enhanced patient compliance and convenience, broadening the market’s consumer base. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of respiratory health, further driving the demand for nebulizers worldwide.

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Market Dynamics and Key Trends

The nebulizer market is undergoing a transformative phase with several key trends shaping its future:

Portability and Compact Designs: The development of lightweight and battery-operated nebulizers has made respiratory treatments accessible anytime and anywhere.

Technological Advancements: Integration of Bluetooth technology and smart connectivity in nebulizers allows real-time monitoring of patient data, enhancing treatment efficiency.

Rising Awareness Campaigns: Increasing public awareness about respiratory health and the benefits of early diagnosis are propelling market growth.

Growth in Home Healthcare: The shift towards home-based care, driven by the rising costs of hospitalization, has significantly boosted the adoption of nebulizers.

Regional Insights

North America currently dominates the nebulizer market, attributed to its advanced healthcare infrastructure, high prevalence of respiratory disorders, and increased healthcare expenditure. Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific is emerging as a lucrative market due to a growing population, urbanization, and improved healthcare access.

Industry Challenges

Despite the promising growth, the market faces challenges such as high costs of advanced nebulizers, lack of awareness in developing regions, and limited availability of skilled healthcare professionals for effective usage and maintenance of devices.

Competitive Landscape

The nebulizer market is highly competitive, with key players focusing on research and development to introduce innovative products. Partnerships, acquisitions, and expansions are common strategies adopted to strengthen market positions and meet the increasing demand.

About Us SNS Insider is one of the leading market research and consulting agencies that dominates the market research industry globally. Our company's aim is to give clients the knowledge they require in order to function in changing circumstances. In order to give you current, accurate market data, consumer insights, and opinions so that you can make decisions with confidence, we employ a variety of techniques, including surveys, video talks, and focus groups around the world.

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[shubhampawrainfinium]

Respiratory Devices: Your Ally in the Fight for Lung Health

The global respiratory devices market is witnessing strong growth, driven by rising incidences of respiratory disorders, increasing awareness of respiratory health, and technological advancements in respiratory care solutions. According to the report, the market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 8% from 2022 to 2028. Valued at approximately USD 20 billion in 2022, the market is expected to reach nearly USD 35 billion by 2028.

What are Respiratory Devices?

Respiratory devices are medical tools used to support patients with respiratory conditions, improving breathing or facilitating oxygen intake. This category includes ventilators, inhalers, nebulizers, and oxygen concentrators, as well as diagnostic and monitoring equipment used to manage chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pneumonia.

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Market Dynamics and Growth Drivers

The growth of the global respiratory devices market is fueled by several factors:

Increasing Prevalence of Respiratory Diseases: The rising incidence of respiratory illnesses such as asthma, COPD, and acute respiratory infections is a key driver for the market. Factors such as air pollution, smoking, and the impact of urbanization contribute to the prevalence of these diseases, creating a steady demand for respiratory devices.

Growing Aging Population: An aging global population is more susceptible to respiratory diseases and other health complications, increasing the need for respiratory devices. Age-related changes in lung function and immunity make elderly individuals more prone to respiratory disorders, driving market demand.

Technological Advancements in Respiratory Care: Innovation in device technology, including portable oxygen concentrators, smart inhalers, and advanced ventilators, is enhancing the effectiveness and convenience of respiratory treatments. These advancements not only improve patient outcomes but also support the growing trend toward home healthcare.

Impact of COVID-19: The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened awareness of respiratory health and increased the demand for respiratory devices, particularly ventilators and oxygen concentrators. Although the initial surge in demand has leveled off, the heightened focus on respiratory care has had a lasting impact on the market.

Shift Toward Home Healthcare: With healthcare systems increasingly promoting home-based care, there is growing demand for portable, easy-to-use respiratory devices that patients can use independently at home. This trend supports market growth by expanding the accessibility and convenience of respiratory treatment.

Regional Analysis

North America: North America is a significant market for respiratory devices, driven by high healthcare expenditure, advanced healthcare infrastructure, and rising cases of respiratory diseases. The United States leads the region due to high awareness of respiratory health, strong adoption of advanced devices, and supportive government healthcare policies.

Europe: Europe’s respiratory devices market is growing steadily, with the U.K., Germany, and France among the top contributors. Increasing elderly populations and high rates of respiratory disorders, particularly COPD, contribute to the demand for respiratory devices across the region.

Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing rapid growth in the respiratory devices market, driven by rising healthcare infrastructure development, growing pollution levels, and a large patient base with unmet needs. Countries like China, India, and Japan are major contributors, with strong demand for respiratory care solutions.

Latin America, Middle East & Africa: These regions are gradually adopting respiratory devices due to rising awareness and improvements in healthcare infrastructure. However, the market here faces challenges such as affordability and limited access to advanced respiratory care, which may hinder growth.

Competitive Landscape

The respiratory devices market is competitive, with key players focusing on innovation, product portfolio expansion, and strategic partnerships. Major companies include:

Philips Healthcare: Known for its advanced respiratory solutions, Philips offers a range of products, including ventilators, oxygen concentrators, and sleep therapy devices. The company is a leader in innovation, focusing on digital health solutions and home-based care.

ResMed: A prominent player in sleep apnea and respiratory care devices, ResMed focuses on creating digital health solutions and has a significant presence in home healthcare. Its products include continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices, ventilators, and related monitoring tools.

Medtronic: Medtronic’s respiratory solutions include ventilators, pulse oximeters, and airway management devices. The company emphasizes research and development to create advanced and efficient respiratory care products.

Masimo: Known for its non-invasive monitoring solutions, Masimo provides respiratory monitoring devices such as pulse oximeters and innovative ventilation solutions. It focuses on improving patient monitoring through digital technology.

Report Overview : https://infiniumglobalresearch.com/reports/global-respiratory-devices-market

Challenges and Opportunities

While the respiratory devices market is growing, it faces challenges such as high device costs, regulatory hurdles, and concerns regarding data privacy in digital health solutions. The initial investment for advanced respiratory devices can be substantial, making affordability a barrier in some regions.

However, there are significant growth opportunities. The increasing focus on home healthcare, telemedicine integration, and the adoption of wearable and portable devices offer substantial market potential. Moreover, emerging economies provide an untapped market for respiratory devices, with growing awareness and healthcare infrastructure developments supporting this demand.

Conclusion

The global respiratory devices market is on a strong growth trajectory, projected to expand from USD 20 billion in 2022 to approximately USD 35 billion by 2028, with a CAGR of over 8%. The market is driven by a combination of rising respiratory health concerns, technological advancements, and an increasing emphasis on home-based care. As more companies focus on innovative solutions and expand their reach to emerging markets, the respiratory devices market is poised for continued expansion, catering to the growing demand for effective respiratory care worldwide.

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[jtq1844]

What's the difference?

I read somewhere recently -- although I have no interest in vetting the information -- that about 800 new titles are released every weekday. I met a guy named Steve today who works in publishing. He corrected me. According to Steve, with the combination of traditional, self/indie, and the nebulously defined hybrid publishing paradigms, the number is now more like 4000 every day! (Indies don't have to keep bankers' hour like trads do. "Bankers' hours" -- now there's a rapidly aging phrase.)

So, in an effort to get it straight in my head, I'll just keep writing things down here until someone finds this and corrects me. It's a win-win situation: I'll get some clarity, and you'll get to feel superior for a good 5 minutes.

Traditional publishing -- It's funny that it's called "traditional" because it really only began in the 1860s or so (which doesn't seem that long ago in terms of traditions and all). Before that, the writer, like other artists, depended upon patronage to foot the bills. Once in a while, there might have been a little crowd-sourcing, but basically, it was self-publishing tied to the apron-strings of someone with deep pockets and their own overriding opinions.

Publishing houses developed as a way to facilitate book publishing without the writer being imprisoned or abandoned by the patron's whims. In exchange for the rights to the book, a publishing house foots the bill for the preparation, design, printing, marketing, and distribution of the book. The writer gets royalties AFTER the publisher recoups the costs of preparation, design, printing, marketing, and distribution ... and if the book does well, the costs of reprinting and redistributing, etc. When all is said and done, the writer gets about 10% of the price of the book when it is sold (for the first time). If the publisher gave the writer an advance, that too is made up before those royalty checks start flowin'. The publisher gets to make subsequent decisions about the book because the publisher owns the rights to it. With small presses, it behooves both the publisher and the writer to build and keep a relationship for the sake of future endeavors and profits. With larger presses, there is another layer between them -- the Literary Agent; however, that, my friends, is another post for another day (mainly because I'm just learning about them).

Self-publishing -- is just that. The writer is handles everything -- the preparation (editing mostly), design, printing, marketing and distribution. They get to keep absolute control over these processes. Whether they are any good at them is another story. They may hire people with expertise to help them of course. Mind you, once one pays all those bills and/or calculates the costs of DIY -- after all "time is money" as they say -- the author of the average self-published book makes about 10% on each book sold (the first time, and nothing after it goes to a used bookstore (in case you were confused)). E-books and print-on-demand help with that a lot, but I haven't bothered to look up any stats on that.

Hybrid-publishing -- When a group of people get frustrated with the traditional publishing paradigm and gain some understanding of each step of the self-publishing process, they do some very special machinations to create a bundle of services to offer the writer. This baby is then advertised to writers. The writer gets to keep the rights to their book but pays the hybrid publishing company for each part of this beautiful mysterious journey. Lots of aspects of this relationship can vary widely. Expertise in each step -- editing, designing, printing, marketing, distribution -- needs to be assessed somehow. On one end of the spectrum, it could be wonderfully frank, supportive, and professional -- laying out a realistic plan ... that the writer pays for. On the other end of the spectrum are the "vanity presses." No vanity press will call itself a vanity press. Yes, they offer services. Yes, the writer pays for them. The general business model is the same.

How does one tell the difference? Here are a few red flags that signal a vanity press.

They will print "anything."

They heap praise on you and your writing from Day 1 ... whether they've had time to read your book or not.

They pressure you to sign contracts quickly.

Their pricing structure is vague or full of hidden add-ons. (This is often impossible to assess early enough in the process.)

They avoid officially stating that they adhere to the standards set out by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), because they aren't concerned about that.

Once one subtracts the cost of the packaged or ala carte services from hybrid publisher from the substantially larger chunk of the sales price the writer receives, it comes down to about ... I dunno. It varies widely depending on the scamminess of the company involved.

Finding a reputable guide though this process takes detective work and research. Thank goodness bloggers about writing and publishing are always so trustworthy and accurate in their posts!

[farmacuticals]

From Prescription to Consumer: The Evolution of Retail Pharmacy

Retail pharmacy is an essential component of the healthcare industry, offering prescription and over-the-counter medications, health consultations, and various other healthcare products and services. These establishments provide a critical bridge between pharmaceutical companies and consumers, ensuring the safe and efficient distribution of medications. Retail pharmacies are often the first point of contact for individuals seeking medical advice, especially for non-emergency conditions. In addition to dispensing drugs, retail pharmacies now play a broader role by offering vaccinations, health screenings, and medication therapy management services.

The retail pharmacy market size was projected to reach 1,636.86 (USD billion) in 2022 based on MRFR analysis.Growth in the retail pharmacy market is predicted to reach 2,843.45 (USD billion) by 2032, up from 1,729.83 (USD billion) in 2023. Over the projected period (2024 - 2032), the Retail Pharmacy Market is expected to develop at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 5.68%.

The size of retail pharmacy is continually expanding due to an aging population, increasing demand for prescription medications, and the growing incidence of chronic diseases. With the rise in healthcare expenditure, the global retail pharmacy market is expected to experience steady growth. According to various reports, the retail pharmacy market was valued at over USD 300 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow significantly in the coming years. The advent of digital technology, telemedicine, and online pharmacies has also played a crucial role in expanding the retail pharmacy size. As a result, traditional brick-and-mortar pharmacies are evolving to meet consumer demands, blending in-store services with online convenience.

Retail Pharmacy Share and Trends

The retail pharmacy share is influenced by several factors, including demographic changes, technological advancements, and evolving consumer behavior. North America and Europe hold a substantial portion of the global retail pharmacy market due to well-established healthcare infrastructure, high consumer awareness, and the significant presence of key market players. However, the Asia-Pacific region is witnessing rapid growth due to increasing healthcare access, rising disposable income, and expanding pharmaceutical industries.

Trends in retail pharmacy reflect the growing integration of technology with healthcare services. Digital health solutions, such as mobile apps and online consultations, have transformed how consumers interact with pharmacies. Another significant trend is the shift towards personalized medicine, where pharmacists tailor treatments based on individual genetic profiles, lifestyle, and health conditions. Additionally, the focus on preventive care and wellness is pushing pharmacies to offer a wider range of health and wellness products, such as vitamins, supplements, and fitness devices. The retail pharmacy sector is also moving towards eco-friendly practices, with sustainable packaging and environmentally conscious business models becoming more prevalent.

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and Retail Pharmacy

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is a severe condition that requires immediate medical attention, typically in a hospital setting. However, retail pharmacies can play a supportive role in managing respiratory conditions that may lead to ARDS, such as severe pneumonia or flu. Pharmacies often provide preventive measures, such as flu vaccinations, and help with managing symptoms of respiratory distress by offering over-the-counter medications, inhalers, and nebulizers. In some cases, retail pharmacies also collaborate with healthcare providers to educate patients about recognizing early symptoms of respiratory distress and the importance of timely intervention.

Reasons to Buy the Reports

When investing in a retail pharmacy report, several compelling reasons can be considered:

Market Insights: Reports provide detailed insights into the retail pharmacy size, share, trends, and opportunities, helping stakeholders make informed business decisions.

Competitive Analysis: Gain an understanding of the competitive landscape, including profiles of key players, their market strategies, and recent developments.

Future Forecasts: Reports often include market forecasts, enabling businesses to plan for the future by understanding potential growth areas and market drivers.

Technological Trends: Understand the impact of emerging technologies on the retail pharmacy market, such as telemedicine, e-pharmacies, and automation.

Strategic Planning: With comprehensive data, reports help businesses develop strategies to stay ahead of the competition, adapt to changing consumer preferences, and leverage market opportunities.

Recent Developments in Retail Pharmacy

The retail pharmacy industry is constantly evolving, with recent developments reflecting the growing demand for healthcare services and innovation. One significant development is the rise of e-pharmacies, which allow consumers to order medications online and have them delivered to their homes. This trend gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to grow. Additionally, pharmacies are increasingly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient care, such as by using AI algorithms to predict medication needs and manage inventory more efficiently. Another key development is the growing role of retail pharmacies in providing clinical services, such as health screenings, disease management programs, and vaccination drives. These services have expanded the role of pharmacies beyond medication dispensing, positioning them as integral parts of the healthcare ecosystem.

In conclusion, retail pharmacies are evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer needs. With increasing retail pharmacy share and the rising importance of personalized healthcare, retail pharmacies are poised for continued growth and innovation.

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