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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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The AI hype bubble is the new crypto hype bubble

Back in 2017 Long Island Ice Tea — known for its undistinguished, barely drinkable sugar-water — changed its name to “Long Blockchain Corp.” Its shares surged to a peak of 400% over their pre-announcement price. The company announced no specific integrations with any kind of blockchain, nor has it made any such integrations since.

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/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

LBCC was subsequently delisted from NASDAQ after settling with the SEC over fraudulent investor statements. Today, the company trades over the counter and its market cap is $36m, down from $138m.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/textbook-case-of-crypto-hype-how-iced-tea-company-went-blockchain-and-failed-despite-a-289-percent-stock-rise

The most remarkable thing about this incredibly stupid story is that LBCC wasn’t the peak of the blockchain bubble — rather, it was the start of blockchain’s final pump-and-dump. By the standards of 2022’s blockchain grifters, LBCC was small potatoes, a mere $138m sugar-water grift.

They didn’t have any NFTs, no wash trades, no ICO. They didn’t have a Superbowl ad. They didn’t steal billions from mom-and-pop investors while proclaiming themselves to be “Effective Altruists.” They didn’t channel hundreds of millions to election campaigns through straw donations and other forms of campaing finance frauds. They didn’t even open a crypto-themed hamburger restaurant where you couldn’t buy hamburgers with crypto:

https://robbreport.com/food-drink/dining/bored-hungry-restaurant-no-cryptocurrency-1234694556/

They were amateurs. Their attempt to “make fetch happen” only succeeded for a brief instant. By contrast, the superpredators of the crypto bubble were able to make fetch happen over an improbably long timescale, deploying the most powerful reality distortion fields since Pets.com.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. We’re told that trillions of dollars’ worth of crypto has been wiped out over the past year, but these losses are nowhere to be seen in the real economy — because the “wealth” that was wiped out by the crypto bubble’s bursting never existed in the first place.

Like any Ponzi scheme, crypto was a way to separate normies from their savings through the pretense that they were “investing” in a vast enterprise — but the only real money (“fiat” in cryptospeak) in the system was the hardscrabble retirement savings of working people, which the bubble’s energetic inflaters swapped for illiquid, worthless shitcoins.

We’ve stopped believing in the illusory billions. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest. But the people who gave him money — and the nimbler Ponzi artists who evaded arrest — are looking for new scams to separate the marks from their money.

Take Morganstanley, who spent 2021 and 2022 hyping cryptocurrency as a massive growth opportunity:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/morgan-stanley-launches-cryptocurrency-research-team

Today, Morganstanley wants you to know that AI is a $6 trillion opportunity.

They’re not alone. The CEOs of Endeavor, Buzzfeed, Microsoft, Spotify, Youtube, Snap, Sports Illustrated, and CAA are all out there, pumping up the AI bubble with every hour that god sends, declaring that the future is AI.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wall-street-ai-stock-price-1235343279/

Google and Bing are locked in an arms-race to see whose search engine can attain the speediest, most profound enshittification via chatbot, replacing links to web-pages with florid paragraphs composed by fully automated, supremely confident liars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Blockchain was a solution in search of a problem. So is AI. Yes, Buzzfeed will be able to reduce its wage-bill by automating its personality quiz vertical, and Spotify’s “AI DJ” will produce slightly less terrible playlists (at least, to the extent that Spotify doesn’t put its thumb on the scales by inserting tracks into the playlists whose only fitness factor is that someone paid to boost them).

But even if you add all of this up, double it, square it, and add a billion dollar confidence interval, it still doesn’t add up to what Bank Of America analysts called “a defining moment — like the internet in the ’90s.” For one thing, the most exciting part of the “internet in the ‘90s” was that it had incredibly low barriers to entry and wasn’t dominated by large companies — indeed, it had them running scared.

The AI bubble, by contrast, is being inflated by massive incumbents, whose excitement boils down to “This will let the biggest companies get much, much bigger and the rest of you can go fuck yourselves.” Some revolution.

AI has all the hallmarks of a classic pump-and-dump, starting with terminology. AI isn’t “artificial” and it’s not “intelligent.” “Machine learning” doesn’t learn. On this week’s Trashfuture podcast, they made an excellent (and profane and hilarious) case that ChatGPT is best understood as a sophisticated form of autocomplete — not our new robot overlord.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NHKMZZNKi0w9mOhPYIL4T

We all know that autocomplete is a decidedly mixed blessing. Like all statistical inference tools, autocomplete is profoundly conservative — it wants you to do the same thing tomorrow as you did yesterday (that’s why “sophisticated” ad retargeting ads show you ads for shoes in response to your search for shoes). If the word you type after “hey” is usually “hon” then the next time you type “hey,” autocomplete will be ready to fill in your typical following word — even if this time you want to type “hey stop texting me you freak”:

https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/

And when autocomplete encounters a new input — when you try to type something you’ve never typed before — it tries to get you to finish your sentence with the statistically median thing that everyone would type next, on average. Usually that produces something utterly bland, but sometimes the results can be hilarious. Back in 2018, I started to text our babysitter with “hey are you free to sit” only to have Android finish the sentence with “on my face” (not something I’d ever typed!):

https://mashable.com/article/android-predictive-text-sit-on-my-face

Modern autocomplete can produce long passages of text in response to prompts, but it is every bit as unreliable as 2018 Android SMS autocomplete, as Alexander Hanff discovered when ChatGPT informed him that he was dead, even generating a plausible URL for a link to a nonexistent obit in The Guardian:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/

Of course, the carnival barkers of the AI pump-and-dump insist that this is all a feature, not a bug. If autocomplete says stupid, wrong things with total confidence, that’s because “AI” is becoming more human, because humans also say stupid, wrong things with total confidence.

Exhibit A is the billionaire AI grifter Sam Altman, CEO if OpenAI — a company whose products are not open, nor are they artificial, nor are they intelligent. Altman celebrated the release of ChatGPT by tweeting “i am a stochastic parrot, and so r u.”

https://twitter.com/sama/status/1599471830255177728

This was a dig at the “stochastic parrots” paper, a comprehensive, measured roundup of criticisms of AI that led Google to fire Timnit Gebru, a respected AI researcher, for having the audacity to point out the Emperor’s New Clothes:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/04/1013294/google-ai-ethics-research-paper-forced-out-timnit-gebru/

Gebru’s co-author on the Parrots paper was Emily M Bender, a computational linguistics specialist at UW, who is one of the best-informed and most damning critics of AI hype. You can get a good sense of her position from Elizabeth Weil’s New York Magazine profile:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html

Bender has made many important scholarly contributions to her field, but she is also famous for her rules of thumb, which caution her fellow scientists not to get high on their own supply:

Please do not conflate word form and meaning

Mind your own credulity

As Bender says, we’ve made “machines that can mindlessly generate text, but we haven’t learned how to stop imagining the mind behind it.” One potential tonic against this fallacy is to follow an Italian MP’s suggestion and replace “AI” with “SALAMI” (“Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences”). It’s a lot easier to keep a clear head when someone asks you, “Is this SALAMI intelligent? Can this SALAMI write a novel? Does this SALAMI deserve human rights?”

Bender’s most famous contribution is the “stochastic parrot,” a construct that “just probabilistically spits out words.” AI bros like Altman love the stochastic parrot, and are hellbent on reducing human beings to stochastic parrots, which will allow them to declare that their chatbots have feature-parity with human beings.

At the same time, Altman and Co are strangely afraid of their creations. It’s possible that this is just a shuck: “I have made something so powerful that it could destroy humanity! Luckily, I am a wise steward of this thing, so it’s fine. But boy, it sure is powerful!”

They’ve been playing this game for a long time. People like Elon Musk (an investor in OpenAI, who is hoping to convince the EU Commission and FTC that he can fire all of Twitter’s human moderators and replace them with chatbots without violating EU law or the FTC’s consent decree) keep warning us that AI will destroy us unless we tame it.

There’s a lot of credulous repetition of these claims, and not just by AI’s boosters. AI critics are also prone to engaging in what Lee Vinsel calls criti-hype: criticizing something by repeating its boosters’ claims without interrogating them to see if they’re true:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

There are better ways to respond to Elon Musk warning us that AIs will emulsify the planet and use human beings for food than to shout, “Look at how irresponsible this wizard is being! He made a Frankenstein’s Monster that will kill us all!” Like, we could point out that of all the things Elon Musk is profoundly wrong about, he is most wrong about the philosophical meaning of Wachowksi movies:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/18/lilly-wachowski-ivana-trump-elon-musk-twitter-red-pill-the-matrix-tweets

But even if we take the bros at their word when they proclaim themselves to be terrified of “existential risk” from AI, we can find better explanations by seeking out other phenomena that might be triggering their dread. As Charlie Stross points out, corporations are Slow AIs, autonomous artificial lifeforms that consistently do the wrong thing even when the people who nominally run them try to steer them in better directions:

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9270-dude_you_broke_the_future

Imagine the existential horror of a ultra-rich manbaby who nominally leads a company, but can’t get it to follow: “everyone thinks I’m in charge, but I’m actually being driven by the Slow AI, serving as its sock puppet on some days, its golem on others.”

Ted Chiang nailed this back in 2017 (the same year of the Long Island Blockchain Company):

There’s a saying, popularized by Fredric Jameson, that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. It’s no surprise that Silicon Valley capitalists don’t want to think about capitalism ending. What’s unexpected is that the way they envision the world ending is through a form of unchecked capitalism, disguised as a superintelligent AI. They have unconsciously created a devil in their own image, a boogeyman whose excesses are precisely their own.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

Chiang is still writing some of the best critical work on “AI.” His February article in the New Yorker, “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web,” was an instant classic:

[AI] hallucinations are compression artifacts, but — like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier — they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web

“AI” is practically purpose-built for inflating another hype-bubble, excelling as it does at producing party-tricks — plausible essays, weird images, voice impersonations. But as Princeton’s Matthew Salganik writes, there’s a world of difference between “cool” and “tool”:

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2023/03/08/can-chatgpt-and-its-successors-go-from-cool-to-tool/

Nature can claim “conversational AI is a game-changer for science” but “there is a huge gap between writing funny instructions for removing food from home electronics and doing scientific research.” Salganik tried to get ChatGPT to help him with the most banal of scholarly tasks — aiding him in peer reviewing a colleague’s paper. The result? “ChatGPT didn’t help me do peer review at all; not one little bit.”

The criti-hype isn’t limited to ChatGPT, of course — there’s plenty of (justifiable) concern about image and voice generators and their impact on creative labor markets, but that concern is often expressed in ways that amplify the self-serving claims of the companies hoping to inflate the hype machine.

One of the best critical responses to the question of image- and voice-generators comes from Kirby Ferguson, whose final Everything Is a Remix video is a superb, visually stunning, brilliantly argued critique of these systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswxcDyotXA

One area where Ferguson shines is in thinking through the copyright question — is there any right to decide who can study the art you make? Except in some edge cases, these systems don’t store copies of the images they analyze, nor do they reproduce them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

For creators, the important material question raised by these systems is economic, not creative: will our bosses use them to erode our wages? That is a very important question, and as far as our bosses are concerned, the answer is a resounding yes.

Markets value automation primarily because automation allows capitalists to pay workers less. The textile factory owners who purchased automatic looms weren’t interested in giving their workers raises and shorting working days. ‘ They wanted to fire their skilled workers and replace them with small children kidnapped out of orphanages and indentured for a decade, starved and beaten and forced to work, even after they were mangled by the machines. Fun fact: Oliver Twist was based on the bestselling memoir of Robert Blincoe, a child who survived his decade of forced labor:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm

Today, voice actors sitting down to record for games companies are forced to begin each session with “My name is ______ and I hereby grant irrevocable permission to train an AI with my voice and use it any way you see fit.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

Let’s be clear here: there is — at present — no firmly established copyright over voiceprints. The “right” that voice actors are signing away as a non-negotiable condition of doing their jobs for giant, powerful monopolists doesn’t even exist. When a corporation makes a worker surrender this right, they are betting that this right will be created later in the name of “artists’ rights” — and that they will then be able to harvest this right and use it to fire the artists who fought so hard for it.

There are other approaches to this. We could support the US Copyright Office’s position that machine-generated works are not works of human creative authorship and are thus not eligible for copyright — so if corporations wanted to control their products, they’d have to hire humans to make them:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/21/22944335/us-copyright-office-reject-ai-generated-art-recent-entrance-to-paradise

Or we could create collective rights that belong to all artists and can’t be signed away to a corporation. That’s how the right to record other musicians’ songs work — and it’s why Taylor Swift was able to re-record the masters that were sold out from under her by evil private-equity bros::

https://doctorow.medium.com/united-we-stand-61e16ec707e2

Whatever we do as creative workers and as humans entitled to a decent life, we can’t afford drink the Blockchain Iced Tea. That means that we have to be technically competent, to understand how the stochastic parrot works, and to make sure our criticism doesn’t just repeat the marketing copy of the latest pump-and-dump.

Today (Mar 9), you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

Tomorrow (Mar 10), Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

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

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

[Image ID: A graph depicting the Gartner hype cycle. A pair of HAL 9000's glowing red eyes are chasing each other down the slope from the Peak of Inflated Expectations to join another one that is at rest in the Trough of Disillusionment. It, in turn, sits atop a vast cairn of HAL 9000 eyes that are piled in a rough pyramid that extends below the graph to a distance of several times its height.]

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beardedmrbean · 26 days ago

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The Market of Sweethearts has nothing on Brooklyn’s seedy Penn Track.

East New York’s notorious open-air sex market has seen an explosion of scantily clad prostitutes in the area near Pennsylvania Avenue, prompting a local pol to plead for cops to crack down as parents are forced to shield their children’s eyes and residents wake up to used condoms scattered across their condo parking lots.

“We need the same attention the police department is paying to Roosevelt Avenue, to bring it out to East New York … to help address the issue,” City Councilman Chris Banks told The Post.

The Post encountered nearly a dozen skimpily dressed hookers Wednesday night, standing beside parked city Sanitation Department and semi-trailer trucks along Georgia and Malta avenues, bringing sleazy drivers to a stop and even jamming up traffic as they chatted up potential johns.

“You’d like to hang out?” one prostitute, who wore black platform boots and a tiny skirt exposing most of her derriere, asked a Post reporter.

After offering sex for $120 or oral for $85, she advised, “I know a spot we can go,” before being turned down.

Another woman on the block promised a good time in the backseat of the scribe’s Chevy Malibu for $140.

“You don’t have tinted windows? We’re going to have to fishbowl it,” cooed the sex worker, who wore thigh-high boots along with a red and black leather jacket.

Longtime locals bemoaned brazen prostitutes hawking sex in broad daylight, less than four blocks from PS 306.

“Had there been an early response to this, it would’ve brought the activity down, [but] it’s been allowed to fester over the last couple years,” said a frustrated Banks, who supported the recently passed hotel licensing bill aimed at cracking down on “bad actors” profiting off the illicit sex trade.

Through Oct. 27, police have made 18 prostitution-related arrests along the Penn Track, including 12 for patronizing prostitutes, compared to 19 during the same period in 2023, with 16 johns being busted. During this period in 2022, just four arrests were made in the area, all for prostitution.

Migrant women staying in nearby shelters are believed to be fueling the prostitution surge at Penn Track, historically the domain of young black sex workers, Banks and a women’s advocate said.

The prostitutes are being extorted by pimps, the advocate explained — some of whom have been busted for allegedly forcing girls as young as 16 to work the streets and gunning down rivals in flesh-peddling turf wars.

“It’s all pimp-controlled,” said the advocate, who requested anonymity. “You can’t work independently there.”

City Hall and the NYPD have made “a lot of verbal commitments” to provide additional resources for tackling the prostitution in his district, but “we haven’t seen the boots on the ground,” Banks said.

An NYPD spokesperson said police have focused their patrol efforts in the Penn Track area and will continue to address the issue.

City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mama said Mayor Eric Adams “has made it clear that lawlessness, particularly the exploitation of women, will not be tolerated or ignored.”

While roughly 50-plus cops were seen patrolling Roosevelt Avenue on a Wednesday night two weeks ago, The Post observed only a pair of cops in an NYPD cruiser and in an unmarked car around the prostitution hub over the course of four hours Wednesday.

“Be careful,” two officers in the unmarked sedan warned a reporter they initially believed to be a john. “You don’t want to be in The Post.”

#nunyas news

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kallie-den · 1 year ago

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Renewable Energy: Trend Setting

Malacanthe is a high-powered businesswoman succubus who hopes that her newly-brainwashed perma-virgin will be the perfect accessory to show up her social rival, Juiblexia, at brunch. But when Juiblexia has a perma-virgin of her own, the only thing left to do is to publicly settle the question: who's virgin is the most pathetic?

Another followup to Renewable Energy, set a little further along after Ziratha's invention has just begun to take off

If you enjoy my work and are looking for more, or you want to support me, I strongly encourage you to check out my Patreon! I write erotica full-time, which means I need your patronage to keep creating, and my Patrons also get benefits like early access to my stories, extra stories, and the ability to vote on what I write next! So, if that sounds good to you, head over and join the couple hundred patrons I already have :)

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Malacanthe checked her expensive watch impatiently; as always, Juiblexia was late. ‘Fashionably late’, in her terminology, although Malacanthe firmly believed there was nothing fashionable about tardiness. Every time they met up, Malacanthe was tempted to arrive even later, just to show her ‘friend’ what it felt like to be kept waiting for a change. The main reason she didn’t was that she sensed Juiblexia would delight in seeing her sink to the other succubus’s level.

It was always like that with her. Juiblexia had an infuriating way of taking everything in stride and turning everything to her advantage - but not this time. This time, Malacanthe held the trump card that was sure to put her friend in her place once and for all.

“Hana,” she called expectantly. “Come here.”

The shorter human accompanying her hurried to obey. It wasn’t like she could stray far, not with Malacanthe holding the leash that was tied to her wrist. Malacanthe immediately started fussing over the trans girl, making sure every last hair on her head was in place and smoothing out her long, tasteful skirt. A smile came to Malacanthe’s face, especially once her refined, demonic senses started to pick up on the surge of arousal coming from her new pet.

Hana was something special. A perma-virgin.

It was the very newest thing. A succubus named Ziratha - a genius, clearly - had created a device called a Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit, a kind of helmet that could regress a normal human into a perma-virgin - someone permanently arrested in a state of total, inescapable virginity as far as their sexual skills, mores, and energy output were concerned.

The result was nothing short of miraculous. Before, sexual energy had been a declining, non-renewable resource. Virgins, the tastiest and most nourishing meals, had to be taken sparingly. Now, virgin energy could be harvested endlessly and infinitely from just a single partner. Thanks to all that energy, Malacanthe had become a vastly magnified version of her former self; tall, looming, and lithe, with elegant, spiraling horns and a tail that had split in two halfway down its length. She looked and felt better than ever.

But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was that, as of yet, the Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit hadn’t reached market. It was still navigating a few regulatory obstacles, and as a result, the only devices out there were a few dozen testing units. The technology was still so new that most people hadn’t heard of it, and those few units were fantastically expensive and all but impossible to get a hold of.

But Malacanthe had managed it.

Her Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit had cost a fortune, but thanks to her position as the CEO of a large and prestigious company, Malacanthe could afford it. She was absolutely sure that this was the next big thing, and that she was so far ahead of the curve that it was sure to make Juiblexia green with envy. Malacanthe was still seething from their last brunch friend-date, when the socialite had one-upped her brand-new tail sheathe from Christian Dior’s latest range with a one-of-a-kind, custom-made set of horn adornments from Louis Vuitton. The embarrassment!

But now, at long last, she was going to get one over on her friend. That was why Malacanthe was so impatient. She simply couldn’t wait to see the look Hana was going to put on Juiblexia’s face.

“Oh, hi darling! I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

Malacanthe turned at the sound of her friend’s voice, plastering an insincere smile on her face. “Juiblexia! So good to see you! Not at all - in fact, I only just arrived.”

Once she caught sight of her friend, Malacanthe’s smile wavered by just a hair. Juiblexia looked good. Too good.

She was taller. Almost as tall as Malacanthe, which made her at least eight feet. Juiblexia had always been decidedly Rubenesque, but her weight and softness seemed to have grown even more than her height, leaving her with a jaw-droppingly voluptuous figure that radiated magnificence and presence. The kinked bull horns on her head had become similarly huge, and her tail was a thick pillar of alluring, demonic flesh. As usual, Juiblexia was wearing a long, flowing, sheer, low-cut dress that accentuated all her best assets and showed off a tasteful but daring amount of pink-tinted skin.

She looked like a queen, and it was making Malacanthe furious.

“Darling, you look wonderful!” Juiblexia exclaimed. A broad smile was on her face, but it was just a little too tight. “But, who’s your cute little friend? You should have warned me!”

Malacanthe’s confidence was starting to return. She could tell Juiblexia was displeased.

“Hardly a friend,” she replied. “More of a pet, you see. She’s lovely, and so well-trained, even if I do need to keep her on a leash. I wouldn’t want her to wander off. Some people might even be tempted to try and poach her kind.”

“Her kind?” Juiblexia tilted her head, affecting a casual curiosity Malacanthe could tell was feigned. “Whatever do you mean, darling?”

A smirk came to Malacanthe’s face. This was her moment. “A perma-virgin. I suppose you must not have heard of them yet. I know the circles you move in can be so old-fashioned. But they’re to die for, I can promise you. You really must get one - well, as soon as you can, anyway.”

Juiblexia was an old-money socialite, and proud of it. Her family was the richest of the rich. The kind of people who had never truly worked a day in their lives, and were proud of it. Malacanthe despised them. She knew they loved looking down their noses at “nouveau riche” succubi like her - almost as much as they loved bragging about which circle of hell their families were originally from. But they had money and they had influence, and so Malacanthe’s role as CEO often required her to rub shoulders with them and suck up to them. It was how she and Juiblexia had met.

“Such kind advice!” Juiblexia exclaimed. “But there’s really no need. Simone, come! Stop hiding, you silly girl.”

It was only then that Malacanthe noticed the leash tucked around Juiblexia’s wrist. As the other succubus tugged on it, her heart sank. And a moment later, Juiblexia’s very own perma-virgin emerged into view.

Simone had an athletic body and a genuine varsity team jacket, but none of the confidence that usually went with them. She had been completely hiding behind Juiblexia’s large, plush body, and now that she was in the spotlight, she had adopted a deer-in-headlights expression that Malacanthe had learned was the perma-virgin trademark. The presence of two such enhanced succubi was making her arousal flare, and she began to cling to Juiblexia’s side for comfort.

Suddenly, Juiblexia’s remarkable glow-up made perfect sense. Malacanthe was seething with rage at having her victory stolen, and the only consolation was knowing that Juiblexia was almost certainly just as mad. There was only one thing she could do to save face: try not to let her disappointment show.

“Wow!” she cooed. “She’s lovely. But…” Her curiosity got the better of her, she couldn’t help it. “How did you get a Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit?”

“Oh, dearest Mommy knows all the right people,” Juiblexia replied disdainfully. “And… you? I suppose you had to pay for it.”

“That’s usually how people get things,” Malacanthe shot back. “With their own money, in fact. It’s much nicer than having to rely on your family name to get you everything. You should try it!”

“Malacanthe! You’re so funny, as always.” The two of them laughed like it was nothing more than a friendly joke. Then, Juiblexia bent down to peer at Hana. “And yours is… well, she’s so you, darling.”

Malacanthe took that as a compliment, even though she knew it wasn’t meant as one. In fact, she’d selected Hana to be her pet precisely because the two of them were such a good match. Hana was an exceptionally bright, hard-working, ambitious college student who’d won a summer internship at Malacanthe’s company. After Malacanthe had seduced her and persuaded her to try the Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit, her demeanor had changed a little - but in Malacanthe’s eyes, she was perfect.

Naturally, she’d co-ordinated both of their outfits. Even at a friendly brunch, Malacanthe liked to dress formal. She was wearing a tailored blazer with matching pants and a white shirt, open at the collar. She’d dressed Hana up in a pretty, white blouse and a long, gray, pleated skirt. Along with her glasses and her ponytail, it made her look wonderfully demure. Perfect, for the preppy college student.

“Thank you,” Malacanthe replied gracefully, before gesturing to a nearby restaurant. “Shall we head inside?”

The two of them were standing directly in front of Apolline’s, the city’s finest and most exclusive bakery-cum-restaurant. It was particularly popular amongst succubi and getting a reservation there usually took months, but Malacanthe had been able to secure one for herself and Juiblexia within the week. A server was immediately there to greet them at the door, and mimosas were already waiting for them at their usual table - a cute little diner-style booth, right by the window.

No one asked about Hana or Simone. Their leashes - Hana’s tied around her wrist, Simone’s around her neck - made their status more than clear.

Happily, Apolline’s permitted pets.

Once they were seated, each succubus-human pair opposite the other, an unhappy silence descended on the group, punctuated only by the occasional sound of Juiblexia slurping at her mimosa. Both Hana and Simone looked woefully uncomfortable, and were clearly trying to look anywhere except at the two statuesque succubi next to them. Simply looking at a woman could be difficult for perma-virgins; looking at a sex demon who had been enhanced by an unending flood of unholy vitality was beyond overwhelming. Malacanthe, meanwhile, was still stewing with frustration at Juiblexia for having stolen her thunder, and she could sense that the feeling was mutual.

“Hana?” Simone said suddenly, in a hushed voice, like she was hoping the succubi wouldn’t hear. “I-is that… that’s really you, right?”

Hana didn’t reply. She turned her head aside haughtily, but her cheeks were tinged with color.

“Wow,” Simone breathed, undissuaded. “You too. That’s really something.”

It was hard to tell if she was appalled or amused. Or both.

“Oh my!” Juiblexia purred, turning to her pet. “What’s this? Do you two know each other?”

Simone immediately shrank into herself as she felt the weight of Juiblexia’s attention on her. But it wasn’t fear that made her recoil. It was arousal.

“Hana?” Malacanthe gave Hana’s leash a gentle but insistent tug. She was just as curious as Juiblexia. “Is this true?”

Hana immediately blushed and looked down under the table, and nodded.

“Well, well, well!” Juiblexia seemed delighted by the new development. “What a surprise! Malacanthe, darling, I know they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but you really could have gone a little further afield.”

Malacanthe started grinding her teeth. “Where did you find yours?”

“At the college,” Juiblexia replied smugly. “Simone’s quite something, you know. A real varsity girl. Ace of the women’s soccer team. She was so confident, and so eager to brag about adding a succubus like myself to her already-impressive tally. In bed, she was so very cocky, and up for anything. Until… well, you know.” She winked. “And you?”

“Hana’s also a student. She applied for a summer internship at my company. Her résumé caught my eye at once.” Malacanthe’s competitive urge immediately roused itself. She couldn’t resist bragging. “She’s a top student. Truly exceptional. A shoo-in for valedictorian. She worked very hard, and she was so flattered by my attention. So, of course, I had to make her mine.”

“I’m sure!” Juiblexia let out a rambunctious laugh that made her whole body jiggle, and the table along with it. She turned to Simone. “So, bauble, spill it! What’s the story?”

Simone blushed very deeply, especially when Juiblexia reached over and started patting her on the head no differently from how she might have petted a beloved puppy, messing up Simone’s radiant, blonde hair in the process.

“I… we… um…” she spluttered. Watching her struggle like this, Malacanthe found it impossible to picture her as the cocky college athlete she’d been before Ziratha’s device had worked its magic. “We… know each other from, um, college.”

“Oh? Are you friends?” Juiblexia tittered. “How cute!”

“No!” Hana cried, her voice tense. “With her? Please.”

She seemed to regret her outburst when both Juiblexia and Malacanthe immediately rounded on her.

“Exes, then?” Malacanthe probed, eyes alight with curiosity.

“N-n-no!” Hana protested, cheeks burning.

“Then… rivals?” Juiblexia speculated. The looks on the humans’ faces seemed to confirm that. “Wonderful! Prep versus jock. A tale as old as time.”

“Tell me more,” Malacanthe demanded of her pet. “Now, Hana.”

“S-she…” Hana’s cheeks were burning and she was rubbing her legs together beneath her skirt, uncomfortably aware of Malacanthe’s closeness. “S-she brings the school into disrepute! All that f-flirting and s-s-s-sleeping around with other girls! As the r-representative of the varsity team, she should act more responsibly.”

“That’s so dumb!” Simone exclaimed. She looked utterly mortified at the mention of her promiscuity. “L-little miss perfect student wants college to be nothing more than classes and tests. Some of us actually want to live. Maybe you should try going out and g-getting l… la… um… having fun for a change.”

The two humans glared fiercely at each other, even as they squirmed and blushed with superhuman levels of arousal and embarrassment. A smile played across Malacanthe’s face. It was a little like watching two puppies yap at each other.

“Ladies!” At that moment, a young, diminutive, succubus waitress appeared at their booth. “Can I take your orders?”

At once, her nostrils started to flare and she stared at Hana and Simone with barely-disguised lust in her eyes. Malacanthe wasn’t surprised. Any succubus could smell a normal virgin at ten paces, and these weren’t just normal virgins. Their energy was at peak potency, constantly elevated by shame and arousal. Being around Juiblexia and Malacanthe certainly wasn’t helping matters. Especially now, the two succubi exuded powerful auras of lust and desire, and the perma-virgins were as ill-equipped to handle it as possible.

“I’ll have a selection of the house pastries,” Malacanthe said. She gestured to Hana, who opened her mouth, but Malacanthe spoke for her. “Nothing for her. She’s watching her figure.”

Hana looked faintly disappointed but didn’t argue.

“The same for me,” Juiblexia told the waitress. “Only, make it a deluxe selection. Oh, and Simone here will have a set of macarons and a Danish.”

Simone looked surprised and tugged nervously at Juiblexia’s sleeve. “B-but,” she whispered. “C-couch said I’m supposed to… I mean, with the big game coming up…”

“Nonsense!” Juiblexia scoffed merrily. “My bauble deserves a special treat.”

She started petting Simone again, which was more than enough to silence her.

“Of course. That’ll be ready shortly.” The waitress nodded and headed back to the kitchen, although not without a parting look of longing at the two perma-virgins.

That was one of the reasons Malacanthe kept Hana on a leash, and she presumed it was the same for Juiblexia and Simone. The last thing either of them wanted was for another succubus to try and steal their precious perma-virgins away.

“You know, you should really give her something,” Juiblexia complained, glancing at Hana. “Her figure is just fine. If you ask me, she could use a little extra meat.”

She licked her lips. Hana quivered like she was about to cream herself.

“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t,” Malacanthe retorted tersely. “I’ve no wish to spoil her. Perhaps you should think about that.”

Juiblexia just shrugged. “I’m thinking of you, darling. If nothing else, she’ll need some energy if you want to be able to enjoy her properly.”

She filled the word ‘enjoy’ with enough sultry lust to make both humans at the table shiver and squirm.

“Thank you. But you needn’t be concerned.” A thin smile came to Malacanthe’s face. She reached over and rested a hand on the back of Hana’s neck, massaging her. Hana let out a squeak. “My Hana is perfectly enjoyable. Always. You wouldn’t believe how good she is. Unlike some, I know how to get my girls performing properly.”

She looked pointedly across at Juiblexia. Hana, meanwhile, looked like she was about to explode. She was looking down, an expression of utmost shame on her face, and couldn’t stop tugging frantically at her skirt.

“Oh I’d believe it,” Juiblexia purred, taking another sip from her mimosa. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s… adequate. But, darling, you’ve never had quite the right eye for taste. Forgive me for saying so. It’s what comes from a rough upbringing, I suppose. Take it from me: a girl like Simone is so much better.”

Simone had been looking faintly amused at Hana’s plight. For her, it was clearly satisfying to see the uptight valedictorian squirm and be spoken about in such vulgar terms. When attention shifted back to her, though, she started spluttering and choking. Her face lit up briefly with smug pride at Juiblexia’s praise, but it soon turned, becoming far more embarrassed and uncertain as she blushed.

She might have been a stud before, but she was a virgin now.

“I’m surprised, Juiblexia,” Malacanthe retorted. “Even for you, that’s cliché. The big, popular, athletic girl? It’s been done already. Her type has always been popular amongst succubi. You should try updating your fashion a little. Broaden your horizons. Get a little more experimental. You wouldn’t want to be left behind.”

She was hoping to deflate Juiblexia a little, but the other succubus just puffed herself up even further.

“Darling! I thought you’d know better than to judge a book by its cover,” she scolded. “My Simone is very special.”

“Sure.” Malacanthe rolled her eyes. Juiblexia was nothing but hot air. She was sure of it. “But she’s got nothing on my Hana.”

“Hmm.” Juiblexia’s eyes flashed suddenly. “Would you care to put that to the test?”

“What do you mean?” Malacanthe asked guardedly.

Juiblexia licked her lips again. “A friendly competition.”

“I’m game,” Malacanthe replied at once. A competition was perfect. She’d take any chance she got to put Juiblexia in her place. “What did you have in mind?”

“Let’s keep it simple,” Juiblexia proposed. “Whoever can get the most out of their perma-virgin wins. The most energy. The greatest nourishment. The richest, most delightful flavor. I’m sure you get the picture.”

“You’re on.” Malancathe was grinning. She couldn’t wait. She was going to make Juiblexia realize that fawning over sports players was beyond passé. “Allow me to demonstrate Hana’s most admirable qualities.”

Before her pet could brace herself, Malacanthe leaned over and wrapped a hand around Hana’s head to cradle her and prevent her from pulling away. Then, she put her lips to the poor perma-virgin’s neck and started to kiss her. Her kisses were long, languid, and hungry; she took her time drawing her tongue in slow strokes across Hana’s skin, peeling away the student’s high collar and drooling a little on her pretty blouse. Malacanthe’s tongue seemed impossibly long, and as she unfolded it further and further out of her mouth, she started coiling it, serpentine, around Hana’s neck.

The effect her affections had on the human was dramatic and immediate. Hana was trying as hard as she possibly could to remain dignified and unmoved - and it wasn’t working. She stared determinedly at a single point underneath the table as her cheeks turned a deep, furious red and she started to quiver. The poor girl was gripping the folds of her skirt so hard her knuckles had turned white; she seemed to be trying to smooth out the garment, but with little success. A distinctive bulge was already forming a tent beneath the fabric.

Peering over the table, Juiblexia licked her lips again as she noted that Hana was already rock hard.

“So that’s your preferred flavor?” the curvy succubus asked. “Darling, I approve! Trans girls make for so much fun.”

Malacanthe allowed herself a smug smile. “Indeed. But that wasn’t all I meant when I said Hana was special. You’ll see.” She kissed Hana again, but this time sucked hard enough to leave a bright red mark. “I just need to get her worked up properly first.”

As Malacanthe gave her the hickey, Hana sat up completely straight and rigid, like she was being struck by lightning. She was struggling not to pant.

Neither of the succubi needed to look at her to know how painfully aroused she was, though. They could sense it. The raw, untapped, sexual energy within her was blazing like a beacon. Her alluring virgin-scent poured out of her, so dense and heavy it was like a fog. Neither Malacanthe nor Juiblexia were wanting for nourishment, but Hana’s arousal was making each of them ravenous. And they weren’t the only ones; some of Apolline’s other succubus patrons were already turning to look, expressions of undisguised envy on their faces.

“Well, don’t think I’ll let you get too much of a head start,” Juiblexia commented. “Come here, Simone.”

Simone already looked decidedly uncomfortable with what was going on on the opposite side of the table. She was red in the face and shivered, and when Juiblexia called her name, she flinched, but nonetheless obediently pulled closer to the statuesque succubus.

“A succubus getting a girl all worked up from a kiss doesn’t strike me as very impressive, darling,” Juiblexia commented, throwing one of her big arms across Simone’s shoulder. “Watch and learn.”

With a big, theatrical gesture, she reached down and stroked a few of her fingertips along Simone’s hip.

Malacanthe wasn’t expecting much. Simone was wearing jeans, after all. She was shocked, then, when the jock girl immediately exploded into motion, squirming and thrashing madly like she was already in the throes of orgasm. Staccato moans filled the air as Simone was wracked with pleasure, and after a few moments, she turned to cling tightly to Juiblexia, taking paradoxical comfort in the succubus who was tormenting her.

Juiblexia let out a satisfied purr at the look on Malacanthe’s face.

“Hyper-sensitivity,” she explained proudly. “With the right education, everything is sexual. And our sweet little things are so poorly-equipped to handle that, aren’t they? You add to that a little sensory deprivation here, a little over-stimulation there, and… well. I think the results speak for themselves.”

Despite herself, Malacanthe was impressed. She could feel the rich glow of Simone’s arousal, and even though Juiblexia had already stopped caressing her thigh, the human’s moans were only slowly dying away. Clearly, Juiblexia had been experimenting with her Transcranial Magical Stimulation Unit. Extracting so much with so little was quite the feat.

Not that she would ever tell that to Juiblexia.

“Perhaps,” Malacanthe sniffed. “But we’re only just beginning. Hana, let me-“

“Excuse me,” came a nervous voice. “Um… I have your orders.”

Both Malacanthe and Juiblexia turned to see the waitress from earlier standing next to their table, pushing a cart that was stacked high with rich, fancy pastries. At first she simply looked awkward, but after a few moments in close proximity to two pent-up virgins she started drooling lustfully.

“Thank you?” Juiblexia prompted.

“R-right,” the succubus waitress said nervously. “Here you go.”

She started handing out various plates, all the while throwing wanton glances at Hana and Simone, both of whom looked like they desperately hoped the ground beneath them was about to open up and swallow them. The word ‘mortified’ was wholly inadequate, and they only looked more pained as the waitress started to sweat visibly from sheer need.

“W-will there be anything else?” she asked in a pained voice.

“No, thank you,” Malacanthe said stiffly.

“Then, enjoy your, um, food.”

The waitress left the table, although as she walked away she looked over her shoulder longingly a few times. Juiblexia preened, apparently enjoying the envy, whilst Malacanthe growled. Hana belonged to her, and her alone.

“You see?” Juiblexia taunted. “Everyone admires my Simone.”

That instantly lit a fire under Malacanthe. “Don’t be foolish,” she shot back. “She was obviously looking at my Hana. Who wouldn’t?”

“I’m simply not sure what there is to look at, darling.” Juiblexia’s face was drawn into a crafty, poisonous smirk. “Uptight schoolgirl getting a little too hot and bothered? We’ve all seen it.”

“Not like this.” Now it was Malacanthe’s turn to smirk. “Just wait and see. All it takes is pushing the right buttons. You’re not the only one who’s been doing a little experimenting.”

She turned to Hana. Now, the trans girl was truly sweating. She kept shaking her head and throwing nervous glances across to Simone. Clearly, she didn’t want her rival to see this. But Malacanthe wasn’t inclined to be merciful. Not when she needed to show off.

“Hana,” Malacanthe cooed. “I need you inside me.”

Immediately, Hana shuddered. Her back arched, and a wet moan escaped from her lips. The tent in her skirt twitched.

“Don’t you need to be inside me too?” Malacanthe’s voice, usually so stiff and stern, became breathy and shockingly seductive. “I can tell you do.”

Hana whimpered. The tent in her skirt kept growing, and her hips were starting to move, like she was inadvertently thrusting against the fabric of her own clothes. Her eyes were starting to turn wild and roll back into her own head.

“You’re so big,” Malacanthe whispered, putting her mouth near Hana’s ear and letting her long tongue drool out of her mouth. “So… so virile.”

Another whimper, louder and more strained than the last. Hana opened her mouth but no words came out, only drool.

“It’s been days since we last fucked.” Hana twitched, visibly uncomfortable with the curse word. “I bet your balls are so full. Throbbing. Churning. I can’t stop thinking about it. About how much you could fill me up right now.”

“N-n-n-noooo,” Hana protested, shaking her head from side to side. The proud, morally-upright valedictorian was coming apart at the seams. There was nothing dignified about her now.

“Yes,” Malacanthe teased. She reached down and let a few of her fingertips play in the air over Hana’s bulge. “I need it, Hana. I need you to breed me.”

At the word ‘breed’, Hana gave up holding back. She moaned long and loud, her drool forming into froth at her lips, and the wild, twitching motion of her head turned from shaking into nodding.

“Breed me,” Malacanthe urged. “Knock me up. Pump me full of your cum, Hana. I need to feel you filling me up. Don’t you need it too? Don’t you need to get my belly nice and full?”

“Yes!” Hana panted. Her cheeks were still burning with shame but, stoked by Malacanthe’s words, her desperation was enough to overcome it. She had a virgin’s overeagerness. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Malacanthe turned to glance pointedly at Juiblexia. The other succubus looked, despite herself, hungry and faintly envious. It was easy to see why. To the keen, supernatural senses of a succubus, Hana was lit up like a lighthouse, impossibly aroused and impossibly ripe for feeding on.

Victory.

Usually, people assumed that a virgin with a succubus was like a mouse caught in a trap. And usually, they were right. Most virgins were passive and uncertain, and most succubi were active and predatory. Malacanthe, though, had a taste for something different. She liked her pets to do the work for her. And she had found that, with the right conditioning and the right encouragement, it was entirely possible to turn a blushing virgin into a rutting beast.

That was the other reason she’d chosen Hana: the latent breeding kink she’d been able to pick up on.

And now, thanks to Ziratha’s invention and her own skill, it wasn’t latent at all. By teasing the right fantasies, she could get Hana so worked up that she was about to have a mind-breaking orgasm - all without even touching her.

“So,” Malacanthe said to Juiblexia, smirking, while Hana tugged at her arm and bucked her hips into the air. “Ready to concede defeat?”

“Hardly.” Now it was Juiblexia who sounded terse. “We’re just warming up, after all. Simone, dear.”

“H-huh?”

The aroused jock girl perked up at the sound of her name being called. She had seemed all but hypnotized by the sight of what Malacanthe was doing to Hana, squirming from both discomfort and fascination in equal measure. Simone turned to look up at Juiblexia, and immediately started to let out shrill, wordless protests when Juiblexia put her hands on Simone’s waist, lifted her bodily into the air, and set her back down in the plump succubus’s warm, inviting lap.

“C-c’mon,” she pleaded weakly “N-n-not in front of h-her, can’t- ah!”

She broke off into pitiful moaning when Juiblexia completely blew past her protests and started running her hands all over Simone’s body.

Juiblexia wasn’t groping, exactly. She didn’t need to. Even the lightest possible touches across Simone’s body, through her clothes, were enough to reduce the perma-virginized girl to a trembling, drooling, moaning mess. There was something almost juvenile about it; Juiblexia’s touch was like the heavy petting teens gave each other when they were playing seven minutes in heaven and were too nervous to truly reach for second base.

From the look on Juiblexia’s face, it was clear that seeing someone who had been so strong, so proud, so sexually confident, brought to the point of orgasm by something so innocent was at least half the pleasure.

"You might be able to get your pet virgin drooling with just a few words,” Juiblexia purred. “But look what I can do to mine with just… this.”

With ease, she pried Simone’s legs apart and then, after pointedly holding up a single finger, dragged it along Simone’s sensitive inner thigh.

This touch, so much more intimate than simple petting, made Simone go wild. She thrashed like mad, limbs splaying apart and flailing so violently she might have tipped over the table if not for Juiblexia effortlessly restraining her. The expression on the jock girl’s face transcended pleasure and became pained again, like she was completely, unbearably overwhelmed by what she was feeling. A stain formed of her wetness began to seep through the front of her jeans, attesting to the thunderous orgasms tearing through Simone.

Within moments, the whole of Apolline’s was filled with the heady scent of Simone’s arousal.

“So,” Juiblexia said, looking up at Malacanthe with a grin on her face. “Would you like to concede, darling?”

Malacanthe glared at her furiously. She would never, ever give in to Juiblexia - and besides, her hunger was only growing. She plastered a seductive smile, full of sinister promise, over her frown and turned to Hana.

“Hana?” she cooed, in a simpering voice. “Won’t you come and knock me up?”

The perma-virgin’s eyes flashed with untempered lust, before she glanced nervously around the room. “B-but… um… aren’t we….”

“Hana,” Malacanthe interrupted, injecting as much lust and need into her voice as possible. “Come fuck a baby into me.”

That was all it took to completely break the hopeless perma-virgin.

“P-p-please!” Hana cried, suddenly pawing at Malacanthe. An awed expression came to her face, like she couldn’t believe her luck.

“Here,” Malacanthe instructed, smirking. “Now.”

She reached down and unbuttoned her pants. Immediately, Hana started to clamber on top of her, tearing clumsily at her own skirt. Uncontrolled arousal made her so uncoordinated she couldn’t seem to remove her clothes, and was tearing up in frustration before Malacanthe reached out to help her. Once she was naked, all eyes were on Hana’s hard, proud, dripping cock. She was blushing and trembling furiously with overwhelming shame, but her need was greater, especially when Malacanthe pulled her panties aside to expose her pussy and propped each of her legs up on the table on either side of her pet.

With a pitiful, humiliated squeak, Hana thrust forward and entered her owner.

Watching on the other side of the table, Juiblexia wasn’t about to be outdone. She started unceremoniously stripping Simone without giving the overwhelmed virgin even a moment to recover. Simone whined in protest, but she was far, far too weak to stop the voluptuous succubus from removing her varsity jacket, then her jeans, and then her tank top.

But she stopped there, leaving Simone in her sports bra and matching boxers. Unlike Malacanthe, Juiblexia wasn’t interested in sex. In fact, she had firmly resolved that, after her rebirth as a blushing perma-virgin, Simone should remain as pure and virginal as possible.

She just wanted to show off what bare, skin-to-skin contact would do to her.

Sure enough, as soon as Simone felt Juiblexia’s bare skin against hers, she came explosively. Her boxers were already hopelessly soaked through, but now her wetness started dripping from her thighs, soaking Juiblexia’s lap and forming a wet, sticky puddle on the floor underneath. Simone started screaming her moans in a voice so loud and so needy it filled the entire restaurant and made every head turn. After a few seconds she ran out of breath, but she kept arching her back and throwing back her head, screaming wordless bliss with a ridiculous, pleasure-drunk expression on her face.

And all simply because Juiblexia had been stroking down her side, and running a hand over her bare arm.

“P-p-p-please!” Simone howled, after finding the strength to take a breath. “I’m not… ngghhh… I’m not r-ready yettt…”

“For a little heavy petting?” Juiblexia mocked, resting a hand on Simone’s belly to make her squirm. “Aren’t you just precious?”

Meanwhile, opposite them, Malacanthe and Hana had progressed far beyond heavy petting. Malacanthe was leaning back, legs up and apart, whilst Hana mounted the much larger succubus. Hana was unbelievably red in the face and was rutting into Malacanthe with quick, eager, clumsy, desperate strokes, all of her proud, stiff composure now hopelessly lost. All she was thinking about was how badly she needed to pump her load into Malacanthe.

And Malacanthe, drinking greedily from the perma-virgin’s energy, looked prouder and stronger than ever.

"Harder,” she said to Hana in a lover’s whisper. “More. Fill me up. Knock me up.”

Hana was already cumming, but one orgasm wasn’t nearly enough for the pent-up perma-virgin. She just kept going, pumping more and more of her load into Malacanthe with each thrust, eyes rolled back into her skull from the impossible, overwhelming pleasure of multiple orgasms, each one riding on the next, her brain now hard-wired so that she couldn’t possible acclimate herself to it.

“I love you!” Hana babbled, a broad, goofy, addled grin spreading across her face. “I love you, I love you, I love you!”

Malacanthe didn’t say it back, but she did smile fondly at her pet. She loved seeing Hana reduced to this.

Simone was just as ruined; even Malacanthe couldn’t deny that. The jock girl was rolling her hips now, rubbing herself on nothing but her own boxers, and the motion made it look, more than anything, like she was simply trying to snuggle deeper into Juiblexia’s lap. Juiblexia’s hands were still all over her and they were slowly becoming more possessive and more intrusive, but they still did nothing more than trace the swell of her breasts and tease the hem of her boxers.

Juiblexia was determined to give her once-cocky pet no more than the barest taste of real, mature sex.

It might not have been sex, but Juiblexia was nourished by it all the same. Her face was flush and her eyes were shining, and Malacanthe could sense her drawing energy from her pet. It was difficult for her not to envy the exquisite flavor she was surely getting from Simone, even as she could tell Juiblexia was coveting Hana’s.

Which begged a question:

“How do we decide who wins?” Malacanthe asked, in a voice punctuated by breathy pants every time Hana thrust into her.

“We…” Juiblexia frowned. “Ah. Perhaps I overlooked something, darling.”

The two of them shared an awkward look before they were again interrupted. Not by the waitress, but by someone who was clearly more senior. It was the manager. Another succubus, she was dressed smartly, and wore a displeased look on her face.

“Ladies,” she said stiffly. “We here at Apolline’s aim to curate a permissive and lively atmosphere, and allow our patrons to enjoy pleasures beyond simply our baking.” Her frown deepened when she noticed the pastries that had been brought to the table earlier, still untouched. “Nonetheless, we have received a few comments about the level of noise coming fr-“

Her words died in her throat once she caught Hana and Simone’s scents from up close.

The polite, managerial stiffness in her demeanor vanished in a single moment. She started leaning forward, a ravenous look on her face. A red blush strained her cheeks, and drool fell from her lips to stain her immaculate uniform. Her stomach growled with hunger.

Malacanthe and Juiblexia exchanged another look.

“Our apologies,” Malacanthe said smoothly. Hana was still plowing into her with all her overeager energy. “Actually, we just need you to settle something for us.”

“Yes,” Juiblexia put in. “The two of us were having a friendly little contest, and it seems we’re in need of a judge. So, darling: which one of our little pets here do you think makes for the best, tastiest, most nourishing meal?”

The manager nodded, stupefied by the overwhelming outpour of sexual energy happening around the table. She looked first at Hana, then at Simone, and then back again. Finally, after long moments of contemplation, she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice sounded wet. “I can’t pick. They’re both perfect.”

Malacanthe blinked. A draw? She hadn’t considered that. Normally, she would never accept anything less than complete victory over Juiblexia, but Hana’s exertions were putting her in a good mood. Perhaps, just this once, she could make her peace with it.

“I just have one question,” the manager added, unable to hold back. She pointed at each of the mind-broken perma-virgins in turn. “How did you get these girls?”

Juiblexia and Malacanthe exchanged one last look, and prepared to spread the good word.

—

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Finally, thank you again to GrillFan65 for commissioning this story!

#renewableenergy #story

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voskhozhdeniye · 9 months ago

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Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, advocates and policy analysts have warned of a homelessness “tsunami.” It’s the worst-case scenario where the combination of lost income, backlogs of owed rent, and a lack of local government foresight contribute to a surge of people losing housing and ending up on the street. Well, it has arrived—and it’s poised to get much worse as the Supreme Court is set to decide whether to make homelessness a de facto crime.

This past month, many cities and counties conducted their annual point-in-time homelessness counts. The results of January’s counts won’t be known for several more months, but they’re likely to be dire. The end-of-2023 results found that approximately 653,000 people were experiencing homelessness. That’s up more than 70,000 over 2022, or a 12 percent increase. In the 12 months since that data was collected, those numbers have likely gone up.

But the raw numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. As more people end up experiencing homelessness, they’re also facing increasingly punitive and reactionary responses from local governments and their neighbors. Such policies could become legally codified in short order, with the high court having agreed to hear arguments in Grants Pass v. Johnson.

Originally brought in 2018, the case challenged the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, over an ordinance banning camping. Both a federal judge and, later, a panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck the law down, saying that Grants Pass did not have enough available shelter to offer homeless people. As such, the law was deemed to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The ruling backed up the Ninth Circuit’s earlier ruling on the Martin v. City of Boise case, which said that punishing or arresting people for camping in public when there are no available shelter beds to take them to instead constituted a violation of the “cruel and unusual punishment” clause in the Eighth Amendment. That applied to localities in the Ninth Circuit’s area of concern and has led to greater legal scrutiny even as cities and counties push for more punitive and restrictive anti-camping laws. In fact, Grants Pass pushed to get the Supreme Court to hear the case, and several nominally liberal cities and states on the West Coast are backing its argument. If the Supreme Court overturns the previous Grants Pass and Boise rulings, it would open the door for cities, states, and counties to essentially criminalize being unhoused on a massive scale.

If it does so, that will have ramifications for all unhoused people, from those who have been chronically homeless for some time to those currently falling into homelessness. And that last category is a large one: In the time since the January 2023 homeless count, there have been at least 1,076,396 evictions across 10 states and 34 cities, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab project, which has tracked data related to evictions through the end of 2023. In December alone, there were more than 69,000 evictions in those monitored areas. According to the data, evictions have almost fully returned to pre-Covid pandemic levels, after federal moratoriums and protections expired.

It’s also becoming harder to pay for housing. The housing market remains tight for anyone looking to buy, and renters are losing options. Inflation has eaten into people’s available income, pandemic-era protections have ended, rents are rising, and data from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies that came out last month showed that renters are spending more—even as the amount of affordable housing available is decreasing.

Nearly 22.4 million households—or half of all renters—can’t afford their rent, according to an accepted standard that paying more than 30 percent of one’s income on rent renders it unaffordable. Without immediate assistance to renters, it’s a situation that will only worsen. Back rent due, as well as new rent increases, is likely to magnify the financial strain that’s already being keenly felt by renters, forcing more people out of their homes, either to depend on friends and family or end up on the streets.

If the Supreme Court sides with Grants Pass, it will effectively undo all of the protections created by the Boise case, which means that the thousands of people currently experiencing homelessness as well as those likely to fall into homelessness in 2024 will face additional challenges in an already traumatic situation. Added legal and financial burdens will only make it harder for them to become rehoused, creating a vicious cycle of escalating misery that will do nothing to actually solve the underlying causes of homelessness.

Grants Pass v. Johnson hasn’t received the same fanfare as many of the other cases before the Supreme Court this term, but perhaps no other case has as much at stake for some of the most vulnerable Americans, who now face the prospect of both additional financial burdens and the possibility of being transformed into a new class of criminal, solely because so many states and municipalities have chosen to wash their hands of a crisis their own policies have created.

Jesse Rabinowitz, the campaign and communications director with the National Homelessness Law Center’s “Housing Not Handcuffs” program (which plans to file an amicus brief in the case prior to oral arguments but has not as of press time) told The New Republic that an arrest record only makes it harder to get a job or find a new apartment to rent—and unpaid fines can lower a credit score, causing more financial hardship.

If the highest court sides with lawmakers that have abandoned the homeless to face more punitive measures for their misfortune, anyone left on the streets could be subject to arrest or other criminal penalties simply for having nowhere else to go, even in instances where local government has fallen through on the provision of adequate shelters. They will either be left to rot in jail or be forced out of the communities they call home.

The biggest obstacle to solving homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. That’s it. Either people are being priced out of homes or those on the streets can’t afford to obtain a permanent home. Thousands of units are either in the approval process or being built, but at the moment there is a nationwide deficit in housing, and construction is not matching pace with the growth of the unhoused population.

“Homelessness is increasing in many communities because rents are sky high and there is a severe shortage of affordable rental homes. More people are just one financial shock away from falling behind on rent and facing evictions and, in worst cases, homelessness,” Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The New Republic. “As homelessness has increased, elected officials are under a lot of pressure to take action, but too many of them are turning to misguided, ineffective, and costly approaches, like criminalization, rather than investing in proven solutions.”

This is not some abstract conundrum. In Los Angeles this past month, before and during dangerous storms that found officials urging sheltering in place for safety, police and city agencies were out dismantling encampments. Efforts by local advocates and organizations to help get unhoused people into promised shelters were met with confusion by local government and a lack of actual help, as documented by the group Ktown for All. Prior high-level sweeps, such as at Echo Park Lake in 2020, cleared the park of tents, but despite initial claims by Los Angeles City Council members, only a handful of the nearly 200 people cleared by the lake found temporary shelter, let alone permanent housing. Additionally, representatives with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said such clearances disrupted outreach attempts intended to get people to shelter and temporary housing, undoing trust-building efforts that took time to develop.

And real solutions to homelessness are up against long timelines and limited political will. There are major efforts to build new housing and fund services—the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $3.16 billion last month for those very issues—but these resources take time to spin up, and they face political challenges along the way. An ambitious plan by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, announced in 2022, shriveled over a year, with several cuts to social services. It’s an initiative that joins other community programs in facing financing and budget issues, all while the mayor pushes increasing money to the already massively funded NYPD. Los Angeles elected a slew of progressive officials in 2022 and passed a mansion tax to fund housing and services, however it will still be some time before any new housing funded by it opens.

Meanwhile the city’s wealthy interests and corporate donors are funding the campaigns of conservative challengers to several progressives this year. If the Grants Pass case ends up allowing widespread criminalization of homelessness, it could lead to major setbacks that could render these projects far less effective.

Even large cities that have committed significant resources to helping unhoused people can’t adequately shelter people. New York, with a right-to-shelter law, still falls short of helping all of the people in need. Los Angeles has initiated several measures—several very good ones, as a matter of fact—to fund housing and services, but new units take time to actually be built, and more reactionary elements in the city government are pushing anti-homeless ordinances of their own.

And shelter, although helpful, is not housing. People in transitional or bridge housing still struggle to find permanent solutions, mainly because there simply isn’t enough affordable housing available. And it’s worth remembering that tens of thousands of people fall into and out of homelessness a year, including many who might experience homelessness for just a brief period of time before safety programs, family, or good fortune help them regain housing stability. Those who fit into this category could find themselves caught up in the criminal justice system for just a few days’ misfortune.

If the Supreme Court does side with criminalizing homelessness, local and state governments could start punishing people very quickly, according to Rabinowitz. “A lot of states have carve-outs that say this policy of criminalization can’t be enacted unless there is adequate shelter,” Rabinowitz said. “I imagine the ‘adequate shelter’ part will go away very quickly if the court rules that way.”

There are even more hostile proposals being dreamt up. In Florida, the state legislature—with the endorsement of Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his failed presidential run—is proposing criminalizing homelessness and putting unhoused Floridians in camps. Donald Trump is running on a nationwide version of this same policy. Under his proposal, unhoused people would be sent to “tent cities” on “inexpensive land” (exactly what that means is unclear, but it’s implied to be outside of cities).

Notably, the proposal is missing any real details on getting people out of those camps into actual permanent supportive housing. Trump hasn’t provided any idea of what his indefinite internment plan will cost or how he will pay for it; it goes without saying that it’s impossible to determine whether it would be more cost-effective than simply building more housing. But the former president appears to have retribution, not solutions, on his mind. In his 2023 video, he accused cities of focusing on “the whims of a deeply unwell few,” outright ignoring the root causes of homelessness and the factors that keep people unhoused.

When one considers the draconian ideas being conceived behind closed doors, the implications of any decision in Grants Pass are very real. The mechanisms and political desire to criminalize the homeless already exists, and lawmakers seem to be racing toward drastic and punitive approaches, instead of solutions that might actually ease the crisis. Should the Supreme Court contribute to the momentum of criminalization, it will likely exacerbate the crisis—it certainly will neither contribute to rehousing the homeless nor alleviate the economic conditions that force people out onto the streets. It’s a recipe for shortsighted, “out of sight” policies that will enable officials to pursue the cruelest possible approaches to a problem they helped create.

#Greetings from America

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dreaming-in-daylight · 2 years ago

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watch a half functioning braincelll read the first 5 chapters of red queen

1st chapter

ooh she’s a thief~ i already like this mare

okay, she’s 17 nice, nice

aww now i want 3 piercings on the same ear

wHo iS tHiS mAn? hE….. iS …… Kilorn Warren

you dumb fool.

hEr DAD IS MISSING A LEG AND A LUNG?!

noo poor kil don’t starve

ok ok so there are strong arms, telkies, swifties—- i mean swifts, nymphs, greenys (blueys) and stone-skins

oOh this guy likes violence

Samson, can i call you sam? WAIT ACTUALLY NO SAM IS THE NAME OF A TEACHER THAT HATES ME

SAMSON’S A WHISPER THATS SOCOOL

2nd chapter

wait didn’t her mom leave the fam *flicks back a few pages* “Kilorn’s mother ran off after that” OHH OKAY

okay her sister has red hair like fire

I dunno if i should trust this sister

the mom’s worse at cooking than me

WHAT KIND OF SISTER FORGETS HER BOTHER’S LETTER

ahh okay so the dad’s an anteater when it comes to shade’s letters, makes sense

I like this shade we should be friends

“her chair scrapes as she stands up” ouch just reading it hurt my ears

“i hope you like black eyes because i have no problem giving you one for this” i was scared kil would punch mare here

oh no kil don’t cry

DONT GO KIL PLEASE DONT GO TO WAR

que go to war by nothing more

3rd chapter

“his voice cracks, though he coughs to try and cover it up” nooo bby

“the heat in my cheeks surges faster than any flame” oooh someone has a cruushhh

whenever you need to be transported somewhere, just look for the black market

obviously the grandpa is gonna have access to the black market

LadyFarleyis hot

here you go lady farley:

( i added a thousand crown emojis but APPARENTLY theres a limit)

now that that’s done, i have a pickup line: why tf would you need a thousand crowns for? you’re ALREADY a queen

and plus people would be sus about how you would have that many crowns

“oh yeah i was human trafficking and the price was a thousand crowns”

*chokes on literal air* THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW?!?!

Lady, I think you need to sit down

oh no how’s she gonna tell kil

4th chapter

okay first can i say that i had a dream that mare was a telkie or a whisper … if that’s how you spell it

do all silvers have rdf’s?

how much you guys wanna bet she’ll leave gee here and get arrested

FARLEY AND GRANDPA WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO

okay but that was very baddie of Farley

why would you drown the innocent red? If he was part of the scarlet guard, he would be terrorizing with his cult, wouldn’t he? That’s like killing every German because of Hitler

Mare didn’t even get a single thing

so there are also cloners. They. Are. Scary.

please don’t beat up gee and mare, please don’t beat up gee and mare

WHAT THE HECK DID YOU JUST DO TO GEE

THAT OFFICER IS GETTING BEAT UP

WHAT DO YOU MEAN “ITS THE LAW” SHE DIDN’T ACTUALLY STEAL ANYTHING. EVEN IF SHE DID YOU COULD JUST TAKE IT FROM HER AND SEND HER TO JAIL NOT BEAT UP HER HANDS

I WILL FIND THE OFFICER AND BEAT HIM UP

5th chapter

I wonder where she’s planning to go

“I do it every summer, but Kilorn is always with me, smiling into a drink as he watches me work. I don’t suppose I’ll see his smile for much longer.” NOOO PLEASE SHUT UP DONT MAKE ME MISS HIM ALREADY

“I guess causing pain is all I’m good for” NO SHUT UP YOU WERE ONLY TRYING TO GET A THOUSAND CROWNS TO KEEP KILORN WITH YOU IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT

also stop sulking and do something about it

uh oh she got caught

the guy who caught her is going to be important. Not once has she described anyone with such detail.

“He is the strangest person I’ve ever met” could it be that guy “Cal” I’ve heard about? If I’m right, you all owe me a chicken nugget

“His smile returns, and the comfort it gives me is unsettling” HAH NOW I KNOW ITS CAL

“I’m Cal” WHAT DID I SAY YOU ALL OWE ME A CHICKEN NUGGET

Was Cal at the Hall too?

I like Cal

So, what, does Cal pay her every time he pities her?

“Something about the mud and shadows makes Cal uncomfortable” Is that going to be important?

“You shouldn’t worry your mother like that” IS HER DAD NOT EVEN GOING TO CONSIDER THE GUILT SHE FEELS?!

Why is the dad worried about the light shortage in the house aND NOT HIS DAUGHTER’S BROKEN HANDS

Does her turning the light on magically have something to do with her powers that are mentioned in the back?

Her dad is now has a profession in lecturing mare about false hope

How can Gee sleep? If that were me i’d be shaking and whimpering and crying until sunrise

OH MY GOD SHADE’S PART OF THE SCARLET GUARD

#red queen #victoria aveyard #mare barrow

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spectra-fantasies · 2 years ago

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Indigo Flames

Chapter 1

The atmosphere within the castle was explosive; every occupant was suffocated with nervous energy as they prepared for the prisoner. Their death-row prisons were just under a mile away from the palace - a design flaw that became glaringly obvious with the danger this individual posed. Originally, he was kept in a state of the art facility which had the slight probability of containing him. These dungeons were but brick and stone, and the usual calmness of the people was shattering with anxiety.

●°•●

The cobbled streets were swarmed by the procession of a thousand armed men who surrounded a barely visible black carriage. Civilians marched with them, screaming profanities and death threats to the mage that they were escorting. Stones were thrown into the air as the cacophony continued to increase. Numerous individuals were blocked by the soldiers and elemental walls were thrown up by magicians when they drew too close.

His life was to be taken by the state, not the people. It did not matter how hot their fury burned.

By chance Strawberry was caught up in the pandemonium, as she did not realize that her usual route to the market would be overtaken with this flood of hatred. Angry men and women stomped their feet and shook their fists. In several cases tears streaked down their faces.

It would be intimidating for anyone who did not plan to join this march, but it was even more so for the elegant young woman who was thrown around by the angry mob. She tried to keep up with them and make herself as small as possible to avoid the onslaught, but at one fateful moment a new surge of momentum pushed her directly into a soldier.

Unfortunately, this particular man was already pulled taut with barely contained fear, so when she fell into him he took this as an opportunity to make himself feel bigger than what he actually was. He struck her across the face and threw her towards a guard in a lower ranking position than him, "This stupid bitch tried to kill me, tried to get a knife under my armour. Put her with the prisoner, she can hang with him for treason."

When Strawberry tried to plead against him she was met with another hand through her face. In the mayhem no one questioned her arrest, and she was shackled behind the carts.

Out of pure cruelty she was locked away in the same cell as the mage. The guards laughed at her future torture as they walked away. On her part she huddled as deep into the corner of the block as humanly possible. She too had heard of what he had done, and what he was capable of.

He stood in the center of the chamber with inhuman stillness. A long blue robe was wrapped around his body and a hood shadowed his face. Every inch of their shared space was dominated by him, in all her life Strawberry had not met such an imposing figure and she was glad for it. Just knowing about him was terrifying, but being this close to him was far worse.

Eventually, after hours of stillness he spoke, "You do not have to fear me."

His voice was so unexpected: deep and silky, but it held an unquestionable authority. Her mouth went dry and she curled more into herself. In one fluid motion he turned towards her, "Neither of us are going to die."

Strawberry forced words onto her barren tongue, "If you were able to escape you would have already."

She heard a smile in his tone, "Whatever makes you think that?"

"Why else would you still be here?"

"So that they cannot blame me for what is to come."

#love story #slow burn #writing #fiction #short story

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stevenwilliam12 · 1 day ago

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TP53 Market Size, Target Population, Competitive Landscape, and Market Forecast – 2034

The TP53 gene has emerged as a focal point in cancer research and drug development, representing a transformative frontier in oncology therapeutics. As a critical tumor suppressor gene, TP53 plays an indispensable role in maintaining genomic integrity through its regulation of cell cycle arrest, DNA repair, and apoptosis. Mutations in TP53 are linked to over 50% of human cancers, making it one of the most commonly altered genes in oncology. This presents a significant opportunity for developing innovative therapies that restore or mimic TP53 function, potentially revolutionizing treatment options for patients across a wide range of malignancies.

TP53 Market Size and Target Population

The TP53 market is undergoing steady expansion, fueled by advancements in precision medicine, a deeper understanding of the gene's role in cancer progression, and the growing prevalence of cancers characterized by TP53 mutations. In 2023, the market was in its nascent stages, yet its potential for exponential growth is clear. As the prevalence of cancer continues to rise globally, the demand for TP53-targeted therapies is expected to surge.

Market Growth Drivers

The increasing incidence of cancers with TP53 mutations is one of the primary drivers of this market. TP53 mutations are associated with a broad spectrum of malignancies, including both solid tumors and hematological cancers. Among solid tumors, ovarian, breast, lung, and colorectal cancers feature prominently. Meanwhile, in hematological malignancies, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a notable target for TP53-focused therapies.

In addition to the rising cancer burden, advancements in precision oncology have enabled the development of targeted therapies tailored to specific genetic mutations. This shift toward personalized medicine is accelerating the adoption of TP53-based therapeutic interventions. The growing recognition of TP53 as a key therapeutic target has spurred investment in research and development (R&D) efforts, further driving the market's growth trajectory.

Target Population Overview

Approximately half of all cancer patients are estimated to harbor TP53 mutations, making the target population for TP53-focused therapies extensive and heterogeneous. Patients with advanced-stage cancers or those with resistance to conventional therapies represent a particularly high-need segment of this population. The diverse patient pool spans geographic regions, cancer types, and stages of disease progression, underscoring the wide-reaching impact of TP53-targeted drug development.

TP53 Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape of the TP53 market is characterized by robust innovation and a diverse pipeline of therapeutic candidates. Numerous biopharmaceutical companies and academic institutions are actively pursuing strategies to harness the therapeutic potential of TP53. These strategies include restoring the wild-type function of mutated TP53, enhancing its tumor-suppressive activities, and leveraging its role in immunomodulation.

TP53 Companies and Therapies

Several companies are leading the charge in TP53-targeted therapy development, including Aprea Therapeutics, Oncologie, and Genentech. These organizations are advancing novel candidates such as eprenetapopt (APR-246), a small-molecule drug designed to reactivate mutant TP53, thereby restoring its tumor-suppressive capabilities. APR-246 has demonstrated encouraging preclinical and clinical results, positioning it as a promising therapy for cancers associated with TP53 mutations.

In addition to small molecules, gene therapy approaches are gaining traction. Adenoviral vector-based delivery of TP53 represents a cutting-edge strategy to directly introduce functional copies of the gene into cancer cells. These gene therapy platforms aim to counteract the effects of TP53 mutations by reinstating its normal biological functions.

Combination therapies also hold significant promise in the TP53 therapeutic landscape. Researchers are investigating the synergistic potential of TP53-targeted drugs with other treatment modalities, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors (e.g., anti-PD-1/PD-L1 agents) or traditional chemotherapeutics. These combinations aim to amplify anti-tumor effects while addressing the complexity of cancer's molecular underpinnings.

Collaborative Ecosystem

Collaboration has become a cornerstone of innovation within the TP53 market. Partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions are fostering breakthroughs in drug discovery and development. These collaborations enable the pooling of expertise, resources, and technologies to accelerate the translation of scientific insights into viable therapeutic options.

For instance, partnerships are supporting the development of biomarkers for patient stratification, enhancing the precision and efficacy of TP53-targeted therapies. By identifying subsets of patients most likely to benefit from these treatments, researchers are optimizing clinical trial outcomes and paving the way for personalized therapeutic approaches.

TP53 Market Forecast to 2034

Looking ahead, the TP53 market is poised for significant expansion, with projections indicating substantial growth by 2034. Several factors are expected to contribute to this upward trajectory:

Drug Approvals: The anticipated regulatory approval of TP53-targeted therapies will mark a pivotal milestone for the market. Approvals will not only validate the clinical efficacy and safety of these drugs but also catalyze their adoption in oncology practice.

Expanded Applications: Beyond traditional cancer indications, TP53-targeted therapies are likely to find applications in rare cancers and in combination with emerging treatment modalities. The expansion of therapeutic indications will broaden the market’s scope and impact.

Increased Awareness and Adoption: As awareness of TP53's role in cancer grows among healthcare providers, the demand for targeted therapies is expected to rise. Educational initiatives and data dissemination efforts will play a crucial role in driving adoption.

Technological Advancements: Advances in drug delivery systems, gene-editing technologies, and bioinformatics tools will enhance the development and deployment of TP53-based therapies. These innovations will improve treatment efficacy, minimize side effects, and optimize patient outcomes.

Market Valuation

By 2034, the TP53 market is projected to achieve a significant valuation, underpinned by the successful commercialization of therapies, robust R&D pipelines, and favorable regulatory environments. The oncology segment is expected to dominate the market, reflecting the high prevalence of TP53 mutations in cancer and the urgent need for effective interventions.

Challenges and Opportunities

While the TP53 market holds immense promise, it also faces challenges that must be addressed to realize its full potential:

Complex Biology: TP53’s intricate regulatory mechanisms and interactions present challenges for therapeutic targeting. Developing drugs that effectively mimic or restore TP53 function requires overcoming significant scientific hurdles.

Resistance Mechanisms: Cancer cells often develop resistance to targeted therapies, including those aimed at TP53. Addressing resistance mechanisms will be critical for ensuring the long-term efficacy of TP53-targeted treatments.

Cost and Accessibility: Ensuring the affordability and accessibility of TP53 therapies will be essential for maximizing their global impact. Policymakers, payers, and manufacturers must collaborate to address economic barriers.

Despite these challenges, the TP53 market offers abundant opportunities for innovation, collaboration, and growth. The potential to transform cancer treatment paradigms underscores the urgency and importance of continued investment in this field.

Conclusion

The TP53 market represents a groundbreaking frontier in cancer therapeutics, driven by scientific advancements and an urgent need for more effective treatments. As research continues to unveil the complexities of TP53 biology, the development of targeted therapies is set to redefine oncology care. By 2034, the TP53 market is expected to reach unprecedented heights, offering hope to millions of patients worldwide. With its promise to address one of cancer’s most pervasive genetic drivers, the TP53 market embodies the transformative potential of precision medicine.

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