How pharmaceutical companies take advantage of people with diabetes

When Banting and colleagues discovered insulin and saved countless lives they refused to profit from it. Their successors are making millions from Americans. The price used to be low, and it’s still low elsewhere, but pharmaceutical companies have jacked up prices by an incredible amount in recent years, as has happened with a lot of other things lately. For patients it’s literally a case of your money or your life.

Link: https://youtu.be/lx08ldVSvd4

Link: https://youtu.be/7Ycd8zEdoVk

For a very brief history of how insulin was discovered (and a sea shanty about it), see this earlier post. It was mainly the work of four people, two of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize and who then shared the award with the other two.



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The recently arrested compete for most nuts

It took me a while to figure out it was Michael Keaton:

Link:https://youtu.be/dvLfK0iOyD4

By the way, I’ve been griping that the news media haven’t answered the most important question about Julian Assange’s arrest, namely, what happened to his cat? The Washington Post is ahead of everyone else on this it turns out, with an article headlined (and I’m not making this up):

The mystery of Julian Assange’s cat: Where will it go? What does it know?



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Don Cheadle recalls trying not to be recognized in London with several other members of the Avengers cast

On Late Night with Seth Meyers (back in February), Don Cheadle recalls the night he, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, et al decided to walk a few blocks in packed London streets despite an expectation of being mobbed. It didn’t quite work out as they expected. As a bonus, Cheadle recalls how he came to meet Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice during the George W Bush administration.

Link: https://youtu.be/_yoE3K5OG3E



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How rounding numbers affects the law and politics

British mathematician, humorist, and author Matt Parker (whose YouTube channel is “standupmaths“) describes how rounding can have unexpected effects, even on how the Trump administration tried to get around a provision in the Affordable Care Act to please insurance industry lobbyists:

Link: https://youtu.be/0X_Hqb7qkW4



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The collapse of local news coverage across the United States

This PBS NewsHour segment was originally broadcast at the end of January but it’s still current because it’s about a continuing disaster, namely the collapse of local newspapers and news coverage.

Link: https://youtu.be/1KvsAwvXe8M

Local television stations and their websites have to some extent kept a degree of local news going, but it’s nowhere near as complete. At one time newspapers were by far the biggest form of advertising. If you wanted to buy a house, for example, you looked in the real estate classifieds. Consistent ad revenues let papers hire lots of reporters. Of course, small towns and rural counties didn’t have the level of coverage that larger communities did, but the situation is even worse now.

There are no obvious solutions to the problem. Nonprofit news could help to some extent and is being tried a number of places. There have also been proposals for government subsidies. (In fact, many decades ago the post office delivered magazines and newspapers at reduced rate.) But there are both practical problems and political problems with this.



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