My son shared the Public Domain Day video w/me via Discord.
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That prescription drug one is basically my internal monologue every time I see one of those commercials. Well, plus laughing about how you’re not supposed to take it if you’re allergic to it (which you probably wouldn’t know until taking it, and if you know then why would you take it?), and all the horrible possible side effects that are usually listed.
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Speaking of:
“One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value,” said the authors, which include researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.
Of the top advertised drugs, 73 had at least one value rating. Collectively, pharmaceutical companies spent $22.3 billion on advertising for those 73 drugs between 2015 and 2021. Even with the generous ratings, 53 of the 73 drugs (roughly 73 percent) were categorized as low-benefit. Collectively, these low-benefit drugs accounted for $15.9 billion of the ad spending. The top three low-benefit drugs by dollar amount were Dulaglutide (type 2 diabetes), Varenicline (smoking cessation), and Tofacitinib (rheumatoid arthritis).
I’m not a particularly creative person, but I can think of a lot of things that sixteen billion dollars could be used for instead.
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The insurance companies and drug companies have taken over our healthcare system. It’s great new drugs are being created, but the doctors don’t have unbiased research to turn to when deciding what to prescribe.
Most doctors are not well trained in prescribing medicine. I once had a allergist who was very, very good at prescribing drugs, and he had gone to special training to be able to do it. I thought that was crazy, as 9/10 of the reason most people go to a doctor is to get a prescription to help them manage their symptoms or hopefully cure their illness.
So then the doctors who are so busy are at the mercy of the drug reps. I have a friend who is a drug rep for a cancer drug - a particularly toxic implant - and being a rep for selling drugs takes a lot of knowledge and skill, too, so I think the doctors are really relieved to have people who they consider to be a valuable resource.
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A few more recent gems:
His ability to be angry and reasonable at the same time is remarkable.
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A follow up to “How Hard Is It to Not Buy a Video Game?”
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I think he really danced around a major point and almost said it, especially toward the end, but I guess decided not to.
I am one who can love the art but hate the artist (or vice-versa actually). Some other people just can’t make that separation.
One of the sci-fi authors I loved reading when I was growing up has turned out to be a total raving asshole in terms of his personal and political beliefs published on social media. Of course reasonable people will hate him. But that doesn’t change the fact that some of the stories he wrote back in the day were really great.
And I’ll go so far as to say that goes for Bill Cosby too. We can hate the guy all we want, we can do that together, I’ve no problem joining in. But when I was growing up his show was always on, and it was a comforting, relaxing very easy-going light friendly sitcom. And I have good memories of coming home and just zoning out to that show to relax and calm down after stress.
Music, oh man. So many performers came out as raving lunatics in the last few years. But that doesn’t change the awesome songs that they did in the 70s or the 80s or whatever. And if you try to guilt me for still liking those songs, yes that’s annoying.
Not everything has to be about a cult of personality and celebrity worship and a ‘personal brand’. I can like the stories, the songs, the shows. I can totally hate the people that made them and still enjoy what they made.
Maybe I’m just old, because we didn’t have this whole social media personal brand stuff when I was growing up. But yes, I will get annoyed if someone criticizes me for liking something made by a bad person. It doesn’t mean I like the person.
And similarly, just because I like a person doesn’t mean I’m automatically gonna like anything they create. People I love create crap. I create crap myself sometimes. That’s just the nature of things.
Maybe I’m beginning to get old and I really don’t understand why people are conflating those things now. It just seems like social media has warped the perception. Now you have to either love or hate everything someone did based on totally irrelevant stuff? I don’t agree with that.
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Is it Card? You just described my relationship with Card’s work vs. his entirely detestable personal beliefs.
Here’s another take on the issues with Hogwart’s Legacy:
The key points are that you can’t claim to care about a marginalized group, then engage with content that directly or indirectly supports someone in opposition of that group, and then be surprised when they’re hurt by your actions. In other words, you can’t say that you’re an ally and then not act like one.
JK Rowling isn’t going to suffer financially whether I buy Hogwart’s Legacy or not, but I’m not going to buy it anyway. It’s literally the least I can do.
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I get what you’re typing. I recently found out that Asimov was one of those men who think women are for pinching. It made me very sad.
From what I’ve gathered, people do art to release whatever needs to be released from inside of them. Maybe for some of them, it only releases part of the anger and the rest they unleash upon other humans.
Actors…there seems to be a history of those who are assholes playing super-nice parts, whereas some of them for whom the only criticism was that they were almost too nice IRL were great at playing villains.
Thes
I think they’ve always been conflating them, and it’s because of the internet, what with its ability to spread information instantly, that we simply know more things. Also, it just seems to be the way humans are.
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That sucks. I never really got into Asimov, but I know many people like his work.
To draw a distinction between Asimov and, for example, Rowling and Card:
- As far as I know, he didn’t use his notoriety as a platform for spreading his views on women.
- I’m not that familiar with him, so I could be totally wrong here.
- He’s dead, so he’s not actively harming anyone any more.
- It’s still possible that his estate could be using proceeds from his income for bad purposes, but I would argue that’s a separate issue.
I’m not suggesting that anyone should or shouldn’t engage with his work. Everyone has to make that decision for themselves, but I can acknowledge that there is some more nuance to separating the art and the artist when the artist is mere historical fact.
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I think he did his share in shaping the chauvinistic views that the present SF community holds.
And I myself am getting sick of the argument “But things were different then!”, which I’ve used myself quite a few times. Taking humans who are/were being othered and using them to further one’s agenda and/or income has always been wrong, and there have always been those who are against that. But if it makes a profit for a majority of people, who’s going to listen to the nay-sayers?
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I definitely think there’s a solid difference in it depending on whether the artist is alive or not.
I mean, once the artist is no longer around, at that point you’re not enabling ongoing behavior and activity. It’s a lot easier to say “hey, this person was a piece of crap, but that wasn’t a part of this thing they created and it had value independent of them”. This depends a lot, of course, on how much harm the artist was responsible for, but still holds up in general.
When they are around, trying to treat the art as separate from the artist usually still means that you are still supporting that artist, contributing to their purse, helping to increase their popularity, and giving them reasons to believe that whatever non-art issues they have are acceptable. Doubly true when they are actively telling people that the popularity of their art means that their other views/actions are also correct.
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I’ve been saying this for years.
And the radio show is surprisingly great too. Both aimed at kids, and that is one of their strengths.
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Speaking of:
In the hypothetical world where I’m not 18+ months behind on podcasts, it could be fun to start listening this this.
Also related:
This seems great.
We could create a whole set of threads just to talk about the different topics Steve covers, like:
- Superman
- Batman
- Star Trek
- Poirot
- Wrestling
- Stuffy (and Friends)
- Politics
- MacGyver
- …and the proverbial more.
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We already do have a Star Trek thread!
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He’s also done a number of skits that are pretty good:
This one is probably my favorite, although I am unreasonably bothered by his pronunciation of temperature.
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Of course. I only meant that we could practically have a Steve Shives thread for each of those topics.
I actually don’t watch much of his Star Trek content for the same reason as I don’t participate in the thread here: Although I would consider myself a fan, I have fallen behind in a way that makes it nearly impossible to engage with the current discourse without spoiling anything.
Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, I think the last Star Trek content I really paid attention to was Enterprise. The standard response to that would probably be that I shouldn’t let that ruin it for me, but I actually think it’s underrated, especially the last season, with the exception of the finale:
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I tend to agree. It was a solid show… I think the opening song chased off a lot of folks!
Of the new series, they’re all pretty solid, but the least popular seems to be Picard. Shives is not a fan, as he feels it’s far too fan-servicey (he feels the same about the animated show Lower Decks)… I like it though. I do highly recommend both Discovery and Strange New Worlds. If you are a big fan of TOS, I’d especially recommend Strange New Worlds, as it’s basically classic trek, but with a budget and just a bit of interconnectedness of the storyline.
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