The Sackler family are owners of the drug company that caused a devastating drug crisis in the United States by making false claims about the safety of its highly addictive OxyContin. According to an AP story, Mundipharma, a Chinese company owned by the Sackler family is now using the same tactics in China. Mundipharma is telling doctors that its time-release opioids are less addictive than other kinds of opioids, "the same pitch that Purdue Pharma, the U.S. company owned by the family, admitted was false in court more than a decade ago."
Mundipharma has pushed ever larger doses of the drug, even as it became clear that higher doses present higher risks, and represented the drug as safe for chronic pain, according the interviews and documents.
These tactics mirror those employed by Purdue Pharma in the U.S., where more than 400,000 people have died of opioid overdoses and millions more became addicted. An avalanche of litigation over the company’s marketing has driven Purdue Pharma into bankruptcy in the U.S.
In other words, if you were worried that the Sacklers might suffer as a result of their role US drug epidemic, this news should assuage your concerns. They'll be fine.
On Sunday, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly using a remote control car to smuggle meth from Mexico. According to the US Border Patrol, the RC car likely made several trips back and forth to haul more than 50 pounds of meth near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in the San Diego-Tijuana region. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Border Patrol agents believe someone on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border was able to slip the drug-laden car through a gap in the bollard-style fencing and then drive it to the teen waiting on the north side of the fence, said Border Patrol spokesman Theron Francisco.
An agent spotted the boy hiding in thick brush near the border, about a mile north of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, around 12:30 a.m. Sunday. The teen had two large duffel bags and a remote-controlled car with him, and agents found 50 packages of methamphetamine weighing more than 55 pounds in his bags.
This is Cecil H. Dill, a farmer from Traverse Coty, Michigan, who discovered his unique, er, talent for making music with his hands. In the year of 1914. In the month of February.
If you think the Electoral College should be scrapped because it sometimes results in getting a candidate elected that most of its citizens didn't vote for, then you might not have to wait forever for a Constitutional amendment to abolish it.
In his latest video, CPG Grey outlines a plan to subvert Electoral College using the Electoral College, called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The idea is to get States to "agree to cast their Electoral College votes for the candidate who gets the most votes from citizens nationwide."
Robert J. Lang, an origami artist, shows how to fold a cicada 11 different ways, from easy to complex. The final one is basically sculpting the paper with many folds into something that looks very much like a real cicada.
KHQ6 reports that John Rabago, a Hawaii cop accused of forcing a homeless man to lick a public urinal, plans to plead guilty on a civil rights charge. Another officer, Reginald Ramones, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge: "Ramones says Rabago convinced him not to report it."
The homeless man feared he would be arrested and reluctantly obeyed Rabago’s orders, according to Ramones’ plea agreement. Rabago had previously threatened another man he was questioning by saying he wouldn’t be arrested if he stuck his head in a toilet, the document said.
Alt headline: Blue water blues for the boys in blue
The Maine Democratic Party has teamed up with the progressive sticker-and-more company Bumperactive (previously) to produce a line of Stephen King-themed, anti-Susan Collins merch, with proceeds going to unseat the Republican Senator whose repeated acts of cowardice (especially during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings) demonstrated that she had no commitment to either her stated principles or the people of Maine. There are four graphics in all: "Trump as Pennywise the Clown, Susan Collins in 'Debt Sematary', Susan as Jack Nicholson from The Shining, and of course, Stand By ME," available as tees ($30), posters ($25 or $45 for four) and vinyl stickers ($4 for 2 or all four for $15).
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Through the 1940s and 1950s, the DoJ went to war on the "studio system" -- a system whereby studios locked up actors in exclusive contracts and then bought or strong-armed all the movie theaters in America so that they'd screen whatever the studios made, freezing out independent productions from movie companies that might offer their talent a better, less restrictive deal.
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The "pay-for game" is that gotcha game that Conservatives like to play, wherein the ridiculous boondoggles favored by the right (billions for Trump's wall, more than a trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy, massive increases in Pentagon and intelligence agency spending, even a $16 million bomb used for no military reason) can be financed with infinite amounts of deficit spending, while any program that benefits the majority of America needs has to be "fully funded," generally by making cuts in other programs that benefit the majority of America -- something that the idiotic Democratic establishment has bought into.
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The UK is having an election in less than a month, and last night, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn debated Tory archclown Boris Johnson for a televised debate in which Johnson had to defend his record as a lying, racist, philandering, cowardly failure of a human being, and of a leader to his party and the nation.
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Here's a Facebook video explaining how to make "thick and glossy slime", for any and all slime-related needs you may have.
The key ingredient is Elmer's Glue-All [Amazon]; the basic slime recipe is to add baking soda and contact lens solution to "activate" the glue, but that won't be thick and glossy enough. For that you need school glue, baby oil and generic lotion, added in the precise quantities shows in the video.
There are so many retro-themed merch options out there, but I'm tickled blue by Rhayader Computers's mouse mat designs showing BASIC interpreters from classic 8-bit computers. It seems only the C64 and Amstrad CPC are thusly honored, but there's lots of other well-chosen designs to pick from.
Step into the Five & Dime Antique Mall in Bakersfield, California, and that rarity becomes reality. There, in the back corner at the ground-floor level of the four-story building, is a fully functioning former Woolworth luncheonette counter, complete with 22 counter seats, Formica tables ringing the room, and an open kitchen for griddling burgers and making milkshakes. But this well-protected bit of ephemera isn’t cordoned off with Do Not Touch signs — it’s still a real, thriving luncheonette counter called the Woolworth Diner, serving police officers, antiquers, and locals daily.
Head over to Eater Los Angeles to see lots of photos of this fifties time capsule.
The Persistence of Pong is an art installation by Jesse Stiles, augmenting a standard game of ping-pong with sounds, colors, intense flashing lights and moments of complete darkness.
An ordinary ping pong table is augmented with reactive sounds and lights, turning the game into a disorienting synesthetic experience for players and spectators alike. The installation presents players with syncopated patterns of light that play with the illusion known as persistence of vision – the phenomenon that distinguishes between the perception of still images versus continuous motion. These patterns are triggered directly by the bouncing of the ball, which is detected by microphones embedded in the table. Similarly, the installation presents disorienting patterns of sound that teeter between rhythm (individual sounds) and pitch as the speed of the action increases and decreases based on game play. Players may choose to cooperate by trying to keep the ball in play through increasingly hallucinatory levels or may seek to destroy the competition in the most disorienting ping pong environment technology can provide.
You can play yourself at the LikeLike gallery in Pittsburgh, but you have to arrange an appointment outside of specified dates.
The surveillance video at the top of this piece, which was obtained by an investigator for [Pedro] Barbosa’s lawyer, backs all of this up. Barbosa did drive off, but at no time was either officer at risk of being struck by Barbosa’s car.
But [NYPD officer Michael] Bergman would later tell the grand jury an entirely different story. “The defendant locked eyes with me, turned the car into reverse, floored the vehicle into reverse approximately seven feet,” Bergman said. “As I’m still yelling, the defendant put it in drive, turned the vehicle towards me to the point where I was in between his headlights, and if I didn’t jump out of the way, I would have been under his vehicle.” ...
The video above shows that almost none of that is true. Barbosa never put the car in reverse, never accelerated in reverse, and Bergman was never “between his headlights.”
Looking for something special to do with the family? The San Francisco Symphony has a fun ongoing film program where they put a popular movie on the big screen and their orchestra performs the score live. The next performance is for Ghostbusters on November 29 and 30, at Davies Symphony Hall. Adult tickets start at $65.
The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court seeks damages for all U.S. purchasers of the Impossible Whopper, and an injunction requiring Burger King to “plainly disclose” that Impossible Whoppers and regular burgers are cooked on the same grills. [Burger King] describes the Impossible Burger as “100% Whopper, 0% Beef,” and adds that “for guests looking for a meat-free option, a non-broiler method of preparation is available upon request.”
