We’ve been watching network news in the evening, after almost a decade of not watching 24-hour cable news or network nightly news shows. Last night we watched the 6:30 p.m. news on one network, then switched to another for 7:00 p.m.
The first 6:30 p.m. broadcast had about 80% ads for pharmaceutical drugs. They featured two Pharma-oriented reports: the first covered pharmacies starting to sell mifepristone, the abortion pill, and a second in-depth report featured a woman who had lost weight on Ozempic, with the “surprising side effect” of having less interest in drinking alcohol.
The young woman said, “Before I took Ozempic, I was drinking about 15 drinks of alcohol a week. Now I have maybe three drinks a week.” She could even go to parties without drinking, she said.
The report concluded with an expert saying, “This could be the biggest game changer for addiction medicine in history!”
Jesus Christ, I thought.
Then we changed the channel to another network. This broadcast featured a report that OPill will be the first over-the-counter birth control pill to be sold at pharmacies. OPill doesn’t require a prescription. According to the report, it will cost about $20.00 a month.
It hit me like a bolt of lightning: This is why they pushed the end of Roe V. Wade.
This is why the “politicians” (I use the term loosely) want to keep fundraising off abortion as the Pharmas increase their market share and cost of everything they sell.
Including mifepristone and norgestril (OPill’s basic chemical makeup, a synthetic hormone — progestin).
I don’t think that abortion or birth control is likely to be completely outlawed any time soon. The states outlawing abortion are simply doing it to make room for expensive online prescriptions and cross-border trips to “legal states.” The “products” are just going to get more expensive. Judging by the way basic food prices are increasing: a lot more expensive.
What happens to a world, I wonder, where every action is designed to take money and life from someone else?
I’m supposed to be able to imagine such scenarios.
We’re living in a world where this is rapidly approaching reality.
A world where every person, every plant, every animal, is a product for someone’s consumption. Every idea is meant to sell something to someone or to steal something from someone else.
The ads on the nightly U.S. network news are 80% for some pharmaceutical drug. All have jingles: many of them based on 70s-90s hit songs. Ozempic: “Oh, oh, oh Ozempic!” (“It’s Magic” by Pilot — 1974).
Jardiance, “the little pill with a big story to tell,” has one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve ever seen. The Disney-style major production number “starring” a young woman who is “managing my Type 2 Diabetes well,” is disturbing on so many levels.
Mostly because it looks like she’s singing about her Disney Princess-style romance.
With a pill.
I’m even starting to think that the opioid Sacklers have only been sued by nearly every U.S. county and larger city, as well as Native American tribes, because they are being paid by other Pharmas to do so. Motive? Knock out the competition.
Judging by YouTube comments, others agree with me that the Jardiance commercial isn’t just bizarre, it’s offensive and disturbing.
I think most people know by now that U.S. electoral politics are a show: a lousy one that should be cancelled. This show, too, like all other aspects of life these days, includes legal maneuvering and lawsuits, as well as the abuse of songs we used to know and love.
You know: for the sake of music.
For months, I’ve been disgusted with the lack of creativity. It isn’t that AI is “stealing” from our “talented” writers like Stephen King.
AI is a mirror. And it doesn’t show a flattering image of human creativity.
The same is true for art. I’m not particularly thrilled with the article header image that I asked DALL-E to provide for this piece. But is it really much worse than what we typically see featured on digital magazines?
I’m not sure people know what creativity is any more. I can say what it isn’t.
Creativity isn’t a pill.
It doesn’t come from substances.
It comes from inside of us and it’s a response to our experiences. What we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel.
And of late, that has been all too artificial, ersatz, distorted, wrong.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m absolutely certain an authentic, healthy, happy life isn’t found within a pill, injection, patch, or any other pharmaceutical solution.
In the words of Nancy Reagan, selling Cop City, “Just say no.”
The irony couldn’t be thicker.
-- It hit me like a bolt of lightning: This is why they pushed the end of Roe V. Wade.
Always follow the money. It's so obvious I'm ashamed I didn't realize this. Your insight that everybody suing the Sacklers could be underwritten by agents just as morally bankrupt is solid.
-- What happens to a world, I wonder, where every action is designed to take money and life from someone else?
I've wondered this, too. I've long had an idea for a story about parents and kids billing each other for "services rendered", but rounding it out involves more depravity than I'm comfortable with. As you note, that world is pretty much here already.
--For months, I’ve been disgusted with the lack of creativity. It isn’t that AI is “stealing” from our “talented” writers like Stephen King. AI is a mirror. And it doesn’t show a flattering image of human creativity.
Yes! That was a breakthrough for me. Computers are amplifiying mirrors. We hardly use them for computation, but to project ourselves outward. Art does this, too, but the computer has grown to be many times more powerful. And like all things, that power serves the power that's already there. TPTB realized this in the 90s, I think, and understood they had to get this thing under control before there was "too much democracy". And here we are, the internet now reduced to a handful of 'walled gardens', with almost all the rest AI-generated SEO junk.
Thanks for these insights! Nothing is quite what it seems.