Thursday, January 31, 2019 - The Day's Most Fascinating News from Dave Pell
Thursday, January 31, 2019
1
THE YEAR OF GIVING DANGEROUSLY
It's not just that Purdue Pharma knew about the dangers of Oxycontin (and especially Fentanyl) long before those dangers began to manifest across swaths of America. And it's not just that the company continued to strategize ways to push the painkillers once the risks became widely known (including seeking advice from "McKinsey & Co. on strategies to boost the drug's sales and burnish its image, including how to 'counter the emotional messages' of mothers whose children overdosed"). They even considered getting into the opioid addiction treatment business. ProPublica and Stat share some secret portions of a Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue and the Sackler family and the details are, well, painful. "Not content with billions of dollars in profits from the potent painkiller OxyContin, its maker explored expanding into an 'attractive market' fueled by the drug's popularity — treatment of opioid addiction." (It's surprising they never considered selling body bags.)
"Chicago ... will see a temperature rise of almost 75 degrees -- from extreme cold of 20-25 below zero to temps in the low 50s on Monday." As the Polar Vortex moves east, the hardest hit regions will see some dramatic warming. But first, more cold. Here's the latest.
You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. But that attorney might have also been provided to a few hundred other clients as well. An excellent look at how unfair the courts can be for those who can't afford fairness. NYT: One Lawyer, One Day, 194 Felony Cases.
4
CIG LEAF
From WaPo: "E-cigarettes are almost twice as effective at helping smokers quit as nicotine replacement therapies such as lozenges and patches, according to a new study that immediately stoked the debate over whether e-cigarettes are an important smoking-cessation tool or a health menace." (They might be both.)
5
FUBAR EXAM
"Erik Brunetti has spent the greater part of 30 years testing the foundational idea that in America, all speech is protected under the First Amendment—even speech you disagree with. The vessel through which Brunetti has exercised his right is Fuct." GQ: How O.G. Streetwear Brand FUCT Took a Free Speech Case All the Way to the Supreme Court. (The wordplay doesn't bother me much, but the use of all-caps is a clear violation of obscenity laws...)
+ Seems like a decent time to go back into the archives and listen to George Carlin on the champion of dirty words.
6
DEATH AND VAXES
"New York and Washington allow parents to refuse vaccinations for non-medical reasons. Both states are experiencing major measles outbreaks. This is not a coincidence." The New Republic: America's Epidemic of Vaccine Exemptions.
"What tech companies are doing is subtly different from classic nostalgia-marketing. Rather than using cultural symbols to trigger collective nostalgia, they're using you and what they know about you." (I miss not being aware of that.) The New Yorker: The Seductiveness of Insta-Nostalgia.
8
DEPORT HOLE
"Kids laughed at Ashley's weird name and her terrible Spanish. Though she'd been a top student back in South Carolina, she was suddenly trying to learn in a language that she couldn't read or write and could barely speak." California Sunday Magazine: The Deported Americans: More than 600,000 US-born children of undocumented parents live in Mexico. What happens when you return to a country you've never known?
9
THE DIG IS UP
"The clues to what lay underneath started to surface the night before. Someone reported seeing a pothole. The first call went to the Pembroke Pines Public Works Department ... An orange extension cord was peeking through — the simple kind you might pick up at a grocery or hardware store. That didn't look right to the work crew." So they did some digging. The FBI found a tunnel leading to a bank in Florida suburbia. (Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were just trying to avoid traffic.)
10
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS
"A person's final resting place could be the foundations of a flowerbed or could feed the roots of a tree." How do you compost a human body - and why would you? (I'm sticking with my plan to be stuffed and preserved on a couch behind my Macbook Air. But to each his own.)
NextDraft 600 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
You are receiving this because you signed up for Dave Pell's Next Draft newsletter. If you'd like to stop receiving these emails, simply unsubscribe. No hard feelings. If this email isn't looking quite right, you can view it in your browser.
Did some awesome person forward this issue to you? Subscribe at NextDraft and get it in your own inbox.
Skimm'd after getting our tax season calendar JANUARY 31, 2019 READ IN BROWSER Skimm'd after getting our tax season calendar QUOTE OF THE DAY "Small charcoal grill" – What Ariana Grande's new tattoo in Japanese translates to. Yes, it's a mistake. FROZEN The Story Tens of millions of Americans are experiencing a polar vortex . I'm not a meteorologist. What's a polar vortex? Freezing cold air that usually sits on top of the North Pole. Except sometimes it migrates south. Which is what happened earlier this week, causing t
Plus: FAA opens Boeing investigation, Israel conducts strikes on Rafah, and more. May 7, 2024 View in browser Good morning. As a potential Israeli offensive in Rafah looms and Israel tells Palestinians to leave the city to which over 1 million people had already fled, college students continue protesting across America. Senior reporter Nicole Narea is here to dig into their core demand. — Caroline Houck, senior editor of news Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Divestment: The rallying cry behind student protests, explained A core demand at the heart of the protests over the war in Gaza currently roiling college campuses a
Plus: Factory farming, Haitian gangs, and more February 16, 2024 View in browser Good morning. Tensions are building in Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city, as Israel warns of a ground invasion; senior producer on the Today, Explained podcast Avishay Artsy is here to explain. — Caroline Houck, senior editor of news Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images Things are only getting worse in Rafah More than four months into the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza residents are struggling to survive winter conditions with insufficient food, drinking water, medicine, and clothing. The majority of them have fled to Rafah, a city in the south bordering Egypt
Comments
Post a Comment