Bridget

There is a story that Charles Ornstein and Ryann Grochowski Jones published Wednesday at ProPublica and the Upshot that should make you furious.

The story is a deep dive into data about what pharmaceutical companies spend on marketing their new products. What it shows is that drug makers devote the largest share of their spending doctor interactions (things like meals and visits) trying to sell doctors on prescribing "me-too" drugs: pills that essentially do the same thing as another drug already on the market.

Big breakthrough drugs that substantially improve how doctors practice medicine don't get many marketing dollars. Build a pill that cures Hepatitis C in nearly all patients (as Gilead did earlier this year), and doctors will easily buy it.

Drugs that don't offer a big improvement, however, are an understandably tougher sell. So the pharmaceutical companies spending the most to promote their more mediocre products.

'"They may have some unique niche in the market, but they are fairly redundant with other therapies that are already available," said Dr. Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine and public health at Yale University School of Medicine. "Many of these, you could call me-too drugs."

In almost all cases, older, cheaper products are available to treat the same conditions. Companies typically try to differentiate the new drugs by claiming they are easier to use; carry fewer side effects; work faster than competitors; or have medical advantages.

It makes sense that the drugs that aren't that great take the most wooing and winning over of doctors to get them on board as prescribers. There's a blood thinner that Ornstein and Jones write about called Brilinta, which drug company AstraZeneca spent $7.7 million talking to doctors and hospitals about during the last five months of 2013 (the time period of the ProPublica investigation). That puts it in third place for marketing dollars.

Brilinta is pretty similar to Plavix, a much less expensive, generic blood thinner that does largely similar things. Of course, Brilinta needs a marketing budget; it's up against a cheaper product that treats the same type of issues.

Pharmaceutical companies offered ProPublica defenses about why they needed to educate doctors, and it is possible that these "me too" drugs work better for certain classes of patients. But generally, they're not especially innovative products and ultimately just drive up health-care spending.

In case fireworks aren’t your thing, there’s another great way to ring in the new year – by setting off thousands of armed mousetraps with ping-pong balls in an explosive video like this one!

The video, which was organized by Pepsi and filmed by HarrimanSteel to advertise the Pepsi Max drink, shows everything from the setup for the elaborate and massive experiment to its explosive conclusion. Interestingly enough, this chain reaction can be used in physics classrooms to simulate what happens in a nuclear reactor.

Though a number of sites have written that 2014 mousetraps were used, the video actually used 1650 mousetraps and 1840 ping-pong balls – according to the creators.

More info: Twitter | harrimansteel.co.uk | votd.tv (h/t: viralnova)

Full video if you missed it at the beginning:

[body_image width='1500' height='1014' path='images/content-images/2015/01/08/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/08/' filename='public-swimming-pools-are-even-more-disgusting-than-you-thought-108-body-image-1420678609.jpg' id='16318']

Photo by Flickr user Quinn Dombrowski

Public swimming pools are gross— this is known. Swimming in one is basically like taking a soapless bath with a dozen strangers, some of whom are secretly peeing in the water, all of whom are shedding fragments of skin and hair. Most people hop into the pool without any regard for whether or not they're reasonably clean; I once saw a girl full-on blow her nose into a pool, then continue flopping around on her pool noodle as if nothing had happened.

So what's floating around in that water, besides sweat and snot and pee? Researchers from Purdue University, the Georgia Institute for Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences sought to find out by testing water samples from public swimming pools in Georgia and Indiana. In their samples, they found the presence of DEET (the chemical commonly used in insect repellant), TCEP (a type of flame retardant), and caffeine. There were also traces of pharmaceutical drugs like ibuprofen, naproxen, and acetaminophen floating around. (These findings were published in the journal for Environmental Science and Technology Letters.)

So how the fuck does all of that get into the pool? Some of the chemicals—like the insect repellant—come from people's skin, which is why you should all rinse yourselves off before taking a dip. Others, like the drugs and caffeine, are secreted through swimmers' sweat and urine. The researchers had no idea why there was TCEP in their water samples. Maybe someone had been doused with flame retardant before jumping into the pool?

The Purdue study noted that most swimming pools in the United States recycle their water through a closed-loop system, so the same water can stay in a pool for weeks, months, or even years. Years. And although there's chlorine to kill off most of the germs in the water, the chemicals found leftover in swimming pools still survive because they react slowly with chlorine.

If you swim in pools, you may end up swallowing water, which means not only ingesting traces of sweat and urine but possibly gulping down DEET or TCEP as well. Maybe just take a bath instead?

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Himanshu Suri, better known simply as Heems, is getting ready to release his first bona fide solo album since his last band Das Racist tragically disbanded in 2012. He’s still got the goofy comic timing and flair for puns that put Das Racist on the map—the album is called “EAT. PRAY. THUG.” But while the new single “Sometimes” is still self-deprecating (it starts out “Brown boy, brown boy, what’s up with that sound boy?”) Heems is seriously stepping up his game. The flow and production are fluid and hypnotizing. Whereas the humor on the earliest Das Racist material seemed to supplant real production, there’s no crutch needed here.

Heems recorded “Eat. Pray. Thug.” in New York and Bombay. He released a statement about the song:

“Sometimes” is about dualities, identity and the space between spaces. Like so many other people, as a first generation South Asian in the U.S. I often felt like I lived two lives, an Indian one and an American one. I lived, at once, in and between two spaces and outside them as well. On another level, I also often felt like in America I lived in the space between black and white. Dualities are normal though. As fun as rap is, I can’t always feel happy. Sometimes I feel sad too. It also pays homage to hip-hop before me with cadences referencing both Nice and Smooth and Busta Rhymes.

[h/t Stereogum]

For a show about a washed up horse actor who lives in a world where animals and people coexist as sentient clothes-wearing beings, Netflix’s Bojack Horseman is surprisingly good with representation for its humans. I’m not even talking about the show’s recurring cast, either—there’s a pretty decent amount of minor background characters who are female, POC, or both. According to the show’s creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, that’s all intentional.

While answering questions about the show on his Tumblr recently, Bob-Waksberg was asked how the writers come up with all the different visual bits involving the different animals in the show, such as the crocodile who wears crocs. (To answer that, a lot of the sight gags come from Supervising Director  Mike Hollingsworth, though the crocs specifically are probably from head designer Lisa Hanawalt). But, he points out, the person who questioned him inadvertently mis-gendered the crocodile as a “he” when asking their question, when in actuality the crocodile is a woman played by Kulap Vilaysak.

This, he writes, is indicative of “the tendency for comedy writers, and audiences, and writers, and audiences to view comedy characters as inherently male, unless there is something specifically female about them.” He cites an example from his own work, in which a storyboarded joke that features a dog person drooling on a businessperson was imagined as two men, until Lisa Hanawalt designed them as women. These women, specifically:

Bob-Waksberg noted feeling weird about the change until, when prodded by Hanawalt, he couldn’t offer up a reason why it felt weird—it was just his own biases being triggered, so they left it in. He explains:

The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the businessperson, but if you also have a thing where both of them ladies, then that’s an additional thing and it muddies up the joke. The audience will think, “Why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?” The underlying assumption there is that the default mode for any character is male, so to make the characters female is an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being a hundred percent clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it, and I’m proud to say I mostly don’t think this way anymore. Sometimes I still do, because this kind of stuff is baked into us by years of consuming media, but usually I’m able (with some help) to take a step back and not think this way, and one of the things I love about working with Lisa is she challenges these instincts in me.

“I try to think about that when writing new characters,” Bob-Waksberg also says, recalling a story about the reported divisiveness of the toaster’s gender in The Brave Little Toaster. “Is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?” If it’s the latter, then he should have no problem writing it for a woman, or someone of a different underrepresented race. Pretty good advice for content creators of all kinds, we think.

(via Tumblr)

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Something about Bang & Olufsen's BeoSound Moment looks familiar, huh? The aluminum and glass slab is basically a big iPod that's supposed to power wireless music throughout your house. This thing is going to cost a damn fortune, but there's a lot of lovely design to admire—even if no normal human will be able to afford it.

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Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA started working with speaker manufacturer Boombotix in mid-2014, and he says he wanted make more than just another branded product. "I just had a bigger idea than sticking my logo on something," he told me at CES in Las Vegas. "I thought we could make this great product a little greater." His idea? Load it with exclusive music.

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Not going to the Golden Globes? No worries, here are 18 things to do in L.A. this weekend. [ more › ]

If your parents forced you to practice your scales by saying it would "build character," they were onto something. The Washington Post reports that one of the largest scientific studies into music's effect on the brain has found something striking: Musical training doesn't just affect your musical ability — it provides tremendous benefits to children's emotional and behavioral maturation.

The study by the University of Vermont College of Medicine found that even those who never made it past nursery rhyme songs and do-re-mi's likely received some major developmental benefits just from playing. Read More

Tamir Rice's 14-year-old sister was handcuffed and left to watch her 12-year-old brother dying in the snow after he was shot by a Cleveland police officer on Nov. 22, 2014, as seen in a new video released by the city late Wednesday. The teen, who was tackled and detained as she tried to approach her wounded brother, witnessed the ordeal unfold from the back of a police cruiser less than 10 feet from his body:

The disturbing new details, which match the account given by Rice's mother, Samaria, at a press conference in December, are taken from an extended surveillance video clip obtained by the Northeast Ohio Media Group. City officials had initially released a short portion of the video and refused to release the full version to the public.

Tamir Rice was confronted by officers while waving an air pistol in an empty Cleveland park. Read More

It's good to know that whenever the apocalypse comes, Doom will still be there with us even in the middle of a nuclear winter. You just need some random techno-junk and the necessary skills—like the ones modder Lutz Latta already has—to assemble a computer capable of running the game.

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A new California Lottery promotion is aimed at enticing fans of Thomas Keller who maybe don't have the funds to experience his extravagant multi-course French-American meals on their own. Now through the end of January, if you purchase an Emerald 10 Scratcher and go through a series of steps to enter the Lottery's "Ultimate Foodie" contest, you could win the coveted Black Card Experience for two at three-Michelin-star Napa restaurant French Laundry, plus a two-night stay at a nearby lodge.…

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eyelinger:

And this, dear new age yuppies, is the lovely child who makes your garden Buddhas.

chelseaashcroft:

This never fails to make me laugh. 

Nine people who visited Disneyland last month are confirmed to be infected with measles, with three more unconfirmed cases. [ more › ]

The tab came to over $2,000, but Xenu did not initially bless the delivery guys with a tip. [ more › ]

The owners say they're running out of room in their private home that houses the Bunny Museum and have launched a Kickstarter for a new and larger space. [ more › ]

Chefs around Los Angeles have been scrambling to put together foie gras-centric menus after news came out that the foie gras ban was lifted today. [ more › ]

“I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”

- Salman Rushdie (via thatlitsite)

“"When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say."”

- George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings (via divineirony)

A Gronking to Remember, or as the late mayor of Boston, Tom Menino would call it, A Gonking to Remember is the first! in the Rob Gronkowski erotica series. E L James move over. And for that matter, Twain, Hemmingway, and Fitzgerald as well. Lacey Noonan has firmly cemented her place on the Mount Rushmore of great American authors with this tour de force.

Leaving the easy "tight end" innuendo for writers that pluck the lower hanging fruit, Noonan's seamlessly woven footballisms like the "Gronk Spike" make reading this rollicking sexual fantasy with one hand an afterthought. Rather, readers will find themselves so immersed in her poetic prose as our modern-caveman-cum-Patriot drives a spike between the lead lusting female Leigh and her husband that they'll be unable to use the delicate flick of their fingertips for anything more than turning pages.

A Gonking to Remember goes deep and scores on so many levels. Whether you're a Patriots fan, a lover of Noonan's past works, or just a fan of penetrating words, you're sure to come away from this read needing a long soak in a cold tub.

One can only hope for horizontal followups in the series such as, Le'veon Rings My Bell, Menage a Trois with the Mannings, A Rodgering from Aaron, and Tony Gets Romosexual.

You'll have to read the book to see if Tom Brady shows up for one of his trademark Brady ass slaps.

You've probably heard of the Stanley Hotel. This century-old landmark in Estes Park, Colorado is the spooky spot that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining after he and his wife stayed there*. Now, you can design a giant hedge maze—inspired by the giant hedge maze in The Shining—on the Stanley Hotel grounds.

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Nobody's going to mistake it for a Vitamix, but for single-serve smoothies and easy cleanup, the Nutribullet is tough to beat, especially at this price. [ Magic Bullet NutriBullet 12-Piece High-Speed Blender/Mixer System, $70]

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Today I fell down a Vine rabbithole that led me to this goodness: A guy who forgot about Dre. Don't be that guy! Go listen to Chronic 2001. Happy Wednesday, and don't forget about Apple VP Andre Young. [Spotify, iTunes, Amazon]

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I can't understand a word he's saying, but there's something terribly moving about listening to our secretary of state address the French people in their own language today:

I'm old enough to remember when Republicans turned Kerry's fluency in French into a political liability—it was back when Kerry was running for president against a man who could barely speak English.

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1. Investigators arrested Thaddeus Murphy, a 44-year-old carpenter, for allegedly setting off a bomb near an NAACP office building in January, the Associated Press reported.
   
2. Investigators told the AP that Murphy was enraged over financial problems and was targeting his accountant's office.
3. The bomb originally rattled civil rights groups and advocates, who feared the NAACP was the original target.
   
4. No one was injured or killed by the bombing.

The FBI deemed the attack deliberate

An early composite sketch of the suspect of the bombing. (FBI)

Murphy allegedly exploded a device outside the building housing the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP shortly before 11 a.m. on January 6. Authorities quickly determined that the bombing was deliberate, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The device, which FBI investigators described as "not sophisticated," was detonated at the side of the building. The explosion charred the wall, but no other damage was reported, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. A gas can was placed next to the bomb, but it didn't ignite.

Further reading: The long history of attacks against civil rights organizations.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Candles might not be the most convenient way to light up your home thanks to the lightbulb, but they are irreplaceable when creating a cozy or intimate atmosphere. Candle design has come a long way, and there are plenty of awesome designs out there to choose from.

Check out these creative candle designs, add some that you’ve seen, and vote for your favorites too.

Watermelon Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Plugged In Candles

Source: decoracion2.com

Tiny Candle With A Matchbox

Source: www.design-3000.com

Emotions Revealed Candles

Source: www.uncommongoods.com

Realistic Egg Candle

Source: www.oddee.com

Candle That Comes With A Matchbox Attached

Source: www.craftscollection.dk

Floating Origami Boat Candle

Source: imwm.org

Macaroon Candles

Source: www.etsy.com

Spine Candle

Source: makezine.com

Brain Candle With Baby Head Candle-Holder

Source: www.etsy.com

Burning Human Candle

Source: sunripeshadows.tumblr.com

Forest Creature Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Realistic Heart Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Poop Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Free Yourself Candle

Source: www.creativebloq.com

Creepy Baby Head Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Crayon Candles

Source: www.petitapetitandfamily.com

Reusable Candle Holder

Source: www.boredpanda.com

Cthulhu Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Forest Animals Candle Holders

Source: www.etsy.com

Realistic Beer Candle

Source: www.etsy.com

Batman Shadow Candle Holder

Source: www.shapeways.com

Cat Skeleton Candle

Source: www.kickstarter.com

Shadow Art Candle

Source: www.uncommongoods.com

Rainbow Light Candle

Source: www.uncommongoods.com

Charmander Candle

Source: msandrade.tumblr.com

Multiple Wick Candle

Source: bravit.com

Light Bulb Candle

Source: www.systemdesignstudio.com