I’ve been watching it, and man is it just a grueling slog. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant show, but having lived through this and having it being centered in a region that is identical to my own, it’s just hard.
I can’t believe the Sacklers got away with it. But then again, I can.
And it is still ongoing and shitloads of people died last year and no one is doing anything about it.
Mike in NC
Went to Best Buy today and got the Roku Ultima package. Setup was a breeze. Our old Apple TV was simply tired and FUBAR and needed to be replaced with something easier to use. Didn’t choose to wait until Friday to get a discount.
SalterWobchak
I’m reading Empire of Pain right now. It’s good.
eclare
@SalterWobchak: That book is on my list. I’m also switching over to Hulu from Netflix next month, and one of the shows I want to see is Dopesick.
James E Powell
“Hyman Roth is the only one left, because he always made money for his partners.”
Haven’t read the book or seen the series, but I’m guessing the Sacklers spread the wealth to those who could help & protect them.
Mike J
Rest assured that if anyone decides to do anything about it, what will be done is forbidding people in pain from getting anything that might give them the slightest amount of relief.
Ohio Mom
@Mike J: I think that’s been already true for a long time.
dexwood
Man, y’all watch and read the most depressing stuff. It isn’t necessary to soak up, and moan about, everything that brings you down to stay informed.
Professor Bigfoot
I went on a spending spree at Sweetwater; got myself some nice studio monitors, a new guitar processor (with that new-fangled digital output) and have been fooling around with GarageBand and other assorted DAWs.
Right now blow away by the sounds available for the Apple Pro Logic DAW… and really having way too much fun.
(ps- I ordered this stuff late Friday night; it was delivered on Sunday morning. Sweetwater. Whoah.)
dexwood
@Professor Bigfoot: I only have a limited idea about all this stuff and what it can do, but goddamn, you sound happy. That makes me happy.
frosty
@Professor Bigfoot: I have GarageBand on my iPhone but haven’t done anything except set it up as a metronome. Is it strictly Apple or can it (or something similar) be used on Windows?
I should really spend my time trying to play at least one song without mistakes, but hey, new gear!!
Parmenides
The Sacklers make me want to believe in hell. But the real problem is that we just don’t have any pain meds that don’t have some serious problems. There are some NSAIDS that are great but will wreck your kidneys. SAIDS are great but will eat your bones. Opiods damn near rewire the brain to get you addicted. All the while being in constant pain sucks. Working jobs your entire life that keep you on your feet will leave you with a lot of that constant pain. I keep banging my head against a wall thinking how to fix it and can’t.
frosty
@dexwood:
Agreed. There are a lot of things on my binge list but when I sit down to watch there’s not much there that I really want to see.
Benw
@Professor Bigfoot: sweetwater rules.
Felanius Kootea
OT: I’m super mad at Amazon right now. I’d been tracking a super convection oven/air fryer for months and the price went steadily down from $599 to $319. I ordered it at $319 two Fridays ago (Nov 12th) with 3 day prime shipping, so it would arrive by Tuesday, November 15th at the latest. Tracking shows that the oven left an Oklahoma facility on Saturday, November 13th. Then nothing. On Tuesday, my Amazon returns and orders has an update that the item is now scheduled to arrive between November 17 and 19. No tracking details on package beyond leaving Oklahoma on the 13th. No notice of arrival anywhere in California, where I live. November 18, my Amazon returns and orders has a message saying that my package was probably lost and to click cancel for a refund. Like a big dummy, I click cancel and go to reorder the oven, except the price is now $599. Call Amazon and they’re all out in their own fulfillment centers and only third parties are fulfilling the order, so they can’t do anything about price except a $20 gift card for my aggravation. Okay, I say, track down the original shipper and see if they can get the package with the item I ordered to me at $319. No way am I paying $599. No one is able to reach the shipper. My Amazon tracking info now shows “customer declined receipt of order.” What? How did I decline receipt in California of an order that is apparently floating somewhere over Oklahoma? Best Amazon can do is wait to see whether Amazon receives more of the item (could be in a month, could be February, could be sometime in 2024) and sell it to me at the original price I bought it. Ugh. Serves me right for still patronizing Amazon.
frosty
@Parmenides: Just getting older – my occasional lower back pain (think sudden attack by a cattle prod) has now been joined by something around the shoulder blade*. Advil and Aleve were no good but the leftover prescription hydrocodone knocked it back. If I don’t hurt I don’t tense up and aggravate the muscle spasm. Like you said, it would be nice to find something less damaging.
* Nothing like a lifelong carpenter has to deal with.
Ksmiami
I read the book- maybe having leaders like Manchin etc contributed to the area’s tragedy. Sounds like a lot of hopeless people in pain…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dexwood: : @frosty: thirded, somebody today was telling me I’ve got to watch Chernobyl, and everybody raves about it, but I find reality depressing enough. I’ve been rewatching Breaking Bad, which isn’t light and uplifting, but the acting is compelling and the plots are engaging. Also find myself re-watching Schitt’s Creek. The Roses are (ex) rich clueless assholes but they haven’t killed anyone, I don’t think.
scav
Between the corporations killing people in pursuit of ever-increasing profit, the politicians killing constituents in pursuit of party branding, the militants / police killing people in pursuit of automatic unquestioned authority, so what if some of us get picked off by fleeing automobiles with nothing personal involved?
frosty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Chernobyl actually wasn’t bad. I liked Schitt’s Creek but not enough to watch it again. It took at least half the first season to get over the fact that every character (except Stevie, I love Stevie!) was totally cringeworthy.
Kent
@Felanius Kootea: Shop at Costco. They have air fryers and for a lot cheaper. They always guarantee you the lowest price. If the price goes down you just go show your receipt and ask for a refund and they give it.
Sister Golden Bear
The Norwegian postal service celebrates the 50th anniversary of the country decriminalizing being gay with a short film, “When Harry Met Santa.” Just lovely.
Ksmiami
@scav: Our country is just so pro-life isn’t it?
James E Powell
@Professor Bigfoot:
I got a new macbook air & bought the logic pro. I have not begun to figure out how to use it. I am interested in recording. I want to wait until my winter recess to devote time and attention to learning it.
Felanius Kootea
@Kent: I should. I liked the one I ordered online because of the larger size/ability to cook enough for more than 6 people, but the hassle wasn’t worth it. I am a Costco member.
CaseyL
One of the joys of having a tiny kitchen is I don’t have to agonize over whether to get an Instant Pot or an Air Fryer or a Food Processor, much less which brand to get or which vendor to get it from, because I don’t have counter or cabinet space for any of it anyway.
But I do order items online, and a few vendors have had orders from me that vanished into thin air. I had the tracking numbers, the tracker said the items had been shipped, and then **poof** gone. Tracker gets stuck at where the last known location was a week ago, two weeks ago, a month ago. (One item showed up a month or two after I cancelled the order, after both the vendor and the shopping site declared it to be lost!)
Or – this happened today – an order the tracker said was “out for delivery” as of Nov 19 and expected delivery was the 20th, then the 21st, and then the 22nd… suddenly went back to “out for delivery” as of Nov 18. No estimated delivery date at all, the previous estimates deleted as if they’d never been.
I don’t know if companies are just lying about stuff getting shipped out, or what. it’s not USPS’ fault, either: at least two of my errant orders weren’t being shipped via USPS.
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear: That was lovely, thanks.
dexwood
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Breaking Bad was a fine work of fiction I chose to watch for entertainment. I don’t choose to wallow in depressing reality. True confession, Breaking Bad was shot all around my neighborhood. The car wash is within easy walking distance. I was an extra in one of the episodes in season three. Right place at the right time. Didn’t make the edit, though.
eclare
@CaseyL: Of the stuff I have ordered recently (which is not much), the company that does the best is the USPS.
Bill Arnold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Voices from Chernobyl (Svetlana Alexievich, 1997) (the series source material) is quite good. (The emotional rhythms of the stories are fascinating.)
patroclus
Chernobyl is really good because it really puts you in the period of the declining USSR and describes what actually happened fairly accurately without a lot of technobabble. And Jared Harris is an excellent actor and conveys the emotion of the disaster quite effectively. I thought I knew what happened, but after watching it, I understood it far better.
Major Major Major Major
@dexwood: I can’t stand this sort of stuff either, but I also try not to judge other people for what they like ? I read enough politics, I can hardly even deal with clips of politicians.
But I’m sure plenty of people think it’s silly that I only read genre fiction.
Ohio Mom
@Parmenides: After a bad bout with Percocet — after a few properly spaced doses, I spent the next day vomitting — I asked my oncologist what she would recommend, as a doctor who prescribes a lot of pain meds, if I ever had to have my other eye operated on.
Her answer was There are no good pain medicines, they are all awful.
L85NJGT
@CaseyL:
It happens down to the last mile at Amazon. The Flex app will assign non-existent packages to drivers. Ghosts in the machine, I guess.
dexwood
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, different strokes for different folks and all that.
G’night, Balloon Juice.
Felanius Kootea
@CaseyL: Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t be so paranoid. I figured it was some kind of inside scam to get me to buy at the highest listed price, but maybe the item was just simply lost. I hadn’t experienced this kind of problem before.
mrmoshpotato
@Felanius Kootea: Hopefully it shows up eventually.
Leslie
The final season of Goliath has a storyline about some fictionalized Sacklers. I couldn’t bring myself to watch Dopesick on the heels of that.
I did start watching Maid. The first episode was all I could take. There’s a reason I mostly read genre fiction, and my TV viewing is probably 50% cozy mysteries.
Major Major Major Major
@Felanius Kootea: I’ve had all sorts of trouble getting things delivered—by anyone—feels like it started around last February, probably not a coincidence
eclare
@Felanius Kootea: All the shippers are having problems. Some FedEx Ground sort centers are at 65% capacity.
NotMax
@CaseyL
Teensy kitchen here too. However the Instant Pot is such a boon and so versatile that you’ll happily find/make room for it to be stashed. If stored when not in use in another room in a place where it is visible, and you don’t want to stare at an appliance when it is put there, there are a number of styles of round covers made to slip over it.
James E Powell
@Bill Arnold:
I listened to the audiobook. It was excellent.
I followed it up with The Unwomanly Face of War: An oral history of women in World War II. Also excellent.
Benw
@Sister Golden Bear: awesome
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Eh, those people are sort of snobs.
By the way, knowing you’re such a big fan of ATLA, I have a fanfic recommendation for you:
Operation Eclipse
It’s very good, if a bit of a slow burn. The AEU is made up of Americans, RAF pilots, British engineers, and ex-Werhmact troops from an airstrip/port in occupied Germany in Norden, some months after the end of WW2 Think Tom Clancy meets Avatar meets Island in the Sea of Time. I really only have three critiques:
With all that being said, it’s a very detailed and an intriguing premise. Action-packed when it gets going too, but doesn’t glorify war or violence. It’s not finished and the war is far from being over.
I’ve always been a sucker for these types of stories. I remember coming across one on Space Battles where a portal to Westeros opens up in the Sahara Desert and US soldiers meet up with Jon Snow in the cold open and shoot some White Walkers.
Another fanfic I recall was one where the Nazis locate a wardrobe that leads to Narnia.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): well don’t they just have a fanfic for everything!
idk if I’m down for airbender fics tho.
Just about to start the Vorkosigan Saga actually.
sab
I can absolutely believe the Sacklers got away with it.
One of my step-kids has had a 15 year battle with drug addiction. Mostly successful- he is still alive. But it is never-ending. He got his addiction on the street like a normal kid. But there is no place in Hell bad enough for the Sacklers, and yet they will get away with it.
My sister is a professional art historian. This poisons her whole field, because to be successful you have to be in bed with these guys. Actually it poisons the whole field of visual arts. To make a living you have to associate with people like this,
stinger
@Sister Golden Bear: “I Saw Harry Kissing Santa Claus” — how lovely!
Ruckus
@Parmenides:
I’ve worked on my feet for 60 yrs so I understand your pain.
May I suggest that banging your head against the wall may not be an actual cure for pain…..
The only thing I’ve ever found that can really, really, really kick a migraine’s ass turns out to be an opioid. 15 minutes after taking it the migraine is just gone, one minute it feels like my brain is trying to kill me, the next, no pain whatsoever. But it is of course a high risk opioid, so it’s a no no. But now there are alternatives that work without the extreme risk, it’s just not the 15 minute light switch pain is gone experience. Of course there is also no opioid addiction risk either….
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
I ordered Adam Schiff’s book on Amazon and their warehouse shipped it to UPS and they delivered it to their local USPS shipping center and USPS delivered it Sunday. That seems like an awfully convoluted system to get a book delivered half way across the country. I can not imagine that it was cheaper than any other process.
sab
We had to put my dad’s amazing cat down today. He ( the cat) has been blind for at least the last five years. But lately he has been a lot weaker. He couldn’t navigate his way around anymore. He fell off tables and hurt himself landing badly. He started to yell in the night because he was afraid of his world. He used to be fearless. My husband sobbed like a baby. I don’t think he will cry if I die but this cat broke his heart. I understand.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
I love that. Thank you.
SiubhanDuinne
@sab:
Oh, sab, I am really sorry.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
I’m so sorry to hear that, sab. My condolences
Ha
@Felanius Kootea:
I bought a Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro for $399 from Williams & Sonoma.
I don’t know if it’s what you want, but at least it wasn’t $599.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: We all die sometime. I really wish this brave little critter had been allowed to die in his sleep, but no.So we gave him the best alternative. Dylan Thomas would have been shocked. He wanted to go into that dark night. He was sick and in pain and afraid.
Mary G
@sab: I am so sorry.
sab
Thank you all. I am shocked and bereft, but he is at peace finally. He mostly had a gloriously happy life.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: How the fuck did you get in my pie filter?.!! Love that toggle switch.
SiubhanDuinne
@sab:
Dylan Thomas’ dark night leads to the kitties’ Rainbow Bridge. You helped him get there — the final gift. It really is a generous and loving thing to do. Hugs.
Felanius Kootea
@sab:
Sounds like he was in really bad shape towards the end. So sorry that you had to go through this :(.
SiubhanDuinne
@sab:
LOL. Pretty sure I said something intemperate to you a few days ago! Happily, I am so old that I can’t remember what it was, nor can I be bothered to try to find it.
(And of course there’s no way either to prove or disprove this, but I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been pied. I hope that doesn’t sound like boastfulness.)
:-)
Felanius Kootea
@Ha:
That’s exactly what I’d been tracking on Amazon. I always thought Williams Sonoma was more expensive! I’ll admit I’ve never shopped there. Thank you!
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: My best guess is that you were next to a wrong person. I would never have intentionally pied you.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: My best guess is that you were next to a wrong person. I would never have intentionally pied you.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: My best guess is that you were next to a wrong person. I would never have intentionally pied you.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: My best guess is that you were next to a wrong person. I would never have intentionally pied you. Also, I rarely pie.
sab
Steeplejack
@sab:
Oh, sab, so sorry to hear that. Condolences.
??
sab
Needless to say, comments for me borked for a bit.
I absolutely love using that verb.
ETA We cannot all be nice.
TriassicSands
What!? You only read genre fiction. What is wrong with you? I can’t believe it! Genre fiction? Unbelievable! Incredible!!! What is the world coming to?
Um…What the heck is genre fiction?
Just kidding, but that seemed to fit in with typical responses these days about lots of things.
I learned a long time ago that there are things that just aren’t worth arguing about or using as standards of worthiness. What movies, music, or reading material people enjoy, for example.
sab
@TriassicSands: All fiction fits into some genre.
TriassicSands
That’s a careless statement, at best. There are no perfect pain medications, but that is true of virtually all medications.
An example of a great pain medication is proparacaine hydrochloride ophalmic solution. If you scratch your cornea, for example, it can be tremendously painful. A drop or two of proparacaine and seconds later the pain is gone. Completely. That sounds perfect, but there are two problems. First, it doesn’t last very long so you need to reapply it. That can be difficult because many doctors won’t write a prescription for it (or let you have the bottle if you are in the ER) because it is so effective at numbing your eye that people have caused permanent damage to their eye by rubbing it. I had to go to the ER for an eye injury and the doctor let me have the bottle because he acknowledged that I was aware of the risks and was unlikely to hurt myself. The medication allowed me to sleep while my eye healed. A fantastic pain medication.
More generally, opioids are similar. They must be used responsibly. I doubt I would be alive today if not for opioids. But they could, ultimately, kill me me, because it is possible to take them carefully, as directed, and still have them cause fatal respiration suppression.
People who don’t have serious chronic conditions may not understand this, but an extraordinary number of medications — for organ transplant recipients and people with auto-immune diseases have horrendous potential side effects. Take Humira, the world’s most profitable drug, and you may develop heart failure or if you are young, a form of lymphoma that will likely kill you in a couple of years. Or you could just develop a fatal infection.
A number of drugs being pushed right now (the newest may be Ocrevus for MS) cause or may cause PML — progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy — a devastating brain disease that trashes your brain and kills 30%-50% within a few months. if you live, you’re probably not lucky. Or maybe the medication will cause TB or some form of cancer. The risks may be relatively small, but they are real, and the alternative is intolerable. So, people take the medications.
Opiods get all the press because crime is often involved and they kill quickly. But you rarely read about people whose lives are salvaged by opioids. An article in the Post or Times the other day called fentanyl “poison.” But it’s on the WHO’s list of essential medicines. The big problem is street use; I wore a fentanyl patch for years without any noticeable problems.
The issue of addiction is complicated and the word is often used incorrectly. What should never be done is to cut someone off who has developed dependence.
Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be so long.
opiejeanne
@sab: You did a good thing and gave him the care he needed, but it’s never easy.
I’m so sorry.
Anyway
@Sister Golden Bear:
Lovely, thanks.
Gvg
@Felanius Kootea: I have had 2 packages do this last year. UPS both. It is very frustrating. I never had a problem until then. One was Bed Bath & Beyond which apparently just uses UPS. Other packages through UPS have been slower too.
Target delivers but is rough on packages and I have had damages. Will avoid if I can in the future. Walmart leaves packages in weird places, sometimes too visible IMO.
Betty
@Parmenides: Try marijuana if you can. It does work pretty well for some people.
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ve seen an article saying that there’s a salmonella strain that’s running through the food chain and showing up every now and again, but there’s no authority to order a recall, and there’s not enough tracking to locate the source.
So people are dying, and all because “Republicans prefer a light regulatory touch,” gets said, and “which we now see kills people in a lot of different ways,” doesn’t.
We really ought to start mentioning regulatory failures a heck of a lot more, from Texans dying of CO poisoning, to what appears to be a toothless DEA ( how delicious it would be to find it’s fair to write “who would have thought Republicans were so unwilling to pursue the war on drugs?”), to other regulatory failures up and down the line.
“That consumer killing undoubtedly occurred because they removed a “Job Killing” regulation, which caused the net loss of a few jobs previously needed for safety and regulatory compliance.”
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@TriassicSands: Thks. This is the kind of thing most people know nothing about.
rikyrah
I can’t watch some stuff. Things that I consider pure evil are tough to watch. And, I consider the Sacklers to be pure evil.
taumaturgo
Americans besides the addition to meds, guns, and religion, love to be bitch slap by the billionaire class.
taumaturgo
@taumaturgo: *addictions
Anonymous
@Mike J:
Indeed!
I suffer from chronic pain, nerve damage, numbness in extremities, cramps and spasms, etc. The result of industrial accidents and auto accidents starting back when I was in the service, drafted during the ‘Nam. Multiple concussions, etc…
I have taken pretty substantial pain meds for many years. This addiction plague is not my fault, yet I feel blamed every time a piece airs on TV. I’m sorry people get addicted to pain drugs. A good friend was hurt at work, electrician, elbow damage, pain killer meds, got hooked. Stole from everyone he knew. Money, tools, you name it. Dead now of an OD after years of drug abuse.
Yet people with medical conditions still desperately need pain relief… people commit suicide because of their unrelenting pain. I would have quite a battle without my medication.