Insulin

I’ve apparently been thinking about insulin a lot lately!

Anyway.

I learned today that Eli Lilly is going to reduce prices on some of its insulin products (I was over at WSJ; I’m not endorsing WSJ or suggesting you read it, but here’s what I saw: https://www.wsj.com/articles/eli-lilly-to-cut-prices-of-insulin-drugs-by-70-c554f516). I was amused that in a heist episode of The Equalizer, a point in the backstory of the reformed criminal who was Robin’s client was that he turned to crime in order to pay for his younger brother’s insulin after their parents died. (The Equalizer, Season 3, Episode 9, “Second Chance”)

Apparently, this is the point at which pharma concedes. When your pricing choices are a plot point in The Equalizer, when your corporate choices are used to make a criminal more sympathetic, it’s probably time to change your pricing choices.

ETA:

Unrelated to insulin, but also in WSJ today, an article about Young People wanting to drive manual transmission cars.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/manual-transmission-stick-shift-cars-929dc155

The article explicitly relates this to point-and-shoot cameras and vinyl records as a similar trend. AND hilariously, the end quote is from a young woman who is already tired of her manual BMW and plans to buy an electric BMW when she can afford to.

As a formerly young woman who when young thought a manual was cool to drive, I can only agree with this choice. It is _currently_ still useful to know how to drive a manual when renting cars in some other countries. And also, I don’t expect that to last forever, either.

Good times. Young people being retro, and figuring out why we decided those things actually were not worth keeping around is in fact a core component of how our decisions are solidified after being double and triple checked.

A bit more from _Behemoth_

I swear, I’m stopping after this. This isn’t a screwed up name.

“Amazon retaliated, removing the “buy button” from all titles published by one of the big five, Macmillan. That made Macmillan books hard to find and hence buy, which in turn generated customer complaints and negative press.”

Um, it actually made it NOT possible to buy at all on Amazon.

“The final result was a draw favoring Amazon. The agency model stuck with four of the big five publishers (although the biggest, Penguin Random House, still uses the wholesale model) but the publishers and Apple were eventually caught up in a Department of Justice antitrust suit — which claimed that they had conspired to raise prices — and paid heavily to settle it.”

This is the wikipedia page about the suit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.

Apple _lost_, found to be in violation of the Sherman Act. Apple and the publishers all had to pay large-ish amounts AND they had a consent decree saying they couldn’t use the agency model for 2 years.

This is a profoundly dishonest, error-ridden book, based on the free sample.

And Now For Something Completely Different!

Moving on!

I read the sample of _Switched on Pop_ and it’s fantastic! Highly recommend. Rather than immediately go buy and read the book, however, I’m going to detour over to the podcast.

But yeah, if you are looking for music nerd books, this is a great one.

I attempted to read the sample for _EDrenaline Rush_ and I Just Can’t. I did not download this sample; my sister did. Looking at the detail page, there’s no way I would ever decide to read a book on this topic / written by this man. Ugh.

Not for me.