- ̗̀your local fairy ̖́-

Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!

It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.

Like, it’s literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers, bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

MCCPDC CEO Alex Oshmyansky reached out to Cuban with an idea for a low-cost generic drug company in a cold email. It was launched in January last year. They were motivated in part by “Pharma Bro” Martin Shrkeli’s outrage-producing price hike of the lifesaving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per tablet while Shrkeli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. Cuban told Forbes last year the pricing for generic drugs was “ridiculous.” He said he decided to put his name on the company to “show capitalism can be compassionate and to send the message I am all in.” It’s not clear how much he had invested in the company.

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please note that prices are location dependent on goodrx—it shows you the options at pharmacies near your location. i’m in pittsburgh, pa; if you’re in a different part of the country and you try this, you may get slightly (or wildly) different numbers. 

fluoxetine is generic prozac. thirty 20mg capsules costs $12.80 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $3.90.

atorvastatin is generic lipitor. thirty 40mg tablets is $10.95 at my cheapest local pharmacy. costplus has it for $4.20.

omeprazole is generic prilosec. thirty 20mg capsules is $13.90 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $4.20 at costplus.

aripiprazole is generic abilify. thirty 10mg tablets is $17.73 at the cheapest local pharmacy (and $260.60 at the most expensive—and that’s with a discount, still, yikes); $6.00 at costplus. 

lamotrigine xr is generic lamictal xr. thirty 25mg tablets is $36.59 at the cheapest local pharmacy; $8.40 at costplus. 

maybe that doesn’t seem like a huge discount, but the goodrx prices change *all the time*—last time i used it to buy fluoxetine, which was in the last couple of years, it was $31. also, many people are on multiple medications, or have multiple people in a household taking multiple medications, and $5 off every prescription adds up real fast. 

THE CHEAPEST I CAN GET IT IN PERSON ANYWHERE IS $13 AND THE STANDARD PRICE FOR THE GENERIC IS $82.

TAMIFLU IS ON HERE FOR UNDER $4. IT’S AN ANTIVIRAL USED TO TREAT SEVERE CASES OF INFLUENZA AND REGULARLY COSTS OVER $100.

There is a medicine on here called Valcyte, it’s an HIV medication, he’s offering it for $100.20 which sounds outrageous (and I mean still kind of is but wait for it, wait for it) UNTIL YOU REALIZE ON GOODRX IT’S LISTED FOR $179 AS THE ABSOLUTE CHEAPEST PRICE I CAN FIND AND MY LOCAL WALGREENS SELLS IT FOR $1,009 FOR A MONTH’S SUPPLY.

02.02.2022

The university entrance exam is in June and there is not much time left until then… in any case, I think my studies for it are going well.

climate change represents world-altering tragedy if unchecked, but not even in the worst-case scenario does it mean “literally everyone dies”

this, this, this, this, this, this, and like, 700 other sources will tell you that most of the effects of climate change will be reversible even if we pass the ‘threshold’ of a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature

BUT. Even if the worst happens, it will be important to be doing things other than wallowing in misery???

I’m not trying to be callous but for people living today it’s wildly unlikely for the results to be “literally immediate death.”

People will get displaced from their homes by rising sea levels. We have like, years, probably decades, before that happens. It seems so fucked up to decide that we should do nothing, because we’ve already decided they’re going to die anyway????

If a bunch of us are going to die, why not die trying to help each other? Why not try to make sure fewer people die? Why not do something that might reduce someone’s suffering or give them food or clean water or a place to sleep?