close Video Off-label use of Ozempic for weight loss causing shortage for diabetics Dr. Marc Siegel reports on the shortage facing pharmacies across the U.S. Ozempic and Wegovy share the common side effects of nausea and appetite loss, but there is one lesser-known risk factor that isn’t mentioned nearly as often. The two semaglutide-containing medications — Ozempic for type 2 diabetes control and Wegovy for weight loss — could also pose a serious risk to unborn babies. Animal studies have shown that when pregnant rabbits, rats and monkeys were given semaglutide, they experienced higher rates of miscarriage, birth defects and small fetal size — information that’s included in the drug labels for both medications, which are made by Novo Nordisk in New Jersey . WEIGHT LOSS MEDICATIONS OZEMPIC AND WEGOVY: WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE YOU STOP TAKING THEM Ozempic is still wildly popular, with more than four million active prescriptions, … [Read more...] about Ozempic, Wegovy and pregnancy risk: What you need to know about the issue
Whats mai tai
What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in June
Newly Reviewed Chelsea Joan Brown Through June 17. Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street, Manhattan; 212-243-0200, matthewmarks.com . You could call the mature style of the great American painter Joan Brown (1938-1990) extra-late Egyptian, with her figures often rendered fully frontal or fully in profile. This formality — along with expanses of startling solid colors — contributes to the hypnotic stillness of her mainly autobiographical works. (Besides painting, her interests included her family, Hinduism, ballroom dancing, serious amateur swimming and Egyptian art.) It’s not always clear what Brown, who appears in six of the paintings here, is thinking about, but the seriousness is undeniable. So it’s not surprising that this show of a dozen paintings, mostly from the 1970s, includes “The Visitor” (1977). It depicts the artist seated with an Egyptian pharaoh at a restaurant. The pharaoh is deep turquoise — the color of Egyptian faience — as is the wall … [Read more...] about What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in June
How to Navigate the Bizarro Economy
Photo: Getty Images/Getty Images It’s reasonable to be worried about a recession. Banks have been failing , offices are closing , and it’s not like anything has been getting cheaper . Still, you have people like Neel Kashkari , the CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, saying that the economy is fine, that no downturn is on the horizon. It is all very confusing. When good data does come along, it seems to come with an asterisk. On Wednesday, the federal government released new information on the amount of jobs out there, and it was pretty great. Not only are businesses still hiring like crazy, they actually increased the total number of job listings in April. There were 10.1 million openings last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — nearly two for each of the 5.8 million unemployed. People are still quitting jobs for better ones, and fewer people are getting laid off. Good, right? Actually — this news sucked, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average … [Read more...] about How to Navigate the Bizarro Economy
Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images Early this year, Google teased a fundamental change to its core product, the search engine through which much of the world accesses the web. Soon, the company said, Google would start using AI to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats.” By May, the company had a real product to share. For Google, it was an obvious and incremental feature update combining two of the company’s products: a text generator plugged into a search engine, basically. Searchers ask a question, and Google tries to answer it with short, article-style “snapshots.” For publishers, however — of news, how-to content, reviews, recommendations, reference material, and a range of other content one might describe as existing to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats” — it looked like nothing less than an existential crisis. Google was getting into content, automating the … [Read more...] about Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
MAGA World Dismisses Ken Paxton Impeachment As Political Persecution
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Back in the 1950s, there was an ethically challenged governor of my home state of Georgia who would defend himself against frequent charges of corruption by accusing his critics of trying to undermine Jim Crow laws, of which he was a loud champion. One journalist referred to this argument as: “If you ain’t for stealin’, you ain’t for segregation!” I thought of this precedent upon reading about the impeachment of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton by the Texas House for a remarkable array of improprieties, which has led him to mobilize his MAGA allies to launch a highly ideological defense, as the Texas Tribune reports : One day after a Texas House committee recommended that Attorney General Ken Paxton be impeached, several prominent Republicans pressed a common strategy Friday: attack, attack, attack. In statements and social media posts, conservatives accused their fellow Republicans in the Texas House — Speaker Dade … [Read more...] about MAGA World Dismisses Ken Paxton Impeachment As Political Persecution
Kevin McCarthy Really Did It
Photo: Getty Images Kevin McCarthy finally did it. On Wednesday, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote including the vast majority of Republicans, the House finally passed an increase to the debt ceiling and did so as a part of a package that included some Republican goals to limit spending. It was the end of the arduous journey for McCarthy that had started only moments after he finally won election to be Speaker after midnight on the 15th ballot in January. Yet, addressing reporters in a press conference only minutes after the vote was gaveled to a close, he made clear that while the weight of the world might now be off his back, the chip on his shoulder remained. It didn’t matter that it was his moment of triumph or even that he was roundly praised by his fellow Republicans at the press conference. Garret Graves of Louisiana, who had been one of McCarthy’s chief negotiators with the White House, went out of his way to praise the Speaker as “one of the best strategists I’ve … [Read more...] about Kevin McCarthy Really Did It