By any name, though, it’s experiencing a renewed popularity among collectors who are drawn to its eerie glow and perceived danger....
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Although uranium is often associated with atomic bombs and nuclear disasters, for much of its history, it was just another colouring agent. German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovered the element in 1789, and glassmakers later began using it to colour glass in shades ranging from bright green to pale yellow.
The term “uranium glass” generally describes glass with uranium oxide, which glows under a black light. Other terms — Vaseline glass and Depression glass, for example — came later and apply more specifically to lighter yellow glass and glass made during the Great Depression, respectively. By any name, though, it’s experiencing a renewed popularity among collectors who are drawn to its eerie glow and perceived danger.
Franz Anton Riedel is cited as one of the first to add uranium to glass, using it in the 1830s in the modern-day Czech Republic, but similar work was going on simultaneously in the United States, England and other locations. A set of uranium glassware was created for the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.
The process isn’t too different from making other types of glass.
Most tableware kind of glass is what’s called a soda-lime glass. The base is mostly silica, with a few fluxes or substances that lower the melting point of the silica. Colour is added by inserting pieces from long rods of tinted glass in the hot blow pipe, or by rolling molten glass in a fine powder of a metal oxide, including uranium. Uranium is just a controlled substance, so it’s a little harder to get your hands on.
Ozempic - a diabetes drug taken by injection in the thigh, stomach or arm isn’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss. But recently, the drug and others of its kind have become the subject of conversations about weight loss, thinness and so-called biohacking in Hollywood, the tech industry and beyond. Now it is also called the Hollywood drug.
The FDA approved the drug in 2017 to help lower blood sugar in people with Type 2 diabetes. Doctors use medical discretion to prescribe it to people who are obese or overweight, but it’s not meant to be taken as a get-thin-quick treatment. In some cases, patients who meet neither of those criteria are still getting their hands on Ozempic.
And also doctors are also seen prescribing Ozempic too liberally—and in some cases, giving samples to patients who can’t afford to continue taking the drug once the free doses run out. One Ozempic injection pen typically lasts about a month and costs about $900.
Ozempic, made by Novo Nordisk, contains semaglutide, which stimulates insulin production and targets areas of the brain that regulate appetite. Semaglutide, approved for weight loss under the brand name Wegovy, which Novo Nordisk sells at a higher price than its cousin Ozempic.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted this month that he was taking Wegovy in combination with fasting to lose weight.
