3. At least several hundred billion tons of commodity plastics have been mass produced over the last 70 years with little to no quantified, attributable environmental damage from these plastics. Most microplastic is essentially inert dust that is no different from other organic or inorganic dust such as pollen or clay. Plastics are not allergens because they are non reactive and do not stimulate an immune response. It is very likely that blood of animals contains plastic molecules along with thousands of other molecules in trace quantities doing no more harm than natural silt in a river system.
You're missing a couple points yourself. For example, the article is talking about phthalates. These are additives added to plastics. These leech from microplastics. So your rant about how plastics are inert shows you didnt even understand the article yourself tbh.
There is plenty of evidence that these compounds are harmful and affect the biology. See the section on wikipedia on phthalates. What there isnt is much evidence and experimentation showing theyre NOT harmful.
This whole thread is a great example of an interesting phenomenon... whenever people talk about this people come out of the woodwork to nitpick the details of whoever is criticizing the wonton use of likely poisonous compounds. Theyll argue things like this about the details of the exact likely bioactivity of the compound, or go on about how its impossible to have modern society without poisoning everything in a huge perfect enemy of the good argument.
Like, go drink from a cup of pthalates if youre so ok with it being in your brain, balls, ovaries, etc. No ones arguing we need to ban plastics, but maybe coating the world in single use water bottles without considering the effects is suboptimal. Shouldnt the onus be on proving its safe before spreading it everywhere, rather than proving its dangerous?
I'm not nitpicking the parent. The parent comment is just wrong, full stop. You should not listen to them.
They have an incorrect notion of what a phthalate is (usually a slightly greasy ester or an alcohol), how polar/hydrophopic they are (mixed; generally ampiphilic), and whether or not they tend to bioaccumulate (in general, they do not).
Your broader point is well-taken, however, but not in the way you intended: chemistry does not reward a shallow understanding. The details matter a lot.
You're arguing as if you understand all the side effects of the biochemistry on the biology. None of us do. Theyre correct about one thing: its probably not good for you.
But sure, you might be more right on the basics of the biochemistry.
I guess I'm just frustrated about the state of the world - im not a degrowth person I just want a better balance.
There seems to be plenty of evidence for, for example, their role in endocrine disruption.
Sure, but I didnt claim he made a valid argument either. What I am claiming is when someone says things like
"The question of what this would do in the human body, which is full of polymers with very sensitively evolved mechanical properties, was obvious - yet it was not asked in a funded capacity until we had been letting it accumulate in our kids for decades"
which the article I linked supports, people come out of the woodwork to argue we need "more evidence/an exact biochemical pathway" when we dont have the understanding/technology to actually do that.
You're assuming we're all being poisoned. We might not be, and clearly if we are, it's not a huge effect because we're still not obviously more diseasous than before. It could even be that the benefits of these chemicals on civilization outweigh the health costs so we're better off using them.
You're assuming were not all being poisoned, lol. Did you even read what I wrote.
There's plenty of evidence we're increasingly fucking with our bodies, again see the rising rates of cancer in youth. Yes, there are likely many causes for that. You'd have to be criminally negligent to argue a class of chemicals like phthalates is in the clear. Yes, the details are complicated. Yes, the dose makes the poison. Yes.
I believe we're smart enough to find a way to have/eat out cake, but smart people are arguing in this classic way about details that miss the main point people should care about, downplaying the issue in a way that laypeople cant understand the nuance of. So we keep following the $$$ and likely poisoning ourselves.
I've been burning alot of time learning electronics. This book isnt too bad for beginners, but I get way more understanding out of Behrad Razavi's stuff, he has lectures on youtube as well as a book which has way more worked examples. OTOH this book introduces more intricate concepts much more early which can be good for motivation if you dont let yourself get stuck on totally understanding them. For example he goes through a BPT schmitt trigger before he even shows the small signal model for BPTs.
I don't know if we can draw conclusions about racist leanings by backpack stickers that require so much familiarity with historical nazi logos that you can recognize one re-interpreted into a "generic tough guy" aesthetic. Maybe we can! But even if it's the case that there are simply a lot of racists in eastern europe, it's still true that one side is brutally invading a non-threatening neighboring democracy and committing war crimes on a daily basis.
I think those who are arguing against it either don't know quite how extreme KiwiFarms is, or strongly agree with the hatred, doxing and SWATting of minorities and vulnerable people that their members do.
I suppose you're right, and a bunch of them seem to be throwaways, or perhaps people who only made an account to defend their site (I'm basically on a throwaway too). Sad they fell into the same persecution complex thing people seem to get trapped in... like you're really defending the site where they welcomed the Christchurch shooter's manifesto? You really think you're doing something? That's what you want to fight for?
I've never understood the attitude that there should be zero nuance to free speech. That somehow we can't collectively look at the Christchurch manifesto and say, "that's over the line".
Yes, I believe there are laws that are unjustly applied, but this is a) not a law and b) so obviously different from any sort of edge case. The only people who think kiwifarms should exist are sociopaths.
It's a modern day witch-hunt. I grew up in an environment where thinking that deviates from what's commonly acceptable is deemed not worthy and such person should suffer the consequences. It takes time, maturity and probably most important seeing a lot of world to get it changed. I bet a lot of those people on that site are completely lost when it comes to purpose or their place in life, so they end up focusing on extremely negative things as a way to justify their actions or escape their reality.
FYI people are interpreting this as saying the witch hunt is the KF users being targeted, and not what they did to other people (who FWIW might be bad people and do bad things, but this weird disconnected cyber-vigilantism teeming with "far-right" overtones is just not the way to deal with that...).
I read it that way too at first but it makes no sense in light of your OP.
By writing witch hunt, I've meant that KF users hunt down certain individuals they may not agree with, for whatever the reason. I definitely didn't mean that KF users are being hunted.
What kind of actions? I don't chase up people around the globe just because I disagree with them. I don't support in any shape or form doxxing or swatting anyone. People need to be mental to engage in this kind of nonsense.
Yeah, those comments are either extremely ignorant or disingenuous. It takes about 30s of browsing KF to realize that it is coordinated harassment - there are entire subforums devoted to harassing one individual person with thousands and thousands of messages each.
It's one of the most awful places I've ever seen on the internet, and I have zero respect for the people who try to launder large-scale harassment into "it's just free speech!"
I think you're going to need to define what you mean by harassing here. Because talking about people who make fools of themselves publicly is certainly not what most people, and certainly not the law, would consider "harassment"
I cannot think of a valid argument against taking KiwiFarms off of Cloudflare (unless the FBI finds it useful to have them on a domestic service, or something). The only troubling thing about this traces back to a question that sits in the backs of all of our minds: how much do we trust these companies to do good with the ridiculous amount of power they have over society? Even when Big Tech Megacorp™ does something good with that power, it can still be unsettling to see that power being used.
Your post is the perfect example of the no-effort no-info SM reply. How many different social media opinions did your understanding of the site come from?
Swatting is illegal on the site, harassing too, in fact it's against the rules to really try to interact with anyone at all. And they target everyone and anyone who publicly says or does stupid stuff regularly. Don't feel to bad, most people tend to easily fall for misinformation like this.
I have looked at the site and it's doesn't seem that extreme, unless there's a bunch of content not visible to guests. It looks like any anonymous IB from the early 2000s. The people who are calling it "extreme" seem to mostly be trusting other people's descriptions of the site.
> SWATting of minorities
As far as I can tell, the only people verifiably being swatted are KF site operators. I have yet to see a case of swatting with compelling evidence of attribution to KF.
If you anger certain members of the community - e.g. by being a vocal trans person - you'll be targetted by members who will attempt to find your personal information, your full name, your birth name, your phone number and address or other information that can be used to harrass you. An example from the "Main Character" on KF right now, Keffals, is this: https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1566153033586810885?s=20&...
I read the site sometimes, although my argument is that anything against US law is against the site rules and this whole thing is disingenuous. But it's also censorship whether or not you frequent the site.
I get how if you just read about it that KF sounds awful. Not sure how legit any of that is tho. Do the people you suspect of being readers of KF seem like awful degenerates to you?
You're missing a couple points yourself. For example, the article is talking about phthalates. These are additives added to plastics. These leech from microplastics. So your rant about how plastics are inert shows you didnt even understand the article yourself tbh.
There is plenty of evidence that these compounds are harmful and affect the biology. See the section on wikipedia on phthalates. What there isnt is much evidence and experimentation showing theyre NOT harmful.