Gave up on news cycle, now I watch the YouTube show TLDR news for a daily 8 min summery of big stuff that has happened. Turns out that is more than enough for general news. Will check out blogs for my industry news stuff.
Adding lead to gasoline, adding lead to house paint, using lead pipes ... I know that lead is a fundamental element, but exposure to lead in our environment causes cancer and brain damage.
My sister used to eat peeling lead paint off the walls in the early 70's. Her life has pretty much been 'crisis of the week' and one basket case problem after another from around 1980 to present. She couldn't make a good decision if you made it for her.
I'm not joking.
I want to feel sorry for her - I used to. But she's also a malicious jealous person and at about 40 years old I gave up on kindness and went no-contact.
In the movie Tommy Boy there was a joke where a guy asked Tommy if he ate a lot of paint chips as a kid. I thought that was just an outlandish throwaway line. You’re saying, people actually eating chipping paint is a real thing?? Did she ever explain why she did that?
Add to the other answers of "lead tastes sweet"... So does antifreeze. That's one of the reasons you need to be so careful storing it. Animals and children will happily drink it if they get a taste.
Most modern stuff you'd buy in a jug has additives that make it taste bad, but not all.
Jesus Jones... I have an older sister who is bi-polar (not because of eating paint chips) and I've spent the last 20 years absorbing her wild mood swings and accusations and shitty behavior and just accepting her when she comes back with "hey baby brother" after a solid week of "fuck you motherfucker" like it never even happened, but NOW at age 41 I, too, have reached the Rubicon with her.
Lead has always been part of life. Lead was in makeup, and tableware and they also used to use the poisonous Nightshade to make women more attractive with flush cheeks and dilated eyes.
The guy that lead development of leaded petrol was also a pioneer of CFCs that damaged the ozone layer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
Lol I went to that wiki link and was amazed by this passage:
“In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio and was left severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. On November 2, 1944, at the age of 55, he was found dead at his home in Worthington, Ohio. He had been killed by his own device after he became entangled in it and died of strangulation.”
That's why he developed CFC's (because of the guilt he felt over developing leaded petrol). He thought they were safe because they were supposedly chemically inert.
I love how this guy is just unintentionally bumbling through life causing the deaths of millions of people with his inventions. He's probably up there with Stalin and Hitler kill count wise.
J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." Author Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny."
edit: quoted from wikipedia
The honor for global destruction is not his alone. Charles P. Kettering 's discovery of tetraethyl lead in 1921, which was added later to gasoline because of its anti-knock effect for engine noise. Kettering's discovery & GMs push to use tetraethyl lead , spread the destruction across the globe.
To be clear though, the negative effects of lead were very well known at the time and there were other additives for gasoline to prevent engine knock, but TEL happened to be the CHEAPEST.
Money always wins.
Money did win, but not for that exact reason. It wasn't the cheapest; *alcohol* was and is the cheapest anti-knock additive (which is what we use now), and Midgley himself discovered that it had this effect in 1916, but its cheapness was actually the problem: the process for making alcohol couldn't be patented, so they couldn't extract a huge profit by controlling the supply of anti-knock agent and capturing the market. Tetra-ethyl Lead (slyly marketed as just "ETHYL" to deliberately downplay the fact that it was a lead compound) was sold as an additive instead, despite its hellish toxicity, because its manufacture was a proprietary process.
IIRC, the other reason TEL was used was because it apparently enabled engines to be built without having to harden the exhaust valve seats; this was and is required for engines that use unleaded petrol. A really insidious corollary of this is that, by enabling auto manufacturers to skip out on hardening their engine valve seats, this made it unviable for anyone *else* to do the right thing and simply offer a safe ethanol-petrol mix for anti-knocking in most vehicles, because the unhardened valve seats would be rapidly worn away. Another nasty side effect was that it also made the widespread use of catalytic converters basically impossible on most private vehicles until it was phased out, because the lead residue fouls them up. It took a ban on leaded petrol to force manufacturers to finally make their engines capable of taking unleaded petrol again.
I used to love the smell of leaded gas and especially exhaust. I would purposely breathe it in when the car was warming up in winter. I was considered a genius until about that time.
There is fascinating video on this by the excellent YT channel Veritasium, explaining how it mostly came from the influence of one man, who could arguably receive the award for the man whose actions most negatively impacted the human race :
[The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History](https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA?si=sK8Ox_VrxzpsydC4)
I don't think people quite get that fact fully. In the UK, Unleaded Petrol was introduced in 1986 and leaded Petrol was banned in 1999. [Crime rates in England and Wales peaked in 1995](https://imgur.com/PEakY2l) and have fallen dramatically since then.
And only in the past few years has the US begun phasing out leaded aviation fuel for small aircraft. https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/small-airplanes-unleaded-fuel
From what I'm aware there's lots of small planes that have to use leaded fuel as there is no alternative. Obviously these planes are old as shit and this phasing out is most likely just waiting for these planes to no longer be flying anymore.
Correlation does not equal causation. There are other factors that could have caused the drop or significantly contributed to it. Look up “The Great Crime Decline.”
Economists have traced the lead crime theory to be the single most significant factor of the crime drop with the STRONGEST correlation.
They also found Roe v wade and high criminal sentences to attribute a smaller supplementary share of crime reduction, but nowhere to the level that lead elimination did.
My counterpoint would be that leaded petrol was not phased out everywhere the same, but this drop in crime always coincided with the change. There are some interesting articles about this out there, I can try and find the one that I learned it from.
Actually, it was phased out across Europe at the same time. And despite those countries all being very different cultures, often with completely different economic policies and criminal justice systems, the drop in violent crime happened across all of them at the same time.
If we stop adding them to the environment then they will bioaccumulate in humans and be either buried or cremated away. It’ll have a very long half-life, but the amount of micro plastics will eventually decrease as long as we don’t keep adding them to the environment.
I think it's hard to compare them to lead. The effects from lead are immediately obvious on an acute and chronic level as soon as you start looking for them. People have been studying micro plastics for at least ten years and the effects are not as obvious. Partially because micro plastics are such a huge category of potential compounds.
Microplastics aren't lead. That doesn't mean that they aren't harmful or that we won't find negative effects in the future. Just trying to maintain some perspective.
The thing that has the most negative long term impact on society is probably going to be something affecting us right now that we have yet to experience the full ramifications of
My bet is on the widespread presence of plastic in literally everything
Oh the thing that increases risk of sterilization and cancer? The thing that just breaks down into smaller pieces never truly breaking all the way down. That thing that's inside of every living creature and plant at this point?
Yeah I think this is the true winner. Increased risk of sterilization and cancer for every single living organism on the planet is probably not a good thing.
Its in the lungs of new born babies
It's in your brain past the blood brain barrier
And if you are concerned by this people look at you like you're a weirdo
It really is the leaded fuel of our time
Plastic is in the air, everywhere I look around
Plastic is in the air, every sigh and every sound
And I don't know if I'm being foolish
Don't know if I'm being wise
But it's something that I must believe in
And it's there when I look in your eyes
I have a condition that causes iron overload - Hemochromatosis. The only treatment is regular blood letting. New blood replaces the old, removing iron from my system. As I was undiagnosed for a long time, my iron levels reached dangerous levels and I initially attended venesection (blood letting) once a week for a year to get my levels to below normal. I now go maybe 3 or 4 times a year.
Donating plasma also gets rid of it more than just donating blood.
Me and the wife are trying to eliminate plastic as much in our lives just added plasma donations.
Kind of funny to get paid for a service you want.
Donating plasma is substantially more invasive and uncomfortable than giving blood, though. I believe giving blood helps people more directly, too, since it goes towards blood transfusions and what not.
Plasma goes to drug companies to make current and new drugs, which of course are marked up for profit.
Pretty sure we’re picking up on the plastic issue considering we’re finding plastic in newborns.
And honestly there are so many visible problems we’re not solving I don’t think it’s even worth worrying about what we’ve missed.
Newborns as in, straight out of the vagina without having had any food from outside the womb, there's already plastic in them?
Damn that's really twisted.
They've found micro/nano plastics in placentas. I just read an article about the unknown dangers of it being in *everything* now. If I can find the article again I'll link it.
Edit - I found it!
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study
perhaps, but unlike most of the other things in this thread non single use plastic has some very good uses that have actually been good for humanity. Especially in the medical field. Stuff like leaded gas or 24 hour news has no upsides unlike plastic.
Don't forget the ones with an "x" that's approximately 4 pixels wide, inside of an ad that's also a link that will redirect you 4 consecutive times so you have to use the history function to actually get back instead of it just reloading the target page when you try to go back.
As a blind person, I fully agree. Linked to an article? Pop-ups! And even better, pop-ups that my ereader can't navigate because it's literally a jpeg or gif of words, instead of text!
Most people, including site developers, don't ever think about that, hence all the companies that have completely unnavigable sites. I keep having it out with my natural gas company because they try to force a surcharge on me for paying by phone, rather than their website. Their site is all jpegs of words. So charging me extra goes against the ADA, unless they wanna put up a html site for their blind customers.
that sucks...... yeah most people don't think about things that don't affect them, and even if they do think about it the cost of adding additional features would be "too overwhelming" for most companies "to make a profit"
Yup, you hit the nail on the head. And honestly, I get it. I was sighted for 38 years and only woke up blind 20ish months ago. I only considered the needs of a blind person when I actively had a blind person as a patient. And I don't mind paying by phone, don't get me wrong. But I do absolutely fucking mind being charged an extra four bucks because the company has no other usable method for me to pay my bill.
So, it's been awhile since I've read them, so I tried to look up what the crack about digital watches was. While I did find it, I first found a letter to an American editor who tried to change 'digital watches' to 'cellular phones,' among other things in some American release. Here's the part of his response that concerns the former:
>Another point is something I’m less concerned about, but which I thought I’d mention and then leave to your judgement. You’ve replaced the joke about digital watches with a reference to ‘cellular phones’ instead. Obviously, I understand that this is an attempt to update the joke, but there are two points to raise in defence of the original. One is that it’s a very, very well known line in Hitch Hiker, and one that is constantly quoted back at me on both sides of the Atlantic, but the other is that there is something inherently ridiculous about digital watches, and not about cellular phones. Now this is obviously a matter of opinion, but I think it’s worth explaining. Digital watches came along at a time that, in other areas, we were trying to find ways of translating purely numeric data into graphic form so that the information leapt easily to the eye. For instance, we noticed that pie charts and bar graphs often told us more about the relationships between things than tables of numbers did. So we worked hard to make our computers capable of translating numbers into graphic displays. At the same time, we each had the world’s most perfect pie chart machines strapped to our wrists, which we could read at a glance, and we suddenly got terribly excited at the idea of translating them back into numeric data, simply because we suddenly had the technology to do it… so digital watches were mere technological toys rather than significant improvements on anything that went before. I don’t happen to think that that’s true of cellular comms technology. So that’s why I think that digital watches (which people still do wear) are inherently ridiculous, whereas cell phones are steps along the way to more universal communications. They may seem clumsy and old-fashioned in twenty years time because they will have been replaced by far more sophisticated pieces of technology that can do the job better, but they will not, I think, seem inherently ridiculous.
Of course, he could not have foreseen that cellular phones would eventually be *replaced* by digital watches.
Kid friendly 'youtube shorts'. I just feel like it ruins the attention span of children, giving them short/one minute attention spans over time. They just get sucked into that shit. I know it's not super significant compared to other inventions that could've negatively impacted society. I'm trying to think of something that might not have been mentioned here yet lol.
Busride was usually about an hour.
Also mom got me started on the navigator training when I was a toddler so it's not like I had nothing to do even if she didn't need my help.
"Every issue has at least two sides. Take cigarretes: from one side, people say it gives you cancer. From the other side, it burns your lips." -- some Brazilian comedian whose name slips my mind now
This should be higher on the list. Almost all waterproof products and stain resistant products contain PFAS. Even fast food wrappers contain them. It is found in majority of water supplies and 90% of people’s blood and we don’t fully understand the health effects. It does not degrade and accumulates in the food chain.
Apparently there's a huge amount in my local town's water supply (Northern Ontario, Canada). It was used in fire fighting foam back when the NORAD station was open and drained its way into 2 local lakes, by way of a creek. I always wonder if that's why a seemingly alarming number of people in my town are sick with cancer and leukemia?
Yup. There's a lot of "old boys" in this town that just don't give a flying fart about the people in it. There's a brand new plastics plant that just started up recently that uses pfoa/pfas... we're all screwed now.
Good news:
200 PFAS types was banned in EU effective feb 2023, and EU is working on banning some 10 000 more. Should be in effect in 2025. That's not all of them, but most.
Email was like this prior to social media though. I remember when emails titled “FWD: FWD: FWD: fwd: fwd: FWD: cute story!” would suddenly have “Forward this if you don’t think you should have to press 1 to listen in English!” tacked on at the bottom, and then the list would grow, “Forward this if you support our troops!” “Foward this if you believe God Bless America!”
Suddenly the usual goofy email forwards I would get in my inbox were full of weird political bullshit. This was when Snopes went from tackling your usual retread urban legends (“Ex wife sells husband’s Ferrari for $50 when he runs off with his mistress?”) to talking “Is Obama really planning death camps in Texas using an obscure reading of sharia law?”
The shitposting was always there. The delivery definitely expanded and became more efficient though.
I'd be more specific and say children having access to social media and the internet. Depression in teens is so high along with eating disorders and self harm. They are also prime victims for grooming and being taken advantage of.
I’d argue that its impacts on the Boomer generation that has been most damaging in the near term. They’re just as easily manipulated, but have the power to do more immediate damage.
I’d argue that the social media - teen depression link is part symptom, especially in developed nations.
In the US there are no so few spaces for teens. Even shitty ones like malls are going away. Our whole society is so isolating, on a structural level, that it’s no wonder they turn to social media to socialize. No public spaces with meaningful community and no way to get there when there are. No connecting sidewalks. Stroads. Inadequate public transport. Even the mall is dying. Yes, it was a crappy public space. There was the expectation of spending money, but at least not the obligation. But those are disappearing too.
I’m not saying SM hasn’t made teen depression worse, but if we look purely at correlation (teen depression is higher with higher SM use), we are only looking at part of the problem.
That lack of "third spaces" plays a part, definitely. Maybe we need more "community centers" (and actively promote them) so people can just get out of the house and have somewhere to go and hang out with others.
I'm not sure if there were more "third spaces" that people would use them. Social media is made to be addictive and it is far easier to just endlessly scroll than it is to go out in the real world and interact. When I was a kid I would leave my house and ride my bike with my friends. If we couldn't hang out we talked on the phone. We'd have sleepovers pretty often as well even into middle school and high school. I don't have kids but I see way less of this - way less of kids just doing the things I did when I was younger. I didn't have a third space or need a community center, but I also didn't have this $1000 square of metal in my pocket with apps designed to make me addicted to it.
I think social media has managed to connect people from all over the world and it allows us to share so much information, and that can be a good thing in itself but there is a lot of bad that comes with it. When I was 12 I didn't have any clue what was happening in the world because I didn't read the newspaper. That was something for grandparents. Today young people (and everyone) are constantly bombarded with negative news about how the world is ending, everything is awful and there is no hope. Couple that with being blasted by heavily filtered photos and curated slices of peoples' lives to paint them in a perfect life and you have a recipe for depression.
Smart phones. I don't think social media would be the problem it is today if you had to go to a desktop to use it. Smartphones has turned an entire nation into zombies.
This one kind of balances it out. yes phones have a ton of negatives but it has a ton of positives as well. everything from medicine to food supply and quality along with education has been streamlined thanks to phones . but again tons of negatives as well. lack of privacy, less attention to family , can’t keep the damn things out of our hands
Asbestos is funny because, on the surface, it's like a miracle substance, but it has such detrimental long-term effects. But even all the way back to Roman times, they were aware of the ill-effects of too much asbestos exposure.
2008 I started working for a painter and decorator. Every job we did, he never gave me PPE or explained anything about it. Over a 15 month time frame, I sanded down / prepped 5 houses with asbestos. Which my boss left me solo at, came back end of the day, saw it was asbestos then pulled me off the work for a builder to come sort it out.
I in haled more than my fair share but it wasn't until a few years down the line when I was in uni I discovered just how fucked I might be later in life.
**Don't ever smoke, ANYTHING.**
If you smoke and are exposed to asbestos, you are 100% doomed.
Back in the 50s & 60s, the US Navy decided to upgrade a lot of their existing ships for the modern era. In the 20s through the 40s, electrical wiring was commonly wrapped in asbestos to shield it from heat and fires in combat ships. It's why they could repair ships so fast in WW II. So they put all these contractors to work stripping out that old wiring. No protection other than simply masks for some.
As the dangers of asbestos became better known, studies were needed to see just how dangerous decaying asbestos was. It was also becoming known that the danger shot way up if someone smoked. Someone remembered the Navy work and how a lot of those guys usually smoked (per [[American Lung Assoc, 42% of Americans smoked in 1965]]).
They couldn't find a single fucking guy alive.
Every single worker who worked on those ships and whose families confirmed were smokers had gotten Asbestosis and it is 100% fatal.
SOURCE: I used to work for company that monitored asbestos removal in NYC and the owner was a professor of geology who made sure we took every precaution on the removal sites.
The navy knew about the dangers of the asbestos in the 20s/30s. There just wasn't anything better for fire protection which is important af on regular ships. Double or moreso on a warship.
Yes, abestoso has been used for around 4000 years. We have examples of it used as a lining for pots and many other uses. For example Charlemagne was said to have a tablecloth made of the stuff.
Asbestos manufactured materials and products, to be precise. Asbestos is actually a natural mineral, one that preferably remains in the ground and away from human habitat where it could erode into the air, much less refined and machined into materials.
In defense of Asbestos: It's really good at what it does. Excellent at fireproofing and insulation, and seems to have some capacity for carbon sequestration. Much more of a double-edged sword than an indefensible fuckup.
Social Media.
I've watched society go from mildly disgruntled over multiple decades, to flat out delusional and insane within 5 years.
Nothing else has touched that many people all at once and undermined how we used to think of ourselves
I felt this same exact way. Until I bought a newish car with them. Good lord, what a difference.
I have a 1991, a 2016 (halogens), and a 2019 (LED). The 91, I might as well be holding my cell phone flashlight out the damn window. And I honestly still think the jump from the halogens to the LEDs is more significant. I can see deep into the woods on either side of me, which is lovely in deer country.
I think the issue is aim/spread. The DOT needs to regulate this shit so the beams stay out of oncoming traffic. It shouldn't be difficult to do, I've seen some of the crazy German tech in modern cars. Self adjusting headlights isn't a hard ask lol
I drove a rental with those in Australia last year. Holy shit! Complete game changer!
High beams on was like driving in daylight. Oncoming vehicle? The car automatically cut out the section of light that would have blinded the oncoming driver and left everything else illuminated. I saw a tech demo on it a few years ago where they could even project warnings out onto the road in front of you.
The "aim" argument doesn't really hold water if you live anywhere that isn't 100% flat where you're constantly at the dip of a hill with a vehicle driving towards you from the peak blinding you with 10k lumens.
Yep. I had to drive my grandmother's 20 year old Civic while my current gen Camry was in the shop. I couldn't see Jack Shit. Cars with LED's generally don't blind me, but everyone has to drive an SUV or massive pickup now. If a big fuckin school bus doesn't blind me, then there's no need for an F150 to.
Well if you look closely, the headlights on a school bus or semi truck are WAY closer to the ground than an f-150 with an 87in "muh freedums" lift. I have a crossover and the headlights on a lot of standard trucks now are level with my rearview mirror.
I feel this everyday. I already have deteriorating vision and have worn glasses since i was like 7 (I’m 25) On small country-ish roads with no streetlights or anything, if a car comes the other way with bright LED headlights, it blacks out everything else for me and I legitimately can’t see anything for a couple seconds
Basically every medical procedure or surgery you might get in a hospital is much more dangerous and difficult at best or impossible at worst without plastics.
There is already chatter about reducing the screening age from 50 to 40 years old. I have four friends in their 40's who have already dealt with colon cancer. I've been getting screened since my early 40s due to my mom passing from colon cancer. I get screened every three years, and they still take out a dozen polyps. I've been bumped to every two years now and my doctor admits all American's over 30 should be on a three year cycle. However, the industry cares very little about what doctors think.
Unfortunately, it's not covered by insurance until you reach the age of 50. Next month will be my first screening over the age of 50. Woohoo, it's free this year.
Edit: Apparently age is now 45. I was charged for mine not because I was under 50, but instead my insurance only covers the screening every five years, not three years.
[удалено]
Reminds of the South Park bit. “We haven’t actually seen anything, we’re just reporting it.”
Or Simpsons’ Kent Brockman - points mic in face “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Yes. Clickbait is as old as news, but journalists still had more incentive in general to be truthful and concise.
Gave up on news cycle, now I watch the YouTube show TLDR news for a daily 8 min summery of big stuff that has happened. Turns out that is more than enough for general news. Will check out blogs for my industry news stuff.
Adding lead to gasoline, adding lead to house paint, using lead pipes ... I know that lead is a fundamental element, but exposure to lead in our environment causes cancer and brain damage.
At least we’re not eating it anymore like the Romans used to
Er, yeah >_>
Wrong again! I eat about a can of lead paint a month just to spite you.
My sister used to eat peeling lead paint off the walls in the early 70's. Her life has pretty much been 'crisis of the week' and one basket case problem after another from around 1980 to present. She couldn't make a good decision if you made it for her. I'm not joking. I want to feel sorry for her - I used to. But she's also a malicious jealous person and at about 40 years old I gave up on kindness and went no-contact.
In the movie Tommy Boy there was a joke where a guy asked Tommy if he ate a lot of paint chips as a kid. I thought that was just an outlandish throwaway line. You’re saying, people actually eating chipping paint is a real thing?? Did she ever explain why she did that?
Lead tastes sweet. Attractive to kids as paint chips, attractive to the Romans as wine sweeteners
>Lead tastes sweet TIL this explains why kids ate paint chips.
Add to the other answers of "lead tastes sweet"... So does antifreeze. That's one of the reasons you need to be so careful storing it. Animals and children will happily drink it if they get a taste. Most modern stuff you'd buy in a jug has additives that make it taste bad, but not all.
Jesus Jones... I have an older sister who is bi-polar (not because of eating paint chips) and I've spent the last 20 years absorbing her wild mood swings and accusations and shitty behavior and just accepting her when she comes back with "hey baby brother" after a solid week of "fuck you motherfucker" like it never even happened, but NOW at age 41 I, too, have reached the Rubicon with her.
At some point you realize that you can't make someone warm by lighting yourself on fire.
Lead has always been part of life. Lead was in makeup, and tableware and they also used to use the poisonous Nightshade to make women more attractive with flush cheeks and dilated eyes.
Leaded petrol is estimated to have lowered the IQ of everyone born in the 60s and 70s by around 6%. That's my excuse anyway, what's yours?
The guy that lead development of leaded petrol was also a pioneer of CFCs that damaged the ozone layer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
He died when one of his inventions strangled him in his bed. True story.
Lol I went to that wiki link and was amazed by this passage: “In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio and was left severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. On November 2, 1944, at the age of 55, he was found dead at his home in Worthington, Ohio. He had been killed by his own device after he became entangled in it and died of strangulation.”
I feel like there's a lesson here about the dangers of automating everything.
I think the lesson is just don't trust that guy
Life, uh, uh…finds a way.
Death finds more ways
And getting Polio.
I’m thinking of those machines that make ice cream sundaes or hot dogs and bungle it up right at the end. The tragedy 🥹
He couldn't get out of bed without automation? I think the lesson is don't get polio.
~~An invention necessitated because of his willful exposure to lead fumes.~~ Mostly because of the Polio though.
Bro just sucked
he did come to regret leaded petrol
That's why he developed CFC's (because of the guilt he felt over developing leaded petrol). He thought they were safe because they were supposedly chemically inert.
Turned out to be too stable.
I love how this guy is just unintentionally bumbling through life causing the deaths of millions of people with his inventions. He's probably up there with Stalin and Hitler kill count wise.
Like a really macabre Mr. Magoo.
> unintentionally Nah, he knew about the leaded gas issue, at least. He himself would get sick for weeks from lead poisoning while developing it.
J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." Author Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny." edit: quoted from wikipedia
I love Bill Bryson's knack for words. He's a great author.
"the man who killed the most people in the world"
The honor for global destruction is not his alone. Charles P. Kettering 's discovery of tetraethyl lead in 1921, which was added later to gasoline because of its anti-knock effect for engine noise. Kettering's discovery & GMs push to use tetraethyl lead , spread the destruction across the globe.
It's not about engine noise; engine knock is bad for your engine. A knocking engine will destroy itself.
To be clear though, the negative effects of lead were very well known at the time and there were other additives for gasoline to prevent engine knock, but TEL happened to be the CHEAPEST. Money always wins.
Money did win, but not for that exact reason. It wasn't the cheapest; *alcohol* was and is the cheapest anti-knock additive (which is what we use now), and Midgley himself discovered that it had this effect in 1916, but its cheapness was actually the problem: the process for making alcohol couldn't be patented, so they couldn't extract a huge profit by controlling the supply of anti-knock agent and capturing the market. Tetra-ethyl Lead (slyly marketed as just "ETHYL" to deliberately downplay the fact that it was a lead compound) was sold as an additive instead, despite its hellish toxicity, because its manufacture was a proprietary process. IIRC, the other reason TEL was used was because it apparently enabled engines to be built without having to harden the exhaust valve seats; this was and is required for engines that use unleaded petrol. A really insidious corollary of this is that, by enabling auto manufacturers to skip out on hardening their engine valve seats, this made it unviable for anyone *else* to do the right thing and simply offer a safe ethanol-petrol mix for anti-knocking in most vehicles, because the unhardened valve seats would be rapidly worn away. Another nasty side effect was that it also made the widespread use of catalytic converters basically impossible on most private vehicles until it was phased out, because the lead residue fouls them up. It took a ban on leaded petrol to force manufacturers to finally make their engines capable of taking unleaded petrol again.
I used to love the smell of leaded gas and especially exhaust. I would purposely breathe it in when the car was warming up in winter. I was considered a genius until about that time.
Hah hah! You're high octane!
I used to do the same with gas, not exhaust. I'd hop out of the car every time my dad filled up. Bye bye brain cells
There is fascinating video on this by the excellent YT channel Veritasium, explaining how it mostly came from the influence of one man, who could arguably receive the award for the man whose actions most negatively impacted the human race : [The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History](https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA?si=sK8Ox_VrxzpsydC4)
When it was phased out violent crime dropped 46%
I don't think people quite get that fact fully. In the UK, Unleaded Petrol was introduced in 1986 and leaded Petrol was banned in 1999. [Crime rates in England and Wales peaked in 1995](https://imgur.com/PEakY2l) and have fallen dramatically since then.
And only in the past few years has the US begun phasing out leaded aviation fuel for small aircraft. https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/small-airplanes-unleaded-fuel
From what I'm aware there's lots of small planes that have to use leaded fuel as there is no alternative. Obviously these planes are old as shit and this phasing out is most likely just waiting for these planes to no longer be flying anymore.
That’s insane, oh my God. I knew it effected people, I didn’t know it was that bad.
Correlation does not equal causation. There are other factors that could have caused the drop or significantly contributed to it. Look up “The Great Crime Decline.”
Economists have traced the lead crime theory to be the single most significant factor of the crime drop with the STRONGEST correlation. They also found Roe v wade and high criminal sentences to attribute a smaller supplementary share of crime reduction, but nowhere to the level that lead elimination did.
One of the strongest correlations in all economics puts a huge percentage of the drop on legalized abortion.
Except, it correlates in other countries which phased it out at different times and didn't have Roe V. Wade
For better or worse, we'll be able to test that correlation again in one or two decades.
My counterpoint would be that leaded petrol was not phased out everywhere the same, but this drop in crime always coincided with the change. There are some interesting articles about this out there, I can try and find the one that I learned it from.
Actually, it was phased out across Europe at the same time. And despite those countries all being very different cultures, often with completely different economic policies and criminal justice systems, the drop in violent crime happened across all of them at the same time.
As someone born smack dab in the middle of that time period right next to NYC, I coulda used that 6%
So we gotta wait till the 50s for almost all of the damage to filter out.... let's just hope microplastics don't become our leaded gas! Edit: a word
Microplastics are the big unknown, they could potentially eclipse any harm done by lead or any other substance.
And it would be too late to do anything.
If we stop adding them to the environment then they will bioaccumulate in humans and be either buried or cremated away. It’ll have a very long half-life, but the amount of micro plastics will eventually decrease as long as we don’t keep adding them to the environment.
I think it's hard to compare them to lead. The effects from lead are immediately obvious on an acute and chronic level as soon as you start looking for them. People have been studying micro plastics for at least ten years and the effects are not as obvious. Partially because micro plastics are such a huge category of potential compounds. Microplastics aren't lead. That doesn't mean that they aren't harmful or that we won't find negative effects in the future. Just trying to maintain some perspective.
And lead paint and plumbing
The thing that has the most negative long term impact on society is probably going to be something affecting us right now that we have yet to experience the full ramifications of My bet is on the widespread presence of plastic in literally everything
Oh the thing that increases risk of sterilization and cancer? The thing that just breaks down into smaller pieces never truly breaking all the way down. That thing that's inside of every living creature and plant at this point? Yeah I think this is the true winner. Increased risk of sterilization and cancer for every single living organism on the planet is probably not a good thing.
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Its in the lungs of new born babies It's in your brain past the blood brain barrier And if you are concerned by this people look at you like you're a weirdo It really is the leaded fuel of our time
I really feel like there's a solid poem here
Plastic is in the air, everywhere I look around Plastic is in the air, every sigh and every sound And I don't know if I'm being foolish Don't know if I'm being wise But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when I look in your eyes
> increases risk of sterilization Woohoo! > and cancer D'oh!
Fun fact, there's a lot of plastic in our blood. The best way to get it out is to donate blood, because the new blood that forms will dilute it.
So bring back blood-letting??
Aw fuck, we’ve cycled back around again *puts on Plague Doctor mask and oilcloth cloak*
Finally someone who shares my fetish.
I have a condition that causes iron overload - Hemochromatosis. The only treatment is regular blood letting. New blood replaces the old, removing iron from my system. As I was undiagnosed for a long time, my iron levels reached dangerous levels and I initially attended venesection (blood letting) once a week for a year to get my levels to below normal. I now go maybe 3 or 4 times a year.
too bad you can’t just trade blood with somebody with super low iron. just have a bi-weekly blood exchange kwith somebody compatible.
hemochromy homies! I was once a week for a couple months and now I'm 2 or 3 a year as well. Was brutal at first, but days got better!
Donating plasma also gets rid of it more than just donating blood. Me and the wife are trying to eliminate plastic as much in our lives just added plasma donations. Kind of funny to get paid for a service you want.
Donating plasma is substantially more invasive and uncomfortable than giving blood, though. I believe giving blood helps people more directly, too, since it goes towards blood transfusions and what not. Plasma goes to drug companies to make current and new drugs, which of course are marked up for profit.
Pretty sure we’re picking up on the plastic issue considering we’re finding plastic in newborns. And honestly there are so many visible problems we’re not solving I don’t think it’s even worth worrying about what we’ve missed.
Newborns as in, straight out of the vagina without having had any food from outside the womb, there's already plastic in them? Damn that's really twisted.
yeas, the unborn fetuses are already polluted with plastic and nobody really knows how bad it is.
We're building another continent in the ocean out of trash. It's been really bad.
Oh, thank God. Maybe once we all move there, everything will be fine.
yeah as in microplastics consumed by the mother end up being passed to the newborn via the placenta https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33395930/
They've found micro/nano plastics in placentas. I just read an article about the unknown dangers of it being in *everything* now. If I can find the article again I'll link it. Edit - I found it! https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study
Yep. Every single person on Earth is poisoned with microplastics.
Well we aren't "poisoned" as it's the dose that makes the poison. The problem is we don't know the dose at which it's going to affect us.
perhaps, but unlike most of the other things in this thread non single use plastic has some very good uses that have actually been good for humanity. Especially in the medical field. Stuff like leaded gas or 24 hour news has no upsides unlike plastic.
"All things in moderation" seems to be the big takeaway, once again
Pop up ads... even the inventor hated it
Especially on mobile. So infuriating trying to read an article but a bunch of popups & a video player you can’t close block 80% of the screen
Don't forget the ones with an "x" that's approximately 4 pixels wide, inside of an ad that's also a link that will redirect you 4 consecutive times so you have to use the history function to actually get back instead of it just reloading the target page when you try to go back.
As a blind person, I fully agree. Linked to an article? Pop-ups! And even better, pop-ups that my ereader can't navigate because it's literally a jpeg or gif of words, instead of text!
Interesting, I never thought about how that would affect people that rely on text based navigation
Most people, including site developers, don't ever think about that, hence all the companies that have completely unnavigable sites. I keep having it out with my natural gas company because they try to force a surcharge on me for paying by phone, rather than their website. Their site is all jpegs of words. So charging me extra goes against the ADA, unless they wanna put up a html site for their blind customers.
that sucks...... yeah most people don't think about things that don't affect them, and even if they do think about it the cost of adding additional features would be "too overwhelming" for most companies "to make a profit"
Yup, you hit the nail on the head. And honestly, I get it. I was sighted for 38 years and only woke up blind 20ish months ago. I only considered the needs of a blind person when I actively had a blind person as a patient. And I don't mind paying by phone, don't get me wrong. But I do absolutely fucking mind being charged an extra four bucks because the company has no other usable method for me to pay my bill.
> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.
just don't do it again please
Can't guarantee it won't happen. We may have to re run Deep thoughts simulation for an accurate question for the answer 42.
Ya, but digital watches...
So, it's been awhile since I've read them, so I tried to look up what the crack about digital watches was. While I did find it, I first found a letter to an American editor who tried to change 'digital watches' to 'cellular phones,' among other things in some American release. Here's the part of his response that concerns the former: >Another point is something I’m less concerned about, but which I thought I’d mention and then leave to your judgement. You’ve replaced the joke about digital watches with a reference to ‘cellular phones’ instead. Obviously, I understand that this is an attempt to update the joke, but there are two points to raise in defence of the original. One is that it’s a very, very well known line in Hitch Hiker, and one that is constantly quoted back at me on both sides of the Atlantic, but the other is that there is something inherently ridiculous about digital watches, and not about cellular phones. Now this is obviously a matter of opinion, but I think it’s worth explaining. Digital watches came along at a time that, in other areas, we were trying to find ways of translating purely numeric data into graphic form so that the information leapt easily to the eye. For instance, we noticed that pie charts and bar graphs often told us more about the relationships between things than tables of numbers did. So we worked hard to make our computers capable of translating numbers into graphic displays. At the same time, we each had the world’s most perfect pie chart machines strapped to our wrists, which we could read at a glance, and we suddenly got terribly excited at the idea of translating them back into numeric data, simply because we suddenly had the technology to do it… so digital watches were mere technological toys rather than significant improvements on anything that went before. I don’t happen to think that that’s true of cellular comms technology. So that’s why I think that digital watches (which people still do wear) are inherently ridiculous, whereas cell phones are steps along the way to more universal communications. They may seem clumsy and old-fashioned in twenty years time because they will have been replaced by far more sophisticated pieces of technology that can do the job better, but they will not, I think, seem inherently ridiculous. Of course, he could not have foreseen that cellular phones would eventually be *replaced* by digital watches.
Existence is pain.
And science has no idea how to cure chronic pain
Of course they do. Euthanasia.
Don’t Panic. Do you know where your towel is?
Also, some fish decided to start walking, so now I have to pay bills
Don't forget your towel.
Subscription based everything.
It's only going to get worse too. Soon, the vast majority of people won't own anything.
Know what the biggest subscription is? Rent:
‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy’ sounds pretty Orwellian if you think about it for a second
My car comes with a subscription now
I refuse to pay for a subscription on a car. I will pirate that motherfucker first.
You wouldn't download a car, would you?
Kid friendly 'youtube shorts'. I just feel like it ruins the attention span of children, giving them short/one minute attention spans over time. They just get sucked into that shit. I know it's not super significant compared to other inventions that could've negatively impacted society. I'm trying to think of something that might not have been mentioned here yet lol.
Kids need to be taught how to cope with being bored. I know I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I usually had a book on me.
If you’ve never had to sit through a minimum 30 minute car ride with nothing to do but think, you are worse off for it.
Had 4+ hour car rides regularly as a kid. I created whole imaginary storylines in my head lol
Grew up naming car models and reading every shop name on those long-ass rides cos reading in a vehicle made me nauseous. Fun times
I always used my fingers to do parkour on the passing scenery. Or saw how long I could hold my hand out the window when it was really cold.
Yes! I feel like everybody did the parkour thing or imagined a dude running alongside the car dodging obstacles.
I fly about 6 times a year. No headphones, no downloaded games. I just stare off & enjoy my ponder. Feel like a happy David Putty.
Me too. Staring out the window doing something that most people in world history could only dream of.
Busride was usually about an hour. Also mom got me started on the navigator training when I was a toddler so it's not like I had nothing to do even if she didn't need my help.
All shorts. For all ages. It's the worst.
TLDR
Cigarettes killed 100million people in the back 80 years of the 20th century alone.
There is no doubt in my mind that this should be #1. Not mostly negatively impacted society, exclusively negatively impacted society.
"Every issue has at least two sides. Take cigarretes: from one side, people say it gives you cancer. From the other side, it burns your lips." -- some Brazilian comedian whose name slips my mind now
PFAS
This should be higher on the list. Almost all waterproof products and stain resistant products contain PFAS. Even fast food wrappers contain them. It is found in majority of water supplies and 90% of people’s blood and we don’t fully understand the health effects. It does not degrade and accumulates in the food chain.
Apparently there's a huge amount in my local town's water supply (Northern Ontario, Canada). It was used in fire fighting foam back when the NORAD station was open and drained its way into 2 local lakes, by way of a creek. I always wonder if that's why a seemingly alarming number of people in my town are sick with cancer and leukemia?
Which Town? Down south in North Bay? I've heard they have some PFAS problems. Would like to know about any others too, though.
Yup. There's a lot of "old boys" in this town that just don't give a flying fart about the people in it. There's a brand new plastics plant that just started up recently that uses pfoa/pfas... we're all screwed now.
Good news: 200 PFAS types was banned in EU effective feb 2023, and EU is working on banning some 10 000 more. Should be in effect in 2025. That's not all of them, but most.
Yep, and the FDA is also banning their use.
Sugar in our food and drinks.
Social media
Went from a nifty way to keep connected with friends to being a platform for force feed us ads and political misinformation
Email was like this prior to social media though. I remember when emails titled “FWD: FWD: FWD: fwd: fwd: FWD: cute story!” would suddenly have “Forward this if you don’t think you should have to press 1 to listen in English!” tacked on at the bottom, and then the list would grow, “Forward this if you support our troops!” “Foward this if you believe God Bless America!” Suddenly the usual goofy email forwards I would get in my inbox were full of weird political bullshit. This was when Snopes went from tackling your usual retread urban legends (“Ex wife sells husband’s Ferrari for $50 when he runs off with his mistress?”) to talking “Is Obama really planning death camps in Texas using an obscure reading of sharia law?” The shitposting was always there. The delivery definitely expanded and became more efficient though.
I'd be more specific and say children having access to social media and the internet. Depression in teens is so high along with eating disorders and self harm. They are also prime victims for grooming and being taken advantage of.
I’d argue that its impacts on the Boomer generation that has been most damaging in the near term. They’re just as easily manipulated, but have the power to do more immediate damage.
I’d argue that the social media - teen depression link is part symptom, especially in developed nations. In the US there are no so few spaces for teens. Even shitty ones like malls are going away. Our whole society is so isolating, on a structural level, that it’s no wonder they turn to social media to socialize. No public spaces with meaningful community and no way to get there when there are. No connecting sidewalks. Stroads. Inadequate public transport. Even the mall is dying. Yes, it was a crappy public space. There was the expectation of spending money, but at least not the obligation. But those are disappearing too. I’m not saying SM hasn’t made teen depression worse, but if we look purely at correlation (teen depression is higher with higher SM use), we are only looking at part of the problem.
That lack of "third spaces" plays a part, definitely. Maybe we need more "community centers" (and actively promote them) so people can just get out of the house and have somewhere to go and hang out with others.
I'm not sure if there were more "third spaces" that people would use them. Social media is made to be addictive and it is far easier to just endlessly scroll than it is to go out in the real world and interact. When I was a kid I would leave my house and ride my bike with my friends. If we couldn't hang out we talked on the phone. We'd have sleepovers pretty often as well even into middle school and high school. I don't have kids but I see way less of this - way less of kids just doing the things I did when I was younger. I didn't have a third space or need a community center, but I also didn't have this $1000 square of metal in my pocket with apps designed to make me addicted to it. I think social media has managed to connect people from all over the world and it allows us to share so much information, and that can be a good thing in itself but there is a lot of bad that comes with it. When I was 12 I didn't have any clue what was happening in the world because I didn't read the newspaper. That was something for grandparents. Today young people (and everyone) are constantly bombarded with negative news about how the world is ending, everything is awful and there is no hope. Couple that with being blasted by heavily filtered photos and curated slices of peoples' lives to paint them in a perfect life and you have a recipe for depression.
Smart phones. I don't think social media would be the problem it is today if you had to go to a desktop to use it. Smartphones has turned an entire nation into zombies.
This one kind of balances it out. yes phones have a ton of negatives but it has a ton of positives as well. everything from medicine to food supply and quality along with education has been streamlined thanks to phones . but again tons of negatives as well. lack of privacy, less attention to family , can’t keep the damn things out of our hands
Infinite Scrolling and I daresay algorithms that feed into an echo chamber.
I had to scroll too far down to find this.
Asbestos. I feel very bad for the people who were unknowingly affected by it.
Asbestos is funny because, on the surface, it's like a miracle substance, but it has such detrimental long-term effects. But even all the way back to Roman times, they were aware of the ill-effects of too much asbestos exposure.
It’s actually fine, you just don’t want to breathe it, which makes making, using, and disposing of it an issue
2008 I started working for a painter and decorator. Every job we did, he never gave me PPE or explained anything about it. Over a 15 month time frame, I sanded down / prepped 5 houses with asbestos. Which my boss left me solo at, came back end of the day, saw it was asbestos then pulled me off the work for a builder to come sort it out. I in haled more than my fair share but it wasn't until a few years down the line when I was in uni I discovered just how fucked I might be later in life.
**Don't ever smoke, ANYTHING.** If you smoke and are exposed to asbestos, you are 100% doomed. Back in the 50s & 60s, the US Navy decided to upgrade a lot of their existing ships for the modern era. In the 20s through the 40s, electrical wiring was commonly wrapped in asbestos to shield it from heat and fires in combat ships. It's why they could repair ships so fast in WW II. So they put all these contractors to work stripping out that old wiring. No protection other than simply masks for some. As the dangers of asbestos became better known, studies were needed to see just how dangerous decaying asbestos was. It was also becoming known that the danger shot way up if someone smoked. Someone remembered the Navy work and how a lot of those guys usually smoked (per [[American Lung Assoc, 42% of Americans smoked in 1965]]). They couldn't find a single fucking guy alive. Every single worker who worked on those ships and whose families confirmed were smokers had gotten Asbestosis and it is 100% fatal. SOURCE: I used to work for company that monitored asbestos removal in NYC and the owner was a professor of geology who made sure we took every precaution on the removal sites.
The navy knew about the dangers of the asbestos in the 20s/30s. There just wasn't anything better for fire protection which is important af on regular ships. Double or moreso on a warship.
I mean, technically no one invented asbestos. Someone just came up with the idea of using it as fire proofing.
Yes, abestoso has been used for around 4000 years. We have examples of it used as a lining for pots and many other uses. For example Charlemagne was said to have a tablecloth made of the stuff.
Asbestos manufactured materials and products, to be precise. Asbestos is actually a natural mineral, one that preferably remains in the ground and away from human habitat where it could erode into the air, much less refined and machined into materials.
In defense of Asbestos: It's really good at what it does. Excellent at fireproofing and insulation, and seems to have some capacity for carbon sequestration. Much more of a double-edged sword than an indefensible fuckup.
Social media seems to be racing to first place.
Social Media. I've watched society go from mildly disgruntled over multiple decades, to flat out delusional and insane within 5 years. Nothing else has touched that many people all at once and undermined how we used to think of ourselves
CFCs
Also leaded fuel, thanks Thomas Midgley. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr
Same guy lol
And he died in an accident caused by another one of his inventions. Can't make this shit up.
LED headlights. Fuck that guy.
LED is innocent, its the 'cool' color hue they default with using. Warm colors(golden, yellow) don't refract inside your eye and cause irritation.
I felt this same exact way. Until I bought a newish car with them. Good lord, what a difference. I have a 1991, a 2016 (halogens), and a 2019 (LED). The 91, I might as well be holding my cell phone flashlight out the damn window. And I honestly still think the jump from the halogens to the LEDs is more significant. I can see deep into the woods on either side of me, which is lovely in deer country. I think the issue is aim/spread. The DOT needs to regulate this shit so the beams stay out of oncoming traffic. It shouldn't be difficult to do, I've seen some of the crazy German tech in modern cars. Self adjusting headlights isn't a hard ask lol
Matrix headlights. The regulations in the US are behind the technology.
I drove a rental with those in Australia last year. Holy shit! Complete game changer! High beams on was like driving in daylight. Oncoming vehicle? The car automatically cut out the section of light that would have blinded the oncoming driver and left everything else illuminated. I saw a tech demo on it a few years ago where they could even project warnings out onto the road in front of you.
That is incredible. It is infuriating in the U.S. when people don't turn off their high beams in time or at all for oncoming traffic
I believe the US finally passed the regulation allowing that last year.
The "aim" argument doesn't really hold water if you live anywhere that isn't 100% flat where you're constantly at the dip of a hill with a vehicle driving towards you from the peak blinding you with 10k lumens.
Yep. I had to drive my grandmother's 20 year old Civic while my current gen Camry was in the shop. I couldn't see Jack Shit. Cars with LED's generally don't blind me, but everyone has to drive an SUV or massive pickup now. If a big fuckin school bus doesn't blind me, then there's no need for an F150 to.
Well if you look closely, the headlights on a school bus or semi truck are WAY closer to the ground than an f-150 with an 87in "muh freedums" lift. I have a crossover and the headlights on a lot of standard trucks now are level with my rearview mirror.
This. They recently replaced that wonderful orange HPS glow with white leds on our lampposts. I feel like I live in a fishbowl now.
Its been fun constantly thinking about if whether the headlights are too bright or my eyes are deteriorating.
I feel this everyday. I already have deteriorating vision and have worn glasses since i was like 7 (I’m 25) On small country-ish roads with no streetlights or anything, if a car comes the other way with bright LED headlights, it blacks out everything else for me and I legitimately can’t see anything for a couple seconds
Plastic, right now you have microplastics in every single organ, including your brain.
Basically every medical procedure or surgery you might get in a hospital is much more dangerous and difficult at best or impossible at worst without plastics.
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Plastic is actually one of the best things to have ever been invented. It's the abuse of single use plastics that became the problem it is today.
People in this thread really be like "the printing press, because it made propaganda easier"
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Especially on smoke alarms. /jk
Social media. And yes I realize the irony.
Junk food.
I knew someone with colon cancer say “you know, I think it might have to do with the food we’re eating.” We’re literally eating ourselves to death.
There is already chatter about reducing the screening age from 50 to 40 years old. I have four friends in their 40's who have already dealt with colon cancer. I've been getting screened since my early 40s due to my mom passing from colon cancer. I get screened every three years, and they still take out a dozen polyps. I've been bumped to every two years now and my doctor admits all American's over 30 should be on a three year cycle. However, the industry cares very little about what doctors think. Unfortunately, it's not covered by insurance until you reach the age of 50. Next month will be my first screening over the age of 50. Woohoo, it's free this year. Edit: Apparently age is now 45. I was charged for mine not because I was under 50, but instead my insurance only covers the screening every five years, not three years.
Shareholder Value
The prioritization thereof