Tardigrades are so cute! And appear to be able to survive everything, including outer space! So maybe they are they highest level of life? Maybe after death we can become tardigrades!
I despise the term "lobbyist." It's a sanitized version of the much more accurate term "bribery specialist." These people spend tons of money - they bribe, they threaten, they connive, they use any trick in the book to serve the financial interests of their overlords.
We can have all the free speech we like - just put limits on it like we do everything else. You have a case to make for Big Oil or Big Pharma? Fine - you have 10 minutes to make your case, just like the citizen who was just diagnosed with cancer because of your selfish decisions. No money. No "campaign contribution." Say what you want, and then you're done.
Money is not speech. Maybe if we got that through the thick skulls of the judges & justices, we might be able to have nice things.
As long as the money keeps flowing to these industry executives, the plastic will not stop. The only way to stop it is for the consumers to stop buying it. But, there's a catch. The packaging industry is in on this so they would have to find or be offered a cost effective alternative. Until that happens, the planet is stuck with ingesting microplastics that are killing every mammalian, fish and bird species everywhere.
Just in the couple years I've been getting "Heated," the few remaining glass, paper and metal containers at the local market have been replaced by plastic(s), or weird combinations of plastic and paper. Construction supplies which were tied up with rope are shrink-wrapped, etc. Somehow the economy functioned in my youth with hardly any plastics at all.
I'd love to see an unhinged list of the studies on the major vectors of microplastic dispersion. The sludge/biosolids land application has got to stop now. I don't know if tire wear particulates qualify as "microplastics," but that's a huge load into soil air and water. My understanding of ocean plastic pollution is that a huge proportion comes from a few 2nd or 3rd world countries. With us contributing mostly during floods.
One bit of good news; some folks criticize solar panels for their plastic content, but that's always just been the backsheet and now all PV panels installed in solar fields and most flat roofs are "bifacial" which requires glass on the back side too. Yeah, A fiberglass & foam wind turbine blade broke off into Nantucket Sound this summer, but in the history of offshore wind, that's maybe the 4th or 5th time out of 33,000 blades deployed in 25 years.
I heard in a podcast that 2% of our brains are now made of microplastics, but searching I could find only a preprint article saying its .5 % -- notably 10 to 20 times more than in other organs.
Tardigrades are so cute! And appear to be able to survive everything, including outer space! So maybe they are they highest level of life? Maybe after death we can become tardigrades!
Yes! I also learned they're called EXTREMOPHILES which would be a sick band name
I despise the term "lobbyist." It's a sanitized version of the much more accurate term "bribery specialist." These people spend tons of money - they bribe, they threaten, they connive, they use any trick in the book to serve the financial interests of their overlords.
We can have all the free speech we like - just put limits on it like we do everything else. You have a case to make for Big Oil or Big Pharma? Fine - you have 10 minutes to make your case, just like the citizen who was just diagnosed with cancer because of your selfish decisions. No money. No "campaign contribution." Say what you want, and then you're done.
Money is not speech. Maybe if we got that through the thick skulls of the judges & justices, we might be able to have nice things.
Yikes. Just yikes. 😵💫
Radiation, PFAS, and now plastics into the environment, in such small amounts, they enter living bodies. We are not doing the living all too well.
As long as the money keeps flowing to these industry executives, the plastic will not stop. The only way to stop it is for the consumers to stop buying it. But, there's a catch. The packaging industry is in on this so they would have to find or be offered a cost effective alternative. Until that happens, the planet is stuck with ingesting microplastics that are killing every mammalian, fish and bird species everywhere.
Good Job, Emily! Unhinge me for the day!
Just in the couple years I've been getting "Heated," the few remaining glass, paper and metal containers at the local market have been replaced by plastic(s), or weird combinations of plastic and paper. Construction supplies which were tied up with rope are shrink-wrapped, etc. Somehow the economy functioned in my youth with hardly any plastics at all.
I'd love to see an unhinged list of the studies on the major vectors of microplastic dispersion. The sludge/biosolids land application has got to stop now. I don't know if tire wear particulates qualify as "microplastics," but that's a huge load into soil air and water. My understanding of ocean plastic pollution is that a huge proportion comes from a few 2nd or 3rd world countries. With us contributing mostly during floods.
One bit of good news; some folks criticize solar panels for their plastic content, but that's always just been the backsheet and now all PV panels installed in solar fields and most flat roofs are "bifacial" which requires glass on the back side too. Yeah, A fiberglass & foam wind turbine blade broke off into Nantucket Sound this summer, but in the history of offshore wind, that's maybe the 4th or 5th time out of 33,000 blades deployed in 25 years.
Literally everywhere. It's beyond depressing.
I heard in a podcast that 2% of our brains are now made of microplastics, but searching I could find only a preprint article saying its .5 % -- notably 10 to 20 times more than in other organs.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/microplastics-brain-pollution-health https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11100893/