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The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

audubon.org

31–40 of 218 posts

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#31
post #13
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can order parts to make your gun fully automatic straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can order suppressors straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can _not_ buy thousands of rounds worth of any ammo other than .22 with a week's…

You’re correct on the vast majority of people aren’t violent and unreasonable part… but I very much think you’re missing a point. Yes, you could mostly always buy something like a part to make a gun fully automatic or a suppressor online. Anybody with the slightest technical skills could make the full auto parts with some metal stock & a dremel. But a lot of people aren’t thinking into it that much when they’re impul…

Minimum wage where? $7.25 for 40 hours is still $290 before taxes, yes? That's federal minimum wage in the United States, and that's only for untipped workers on W-2 who can manage to get a full time schedule.

Some states have substantially higher minimums, though, and don't allow wage discrimination against wait staff.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#32
post #28

Anyone surprised that the title is not a metaphor? The article is about the literal sale of substances which are harmful when ingested by rodents.

Yep, I totally thought that it would be about some law that ruins the internet for everyone while at the same time does nothing to stop bad actors. Like the EU cookie warning mandate.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#33
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good reviews also barely mean anything these days. The worst item I have ever bought online, which damaged itself on opening for 100% of buyers, had ~4.1 rating. At this point, it is fair to say getting less than 4 stars means the seller was too poor/naive to hire "online promotion" services or whatever they are called, rather than anything else.

Similar to eBay seller ratings where 99.9% positive feedback means you might get your item, whereas 95% positive feedback implies the seller is stealing the goods from the factory that counterfeits them and whether you receive anything depends mainly on how the shipping carrier handles a package that catches fire in transit. Less than 80% positive feedback has never been observed but would presumably involve the sell…

This has the same energy as that "you wouldn't steal a car" ad in IT Crowd.

But it's not far from the truth, and unless 10 news websites report on it online platforms won't even bother with an empty statement. Amazon for example lets vendors transfer good reviews to any other product by just replacing the product entry (name, description, price). Sure you then have reviews for coffee cups under some solder wire, but it fools enough users. And if the reviews are too negative you can just remove the product offer and immediately create it again.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#34

What's surprising is why people would buy this over the more obvious search result 'Rat Poison'. Perhaps Amazon has already adjusted the search results but the top results for 'rat poison' were Cholecalciferol and Bromethalin based products. Does Brodifacoum work the best? What's driving consumers to search for a specific type of poison. > Things haven’t quite worked out as the EPA envisioned. When I first started br…

Never had to deal with a rat problem, but lemme put myself in the shoes of someone who tried using cheap single-mouse traps and found they didn’t work. At that point I would google for the most effective poison (using some metric like time to death or LD50 per kg), check exterminator forums to see what they use as a last resort, etc. If the product is as deadly as promised, I’d give it a 5* rating and recommend it to all my IRL friends.

Personally I’ve been burned by milquetoast products such as “eco friendly” cleaning liquids that just don’t work. Product with many warning labels that are clearly targeted towards professionals are so much more effective in general.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dismantling of safety nets is a circumvoluted problem. Safety nets are a feature of rather leftist politics (To me, helping others is the core of leftism). However, the same ones who set up the safety nets, have a racial preference towards helping those they perceive as in the worst situation. Yesterday it was the factory workers, today it’s women, african americans and LGBTQIA+. So, by increasing the safety nets…

> To me, helping others is the core of leftism People on the right wing also want to help others, but the method is different: helping people to help themselves. I think there are risks to both. People can become dependent on safety nets. People can also need more help than just "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". > I say beautiful because, to abstain from finding solutions, there has to be people who find this be…

To play devil's advocate and be only a little cheeky, it seems the way the right of recent American politics tries to help people help themselves is to offer them military-grade weaponry, deregulated environmental protections, laws to enforce sexual and vice Christian-specific rules not widely agreed on by non-Christians, and decreased worker protections. This seems almost perfectly calculated to help them become criminals or wage slaves to modern robber barons. The people most served by the modern right are the robber barons themselves (except for the weapons part). If I was a robber baron the last thing I'd want is all my workers watching their livelihoods disappear to all have automatic weapons.

I think this is why so much messaging goes to convince people that their worsening situation is because LGBTQ+ or immigrants exist and God is punishing them for the "wickedness of the land."

I myself very much would prefer a model that helps people help themselves, but I am unclear what policies would achieve that goal that aren't already supported by the left. Many Americans don't want hand outs, they want dignity and a good job that pays them a thriving wage.

However, they also will vote against policies that enforce a fair wage, because it's coming from the mouths of "sinners" who for all they know are causing this via "wickedness." The left can be very condescending and is large enough to have lots of people who similarly think that lack of ideological purity is the cause of the nation's issues, only the ideology is not completely agreed on by any of followers, so it's always shifting, which gives the impression that it's less serious and is very easy to mock. There's a lot about making places safer, which runs counter to how many Americans want to see themselves: they don't want places to be safer, they want to be tougher individuals, so such attempts feel weak to them.

As someone who's studied the Bible far more than average (I read New Treatment Greek and went to seminary for a bit), I feel like there is _very_ little thought about sins like pride, hatefulness, and gluttony in the modern church, so it's only a partial truth according to the Bible. Describing the classic "fruits of the Spirit" does not sound anything like the modern Right: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

It seems a situation where the messaging has just enough Christian ethics to resemble some of what one would hear from church leadership, but without the inward reflection required of most of the New Testament. It's very Old Testament with messaging that implies "it's these sinners among you who are the problem and need to be stopped or killed." The New Testament would instead lead someone to conclude that if they are being punished it is from their own personal sin. This is enforced with lessons like "let he without sin cast the first stone."

I really diverged a bit here, but I've been thinking a lot about the situation of politics. The right cannot be understood without understanding how much of that worldview is shaped by religion, but also that it really isn't a Christian worldview, it's an Old Testament worldview. Too many people crave "righteous" wrath against sinners, not humble admission that all are sinners all the time, and we all need grace and forgiveness not a murderous rampage.

As it pertains to policies, I'm not sure how to even start to deescalate the situation. But attempting to do so without understanding the worldviews involved will never work.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#36
post #28

Anyone surprised that the title is not a metaphor? The article is about the literal sale of substances which are harmful when ingested by rodents.

Yes! I thought it was going to compare the fight against with the Hanoi rat problem of 1902, where giving people the wrong incentive exacerbated the problem.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#37

I use the old-fashioned snap traps. They work fine. Sometimes it's necessary to tweak the catch to make it more sensitive. They're made of wood and wire, and aren't an environmental problem. I live near a greenbelt and there's a never-ending invasion of mice. If I leave the garage door open and unattended, they're in in a flash and setting up shop. The only way to get rid of them is the traps, and you have to get rid…

For a Cat to work on mice it has to be a Mouser. I can't pretend I know the full theory of Mousers but it seems that females brought up by Mouser mothers in a mouse-rich environment are the best Mousers, since they are taught to kill from their earliest years.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#39

I use the old-fashioned snap traps. They work fine. Sometimes it's necessary to tweak the catch to make it more sensitive. They're made of wood and wire, and aren't an environmental problem. I live near a greenbelt and there's a never-ending invasion of mice. If I leave the garage door open and unattended, they're in in a flash and setting up shop. The only way to get rid of them is the traps, and you have to get rid…

If anyone is interested there is a YouTube channels dedicated to mouse traps and other rodent traps: Mousetrap Monday.

Edit: he also has a bit about rat poison somewhere where he explains how to prevent non-rodents from eating rat poison. I cannot vouch for it but it sounded smart to me (farming background).

Edit 2, here's the video: https://mousetrapmonday.com/videos/why-rat-x-is-the-only-rat...

In a couple of the cuts we can see ingredient names, but I, like Shawn in the video take the declaration with a pinch of salt.

For me I'll use traps anyway at my current "farm".

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#40

I use the old-fashioned snap traps. They work fine. Sometimes it's necessary to tweak the catch to make it more sensitive. They're made of wood and wire, and aren't an environmental problem. I live near a greenbelt and there's a never-ending invasion of mice. If I leave the garage door open and unattended, they're in in a flash and setting up shop. The only way to get rid of them is the traps, and you have to get rid…

I think it's highly variable, depending on the size of the population, how hungry they are, if they have other food options available, and their culture and genetics. Sometimes the traps get them, and sometimes they definitely don't. And if the traps don't get all of them, the problem isn't really addressed.
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