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The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

audubon.org

101–110 of 218 posts

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon used to have a webpage that clearly stated they commingle inventory from all sellers, so it has long been public information that when you buy something on Amazon.com, the seller you buy from does not matter.

It does matter. If you order real stuff, and get fake stuff, then it matters.

The act of choosing seller A vs seller B on Amazon does not matter for the purposes of trying to ensure the source of your item.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#102
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon used to have a webpage that clearly stated they commingle inventory from all sellers, so it has long been public information that when you buy something on Amazon.com, the seller you buy from does not matter.

What I never understand: Why do they not put a sticker with an unique ID on the items (or require the seller to do so, with occasional compliance checks)? That way they could match customer complaints to the company that delivered the item, even if it is not the seller the customer bought from.

I assume they do have a method of keeping track for their own purposes.

I also assume the reason Amazon commingles is it makes their 2 day shipping promise cheaper or more possible to fulfill. If seller A’s items are on the east coast, and seller B’s items are on the west coast, and the items are identical, then it makes sense to send you the closest one.

Obviously, the problem is items are not identical, and quality control is not something I am interested in doing as a customer of Amazon’s.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#103
post #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.

God I hate that bullshit. They have accomplished what, exactly? Oh, a big annoying banner that I now have to click through. So helpful. A testament to the stupidity of mankind.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#106
post #65
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then all you have to be concerned with is avoiding toxoplasmosis exposure.

The most important precaution is daily cleaning of litter boxes, since the parasite does not become infectious until after a day of being expelled from the cat through its feces.

Also, cats only spread the parasite for up to three weeks after becoming infected themselves.

This has more info about this: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/gen_info/faqs.ht...

Also, for anyone curious about parasites, this book is a gem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cri…

I think this is oversimplifying the political compass. There are a whole class of people that believe helping people should be voluntary, not mandatory. Dignity is something that comes from within, but if you want a "thriving wage", negotiate for it. The left supports all sorts of policies that make helping people compulsory, at which point it starts to more resemble slavery than charity.

How would you define a "fair" wage? Enough to stay alive? Raise a family? Own a house? A car? A TV? An air conditioner? I personally don't see how entitling people to these things is remotely "fair". You'll note that none of this has anything remotely to do with religion.

> I'm not sure how to even start to deescalate the situation.

The best way would be to refrain from imposing your view of "good" or "fair" on other people. Society is about coexisting peacefully, not binding everyone into a single ideology.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#108
This has been a problem in my suburban neighborhood the last couple of years. Each spring, there's a very sudden die-off among the local chipmunk population. I've found a couple of the bodies, showing classic signs of SGAR poisoning. Haven't particularly noticed an effect on the local raptor population, but I don't see all that many even in the best of times so it's hard to tell. One pet dog has died, another couple have become severely ill. The close timing and extent suggests that it's a careless pest-control contractor rather than dozens of homeowners acting independently, but no culprit has been identified yet.

These chemicals are supposed to be used for rats because many rats have developed resistance to other chemicals, but I very much doubt that rats are the problem around here. Never seen one, or signs of one. People are using these poisons to control mice, which most definitely are a problem, and it's literally overkill. Personally I burn through a handful of snap traps every year (PB and Nutella are my baits of choice). There are other effective techniques as well, several mentioned here. Like "last line of defense" antibiotics, SGARs should be a last resort for pests which can't be dealt with by other means.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#109
post #53

Brodifacoum? I don’t buy that on Amazon, I buy it at my local supermarket. Not the US, Australia. I’ve never heard any controversy about availability of brodifacoum in Australia (maybe some environmental or animal welfare group has complained, but if so I haven’t heard about it) Glue traps, now that’s controversial. In the state of Victoria, illegal to use in residential settings (on animal welfare grounds), but stil…

What’s so bad about a glue trap that it weighs up against massive internal hemorrhaging over the course of 5 days?

The difference is that you see it. As somebody that had rescued a mouse from a glue trap once, I find them nasty. Having a totally restrained animal dying from hunger in your kitchen over the course of hours and days while looking at you terrified is a really unpleasant experience.

You can kill it of course, and I'm not against killing an animal, but is a mess of glue and liquids and spring traps are more fair in that sense.

[1] After a while I just couldn't keep typing without doing something about it. Some people laughed at me, and a bald and almost naked mouse was released some weeks later into a dry stone wall when fur started to grow again. It was a lot of work but I don't regret anything.

Re: The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

#110
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to control my serious ant problem by feeding them. I would set up plates of sugar or sugary food outside, away from the house. Over time I got fewer and fewer scouts coming in to the house to snoop around.

I would expect this only works for you because something else is preventing population growth in ants near your house.

Either this or confirmation bias. Ants will reproduce colonies and expand to take as much resources as you're willing to give them.
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