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Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

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Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#91
post #7

When I read about Inuit culture of non-violence in the 20th century [1], and wheb I read about them today [2], I have this disgusted feeling that Western culture of drugs and anger is like a virus that spread into their completely non-immunized population. A bit like the diseases brought into the new world in the 19th century, but this time psychological. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674608283…

Your thoughts are interesting, but I am having trouble seeing how this relates to the Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article is about police murdering a number of Indigenous Canadians. I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people. I believe that none of the men in this Wikipedia article are Inuit. Wikipedia reports 2016 census showing the following Indigenous pop…

> I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people.

I think the parent poster is referring to the non-native population’s history of inflicting trauma on native populations and how this trauma is like a seed that begets it’s own cycle of behaviour that causes still more trauma (hence a virus that spreads). Prior, native populations weren’t known to have traumatized their own peoples (though wars between tribes are well documented).

Edit: are you strictly limiting your comment to the Inuit? I think collectivism was the base case among native populations. Non-violence within tribes as well.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#92
post #80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder that leaded gasoline is still used today in airports all over the USA. If you live near an airport you are still affected by this in 2022.

There was no widespread soil remediation so if you live near any road at all (that would be everyone) you are still affected by this. No need to be near an airport

Yeah, but you won't get internet virtue points, likes, retweets and shares screeching about the dirt the way you will complaining that general aviation still uses leaded gas hence why you never hear about it but you always hear about avgas which would be a solved problem if the FAA would just do their jobs.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#93
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low effort isn't in the concern, but just in literally the amount of effort OP put into their comment. They could at least attempt to quantify the effect they believe this has on people living near airports.

I don’t know if there is any known level of safe lead exposure. In terms of direct impact, this is going to be hard to measure but the risk is nonetheless real. In fact the difficulty of measuring the consequences of mass lead exposure was one of the best arguments out forth my oil refining companies back in the day to support leader gasoline. Not sure why all the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to avoid expos…

You're right that no level of lead exposure is considered safe, but that doesn't mean that any lead exposure is going to have any kind of measurable effect on an organism.

Shouldn't the impact of leaded avgas be easier to measure, since the concentrations should be higher around airports which send up a lot of leaded avgas planes? It's a different situation than where every car was burning leaded gas and everyone was pretty much exposed to it. The effects should be much more localized and therefore easier to study.

The risk may be real, but it may be dwarfed by other sources of lead, making it a silly thing to worry yourself about. For example, you might get more lead into your body from 8oz of fruit juice than you would living a year near an airport.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#94
post #7

When I read about Inuit culture of non-violence in the 20th century [1], and wheb I read about them today [2], I have this disgusted feeling that Western culture of drugs and anger is like a virus that spread into their completely non-immunized population. A bit like the diseases brought into the new world in the 19th century, but this time psychological. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674608283…

"Western culture of drugs and anger?" That entirely discounts all the positive aspects of the culture. If you have disgusting views, you're likely to be disgusted a lot.

If you find a population that largely lives somewhere where drugs don't or can't grow, the results should be obvious once they do become available. Whether through a "culture of drugs and violence" or a "culture of drugs and love" or mere "natural market realities."

And in both cases, it's not as if we created drugs or smallpox with the specific intent of eradicating entire native societies. Or that our cavalier attitudes were at all in service of that goal.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#95
post #80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder that leaded gasoline is still used today in airports all over the USA. If you live near an airport you are still affected by this in 2022.

There was no widespread soil remediation so if you live near any road at all (that would be everyone) you are still affected by this. No need to be near an airport

How mobile is the lead today? There are a number of extremely insoluble lead salts, such as the sulfide, the phosphate, the chromate, the titanate, some of the oxides, and even the carbonate and the sulfate.

My mental model is that lead metal and the above-mentioned salts are basically immobile in the soil: you can have all the lead sulfide or metallic lead you want in your soil without it leaching into the groundwater or contaminating the tomatoes you grow in it. And lead ions (in the form of the acetate, for example) are only mobile until they bump into one of the anions mentioned above, at which point they get locked up for geological periods of time. Organic lead compounds like tetraethyllead are a much scarier problem, but they also get broken down into ionic lead over a period of years.

Is that right? Am I misunderstanding the dynamics?

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#96
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead was used in Egyptian pottery many thousands of years ago.

And to sweeten wine, which survived into the Middle Ages as people soaking lumps in cheap wine to improve the flavor. There’s a plausible theory that tomatoes were mistaken for poisonous due to lead dinner plates of that era. With the possible exception of the counterfeit wine example, that’s all very ethically different from pumping it into the air.

lead... as a sweetener??

:: looks on past in abject horror ::

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#97

The treatment of native and african Americans in the North American continent is so unjust and severe, and has been persistent for decades in a way that it's almost like a long drawn-out genocide.

unbalanced representations only fuel the fire of antagonism; far too many examples on both sides of justice in the last sixty years, for a single summary right?

No post body was provided.

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#98
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garden hoses are absolutely awful for their plasticizer content (xenoestrogen) as well

It seems like there's no winning. Is there any conceivable way those chemicals could make their way into food? Should people use a watering can? Is there any avoiding contaminants in food? Do we live in a post-contaminant society? Even our compost is contaminated.

[deleted]

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#99
post #95
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no widespread soil remediation so if you live near any road at all (that would be everyone) you are still affected by this. No need to be near an airport

How mobile is the lead today? There are a number of extremely insoluble lead salts, such as the sulfide, the phosphate, the chromate, the titanate, some of the oxides, and even the carbonate and the sulfate. My mental model is that lead metal and the above-mentioned salts are basically immobile in the soil: you can have all the lead sulfide or metallic lead you want in your soil without it leaching into the groundwat…

Lead in soil gets stirred up by wind, rain, humans and animals into the air all day long.

Of particular risk as far as food contamination is concerned are leafy vegetables and shrubby fruits that grow near the ground (surface contamination, eventually binding to the food - not internal uptake necessarily).

There are studies measuring these effects, you don’t have to take my word for it.

Here is what the CDC has to say https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/soil.htm

Re: Saskatoon Freezing Deaths

#100
post #7

When I read about Inuit culture of non-violence in the 20th century [1], and wheb I read about them today [2], I have this disgusted feeling that Western culture of drugs and anger is like a virus that spread into their completely non-immunized population. A bit like the diseases brought into the new world in the 19th century, but this time psychological. [1] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674608283…

Your thoughts are interesting, but I am having trouble seeing how this relates to the Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article is about police murdering a number of Indigenous Canadians. I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people. I believe that none of the men in this Wikipedia article are Inuit. Wikipedia reports 2016 census showing the following Indigenous pop…

First, the practice of "Starlight Tours" wasn't isolated to Saskatoon. It was, and is speculated to still be a practice in many communities, with verified occurrences in Montreal and Winnipeg, as well as claims of it happening in many other small communities.

Second, the genocidal practices of the Canada towards it's indigenous population included the Inuit. There is a laundry list of genocidal tactics: * criminalization of cultural practices * residential schools * isolating communities into reserves * underfunding or denying funding for critical infrastructure * forced separation at birth * forced sterilization * extrajudicial punishment by federal, provincial, and municipal police forces

The list goes on, and on, and on. There isn't a direct line between the spread of drugs and destruction of Inuit culture, and the prevalence or incidence of starlight tours, but they are all part of the threads of racism and genocide that are tightly woven into the fabric of Canadian culture.

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