181–190 of 197 posts
Same reason why toxic oil fracking exists and burn off millions of dollars of natural gas into atmosphere daily.
Same reason why there are allowed toxic zones in populated areas https://projects.propublica.org/toxmap/
Same reason why highly toxic leaded fuel is still used daily in aviation for decades despite banned everywhere else.
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How do you deal with ant infestations inside your house?
I’ve had great success with the boric acid-sugar traps. Boric acid is toxic if you eat it, but not very toxic. The ants eat it, carry it back the nest and kill the rest of the inhabitants.
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> If you go and speak to your representative for a few minutes to try and convince them to support your position Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. If you don’t have a campaign donation lined up, you’re not getting in the door.
You don’t have experience then. My professor in college actually drafted a pro-entrepreneurship law in the office of his representative who then brought it to the floor for a vote. No money was exchanged.
Corruption doesn’t always seem to lie in the identification of problems (although it could). The interface with the private sector is where I believe the government often fails to meet ethical standards.
The experts in the telecom industry work for the telecom industry, for instance. If I believe a bill they wrote will cause harm to the public, there is no one within the benefitting industry that will argue on my behalf, except for myself.
Herbicides aside, I worry a lot about the chemicals that we consider "normal". I signed up for a pest service after purchasing my home because we were getting ants and water bugs in the house. They have a package they they sell that includes a "full property" treatment, which I don't think I need. They list off a couple down "pests" that they kill, and go through a long script about how safe the chemicals are. But li…
Yeah, we have ants in our house in the summer. I have found that as long as everything is clean, I hardly do see them. Usually if we spill something and miss a spot and tbey show up then they generally have it all cleaned up and are out of my way by the time I get back from work. I've sworn off pesticides and herbicides and the effect on my property has been amamzing. It's like a little nature hub. Lots of insects ou…
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Of course it's still bribery. The definition doesn't change just because you happen to agree with what they're getting bribed for.
Okay, if you think having dinner while talking about cancer research is bribery, let me find you an even more bare bones example. Your representative has a town hall and afterwards you get a few minutes to speak with him. You argue that the number of stop signs in your neighborhood isn’t enough and causes danger. In other words, you lobby him to pursue increased stop signs in your area. He hears you out, you guys sha…
wait
Didn't you go from lobbying (getting a dinner specifically to discuss and convince):
> Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery?
to having dinner and talking cancer research en passant:
> having dinner while talking about cancer research
With that being said, these matters are supposed to be debated on a parliament's floor and an elected parliament member should have his stance about cancer research in his program, that's what he sold/promised to people who voted for them.
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They are literally stuff meant to kill other stuff. As such they will be deadly for some stuff and likely also others. So I agree that we have to evaluate which of them is least worse. Or presents acceptable risk levels in comparative scenarios. And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them.
> And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them. The following study states that organic farming on average is 25% less productive than conventional farming. The major difference being the use of plant protection products (herbicides, pesticides, etc.). https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/6344... That additional land use could be satisfied if the consumption of meat would be drasti…
I'm more worried about the GMO "roundup ready" seeds they sell, and the crops that result. Those contain alterations that (I hypothesize) are partially responsible for increased allergies in the US population.
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Exposure to leaded gasoline and diesel is way more likely to have caused this increase tbh. In France, the increased allergies isn't as noticeable in rural area as in cities. If it was caused by chemical we use on plant, the reverse would be true.
another hypothesis i heard was rural kids grew up with their immune systems exposed to more stuff and so better trained/less likely to overreact. personally, i always noticed kids with allergies tended to be weak and sickly much more often, so maybe that's related.
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Allergies are a form of immune response to normally innocuous things. It makes sense that there is general coincidence between severe allergies and other immune disorders.
not just immune disorder, i mean that "allergy kids" always seemed to be the 110lb scrawny ones, never go outside, never play sports, and burst in to tears for things that made other kids say "ow". idk but makes it seem like maybe there's as much nurture as nature here, i bet ngl i think this is just a epigenetic shift from people who have been "raised weak" for several generations. i can't prove it completely but th…
By the way, the two worst offenders i ever met when talking about allergies were around the same age (they should be in their 60s now) and both are Distilben babies. And they were scrawny, but it wasn't by choice, they just couldn't eat most fats. Nothing to do with nurture in their case.