Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poison, Poison Everywhere

loeber.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 211 posts

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#171

Post by Der_Einzige »

hiddencost wrote: post #58
Ferret7446 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a solution. There is no practical solution for this, and has not been for the millennia on human history; it's only been in the recent decades where we've been able the hallucinate about knowing about toxins in our daily lives. Legislation is just paper, you have no enforcement mechanism beyond what you already have currently: suing companies on a case by case basis.

Uh, it used to be until it was gutted in the last 30 years. Legislation and bureaucracy has been one of the most successful interventions for public health for centuries. Read about the hole in the ozone layer. Banning lead paint. Read about the invention of public water authorities. Read Silent Spring and read about its aftermath. Look into the history of air pollution and the EPA. These are some of the crown jewels…

Trump voters think EVERY one of these events was horrible/bad and should be rejected. If they could read and pay attention to the red scare they'd know that they would want to put Rachel Carson in front of Joseph McCarthy

They want a return to using Lead/Asbestos, a return to incandescent light bulbs, gutting/defunding/removal of most federal consumer protection and health, and environmental agencies. They think that the Ozone hole was a myth invented by globalist ZOG Soros funded marxists.

Right now, the dominant cultural narrative is Schadenfreude. Shitting up the environment to make someone you hate feel bad is absolutly the most popular approach to regulation right now. This is why hardcore southern conservatives love to "Roll Coal" and it's also why Trump just shared an AI generated meme of him literally shitting on America.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#172

Post by Der_Einzige »

potato3732842 wrote: post #136
margalabargala wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about lead levels in soil near gen aviation airports for this reason, and in the neighborhoods that sometimes get built on decommissioned runways.

I assume it's pretty inconsequential because if it weren't I'd hear real people talking about it (like with lead paint, and various forms of soil contamination) and as it stands I only hear fake internet comment section hand wringers hand wringing about it.

I'm sure you'd regard something like banning tail docking, ear cropping, or non medically necessary infant circumcision as similarly unimportant because only weird "chronically online" folks talk about it. "Just hand wringers". This is why the world is full of cruelty.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#173

Post by dkarl »

everdrive wrote: post #148
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about that too, but in the end, price always wins - this is why the Amazons and Walmarts of the world have out-competed local small businesses. The major flaw in your example is that you have a site saying product X is good and trusted, but people will then go look online for a competitor that sells it for cheaper. This is where capitalism clashes with consumer rights / safety. What should be the case is…

>The major flaw in your example is that you have a site saying product X is good and trusted, but people will then go look online for a competitor that sells it for cheaper. Product X is good and trusted, except: - due to mixed inventory you were sent product Y, which is poison - product X has a complex supply chain, and it was previously good and trusted, and now it's poison and you had no idea anything changed

Product X had decent sales but not good enough profit margins, so the brand was sold to a company that sells a cheap, dangerous look-alike under the same name.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#174

Post by hammock »

mrob wrote: post #165
hammock wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they even selling mercury thermometers for oral use when an alcohol one (the red liquid) does fine

Mercury has higher thermal conductivity than alcohol. The temperature reading stabilizes faster with mercury.

For sure but I haven’t seen one for home use in nearly 40 years. The risk of having mercury in the hands of Joe Schmoe or his garbage is probably not worth it

There are plenty of stories around this

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#175

Post by PyWoody »

lr4444lr wrote: post #3

This is precisely why I happily pay for an annual subscription to ConsumerLab[0]. It's largely just for supplements and a few functional foods, but with a tiny staff they are doing more work to help the public on the unregulated medicine market than the entire FDA, IMHO. [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/

TechGearLab[0] is a great, free resource, too. I have never been done wrong by one of their reviews and I have been using them for years.

[0] https://www.techgearlab.com/

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#176

Post by BobaFloutist »

noduerme wrote: post #69
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is straight up evil at this point. People have pointed out they are selling fake fuses that have most likely gotten people killed, Amazon has done nothing. I am sure the same is occurring across other product categories like your example. The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands, with the idea being that a company's Brand was worth more than lure of profits/shortcuts that could result in ruining th…

>> The 'luxury' you are talking about was called Brands I dunno. Branding was my gig for a long time. I think brands were a weak substitute for artisans / bespoke makers who had to personally stand by their work. Once upon a time there was a guy named Levi Strauss who made sturdy jeans, some guy named McDonald who made good hamburgers, a couple guys named Johnson who sold talcum powder. And that guy Nobel who invente…

I mean wasn't the era of bespoke makers the same as the era of traveling sake-oil salesmen that went town-to-town, disappearing just before the ramifications of their poison "cure-all" became clear? There were tons of scams and grifts back in the day.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#177

Post by IAmBroom »

noduerme wrote: post #46

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…

> I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth.

I played with mercury a bit when I was a kid, as did every kid who could - it was COOL! From that I learned: mercury is almost omniphobic. Oil avoids mixing with water. Mercury avoids mixing with, holding on to, and generally touching anything.

So how could a blob of mercury stick to a glass tip???

Sincere question.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#178

Post by IAmBroom »

agumonkey wrote: post #157
noduerme wrote: post #46

Amazon is so completely irresponsible for their marketplace that recently, shopping for a glass oral thermometer (because the digital ones suck) I stumbled on reviews with photos showing products that had no mercury inside and actual blobs of mercury stuck to the tip that goes in your mouth. These were still for sale. I feel like even 10 years ago, online marketplaces would have taken measures to prevent stuff like t…

Isn't this a new concept of this era ? We profit from letting others be free to harm you but we cannot be held responsible. disruptism ? platformism ?

Sameasitalwayswasism.

Consumer protection had a brief heyday, but is far from status quo in even the last century of history.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#179

Post by andrewflnr »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #91
hiddencost wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, it used to be until it was gutted in the last 30 years. Legislation and bureaucracy has been one of the most successful interventions for public health for centuries. Read about the hole in the ozone layer. Banning lead paint. Read about the invention of public water authorities. Read Silent Spring and read about its aftermath. Look into the history of air pollution and the EPA. These are some of the crown jewels…

You are mistaken; legislation is not what achieved those. Massive, focused public scrutiny on pinpoint issues is what achieved those. Passing legislation without the latter is meaningless, and if you have the latter, you don't necessarily need legislation; the free market will force a correction (although politicians will follow the will of the people anyway). You cannot achieve that across the countless toxins and/o…

> and if you have the latter, you don't necessarily need legislation; the free market will force a correction

The free market is very bad at solving problems with a lack of information. Efficient markets rely on buyers having a clear idea of what they're buying. You might hope that people are willing to pay for certification services or whatever, but this is not actually how naive consumers operate. There are already services like that and they operate on the fringes.

The notion that there is not enough public attention to ask for legislation about toxins as a general concept ("pinpoint" is demonstrably not needed), but there is enough attention for that same public to navigate an information marketplace about those toxins to make informed buying decisions, is laughable. Even more so when the former has actually happened multiple times and the latter remains a niche phenomenon.

Re: Poison, Poison Everywhere

#180

Post by ahstilde »

I totally agree. I actually started Wyndly (https://www.wyndly.com/) because I realized I was poisoning myself with antihistamines every single day for my allergies. I did the research, and antihistamines are know to cause anxiety, depression, weight gain, and brain fog!

I applied for YC. We got in!

And now we're chipping away at this corner of human health: treating the root cause of allergies with protein exposure therapy (allergy immunotherapy) instead of covering up allergy symptoms with ineffective (and, it turns out, dangerous) antihistamines.

Post reply on HN