The Dipshit tried to bring it back his last term. Guess which country is the top producer of asbestos?
Sponsored by the freedom initiative or something with a similar name to cover up it’s a social media campaign for a billionaire.
Like Transfats. I remember the idiots complaining, not realizing they were getting something inferior.
Something with trans in there? That should not even come up in his mind.
Of course he is for it.
It will make him money
And none of the thousands who will get sick and or die
Are people he knows personally
If CFCs were banned today you would see people spraying them in the air to own the libs, also spraying their children with DDTs because RFK Jr told them to
What about thalidomide?
worth giving it a try…do NOT, I repeat do NOT spray RFK Jr with DDT every time you see him. I am a liberal and this would really make me cry. Don’t do it!
I’m surprised there isn’t a “pro poison in food” If only for those who feel
“No one tells ME what to do!”
I humbly direct you towards the raw milk crowd
As if the processed food industry doesn’t already lobby Congress spendinf millions annually.
I’m still in favor of asbestos. It’s an amazing material for preventing fires AS LONG AS you never disturb it. The people that were most at risk of cancers were the people involved in the mining, manufacturing, and installation of asbestos products, but once the asbestos-containing products were installed, they were almost entirely safe for the occupants of the building. You could, in theory, largely mitigate the risks to the miners, manufacturers, and installers, but that is… Well, expensive. And people have a really bad tendency to ignore health and safety warnings when they’re inconvenient. You see the same issue with quartz countertops; they’re known to cause silicosis in people that are doing the cutting unless they do wet cutting for everything, and wear PPE, but a lot of people don’t, because wet-cutting is messy and slow, and PPE is hot and uncomfortable.
There was a big movement in the late 90s to remove asbestos from old buildings; the current advice is to encapsulate it, and leave it in place.
You also have to consider removal at the end of life. Or safety risks if another country drops bombs randomly on your cities.
Fair point about removal; but if you’re being bombed, I think asbestos is going to be low on your list of worries.
they were almost entirely safe for the occupants of the building
So would you live in a house your whole life that’s “almost” entirely safe? I don’t think I would
I did in Chicago. And I absolutely would again, because it makes my house much less likely to burn down from e.g. an electrical fire.
I quit smoking a decade ago; my risk of lung cancer was–is–far, far higher from smoking than it ever would have been from living in a house with asbestos insulation in the walls and around pipes.
Millions of people do and have. They are again almost entirely fine.
I do. My ceiling almost certainly has asbestos in it. I just don’t touch it. Also uncovered a few chunks that looked kinda asbestossy when breaking up the concrete in the garden, it was only a few chunks so I assume something containing it had been dumped there many decades ago. I just disposed of it with everything else and pretended I didn’t see anything.
It was a very dusty job in the first place so I started spraying it with water to help prevent the dust getting into the air.
Aren’t there ways to treat the asbestos and prevent the fibers from becoming airborne and posing a serious risk?
Encapsulation, yeah. That’s usually what they do now, since encapsulation is usually cheaper, and generally less disruptive.
“When we had asbestos there was less autism. Big pharma teamed up with big construction to screw us up”
It all makes sense now!
Plastic is much more harmful than asbestos ever was.
Cool bro. I guess we should bring asbestos back then
My point was, as per OP, if we banned it now, there would still be a large portion claiming outrage. Either because they profit from it, or it effects a product they use or collect.
When seatbelts were introduced to cars, there was a big movement against them. Some by car manufacturers to keep costs down, but a lot of backlash was from good ol’ natural born idiots so contrarian and averse to change they’d let themselves die just to give a smug look about not doing what someone asked of them. The sort of dumbass who during the height of pre-vaccine Covid would drown in the fluid buildup in their lungs and refuse treatment because doing so would be an admission of fault.
These past 9 years have made me DEEPLY cynical about my fellow man. There is no bottom. No level of malicious stupidity is low enough. It’s not even disappointment anymore, I’m resigned to it. Some people are so beyond hope, so beyond redemption, it’s like trying to get a fucking deer to recognize itself in a mirror. Just ZERO awareness, no theory of mind, object permanence is a fucking coin flip. If it weren’t for my principles, my absolute refusal to engage in dehumanization, I’d be tempted to write them off as another species just to cope with the dissonance that comes from seeing people acting that self destructive. Like it doesn’t make sense. You’d expect at some point some form of pattern recognition and harm avoidance to develop. “Hey, putting my hand on the stove hurt. It hurt every time I did it. It hurt everyone I saw someone else do it too. I’m gonna put my hand on the stove and it won’t hurt this time.”.
I think there is a growing divide between the most and least intelligent in society, and it has been growing with tech advancement (the gap wouldn’t have been that big in the middle ages). If we ever develop superintelligent AI, I can see that becoming an inflection point in this divide because we (Lemmy dwellers) will become as fallible to that AI as the people you mentioned are today in what is still a human-dominated society. Introducing AGI will vastly exasperate the gap between the most and least intelligent and I can’t see society surviving that in its current form.
I was annoyed about the seatbelt laws, but I was a little kid at the time. I came from an era of riding in the back of dad’s truck and enjoying the breeze. Hell, I went from New England to Canada in the back of a capped truck. I was eight years old and never thought anything of it.
However, as I got older into my teens I got more adamant about using a seat belt, even when the laws were still sorta gray here (you were let off with no warning most times). Now its second nature, even if I’m heading 3 mins to the store. Some people still don’t because they think that they’re only endangering themselves. Thing is, I have a brother in law that’s a first responder. He’s seen people torpedo out of windows in head-on collisions and into the other car, injuring the other driver/passengers.
Honestly, I don’t get what the whole problem is. You barely even notice them on you. Most people who don’t put on a simple and comfortable safety belt are just being fucking stubborn children who don’t like being told what to do. I’m glad I grew out of that way of thinking. Some my family are those “good ol’ natural borns”. They’ll tell me I don’t have to put my seatbelt on and every time I adamantly say, “I always do”. My other brother in law will literally crank the radio so he can’t hear the seatbelt alarm. Drives me insane, but I love the idiot.
I hated them as a kid because they were uncomfortable and didn’t fit right. My mom made is wear it but I used to put the chest belt behind my back as soon as she turned around because it dug into my neck. I probably should have been in a car seat for way longer than I was. As an adult I don’t even notice it.
There are still people that buy “belt silencers” or sit on their seatbelts to drive without. Newer cars will alarm, and mine even shuts down if you drive without a seatbelt
I think those are mostly for super obese people because seat belts are really uncomfortable if you’re really, really fat. At least that’s what I always assumed because everyone I know who has one is really fat.
My sister’s boyfriend bought an oldtimer with no seatbelt. The previous owner installed some and he took them out again. I think there is nothing that brings him more joy than to tell people how he doesn’t need a seatbelt. He also drives his children around in this deathtrap. But he also refuses to wear a helmet when they ride their ebike. My sister nagged so long about it that he now takes the helmet with him, but he doesn’t wear it, that’s the compromise they reached. Some people are just fucking weird.
Is he signed up to be an organ donor?
Seen bumper sticker: No air bags, we die like men.
To be fair, I find that funny.
I assume it’s sarcastic, but you never know
I enjoyed reading this. Well put. I also share this recent realization. It’s made me feel a bit less imposter syndrome. Among other things.
LOL, libs are trying to ban asbestos! They want us all to catch fire! Asbestos causing cancer is a conspiracy, do your own research. Besides, Ivermectin will cure any cancer caused by asbestos.
/s (because the USA is crazy and someone would really post this and mean it)
Post it on reddit, and that will end up as a google AI recommendation next week.
I can see them railing a line of asbestos just to own the libs. Better than vaccine denial I suppose, at least it limits the damage.
A guy I went to HS with definitely did this one time on a dare. A piece of insulation fell out of the kiln in shop class n another kid smashed it n told this kid he’d give him $5 to snort it. No one thought he would, but this dude absolutely railed it. Someone asks the shop teacher later what the tiles were made of and he says asbestos mostly, but it’s fine as long as you don’t mess with it. 💀
I keep checking on his Facebook every couple of years to see if lung cancer got him. So far, he’s still kicking lol.
Old car guys are still bitter over unleaded gas. Some will drive to airports to buy the leaded stuff.
Old car drivers drive cars that need additives in the gas. The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
They didn’t just add lead because it made the gas prettier; there was a reason. I would suppose that today there are other additives that can reproduce the lubricating effects for those old cars, but old car hobbyists are niche and you’re not going to find those products at Walmart, whereas there’s always a local airport somewhere nearby.
I’m not defending leaded gas, but I think vintage car enthusiasts do it not because they’re being stupididly misinformed and contrarian, but because they’re trying to keep their engines running well.
The reason was TEL stopped engine pinging.
Thomas Midgley Jr is the same guy that invented leaded gas and also invented freon (chlorofluorocarbons). Imagine being the architect of not one but two of the greatest environmental calamities of the industrial age.
And he also died from complications from polio. Not actual complications mind you, he was ensnared in harnesses he made to get around after having suffered from Polio. Made worse by his poor health having worked on TEL.
The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
There were two issues. First, tetraethyl lead increased the effective octane level. That, in turn, reduced the probability of pre-ignition, e.g., the fuel-air mixture igniting before the compression cycle was completed. Higher octane allows for higher compression, which is more efficient. The other issue was the valves specifically; the lead provided a ‘cushion’ between the valves and the valve seats, which minimized valve wear.
The octane issue is easily solved by both better refining or by adding alcohol. It was known that you could add alcohol to gas to improve octane rating even when TEL was first added, but TEL could be patented, and alcohol couldn’t. The valve issue has largely been solved by better metallurgy and manufacturing.
The one are where it hasn’t been solved is small aircraft. Some small planes still use leaded gas, and it’s mostly for the octane boost. TEL can give them a better octane rating than alcohol or better refinement can, which allows them to operate at much high compression. Take that away, and the engines are too underpowered to keep the plane in the air. Over 150,000 small airplanes still use leaded AvGas; thankfully, newer turboprop planes and all jet planes mostly use Jet A or Jet B fuel, which is closer to kerosene.
In theory, I think that you could convert older cars to run on unleaded fuels, but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Thank you. All my knowledge of ICEs has been through osmosis via a friendship with a guy who used to be a mechanic; I don’t care about them myself, and I appreciate the extensive added information you took the time to write. It’s really the only way I learn about ICEs.
but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Yeah, that was ultimately my point. OEM is so important to that crowd; it’s both a status and a real value factor for them. They’re not just being contrarian: they do it because the cars they’re driving run better on leaded.
The end result may be the same, but I think the motivation matters for stuff like this. One is based on hostility, the other on a hobby passion.
I understand it as a hobby/passion, even though the old cars are far less efficient, die sooner, and are less safe than now. The only way they were better, IMO, was that they were less complicated, and thus easier to wrench on. It’s significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
I ones I know are putting it in new generators.
While putting in a new generator is absolutely a better idea, that means it’s not the original car. Plenty of classic car (and computing and video game and music and any hobby) enthusiasts run original hardware on purpose. Where’s the fun in building an Apple IIe if you use a flash drive instead of the hard drive? Where’s the soul in listening to The Four Tops on a digital recording instead of the vinyl master? Why play Sega on a flash cart instead of the original cartridges? Why drive a classic Civic if you’re trying to drop a K20 in there?
New stuff is objectively better. A 4Cyl Mustang makes more power these days than a V8 from the 90s, more so for older models. You have to be a little irrational to put that amount of time into running something just because it’s older.
Where’s the fun in building an Apple IIe if you use a flash drive instead of the hard drive?
Not to be that guy, but the Apple IIe didn’t have a hard drive. External tape or floppy were your only storage choices. The real cool kids had two floppy drives, so you could pirate games directly disk-to-disk.
so you could pirate games
What‽‽ I never used my dual drives for that.
I think you misread their comment; they weren’t saying people they know are putting on new parts in old cars, they were saying people they know are maliciously putting leaded gas into new engines, presumably to “stick it to the libruls”.
Here in Australia we just banned engineered stone because it tends to cause silicosis
And yep, lots of shitty business owners whined and a few shit customers on Facebook
Silicosis is what’s killing people at the moment, and business owners in particular don’t seem to care, despite the fact there’s is alternatives
I have no idea engineered stones causes silicosis. Is it the manufacturing or the installation or the home owner getting too close to it that causes it?
When it’s cut for bench tops and such , that’s what exposes people.
Lots of stonemasons here in Australia now have silicosis because of it.
Natural stone has far less issues and there is stone available which doesn’t cause it
Business owners were also claiming they weren’t given enough time to switch. Everyone including me (I have a friend with silicosis now) has known engineered stone was dangerous to work with for years.
So they had years of warning that it was dangerous But they pretend like it was unexpected.
We (srtaya) tried to introduce cutting standards as the silicosis is avoidable, but the cutting technique is more expensive so it got skipped for the cheaper dangerous methods.
You probably know about it more than me…
I’ve been onsite plenty of times when they’ve been cutting that stuff up. Some owners argued better PPE would be enough for the Stonemasons, but it won’t protect other people where its being cut.
Furthermore, nobody NEEDS engineered stone anyway, and people tend to take shortcuts when they are in a rush
And its mainly the workers affected. The people selling it are sometimes the ones who aren’t even cutting it up (especially because they know there are risks).
Feel bad for my friend though who now has silicosis and no way to cure it.
It was the same with asbestos, there were correct handling procedures but they were skipped enough for people to still get sick from it. Better we don’t use it if we don’t need to.
I used to live in a city called Asbestos, the mine was closed back in 2012 and older folks are still angry about it, they’ll even tell you that the workers handling it weren’t in worse health than anyone else in the city… The worst part is that it was banned in the construction industry 30 years prior, so they kept exploiting the mine only to export it to countries that hadn’t banned it, even if it meant killing people there…
