He’s just going to get people killed. But that’s ok he doesn’t give a shit anyways, so it’s moot. What are a few thousand dead peasants when we could make big stock number go up?

  • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    So I visited Bangladesh one time, and learned they have insanely high rates of cancer there. Why? Well it turns out that (among other reasons) the farmers had been injecting formaldehyde into their vegetables because it made them last longer on the shelves, and therefore sold better.

    This is what you get with no regulations. A sick and dying population.

    • hansolo@lemm.ee
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      I spent a decade living around Africa, and this kind of thinking is common. DDT was what everyone put on the tomatoes because pests mean loss of food. Who wants that?

      Lack of relations is only about living in short-term survival thinking 24/7. Long term effects mean nothing.

      • teft@lemmy.world
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        DDT isn’t going to cause health problems for the people in Africa. It will cause problems for some birds near the top of the food chain however.

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          5 days ago

          It’s just the easiest example to use. I have maybe dozens more examples that require more storytelling and setup.

          Ever had someone try to sell you a car with visible drywall screws holding the bumper on, like you were the dick for pointing them out?

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        5 days ago

        Seriously. It’s like no one realizes the literal most important thing in all of the world.

        Line go up.

        Fuck your family, fuck your health, fuck your safety, fuck yo couch, fuck the environment, LINE GO UP!

        C.R.E.A.M.

        … Fml

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          5 days ago

          I’m kind of relieved we’re extincting ourselves before we become an interstellar plague of misery, with children being born into inescapable, perpetual oxygen debt to the local corporate leadership on Mars and Titan colonies.

          We’d make the Ferengi look like altruists. We were a mistake of evolution.

          • SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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            4 days ago

            It took WW3 to fix humans in Star Trek. In that timeline, they outlawed genetic engineering so that elite supermen cannot be made.

            In ours, I hope we outlaw millionaires and worse. That way, elite dinguses cannot be born.

          • naught101@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            It’s the current western dominionist mindset that’s the mistake. Don’t mistake that for all of humanity (even if it currently makes up 90% of it).

            • Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.com
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              5 days ago

              As opposed to…who exactly? That one tribe in the sentinel Islands that hasn’t been contacted by modern civilization yet?

              • naught101@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                Sure. Also many other cultures who have been contacted and haven’t been completely destroyed.

                But the point is not that we should copy some tiny tribe’s way of life, the point is that western dominionism is not the only way that humans are capable of organising their societies. There are likely many other ways that have never been tried yet that are much better than what we have now.

                • Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.com
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                  5 days ago

                  So… would you ignore all of recorded history, and most of anthropological records that dictate humanity has always been in a race to find new and exciting ways to kill each other?

        • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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          In every civilization there comes a time where the interests of the elite grilled too far apart from the interests of the common people. Some kind of correction becomes inevitable. The way this correction plays out and who wins is another matter. But it looks like in the coming decades, maybe centuries, a new to type of economic model gets worked out, based on sustainability first, or very soon new tech is survived that allowed further line going up without destroying the planet. But living through a pivot in history is always a stressful affair.

          • Mike D.@lemm.ee
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            5 days ago

            Rick James from Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories?

            R.I.P. Charlie Murphy

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      Go read about how horribly adulterated food was in Europe and the US in the 1800s and before. They’d add sawdust to flour, chalk, toxic metals, rotten meat was sold regularly, etc. Patent medicines were essentially drug trafficking or just scams. Soldiers in the Spanish-American war were supplied with canned meat from the US Civil War. I saw an old film from the time the Pure Food and Drug act was passed showing a can of meat being opened and it literally shot out from the gasses inside.

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        5 days ago

        Well, the Libertarians and Republicans had their heads poisoned with total rot like Ayn Rand’s horrible sci-fi, and then spent the past several decades screaming about how derrp, we don’t need no regulations!

        Now I guess we all get to find out along with these dolts.

        • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Not to mention the US falling 110% into the cult of individualism. Individualism is fine if it is balanced with the needs of society as a whole. You can’t even get people to chip into schools and roads, shared resources, anymore.

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        Do you have examples of this stuff happening in continental European countries? I’d love to jump down that rabbit hole.

        In the past I’ve read descriptions of systematic bad practices in the industrialized Uk, but I can’t recall reading about similar things happening in other western European countries. Nothing systematic anyhow. I’d image that the french would have had a(nother) revolution if anyone had tried that stuff with their food.

        • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Enjoy!

          I think the English were just better at recording it.

          https://victorianweb.org/science/health/health1.html

          https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-fight-against-food-adulteration/2020253.article

          Here is one in Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esing_Bakery_incident

          France passed a food adulteration law in 1905. Many countries were cracking down on it around this time along with the US with the Pure Food and Drug Act under Teddy Roosevelt.

          Examples of food adulteration in France in the 1800s:

          https://review.gale.com/2020/01/08/wine-adulteration-in-the-nineteenth-century/

          Copper-colored vegetables: French beans, cucumbers, and samphires were often colored green with copper. This could have fatal consequences.

          Beer: Brewers added substances like copperas, quassia, liquorice juice, and Nux vomica to make beer bitter.

          Wine: The wine industry was affected by the Phylloxera epidemic, which destroyed a large proportion of vines. In response, wine adulteration increased.

          Confectionery: Arsenic and mercury compounds were used as colorants.

          Mustard: Lead chromate was added to mustard.

          Meat: Animal health became a concern as meat consumption increased.

          • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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            Many thanks for the links, was interesting.

            Just by the existence of food standards laws, we know that there must have been food standards problems. Stuff like mayonnaise composition being put into law, must mean that there had been a mayonnaise quality problem or worries at a certain point in time, I just can’t find any specific info on when or what. Those scandals were probably recorded just as well in the news papers of my small country, but if no one writes a new article or paper about the scandal 50+ years after it happened, then that info won’t turn up in an internet search query.

    • Hubi@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      They will just call it Freedom Juice™ and write on the packaging that it makes the food taste more better.

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    4 days ago

    Side note, Im still not buying this “Worlds richest man” Label.

    I believe that title still belongs to Vladimir Putin. his wealth is not published though. He Robbed a vast nation blind to the point that he is a living god in Russia.

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        I think its less of a master giving orders to a dog dynamic, and More of a “I’ll have mine, you have yours” dynamic.

        I still dont know if they are fucking crazy enough to try it. but this is whats in the back of my mind with this aggressive and jingoistic rhetoric against Canada, the EU, and Ukraine.

        America may have stepped down from the stage of the Free world, and the Free world may very well be finished. but whats left of it still has nuclear weapons.

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      I’ve been reading for 20+ years that the real richest in the world are oil barons in the middle east. I believe a few people are projected to have up to a trillion dollars in assets/wealth etc, but they aren’t celebs or post about it via publicly traded organisations etc.

      Who knows though

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        I mean the House of Saud is worth over a trillion dollars I believe.

        Putin could also easily have over a trillion dollars in assets, but they’d obviously be hidden. Does he? We’ll never know.

    • cia@lemm.ee
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      If that’s how Putin got rich, Elon is soon to catch up

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    Remember that we’re not allowed to call for violence, but it’s okay when Elon does things like this, because allowing industry to poison whole towns isn’t violence, it’s just capitalism.

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      Sharing the names of Musk’s helpers? Not okay.

      Letting nuclear plants operate in a way that risks big swaths of the country uninhabitable? Totally cool.

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      This horrible for sure, but it’s worth noting they just made it so there are no on-paper repercussions for industry poisoning people. Poor people in rural areas have been getting poisoned (and/or driven from their homes) all along. Major media and unfortunately even EPA officials (as we saw for East Palestine) seem to just ignore or bury it most of the time, similar to the treatment environmental activists have reported when there’s an oil spill/leak and media don’t want to touch it. Here’s the latest example I’ve heard about recently. (I’m not specifically trying to follow this stuff incidentally, but I’m always interested in who corporate media tend to ignore or treat unfairly.)

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    5 days ago

    My power company fucked up my autopay, they then preceeded to not tell me, then they shut off my power without a note or an in person heads up, leaving it indistinguishable from a regular outage until it was dark and my neighbors lights turned on and their billing department was closed for the night. In February.

    I’m saying this because all this was illegal thanks to regulations. I reported it to the government because it was danger, irresponsible, and a dick move. I think a lot of people think of regulations as stuff like wheelchair ramps and no knowingly giving entire towns cancer, but it’s also shit like this, that you have to tell people that you shut off their power for non-payment and warn them before you do so they don’t have to spend a night eating takeout by candlelight for no reason.

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    Decades upon decades of progress are going to be gone by the end of this.

    We’ll spend the rest of our lives living in a system slowly being rebuilt, if we even get that lucky.

    There goes our futures. And we voted for it.

    Truly a shit nation full of shit people.