Do you mean what ubiquitous toxin will be next?

Or do you mean how can we get by without plastic?

If it’s the second one, the answer is easy, fucking aluminum. We’ve had the answer forever and it still works great. Glass too, good for many applications.

Now the actual problem isn’t plastic bags or beverage containers though, it’s clothing and tires. Most clothing is plastic these days and tiny plastic fibers break up into micro plastics and take to the air or end up in the sea. Car tires are also just plastic these days, not rubber (which is arguably better for the environment than leveling rainforest for rubber tree plantations, sigh…), the tires rub off on the road like a pencil eraser on sandpaper. This also ends up in the air and sea.

So anyway, replacing plastic beverage containers is a great step, a no brainer, but it also doesn’t address the real problem at all. I hope that some day soon tires and clothes can start to be made with biodegradable “eco plastics”, but if that doesn’t turn out to be feasible, we’ll be in some serious trouble. And once we have some real, feasible, affordable replacements, then we need to actually outlaw the use of older plastic tires, in every country on the planet, despite heavy lobbying against any new measures from vested interests… I can’t even imagine how to make that happen. How did we do it with lead? Has every country outlawed lead in gas?

I’m going to go out on a limb here, maybe the solution to many of the US’s international problems is to simply stop handing out weapons.

Maybe we should just not give guns to every despot, dictator or warlord we meet.

I did say that, because this isn’t a pie chart situation, it’s a Venn diagram situation.

For instance, AI art is 99% theft and 60% garbage. It’s both because there’s overlap.

Stolen and bad aren’t opposites, why would this be a dichotomy?

Oh, I enjoy lots of great art! But do you think I watch every film? Listen to every band? There’s tons of shit out there!

Do you really believe, of all the songs that are written every day, that less than a third are crap? Even Taylor Swift doesn’t publish everything she does. Sometimes you work on something for weeks and then end up tossing it in the bin. More often, you work on something for 30 minutes before deciding “I’m gonna start over, try something different”. The majority of art is crap, but then you keep the stuff you think works.

And what’s that expression, “good artists copy, great artists steal”. I mean, that’s a bit satirical, but the fact is, everything is derivative to some degree. It’s not that there aren’t new ideas, it’s just that our new ideas are based on older ones. We stand on the shoulders of giants (or at least, on the shoulders of some people who came before us).

All I was really saying, was that the accusation “2 parts copying, 1 part crap”, well honestly that’s par for the course, that’s how humans work. (And we do some great work that way).

Yeah that would probably work

The majors hate CDs as you can rip them and listen to a perfect digital copy as much as you like without generating a cent of streaming revenue

Well it’s not really worth fussing about. I mean they can never escape the analogue loophole…

Audio is super easy to copy and there are plenty of ways to do it. Copying will always happen, forever. DRM is just a spectacular waste of time for audio and video.

AI artworks 1/3rd shite and 2/3rds theft.

To be fair, that could be said of most art.

So… Ted voted against his own bill?

Really you don’t want hackers using your random Internet appliance as a point of attack to access your whole network.

More IoT devices means a greater attack surface. And it’s an appliance you don’t actually want to spend time thinking about. You don’t want to waste time troubleshooting network issues with your dehumidifier… It just needs to work, or you use a different one.

Probably lots of people in red states. Farmers for instance, people who generally buy the Republican bullshit, but may personally rely heavily on immigrant workers. ICE puts them in a really tough position.

Waaa! He said something mean to me! Waaa!

There could be money involved…

Eh, it’s not the worst rule.

And blocked… What a douche.

A family that may not exist once the Nazis have carte blanche.

That word “may” is the weak point of the argument. In contrast, a family will not exist if they don’t eat.

The fact is money is like oxygen it’s how we sustain our lives. You may be familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, basic needs (the kind that money provides) are at the very base of the pyramid, the most important level. This Nazi takeover falls under the very next category, “safety and security” and it also effects some other tiers up top as well. So to be clear, I’m recognizing the importance of this issue, it’s extremely important without a doubt. But the basic needs are still the basic needs.

With that in mind, I absolutely defend and support the strategy of participating in activism on the weekend and then going back to work on Monday. That is nothing but rational.

If you go home after one day then you achieve nothing.

This is just naive. Building something important takes time. You know that expression, Rome wasn’t built in a day? Well that’s barely even a metaphor here; if you want to build a new United States, a more functional, less corrupt US without all the fascism and corporate control, well that takes time. And again, in that time it takes to make those changes, you need to continue living, continue filling those basic needs.

I went to the no kings protest and honestly I think it was quite successful. It was a show of force, a demonstration of pure numbers. It was a good step, and more will be achieved.

Believe it or not, I have. Nothing to do with No Kings though

Hah. Yeah, I’m certain of it. It’s pretty clear.

Showed up for one day, and then went back to work the next day

You’ll find that many of those people still have a family to feed.

I see that you’re still doing something useful though, whining on the Internet. So good on you.

Have you done any organizing for activist events? Because that would be useful.

Feel free I guess.

Yeah, but that’s a pipe dream. Just move on.

Sure, but that plastic lining is a tiny amount of plastic, practically insignificant by mass.

And sure, glass works too, that’s fine with me. But it’s not simply better. It comes with the downsides of being heavier (requiring more energy to transport), less durable, and requiring more energy to recycle. It’s a trade off.

Currently, aluminum has the highest rate of recycling of all beverage materials. So why not double down on the most successful packaging type in the history of recycling?

Well they’re splitting recycling, but plastic, generally speaking is not recyclable. So it’s the paper and metals that are being split off, the plastic goes in with everything else.

There are some plastics that are theoretically recyclable, but even that isn’t really recycling is down-cycling turning a plastic into an interior plastic that isn’t recyclable at all. Or repurposing and reusing a plastic, perhaps as pillow stuffing or melting it down with other things to make road paving material.

But the life of plastic is never a cycle, it’s a path that can sometimes be extended a bit.