It's a story as old as humanity. There's many examples of humans exhausting their nearby resources because they thought they were effectively infinite. Whether that's a forest, a food stock, a water source, or something else.
Not every time, or at least the solution doesn't always result in everyone surviving. The Mayan civilization, for instance, is thought to have exhausted their local resources and fallen apart as a result.
Most progressive folks I know are pretty disillusioned with the Canadian PM for being a Liberal and not at all a Leftist. His treatment of indigenous people in particular is something they've repeatedly pointed out as glaringly terrible.
Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue.
There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient.
It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.
Is there a good list of what things we can reasonably replace? As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions.
Edit:. Looking around, electrical insulation, seals, and shock absorbers are the three things that I cant think of a good replacement for. Some seals like for weather proofing you could use spring bronze.
Large, durable plastic use is less of a concern, if I understand correctly. Plastic use around food (and packaging in general), for instance, has a lifespan of approximately 6 months. Compare to the 13 years for plastics used by the automotive industry.
There's TONS of packaging that could be replaced by other materials -- particularly materials that can non-toxically decompose in the environment in a reasonable time frame.
Anything that can be made from paper, should be. Primarily bags, shipping containers, product packaging, etc. I've seen Amazon replace plastic bubble wrap with paper-based bubble wrap, for example. They use really fine bits of paper and presumably glue to create the "bubbles".
Instead of using plastic to wrap shipping containers, you could use a more re-usable material. Or perhaps we could come up with cardboard "rings" or other techniques to keep stuff together instead of wrapping it in plastic.
We might have to use more soap or other sterilization techniques, but where practical, using glass containers and aluminum cans would still make sense. I'm certain that if plastic single-use containers were eliminated in convenience stores for a country, we'd see a switch to cans, glass and waxed paper instead, almost overnight. Same as in alcohol stores, perhaps.
True to a point, but plastic and the cloud were transitioned to for many things a few years ago because of "saving trees". And then overused to the point of surpassing paper's previous carbon output.
Calling to mind palm oil, adopted as more healthy and sustainable. And then also over-done.
Disposability seems a deeper issue: a retreat to forest products doesn't seem the solution.
The fish-catching clear plastic rings that you throw away, or cut up, are bad, the cardboard packaging coated in paints is bad, but the craft beer heavy duty Paktech rings [1] and Roberts' Craft-Paks [2] seem harbingers of a more reusable + indefinably recyclable future, regardless ultimately of the specific materials involved.
A piece of the wider craft brewery innovation of the '10s in the U.S. [3]
Cans for food is actually one thing I would like to see addressed with an alternative. With how ubiquitous cans are, it was a source of plastic in contact with foods that is difficult to avoid.
> As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions.
Respectfully, CV boots on car suspensions have a lifespan of several years, same with phone cases potentially.
As a first step I'm more interested in replacing the things that hundreds of millions of people discard multiple times a day. Starting off by thinking about CV boots and phone cases strikes me as being precipitously close to the "we can't replace everything so lets replace nothing" path.
Not at all, I agree packaging and liners should never need to be plastic. Lets ban them now. Glass and ceramics can replace almost everything that metal can't.
Recycle the metal and reuse the glass/ceramic. I was just astounded how few things really needed to be plastic.
The big problem is that there has been little to no effort on what to do with waste plastic. It's cheap to produce but it looks like it's expensive to deal with the waste. Right now it costs money to discard it so people and companies do their best to shift the burden to some one else.
Plastic is an important part of our modern society but we need to use it and get rid of it wisely.
Don't throw away your phone every couple of years and that phone case will last many, many years. Think of anything plastic that you throw away. The items you list are durable goods and are likely environmentally better and less toxic than what was used prior to plastic.
There is a process being developed where plastic can be recycled back into an oil be burning it and condensing the vapors/smoke into a liquid (capturing it). This is also very good news given the issues we have with recycling. This process would make it much easier since you would not have to sort.
Curious if we can put said oil back into the earth we extracted it from, or if there are reasons that ecologically would be a bad idea. It’s interesting to me thinking about restoring the environment to a state prior to human interference.
Phones are re-sold and re-used. They would account for a minor fraction of plastic use. It would be completely unreasonable to set a standard form factor and disrupt the market for an evolving product category.
What could use a standard form factor would be packaging, especially for glass jars and bottles which could be endlessly re-cycled.
> Plastic recycling was invented by the plastics industry in the 1970s to assuage environmental concerns without substantially reducing plastic consumption, according to Max Liboiron, an expert on plastic waste and a professor at Memorial University.
> It has never worked. Despite decades of effort, only about nine percent of Canada’s plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the 2019 ECCC-commissioned study.
It is true that most plastic is not recycled. It is not true that recycling does not work.
California has 87% of its plastic beverage bottles recycled.
British Columbia implemented an extended consumer responsibility policy that allows the mixed-stream plastic to get recycled through an automated sortation, shredding and sortation system. Their recovery rate of plastic beverage containers was 73.9% in 2017.
Paper produces vastly more carbon than plastic for most disposable items. The existential risk to humans is climate change, more than litter.
We need to control litter and excess plastic by increasing recycle rates. The unwillingness to adopt better recycling infrastructure is due to unwillingness to adopt taxes to fund the conversion (the cost of converting mixed streams is greater than the market price of the output commodity), not because it is technologically infeasible.
The constant theme of recycling that works is government policy that increases the cost of plastic packaging, and uses those funds to stabilize markets or invest in the expensive equipment that it takes to process the material. But it's worth it to do that compared to the wasteful, CO2 blasting approach of "just switch to paper."
Right. My point is if we stop producing plastic we are still going to have a lot of plastic waste. Perhaps we could invest instead in actually making recycling work for the waste we already have
If there is less demand for plastic in general, then that means there could be less demand for recycling (properly sorted) old plastic to produce new plastic goods.
We recycle less than 10% of our plastic. And of that, very little goes back to producing the same products -- plastic is typically degraded when recycled and converted from food packaging down into benches or clothing, both of which will shed microplastics into the environment before being sent to the landfill.
Plastic recycling is not an eternal loop like metal recycling can be. It's almost entirely downcycling when it happens at all.
If you don't like the Kardashians, fine. I don't either. But clearly some folks do and are willing to help propel them to fame (or notoriety).
I know your comment is being glib, but it's emblematic of HN crowds saying, "I don't like this thing, therefore this thing is funny/bad." It costs you nothing to post your comment and just let people like the things they like.
Let people criticize things. I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes. Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized? This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting.
I have pretty devoutly hated celebrity my entire life, but in recent years I've come to realize that the real "job" of these kinds of "celebrity for celebrity's sake" types is pretty simple:
1. Be society's mirror
2. Be society's punching bag
The Kardashians obviously fill both of these jobs. I don't think it's fair to say they're above reproach – in fact, I hear tons of criticism of them any time their names are brought up around me. They're hardly taboo to criticize.
All of that said, I still think you're 100% right that we shouldn't stop people from hating on them. If we take these two "jobs" away from these sorts of celebrities, then at that point they become actually pointless. As much as I'd like to live in a world without them, at least for now the Kardashians and others are serving their purpose – provoking conversation about what we value as a society.
For some folks, lionizing the Kardashians is a way of saying what they think "perfection" (physically/financially/socially/some or all of the above) looks like in America right now. Others want to look at them and see everything that is wrong with us. For as much as I agree with the idea that criticism of celebrities is fundamental to their role in society, I think it's important to not lose sight of the fact that celebrity has a real social function.
The Kardashians have actual jobs, though. "Celebrity for celebrity's sake" is a role the American public assigned to them, as is the role of American societal scapegoat. That isn't a fundamental role they fill, Americans just enjoy hating rich women. You never see the same degree of contempt levied at rich men.
Elon Musk says hello? I hear a lot more hate towards him than I do the Kardashians.
Anyone who's ever used a Windows PC had probably joked about murdering Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos receives a fair bit of flack too.
Where I live, Karl XIV Gustav is similarly divisive as the above figures, some hate him and everything he represents, others love him for... I'm not exactly sure why actually, Google it.
There are oooh so many more examples too.. I'm not saying we live in an equal society, but men get hated on too,I promise
Sure, there are plenty of rich men who people dislike, but they aren't hated so much that hating them becomes a meme the way hating the Kardashians or Paris Hilton has. Even the FOSS community and the people who think Bill Gates wants to inject them with Illuminati roofies don't demean him personally, meanwhile "Kill the Kardashians" is a t-shirt.
Even the few male equivalents of "famous for being famous" that I could find (the lists are almost exclusively female for some reason) like Kevin Federline and the lesser known Baldwins seem to be given a greater degree of respect by popular culture.
Very fair point - they do have jobs. I certainly don't mean to diminish the legitimate work of people doing social media, etc. It is work. I guess my point more broadly was that there are certain types of celebrity (sports, acting, music) which take a lifetime of dedication to a craft, which at least to my mind is more justifiable than folks who become famous on reputation/relationship/inherited status alone.
But of course, now that you have me interrogating my own biases, that's also true of someone like Lebron James. What other reason does he have to perform well on the court other than to maintain or improve his celebrity? Is he fundamentally different than someone like Kim K? I usually would say yes, but I'm not entirely sure now. I'm sure you're right that to some extent gender comes into play. The ways by which women become famous are scrutinized much more than the ways that men become famous, and that is pretty fucked up. I still believe that the "job" of celebrity has a lot to do with being mirror/punching bag for society, but I think the way in which I said it probably fell into some gender bias issues.
Your points are really good ones, and I appreciate you saying it!
> Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized?
They aren't, and I didn't say that. You can criticize the Kardashians all you want. Saying, effectively, "Kardashians are like these ant parasites, amirite guys?" isn't critique.
> I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes.
I think you dramatically underestimate how much I enjoy being critical of things I support, in fact much, much more so than things I oppose. Things I oppose I find easy to not discuss and write off/move past, generally.
> This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting.
Let people enjoy things comes from a space of "We're all from different backgrounds, who are you to be the arbiter of what's fun?" Whether you are a furry or a larper or a reality tv show junkie or a gun nut.... who the fuck am I to tell you that you can't enjoy that? Obviously, there are limits when other people are involved (like, no, it's not an endorsement of enjoying murdering people), but I'm not out here trying to say that only lowest common denominator things are allowed.
Yeah, I understood the analogy just fine, thanks. Obviously the parent was drawing a parallel between the pampered do nothing ants and the Kardashians.
But critique implies an analysis and some thought, not just a pithy one liner.
Research suggests about 25-30% of people are willing to suffer a disadvantage if it will result in someone else suffering a great one. So this isn't an reliable as incentive as most economists imagine.
Because America is balanced on a knife's edge, and the Senate and Electoral college basically runs the show.
If you introduce a new state that leans blue, that's two more blue senators and N more electoral college votes for a blue president. Republicans will staunchly oppose this. And vice versa.
If the senate were proportional to population, and if the electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote, then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.
You're in the wrong frame of reference here and trying to balance out some sort of America that I think is likely to not exist all that long.
The senate thing though wouldn't be relevant based on what this article is saying. Oregon would have 2 senators as it does now, Idaho would have 2 as well. Potentially could have an effect on the house though but that depends on the population demographics.
> If the senate were proportional to population, and if the electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote, then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.
Well no I don't think that would change much. But I also view the senate as it currently exists as good. Frankly, legislation was intended to be difficult to pass - it should be even more difficult to pass. If something doesn't have broad consensus then getting a slight majority and ramming it down the other side's throat (why are there only two sides anyway) is a lightning rod for partisanship.
But also, why would there be states in a hundred or two hundred years? Maybe nuclear weapons will keep the nation state together like it has Russia. Idk.
It shouldn't be hard to divy up states (granted you might have to cut a state into more than two parts in some cases) in a way that results in no net gain for either party. It's a simple math problem.
But that doesn't solve the problem. If the problem is, "East Oregonians feel disconnected from West Oregonians", I don't think there's a way to split Oregon that results in a net equal number of new representatives and simultaneously addresses the "we're too politically divided" concern.
Yes, you could slice Oregon in half horizontally and maintain the same number of reps, but then you'd have two new states with the East feeling divided. If you split it vertically, then you have the problem of uneven representation.
> Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms
Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?
> > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.
They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes.
> > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again.
Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe dream to me that's totally unfounded.
> Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?
Have you watched Fox News recently? They're very clear: "American" refers to their (conservative, older, rural) viewers; "anti-American" refers to everyone else. People believe this.
I know. I just... I keep hoping that by pointing out the obvious silliness of the phrase "American Values" that maybe, someone somewhere will read it and be like, "Huh, you know, maybe what I meant to say was, 'My values'...."
One interesting discussion point about American values it’s about whether it should be determined by the number of humans inside of American borders, or if it is just a birthright.
I support using satellite imagery to get a day by day census count to include tourists and everyone inside of America as part of the decision making and voting process to improve infrastructure at least.
> violate more and more American values and American freedoms
By this the folks in eastern Oregon are criticizing Democratic Gov. Brown for her approach to the pandemic: you know, normal things like closing restaurants and churches, requiring masks indoors, etc.
Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.
Because right now they are just saying their opponents are "un-American" which means whatever it needs to mean without actually saying anything of substance.
It's amazing how some folk deny what the intention is - I guess the terms provide plausible deniability. Sometimes it's "real Americans" or "middle-class Americans", or "people in the heartland" - we all know which demography you're referring to (and everyone else you're excluding).
> Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.
The 1st amendment granting freedom to assemble? Free exercise of religion? The supreme court agreed when it struck down New York's and California's bans on religious gatherings, which also affected Oregon. So broadly speaking, these are correct by the highest authority on 'American'.
Perhaps this doesn't come to mind when you hear 'American values', but why would these counties care? You are almost certainly not their intended audience.
1. The first amendment gives "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That's not the right of people to gather together wherever they want, whenever they want. Note the dependent clause. It's saying the people can join organizations like the CPUSA, People For the American Way, American Family Association, or even movements like BLM or antifa, and the government is not permitted to constrain that.
2. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" means the government can't say which religions are OK and which aren't, or that there's an official religion of the US. It says nothing about people being able to go to church on Sunday or temples on Saturday
I certainly agree with you there. As the other person mentions though, it didn't appear any time recently and it's not going to go away any time soon. Most people don't think about things logically or critically. See also: ads work.
