Lost in a Lost World (Page 31)

Zanjan
Zanjan: Yeah, I remember paper plates - you put the food on and the whole thing folds and falls to the floor. Kids crying everywhere. Ever put one on your lap, cut your food and have the knife go through the plate into your knee? Good ol' days, eh.

For awhile, some fast food places had thick paper straws. OMG, those feel creepy to use - gives your teeth the heebie jeebies. They dont bend so get mangled before the drink is finished. Most have gone back to plastic.

It's always the customer who gets it in the back. We can't use plastic bags to pack our groceries but everything you buy in the store is sold in plastic cartons. I hate blister packs!
Hasn't England heard that plastic is recyclable???

The plastic bags the stores used WERE recyclable but they think our BS meter is dead. The REAL reason they stopped using them is because it cost the store money to buy them and give them to us for free. So, it's bring your own cloth bag - those aren't likely to have a competing store's advertising on it. Bah humbug

(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Yes, we're quite conversant with recyclable plastic. We've also heard what really happens to it:

Under its National Sword policy, China prohibited 24 types of waste from entering the country, arguing that what was coming in was too contaminated. The policy shift was partly attributed to the impact of a documentary, Plastic China, which went viral before censors erased it from China’s internet. ...

Quickly, the market began flooding any country that would take the trash: Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, countries with some of the world’s highest rates of what researchers call “waste mismanagement” – rubbish left or burned in open landfills, illegal sites or facilities with inadequate reporting, making its final fate difficult to trace. ...

The present dumping ground of choice is Malaysia. In October last year, a Greenpeace Unearthed investigation found mountains of British and European waste in illegal dumps there: Tesco crisp packets, Flora tubs and recycling collection bags from three London councils. As in China, the waste is often burned or abandoned, eventually finding its way into rivers and oceans. In May, the Malaysian government began turning back container ships, citing public health concerns. Thailand and India have announced bans on the import of foreign plastic waste. But still the rubbish flows. ...

In the UK, recycling rates have stagnated in recent years, while National Sword and funding cuts have led to more waste being burned in incinerators and energy-from-waste plants. ( Incineration, while often criticised for being polluting and an inefficient source of energy, is today preferred to landfill, which emits methane and can leach toxic chemicals. ) Westminster council sent 82% of all household waste – including that put in recycling bins – for incineration in 2017/18. Some councils have debated giving up recycling altogether.

[ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish ]
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Yes, shipping garbage by sea is as dangerous as shipping oil by sea - terrible idea. I sympathize with the countries who turned back the shipping containers because the garbage hadn't been pre-sorted; that's inexcusable!

Incineration isn't recycling. Recycling repurposes a product. The plastic is sorted first, then melted and formed into usable pellets; these are sold to manufacturers to be used in molds. The end product has a "recycled" icon.

Paper and cardboard products are sorted, shredded, and cooked in a slurry, screened and pressed onto a conveyor belt where it dries on hot rollers and is made into large rolls then sold. The material can be recycled the same way quite a few times.

It's clean management with a low-carbon footprint. No air pollution. These factories are government regulated and monitored - if one's government can't ensure that's done in another country, they should do it at home, creating more jobs and businesses. Citizens need to hold their governments accountable.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Holding governments to account gets harder by the day.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: They say you hold them with your vote. The problem is by the time you do that, it's too late. Apparently, when it comes to elections, people have short memories.

Right now, our country is having an unnecessary federal election in the middle of its term - the presiding party wants to bag the majority vote while people's memories are still good. Of course, this is a way to overextend its legal term by two years IF they win. People are grumbling. Well, they don't want to change the system so.......
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: The old vote and the young mock. I was acquainted with a bloke a few years back who admitted he'd never voted in his life and he was thirty-nine. I didn't say anything but I was shocked.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: I guess he hasn't been scared badly enough, eh.

No matter who wins, we've all seen what happens to these election promises once they sit in the house - the opposition party kicks them in the slats and blocks them at every turn. Even the most brilliant of leaders, should they succeed, will have all their hard work undone.

The Partisan system is an abysmal failure. No wonder it spawned voter apathy.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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Fractured fairy tale
Fractured fairy tale: Mabye the Old remember a time Not so long ago when there wasn"t so Much Corrution , You Only have too Look at Afgainistan Too see that The way the Neo Liberal Installed prsident took off with all that Money , They reckon Its been going on for Years All the Money there Been Pumping itnto it Being siphoned off , Theres no One person or one Party to blame for all that Its both of them there all complicet , And the Media that kept it all going Till they finally coudn"t Hide it any more .
Whats more Telling Is they think there Done Nothing Wrong They Can"t See the Failures they Were all Part of , Just Keep Pushing it out as Reality when its Not
Only one place thats headed Unfortunally
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Well, the people of Pakistan believe the Taliban are good guys. I'm sure they're good for something, not sure what.

Undoubtedly, all women in Afghanistan are now finding the burka is their friend. Some may have to hide their babies underneath it.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: China and Russia seem about ready to foxtrot with the Taliban so the future could get interesting.
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Fractured fairy tale
Fractured fairy tale: Well Thats Islam Zanjan Thats nothing exclusive too the Teleban Thats where it comes from , You can look at a lot o countries in that Region Saudi arabia are as radical as they are along them lines
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Fractured fairy tale
Fractured fairy tale: So does the US seem to be foxtrtting , won't be long till they all start Taking Russia and Chinas Lead in that respect I suppose
We certainly took Chinas lead on Dealing With the Carona Virisies Every thing Except for Welding doors shut , Despite What the politicans Say
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Fractured fairy tale
Fractured fairy tale: The Teleban Might Fall apart Internally Who knows They could be headed to a Sival war
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Fractured fairy tale
Fractured fairy tale: Despite What Our Western politicans Say Its Verry tribal Over there just the Way it Is , They Find No problem Exploting it when it Suits them Tho
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Zanjan
Zanjan: America has its own share of gun-totin' radicals that are not above storming the government walls - how is that different? I mean, it doesn't matter what name they do it in, only that there has to be more non-radicals than radicals to keep the government standing. This is one situation where numbers do matter.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: In the decade from 2007, American chewing gum sales fell 15 per cent – just as 220 million American adults bought their first smartphones. This was no coincidence. When people got into a shop's queue, they would once have spent the time browsing the goodies for sale at the counter – and gum was the obvious choice. Suddenly, they were spending that time playing with their phones. So gum sales plummeted. Nobody saw that one coming. Predicting the impact of the iPhone on grocery store gum sales would have needed a modern-day Nostradamus.

[ https://www.wired.co.uk/article/exponential-age-azeem-azhar?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Well, nicotine gum is still big here - can barely keep it on the shelves. Now that Marijuana stores have legally opened, you wonder what other mouth-market will be affected.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: As a none smoker, I can't see what the attraction is with nicotine gum. To be truthful, I can't see what the attraction is with any form of gum. Just goes tasteless in next to no time.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Anyway, something to give you the chills if you're partial to fried snails:

It’s about as alien as you can get on Earth. Lei Wang of Guangzhou, China, had no idea he’d accidentally swallowed a nightmare when he was indulging in fried snails back in 2004. He continued to have severe neurological symptoms until doctors discovered that a tapeworm was feeding off his brain in 2018. Though alternative medicine has been suggested, Lei finally decided to have the tapeworm removed surgically — and it was gnarly.

When Wang first started to feel numbness down his left side, it baffled doctors. The symptoms (and unexplained decline of his health) only continued playing out like body horror from there. Desperately in search of an explanation, he saw multiple specialists only to be diagnosed with and treated for a brain tumor. Things only got more bizarre when he frequently experienced seizures and blackouts after he was supposedly cured. Something else was invading his brain.

What Wang’s surgeon, Youming Gu, ended up evicting from the patient’s body instead was a nearly 5-inch tapeworm that had been feasting on his gray matter for the past 15 years. The worm wouldn’t stop moving throughout the surgery. As if that didn’t make such a freaky procedure risky enough, every last part of the thing had to be removed. Tapeworms regenerate if even a small part is left behind in the host’s body. If left in Wang’s brain long enough, the creature would have eaten enough to kill him.

[ https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/forget-xenomorphs-a-real-monster-was-lurking-in-someones-brain-for-15-years ]
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Zanjan
Zanjan:

Who remembers what they ate 15 years ago? They were either raw or under-cooked. Ick.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: You might remember this:

In 2013 a Silicon Valley software engineer decided that food is an inconvenience—a pain point in a busy life. Buying food, preparing it, and cleaning up afterwards struck him as an inefficient way to feed himself. And so was born the idea of Soylent, Rob Rhinehart’s meal replacement powder, described on its website as an International Complete Nutrition Platform. Soylent is the logical result of an engineer’s approach to the “problem” of feeding oneself with food: there must be a more optimal solution.

[ https://time.com/6096754/silicon-valley-optimization-mindset/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB ]
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Zanjan
Zanjan: I remember Soylent Green....even more optimal.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: An economical way to get rid of annoying old farts.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Looks like we're back where so many people like to be: in full-on conflict mode. I guess it provides a rallying point in a world that believes in too few things.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: I'd say they have conflicts because they don't know how to fix their problems and have no vision of the future. They don't know what the world needs so, obviously, they can't be an example of champions.
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