• ChristmasIslandZone@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    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.”.

    • subarctictundra@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      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.

    • ceiphas@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      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

      • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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.

    • stembolts@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      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.

  • limelight79@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I’m a little surprised Trump hasn’t signed the “Asbestos Fibers Are Our Friends” Executive Order.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Is that giving a donkey an enema or preforming an enema with a donkey or is it utilizing a donkey to perform an enema…

  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
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    3 days ago

    My country banned smoking in all public indoor spaces almost 20 years ago. As a smoker at the time I thought it was ridiculous, felt that my rights were being violated and thought it would never last. The quality of life improvement it made is massive. Today I vape rather than smoke but wouldn’t dream of doing either indoors or being where someone else is. It was 100% the right move. Not quite the same thing but you sometimes can’t really understand the benefits of an alternative to the status quo, even if you understand it logically.

    • ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      I don’t generally mind the smoking bans, but I wish there existed some indoor spaces where it could be done. They are very limited and mostly exclusive.

  • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    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

  • Wilco@lemm.ee
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    4 days ago

    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)

    • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      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.

      • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        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.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    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…

  • ExtantHuman@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    The Dipshit tried to bring it back his last term. Guess which country is the top producer of asbestos?

  • SolidShake@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Depends who would ban it. From my life experience, we have one side that definitely would because they get mad at anything the other side. ANYTHING. While the other side is typically more rational and has critical thinking skills.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • x3x3@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      You also have to consider removal at the end of life. Or safety risks if another country drops bombs randomly on your cities.

    • Cats Akimbo@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      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

      • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
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        There are plenty of things that you deal with on a daily basis that are significantly more dangerous than asbestos. And if it had been treated like the hazardous material that it is as soon as we knew it was hazardous, then it would still be used just like all the other hazardous shit we deal with daily. However, as is the usual story, companies not only hid what they knew, but outright lied about its dangers. They called it a miracle material with no downsides. And it is amazingly good at what it does, so it was put in fucking everything, much like AI is today. And so people died for profit. A lot of people.

        • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          And it is amazingly good at what it does, so it was put in fucking everything, much like AI is today. And so people died for profit. A lot of people

          funny how history rhymes. I think the confluence of AI and rising fascism is going to kill a lot more people than asbestos if we don’t get our shit together. probably too late now.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        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.

    • Clbull@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Aren’t there ways to treat the asbestos and prevent the fibers from becoming airborne and posing a serious risk?