I’m not familiar with quilette, but there was a great Washington Post op-ed that broke down exactly why trying to recycle plastic is a bad idea. Here’s a link to it, no paywall: https://wapo.st/3VRnTNl

1.) Plastic breaks down into micro- and nanoplastic particles and get inhaled or consumed by everybody, and we’re just starting to understand how these bits affect our health (like increased systemic inflammation). Recycling facilities breaking down used plastic release untold amounts of plastic bits into their surrounding environments.

2.) “Recycling” old plastic into usable material requires the addition of a LOT of brand new, never-recycled plastic. It’s not a process where you put in used plastics and get some amount of usable plastic out, recycled plastic is like 30% old plastic and 70% new plastic to hold it all together. This is a process we’ve been trying to optimize for 50 years, and the improvements are negligible.

3.) The recycled plastic we get out of it isn’t safe to use for food and drink. (Have you seen those 20 oz. Coke bottles that say “I’m 100% recycled!”? Don’t drink those.) Nobody’s laying down the law and saying they can’t do that, and it’ll be a long time before anyone overcomes the social inertia and corporate lobbyists to stop that from happening.

Plastics are for landfills. I feel like such a piece of shit every time I throw another piece of plastic in the trash, but it’s the option that’s safest for everybody. (I feel like the French climatologist in Project Hail Mary every time.) Recycling isn’t a goal that will help; we need to adapt and reduce how much plastic we use.

It’s time to get ill

This is outstanding

This is indeed a gorgeous friend

Cats can have a little salami

They missed that thing on Matabele ants treating wounds on each other with antibiotics. The ants have done this for so long that they’ve evolved goo pockets to hold their ant-ibiotics https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/ant-antibiotics/

We’ve done it, everybody! We’ve got an actual Cat Facts subscriber!

No, I figured you did a different version of the song!

Hurt by Nine Inch Nails

Fuck that, I love all the disturbing pics you post! Peak AI weirdness and I am here for it.

I feel like I’ve been graced with His Noodly Appendage!

I feel like IT could yell at OP for a little bit, but would ultimately have to stare the fact that they allowed non-privileged users to just change the operating system square in the face. Like holy hell, 500 employees and anybody can just be like, “Hey, maybe I’ll make a major OS change today because why not?” What else are they letting happen?!

Truly the happiest place on Earth!

The cynicism is so valid in examples like this. Haha a few years ago, I would’ve assumed that police didn’t want the “extra” work of having to process the assault; now, there are so many other options available for them to not do work!

My point isn’t that SF police are doing what they’re supposed to, it’s that this problem is systemic. It’s not just the police that are fucking this up, it’s not just fire making comments of pure idiocy about how appropriate it is to test for date rape drugs, it’s a problem that city government, police, fire, and health services are all contributing to when they refuse to test a patient who’s clearly been drugged. They have their tiny bit of hope for deniability (“date rape drugs aren’t commonly used in crimes here” and “what can you do when the test isn’t called for?” kinds of garbage) that every person should recognize as dangerous to all of society.

The city’s goal isn’t safety and justice for all, it’s enough stability to continue operating and growing. Here’s what that might look like:

A fire or police chief is told that city tax revenue (a large source of their station’s funding), goes down when tourists stop visiting. Then, it’s also mentioned that testing for date rape drugs leads to positive results for date rape drugs, and no reasonable person would want to visit a city known for their rates of crimes involving date rape drugs, now, would they? It would be so terrible if there was no money for the station’s most effective community safety programs and equipment upgrades because of declining tourism. If things got bad enough, there might not be enough money to keep the station open without having to rely on public fundraisers like county fair dunk tanks and pancake breakfasts, and doesn’t the city where you built your career deserve better than that?

I keep coming back to this picture because every time I do, I get a little, “Yayy!” going on internally. It’s like a colorful party hat, but on the inside!

Not scabies (caused by tiny, parasitic bugs), but scrapie. Scrapie is the sheep form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and it’s caused by an abnormal protein in the brain–nothing to do with parasites. The misshapen protein can be found in the brain and spinal cord, and it turns out that grinding animals up wholesale to turn them into meat and bone meal can spread those abnormal proteins to the animals eating their ground up cousins.

Similar illnesses are found in other animals like elk (chronic wasting disease) and humans (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, kuru). If I remember right, spongiform encephalopathies are usually rare conditions that come from gene mutations. That’s why BSE (sensationalized as “mad cow disease”) made headlines 30-40 years ago–these sick sheep and cows were showing up in unexpected numbers because of consuming tainted feed, and there was a lot of uncertainty around whether or not humans could develop CJD from eating tainted beef and mutton. It’s really, really unlikely to happen–the last I’d read about it, the people who were confirmed to have contracted CJD all had a super uncommon genetic quirk that made their normal proteins less able to maintain their healthy shape and increased their risk for disease.

I think the reason is because they don’t want date rape drugs showing up in their community’s crime and safety stats

Something from Victor/Victoria? 😂