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testfactor

@ testfactor @lemmy.world

Posts
1
Comments
449
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • Look, it's easy to have the viewpoint that anyone who isn't doing everything you're doing to save the world is a shitty person, and anyone who does more than you is obviously just a try-hard.

    Everyone, yourself included, makes "shitty" decisions for convenience sake every day. I assume you buy food from the grocery store instead of foraging through trash cans. I've had friends who did the latter, and called the rest of us shitty if we ever threw anything away.

    Just because someone looks at a situation and comes out with a different "worth the effort" assessment than you, doesn't make it "shitty." That's just life man. Are you driving a car instead of a motorcycle? Using toilet paper? Buying food from restaurants instead of eating out of trash cans? These are all decisions you could trivially change in your life today to make the world a little greener. So why aren't you?

    But, really, I think our actual disconnect here is that I've not articulated my position well enough. I'm talking paper bags with handles! I mean, if that's not worth a dollar, what is?

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I think the "more than I thought it would be" comment was more a reflection on how low I thought it would be than on how high it is. It's still a pretty tiny fraction of the overall problem.

    But, like, look. The optimal decision, and the only way to "stop accepting shit" as you put it, is for every single person to drop what they're doing and go live as a hermit in the woods, and never produce or consume another product.

    That isn't realistic for the majority of people though. And while I could succumb to self-flagellation as a form of symbolic protest, I think my time and effort is spent participating in the system as it is, and donating to organizations that can make more systematic changes that might ultimately do some good.

    Beating yourself (or others) up for "not doing enough" is at best a form of coping with things that are beyond your control, and at worst a form of alienating people who broadly agree with you.

    And, to be clear, I didn't say I'd pay a dollar a bag for any old paper bag. I said I'd pay that much for one with handles. Big difference.

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I think there's a couple of things in play here though.

    First, this kinda has, "if millennials just didn't drink Starbucks they could afford rent" energy. Would it make a difference? Maybe. But in the grand scheme what it would do is just take away something they enjoy, while they remain unable to make their student loan payments, much less but a house. The actual problems are more systematic, and the "don't buy Starbucks" argument is to some degree just a distraction from fixing those more systematic problems (or an intentional effort to divide people so they can't cooperate to fix those systematic issues.)

    Second, I think you're maybe exhibiting a little bit more brinkmanship than is warrented. It's important to care about the environment, and there's obviously a ton that needs to be done there. But as you say, there are bigger and worse threats out there than people buying paper bags, and it sounds like you're letting your existential dread over the environment sour your actual, meaningful interpersonal connections. It feels a bit over the top to "lose faith in humanity" just because most people buy paper bags. Most people are good people, and it's not unreasonable for them to take small conveniences, even if those conveniences aren't environmentally "optimal."

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I think you're overstating my position. It's not that I'm "not willing to carry bags." It's that I've weighed the options and decided that the provided disposable bags are more convenient, so I'm just gonna do that. I'm unconvinced that switching would do much beyond slightly inconvenience me.

    And you say it's just a "me problem," but a quick and unverified Google search says that 70% of people in the US don't use reusable bags (and 57% worldwide). So it seems like it's not so much a "me problem" as a "literal majority of the world" problem. Though I'm sure it probably felt good to attack me personally, as that gives you someone to lash out at.

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I do think the BTUs portion is less concerning in the greater context. Both 600 and 2500 are negligible compared to, say, my daily commute, or a single plane trip, or basically any other activity that requires energy.

    But the first part is kinda interesting. Doing some super sloppy back of the napkin math, I think that makes paper shopping bags about 6.5% of all paper products made in the US. Paper products account for around 50% of all wood products in the US, so call it just over 3% of total wood use (which may have gone up some due to increased prevalence of paper lately.)

    Which isn't nothing for sure. I would have guessed lower. I do think it may be overstating it to say we'd see a huge shift if everyone started using reusable bags overnight. A 3% drop in timber harvesting would be good, but not world changing I would think. But not insignificant either.

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    Cudahy vice mayor allegedly calls on gang members to stand up against immigration raids

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  • I think the reason it feels like schadenfreude is the context of the community.

    Like, the only version of why someone would post this here that makes sense to me is, "haha, yeah, go gang members, eff those cops." The person with that mentality would view this as "upliftingnews," which would fit in the schadenfreude bucket to me.

    Is that what OP thought? I can't possibly know. But I don't know why else they would have posted it here if they didn't.

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I'd be really interested to see a quantitative analysis of how much difference it would make if all 330mil of us swapped to renewable bags.

    My gut is that paper bags are pretty clean overall, and that grocery bags are a tiny fraction of paper usage in the US. But I'd be really interested to be proven wrong.

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    Cudahy vice mayor allegedly calls on gang members to stand up against immigration raids

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  • Here's the thing. Even if this isn't bad (which I would argue having to resort to asking armed criminals to police your streets certainly isn't good), that doesn't make it "upliftingnews."

    It has the same vibe as a "Trump gets cancer" headline. Would a lot of people be super happy about that? Sure. But it's not "upliftingnews."

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I'd happily pay $1/paper bag with handles, just for the convenience. That's about what it's worth to me.

    I'm absentminded as all hell, and I'm not gonna remember to bring an armful of bags into the grocery store with me. And then, if I'm not using a cart, I gotta carry them around? Nah.

    I mean, it's a super first world problem, and not a big deal at all in the grand scheme of things. But in all honesty I'd rather just pay $1/paper bag than have to deal with it.

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I mean, feasible in an objective sense? Yes. I don't want to though, lol. I really like the convenience of bags at the till.

    Very much a first world problem though, I'm aware.

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    Cudahy vice mayor allegedly calls on gang members to stand up against immigration raids

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  • That was the implication I got from what she said, but I suppose it's possible she was telling the "cholos" to "defend their block from the biggest rival street gang" in a peaceful way. (Her words, not mine.)

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    Cudahy vice mayor allegedly calls on gang members to stand up against immigration raids

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  • I mean, you're right, I didn't.

    I did just read it, and you're right, the article is pretty "that thing she did was bad."

    But then an article that's saying "politician did a bad thing," still doesn't feel like "upliftingnews" to me.

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    Cudahy vice mayor allegedly calls on gang members to stand up against immigration raids

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  • This feels like this breaks the no schadenfreude rule...

    I wouldn't call it exactly "uplifting" that an elected official is asking gangs to attack cops.

  • A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state

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  • I just wish more places put handles on the paper bags.

    I don't mind a paper bag, but I hate having to, like, roll the top to carry it. Just give me some handles. Even a reinforced hole cut in the bag. Anything.

  • What word dk you think could be spelled different?

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  • I just wish we would consolidate on 5 letter words ending with EL and LE as to what the order should be.

    Why is it "table" and "label"? They're basically the same word minus the first letter, but the spellings are different. I hate it.

  • I ain't no fortunate son

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  • This is satire. It even says "Fox Mews" in the bottom left, lol.

  • Melon-chicken-Aspic

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  • I mean, it kinda just looks like boiled chicken, so it's probably fine? Probably not tasty, but not raw by a long shot.

  • An Alabama City Recommends Changing Its Laws to Accommodate One of the Country’s Largest Proposed Data Centers

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  • 100 acres is less than a sixth of a square mile, and Bessemer City doesn't use a ton of electricity, being as rural as it is.

    The endangered species is more concerning, but feels solvable if they use environmentally conscious design practices with regards to the waterway.

    Idk, I think that new data centers are something of a "necessary evil" in our modern society, and they have to be built somewhere.

  • CRISPR used to remove extra chromosomes in Down syndrome and restore cell function

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  • I think it's presumptuous that only a certain income level is going to have access to this. It very much depends on the scalability of the treatment. Nearly everyone in the entire nation got the COVID vaccine, and those that didn't weren't due to lack of financial means. Just because you assert this will be reserved for the ultra wealthy doesn't make it so.

    The rest of what you said is borderline unintelligible, but I'll give it a shot.

    Sure, it would probably be difficult to "un-black" a baby or something, as there are a ton of genetic markers that inform what we think of as "blackness." But just because it's hard, doesn't mean it can't be done.

    And you say that Eugenics "is a vocal minority," which I presume to mean that most people are anti-eugenics. But, as you say, we live in a capitalist hellscape. It would be entirely possible for a billionaire to run a "un-black your baby for a chance to win a million dollars" campaign (a'la the Elon Musk voting drive), and have that take off in a big way.

    And all that assumes that people wouldn't be driven to it by simple desire for conformity. It's easy to justify a lot of things under the "my child would have a much better life if they just weren't... fill in the blank." In the modern climate as an example, there would probably be a lot of Hispanic people saying things like, "my child probably wouldn't get abducted by ICE if they just were more white passing." And that's terrible, obviously, but I guarantee it would happen. Not every mother. Not even a majority. But a good number would.