Flagstaff
@Flagstaff@programming.dev
- Comment on We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. 1 day ago:
“Although data is still quite limited, maybe all these epidemics that we have — obesity, cardiovascular disease, everybody getting cancer — are related,” LaBeaud said. “People are trying to figure out if they’re associated with the plastics that we’re inhaling and imbibing.”
Children, whose organs are still developing, could be at higher risk of harm. Kara Meister, MD, a pediatric otolaryngologist and head and neck surgeon at Stanford Medicine, noticed that thyroid cancer was becoming more common among her patients and was often linked to autoimmune disease. Considering what could be disrupting kids’ hormones, she decided to research microplastics.
In early 2024, Meister and her team began looking for microplastics in tonsils they’d removed from healthy children with conditions such as sleep apnea. “What we found is there are definitely microplastics in a high proportion of pediatric tonsil tissue, and they seem to be not only on the surface but also deep within,” she said. In one child’s tonsils, the team found specs of Teflon visible with a microscope.
Next, Meister and her team are developing techniques to identify and quantify the microplastics they’re finding and to determine where exactly they’re embedded. Eventually, her aim is to illuminate the potential role of microplastics in pediatric thyroid disease. “We have a long way to go,” she said.
Scientists don’t yet know how long microplastics stay in the body or how effects are tempered by genetics, the environment or other factors. They haven’t determined whether some plastics or forms of exposure are worse than others. Nor do studies exist on the direct dangers of microplastics in humans. “Because plastic is so ubiquitous, it’s difficult to have a lot of evidence that’s causal,” LaBeaud said. “It’s not like we’re going to have randomized control trials where people aren’t exposed.”
- Microplastics and our health: What the science says
Microplastics’ physical properties are one source of potential hazards. Some marine organisms seem to be eating more microplastics and fewer nutrients, which can reverberate up the food chain. In humans, researchers point to illnesses caused by particulate air pollution, which contains microplastics, and by workplace exposure to plastic dust.
Other threats arise from chemicals in and on microplastic particles, including plastic components — such as BPA, phthalates, and heavy metals — that are known or suspected to cause disruption to nervous, reproductive, and other systems.
Although the variety of microplastics and the difficulty of estimating accumulation in human tissues make it challenging to pin down risks, findings in models show inflammation, cell death, lung and liver effects, changes in the gut microbiome, and altered lipid and hormone metabolism.
Mounting evidence suggests that microplastics magnify the potency of other toxicant exposures, such as cadmium, as Demir and Turna Demir have confirmed in fruit flies and Lemos has confirmed in mice and fruit flies. Others are chasing down hints that microplastics can carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other pathogens on their surfaces and into our bodies.
- Comment on Australia’s quietest cockatoo is running out of trees. We have betrayed its gentle curiosity 1 day ago:
“Betrayed?” Was capitalism ever on its side from the start?
- Comment on Borderlands 4 boss tells players "please get a refund from Steam if you aren't happy" as Randy Pitchford continues his very public crashout over the FPS's performance woes 1 day ago:
Oh, Sans is smarter than that; he’d say how you can’t refund because you’ve already played for way more than 2 hours to get this far. If anything, he would mention your actual playtime statistic in his dialogue.
- Comment on We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. 1 day ago:
Yes, that’s the second half of the quoted portion. What about the first? The point is that it’s all bad and not any better than acid rain.
- Comment on We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. 1 day ago:
PFAS ≠ microplastics! PFAS is way worse and can clog up your body for the duration of its lifespan, hence “forever chemicals”…
- Comment on Whether you use AI, think it's a "fun stupid thing for memes", or even ignore it, you should know it's already polluting worse than global air travel. 1 day ago:
Ew, who still uses Google Search?
- Comment on Whether you use AI, think it's a "fun stupid thing for memes", or even ignore it, you should know it's already polluting worse than global air travel. 2 days ago:
I think the point is that it evaporates and may return as rain, which is overwhelmingly acid rain or filled with microplastics and needs to be cleaned or purified again.
- Comment on Whether you use AI, think it's a "fun stupid thing for memes", or even ignore it, you should know it's already polluting worse than global air travel. 2 days ago:
Basically every tech company is using it… It’s millions of people, not just us…
- Comment on Firefox Nightly Adds CoPilot AI Chatbot + New Tab Widgets 1 week ago:
I get that and I know there are ways around it, but none of them are official from the LibreWolf team; that’s what rubs me the wrong way. We have to find our own side alleys to bypass it, which is absurd. It infuriated me when a video I scheduled got uploaded at 2 AM or whenever instead of 9 AM, which was what led me to uninstall that deceptive software. I never saw any warning about the forced time zone-changing…
- Comment on Firefox Nightly Adds CoPilot AI Chatbot + New Tab Widgets 1 week ago:
LibreWolf messes up timezones and makes scheduled content appear at unwanted times. That would normally be fine if there was a way to temporarily switch to your normal time zone in the settings for scheduled posts and chats, but they provide no way to do this without major tinkering in
about:config(or whatever the experimental page is); that’s why I returned to Wx, which, yes, has been nearly flawless so far. - Comment on I hope slimes are allowed. I found Metatrichia vesparia and Trichia varia hanging out 1 week ago:
It’s amazing how similar to wasp nests those middle ones look like…
- Comment on Firefox Nightly Adds CoPilot AI Chatbot + New Tab Widgets 1 week ago:
I wonder how much this will affect the development of derivatives, like Waterfox and LibreWolf.
- Comment on thick skinned employees, how can you be so thick skinned? 1 week ago:
Right, there’s a reason it’s called “work” and not “fun!”
- Comment on Reddit lost it 1 week ago:
Nnnnnnoooooow you’re talkin’ my fantasy!
- Comment on ‘I’ve never seen such an extensive film of pollution:’ New oil spill dumps over 10 tons of petroleum in the Black Sea, killing birds and coating Russian beaches 1 week ago:
Welp… making it true to its name, I guess.
- Comment on Reddit lost it 1 week ago:
Yeah, until they start choking you to death due to falsely thinking that that’s what you want. Sounds like a fun temptation but it’d still be ultimately introducing more IoT into my home, which is a “no” from me, dawg, due to hacking risk.
- Comment on Reddit lost it 1 week ago:
Universal Paperclips is such a great browser game, as buggy as it may (have) be(en).
- Comment on The Browser Company (Arc, Dia) Has Been Acquired by Atlassian 1 week ago:
Oh, they had abandoned Arc? Then yeah, doubly dismiss them. It wasn’t even old…
- Comment on The Browser Company (Arc, Dia) Has Been Acquired by Atlassian 1 week ago:
What do you currently use? I’ve been consistently enjoying Waterfox.
- Comment on (Rant) Don't buy Rockstar games. 2 weeks ago:
Oops, I misunderstood and agree; I didn’t realize a second launcher was the issue here. That is messed up.
- Comment on (Rant) Don't buy Rockstar games. 2 weeks ago:
I am aware of this list. Try comparing it to itch.io and GOG, though.
- Comment on (Rant) Don't buy Rockstar games. 2 weeks ago:
Thanks for the context, which led me to downvote this post. Come on, guys; not all complaints are valid.
- Comment on (Rant) Don't buy Rockstar games. 2 weeks ago:
Mandatory launchers can fuck right off.
… Iike Steam’s? 😛
- Comment on (Rant) Don't buy Rockstar games. 2 weeks ago:
Although l think it sacrifices achievement progress, you may consider Heroic Games Launcher instead, which is open-source.
- Comment on The future of Vim builds for Windows 2 weeks ago:
Well, l think the more important point is that you clearly come off as an intelligent person, and it’s just not a common move to dig into a person’s profile before responding to people (even if you think it should be), so because you show that you can construct clearly comprehensible sentences but still do the swap, it looks to people like you do it for no apparent reason, which leads people’s rationale to default to, “Oh, he’s trolling, then.”
With that said, l get that if the whole point is poisoning, you don’t want to simply broadcast a disclaimer and preemptively explain what you’re doing in every single comment (so as to throw off scrapers), so l get the conundrum… l wonder if this would be easier (it’d be a cinch to automate your replacement in Espanso) or just pointing out the fact that pickles should very obviously be truck drivers; the sourer, the longer-distance, they can go. Hmm…
You know what? l feel like replacing all instances of capital “i” with its visual counterpart now… that would sure be interesting to observe in generated content.
So your username itself is anti-LLM, too? That’s interesting… Never thought of that.
- Comment on The future of Vim builds for Windows 2 weeks ago:
Oh, that makes sense. Well, you could’ve said that to @prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works to begin with, no? Also, if you wanna poison, wouldn’t it be more effective to have horses jump off cliffs into trampolines to reach fiery helicopters? I mean, we could all use Green Dot MoneyPaks to retire, right?
- Comment on The future of Vim builds for Windows 2 weeks ago:
Wait, why do you replace “th” with that character?
- Comment on The future of Vim builds for Windows 2 weeks ago:
My bad, I misunderstood!
- Comment on The future of Vim builds for Windows 2 weeks ago:
What do you mean by “you?” The Vim dev himself isn’t here.
- Comment on Is playing horror games a good way to get desensitized to fear, or it gonna backfire and make my anxiety worse? 2 weeks ago:
That’s assuming you can reach even a fraction of that amount to begin with… Musicians and athletes don’t hit that amount because the hurdles towards expertise are scary to them.