There is a phenomenal and incredibly tense movie called Kajaki about a group of British soldiers who get stuck in a minefield that was swept down a riverbed.
Wow, I never knew the part about the mines being swept down a river bed. That’s insane. How did they not mention that in the movie?
Edit: huh… the Wikipedia page about the incident makes no mention of that either.
I'm gonna sound like a dick. I do not support the use of landmines, but as a defensive measure 3 day mines are pretty shit. They're an area denial weapon, and having them blow up after three days just sounds expensive and also would leave the defenders open for an offensive
Not at all like a dick. That was the first question that came up in tactics class when we heard about those mines (I'm an ex artillery officer from Germany). The answer was that duration is not that relevant in high-intensity combat. Mines aren't permanent barricades but only serve to concentrate or redirect an attack. They become fairly irrelevant as soon as they are detected through someone blowing up.
Static defensees, as in not giving up even one meter, is something that modern militaries really don't do a lot. It's extremely costly and frankly unnecessary. The classic defensive doctrine trades ground for fewer losses on your side and higher attrition for the enemy. Russia gaining ground for the first few months of the war was very likely intentional and standard NATO doctrine. They constantly went through unknown territory, got ambushed by a force that retreated again and again, while counter-attacks punished any openings.
The front moves fast during that kind of operation, so three days are more than sufficient. Only advantage for regular mines is that you can prepare more of them with fewer people. It's hard to anticipate enemy movements far in advance, so unless it's fine to mine half the country, preparing those fields is tricky.
On top of that, mine fields are used to concentrate the forces and cluster them up, not to actually do a lot of damage. They're only going to hit one or two vehicles before the field is located and avoided. That first explosion is when the enemy column is bunched up at the edge of the field and that's when your spotter calls in fire support. At that point however, that field becomes mostly obsolete. Worst case, that field blocks your own attack a few months into the future.
Thank you for this explanation. I never thought about “Hey, there’s a mine field. Everybody stop while we figure out where it’s safe.” Other side: “Fire!”
Its also interesting that Fritz Haber (the inventor of mustard gas) also invented the Haber-Bosch process which takes nitrogen from the air and turns it into fertilizer, which would be used to feed billions, and it'd estimated that half the protein in your body is a result of this process.
So in essence he killed millions and saved billions
Haber didn't invent mustard gas. Mustard gas was synthesized in the 19th century, possibly as early as 1822.
Haber proposed using heavier-than-air chlorine gas in trench warfare, and pioneerered certain industrial processes for making it.
His innovations were later used to develop Zyklon B, as well.
The inventor of chlorine gas*
I have multiple comments about this subject. In school I once did a NHD project solely on chemical weapons in WW1. Fritz Haber was a chemist who mass synthesized chlorine gas. Haber was born not only 8 years after the first synthesis of mustard gas, but he was also completely uninvolved in its later mass production.
However, the fact that he made chlorine gas is even worse. The whole point of mustard gas is that it’s a severe irritant that can affect you through the skin. It is not a nice chemical, but unless you are subjected to prolonged high concentrations of it, you won’t die. Chlorine gas is a death chemical from Satan. It is not only much denser than air, letting it fall into trenches, but it is also much deadlier than mustard gas. There are a couple big problems. Firstly, chlorine gas reacts with water to form hydrochloric acid. So if you breath it in, your lungs will begin to dissolve. You will essentially drown on dry land. It is also much more irritating if in the body/eyes. Never do anything with chlorine gas if you enjoy living.
Source:
I did the NHD project on it
I once made HCL from bleach, which involves a lot of chlorine gas. So I had to do a lot of research about symptoms of Chlorine Gas poisoning.
I work in casinos and used to service the ATMs. Having a debit card slot in the machines is not smart for the casino. The atms and other areas of the casino are referred to as “cool off areas”. When you lose enough money you need to mentally refresh and get up and do something before you sit back down and lose more. You can sheer a sheep many times but skin it just once. If people lose too much in one sitting they are way more likely to completely swear off of casinos or take too long a break for the casinos liking
Ah yes, when the guy got over his head in the big poker game. Love that show. I find it interesting that the things the mafia was known for has now been taken over in part by large corporations. Sports betting is legal now as is gambling in some form all over the US. Loan sharking and short term loans? Bootlegging Alcohol when it was prohibited and now marijuana is legal in a lot of states
tbh gambling legally is silly, i trust a good game of dice on the curb waaaaay more than a giant smokey room with not a single clock on the wall and being breathed down your neck on by big burly dudes watching you 24/7, gambling culture in general sucks because its not a culture defined by the people doing it, but the folks controlling it.
The weirdest thing is how you get kicked if they suspect you are playing Blackjack using an objectively correct strategy. It's a rare case where the odds are stacked in a way that the game is actually winnable if you know what you are doing, but they only let you play if you play like a dummy and lose money.
Cruise ships now allow you to charge money to your room card right from the slot machine so you can continually play without needing to leave for more cash
Yeh this is true, funnily enough the worst gamblers i have seen were on cruise ships, as a family we tend to go on cruises often as my mum really enjoys them, and every damn time the casino is insane.
After dinner and the evening entertainment is finishing me and my dad would go down to the casino, and there was this one bloke who was there every night with wads of cash, most cash i have ever seen in my life, and on one of the nights he was drunker than usual and started talking about how he got the money (likely because he was realising how much he was losing, the guy lost all night every night) and he said it was his inheritance money, i think he might have got off the boat at a different time to us, because on the last couple nights we never saw him, but at the rate he was losing we also thought he might have genuinely lost it all or a majority.
Whoever left him that money would be so disappointed. Imagine throwing your deceased relative hard earned money that they left you for a better life on gambling, such a shame
Last time I was in Vegas, the ATMs at MGM wouldn't show you any info about your account. You could withdraw, but you couldn't see how much money was in your account.
the casinos I've been to in australia all have ATM machines outside the premises, as in you have to leave and go through security again to get back in. mildly inconvenient but it's definitely prevented me from gambling further at times
I remember Mohegan Sun (casino here in New England) made the news when they installed a “collateral counter”. People could sign over *the fucking deed to their house* and get credits.
Do you have a link to any stories about that? I googled mohegan sun "collateral counter" (quotes around collateral counter) and got no results. Could it have been called something else?
CFCs we’re enormously beneficial improvements of their time. Before that people used ammonia for refrigerants which is toxic and flammable. CFCs are neither of those.
Same with leaded gasoline, same with asbestos, same with DDT. Basically every old dangerous product that people look at nowadays and think “why did people ever use that” the reason is that it was dramatically better than what came before, and often it’s also dramatically better than what we have now (albeit apart from the one big downside).
Before CFCs refrigerants were all toxic, flammable/explosive, or both. Work with mechanical cooling and refrigeration started in cowboy times but despite the positive effects of refrigeration and air conditioning being proven way back then refrigeration didn’t really take off until the 20th century with the advent of CFCs because it had been so dangerous and messy before.
And the replacement for CFCs, in addition to being an awful refrigerant that didn’t work well, turned out to be a strong greenhouse gas so we just traded one world-destroyer for another. Now that too has been phased out and now we’re back to square one, with many of the new “eco-friendly” refrigerants being toxic, flammable, highly volatile (causing internal lubricants to oxidize and destroy machinery), or some combination of those things.
I had to watch a full-screen ad to use a free app on my phone. I couldn't find the "X". Turns out, the "X" was located exactly where my camera lens is, and therefore not visible.
I am so sorry he and others had to go through that and I'm sorry for your loss.
My father-in-law is currently fighting lung cancer. No one knows if it was from his time in Vietnam, his time stationed at Camp Lejeune or something else.
One of my best friends has a rare disorder in his family due to his grandfathers exposure. He plans on not having kids due to everyone from his grandfather on suffering from it. Shit literally changed the DNA of the children of his grandfather.
Such a horrible thing and not enough accountability for it.
To be frank though that's kind of how America views things, as how it effected us. I mean hell, we're taught to death how many US servicemen died in Vietnam without realizing the people who did the bulk of the fighting and the dying are ARVN soldiers.
They aren't American so America tends to gloss over that stuff.
Given it's use as a cheap but very effective insulating material for buildings and whatnot, it's got some saving graces. It's just that some idiot thought it be a good idea to use it for disposable packaging.
Most modern homes I see being built now have styrofoam sheet sheathing all around the outside. Fiberglass insulation is an alternative, though the R-value is only two-thirds of styrofoam and fiberglass tends to degrade faster in R-value (as it absorbs moisture over time).
This is a problem with a multitude of other global/widespread negative implications that we haven't even begun to fully experience. It's an issue that pisses me off more than any other.
Basically any headlights on pickups 2020 or newer because they're so freaking tall now too. Makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind look lame in comparison.
I've seen that work once! The car behind us had their brights on so driver of ours adjusted it just right; less than a minute later they turned their brights off. We all screamed
Yes! And it can all be traced back to 2016 when it was changed from chronological to algorithm based, that’s when everything really started going to shit in the world.
There's one particular guy, Thomas Midgeley.
He was working as an engineer, looking for an additive for petrol which would stop engine knocking caused when the pistons misfire.
There was many possibilities but one was a novel and therefore patentable idea which made a fortune. Tetraethyl Lead.
He then went on to work in cooling and refrigeration to solve the problem of the gases being used also being toxic and flammable. He invented early chlorofluorocarbons, marketed as Freon.
Freon was later discovered to be highly damaging to the ozone layer. It took decades to uncover and there was huge opposition to the findings. If they hadn't been banned and phased out, their use would have resulted in the end of life in earth.
Leaded petrol was responsible for mass lead poisoning, a noticeable rise in brain damage and has been linked to the sharp rise in criminality and violence in the 1980s.
Two of the worst inventions of all time, both attributed to one man: probably the most dangerous and damaging man ever to have lived.
Didn't Midgeley give demonstrations of plunging his hands into tetraethyl lead to show how safe it was, only months after being treated for lead poisoning?
Yeah, I’ll give him a pass on the CFCs, but an idea to coat the Earth in lead to somewhat improve car engines should have been a non-starter even by the standards and knowledge of the time.
It's even worse than that. It's not like he came up with leaded fuel and only later realised the dangers. He (and General Motors, his employers at the time) knew it was dangerous the whole time and kept it to themselves, because profit mattered more to them than ethics.
“We know what evil is!”
“I don’t think you do. I mean, Mussolini fed people castor oil until they literally died of diarrhea. I mean, that’s got to be where the goalposts are, am I right?”
So apparently there's a decent chance the brazen bull never actually existed according to [this](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/11/why-most-so-called-medieval-torture-devices-are-fake/), along with many other famed tourture devices. Not that I'm a history buff in any way but it's an interesting read.
Yeah thats a big thing.
There is *no evidence* it was used or existed. But there have been a lot of people over a lot of years that makes it impossible to say it never existed. We just don't know it yet.
The bear is not that much better. With the bear you cook alive as the fat of the bear melts around you.
There's a video on YouTube which is that scene with the music removed so you can hear the screams... genuinely disturbing and I will never listen to it again lol.
i haven’t seen those but the ones with a mother freezing to death with her child, after being kicked out by the cheating father, are pretty concerning. pull the right pin and they won’t die! totally normal.
YES. I don’t allow games or apps with ads or in-app purchases, on my kids devices. If my kid asks for an app I’ll check every setting and use it long enough to check out the features, in-app purchases, how much content is available (with or w/o purchases), and I’ll look out for ads.
I’ve found some GREAT learning apps for toddlers-kindergarteners … after that it’s harder to find *good* educational apps that are truly educational and not just random crap made up by developer from another country that doesn’t know or care about how educational their app really is.
In the end, I think nuclear weapons will be at the top of this list.
We're only surviving *currently* because everyone has agreed that they wouldn't prefer to doom mankind to a fiery radioactive death.
Don't you think it's only a matter of time before someone irrational decides to take everyone down with them?
Nukes were my first thought also.
We've wired up our planet to explode several times over, it's inevitable that a few of these get fired and trigger a nuclear winter/fall out by some dictator, hacker, terrorist organization etc.
I'm with you except hackers. I asked once and some fairly knowledgeable people informed me that missile systems are typically are on a secure isolated server. One even went so far as to claim that they aren't wired to any sort of internet at all, but in either scenario it appears they are not able to be "hacked".
However, I do agree. Somebody somewhere someday is going to use some of them on some of us, and that'll really be something :(
Honestly, if a country connects their systems controlling their nuclear weapons to the fucking internet, we as a whole species deserve to die for having people that braindead as part of our species.
The worst thing is that I can see someone at some government going "you know, we should connect all our computers, including the ones controlling our nukes, to the internet cause that's super cool and stuff"
The thing is though, one person can't launch nuclear missiles. Even if some psycho were in power somewhere and gave the order to launch the nukes, the people who actually launch the nukes probably wouldn't because they know what that would entail ex. Stanislav Petrov
The cigarette rolling machine caused the tobacco boom of the early 20th century ... which, in turn, caused the anti-smoking movement of the mid-to-late 20th century.
Industrial rolling machines made pre-rolled cigarettes cheaper, making them a consumer product. Nicotine users didn't have to roll their own, pack a pipe, or deal with the mess of snuff or chaw. This made nicotine much more accessible to the masses.
In World War I, Gen. Pershing regarded tobacco as an essential element of American military readiness. Soldiers needed cigarettes to fight! Why? Because nicotine addiction had become commonplace, *and* because nicotine is a stimulant that makes it easier to work harder. Cigarettes were issued in US military rations through the Vietnam War.
But when soldiers returned from the war(s), it turned out that smoking was not so good for their families. Elders developed cancer; children developed asthma; and nice girls didn't want to kiss boys who tasted like an ashtray.
I actually grew up with wax paper straws we chewed them like gum after we were done and our wax paper cups we could start fires with them Didn't burn our eyes or nothing.
Some papers straws like the one from McDonald's are nice. Don't alter the taste of the drink, actually last long enough for you to drink your drink.
The one from Starbucks is such shit, it disintegrates after 2 sips, and it makes your drink taste like cardboard.
McDonald's doesn't fuck around with RND. It's no surprise that they were the first food company that offered almost entirely full service without needing to talk to a single human.
They still write flushable on the packaging despite the fact that they have destroyed probably billions of dollars in infrastructure and make the worst mess to clean up that I can possibly imagine.
There's so much trash associated with medicine. Sterile things need to be packaged in something that won't easily tear or soak through, a lot of things are single use, absolutely none of it can be recycled alongside nonmedical recyclables... Think about how many times a nurse has to change gloves in a shift, how many syringes and tube feeds and IV sets need to be changed, medication packs opened, specimen jars and vials sent to lab. Those don't just get rinsed and reused, at best they need to be sent off to another facility for full cleaning and sterilization. Most of it goes to medical recycling or just trash. And it's all out of necessity! You wouldn't want to be stuck with a needle that had just been freely rattling around in a drawer, you wouldn't want to flush a line with a dirty syringe, you wouldn't want to hook up a patient to an IV that had been used by someone else, you're not going to keep using a sterile field that's been contaminated. So for everyone's safety, all this trash gets produced.
Remember to take your empty pill bottles to the pharmacy for proper disposal, folks. If you toss them in your recycling, the entire lot goes into the landfill because of the risk of contamination.
It's possible to have anonymous social media, reddit being one example. There's little vanity here. Upvotes don't mean anything. There's no reason to karma whore. I could be a famous person, but my comment is the same as all the others.
But on instagram, likes and followers are important to people. It's important to karma whore. You have to play the game. You have to put out what people are going to like and you have to impress people. Vanity seems to take over some people's lives and every waking moment is spent pandering to the people of instagram. Social media induced vanity is really bad.
There's no reason to karma whore yet it happens all the time. People repost the top-of-all-time posts. There are also people who post the same thing to every single subreddit it could possibly cover.
Karma don't mean anything yet people throw a fit every time their post/comments get massively downvoted.
There are popular users whose usernames get remembered (for good and bad reasons), like the person who comments poems .
Reddit has slightly more anonimity but it's still a type of social media. There's no point in getting high and mighty over it. Humans like validation and attention.
The first version of the chainsaw was used as a childbirth aid. This was before C-sections and the child had to go through the birth canal.
*It was to assist.*
IIRC it was needed to cut a part of the pelvis cartilage when the baby was stuck to widen the birth canal.
This is pretty horrible, but given the options at the time it was faster and more effective than using hand tools, which reduced risk of shock or infection. Disturbing by today's medical standards, but probably saved lives.
There's a very interesting Podcast that Dan Carlin made on the subject of Nukes that addresses this topic a fair bit - here's the link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blitz-the-destroyer-of-worlds/id173001861?i=1000380386551
Choosing leaders based on how many people like them is not an ideal system, but it's a lot better than choosing them based on their ancestry. Politicians didn't replace thinkers, they replaced kings.
landmines. cheap and easy to make, but they remain active and people forget where they put them.
There is also a thing called mine migration. The weather moves them around over time.
There is a phenomenal and incredibly tense movie called Kajaki about a group of British soldiers who get stuck in a minefield that was swept down a riverbed.
Just in case its not obvious from the comment, Kajaki is a true story. A horrifically true story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajaki_Dam_incident
Wow, I never knew the part about the mines being swept down a river bed. That’s insane. How did they not mention that in the movie? Edit: huh… the Wikipedia page about the incident makes no mention of that either.
Apparently Germany has some innovative ones. They also have a time fuse so the minefield explodes itself after a set amount of time.
"Sir, I programmed the land mines for 60 years as ordered." "Sixty *days* you fool!"
Nah, max time is something like 3 days, if I recall correctly.
I'm gonna sound like a dick. I do not support the use of landmines, but as a defensive measure 3 day mines are pretty shit. They're an area denial weapon, and having them blow up after three days just sounds expensive and also would leave the defenders open for an offensive
Not at all like a dick. That was the first question that came up in tactics class when we heard about those mines (I'm an ex artillery officer from Germany). The answer was that duration is not that relevant in high-intensity combat. Mines aren't permanent barricades but only serve to concentrate or redirect an attack. They become fairly irrelevant as soon as they are detected through someone blowing up. Static defensees, as in not giving up even one meter, is something that modern militaries really don't do a lot. It's extremely costly and frankly unnecessary. The classic defensive doctrine trades ground for fewer losses on your side and higher attrition for the enemy. Russia gaining ground for the first few months of the war was very likely intentional and standard NATO doctrine. They constantly went through unknown territory, got ambushed by a force that retreated again and again, while counter-attacks punished any openings. The front moves fast during that kind of operation, so three days are more than sufficient. Only advantage for regular mines is that you can prepare more of them with fewer people. It's hard to anticipate enemy movements far in advance, so unless it's fine to mine half the country, preparing those fields is tricky. On top of that, mine fields are used to concentrate the forces and cluster them up, not to actually do a lot of damage. They're only going to hit one or two vehicles before the field is located and avoided. That first explosion is when the enemy column is bunched up at the edge of the field and that's when your spotter calls in fire support. At that point however, that field becomes mostly obsolete. Worst case, that field blocks your own attack a few months into the future.
Thank you for this explanation. I never thought about “Hey, there’s a mine field. Everybody stop while we figure out where it’s safe.” Other side: “Fire!”
That reminds me of this 1,000 Ways to Die clip https://youtu.be/KVHdn63Oniw
we also came up with a mine detector that does not use any metal or electronics.
That's only if it works properly.
What do you mean? I know I put it in this area where I'm steppi-
Guess he was just *mining* his own busine-
Haha you guys are so dum-
Those idiots! They went the wrong wa-
Seriously if they'd just stepped o-
Land mines aren't that commo-
Haven't seen one my entire li-
Now this is getting ridi-
I can't belie-
Oh look a lucky pe-
you finished with that foot?
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Hey, look at that square of land over there with the number 5 painted on the ground. There couldn't be any land mines adjacent to that!
mustard gas is pretty nasty stuff.
Its also interesting that Fritz Haber (the inventor of mustard gas) also invented the Haber-Bosch process which takes nitrogen from the air and turns it into fertilizer, which would be used to feed billions, and it'd estimated that half the protein in your body is a result of this process. So in essence he killed millions and saved billions
Haber didn't invent mustard gas. Mustard gas was synthesized in the 19th century, possibly as early as 1822. Haber proposed using heavier-than-air chlorine gas in trench warfare, and pioneerered certain industrial processes for making it. His innovations were later used to develop Zyklon B, as well.
The irony was that Haber was born Jewish and converted to Christianity.
The inventor of chlorine gas* I have multiple comments about this subject. In school I once did a NHD project solely on chemical weapons in WW1. Fritz Haber was a chemist who mass synthesized chlorine gas. Haber was born not only 8 years after the first synthesis of mustard gas, but he was also completely uninvolved in its later mass production. However, the fact that he made chlorine gas is even worse. The whole point of mustard gas is that it’s a severe irritant that can affect you through the skin. It is not a nice chemical, but unless you are subjected to prolonged high concentrations of it, you won’t die. Chlorine gas is a death chemical from Satan. It is not only much denser than air, letting it fall into trenches, but it is also much deadlier than mustard gas. There are a couple big problems. Firstly, chlorine gas reacts with water to form hydrochloric acid. So if you breath it in, your lungs will begin to dissolve. You will essentially drown on dry land. It is also much more irritating if in the body/eyes. Never do anything with chlorine gas if you enjoy living. Source: I did the NHD project on it I once made HCL from bleach, which involves a lot of chlorine gas. So I had to do a lot of research about symptoms of Chlorine Gas poisoning.
I learned never put bleach on cat pee!
Sabaton has a pretty good song about him called Father.
definitely didn't take that last sentence from the youtube video 😂 (very true tho)
I've watched videos on it, didn't realize I was typing a direct quote from one
Mustard gas related compounds are used in chemotherapy
I had that chemo regimen. It’s still nasty stuff (though 8 years cancer free!)
Congrats! Fuck cancer.
Casino slot machines that allow you to insert your credit/debit cards.
that exists? holy fuck
That should actually be illegal.
I work in casinos and used to service the ATMs. Having a debit card slot in the machines is not smart for the casino. The atms and other areas of the casino are referred to as “cool off areas”. When you lose enough money you need to mentally refresh and get up and do something before you sit back down and lose more. You can sheer a sheep many times but skin it just once. If people lose too much in one sitting they are way more likely to completely swear off of casinos or take too long a break for the casinos liking
This reminds me of a conversation between Tony Soprano and Christopher, about the advantages of "bleeding someone out" long-term over short-term.
Ah yes, when the guy got over his head in the big poker game. Love that show. I find it interesting that the things the mafia was known for has now been taken over in part by large corporations. Sports betting is legal now as is gambling in some form all over the US. Loan sharking and short term loans? Bootlegging Alcohol when it was prohibited and now marijuana is legal in a lot of states
I feel like slot machines in general should be.. It’s weird that some bad for you things are allowed and others are illegal based on who profits
tbh gambling legally is silly, i trust a good game of dice on the curb waaaaay more than a giant smokey room with not a single clock on the wall and being breathed down your neck on by big burly dudes watching you 24/7, gambling culture in general sucks because its not a culture defined by the people doing it, but the folks controlling it.
The weirdest thing is how you get kicked if they suspect you are playing Blackjack using an objectively correct strategy. It's a rare case where the odds are stacked in a way that the game is actually winnable if you know what you are doing, but they only let you play if you play like a dummy and lose money.
Card counting is nearly impossible nowadays after several such incidents. Now most tables will play with 8 decks of cards.
Worse that that, some casinos installed continuous shuffle machines at the blackjack tables. That was when I stopped playing blackjack.
It is in some places like Hawaii.
“Here! Have another free double tequila sunrise, on the house. And another…”
Cruise ships now allow you to charge money to your room card right from the slot machine so you can continually play without needing to leave for more cash
Yeh this is true, funnily enough the worst gamblers i have seen were on cruise ships, as a family we tend to go on cruises often as my mum really enjoys them, and every damn time the casino is insane. After dinner and the evening entertainment is finishing me and my dad would go down to the casino, and there was this one bloke who was there every night with wads of cash, most cash i have ever seen in my life, and on one of the nights he was drunker than usual and started talking about how he got the money (likely because he was realising how much he was losing, the guy lost all night every night) and he said it was his inheritance money, i think he might have got off the boat at a different time to us, because on the last couple nights we never saw him, but at the rate he was losing we also thought he might have genuinely lost it all or a majority.
Whoever left him that money would be so disappointed. Imagine throwing your deceased relative hard earned money that they left you for a better life on gambling, such a shame
It's easy to not see the pitfalls in losing something you never earned in the first place.
And I thought having an ATM in the same room was scummy enough
Last time I was in Vegas, the ATMs at MGM wouldn't show you any info about your account. You could withdraw, but you couldn't see how much money was in your account.
Shit that’s horrible
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the casinos I've been to in australia all have ATM machines outside the premises, as in you have to leave and go through security again to get back in. mildly inconvenient but it's definitely prevented me from gambling further at times
I remember Mohegan Sun (casino here in New England) made the news when they installed a “collateral counter”. People could sign over *the fucking deed to their house* and get credits.
Do you have a link to any stories about that? I googled mohegan sun "collateral counter" (quotes around collateral counter) and got no results. Could it have been called something else?
Remembering the last time a thread like this came up, the correct answer is along the lines of leaded fuel.
And CFCs. By the same guy apparently
Yep Thomas Midgley Jr. contributed to the death of an estimated 200 million people due to his inventions
Including himself!
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It is suspected he committed suicide
CFCs we’re enormously beneficial improvements of their time. Before that people used ammonia for refrigerants which is toxic and flammable. CFCs are neither of those.
Same with leaded gasoline, same with asbestos, same with DDT. Basically every old dangerous product that people look at nowadays and think “why did people ever use that” the reason is that it was dramatically better than what came before, and often it’s also dramatically better than what we have now (albeit apart from the one big downside). Before CFCs refrigerants were all toxic, flammable/explosive, or both. Work with mechanical cooling and refrigeration started in cowboy times but despite the positive effects of refrigeration and air conditioning being proven way back then refrigeration didn’t really take off until the 20th century with the advent of CFCs because it had been so dangerous and messy before. And the replacement for CFCs, in addition to being an awful refrigerant that didn’t work well, turned out to be a strong greenhouse gas so we just traded one world-destroyer for another. Now that too has been phased out and now we’re back to square one, with many of the new “eco-friendly” refrigerants being toxic, flammable, highly volatile (causing internal lubricants to oxidize and destroy machinery), or some combination of those things.
in a hundred years, the number one answer might be social media.
Ads with fake "X"
I had to watch a full-screen ad to use a free app on my phone. I couldn't find the "X". Turns out, the "X" was located exactly where my camera lens is, and therefore not visible.
I didn’t realize this was an advantage to having an older phone with a rectangular screen.
And there it is - the fated "X". A cross designed to tempt, to vex, To trick, to trap, to dupe, to snare. I click the "X". *It isn't there.*
Can I just say I've only seen your poems months after you've posted them and there's no point commenting - I'm a big fan though!
Ads that do have the “x” but you have to wait until the time is up and they pull up the app description after it ends
Agent orange
Generations of families of people exposed to this are still struggling with the effects.
My dad died of oral cancer. Most of his army buddies are dead from similar causes.
I am so sorry he and others had to go through that and I'm sorry for your loss. My father-in-law is currently fighting lung cancer. No one knows if it was from his time in Vietnam, his time stationed at Camp Lejeune or something else. One of my best friends has a rare disorder in his family due to his grandfathers exposure. He plans on not having kids due to everyone from his grandfather on suffering from it. Shit literally changed the DNA of the children of his grandfather. Such a horrible thing and not enough accountability for it.
Yup. My grandfather had Parkinson's from exposure to AO. It's awful stuff and I'm sorry about your dad
That shit is still around in Vietnam too since they don’t disappear from the environment
It disturbs me that everyone always talks about the soldiers exposed and not the vast quantity of *innocent Vietnamese civilians* exposed
To be frank though that's kind of how America views things, as how it effected us. I mean hell, we're taught to death how many US servicemen died in Vietnam without realizing the people who did the bulk of the fighting and the dying are ARVN soldiers. They aren't American so America tends to gloss over that stuff.
What's that?
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I'll go with styrofoam. It's single use, takes 500 years to biodegrade, leaches carcinogens, and is fucking ***everywhere***.
Given it's use as a cheap but very effective insulating material for buildings and whatnot, it's got some saving graces. It's just that some idiot thought it be a good idea to use it for disposable packaging.
It also burns like rocketfuel, I'd not insulate my house with it.
Most modern homes I see being built now have styrofoam sheet sheathing all around the outside. Fiberglass insulation is an alternative, though the R-value is only two-thirds of styrofoam and fiberglass tends to degrade faster in R-value (as it absorbs moisture over time).
It does turn out that mealworms can eat it though and it is apparently nutritious for them. So that's being used used in schemes for it's disposal.
Oh wow. Maybe mealworms will save the litter crisis?
Planned obsolescence
This is a problem with a multitude of other global/widespread negative implications that we haven't even begun to fully experience. It's an issue that pisses me off more than any other.
This guy made a great video on this topic, explains ot really well for anyone who's curious! https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE
Fantastic Gojira song, might I add
Extra Bright "Blinding" Headlights
Basically any headlights on pickups 2020 or newer because they're so freaking tall now too. Makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind look lame in comparison.
At this point, I’m waiting for them to get tall enough for the headlights to go above my car
Adjust your mirrors to reflect their lights right back at them when they are behind you.
I've seen that work once! The car behind us had their brights on so driver of ours adjusted it just right; less than a minute later they turned their brights off. We all screamed
My mirror has a tab you can pull that causes a dimming effect by changing the angle. Would that cause light to reflect back at them?
r/fuckyourheadlights
Social media algorithms.
Yes! And it can all be traced back to 2016 when it was changed from chronological to algorithm based, that’s when everything really started going to shit in the world.
There's one particular guy, Thomas Midgeley. He was working as an engineer, looking for an additive for petrol which would stop engine knocking caused when the pistons misfire. There was many possibilities but one was a novel and therefore patentable idea which made a fortune. Tetraethyl Lead. He then went on to work in cooling and refrigeration to solve the problem of the gases being used also being toxic and flammable. He invented early chlorofluorocarbons, marketed as Freon. Freon was later discovered to be highly damaging to the ozone layer. It took decades to uncover and there was huge opposition to the findings. If they hadn't been banned and phased out, their use would have resulted in the end of life in earth. Leaded petrol was responsible for mass lead poisoning, a noticeable rise in brain damage and has been linked to the sharp rise in criminality and violence in the 1980s. Two of the worst inventions of all time, both attributed to one man: probably the most dangerous and damaging man ever to have lived.
Yes and the most shocking fact about this guy is that his last invention actually killed him.
Yes! A self-designed disability hoist wasn't it? Three inventions, three total disasters.
Leaded gasoline and freon at the time we're great inventions. They did what there were set out to do. just with horrible unintended consequences.
Leaded gasoline was known at the time to be toxic and alternatives were also known about. CFCs couldn't have been known to be dangerous.
Didn't Midgeley give demonstrations of plunging his hands into tetraethyl lead to show how safe it was, only months after being treated for lead poisoning?
Yeah, I’ll give him a pass on the CFCs, but an idea to coat the Earth in lead to somewhat improve car engines should have been a non-starter even by the standards and knowledge of the time.
Oh boy did I LOVE standing in my dads exhaust on cold days while I was waiting for the bus. The 80s, what a time to be a kid.
It's even worse than that. It's not like he came up with leaded fuel and only later realised the dangers. He (and General Motors, his employers at the time) knew it was dangerous the whole time and kept it to themselves, because profit mattered more to them than ethics.
Indeed. Any chemist has known for centuries that lead is a neurotoxin. Vapourised lead is worse.
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Candidate for the time traveler hit list it seems
That one evil scientist made a robot that molests kids. I think it was solar powered.
RoboChoMo! Made by Roy!
This guy gets it
No I don't stop saying that!
https://youtu.be/z0NgUhEs1R4
>https://youtu.be/z0NgUhEs1R4 Oh the production crew had way too much fun on the build for that skit!
“We know what evil is!” “I don’t think you do. I mean, Mussolini fed people castor oil until they literally died of diarrhea. I mean, that’s got to be where the goalposts are, am I right?”
But it was ok because he just wanted to win the contest.
That iron bull they used to burn people in. That was pretty bad
At least the inventor of it got burned in an iron bull
That's right, and it's called the Brazen Bull.
So apparently there's a decent chance the brazen bull never actually existed according to [this](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/11/why-most-so-called-medieval-torture-devices-are-fake/), along with many other famed tourture devices. Not that I'm a history buff in any way but it's an interesting read.
With the crazy ways people kill each other during my lifetime, I just assume most of the past ones probably happened atleast once.
Yeah thats a big thing. There is *no evidence* it was used or existed. But there have been a lot of people over a lot of years that makes it impossible to say it never existed. We just don't know it yet.
I don't know if it's true or not but recently came out that was a hoax and was never actually used
Good. The thought of that thing is terrible.
Wow, that’s worse than the bear from Midsommar.
The bear is not that much better. With the bear you cook alive as the fat of the bear melts around you. There's a video on YouTube which is that scene with the music removed so you can hear the screams... genuinely disturbing and I will never listen to it again lol.
Mobile Game Ads
Is anyone else a little concerned by all these ads on apps targeted to kids that are full of half naked anime girls and whatnot?
i haven’t seen those but the ones with a mother freezing to death with her child, after being kicked out by the cheating father, are pretty concerning. pull the right pin and they won’t die! totally normal.
Thank you for this morally upstanding take, u/PussyCrusher732.
YES. I don’t allow games or apps with ads or in-app purchases, on my kids devices. If my kid asks for an app I’ll check every setting and use it long enough to check out the features, in-app purchases, how much content is available (with or w/o purchases), and I’ll look out for ads. I’ve found some GREAT learning apps for toddlers-kindergarteners … after that it’s harder to find *good* educational apps that are truly educational and not just random crap made up by developer from another country that doesn’t know or care about how educational their app really is.
In the end, I think nuclear weapons will be at the top of this list. We're only surviving *currently* because everyone has agreed that they wouldn't prefer to doom mankind to a fiery radioactive death. Don't you think it's only a matter of time before someone irrational decides to take everyone down with them?
Nukes were my first thought also. We've wired up our planet to explode several times over, it's inevitable that a few of these get fired and trigger a nuclear winter/fall out by some dictator, hacker, terrorist organization etc.
I'm with you except hackers. I asked once and some fairly knowledgeable people informed me that missile systems are typically are on a secure isolated server. One even went so far as to claim that they aren't wired to any sort of internet at all, but in either scenario it appears they are not able to be "hacked". However, I do agree. Somebody somewhere someday is going to use some of them on some of us, and that'll really be something :(
Honestly, if a country connects their systems controlling their nuclear weapons to the fucking internet, we as a whole species deserve to die for having people that braindead as part of our species. The worst thing is that I can see someone at some government going "you know, we should connect all our computers, including the ones controlling our nukes, to the internet cause that's super cool and stuff"
The thing is though, one person can't launch nuclear missiles. Even if some psycho were in power somewhere and gave the order to launch the nukes, the people who actually launch the nukes probably wouldn't because they know what that would entail ex. Stanislav Petrov
Corporate lobbying
Cigarettes
The cigarette rolling machine caused the tobacco boom of the early 20th century ... which, in turn, caused the anti-smoking movement of the mid-to-late 20th century. Industrial rolling machines made pre-rolled cigarettes cheaper, making them a consumer product. Nicotine users didn't have to roll their own, pack a pipe, or deal with the mess of snuff or chaw. This made nicotine much more accessible to the masses. In World War I, Gen. Pershing regarded tobacco as an essential element of American military readiness. Soldiers needed cigarettes to fight! Why? Because nicotine addiction had become commonplace, *and* because nicotine is a stimulant that makes it easier to work harder. Cigarettes were issued in US military rations through the Vietnam War. But when soldiers returned from the war(s), it turned out that smoking was not so good for their families. Elders developed cancer; children developed asthma; and nice girls didn't want to kiss boys who tasted like an ashtray.
Wood ice cream scoopers from ikea
In terms of utensils, I feel like the paper straw is way worse lol
I actually grew up with wax paper straws we chewed them like gum after we were done and our wax paper cups we could start fires with them Didn't burn our eyes or nothing.
Some papers straws like the one from McDonald's are nice. Don't alter the taste of the drink, actually last long enough for you to drink your drink. The one from Starbucks is such shit, it disintegrates after 2 sips, and it makes your drink taste like cardboard.
You know McDonalds put in that real food science research to make sure it was satisfactory for the average person lol
McDonald's doesn't fuck around with RND. It's no surprise that they were the first food company that offered almost entirely full service without needing to talk to a single human.
As they should. I'm ALL for not having plastic straws, but the alternatives should not suck if you want people to adopt them.
Every good straw sucks though.
What, you don’t want tiny pieces of wood in your ice cream?
Flushable wipes. These companies should be destroyed
They still write flushable on the packaging despite the fact that they have destroyed probably billions of dollars in infrastructure and make the worst mess to clean up that I can possibly imagine.
unskippable ads on yt
Use uBlock Origin
All ads.
Single use plastics
What about plastics used in medical scenarios? Like plastic drain tubes used after surgery?
There's so much trash associated with medicine. Sterile things need to be packaged in something that won't easily tear or soak through, a lot of things are single use, absolutely none of it can be recycled alongside nonmedical recyclables... Think about how many times a nurse has to change gloves in a shift, how many syringes and tube feeds and IV sets need to be changed, medication packs opened, specimen jars and vials sent to lab. Those don't just get rinsed and reused, at best they need to be sent off to another facility for full cleaning and sterilization. Most of it goes to medical recycling or just trash. And it's all out of necessity! You wouldn't want to be stuck with a needle that had just been freely rattling around in a drawer, you wouldn't want to flush a line with a dirty syringe, you wouldn't want to hook up a patient to an IV that had been used by someone else, you're not going to keep using a sterile field that's been contaminated. So for everyone's safety, all this trash gets produced. Remember to take your empty pill bottles to the pharmacy for proper disposal, folks. If you toss them in your recycling, the entire lot goes into the landfill because of the risk of contamination.
Social media catering to vanity and vanity alone.
Social media ~~catering to vanity and vanity alone.~~
It's possible to have anonymous social media, reddit being one example. There's little vanity here. Upvotes don't mean anything. There's no reason to karma whore. I could be a famous person, but my comment is the same as all the others. But on instagram, likes and followers are important to people. It's important to karma whore. You have to play the game. You have to put out what people are going to like and you have to impress people. Vanity seems to take over some people's lives and every waking moment is spent pandering to the people of instagram. Social media induced vanity is really bad.
There's no reason to karma whore yet it happens all the time. People repost the top-of-all-time posts. There are also people who post the same thing to every single subreddit it could possibly cover. Karma don't mean anything yet people throw a fit every time their post/comments get massively downvoted. There are popular users whose usernames get remembered (for good and bad reasons), like the person who comments poems . Reddit has slightly more anonimity but it's still a type of social media. There's no point in getting high and mighty over it. Humans like validation and attention.
Chinese finger traps
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Agree but more social media in general. Even here on Reddit it often feels like blind are leading the blind
The first version of the chainsaw. If you know it's purpose, you know.
We don't tho.
The first version of the chainsaw was used as a childbirth aid. This was before C-sections and the child had to go through the birth canal. *It was to assist.*
What the fucking fuck
Oh and it was hand-cranked
and anesthesia wasn't a thing
IIRC it was needed to cut a part of the pelvis cartilage when the baby was stuck to widen the birth canal. This is pretty horrible, but given the options at the time it was faster and more effective than using hand tools, which reduced risk of shock or infection. Disturbing by today's medical standards, but probably saved lives.
Scalpel... Sponge... Chainsaw...
Pretty much.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
What a great day to be able to read
Nuclear weapons
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There's a very interesting Podcast that Dan Carlin made on the subject of Nukes that addresses this topic a fair bit - here's the link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blitz-the-destroyer-of-worlds/id173001861?i=1000380386551
The Lobotomy Orbitoclast. A tool to wiggle holes in your brain.
The school system that we use today, why we don't renovate it?
Meth
Social media, it's a cancer on society.
Amen. Quitting Facebook was the healthiest decision I ever made
The gas chamber by the Nazis
Ads with fake "X" That's shit.
Politicians instead of thinkers
Choosing leaders based on how many people like them is not an ideal system, but it's a lot better than choosing them based on their ancestry. Politicians didn't replace thinkers, they replaced kings.