Recent comments in /f/articles

neku wrote

Reply to Year of Luigi on Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia by twovests

on the one hand it is funny that there is a wikipedia article for the year of luigi. on the other does wikipedia actually need an entire article dedicated to a nintendo advertising campaign or is it just edited entirely by dorks.

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neku wrote

Reply to No, heritability will not tell you anything about education policy by Moonside

i know that some people take freddie de boer quite seriously but every time i encounter him he's going off half cocked on some obscure technical point that serves nobody. plus he posted cringe on twitter like ten years ago. i don't remember the details of that but if i remember right it wasn't good

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cute_spider wrote (edited )

Reply to The Money Is In All The Wrong Places by oolong

I do not care that some of this money was made in "options" or "bonuses" or the other kinds of ways that rich people hide how they pay themselves. That's how much they made; that much money, which might have gone anywhere and to anyone in the way that money does, instead wound up stopping with them.

Memorizing this for the next time I talk about wealthy people with my boss or dad

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twovests wrote

Reply to Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe by oolong

In subsequent weeks, Hansen and her team ordered fresh blood samples from every supplier that 3M worked with. Each of the samples tested positive for PFOS.

It's common knowledge by now, but imagine how horrifying it must be to be the first person to know that all of humanity (and later, every animal blood sample as well) appears to be contaminated by industrial chemicals.

The only blood samples without PFOS chemicals were from ones before 3M created PFOS.

Shortly after learning these results, her boss took an early retirement.

Whe she didn't know was that 3M already knew the PFOS were harmful.

Starting at the second-lowest dose that the scientists tested, about 10 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, the rats showed signs of possible harm to their livers, and half of them died. At higher doses, every rat died.

Man.

I'm halfway through the article but this is a doozy. I knew everything was bad, but it's even worse than I thought.

When this article was posted on orangesite, someone shared an anecdote that I (through connection to 3M employees) had heard as well. (iirc it's also backed by stats, but i have no more time to post)

Related anecdote: I know someone who used to work in Oakdale, Minnesota, a town that 3M literally used as a PFAS dumping ground. I'm not saying it's normal for a kid to die of cancer at the local high school, I'm just saying it happens more often there than anywhere else I've ever heard of.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_Contamination_of_Minnesota_Groundwater

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neku wrote

Reply to Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe by oolong

articles like these always sort of stun me. it always comes out that like thousands of employees knew the risks and ramifications of their company's products in like 1950 and nobody said anything to the press or to the government or anything until it was too late. i can't fathom it. imagine knowing without a doubt that your company was essentially poisoning people and the environment and not saying a word because what, you collect a paycheck from them? why were the generations before us so fucking gutless? is it still like this today?

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