This is almost exactly what the article says doesn’t work. We’ve been laying the bulk of the responsibility on average consumers–figure out your consumption, find better options–before insisting that corporations make better options available for consumers.

So, why not try putting some of the responsibility on the largest polluters first for a change? Jail or prison time instead of fines for the decision makers knowingly contaminating environments because it’s cheaper than doing things right, high corporate taxes to fund environmental remediation for the damage already done, penalties for continuing to produce goods in wasteful and unnecessary plastic packaging, incentives for work towards innovative, environmentally sound materials science and engineering. We haven’t tried any of these things, we’ve just been telling consumers, “There are better options out there, use those. It’s your responsibility!”

Like geez, it’s not as if consumers will stop bringing their own bags to the grocery store or using the reusable straws they already bought. Lots of us are already invested in doing better than we have in the past. We can continue to educate the public while also updating our legislation to drive corporate participation in the process. Why wouldn’t we?

We need more alternatives to plastic, not the same number or fewer. Why wouldn’t we make sustainable materials from waste streams to replace the environmentally harmful ones that we banned ten years ago? Your preferences are one person’s preferences. You’re free to continue using apricot scrubs and baby oil, nobody’s trying to take them away from you. However, I would really like to find an environmentally sound, no-fossil-source, physical exfoliant with greater uniformity than the ones you like. (As an aside, milled pits, seeds, and shells (like nut shells) aren’t good exfoliants for human skin. They’re effective scrubbers, but the milling process leaves a lot of points and jagged edges in the resulting product which causes small tears in the skin barrier, reducing its ability to keep your insides safe from the outside.)

It kind of sounds like you’re neglecting the need for continuing innovation in materials science and engineering. We’re not just talking about replacing the horrific plastic microbeads in cosmetics, we’re talking about doing the work to develop entirely new materials that could potentially be used across a wide range of industries. Relying on pits and shells is definitely not the way forward here when we could be developing replacements for plastic wrap and styrofoam using stuff like food waste, fungi, and seaweeds.

Starch is a polymer. Cellulose is a polymer. Chitosan is a polymer, as is chitin. They’re just materials made of long chain, repeating units. One of the ways we can “fix plastic” is by making materials that have similar properties out of naturally-derived stuff that has nothing to do with fossil sources, like plants, arthropod shells, and fungi. We leave a LOT of possibilities just lying around in food production waste streams. This is exactly the same as “replacing plastic,” and the only real difference is which version writers like to use in their articles.

I’m an American. I’m not one of the “good” Americans, though, since I’m disabled, not Christian, not capitalist, and not white. I’ve spent my whole life getting shit on as a third-class citizen by Americans steeped in American culture and public school education that has, at every turn, preached American exceptionalism and pulling oneself up by their bootstraps while totally ignoring every benefit offered to them and withheld from people like me.

I think that you’ve been lucky so far, but now that you’re being asked to sit the fuck down and listen while other people talk, you’re taking it badly. After a lifetime of privilege, it’s really easy to mistake being brought into line with everybody else’s equality for oppression; please don’t do that. It’s a bad look and sets you up to feel bad unnecessarily.

There are like 8 billion people on this planet and you’re one of about 330 million Americans. It’s pretty reasonable that your perspective isn’t the majority opinion, and that other people from other countries may also think their home is the best possible place to live and everyone else is an unlucky chump. Instead of dismissing all the critical comments as the kvetching of the jealous, unwashed masses outside your borders, it may help to look at them as nothing more than other people sharing their own viewpoints. Also, reading about events like Juneteenth, the MOVE bombing, the Kent State massacre, the Jackson State killings, and the Tulsa massacre may help you better understand why people from other places side eye Americans.

And seriously, the metric system is based on the physical properties of Earth and base 10 counting, not dead oppressors.

Mhm, yes. Quality dainty paws

Cleanlines in a world where too many people hold gross opinions and values that run contrary to every ounce of compassion inside you is pretty fucking punk

I’ve been playing so much Hardspace Shipbreaker. I’ve been a lot more dedicated to salvaging old ships than I have in actual career positions. Being a vacuum welder is awesome!

You can pretend that clinical significance is the gold standard measure of disability if you like, but you should recognize that you leave a MASSIVE gap in your effectiveness both as a diagnostician and a practitioner if you neglect all the masking your client has been doing to deal with everybody’s demands their whole life. Seeing that bias in someone pretending to treat me would be enough reason for me to walk out of the appointment and schedule with someone more capable and knowledgeable.

Yeah. It’s so fucking shortsighted to be like, “Eh, you did fine, look at your grades. You can’t be that disabled.” Like, you putzes, are you kidding me? If I hadn’t been spending all my mental energy clearing all these pointless obstacles, I might have cured fucking pancreatic cancer by now. It’s not just about what’s convenient for caretakers, teachers, and a health team, it’s about being denied the opportunity that most other people are handed without asking to achieve everything they’re capable of doing.

Ballionaire is a pretty great stoner game. It’s a pachinko roguelite–excuse me, autobonker

Replace the berries with tiny fists as a visual indicator

It’s a meeting of the minds

The information was there in front of Chloe and me this whole time, and still, we never realized

You say this like drawing blood from wild beavers is a trivial task!

Sounds more like a problem of failing to moderate bigotry, not a social issues problem. The existence of LGBTQ+ people who stream is not a social issue; assholes demanding they go away is

Costume Quest

Tbh, neither did I until I read it hahaha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann’s Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:

• As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York;
• As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English[1][2]) “to bully, harass, or intimidate” or “to baffle”; and
• As a noun to refer to the animal (either the true buffalo or the bison). The plural is also buffalo.

A semantically equivalent form preserving the original word order is: “Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison.”

Yeah, that’s completely true. It’s up to each person to decide what their standards are and where they draw the line. Like Roman Polanski anally raping a 13 year old and using his money and fame to leave the country and avoid the prison time may be across one person’s line while another person says, “Eh, what can you do? It was almost 50 years ago.” Also true, but that piece of shit is still alive and making money–from people who like his work at least enough to keep consuming it.

And we just threw them that pizza party with mandatory attendance last week!