There was a finding that all males have microplastic particles in our testes.
It became a meme.
Everybody laughed.
New meme overtakes old meme.
We forget about our plastic testes and move on.
But, is there any issues going forward, that anyone is aware of?
Can something be done? Possibly, who knows?
Will something be done? I wouldn't hold my breath.
This isn't the only potentially human civilization-ending event I first heard about this past month, and that doesn't include climate change that we've known about for literally decades, which many of the major players involved including the USA and China still don't seem to care much about even now.
There is a saying: "put your money where your mouth is", meaning that if people want to truly "care" about something - e.g. to be Pro-Life - then we need to actually get up off the couch and do something about what we otherwise claim to but don't really care. For instance we could... I dunno, wear masks when we feel the slightest hint of a respiratory illness coming on - cheap, trivially easy, and can save literal lives. And not to trivialize this, some people truly do care - even as I type this I'm listening to a livestream talking about restoration taking much more effort but yielding much greater results than merely shaming people by pointing out something bad.
However, and a bit ironically, Big Tobacco and Big Oil and Big Sugar and Big Tech and Big Plastic etc. all do this, investing great efforts into stopping efforts to try to stop them. Without equal or greater efforts in opposition... well, like I said, I would not hold my breath.
which many of the major players involved including the USA and China still don't seem to care much about even now.
without a matching drop in emissions, any country/business who participates in "green energy" is just doing propaganda
I would hardly call creating measured plans then executing the key steps towards making a stable jump to green energy propaganda, unless you're of the mind that risking severe damage an entire country's energy grid and in turn threatening possibly the lives of millions in premature actions is much more preferable. But I'm sure you're smarter than advocating for that
I'm just saying that creating green energy sources is not sufficient evidence that someone actually cares about climate change issues unless it has results
If you were pointing at literally any of the western nations I would agree, especially with regards to their naked hypocrisy in the fact that they've been further expanding their emmitive energy sources these past few years. But pointing out that China, while having large emissions due to both its large population and due to international Capital moving massive amounts of manufacturing to China over the past few decades, has not only been making its internationally promised goals towards decoupling from emmitive energy sources and switching to a green energy network but has been rapidly surpassing them to the point its leaving the entirety of the G7 nations in the dust.
The fact is that currently it is very difficult for China to lower its emissions as doing so effects not only its own country's economic productivity but the productivity of nations around the world. We saw an economic slump during covid due to China's anti-covid measures disrupting the production of commodities across all industries. Performing premature theatrical gestures would objectively harm more people than it would help, therefor holding such a criteria is ultimately idealistic and ethereally utopian in its logical process
alright that's fair, i was being too bitter and critical, perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good, and it certainly shouldn't accuse good of being propaganda
This isn’t the only potentially human civilization-ending event I first heard about this past month, and that doesn’t include climate change that we’ve known about for literally decades, which many of the major players involved including the USA and China still don’t seem to care much about even now.
To be fair, every damn headline is framed as civilisation-ending for clicks. Nuclear war is the only one I can think of that's both fairly plausible and could actually end it. Others are at various significant but lower levels of suck, or are just geologically rare.
In particular, climate change is going to suck hard, and I'll miss coral reefs, but some form of civilisation will endure. I know, someone's going to argue with me, and I look forward to making you move around the goalposts on what "end of civilisation" means.
Otherwise, yeah, you're just right. Humanity runs on apathy.
Yeah, the increasing likelihood of Russia or China using nukes to get their way was what I was thinking, especially with talk that the Western nations might be giving Ukraine the go-ahead to use those weapons to strike within Russia itself.
The plastic sperm issue actually doesn't sound so bad in comparison, bc fertilization treatments might work even if needing to extract outside of the body first. Overall, it still sounds less dangerous to me than e.g. a young woman living in Florida these days without access to money to leave the state for medical care.
I frankly have no idea what to expect about climate change at this point - we've blown far past all the targets and seem now to be in uncharted territory, according to what little I understand. I do notice far fewer birds, bees and other insect life, and I recall hearing how in the Antarctic a few months back there was a single day where the temperature spiked by +70 degrees F (~40°C). I can only imagine what that would do to e.g. Texas if it went from already 100 to then 170 degrees, even if only for a few hours. "Coral" is the least of the issue iirc, they were (by virtue of being sensitive) mainly indicators of the actual events, which we won't know until we see it, but scientists are saying that it's no bueno. Anyway, it seems like the changes could wipe out all mammalian life on the planet, but then again maybe not!?:-P i.e. it could be really bad, but it could be less so, we just don't know, and as you said, we mostly barely care ("we" meaning voters, so chiefly Boomers & evangelical Christians, as Trump and the Republican party's biggest bases).
And yet we seem to care a great deal about tHe EcOnOmY tHo - so it's a choice of prioritization to pick what "matters" to us.
Yeah, I've noticed the lack of insects, and also different plants growing than I remember from when I was a kid, not all too long ago. Every once in a while someone will be talking to me about the weather and how freakish it is, and they'll suddenly get quiet if I use the word "climate" instead of just weather, because they were (and maybe still are?) denialists.
The thing about mammals is that at least some - ourselves included - can migrate. If we have to, we'll set up banana plantations on Antarctica, and there's no known scenario where it gets that bad. Others are not so lucky, though.
Right, civilization might survive... maybe, possibly, hopefully, just like if we all were to play Russian Roulette. Still doesn't sound like a smart idea to me to mess with something known to be so dangerous.
At the absolute minimum the changes will be cruel, and hundreds of thousands of people are already dying from each of many individual events like hurricanes outside of their normal seasons, at intensities never before seen in a particular area.
So my thought: at the very least we could care? Except I was wrong - we can go lower, so much lower. We do have the satisfaction though that whatever comes, we brought it upon ourselves.
Think of the profits corporations will be able to make curing the impacts of this!
I'm guessing it's unknown. There's microplastic in testes, and it's not good for fertility. Getting that far probably required a lot of research. Understanding the mechanism and projecting it forwards will require way, way more.
It's irreversible at this point and nothing you can do except hope it won't affect your health.
It's only fair that it's happening to humans since we are destroying the planet.
it's gonna keep looping through the foodchain until some microbe finally figures out an easy way to break them down... fun stuff.
Preliminary testes have suggested it will be an issue, but we need another few rounds of testes to be sure.
Plastic babies with poseable figures; you'll be able to get them into any cool action pose for selfies!
Well perhaps the microplastics will reduce the overall fertility rate of the human population at large. Perhaps life itself will get so difficult for the average person, they'll be discouraged from having babies, and perhaps only then will the worst effects of climate change will be narrowly averted...maybe.
One of the worst things you can do to the environment folks. Don't bear children. Don't invite another being into this madness and suffering.
One of the worst things you can do to the environment folks. Don't bear children. Don't invite another being into this madness and suffering.
As is continuing to live so why don't you follow through on that line of thought here
Because I hold out hope that the living can change things. But only us, this generation, right now has that opportunity. Having children forces you to focus on raising them rather than fighting the good fight against climate change and the forces that keep it in place. Instead, I'd say your energy is better spent protesting loudly and relentlessly against the forces that enforce the status quo.
But hey, good luck trying to stay optimistic about that next generation not hating your guts as you raise them in an ever darkening world, if that's the gamble you'd like to take.
Idk about you but I watched the sopranos senior year of high school, and the premise of that show is literally “the party’s over”. I still love my parents.
No one hates their parents for having them.
The idea that energy spent protesting or engaging with work to change our global system is premised on two plainly false underlying ideas, that more time spent will result in faster or broader change (or any change at all) and that people can’t do two things.
My parents had hobbies, one of my childhood friends parents was always out at some protest or other.
Theres obviously room to work towards a better society while also raising children.
Idk about you but I watched the sopranos senior year of high school, and the premise of that show is literally “the party’s over”.
Didn't watch that show, but I'm assuming you mean "the party's over" as in the world is already fucked. Fuck that noise, even if it were, then the question only is "how hard did you fight to leave this world better than you found it anyway?"
I still love my parents.
Good for you.
No one hates their parents for having them.
Hard disagree from my own experience. I've met plenty of people across different backgrounds who hate or resent their parents for bringing them into this world, and then gave some half hearted "Your generation will figure out climate change" schtick when confronted with the naive question, "Why aren't we all doing something about it?" The hate and resentment comes when you realize they were selfish and weak. If they really wanted kids, why not adopt? Oh but MY genes. MY heritage is what matters. Why?
Why not fight the good fight and protest instead? Meh, it's just easier to live a comfortable life today than fight for a better tomorrow I'll never live to see. I'm still a good person! I raised a beautiful family of people who will likely make the same selfish decisions, but because I cared and looked after them and them alone, I swear, there's no way you can question my goodness!
Again, fuck that, hell yes I can and should question that bullshit, and break the fucking cycle of selfish idiocy. Not having more kids is the absolute least I can do.
Theres obviously room to work towards a better society while also raising children.
You live a privileged life for being able to fantasize that that is he case for the majority of people. Most people make little to no money, and had they not had children, might look at their shitty circumstances and had enough time and willpower to take a chance and upend the systems that oppress them. Instead, out of fear for their children's wellbeing, they bow their heads and accept increasingly shitty conditions, all the while praying that somehow life will magically be better for their children. No, you can't exert the kind of political pressure necessary when there are many more sociological pressures to simply feed your kids. The kind of pressure needed to actually change things requires your undivided attention and an exorbitant amount of your time.
The first like five minutes or something of the shows first episode has the main character explaining how he feels like he got into the mob after the good days, that it’s all downhill.
I brought it up to establish that the kind of thinking you’re doing isn’t new. The way it does that is not just by simply being 25 years old, but the context of that monologue: he’s going into therapy to address his feelings. Because therapy and the ideas that everything’s going to shit and you’re late to the party we’re already well established concepts by the 1990s.
So a 25 year old show can traffic in those ideas not as cutting edge thought, but as old well trod ground so much so that the very ways society addresses those ideas are ripe for satire.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t a winnowing down of the opportunities presented to Americans that coincided with the dot com boom and bust, just that the idea that things are going downhill isn’t anything new. The world has been ever darkening for decades now and as I said before, people don’t hate their parents for bringing them into the world.
Now you had a long response to this and I’m not going to argue that your experiences are wrong. We have different experiences though, and we have different conclusions about them.
It’s not easy to adopt. The poorer you are, the harder it is. When you look into the process of adoption closer than “I want a kid”, there are some serious systemic issues that crop up. I’m not arguing that it’s not worth adopting, just that an ethical person considering adoption might end up working within the foster system instead. If that gives you an idea of how fucked the adoption industry is, that’s kinda what I was going for.
I would also question the tactical usefulness of antinatalism when it’s a strategy embraced by the bourgeoisie to extract more out of the downhill trend. There’s no need to pay people enough to support a family when it’s a completely legitimate choice not to reproduce (never mind that people who don’t have enough money to support a family never get to exercise that choice).
If the group destroying the future is making short term money on people not having kids, who’s really being helped by not having kids?
If our goal is the emancipation of the working class, how does embracing the destruction specifically of that class by giving up on reproducing that class move us toward that emancipation?
The amount of labor involved in social reproduction is significant, but has literally never stopped people from participating in collective action in the past. I can’t help but look at your argument that people can’t work to change society if they have to do family labor as absurd and ahistorical.
I mean, look at the panthers, their most significant program was feeding children.
I gotta take a moment and respond directly to your personal attack that I lead a very privileged life. I’m not gonna get into the poverty Olympics or dox myself, but you don’t know me or anything about my life.
Now you had a long response to this and I’m not going to argue that your experiences are wrong. We have different experiences though, and we have different conclusions about them.
Fair enough. I will say that the novelty or whether things haven't always been in decline doesn't denote that therefore, having children doesn't inherently contribute to worsening the climate crisis. It does. Faith that things will somehow be resolved by future generations and not by the present one is a lazy, kick the can down the road approach that I am obviously very critical of.
It’s not easy to adopt. The poorer you are, the harder it is. When you look into the process of adoption closer than “I want a kid”, there are some serious systemic issues that crop up. I’m not arguing that it’s not worth adopting, just that an ethical person considering adoption might end up working within the foster system instead. If that gives you an idea of how fucked the adoption industry is, that’s kinda what I was going for.
This is a very fair argument in which I am in general agreement with. I would also point out that the decision to therefore "have my own genetic kids" is not the right approach because, again, having children inevitably contributes to worsening the climate crisis.
I would also question the tactical usefulness of antinatalism when it’s a strategy embraced by the bourgeoisie to extract more out of the downhill trend. There’s no need to pay people enough to support a family when it’s a completely legitimate choice not to reproduce (never mind that people who don’t have enough money to support a family never get to exercise that choice).
If the group destroying the future is making short term money on people not having kids, who’s really being helped by not having kids?
There's no incentive to pay people enough whether they have kids or not. There are no laws incentivizing nor disincentivizing employers to pay their employees more based off of them having children.
The people in power are incentivized to encourage the general populous to have children for many reasons, but one of them is simply that, like your job and other obligations, having children forces you to divide your concerns away from protests and other forms of activism, as I mentioned earlier. You've criticized that my argument that the assumption that change can only happen with more immediate action ("faster"), more time spent, and with undivided attention (ie "can't do two things") is plainly false.
I'd argue that while beneficial societal change does happen slowly over time due to long uphill battles by protesters, that this change would have been more dramatic and rapid had people had had less obligations to keeping the bourgeoisie wealthy and with a fresh supply of future workers, and therefore had more time to devote to protests and activism. But I'll concede this is a hypothetical.
If our goal is the emancipation of the working class, how does embracing the destruction specifically of that class by giving up on reproducing that class move us toward that emancipation?
Well, to be fair, the original argument I was making was that the point of not having children was to leave the Earth itself better off than when we came to be on it regardless of whether we go extinct or not.
The decision to not have children in this context is an act of defiance, a breaking of a malicious cycle of contributing to a global society that has over generations come to the conclusion that modern comforts, societal hierarchy, and inherited cultures, are more important than ensuring the longevity of the human race and the majority of life on Earth as we currently know it.
The only ones who ultimately benefit from this endless cycle are those who have figured out how to exploit the majority of people and resources around them to their whim. The decision to not have children isn't a decision to somehow deprive the powerful of anything, other than future participants in their game.
The amount of labor involved in social reproduction is significant, but has literally never stopped people from participating in collective action in the past. I can’t help but look at your argument that people can’t work to change society if they have to do family labor as absurd and ahistorical.
My argument is that the change a person can make is proportional to the time they can devote to it. Protests that are most effective are literally the ones that occur where people have nothing but time. They walk out of their jobs, they refuse to work, and yeah, they take time away from their families to do so. All I'm saying is that if you have no children you're obliged to take care of, you have more time and energy to devote to the cause, and can thereby make for a more effective societal movement.
I mean, look at the panthers, their most significant program was feeding children.
Good example, and I won't argue it. As mentioned previously, my take that these movements would have been more effective had they had more time had they not had children is a hypothetical that I strongly believe to be true, but has no historical basis because the majority of people end up having children.
That said, I'll concede that having children of your own often inspires those who would otherwise not have participated in social activism to do so. I would contest that you can achieve more by fighting for the children of others than by dividing your attention between raising your children and fighting for their future.
I gotta take a moment and respond directly to your personal attack that I lead a very privileged life. I’m not gonna get into the poverty Olympics or dox myself, but you don’t know me or anything about my life.
Fair enough. You're right and it was mean spirited and wrong of me to do so. I'll not make excuses and simply apologize for doing so. I got overly heated up in making my argument, and should have never made it about you personally. I apologize.
so if the whole argument youre making is that people shouldn't have children because then they have more time to devote to fulfilling the campsite rule is anyone actually doing that?
Is there any indication that the time and energy people spend on families wouldn't just be spent doing anything else in the world?
if you want some good examples of incentives for the bourgeois classes to encourage antinatalism, look at wages by sector in any country that has a low replacement rate. businesses benefit in the long term from hiring immigrant workers and temporary workers because there are fewer native workers who tend to demand higher pay and benefits.
the word in biology for reproductive strategies where many individuals work to ensure the success of others offspring with no intention of reproducing themselves is "eusociality". it's what bees and ants have.
Nah, it's mostly anti plastic propaganda. However, being fat and sedentary, now that is a real problem.
There are microplastics in your testes perhaps. Not mine. I'm built different.
I finally got a good paying job, by wife is starting to move up at her's and we could finally afford to have kids (with support from our families) Then plastic balls memes start
*removed externally hosted image*
that so?
