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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: December 4th, 2024

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  • Let me introduce you to the racist motive

    The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

    • John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s Domestic Policy Cheif. (Harper’s Magazine)


  • Not so. There are those that believe objectivism is the true way of viewing the world. They view that we are on the way to understanding the universe as it truly is, that human perception will not pose an obstacle to that pursuit, and that there will eventually be one true method of viewing the universe in its entirety that is yet to be discovered. Constructivist beliefs directly oppose that idea, since all science is a man-made construct that can only approximate reality in their view. Constructivism also, then, leaves room for multiple theories coexisting because they provide better utility and insights in different circumstances. In the example of Einstein’s Relativity vs Newton’s Physics, we are talking about an older theory and the theory which usurped it because it was more accurate, and the general expectation is that another theory will be accepted down the line which will be better than both. That expectation is fairly objectivist, since it assumes there is a true model which we just haven’t discovered yet. Constructivism does not make that assumption, since the universe likely does not fit neatly into our constructions in its image.

    The other thing, is that constructivism challenges scientific realism to some extent, in that it challenges the existence of many things which we cannot directly observe, such as quarks, proteins, particles, etc… because “how can we actually confirm these things exist, when we physically can’t observe them, and the things we’re using to show their existence are constructs made up by us?”

    This topic is still very much in a state of debate that has very strong implications around the philosophy of how science works and how it should be conducted. That’s also just talking about constructivism’s implications in the physical sciences. Things get much hairier when you start looking at the social sciences, where biases and perception are extremely influential on what we discover. Constructivism directly challenges the attainability of scientific objectivity, which has serious implications across all fields of science.



  • This guy should learn to view science more like a constructivist. Pretty much everything in science is just something we made up that mostly aligns with the natural world, and just because one model is less accurate than another does not mean it’s no longer useful.

    We didn’t abandon Newtonion physics when Einstein’s model was accepted for instance, since Newtonian physics is still very useful, and much easier to use compared to others.

    Edit: changed language from ‘proven’ to ‘accepted’.




  • All of these factory spaces have metrology departments for confirming product specifications are in spec, who are likely to have training and expertise in defect isolation (as in finding where a defect is coming from). I have very little doubt that they would be able to create/purchase the necessary tools for checking for microplastic dispersion within the factory floor and isolating the key locations that need fixing. That is, if regulations started requiring and testing for lower microplastic content.


  • “We expected the opposite result,” Ph.D. student Iseline Chaib, who conducted the research, told AFP.

    “We then noticed that in the glass, the particles emerging from the samples were the same shape, color and polymer composition—so therefore the same plastic—as the paint on the outside of the caps that seal the glass bottles,” she said.

    The paint on the caps also had “tiny scratches, invisible to the naked eye, probably due to friction between the caps when there were stored,” the agency said in a statement.

    This could then “release particles onto the surface of the caps,” it added.

    OK, so maybe a minor change in how these bottles are filled and sealed could end up fixing the issue. There’s clearly some issues with soft drink assembly lines, and if these can be addressed, then the overall amount of microplastics can be mitigated. Seems like we need to start phasing plastics out of every step of manufacturing if we want to end microplastics in food and drink.