My favorite “we had to regulate this” is coal mining. You see, the larger a coal mine tunnel, the more work and time it takes. So smaller tunnels will be more profitable. So in some places they preferred smaller women and children, so they could make make smaller, easier tunnels. This one I only ever found one source on, but supposedly one mine owner noticed that snags on clothing were slowing things down in the narrow tunnels so he insisted on sending them in nude. Nothing more capitalist than naked coal mining children.
The fact that these fucks were not regularly dragged from their mansions and beaten to death blows my mind
as humans, our arguably greatest trait is the ability to adapt to almost any circumstance. unfortunately that also often makes us accept unacceptable living conditions because changing them involves too high of a personal cost.
That’s because you view things like this as isolated acts done by a few people. But don’t forget, only 1/3 of US voters tried to stop a man who openly declared himself a fascist, had already had a direct hand in the spread of a world wide plague that killed millions.
The “they didn’t know what they were getting into” excuse is no longer valid. And yet 2/3 of voters were fine with him being reelected . The reason those people weren’t dragged from their mansions and beaten to death was because of all the other monsters who were protecting them. The people who weren’t committing atrocities themselves, but benefited from it enough to help it keep happening.You’re not dragging Trump out and beating him to death. So why expect of your ancestors what you can’t do today?
I’m not shaming nor advocating btw, just explaining.
I realy would like to fact check you on this, but i will definitely not search for “naked coal mining children”. “Trust me bro” will have to do it for this one.
That miners often worked naked or partially naked is definitely true. That children, men and women worked together in mines is also true. If it’s legally allowed, then it’s going to happen basically.
That there were owners who preferred children/women over men, is probably false. They will have tended to do different jobs in the mines, but I can’t recall having ever read anything about a mine that preferred to not employ any male miners.
That the workers worked naked because of owner mandates is also going to be false, because those miners used to be paid according to how much they extracted, so there was no reason for the owner to have such a mandate. Instead it was the workers their own choice: some clothes hinder them in their work (heat, snagging, dust) + the job eats up clothes + they have to pay for their own clothes = they’re not going to be wearing many clothes at work.
Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.
Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA
-Food companies, basically.
I sang that in the style of Guns N Roses.
if Upton Sinclair was alive today he would flip his lid
Fun fact:
The precursor to the FDA was created during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. After the book was published, Roosevelt sent federal investigators to the Chicago slaughterhouses to validate the conditions detailed in the story.
The investigators reported that the conditions were worse than described in the book. And that was after the slaughterhouse owners got wind that the feds were coming and had everything cleaned from top to bottom.
Hard to imagine what “worse” looks like because the conditions detailed in the book are truly appalling.
Additional fun fact, The Jungle was meant to highlight the poor working conditions in slaughter houses, but the outrage was related entirely to the poor consideration for the meat that the public was eating.
Love the cover:
[Incidentally and entirely off-topic, it reminds me of the book(s) I’m reading right now: Josiah Bancroft’s Tower of Babel tetralogy - urban steampunk jungle, vertically]
I loved that series, enjoy!
The book cover has the same vibe as the album cover for Pink Floyd’s “Animals”, which also happens to be a scathing critique of capitalism.
such a good read. should be required by all.
Not sure if you intended this, but you can absolutely get what you wrote to work with the timing (and same rhyme sounds/pattern, basically) of the first few lyrics of Guns N Roses ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, with minor modifications.
Welcome to the Jungle,
where we play dirty games.
Food safety sure costs a lot,
so fuck the FDA.
We are the people who hate fines,
Whatever they may be.
If you got no money, honey,
We got your disease.
etc.
(Wonderful that some of the lyrics don’t have to change at all, nor really the chorus, yay internal bleeding.)
It gives “Watch it bring it to your n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees” an entirety different context! 🤮
I mean… the original song’s use of that phrase arguably references a woman basically being forced to give bjs to her dealer in order to get drugs she’s now addicted to…
All of this is terrible!
Sad thing, that original song would still apply - but now for safe baby food, carrots, or maybe a sack of flour. A lot of people are going to do things that they never expected to do.
We are going to live an cursed existence. 💩
I read the original to the tune without thinking about it!
That was my intention. Good on ya!
Sha na na na na na Shingles, eeeeek!
Good ole Bubbly creek https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbly_Creek
And that’s why the Americans (Trump) are deleting regulations. Because regulations will cost the Oligarchs money. They’re sending innocent people to El Salvador. They’re stopping food regulations, they are spreading lies about inoculations that save lives. What is the point? They’re decreasing the population. Why are they doing this? There’s going to be no one left. (I’ve had one too many martinis)
We used to add formaldehyde to milk too. Seems worse than chalk to me.
Whenever a corporation does something good (for example, make a charitable donation) rest assured it’s been calculated that the positive PR will make it financially worthwhile.
And it reduces its tax burden.
It decreases your tax burden in the same way that giving away all of your money to charity decreases your tax burden.
And in case people need it cleared up: Donating at a register during checkout also does not help the company on their taxes. Its the same as you donating individually except they get the PR for it.
I hate it when a store asks me to donate at the register. I’m probably spending more than I want to anyway, and I’m sure the store has a bigger budget than I do. I’m like “fuck off, stop guilt tripping me, and donate yourself.”
Them getting the PR for it is a financial inventive (future sales) even if it doesn’t save them money on their annual balance sheets. It is comparable to advertising.
Yep but honestly I still don’t think the benefit matches what they spend. Especially true since they often match donations or make their own large donations.
And after all, if they’re helping money go to charity by advertising it to their customers, I’m fine with them getting a little benefit in return.
That’s a wild misrepresentation of how write-offs work.
If your tax rate is 30% and you make write off a charitable donation of $100, your tax bill goes down $30. Spending 100 dollars to save 30 isn’t the key to riches.
There’s no way to save money through charitable donations.
How is that a misrepresentation? You justified what I said.
The implication was that they make donations for the write-offs. That’s not accurate, because it’s never cheaper to make a donation and write it off than it is to just pay the taxes.
Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.
I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.
He used to support tobacco companies, was a tobacco cancer denier, and wanted to end the embargo with Cuba so he could get their cigars cheaper. His cigar habit ended up killing him prematurely.
He deserved the cancer that killed him, but I wish his death had been so much worse.
When I told my parents how we got things like the 40 hour work week they were fucking mortified. Something seemingly so inconsequential, many people died for.
Yup.
People died to give workers rights and now we’re electing anti-worker presidents and giving those rights away. It’s sickening.
but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hell, I’d even settle for more people watching classic movies and TV shows. People need to maintain some link to the past to see the mindset of those who lived through fascism, wars, etc. and absorb what a society that rejects those ideas looks like.
Culture is a big part of our collective memory, and a society that can’t look back will just reinvent the same problems.
It would be cool if someone made a “transported through time” miniseries that showed exactly what living in that period with those problems was like. I think it could be very popular.
I can see that being an isekai manga. Say, by the person who did Spice & Wolf?
Oh, by the way, check out Barefoot Gen. It was written by a person who was a boy when the atomic bombs hit Japan. It covers the post-war period, including the corruption and day-to-day life of a shattered Japan.
Watch the show Connections. It was made by the BBC in 1978 and does exactly this, but more science focused. The show holds up really well.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.
But RandLover1988 on YouTube told me businesses have to sell good things otherwise competitors will come in and they’ll go bankrupt, unless there are too many regulations and too much socialism, which is why he got banned for saying the N-word on YouTube. /s
One thing people forget is that it was Big Food that wanted regulations.
After the book came out, it was almost impossible for American companies to sell their products overseas. Teddy knew that slapping a government label attesting to quality would mean that American companies would be able to make big profits.
This is why I am hoping Canadian and Mexican food standards may save us yet
So wait, are you telling me regulations actually help companies, too?
Well, it could in the long ago past, but we’ve outgrown the need for things like regulations, Unions, privacy…
No /s, because that’s what MAGats are already saying.
The U.S. won’t need regulations once the last of its trade partners gives up on it. We’ll be free to eat all the domestic lead and asbestos our dear masters deem necessary to feed us.
This is why I’ve been trying to point out that the ground swell around raw milk seems to have less to do with any critiques of pasteurization (there are no good critiques) and more to do with the fact that if pasteurization isn’t mandated as the only way to make milk safe to drink, corporations will seek cheaper options, like mixing raw milk with formaldehyde…
But if no one FDA checking anything don’t we have to worry about getting milk that says its pasteurized, but actually has an emulsifier and some poison in it?
Vote with your dollar! If tainted baby formula kills your kid, simply refuse to buy that brand anymore!
3 stars. I dislike that it killed my baby, but shipping was really fast!
- review found under a pack of rechargeable batteries
This, so much this…
I tire of people saying “VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET”, when the problem is far more systemic than a “couple bad actors greedy for the green”
At least they’re not american. At this point I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather buy Nestlé just to make sure Trump doesn’t get any tax dollars.
there’s like four companies in america. Soon to be 1 no doubt.
My favourite was hot dog and sausage vendors in big US cities, especially New York, in the early 1900s … they would take semi rancid meat, mix it with lye or some chemical to reduce the stench and bacteria, then mix it with red food colouring … a good batch was known as a mix that didn’t make that many people sick.
Sausage-inna-bun. CMOT Dibbler would be proud, no one else would.
they used to put brick dust in chocolate bars, and sawdust in bread
recently
My wife loves apple sauce, who did this to her
WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree pouches, Schnucks cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches and variety pack and Weis cinnamon applesauce pouches were recalled
it was actually the cinnamon in the applesauce being cut with lead to significantly increase it’s weight, thus it’s value. It was an Ecuadoran cinnamon processor called Carlos Aguilera
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5119336/cinnamon-lead-fda-recall-what-we-know
Thank you!
That should be okay now. I totally expect no subsequent tests with results showing any contamination.
I mean if you think about it, cinnamon is essentially sawdust right?
Not wrong…
Very wrong. Cinnamon is king.
Just in case you weren’t actually aware, that wasn’t a statement about the quality of cinnamon as a spice. It’s literally made frome ground up tree bark.
TIL
I just mean because cinnamon (the spice) is the bark of the cinnamon tree, which when ground up is a form of sawdust. Delicious sawdust, but sawdust, nonetheless.
Fun fact: Cinnamon (Cinnamomum) is the genus not the species. There are Ceylon trees and Cassia trees and a bunch of others but no specifically Cinnamon trees.
TIL. Fascinating!
Ha, I did not know that.
Spices lose their flavor over time. Your’s are too old; throw them out and replace them.
Or at least start using a fuck-ton more than the recipe calls for until you use up the old stuff.
You’re missing the point. Copying what I wrote above:
I just mean because cinnamon (the spice) is the bark of the cinnamon tree, which when ground up is a form of sawdust. Delicious sawdust, but sawdust, nonetheless.
Oh shit, I got whooshed. 😳
Ackshually, sawdust isn’t bark. It’s wood.
Wow, this is a very good point because as we all know it’s impossible for a saw to cut bark.
So, then “sawdust” just becomes anything that a saw can cut?
Anything that’s part of a log. That includes bark, I imagine.
It’s also HEAVY, so something light sold by weight just needs a liiiiittle lead to be a lot cheaper to make
This is what caused that pet food scare back in the 00’s. Some Chinese manufacturer realized that they were being paid by weight, not volume, so they added heavy metals to their cat food and it poisoned a few cats here in the US.
China executed that guy btw.
Wasn’t there lead found in other spices, too? Like tumeric or something?
Yep!
Copper sulfate used to be added to canned peas because it turns green when it oxidizes, making them look greener.
enough will kill a passion
Those poor, poor passions!
Same logic with antivax people.
1000% my first thought. These nutjobs who say “just get some fresh air” are coasting upon the millions of dead and buried who paid the price for us to have longer healthier lives. Strict stringent food safety. Mandatory vaccines without exemptions.
“Measles doesn’t kill anyone!”
No you fuck, measles doesn’t kill anyone TODAY. That can change real fast.
