Life with plastics
Some newsâŚplastics next
Coin tosses are 50/50⌠Or no?
Study found (47 volunteers did 350,000+ tosses - the brave onesâŚ) that itâs actually 50.8% favoring the side facing upward.
An automated machine found an additional bias of individual side weights. I presume side aerodynamics could also play part.
Wind energy rustling up!
A pleasure to see that global wind energy capacity is rising đ However, with current temperature records weâll soon have to resort to Peltier elements đ¤Ą
Therapy for Moana
Pacific islanders face a lot of barriers to seeking mental health help: societal stigma, culture and beliefs etc.
This results in suicide rates rising despite falling globally:
Three main reasons were named:
Collectivist culture: mental illness is stigmatized, can be perceived as âfamily shameâ or âfinancial burdenâ
Cultural beliefs: one should turn to religion, family or âwarrior spirit/mentalityâ and not do that âwhite people stuffâ
Being out of context: for the therapy to be successful, therapist needs to be in the know of beliefs, culture and societal quirks of the people in question. Itâs harder for smaller peoples/societies
Honey, letâs name our son Whitney Alexa GPT
Female newborn names had seen more experimentation in the US, stemming from society being patriarchal and religious âĄď¸ âonly ca. 6% of all the names in Judeo-Christian scriptures are female.â âĄď¸
Less patriarchal and religious society âĄď¸ more name experimentation and variety
Parents were (and are) worried that boys will get teased and bullied over âgirlyâ names - one example is âLeslieâ, a name that became seemingly âcorruptedâ on gaining popularity with newborn girls:
- Presidents, singles and stars/personalities frequently spur baby names spikes, although rarely prolonged. One more example of a name becoming âcorruptedâ is Whitney, a boysâ name turned girlsâ after Whitney Houstonâs rise to fame:
Plastics
Plastics production had grown from 2 Mt in 1950 to 400 Mt in 2023
Our world in data claims a lot more - 460 Mt in 2019. However, thatâs statistics of plastic use, not production.
Only 9% gets recycled đż
Around 0.5% gets to the ocean
Conclusion (IMO)
New alternatives to plastics emerging? Possibly, gotta be on the lookout on funding rounds.
Recycling at scale? No.
Reducing production at the expense of profits? Hell no.
New pandemics and insurgencies to correct increasing plastics demand? Why not đť
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Citation
@online{kogan2024,
author = {Kogan, Zakhar},
title = {Life with Plastics},
date = {2024-04-28},
url = {https://teleogenic.com/posts/240325-plastic-fantastic},
langid = {en}
}