The amount of Lemmy (previously Reddit) commenting I do has legitimately improved my writing, I think.

Vocabulary is more from reading, or listening to other people who use “big” words. Although, if you just read, you make a fool out of yourself with how things are pronounced (like I do).

Hot take, but “small” words are better anyway, unless you need technical jargon.

At least they make toilet seats out of plastic, now. I grew up with one that was porcelain. (Or painted metal, maybe? Pre-plastic, heavy and absolutely bracing in the winter, anyway)

Yeah, once it’s your choice, instead of what gets brought home in spite of you, suddenly a lot of grown up stuff gets interesting.

Which is good. If all the stuff I have to worry about now, was as boring as it was then, it would be catastrophic.

I was blown away when I started looking around at used furniture. It’s functionally the same as the new stuff, but a digit or two cheaper. Nothing else depreciates quite the same way, and for so frivolous a reason.

When you’re talking antiques, it probably goes up again, but still.

Actually, not one of those men personally gave birth out of wedlock!

/s, although it’s technically true.

Scare quotes, probably. This is a very particular sense of “getting”. Like, otherwise you could read this as a synonym for “receiving”.

“All people against my side are exactly the same and interchangeable”

TBF, there’s a left-wing version of that too.

Just like you’d be shocked what the Bible says about mega-rich pastors. Or what Judaism says about the magic wire around a segment of New York.

For anyone that was never in a religion, basically, people earnestly follow it, but in order for that to be possible, whatever “it” is tends to be flexible. The scriptures or oral traditions are reinterpreted however works for the cool, powerful people.

Eh. They aren’t blocking Saudi ports, and are intercepting things on the Saudi’s behalf.

Unless you mean that as a prediction for the near future, or something.

Yeah, 637 chunks under 50 um, assuming that’s a particle count, isn’t very much at all.

I’d assume the ideal level of micro plastics in my food is zero.

Unfortunately, that’s not true of pretty much anything. Mineral dust, microplastics, insect parts, dead fecal coliforms… Earth is a chaotic place; unless you work in semiconductors, nothing is truly clean (and if you do, you know it’s still mostly an aspiration). For food handling purposes, the requirement is that the amount of contamination is far, far smaller than you’ll ever notice, and everything harmful is dead.

Like, in chemistry, I’m pretty sure you never get a 100% pure reagent, right?

Somewhere else in this thread, I bring up plastic utensils. You know how stuff wears down after a lot of use? Yeah, that’s because every contact with something basically knocks off a layer of material. Usually we act like that material just vanishes, but of course it doesn’t. A good chunk of all microplastic out there is actually tire rubber from roadways.

Of course, factories use plastics as well, and the places where the raw ingredients come from have exposure to plastics, and it’s all transported along those road networks.

We made a material that ~never biologically breaks down. That makes it great for long-lasting packaging, infrastructure and tools, but it’s also going to be circulating around the environment forever. As a chemist, you know it’s kind of been a big deal and helped a lot of things. Hopefully it’s too too bad for us, because going back would hurt, and it wouldn’t clean up what’s already out there.

No? If no plastic is in the chewing gum base, then it’s not from the chewing gum base.

You didn’t even get past the title, apparently. If the methodology changes everything, do share. (I mean it that this was helpful, though)

You could say the background amount that just got in as a contaminant is too much, which is a stance you can take, but isn’t what we’re talking about.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the details.

but piefed is gaining users faster than Lemmy is losing them.

Wonderful! Glad to hear it. The last thing I heard was just the slow shrinking.

It can’t really go wrong, since it’s an open standard. Slow, steady growth will get us there eventually. Or intermittent growth.

Unfortunately fediverse.observer shut down recently so it’s hard to find the past stats these days.

Boo!

This whole thread seems like a paranoid psychosis symptom. Because you stopped your meds, you’re no longer feeling well. You just can’t tell.

I may or may not know “the business of psychiatry”, but your psychiatrists definitely do. So do mine. I’m not trying to be mean, here, either.

Surprisingly, synthetic chewing gum released a similar (p > 0.8) number of microplastics as natural or plant-based chewing gums.

So basically, there’s microplastics in it as a contaminent, like in actual food. The base itself conclusively doesn’t generate them.

Thank you for finding the research that confirms it empirically. I was just going off of material science, before.

Users in general, or active users? Reddit probably has tens of billions of inactive accounts.

If it is active users, and Lemmy-Piefed is suddenly growing, that’s great, though.

Depends on the plastic. Goo doesn’t flake, regardless of how close you look. They actually use that principle to keep dust out of semiconductor cleanrooms.

Although, if you’re really worried, you could just suck on a breath mint. Probably get rid of any plastic kitchen utensils, as well. Those definitely shed particles.

If you can put a plastic straw in your mouth…

It is kind of weird, but the reasoning holds. Certain artificial polymers may well be allowed in a lot of countries. The EU doesn’t even like mixing wine grapes, though, so maybe not them.

Microplastics specifically mean small bits, like hard plastic that’s crumbled. Gum is more like a really soft rubber. If you swallow it, then that’s a macroplastic. If you don’t, it’s fine, because it’s not really flaking off.

Like someone else mentioned, they can also use natural, but still inedible ingredients to provide the chewyness, not just artificial polymers.

A few years back, that really felt like where things were going. Now, everything’s coming apart; you can’t really have a quiet sleepwalk into the great benevolent authority watching everything, when it’s not clear which authority that would be.

Loud shifts into surveillance are possible, like sometimes happen after a new regime is established, but that’s a different beast. People will kinda know it’s fucked, even if they go along with it.

No, you should take your pills. Those aren’t the kind of pills you stop taking when you’re better.