This is a case where you have to be careful about cause-effect order. I assume that Tiwanese people that are heavily opposed to China are more likely to avoid tiktok. But of course, it’s been shown that tiktok tends to show more pro-China “content” as well, and likely influences the opinions of its users.
To be fair, this was originally the point of plastic. The primary point of plastic today is that it is an extremely cheap material that you can mould into pretty much any shape.
Need a bag to carry stuff? Plastic.
Packaging for toothpicks? Plastic.
Spacers inside an electric circuit? Plastic.
Packaging for clothes? Plastic.
Fake plant? Plastic.
Part of the problem is that we’re using a wonder-material that lasts forever (plastic) for a bunch of mundane shit where we don’t need it, because that wonder-material turns out to be the cheapest material around as well.
If you read the article, you’ll find that they claim it’s broken down into something which is processed by naturally occurring bacteria. I would have preferred that they linked to an actual research article for details, but this is explicitly not one of these “degradable” plastics that just dissolves into microplastic.
Without checking out the details, I can say with fairly high confidence that a material that will be degraded by a sodium chloride solution will most likely also be degraded by other electrolytes as well.
However, the electrolyte-concentration in drinks is much, much lower than that in seawater. And if it can’t be used for electrolyte-containing drinks, it could be used for water bottles.
Maybe we could use this stuff for umbrellas too? My major concern is what this new material is broken down into.
And the glory of the interwebz is that those 5000 people are bound to find each other and start a movement around it, where just 25 years ago they would have been laughed out of the local pub as a raving idiot…
I don’t need any authority to say something can or can’t be an addiction in order to recognise when someone has an unhealthy addiction to something (is unable to regulate their consumption of said thing to the point where it significantly negatively impacts their life).
Just like you can recognise that alcoholism can be a problem without being a complete prohibitionist nutjob, it’s possible to recognise porn addiction for what it is when you see it without being a puritanical nutjob. I don’t have any intention of shaming anyone for watching porn, I’m just pointing out that I’ve seen for myself that it’s possible to develop an unhealthy relationship to porn. As with any other addiction, there’s usually an underlying problem that has nothing to do with the subject of the addiction.
While I’m aware that pretty much everything I do online is tracked, the stuff that’s shoved at me the rare times I open instagram or facebook indicate that they are clueless about how to get me to stick around. They throw a bunch of shit at the wall (mostly soft-porn or comic strips), but never anything that makes me look twice.
Porn addiction can be an actual problem though. Not to downplay that puritanical shitstains should shut up about porn, but I know someone who had actual problems with porn addiction.
As with all other addictions, it becomes a problem when it starts taking over your life. If you start missing out on things (dropping plans with friends/family, etc.) and/or develop economic problems because you can’t regulate your consumption, it’s becoming an unhealthy addiction.
I pretty much never use instagram, but I follow a shitposting channel there, and every now and then I go into instagram to show someone some old shitpost.
I’ve concluded that the instagram algorithm is frustrated as fuck from not understanding anything about me, because I never click or hover on anything it shoves in my face. However, it’s concluded that I’m a horny dude.
The result is that it floods my feed with a bunch of soft-porn. I have no idea where this all comes from, or who is spending their time uploading a bunch of soft-porn to instagram, but there’s an absolute shitload of it.
Whatever anyone China-affiliated says they’re not doing, it’s a safe bet that’s exactly what they’re doing.
I’m not going to push any conspiracy theories, but I believe the strongest evidence pointing towards Covid-19 originating in a lab is the Chinese government insisting that it didn’t, while prohibiting anyone not under their control from investigating. That doesn’t mean it did originate from a lab, but if anything, that’s what it points to. To be explicit: My impression is that, currently, most available evidence points towards natural origins. However the Chinese government has done its best to convince me otherwise.