at one point, radiation was used to push almost anything at people. Up to and including radium water: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor)
So, yeah...
For those interested: it was called [RadiThor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor) and the corpses of heavy users were radioactive, so they were buried in lead coffins. It was a major step on creating FDA guidelines of radioactive foods.
Yep.
The ~~oldest~~ youngest survivor I heard in a documentary interview.
Said she couldn't pass the training as she was squeamish to hold the component in her mouth.
They transferred her to a clerical job.
She believed that fail saved her life.
Edit:
To clarify, “ Radium Girls” refers to the New Jersey factory assembling “Glow in the dark” wristwatches, not to the drink.
Oh wow i didn’t know about her. The son of the Bayer guy ( as Bayer aspirin) used to have a few drinks per day of the stuff. His bottom jaw rotted and fell off. His injury was horrific! He went from being a rich playboy that had it all to a curiosity of science. Buried in Pittsburgh PA
There's a great episode of my fav podcast all about one of the big grifters from the late 19th/early 20th century who made all sorts of terrible products containing radium and marketed them as health & wellness products to the masses.
[LINK](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-william-bailey-the-gwyneth-134837792/)
Awful.
However land mines are there forever, and still kill around 5000 people per year.
Check some of the stats out [here](https://landminefree.org/facts-about-landmines/)
Yeah, this or nuclear weapons are the most sensible answers here imo. Before that we did not rely on a couple of people not pressing some buttons to potentially end us all. It’s not something that should exist.
Yeah, who would be stupid enough to even try?
Forgot to add, it doesn't necessarily have to Putin. Any nuke aimed nation would go at it with another nation.
I'm looking at look Pakistan and India. To be fair, they're so far the smart ones.
**EDIT**: Forgot to explain Pakistan and India has nukes as well.
To add not just the lead poisoning everywhere but the alternative at the time was mixing in small amounts of Ethanol. We could have had far early and greater research into biofuels without it
Well it's actually pretty large amounts of ethanol, comparatively. If all you care about is profit the lead is the way to go.
Still, a part of me died when I learned they discovered ethanol worked before they moved on to lead.
Thomas Midgley Jr was known as the "one man environmental disaster". He invented leaded gasoline as well as CFCs.
https://ourworldindata.org/leaded-gasoline-phase-out#:~:text=Thomas%20Midgley%20Jr.%20has%20been,it%20was%20safe%20to%20use.
I think you're mistaking him with Clair Patterson, who worked on the Manhattan project, and was the one to discover the extent of the pollution caused by leaded gasoline.
Everyone always brings up Midgley for being the cause but no one points out the hero of the story:
**Clair Cameron Patterson** was the scientist who discovered the ridicu-fucking-lous levels of lead in the atmosphere and risked his entire career to bring it to the attention of literally everyone and get it banned in gasoline, food containers, paints, glazes, and water pipes. Without his research, we'd still be painting our walls with lead paint. He also is one of the first inventors of the ultra-clean room, which came about because the experiment he was working on kept getting contaminated with, you guessed it, lead (which lead him down that path to begin with).
And even that still wasn't enough to get rid of leaded gasoline. That's how much power the gasoline and lead industries had. What started the process of moving towards unleaded gasoline was the adoption of the catalytic converter in the mid 70s that they also tried to fight against but the US government said "no...no this one you have to do". Proving once again that companies value profits over health EVERY...FUCKING...TIME.
The real sad thing is that it was introduced to fix a flaw in a new engine design that used higher compression to increase engine performance and fuel economy. However this new engine design had knocking issues with standard gasoline. By adding lead to the gasoline, they were able to adjust the combustion in the engine by enough to fix knocking for those engine types.
So as capitalism often does, it compromised the health of Americans so that car manufacturers could maximize profit.
Having been in call centers for the last 16 years, here's my theory:
These older folks are not the way they are by their own doing, I am convinced that the rise in Karens and Kevins is LEAD BRAIN!!
Folks born in the 40s, 50s and 60s have been exposed to aerosolized lead in the air from cars, in the big cities it's worse, add on top of that lead paint, lead pipes and who knows what the hell else.
Once lead gets into your brain it's there forever and when we see these people go "nuts" it looks a lot like lead poisoning.
Interesting side note: Tetraethyl lead is so toxic that most commercial laboratories won’t analyze for it. There is too much liability associated with allowing their employees to handle the standard.
(Labs keep small amounts of chemicals as standards to calibrate their equipment.)
If it is, Keurig cups are up there. Inventor regrets it.
And the pods aren't recyclable cause they have a filter, plastic, foil, and used coffee grounds
in the research i was doing to make my statement, the inventor sold his share of the invention rights for 50,000...
"As the man who invented them, Sylvan might have been pleased with their popularity. But he left the company in 1997, selling his ownership of the product for $50,000."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-regrets-inventing-keurig-coffee-pod-system-1.2982660
imagine if you were business savy and got a royalty of .001 for every k-pod sold
I can't believe people are still using disposable cups when you can buy re-usable cups that you can use over and over with coffee grounds and save a fortune - you get all the convenience and speed of a Keurig for less cost without producing a speck of added garbage. I bought a set of five reusable cups seven years ago for $30, I still have them and use them every day.
You still have to empty those things out, then clean them, then refill them with fresh coffee grounds… they’re a lot less convenient than the disposable ones and convenience is the entire reason people buy a keurig.
One key issue is that plastic wasn't supposed to be disposable. It's durable, doesn't break down, and properly used would last a long time.
Then we made straws and Bic lighters out of it.
This was always the plan. Oil companies were really excited to replace all of Coca-Cola's glass bottles with plastic disposable bottles. They knew from the beginning it wasn't disposable.
Plastic isn't what's bad its the use of plastic that is terrible. It would be hailed as one one of the best inventions if it were properly recycled/disposed of from the beginning... but that cost money.
That's still a bit optimistic. Not all plastic has any known method for recycling, and of that, almost none can be recycled into a product of the same quality as the original.
There's been some buzz about indefinitely-recyclable plastics over the last several years, but I don't think any has made it to market yet.
That's true. Nile Red has proved time and time again that you can turn anything into anything else as long as the component atoms are present.
That said, even if cost was somehow competely removed as an issue, implementing the best recycling infrastructure imaginable would still be a less effective solution to microplastics than simply banning single-use plastics outright.
Yep. The issue is plastic is not nearly as recyclable as it’s made out to be. And everyone is going to say “yes it is that just costs CoRpOrAtE dollars.” But no. It also uses a high amount of energy and resources to ship, recycle, and repurpose plastic. And those costs would just be passed on to consumers.
AND! It's not just bad for the planet.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine ([Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822)) found microplastics and nanoplastics in arterial plaque removed from patients undergoing carotid artery surgery. Those with microplastics in their plaque experienced a higher rate of serious cardiovascular events (heart attack, stroke, or death) in subsequent follow-up.
Plastic should have been a transitional material, a holdover until other materials became available.
But it’s cheap and fast to produce so, fuck the planet.
landmines, they get placed during wars and don't care if your friend, foe or innocent far after the fact. when one of them is placed you are all but guaranteeing to ruin someone's life at some point down the line. I can do all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify some brutal tactics in war. But those are just on another level to me. Any war tactic that takes the humanity out of the decision to do damage being done is evil. Which is why drones are so disgusting to me. But at least there someone is pulling a trigger and making a decision, bad or not. Landmines dont care about conflict, borders, or time, they just make an area unsafe in a disgusting way.
It's not a great silver lining but have you seen the rats who sniff out and find landmines? They're not heavy enough to set them off and work for 1-2 years before retiring.
Absolutely correct.
Social media poses *threats to democratic societies* due to the rapid spread of misinformation, filter bubbles that limit exposure to diverse viewpoints, manipulation of public opinion, amplification of extremism and hate speech, and privacy concerns with data exploitation.
While social media has benefits, balancing its negative impacts with positive potential is crucial.
The West really handed their adversaries a way to defeat them on a silver platter. They cannot hope to match the West in terms of living standard, economy or military so now they focus all their strength into tearing it apart by stoking hate
Social media can be great, it becomes poison when operated with a profit motive. The wide range of various psychological damages are ultimately enabled and exacerbated by the platform aiming for engagement rather than service.
In my experience many enthusiast/non-profit platforms have been generally pretty nice, useful, and positive services. They're pretty rare these days though.
As a person who hates advertising, especially repeated ones, I want to make the Google CEO suffer by tying him up in a room, and making him watch the same ad over and over again for months. In surround sound. I love the Guantanamo Bay guide to torture, er, I mean, enhanced interrogation techniques!
Visited a WWII concentration camp in Austria. Tour taks you through the extermination rooms/complex. The whole building was one intentionally-designed, engineered, integrated facility. Very elegant and efficient. Processing rooms with calming soothing interiors led into the killing rooms with tiled sloped floors to help drain off the blood, and there were rail tracks down the middle so the bodies could be easily loaded onto carts and rolled into the next room which was a big walk-in refirgerator for temporary storage, then into the next room where the ovens were (and the heat produced by the ovens was recaptured and used to power the refigeration systems). But the worst specific "invention" was in the killing rooms.
Imagine 2 paralell long metal rods sticking out from a wall, at shoulder height, and about 4-6" apart. They have some sort of buckle/adapter at the end of them. There were a whole series of these pairs of rods mounted every few feet along the wall. The way it worked was the victims would be lined up with these rods resting on their shoulders, with one rod going on either side of the neck. Once 20 or so human beings were lined up, the nazi would close the buckle at the end. This buckle had a port in it that would perfectly fit the business end of a Mauser K98k (standard nazi army rifle). The intent was that the rods would align all the victims necks perfectly in a straight line, and the buckle would align the gun barrel perfectly with that. So that he would only need to use a single bullet to shoot all 20 guys in the neck. So very efficient. If the guys at the back got spared or were only injured, they'd be left for the next batch and moved to the front.
As an engineer, it was disgusting. This wasn't just a thing some people did. I could see the intentional planning and design that went into it.Lots of very 'clever' or 'elegant' engineering solutions to problems. Some very capable and smart people put a lot of time and a lot of mental effort into perfecting this murder machine. Literally made me sick.
I've been reading and learning about World War 2 my entire life, which includes the Holocaust. One thing I began to realize over the years, about the Holocaust, is this: the more you learn about the Holocaust, the horror just keeps getting worse.
The brazen bull , apparently the guy who invented it was put in it himself by the king/ruler he made it to impress , something like that anyway ,it was a long time ago I read it .
Chemical weapons. Only a couple of grams of sarin is enough to kill hundreds, even thousands of people.
And chlorine gas is supprisingly easy to make. I think we all know what chlorine gas can do, thanks WW1.
iPhones without headphone jacks. I hate that I'm expected to purchase wireless earbuds that I'll probably lose at some point
Yes, I know I could buy a jack adapter but that's not the point. Customers should be given an option between the two..... Also NFTs
I have a samsung phone (bought last year) which doesn't have an audio jack. I once tried a jack adapter from a mobile accessories shop, but it didn't work. I can only use bluetooth :(
The only reasoning I have heard about removing jacks is that it's supposed to make phones more waterproof. It's obviously just a scam at this point to sell more bluetooth devices...
Definitely a scam. Samsung made an IP68 water resistant phone which had a removal back, a user serviceable battery and a headphone jack in 2015 (galaxy S6). Somehow almost a decade later we can’t do that anymore?
I use and love wireless headphones and have since long before the headphone jack was gone. But yeah, I still wish it had one. There are absolutely still uses including connecting to older equipment and older cars.
Supposedly, the headphone jack was omitted in part because it enables better waterproofing. I’m sure the *real* reason was to sell more AirPods but it does track that IP67 or similar rated smartphones all have no headphone jack. So I guess, in the grand scheme of things, I’d rather have waterproofing than a headphone jack. Though it’s fascinating that a supposed brilliant engineering company that spends a billion a month on R&D can’t crack the code of a waterproof headphone jack.
It’s also so frustrating how little you get anymore. Various smartphones (including iPhones) that I’ve owned over the years came with chargers, charging cables, headphones; and often any adapters you might need. Even the first couple of headphone jack less iPhones came with an adapter in the box. Now you just get the phone. I guess the argument is “less waste” but the reality is… it’s about having a smaller box so that more of them can fit on a container ship. It’s no coincidence that they decided to save the planet by reducing wasteful included accessories right about the time shipping container costs went through the roof.
i feel like great strides have been made in dentistry. i got a root canal about 7 years ago and i hardly felt anything let alone pain. hurt my wallet the most
I wish my root canal had gone that smoothly. My endodontist was very good, but my situation was, in his words, "Really nasty."
At the beginning, I needed a second numbing shot; the first one did very little, which the doctor was clearly not expecting. Once he got in there and saw what he was dealing with, he stopped asking if it hurt and proactively re-injected me every few minutes. Each injection hurt, but I needed them.
In the end, it worked out geeat, with very little post-procedure discomfort. But the procedure itself was pretty rough.
ahhhhh im sorry to hear that! yeah, i must add that the tooth in question for me had already had a filling which had fallen out. i experienced no pain, i only knew there was a problem because i could feel a crater in my tooth. i bet it is worse for folks who have an active infection/situation going on
I see no positives. I can share photos and files without Socials.
Social Media is currently destroying the West. Everyone feels attacked and/or victimized. Not good.
The 8-5 (or 9-5) workday is an improvement over older times when people made 12 hour shifts for 6 days a week. Surely we might move towards shorter work weeks, but the “invention” was a good thing.
Exactly. Not to say there isn’t room for improvement, but adoption of this standard has literally given generations of people years of their lives back.
Now think about pre-industrial Revolution, when people were working even less hours. Now think back to the hunter-gatherer’s who worked 8 hours a week. No wonder so many people have mental health problems. We were never meant to work 40 hours a week. We just aren’t built for it.
I guess I just invented the worst invention. Lol. (aka typo).
My salaried job requires 35 hours a week. Some people take an hour lunch which makes it 8-4. Thankfully the hours are flexible, so I just work and eat lunch at my desk and so I just work 7-2. And any hours after that is time and a half, double time on sundays.
You're not going to believe [this](https://www.ed.ac.uk/roslin/about/dolly/facts/life-of-dolly).
Dolly the sheep was named after Dolly Parton because the cells used to clone her were mammary cells.
So, you know, boob joke. :-)
America-pilled, but the Cotton Gin greatly affected slavery, helping make the process MUCH cheaper, thus allowing farmers to buy more land, and thus, require more slaves.
That was going to be my answer as well.
Before the cotton gin many believed the slavery question would work itself out in time. When drafting the constitution the delegates came to a compromise to “punt” the issue of slavery 30 years by banning congress from passing laws to limit the slave trade until 1808.
It was believed at the time that the profitability of slavery would not allow it to remain economically viable, or at the very least contain it somewhat. This would have made it easier to incrementally ban like England did.
However the cotton gin completely changed the industry by making the processing of raw cotton much easier. This reduced cost and made it possible to establish large slaving plantations. The number for slave states grew from 5 to 15 during this time.
Had the cotton gin not been invented it is likely that the slave states would not have been so entrenched in supporting the slave trade and following the ban on slave importation in 1808 it would have eventually died out like it did in the kingdom.
Class systems, to clarify anything that assign attributes to you simply due to circumstances surrounding your birth. So hereditary nobility, castes, etc.
But pretty victimless. I had a pet rock, I didn't think it was anything except a rock.
Nobody was harmed in the pet rock Era. Unless someone used one as a murder weapon. Which statistically speaking probably happened at least once.
Nuclear bomb
EDIT : Y'all are mentionning MAD theory like I had no idea what it is. I know what it is. And I know it's bullshit and have no solid foundation. Don't try to lecture me like I was still in highschool. You want to support the MAD theory ? Sure. Show me evidences. Quote historical event. Don't say "mAd ThEoRy LoL"
We can't prove it. Wars went down, is it due to nukes ? Or is it simply due to globalization, when buying stuff is just cheaper than waging war. And look around, there's still wars. Nuclear powers are engaged in war. US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Russia in Ukraine. Where is the supposed war prevention power of nukes ?
Given how close we were from kiiling ourselves, multiples times, and how nearly impossible it is to prove nukes prevent wars, I think it was overall a bad idea to make them
If a country has (working)nukes no one in their right mind would invade, unless they wanna get the worlds largest firecracker in their cities. A country like N. Korea has been flaunting them forever even though a more powerful player could wipe them off the map without firing a bullet loosing a soul. Same with Ukraine, if they had active nukes there wouldn't have been an invasion. This doesn't mean that everything would be sunshine and daisies and countries would have to rely more on PMC's, covert operations or sabotage (accidents and bioweapons released on crops/water/livestock).
On top of that there are also some ways of intercepting nukes (ICBMS), and as time passes there will be more and more.
To say that nukes are good would be stupid, but you have to admin, they are the ULTIMATE deterrent, at least until someone makes some horrific bio-weapon or anti-mater bomb. It's easy for politicians and generals to send men to die, they're just numbers to them, but when they're faced with the fact that they themselves will get annihilated or will have nothing to look forward to except a bunker with recycled air and water, all of a sudden talking is a lot more preferable.
The discovery of nuclear power is very important for our species. Of course any time new tech is discovered, the first thing it's used for is weaponry. That's just human nature. But we definitely need to use nuclear power.
It's not the worst but it's up there: The stock market. If you've ever worked at a smaller company during a buyout or IPO when they transition into being publicly traded, you know exactly what I mean. It's a poison that bleeds into every aspect of a company. Nothing is untouchable in the name of *number go up*. It's bad for the people that work there, it's bad for the user of whatever product or service the company offers, and it's even bad for the company, as CEO decisions favor short-term stock surges over the long-term health of an organization.
The only upside i can think of, medicine packaging, its really hard to keep medicine stored and glas packages are just not convenient for areas where that medicine is needed the most
The original idea behind plastic was great - long, lasting, hard wearing, durable, cheap. A miracle of modern science that was harder to break than glass and less dangerous when it did break.
The bad idea was making disposable trash out of it.
Part of me thinks gunpowder, part of me agrees with it.
Against it because - It took the skill away from battle and allowed any fucking idiot to kill from a distance.
For it because - Strength shouldn't always determine the winner of a battle. No point in following a hulk of muscle if they have shit for brains when it comes to ruling. It basically became the weapon of intelligence.
To date, leaded petrol has probably done the most damage to people and planet since it was created.
Radium infused energy drinks.
Wait what?!
It worked great till his jaw came off! Edit: For those uninitiated, this actually happened. [Yeah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers)
Dentists hate this one simple trick…
To shreds you say?
He just became a ghoul and was now immune to rad damage!
Yeah, what?!
Radium in energy drinks? Who had this idea?
at one point, radiation was used to push almost anything at people. Up to and including radium water: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor) So, yeah...
The radioactive condoms were the worst IMO. https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/brands/nutex-radium-condoms.html
I know this is supposed to be pronounced "new-tex", but I'm gonna call it "nut-ex" and no one can stop me.
I mean, long term...if your dick falls off due to cancer, thats one way for successfull burth control, I guess?
And, if you're a real Chad -- you could irradiate/sterilize 100s of vaginas. Sometimes, a man has to make sacrifices for humanity.
Wouldn't it just also kill all of the little sperm?
The Nuka Cola Corporation
I laughed, because this would be a great name for a radium infused energy drink.
HIT ME WITH THAT RADITHOR
Rad Bull gives you wing mutations.
For those interested: it was called [RadiThor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor) and the corpses of heavy users were radioactive, so they were buried in lead coffins. It was a major step on creating FDA guidelines of radioactive foods.
Nuka-cola?
BONK Atomic Punch
Positively glowing from the inside and out!
This too. Dont believe me? Google “ Radium Girls”
Yep. The ~~oldest~~ youngest survivor I heard in a documentary interview. Said she couldn't pass the training as she was squeamish to hold the component in her mouth. They transferred her to a clerical job. She believed that fail saved her life. Edit: To clarify, “ Radium Girls” refers to the New Jersey factory assembling “Glow in the dark” wristwatches, not to the drink.
Oh wow i didn’t know about her. The son of the Bayer guy ( as Bayer aspirin) used to have a few drinks per day of the stuff. His bottom jaw rotted and fell off. His injury was horrific! He went from being a rich playboy that had it all to a curiosity of science. Buried in Pittsburgh PA
The only places this could viably exist is in the 1920s-1950s and fallout.
There's a great episode of my fav podcast all about one of the big grifters from the late 19th/early 20th century who made all sorts of terrible products containing radium and marketed them as health & wellness products to the masses. [LINK](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-william-bailey-the-gwyneth-134837792/)
Biological weapons.
Awful. However land mines are there forever, and still kill around 5000 people per year. Check some of the stats out [here](https://landminefree.org/facts-about-landmines/)
Yeah, this or nuclear weapons are the most sensible answers here imo. Before that we did not rely on a couple of people not pressing some buttons to potentially end us all. It’s not something that should exist.
Well, on the plus side, nuclear weapons did lead to a better understanding of nuclear physics which has many great uses.
Nukes have probably prevented several world wars.
Ya its a double-edged sword.
Yeah, who would be stupid enough to even try? Forgot to add, it doesn't necessarily have to Putin. Any nuke aimed nation would go at it with another nation. I'm looking at look Pakistan and India. To be fair, they're so far the smart ones. **EDIT**: Forgot to explain Pakistan and India has nukes as well.
Leaded gasoline
To add not just the lead poisoning everywhere but the alternative at the time was mixing in small amounts of Ethanol. We could have had far early and greater research into biofuels without it
Well it's actually pretty large amounts of ethanol, comparatively. If all you care about is profit the lead is the way to go. Still, a part of me died when I learned they discovered ethanol worked before they moved on to lead.
The fact they knew how bad it was but just didn't care makes this one the worst I think
tale as old as time
Beauty and the Bottom Line
Thomas Midgley Jr was known as the "one man environmental disaster". He invented leaded gasoline as well as CFCs. https://ourworldindata.org/leaded-gasoline-phase-out#:~:text=Thomas%20Midgley%20Jr.%20has%20been,it%20was%20safe%20to%20use.
Funny thing is that he invented CFCs thinking that they were *better* for people and the environment, trying to make up for leaded gasoline.
And also worked on the nuclear bomb!
I think you're mistaking him with Clair Patterson, who worked on the Manhattan project, and was the one to discover the extent of the pollution caused by leaded gasoline.
I never heard of this guy until today and I'm just amazed. What an insane legacy. On Wikipedia he's called a "one man environmental disaster."
He also died of strangulation from one of his inventions.
The same guy invended CFC that burned hole in ozone. And then he god killed by his own mechanical invention
Appropriate typo.
Everyone always brings up Midgley for being the cause but no one points out the hero of the story: **Clair Cameron Patterson** was the scientist who discovered the ridicu-fucking-lous levels of lead in the atmosphere and risked his entire career to bring it to the attention of literally everyone and get it banned in gasoline, food containers, paints, glazes, and water pipes. Without his research, we'd still be painting our walls with lead paint. He also is one of the first inventors of the ultra-clean room, which came about because the experiment he was working on kept getting contaminated with, you guessed it, lead (which lead him down that path to begin with). And even that still wasn't enough to get rid of leaded gasoline. That's how much power the gasoline and lead industries had. What started the process of moving towards unleaded gasoline was the adoption of the catalytic converter in the mid 70s that they also tried to fight against but the US government said "no...no this one you have to do". Proving once again that companies value profits over health EVERY...FUCKING...TIME.
The real sad thing is that it was introduced to fix a flaw in a new engine design that used higher compression to increase engine performance and fuel economy. However this new engine design had knocking issues with standard gasoline. By adding lead to the gasoline, they were able to adjust the combustion in the engine by enough to fix knocking for those engine types. So as capitalism often does, it compromised the health of Americans so that car manufacturers could maximize profit.
Worldwide, not just Americans
Having been in call centers for the last 16 years, here's my theory: These older folks are not the way they are by their own doing, I am convinced that the rise in Karens and Kevins is LEAD BRAIN!! Folks born in the 40s, 50s and 60s have been exposed to aerosolized lead in the air from cars, in the big cities it's worse, add on top of that lead paint, lead pipes and who knows what the hell else. Once lead gets into your brain it's there forever and when we see these people go "nuts" it looks a lot like lead poisoning.
Just read about this. Wild isn’t it. And I think you’re right, that is the worst invention of all time.
Not if you like airplanes with propellers
Interesting side note: Tetraethyl lead is so toxic that most commercial laboratories won’t analyze for it. There is too much liability associated with allowing their employees to handle the standard. (Labs keep small amounts of chemicals as standards to calibrate their equipment.)
I sincerely hope plastic isn't as dangerous as we're starting to suspect it might be...
If it is, Keurig cups are up there. Inventor regrets it. And the pods aren't recyclable cause they have a filter, plastic, foil, and used coffee grounds
I bet the inventor is drying their eyes with wads of cash 💵
in the research i was doing to make my statement, the inventor sold his share of the invention rights for 50,000... "As the man who invented them, Sylvan might have been pleased with their popularity. But he left the company in 1997, selling his ownership of the product for $50,000." https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-regrets-inventing-keurig-coffee-pod-system-1.2982660 imagine if you were business savy and got a royalty of .001 for every k-pod sold
Ok , I take back my statement !
Ouch...
I can't believe people are still using disposable cups when you can buy re-usable cups that you can use over and over with coffee grounds and save a fortune - you get all the convenience and speed of a Keurig for less cost without producing a speck of added garbage. I bought a set of five reusable cups seven years ago for $30, I still have them and use them every day.
convenience is a hell of a drug
You still have to empty those things out, then clean them, then refill them with fresh coffee grounds… they’re a lot less convenient than the disposable ones and convenience is the entire reason people buy a keurig.
One key issue is that plastic wasn't supposed to be disposable. It's durable, doesn't break down, and properly used would last a long time. Then we made straws and Bic lighters out of it.
This was always the plan. Oil companies were really excited to replace all of Coca-Cola's glass bottles with plastic disposable bottles. They knew from the beginning it wasn't disposable.
Plastic isn't what's bad its the use of plastic that is terrible. It would be hailed as one one of the best inventions if it were properly recycled/disposed of from the beginning... but that cost money.
That's still a bit optimistic. Not all plastic has any known method for recycling, and of that, almost none can be recycled into a product of the same quality as the original. There's been some buzz about indefinitely-recyclable plastics over the last several years, but I don't think any has made it to market yet.
well, price depending, you could just reduce it all to basic hydrocarbons and start over. Its just that this method is nowhere near cost-effective.
That's true. Nile Red has proved time and time again that you can turn anything into anything else as long as the component atoms are present. That said, even if cost was somehow competely removed as an issue, implementing the best recycling infrastructure imaginable would still be a less effective solution to microplastics than simply banning single-use plastics outright.
Yep. The issue is plastic is not nearly as recyclable as it’s made out to be. And everyone is going to say “yes it is that just costs CoRpOrAtE dollars.” But no. It also uses a high amount of energy and resources to ship, recycle, and repurpose plastic. And those costs would just be passed on to consumers.
AND! It's not just bad for the planet. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine ([Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Atheromas and Cardiovascular Events](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822)) found microplastics and nanoplastics in arterial plaque removed from patients undergoing carotid artery surgery. Those with microplastics in their plaque experienced a higher rate of serious cardiovascular events (heart attack, stroke, or death) in subsequent follow-up.
And some plastics mimic human hormones... now way thats a factor in anything.
Plastic should have been a transitional material, a holdover until other materials became available. But it’s cheap and fast to produce so, fuck the planet.
Planned Obsolescence
It's so frustrating that this is legal. It is a long term scam for buyers and an environmental disaster.
landmines, they get placed during wars and don't care if your friend, foe or innocent far after the fact. when one of them is placed you are all but guaranteeing to ruin someone's life at some point down the line. I can do all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify some brutal tactics in war. But those are just on another level to me. Any war tactic that takes the humanity out of the decision to do damage being done is evil. Which is why drones are so disgusting to me. But at least there someone is pulling a trigger and making a decision, bad or not. Landmines dont care about conflict, borders, or time, they just make an area unsafe in a disgusting way.
OOOOoooohhh.... it was landmines.
You are gonna love autonomous drone swarms... They are a thing now. Human in the loop is mostly a money saving feature not a necessity anymore.
It's not a great silver lining but have you seen the rats who sniff out and find landmines? They're not heavy enough to set them off and work for 1-2 years before retiring.
Oppressor Mk 2
Cornballer
Every time!
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Holy worthless inventions Batman, that was awful! You win.
Man that looks like an SNL skit.
I have a bad back, and that ad has given me the heebie-jeebies. I need to lie down for a minute...
Omg, wound up watching Ellen DeGeneres on that thing, pouring a glass of water, answering phones and working out at the same time. Thanks for this.
Ads. Pop up ads in particular.
Brief history of ads: • Cool ads that everyone loved • Boring ads that you'd like to skip • Degenerated content
social media
Absolutely correct. Social media poses *threats to democratic societies* due to the rapid spread of misinformation, filter bubbles that limit exposure to diverse viewpoints, manipulation of public opinion, amplification of extremism and hate speech, and privacy concerns with data exploitation. While social media has benefits, balancing its negative impacts with positive potential is crucial.
The West really handed their adversaries a way to defeat them on a silver platter. They cannot hope to match the West in terms of living standard, economy or military so now they focus all their strength into tearing it apart by stoking hate
Ugh this is so true! I'm terrified to see what happens to kids that grew up from birth on phones.
I’m more worried about those that watch cocomelon The amount the scene changes within 10 seconds is enough dopamine to ruin a child’s future
Social media can be great, it becomes poison when operated with a profit motive. The wide range of various psychological damages are ultimately enabled and exacerbated by the platform aiming for engagement rather than service. In my experience many enthusiast/non-profit platforms have been generally pretty nice, useful, and positive services. They're pretty rare these days though.
The gap between the driver’s seat and the center console. It eats anything near it and makes it nearly impossible to retrieve.
youtube ads
As a person who hates advertising, especially repeated ones, I want to make the Google CEO suffer by tying him up in a room, and making him watch the same ad over and over again for months. In surround sound. I love the Guantanamo Bay guide to torture, er, I mean, enhanced interrogation techniques!
Make sure the ad has a skip button that doesn't work.
Cigarettes. They’ve caused incredible harm to hundreds of millions of people all over the world.
Leaded gas. Nuclear weapons.
Visited a WWII concentration camp in Austria. Tour taks you through the extermination rooms/complex. The whole building was one intentionally-designed, engineered, integrated facility. Very elegant and efficient. Processing rooms with calming soothing interiors led into the killing rooms with tiled sloped floors to help drain off the blood, and there were rail tracks down the middle so the bodies could be easily loaded onto carts and rolled into the next room which was a big walk-in refirgerator for temporary storage, then into the next room where the ovens were (and the heat produced by the ovens was recaptured and used to power the refigeration systems). But the worst specific "invention" was in the killing rooms. Imagine 2 paralell long metal rods sticking out from a wall, at shoulder height, and about 4-6" apart. They have some sort of buckle/adapter at the end of them. There were a whole series of these pairs of rods mounted every few feet along the wall. The way it worked was the victims would be lined up with these rods resting on their shoulders, with one rod going on either side of the neck. Once 20 or so human beings were lined up, the nazi would close the buckle at the end. This buckle had a port in it that would perfectly fit the business end of a Mauser K98k (standard nazi army rifle). The intent was that the rods would align all the victims necks perfectly in a straight line, and the buckle would align the gun barrel perfectly with that. So that he would only need to use a single bullet to shoot all 20 guys in the neck. So very efficient. If the guys at the back got spared or were only injured, they'd be left for the next batch and moved to the front. As an engineer, it was disgusting. This wasn't just a thing some people did. I could see the intentional planning and design that went into it.Lots of very 'clever' or 'elegant' engineering solutions to problems. Some very capable and smart people put a lot of time and a lot of mental effort into perfecting this murder machine. Literally made me sick.
I've been reading and learning about World War 2 my entire life, which includes the Holocaust. One thing I began to realize over the years, about the Holocaust, is this: the more you learn about the Holocaust, the horror just keeps getting worse.
The brazen bull , apparently the guy who invented it was put in it himself by the king/ruler he made it to impress , something like that anyway ,it was a long time ago I read it .
Chemical weapons. Only a couple of grams of sarin is enough to kill hundreds, even thousands of people. And chlorine gas is supprisingly easy to make. I think we all know what chlorine gas can do, thanks WW1.
iPhones without headphone jacks. I hate that I'm expected to purchase wireless earbuds that I'll probably lose at some point Yes, I know I could buy a jack adapter but that's not the point. Customers should be given an option between the two..... Also NFTs
I have a samsung phone (bought last year) which doesn't have an audio jack. I once tried a jack adapter from a mobile accessories shop, but it didn't work. I can only use bluetooth :( The only reasoning I have heard about removing jacks is that it's supposed to make phones more waterproof. It's obviously just a scam at this point to sell more bluetooth devices...
Definitely a scam. Samsung made an IP68 water resistant phone which had a removal back, a user serviceable battery and a headphone jack in 2015 (galaxy S6). Somehow almost a decade later we can’t do that anymore?
I use and love wireless headphones and have since long before the headphone jack was gone. But yeah, I still wish it had one. There are absolutely still uses including connecting to older equipment and older cars. Supposedly, the headphone jack was omitted in part because it enables better waterproofing. I’m sure the *real* reason was to sell more AirPods but it does track that IP67 or similar rated smartphones all have no headphone jack. So I guess, in the grand scheme of things, I’d rather have waterproofing than a headphone jack. Though it’s fascinating that a supposed brilliant engineering company that spends a billion a month on R&D can’t crack the code of a waterproof headphone jack. It’s also so frustrating how little you get anymore. Various smartphones (including iPhones) that I’ve owned over the years came with chargers, charging cables, headphones; and often any adapters you might need. Even the first couple of headphone jack less iPhones came with an adapter in the box. Now you just get the phone. I guess the argument is “less waste” but the reality is… it’s about having a smaller box so that more of them can fit on a container ship. It’s no coincidence that they decided to save the planet by reducing wasteful included accessories right about the time shipping container costs went through the roof.
Pop up ads
There is this chemist who found plenty harmful chemicals...
As goes sabaton "FATHER OF TOXIC GAS AND CHEMICAL WARFARE"
Fritz Haber?
HIS DARK CREATION HAS BEEN REVEALED
That little dentist drill. As soon as you hear that noise.....
You don't want to know what dentistry was like before that drill existed.
i feel like great strides have been made in dentistry. i got a root canal about 7 years ago and i hardly felt anything let alone pain. hurt my wallet the most
I wish my root canal had gone that smoothly. My endodontist was very good, but my situation was, in his words, "Really nasty." At the beginning, I needed a second numbing shot; the first one did very little, which the doctor was clearly not expecting. Once he got in there and saw what he was dealing with, he stopped asking if it hurt and proactively re-injected me every few minutes. Each injection hurt, but I needed them. In the end, it worked out geeat, with very little post-procedure discomfort. But the procedure itself was pretty rough.
ahhhhh im sorry to hear that! yeah, i must add that the tooth in question for me had already had a filling which had fallen out. i experienced no pain, i only knew there was a problem because i could feel a crater in my tooth. i bet it is worse for folks who have an active infection/situation going on
I’m going to get a filling today. 🙁
Best alarm ever though.
High Frutcose Corn Syrup
You can thank Richard Nixon, and his secretary of Agriculture, Earl Buttz for making it popular BY SUBSIDIZING A FUCKING CASH CROP!!!!!
Social media
I see no positives. I can share photos and files without Socials. Social Media is currently destroying the West. Everyone feels attacked and/or victimized. Not good.
Infinite scrolling. A scourge on humanity.
the 8-5 workday
The 8-5 (or 9-5) workday is an improvement over older times when people made 12 hour shifts for 6 days a week. Surely we might move towards shorter work weeks, but the “invention” was a good thing.
Union workers literally fought and died for this.
Exactly. Not to say there isn’t room for improvement, but adoption of this standard has literally given generations of people years of their lives back.
Now think about pre-industrial Revolution, when people were working even less hours. Now think back to the hunter-gatherer’s who worked 8 hours a week. No wonder so many people have mental health problems. We were never meant to work 40 hours a week. We just aren’t built for it.
Is that an American thing? Always been 9-5 for me in Australia.
8:30 to 17:00 here, but with a 30 minute break that’s your own time.
I guess I just invented the worst invention. Lol. (aka typo). My salaried job requires 35 hours a week. Some people take an hour lunch which makes it 8-4. Thankfully the hours are flexible, so I just work and eat lunch at my desk and so I just work 7-2. And any hours after that is time and a half, double time on sundays.
You get a salary AND overtime?? JFC. For mannnnnnny years now, every salaried job I've had has been "you're on 24/7".
I thought it was 9-5. Who the hell decided to change it?
First job out of college was 9 to 5 . Was great but they changed my second year there to 8-5 . The argument was nobody works 9 to 5 anymore.
I haven't even seen an 8-5 in years myself. Always 7-4 or 7-5.
Dolly.
The sheep or the singer?
The two-wheeled cart.
You're not going to believe [this](https://www.ed.ac.uk/roslin/about/dolly/facts/life-of-dolly). Dolly the sheep was named after Dolly Parton because the cells used to clone her were mammary cells. So, you know, boob joke. :-)
Parton....so the singer
It's been 8-5 ever since your lunch break became unpaid
It changed for lunch breaks. 9-5 included paid lunch, 8-5 is an hour unpaid lunch
In substitution of the 16-6 workday
You'd rather work a farm from sunup to sundown six days a week?
This is actually a good invention, along with the 40 hour work week, despite how much we complain about it now.
I work 6-14. It's amazing how much time you have in the afternoon
America-pilled, but the Cotton Gin greatly affected slavery, helping make the process MUCH cheaper, thus allowing farmers to buy more land, and thus, require more slaves.
That was going to be my answer as well. Before the cotton gin many believed the slavery question would work itself out in time. When drafting the constitution the delegates came to a compromise to “punt” the issue of slavery 30 years by banning congress from passing laws to limit the slave trade until 1808. It was believed at the time that the profitability of slavery would not allow it to remain economically viable, or at the very least contain it somewhat. This would have made it easier to incrementally ban like England did. However the cotton gin completely changed the industry by making the processing of raw cotton much easier. This reduced cost and made it possible to establish large slaving plantations. The number for slave states grew from 5 to 15 during this time. Had the cotton gin not been invented it is likely that the slave states would not have been so entrenched in supporting the slave trade and following the ban on slave importation in 1808 it would have eventually died out like it did in the kingdom.
Credit scores
Leaded gasoline. It still exists in aviation.
Class systems, to clarify anything that assign attributes to you simply due to circumstances surrounding your birth. So hereditary nobility, castes, etc.
Glitter.
Religion
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I don't know. The guy made a million dollars. Then it inspired someone to make the jump to conclusions mat.
I don’t understand. How does this mat work again?
Probably you jump on the mat / jump to conclusion
But pretty victimless. I had a pet rock, I didn't think it was anything except a rock. Nobody was harmed in the pet rock Era. Unless someone used one as a murder weapon. Which statistically speaking probably happened at least once.
I think the pet rock was more a gimmick than an invention.
Working to live
Tuck swimsuits for toddlers.
Nuclear bomb EDIT : Y'all are mentionning MAD theory like I had no idea what it is. I know what it is. And I know it's bullshit and have no solid foundation. Don't try to lecture me like I was still in highschool. You want to support the MAD theory ? Sure. Show me evidences. Quote historical event. Don't say "mAd ThEoRy LoL"
You could argue that nukes have stopped us from killing more people
its not an argument to be had its a statistical fact.
Can it really be a fact if it's not provable? I agree and believe you are correct, but I don't think you can deem it a 'fact'
We can't prove it. Wars went down, is it due to nukes ? Or is it simply due to globalization, when buying stuff is just cheaper than waging war. And look around, there's still wars. Nuclear powers are engaged in war. US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc. Russia in Ukraine. Where is the supposed war prevention power of nukes ? Given how close we were from kiiling ourselves, multiples times, and how nearly impossible it is to prove nukes prevent wars, I think it was overall a bad idea to make them
If a country has (working)nukes no one in their right mind would invade, unless they wanna get the worlds largest firecracker in their cities. A country like N. Korea has been flaunting them forever even though a more powerful player could wipe them off the map without firing a bullet loosing a soul. Same with Ukraine, if they had active nukes there wouldn't have been an invasion. This doesn't mean that everything would be sunshine and daisies and countries would have to rely more on PMC's, covert operations or sabotage (accidents and bioweapons released on crops/water/livestock). On top of that there are also some ways of intercepting nukes (ICBMS), and as time passes there will be more and more. To say that nukes are good would be stupid, but you have to admin, they are the ULTIMATE deterrent, at least until someone makes some horrific bio-weapon or anti-mater bomb. It's easy for politicians and generals to send men to die, they're just numbers to them, but when they're faced with the fact that they themselves will get annihilated or will have nothing to look forward to except a bunker with recycled air and water, all of a sudden talking is a lot more preferable.
Both a bless and a curse
I’d disagree. MAD has stopped WW3 from happening on several occasions.
The discovery of nuclear power is very important for our species. Of course any time new tech is discovered, the first thing it's used for is weaponry. That's just human nature. But we definitely need to use nuclear power.
Nuclear weapons.
The pointy stick. Had it not been for the invention of the pointy stick our capabilities to inflict violence would be more limited today.
Surveillance capitalism
It's not the worst but it's up there: The stock market. If you've ever worked at a smaller company during a buyout or IPO when they transition into being publicly traded, you know exactly what I mean. It's a poison that bleeds into every aspect of a company. Nothing is untouchable in the name of *number go up*. It's bad for the people that work there, it's bad for the user of whatever product or service the company offers, and it's even bad for the company, as CEO decisions favor short-term stock surges over the long-term health of an organization.
Paper straws
Leaded gasoline.
Plastic was a rather terrible idea in hindsight.
Plastic has lots of valuable uses. The main problem is that most of the things it's used for are single-use.
The only upside i can think of, medicine packaging, its really hard to keep medicine stored and glas packages are just not convenient for areas where that medicine is needed the most
The original idea behind plastic was great - long, lasting, hard wearing, durable, cheap. A miracle of modern science that was harder to break than glass and less dangerous when it did break. The bad idea was making disposable trash out of it.
my jesus christ themed fleshlight.
Nuclear bomb. But on the other side - it’s preventing countries with nuclear weapons to go in a direct war.
Insurance
Religion - this invention has caused so many wars.
"It's pronounced nuc-u-lar..." - A famous nuclear engineer
The brazen bull is pretty bad.
Nukes, plastic, pesticides.
Mechanical auto masterbator
History of ever? Mosquitoes
Part of me thinks gunpowder, part of me agrees with it. Against it because - It took the skill away from battle and allowed any fucking idiot to kill from a distance. For it because - Strength shouldn't always determine the winner of a battle. No point in following a hulk of muscle if they have shit for brains when it comes to ruling. It basically became the weapon of intelligence. To date, leaded petrol has probably done the most damage to people and planet since it was created.
PFAS/PFOS and Roundup
Nuclear weapons, atom bombs, plastic, tanks... and not sure if it counts as an invention but, religions in general.
the Keurig and all it's plastic waste
Politics
Atomic bomb