October 14, 2020

What's Up Wednesday #6 - Big Oil Scams Us, Democracy can fall faster than we like to think

What's Up Wednesday #6

Great Wednesday, everyone! This week I published an article about the irrationality of risk and how we often overestimate or underestimate possible risks depending on their nature.

Recycling

♻️ Apple sues a recycling firm for reselling their devices instead of destroying them. On a legal level, apple is probably right. On an ethical level, we all probably agree: devices should be reused and kept alive as long as they are safe to use, and someone wants to use them.

♴ Big oil set up a big recycling scam to greenwash plastic. It should make you upset. For decades they made us believe that recycling plastic is great. However, often the recycling trash was just shipped to China and then dumped into the oceans. Just putting it into landfills would have been better, at least then it would have been safely contained. Unfortunately, lobbying and advertisements can craft such a lie. I think taxing plastic usage would be a good tool to make producers use less of it. How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

Democracy

🚔 In Belarus police are forcing down protesters with violence youtube. The police even stated that they would go after the protestors they only caught on camera after/if the situation calms down.

💣 It’s not hard for democracy to collapse. All you have to do is nothing. Democracy is a fragile thing

💬The freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like. While we need freedom of speech I think there should be some anti-bullshit laws. Just an idea though, and probably impossible to make this working fair for everyone.

Connect the dots

🛣 You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs