redshirt posted:

It's really remarkable how different we used to view the environment (and some still do). As utterly disposable, to do whatever you want with, without any limitation. More so, it's our RIGHT to do so, God given.

My family had this camp on a small pond in Maine and I discovered dozens and dozens of very old shoe soles, glass bottles, and cans buried right beside the shore. There was probably more trash I didn't find. And it amazed me that 150 years prior, some folks saw this beautiful lakeshore and thought: Good place to dump all our trash.

Boggles my mind, but it's clearly not out of the norm.

In this way though, things are getting better.

His Divine Shadow posted:

The way I had this explained to me is that this type of trash handling worked OK in pre-industrial times when trash was mostly organic and in small quantities, stuff like iron and nails would not be thrown away but reused, same for glass if possible.

But then we industrialized, and then we got plastic and all kinds of products of materials not before used and in quantities not seen before, which made them more disposable. But we still treated trash like a preindustrial peasant might have. It really took a long time for that to catch up to the realities of the situation.

redshirt posted:

Great way to look at it. I was thinking about the general concept of litter, and wondering if, for example, Roman cities had litter, did English medieval towns have litter, etc. Litter in many ways is a luxury, so in other times I can imagine not much was actually thrown away if it could be avoided.

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

iirc there's a trash mountain of amphorae that still exists in rome

BigBadSteve posted:

Rottentomatoes.com, sometime in the last few weeks, abolished a lot of user accounts with no notice whatever. I'm not sure whether they cancelled just spamgourmet.com type shell email accounts (which stop dickheads like them spamming us) or abolished all user accounts.

So every user, including me, who bothered to review any movie on the site, has had our reviews deleted, with no chance to save them. loving SCUM.

Also, the whole point of the site (IMO) was to display aggregate ratings of professional reviewers from magazine and newspaper etc. websites, with a list of quotes and ratings from them, and links to their full reviews, on each movie's main page (at rottentomatoes.com). Now you have to click through links to get to them. I'm guesstimating this is because many of the linked reviews are now dead links, and rottentomatoes doesn't have the rights to reprint any of them, even quotes therefrom.

Oh, and the RT page for each movie has been redesigned so it looks 'nice' (supposedly) on a loving phone but awful on pads or computer screens due to all the wasted space. This trend is cancer (with apologies to the schoolkids actually contacting cancer mentioned in the above post).

gently caress YOU, Rottentomatoes.com !!!

Nocheez posted:

If y'all aren't using Plex and the skip intro and credits feature, you're missing out.

moist banana bread posted:

yes sharing your opinion of things is labor

thathonkey posted:

is plex pass worth it? is there another way

moist banana bread posted:

noun
1.
work, especially hard physical work.

moist banana bread posted:

noun
1.
work, especially hard physical work.

moist banana bread posted:

Hey I get it, everyone in our communist utopia knows the only thing of value in life is money and if you didn't get any someone cheated you.

teen witch posted:

Broke: the second shift
Woke: the third shift (posting)

moist banana bread posted:

I'm just salty they rejected my application to be a professional critic.

teen witch posted:

What, did they tell you it stinks?

ArmedZombie posted:

Literally A Person posted:

credburn posted:

I love that the actual website content appears to take up only about 40% of the screen while the big giant ad takes up 70%



And the rest, just a black void, sure.

Should I turn my monitor on its side to read this in the right ratio? Or move my eyeballs so they're on top of each other

wizardofloneliness posted:

I was going to say it sounds like we live in the same place, except my lake was all hosed up pre-1950. I actually unknowingly lived a couple miles away from the local Superfund site when I first moved here. Turns out there’s a good reason the nearby road smells like sulphur and is also called Sulphur Mine Rd.

Houle posted:

it would be like if every 10km the highway is shut down for you to watch 3 minutes of commercials in their infotainment systems.

Houle posted:

it would be like if every 10km the highway is shut down for you to watch 3 minutes of commercials in their infotainment systems.

moist banana bread posted:

Go click around that website on waybackmachine and tell me it has not always been a steaming pile of dogshit.

TotalLossBrain posted:

Yes, he plays a super admiral or something. Very embarrassing

Here's something that got shittier: paint jobs on cars.
There was a car hauler next to me on my way home today. I was sitting at a stop light so I checked out the brand new Chevy ZR2 on it when I noticed it.

800peepee51doodoo posted:

I guarantee the reason google and others are so hot to get self driving cars working is so they can serve you an endless series of ads on the screen where your windshield used to be.

hot cocoa on the couch posted:

iirc there's a trash mountain of amphorae that still exists in rome

Squiggle posted:

I'm sure it happened more than once, but speaking of superfund sites....Times Beach outside of St. Louis was a poster child for this poo poo. A contractor got paid to dispose of all of the dioxin from the nearby loving Agent Orange factory, and also to tamp down dust on the roads in Times Beach, so hey two birds one stone:

https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back-times-beach-disaster-nearly-40-years-later

It was so hosed the federal government bought the entire town, started shoveling all of the topsoil into incinerators, and buried everything else in the town in a giant landfill. I remember driving by the soil incinerators as a kid on the way to Six Flags. It was wild.

redshirt posted:

Good example. I assume they were tossed because they were broken and no way to repair.

And of course there's always tons of organic "trash" - poo poo and shells and such.

"Middens"

Squiggle posted:

I'm sure it happened more than once, but speaking of superfund sites....Times Beach outside of St. Louis was a poster child for this poo poo. A contractor got paid to dispose of all of the dioxin from the nearby loving Agent Orange factory, and also to tamp down dust on the roads in Times Beach, so hey two birds one stone:

https://www.epa.gov/mo/town-flood-and-superfund-looking-back-times-beach-disaster-nearly-40-years-later

It was so hosed the federal government bought the entire town, started shoveling all of the topsoil into incinerators, and buried everything else in the town in a giant landfill. I remember driving by the soil incinerators as a kid on the way to Six Flags. It was wild.

quote:

Prior to 1978, the Bliss Waste Oil Company was owned and operated by Russell and Evelyn Bliss; their son, Jerry Bliss, was an employee of their business. When the business was incorporated in 1978 Russell, Evelyn, and Jerry Bliss, became the officers, directors and sole shareholders of petitioner. The business operations remained the same after incorporation. The office, trucks, employees and customers of petitioner are the same as those of Bliss Waste Oil Company. Petitioner represented itself to be a continuation of the Bliss Waste Oil Company, advertising on its letterhead that it had been in business for over forty years; and advertised itself as "Bliss Oil, Inc." on the side of at least one of its trucks. This was sufficient to show that petitioner was a continuation of Bliss Waste Oil Company and, as such, responsible for the actions of the latter, its principals and its employees.

euphronius posted:

This is why among other things the clean water act attaches personal liability to people who violate it

www.epa.gov - Wed, 01 May 2024 posted:

2024-05-01T12:00:00Z

SAN FRANCISCO – The Department of Justice, on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Attorney General of California, on behalf of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, filed a civil complaint in federal court today against the City and County of San Francisco for claims of Clean Water Act violations spanning the last decade. The complaint seeks financial penalties and improvements to remedy San Francisco’s repeated and widespread failures to operate its two combined sewer systems and three sewage treatment plants in compliance with the Clean Water Act and its permits. San Francisco failed to operate its combined sewer systems in a manner that keeps untreated sewage out of San Francisco Bay and its tributaries, streets, beaches and other areas with risk of human contact.

“Protecting San Francisco Bay, the Pacific Ocean and public health are critical priorities for EPA, and this complaint is a major step to improve how the San Francisco sewer system is managed,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman. “EPA and our partners are committed to ensuring San Francisco comes into compliance with the Clean Water Act to protect clean water and local communities.”

“San Francisco’s aging wastewater system has exposed the public to risks for too long,” said Alexis Strauss, Chair of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. “This is the time to commit to an outcome which reduces sewage overflows and builds upgraded wastewater infrastructure. Our goal is to help San Francisco achieve a healthy Bay and coastline, which can be enjoyed by millions of residents and visitors every day."

The United States and the San Francisco Water Board request that the Court order the City of San Francisco to cease further violations of the Clean Water Act and its permits and complete all actions necessary to ensure that the City complies in the future. On average each year since 2016, San Francisco has discharged more than 1.8 billion gallons of untreated sewage from its combined sewer systems into creeks, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean, including areas popular for wading, swimming, surfing, kayaking and fishing. San Francisco is served by two combined sewer systems that collect domestic sewage, industrial and commercial wastewater, and stormwater in the same pipes. During heavy rains, when the sewage treatment plants are at maximum capacity, combined sewage is discharged from near-shore outfalls to creeks, the San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean without receiving disinfection treatment.

San Francisco’s failure to take steps to minimize these discharges or provide disinfection treatment interferes with the state’s designated uses for these water bodies, which include water contact recreation and protection of aquatic life. Untreated sewage contains pathogens such as E. coli, which can cause severe illness if ingested. Children, the elderly, people with weakened immune systems and pregnant women have a higher risk for adverse consequences from such illness than the general population.

In addition, San Francisco’s combined sewer systems are in a state of disrepair, and the City’s failure to properly operate and maintain them has led to additional combined sewage discharges that has put members of the public at risk for unknowingly coming into contact with untreated sewage. San Francisco has also consistently failed to properly notify the public about the presence of untreated sewage at popular water recreation locations, overflows from manholes onto sidewalks and streets and the risks of coming into contact with untreated sewage.

EPA has brought enforcement actions to require municipalities across the country to update their sewer systems and address similar Clean Water Act violations. Nationally, EPA has been working with states, municipalities, and trade organizations to develop tools to help communities work towards compliance with Clean Water Act requirements, including meeting applicable water quality standards.

The State Water Board and nine regional boards administer and enforce the Clean Water Act in California, improving water quality for communities and the environment while working with wastewater systems to help bring them into compliance. In 2023, the Water Boards took 260 wastewater enforcement actions under the Clean Water Act, with over six million dollars in assessed penalties.

San Francisco is one of approximately 750 communities in the country with combined sewer systems but is only one of two such systems in California. San Francisco began planning to address its combined sewer overflows in the 1970s and completed construction of planned controls over 25 years ago. Since completion of those controls, no significant upgrades or updates have been made to the system to reduce combined sewer overflows and currently, the controls are insufficient to meet the requirements in San Francisco’s Clean Water Act permits.