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[Egan_BW]

Metals strengthen the bones, you know?

[Max™]

That isn't what that selection says, it means policies blocking lead cost more than any benefits created by said policies, but it's written in a shitty manner to no surprise given the site.

[Starver]

In fact one of the lead researchers did a soil survey around New Orleans, and then compared that to the local police's crime hotspots map, there was a good correlation with contaminated soil and violent neighborhoods.

Not that I don't think that may be linked, but correlation≠causation, and in this instance it could be that (say) older neighbourhoods that have been longer exposed to pre-1992ish leaded car fumes are possibly more likely to be both poorer and more crime-ridden than more recent greenfield housing developments (and quieter roads) built after then.

With any luck, the researchers normalised for this sort of thing. If they could. But it's a thing to think about, if they didn't.

[Greiger]

(@anti smoking stuff)

While smoking is bad for you and I dislike that whole spin that it is not, (I mean seriously how obvious can it be that intentionally inhaling smoke into a system only designed to take in air with only some minor filtration ability is bad for you, regardless of what anyone else says) I do kinda have to agree with the annoyance about the lawsuits.

I sell cigarettes, cigars, and what people call 'blunt wraps' at work. I believe that whatever someone does to their own body is their business, but they can't just ignore the consequences.  Every single person that starts talking about them knows exactly how bad they are for them, yet they still smoke.  And I'm not just talking the older folks.  I'm talking the folks my age too, that I know grew up learning about exactly how addictive the damn things are and decided to smoke them anyway. 

I know that my multiple cans of dr pepper a day is going to bite me in the ass as I get older, but I made my peace with that fact.  I'm not going to sue Dr Pepper over things that everybody already goddamn knows.  With maybe the exception of the elderly, smokers knew exactly what they were getting into as well, and I have zero sympathy, they made their bed, they can sleep in it.  Yea tobacco companies sell death, but people still buy it, and I seriously doubt any of those buying don't know it.

[Reelya]

In fact one of the lead researchers did a soil survey around New Orleans, and then compared that to the local police's crime hotspots map, there was a good correlation with contaminated soil and violent neighborhoods.

Not that I don't think that may be linked, but correlation≠causation, and in this instance it could be that (say) older neighbourhoods that have been longer exposed to pre-1992ish leaded car fumes are possibly more likely to be both poorer and more crime-ridden than more recent greenfield housing developments (and quieter roads) built after then.

With any luck, the researchers normalised for this sort of thing. If they could. But it's a thing to think about, if they didn't.

If it was just that data point then sure. Except we have multiple studies at each of the

(1) personal level - mapping individual lead exposure to the behavior
(2) neighborhood levels - mapping localized lead exposure to the same behaviors found in individuals exposed to lead.
(3) studies at the city vs city level
(4) studies at the state vs state level
(5) studies comparing nations
(6) time-based as well as location-based correlations

So yeah it's pretty well established. I also out of interest once looked up a 1995 map of nations that hadn't phased out leaded gasoline at that point, here:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146257.0

At that point in time, when I wrote that, the top 4 nations for homicide were "Honduras, Venezuela, United States Virgin Islands and Belize". While the only Western Hemisphere nations that hadn't got rid of leaded gasoline by 1995 were Honduras, Venezuela, United States Virgin Islands, Belize, Bolivia, Paraguay. See, there's quite a large overlap in the categories of "places with leaded gasoline until recently" and "murder hellholes". Bolivia and Paraguay probably dodged this bullet, since they are landlocked nations without a port city which would be a focal point for urbanization, and thus smog concentration.

[sluissa]

(@anti smoking stuff)

While smoking is bad for you and I dislike that whole spin that it is not, (I mean seriously how obvious can it be that intentionally inhaling smoke into a system only designed to take in air with only some minor filtration ability is bad for you, regardless of what anyone else says) I do kinda have to agree with the annoyance about the lawsuits.

I sell cigarettes, cigars, and what people call 'blunt wraps' at work. I believe that whatever someone does to their own body is their business, but they can't just ignore the consequences.  Every single person that starts talking about them knows exactly how bad they are for them, yet they still smoke.  And I'm not just talking the older folks.  I'm talking the folks my age too, that I know grew up learning about exactly how addictive the damn things are and decided to smoke them anyway. 

I know that my multiple cans of dr pepper a day is going to bite me in the ass as I get older, but I made my peace with that fact.  I'm not going to sue Dr Pepper over things that everybody already goddamn knows.  With maybe the exception of the elderly, smokers knew exactly what they were getting into as well, and I have zero sympathy, they made their bed, they can sleep in it.  Yea tobacco companies sell death, but people still buy it, and I seriously doubt any of those buying don't know it.

It's only the last couple of decades though that that information wasn't being suppressed by the industry. Hell, my parents generation had doctors that would suggest people suffering from asthma and other respiratory ailments take up smoking to improve their health. There was a serious amount of misinformation being pushed out there and while there was also counter-information that pushed that it was bad for you, the tobacco industry pushed their version HARD and for a lot of people it stuck.

[Reelya]

Seriously you can find stuff just in the last 5 years where tobacco companies just said "no it doesn't" in court cases in which cigarettes are linked to lung cancer.

The thing about lawsuits is yes, perhaps someone should have known better and realized the cigarettes were bad for them. But that's besides the point. The company selling them to you was actively involved in denying that the risk was real and supressing relevant research that proved otherwise.

Their defence then becomes "the plaintiff should have been aware that we are liars, and we're not liable if some idiot actually believes what we said. You should have known better".

That basically makes them equivalent to a con-artist. Perhaps a con-artist's con is blatantly obvious, and you "should have known better" than to trust that person. But that doesn't legalize the con. How stupid you have to be to believe a fraudster has no correlation with how legal the fraud is.

[Frumple]

Eh... more relatively little rather than no, at least in the US. There's legal protections for signing into fuckstupid contracts, but as I understand it they're close to never actually successful when invoked in court save maybe -- and only maybe -- when the victim has been declared legally incompetent or mentally impaired in one way or another.

There are in fact types of cons that are legal due largely to the fact our courts do not do much to stop you from being stupid, and doing things like paying fifty bucks for a meaningless certificate that cost around five cent to make is considered to effectively be on you, having willingly agreed to a friggin' terrible deal.

[Reelya]

Eh... more relatively little rather than no, at least in the US. There's legal protections for signing into fuckstupid contracts, but as I understand it they're close to never actually successful when invoked in court save maybe -- and only maybe -- when the victim has been declared legally incompetent or mentally impaired in one way or another.

There are in fact types of cons that are legal due largely to the fact our courts do not do much to stop you from being stupid, and doing things like paying fifty bucks for a meaningless certificate that cost around five cent to make is considered to effectively be on you, having willingly agreed to a friggin' terrible deal.

Sure, that's if you didn't read the "fine print" then it's on you. However I was more comparing the tobacco deal to fraud because - they're not fully disclosing the details in the fine print. e.g. it's akin to a con artist who doesn't deliver on what the contract states.

If the product isn't in fact what you agreed to then you can sue. If the company is marketing the cigarettes as "smooth and healthy" and denying any links to illness, then you do have grounds for the idea that they conned you and didn't deliver on the promised product.

[Folly]

The White House has Gary Cohn, the Chief Economic Advisor, doing their press briefing today.

This is by far the least spin, and the most hard numbers that I've ever heard from a Trump spokesperson. I'm not saying that I believe him, or agree with his tax plan, but it is refreshing to hear some straight answers for a change.

[MrRoboto75]

How can someone who won't release his own taxes have a bloody tax plan

[Zangi]

How can someone who won't release his own taxes have a bloody tax plan

The plan is not to show you their own taxes.

[EnigmaticHat]

How can the Republicans have a tax plan when the whole political spectrum liked Bernie?

The answer: they're fucked in 2018 either way so who cares, also the Republicans in the House are drinking the kool aid.  So they'll probably pass something absurd up to the Senate.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm personally expecting some Escape From LA shit where a laughing man wearing Paul Ryan's face will paint smiles on the expected voters and carve the session turkey.

[redwallzyl]

From what I heard in the radio from an interview with one of the plan writers its basically trickle down 2.0