Cool, I want a racecar
PLASTICMAXXING
Submitted 3 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/6c74e147-f5c0-430b-933e-e18376b99d5b.jpeg
Comments
P1k1e@lemmy.world 3 days ago
MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Unfortunately, the machine only gives you the reverse of what you type into it.
Caitlyynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
I’m still waiting for nature to figure out how to process plastics and bring down most of the world’s infrastructure with it. But I’m not qualified to actually know if this is even possible
janus2@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I’m vaguely qualified (biochem degree) to say it’s probably possible
that being said there’s just a lot of stuff in nature easier to eat than plastic so if some kind of plasticphagic microbe starts causing issues it’ll likely be somewhere otherwise very inhospitable, like near the poles or in space, where there’s not much else in the way of metabolizable carbon sources
which, lol. imagine going on an Antarctic or space mission and your fucking PPE starts fermenting lmao good luck
or the ocean might become so horribly poisinous that everything dies and after microbes eat all the dead biomass and then each other, then they start eating the plastic 😬
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The thing is that even if there isn’t much energy in plastic to be extracted, theres still enough energy in it to make a viable food source. Now, consider the humble panda and its primary food source, fucking eucalyptus leaves. Theyre so hard to chew that koalas had to spend evolutionary time and energy just to spec into it to the point they cant eat anything else pretty much. Combine that with the fact that eucalyptis leaves are so devoid of nutrients that the koala has to spend all day every day just snacking on them to not die of malnutrition.
Why? Why would a species even bother with this flim-flam if eucalypti sucks that bad as a food source? The answer is: Food scarcity. Because eucalytis grows everywhere where koalas live and because nobody else is bothering to tap into the food source, this sets up a ecological niche by pretty much gaurenteeing any animal that sucessfully finds a way to make it work will have unlimited amounts of food/energy just from the fact theres so damn much of it and nothing else wants to/can touch it. Sure koalas might have paid the price by sacrificing some brain wrinkles but who needs higher intelligence when you have leaves to snack on and sex to make babies.
A similar thing happened with trees and mushrooms. In the deep evolutionary history of our planet trees were once the apex forms of life with forest covering pretty much the whole planet. This is because nothing knew how to break down the wood making up stems for a good couple million years. Most of the coal and oil that we dig up today is actually the preserved remains of these unbroken down trees from the carboniferous period that just layed there petrified never rotting until the carbon compressed into hard rock or squeezed into liquid. The great change in the era happened when our humble mycelium bois finally figured out how to eat wood, causing them to essentially become the new apex life for a time.
twice_hatch@midwest.social 2 days ago
imagine going on an Antarctic or space mission and your fucking PPE starts fermenting
Michael Crichton called it in Andromeda Strain lol
Tinidril@midwest.social 2 days ago
It took a long time for nature to figure out how to process wood, but it eventually happened. My wooden furniture is still standing though.
GTG3000@programming.dev 2 days ago
There’s fungi that are eating the pacific trash patch, but the issue is that there’s not much energy to be gained from plastics we use. It’s slow.
Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Maybe teach that fungus how to photosynthesize.
Or cell scale fusion.
MTK@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If I remember correctly it is a real concern and also part of why developing a bacteria that can break down plastic is very dangerous (not just because it could degrade our tools and infrastructure, but also because it will release literally megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere)
Fyi, in the past there was nothing in nature to break down trees (lignin) and it actually was a problem as they would literally pile up and essentially be the same problem we have today with plastic (ironically it caused global cooling) thorogood.co.uk/treevolution-how-trees-came-first…
HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I thought it already had, I swear I rember some scientists finding or creating something, bacteria fungus or something that processes some polymers and they where tryna get ot to out and eat plastic ig so they can put it in landfills everywhere.
count_dongulus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just donate plasma. Works great, gives some other schmuck your plastic.
nebulaone@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Isn’t plastic basically biologically inert? So unless it is physically blocking something shouldn’t we have seen adverse effects if it actually was dangerous? Or maybe health problems just haven’t been associated with it yet. I think with lead it was obvious pretty quickly. I am a dumbass tho, so maybe someone smarter can correct me.
stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
Plastic is mimicking certain hormones and I’m suspecting that the recent rise in cancer rates is linked to plastic intake.
Kratzkopf@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
There is different health implications connected to microplastics like infertility and cardiovascular diseases, although the connections are not quite understood yet. The amount of microplastics in the human body is very alarming though. A study with brain samples found 0.5w% of plastics, which corresponds to roughly 6g of plastic in a brain. That’s a credit card’s worth of plastic.
This article should give some overview over different findings and implications:
nebulaone@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Interesting. I had only heard about how it “MAY” be harmful before, which means nothing.
Danke für die Korrektur.
JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
The water surrounding DuPont plants manufacturing PFOA-based materials was contaminated with those plastics. A local farmer videotaped his cows develop ulcers, grow tumors, and eventually wither and die. He constantly insisted that something was in the water that was killing his cows. Those same chemicals are now pervasive everywhere, in everyone’s bodies to some extent. It is 100% accurate to say these chemical compounds will kill you longterm.
wewbull@feddit.uk 2 days ago
That’s very different though. Nobody claims that the chemicals used in plastic manufacturing are biologically inert, just that the final result is.
Dupont wasn’t dumping Lego bricks into the pond. They were leaking liquid chemicals.
ulterno@programming.dev 2 days ago
Yeah, probably just extra weight that interferes with the speed of your cells doing their job.
janus2@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
plastic can be oversimplified into “usually biologically inert molecule chains” (polymers) held together by “usually NOT biologically inert accessory molecules” (plasticizers, fillers, etc.)
BPA is a pretty well-known “fucks you up” plasticizer, hence it being banned for some applications and “BPA-free” marketing taking off (fun fact we’re still figuring out how badly BPA replacements, most being very similar molecules, are fucking us up and to what extent)
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yeah it’ll be like the machine that you find in museums where you put in a quarter and get an injection molded toy hot out of the mold. You just hook your arm up to an IV and it starts extracting your blood and then when it gets enough of the plastic it melts it and pushes it into the mold and spits out a little toy dinosaur.
ultrafastsloth@lemmy.world 2 days ago
…and you will be so happy for a few moments before you realize the machine never returned you back all your blood. You realize the machine never intended to give it back as you slowly fade into eternal slumber.
Zink@programming.dev 2 days ago
Sound like a futuristic black-mirror-esque solution to blood donation motivation.
At Blood-B-Kleen, our machine will quickly and safely pull 8 pints of raw dirty blood from your vein and will return 7 pints of your cleaned blood with 99% reduction in plastics and PFAS, plus some hydrating fluids and vitamins. We don’t even charge you for it yet!
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 2 days ago
This sounds like a way to die in one of the Space Quest games lol.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Bro I just 3D printed a model of my dick from the plastic in my blood
starchylemming@lemmy.world 2 days ago
ah i see, you are living mostly plastic free
gotta make do with the little material you have
/jk im sure you have a palm tree there
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 days ago
People are freaking out that there is a credit card worth of microplastics in our brains but I’m just paying for things by putting my forehead on the EFTPOS machine and wondering what the limit is.
dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 2 days ago
The action man toy who has physically merged with my brain says you’ll never get him
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Animals and environment - get fucked, losers!
/s (or whatever this horror is)
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 days ago
How about a whimsical little vampire finger puppet? Grr… arrg…
Wfh@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
shath@hexbear.net 2 days ago
da brain spoon
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
You can download a car… but are you allowed to “steel” (get for free) the filament???
Wilco@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I want them to 3D print a neat little Star Wars starship miniature out of mine. Something obscure like a Kimogila.
Auntievenim@lemmy.world 3 days ago
This is a post about college loans lmao
RattlerSix@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Free 3D printing filament
Chefdano3@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Blood Benchy Boat.
Birch@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Blood benchies for the blood god!