I’m pretty sure that it gets filtered in a way that gets rid of the hexavalent chromium, though. I researched it after reading the article about the chromium-6 and concluded bottled was safer. I’ll have to look into it again, because I don’t remember the specifics.
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And plenty of reason to believe that it’s worse as bottled water must get tested once a week and city water is tested 100 times a month or more.
In 1999, after a four-year review of the bottled-water industry and its safety standards, NRDC concluded that there is no assurance that bottled water is cleaner or safer than tap. In fact, an estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not.
Of the 1,000 bottles tested, the majority proved to be relatively clean and pure. About 22 percent of the brands tested contained chemicals at levels above state health limits in at least one sample. If consumed over a long period of time, some of those contaminants could cause cancer or other health problems for people with weakened immune systems.
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And the manufacture and disposal of the bottles is actually poisoning people and animals.
There is zero incentive for bottled water companies to filter out something that few have ever heard of and isn’t even tracked by the FDA. And a very cursory search suggests that consumer grade RO filters will reduce levels.
This thread is INSPIRING.
Turns out point scoring on a fucking forum is valuable!
I have not spent one meaningful hour on activism in my life. That changes, incrementally, this coming week and with greater meaning each week going forward.
Cheers to the inspiration.
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I started donating to campaigns and causes I believe in in 2016, tried to do a little phone banking for Hillary but cold calling people isn’t really for me so I gave up relatively quickly. The local Dem branch sent me a link for text banking but it didn’t seem to work, I’ll have to try again in 2020. I know that I’m pretty lazy but I think my wife and I plan to get more involved for the 2020 elections. I’d go to protests if they took place when I wasn’t at work, my wife went to one that the police decided to show up at and start assaulting people but fortunately she wasn’t injured.
Recently she made me aware of a situation affecting legal immigrants that she found out about through an organization she volunteers for. I started putting a plan into motion to contact Congress people but apparently they are already planning on doing so. Will have to follow up and if our worthless representatives don’t do anything about it will try to somehow get it in front of AOC.
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Phone banking is my least favorite campaign activity. as time goes by, its effectiveness is decreasing.
text banking is good, especially to younger voters.
Visibility (corner standing, farmers markets, etc) is fun but ultimately a wash when it comes to changing minds. Its real purpose is name-recognition.
The best (but most difficult) and most effective campaign activity that can be done on a volunteer basis is door to door canvassing. People are much less likely to be mean to your face, and it’s actually an ego boost. If an undecided voter who answers the door thinks that you care about them enough to walk around and talk to them personally, they are much more likely to give your candidate a look.
that’s just for campaigning. Obviously there are hundreds of ways to give time and effort to other causes.
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We do something similar. I have a trunk full of thrift store purses that contain essential hygiene products, tampons, etc, and give them out whenever we have occasion.
An extensive part of my research over the years dealt with how to enact social change through consumer entertainment. I guess that one could easily be used for evil/propoganda LOL, but my focus was on things like expanding conscious awareness and affinity for women’s rights.
I volunteer as a peer-to-peer counselor in groups for those suffering with addiction and trauma recovery.
To that, I would just +1 to posting on the internet actually making a difference. Everyone needs a place to find community and talk through these things.
I think the biggest thing I do to make a difference is work through my own shit. I can’t change anyone else, but I can wake up each day working to be more mindful, responsible, and present. Some days are better than others.
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Wet wipes would probably be another good for homeless people, bad for the environment gift.
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I always followed politics loosely but only after 2016 did I really get into following it. In 2018 I helped Swing Left with a couple of local congressional races by sending out postcards and helping with a couple of fundraisers for two local candidates. Both of the candidates won which was good. I’ve also recently started donating small amounts to a couple of local candidates as well as a couple of national presidential candidates (finally had a little extra income to spare). I have talked to a lot of friends and family and got about 10 people to vote in local races in 2018 that probably wouldn’t have voted. I have attended a few local protests (mostly against a charitable organization that runs child detention centers in Chicago) over the last year. Within the next year I will help with some voter registration stuff and maybe more depending on time. I do also volunteer with a couple of local charities here and there when I can but unfortunately haven’t been able to do as much as I wanted due to mental health issues and trying to get back on my feet after a long struggle with opiate addiction that really screwed up a lot of things in my life.
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I’m going to actively seek to be less of an asshole, but still keep my edge like Coors Cutter
and radiate more light than heat.
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I donate roughly 5% of my income directly to political candidates, usually during primaries although I did give heavily to HRC (lol me).
I go out of my way to avoid single use plastics whenever possible.
I buy the expensive sustainably farmed versions of everything including meat. I realize that a lot of this is probably just me being a fish, but I think demand for that stuff has to go up for processes to change.
Here’s the big line item where I actually think I’m making a difference… I go way out of my way to use African American trucking companies. I do this despite the fact that they tend to be under-capitalized and as a result provide meaningfully inferior service… particularly when they are new to the game. I feel slightly bad taking credit for this, but I basically funnel 150k a year worth of pretty decent work into a group of newly formed small businesses that normally wouldn’t be getting the opportunity to haul decent freight (my freight tends to be higher end and as a result pays a bit better than the norm).
My experiences with work have been really interesting wrt racial justice I have to say. It’s made me much more aware of how it self perpetuates… because weirdly if everyone is doing something it kind of becomes +EV for you to do it yourself at an individual level. If African American owned trucking companies can’t get work at the same level as other trucking companies it makes them under-capitalized and it trains them to cut corners (which you have to do to make a living working substandard loads) resulting in them not selling as good of a product. It’s really pernicious. Regardless of my own EV I’m going to keep doing it because I can.
Definitely eye opening though. It turns out that if most African Americans are poor and poor people are more likely to commit crimes it’s +EV (from a cops personal statistics point of view) for a cop to hassle them over say white people. Also because they are disadvantaged they are much less likely to be able to make said cops life difficult (if you hassled me, an upper middle class white guy, the way you hassled black people the city would be cutting me a check lol). As a result any cop who is struggling to make their numbers is going to be heavily incentivized to go fuck up some black people to stay employed. Again it’s crazy how pernicious and self reinforcing it all is.
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Nothing really.
FYI virtue signaling is +ev for the world, even if it makes you uncomfortable. There is good research showing that telling your friends that you donate to charity, for instance, leads to positive peer pressure for them to do the same.
It’s actually quite selfish to keep your charitable acts to yourself.
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Nothing.
Come at me but I’m zoning out of politics. Still listening to CTH because it’s funny but that’s it.
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Travelling the world and helping the young folks with your knowledge is not nothing SuB, don’t sell yourself short 
Thanks 
I teach high school students. Many are smarter than their teachers (including myself). Most teachers are too proud to acknowledge that fact.
Nobody in my school as a kid acknowledged the students that were LBGT. We suspected but never talked about it. Now, students part of that community are in same-sex relationships and don’t hide it. There are some views that are a bit more ignorant (mostly involving Roma* and Muslims**) but on average I’d say they’re center to center-left by European standards.
*Nearly everybody openly despises Roma regardless of where a person is on the political spectrum.
**The student’s disdain of Muslims is mostly based on their mockery of religion in general than the idea of them being terrorists. That goes on here as two-thirds of the people in the CR are atheist. Since Prague is more leftist, it’s probably an even higher percentage here. As for the elderly, well there’s a shit ton of casual racism among them. No doubt it’s more so than in America, but less aggressive and violent.
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What are attitudes in Czechia like towards the growing Vietnamese community?
I am on the city council in the place I live in and am contemplating running for state parliament in the next election. I am not sure how much that is making a difference, but it surely is doing a lot.
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Congratulations on winning the thread lol.
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