We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
Damn if only there were any research pointing out water fluoridation as one of the most cost-effective public health programs in the history of humanity.
Fluoride is cheap as shit.
Not to mention it really pisses off the conspiracy crowd. "To own the chuds" will always be my first concern in decisionmaking and it has a track record there.
Giving myself fluorosis to own the chuds. It's not just chuds that oppose fluoridation it's pretty much everybody outside of the US.
If it's cheap as shit give everyone a packet of fluoride to smear on their teeth. Also I don't care about whatever "line goes up" justification there is, it's just still a roundabout and wasteful delivery method to put it in the tap water. There's no way to control dosage and it's wasteful. Also municipalities fuck up the quantity of fluoridation pretty regularly.
Besides the practical concerns water fluoridation would never pass an ethical review if it were proposed today. People should be able to consent to what medicine they're taking. It's banned in almost every country other than the US for a reason.
Also dentists aren't real doctors. They don't go through med school and most of the research they publish isn't nearly as rigorous as regular medical research. Same fuckers came up with the bright idea to put mercury in tooth implants.
That creates hundreds of millions of waste packets every year surely.
It might be wasteful, but it's probably not more wasteful than packaging and shipping all these packets.
I can't find anything to suggest this is true.
Also like, if you're homeless or something you're probably not getting your toothpaste in the mail or however and there aren't many places to brush or a way to keep a clean tooth brush. So some fluoride in the tap water really does help there.
Mercury isn't used any more in fillings but you do know that alloying a metal changes its properties, right? Like, sodium and chlorine will fuck you up real bad but your body will die unless you imbibe salt.
Also, do you get this
mad over iodine in salt? It's all the same shit, cheap and efficient solutions for vast and expensive problems.
That’s a pretty weak response.
Metals and metalloids are generally not metabolized safely and the few that are stand out and get specific mentions in rda lists like iron and zinc. There isnt a recommended daily allowance of mercury or lead, don’t eat or breathe them.
Only table salt gets iodized, not kosher, pickling or road salt. Iodization is like a million times more focused and efficient than fluoridation.
Unlike real doctors who have never put dangerous chemicals inside of patients
[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]
It's widely practiced in other countries like the UK, all across South America, Malaysia, ROK, Ireland, Spain, China, Singapore; the rest of what you're saying is comically wrong but this part is incredibly easy to demonstrate how wrong you are.
too bad we don't know how much water people drink & can't calibrate relative to that. one of life's great mysteries
great point, we don't know when people are using water in a way that necessitates chlorination, we should just send everyone untreated water & they can treat it at their discretion when it's really necessary. stop the waste!
Some people are sweating in the sun and drinking lots of water to replace it; some people are hydrating almost exclusively with bottled sparkling water. There is actually great variation among how much tap water people drink. You know how some people are getting iodine deficiency even though we supplement table salt, because they're using sea salt for all their home cooking?
Not to say that fluoridated water isn't better than nothing. But I don't see how it can give everyone a perfect dose.
you don't need a perfect dose, just less than would give people fluorosis, which is a fucking lot--people usually get it from eating toothpaste which has a concentration 1.000 times that of the recommended amount in water
The amount of fluoride it requires to do any damage is astronomically high and it being in water means you will piss it out too fast for it to be an issue. So you're safe from too high of a dose. If you're not eating ionized salt and also are somehow not getting any dietary iodine elsewhere, that's weird and you can tske supplements, same with fluoride. If you don't drink tap water it means you're paying for your water which means you brush your teeth often anyway.
Please tell me how to get everyone an individual packet of fluoride to put on their teeth. Are their fluoride depots spread all throughout this great land? How will the homeless access these packets? How about all of the waste from these dingle serve packets? Also it's not medicine, it's a mineral that is already part of your teeth and re-minerlizarion is necessary to maintain enamel and stuff. To say fluoride is medicine means that literally all nutrients count as medicine, so should the government stop putting water in the tap water? Cause guess the fuck what water is? Lava. Geologically speaking ice is a rock. So fundamentally there is no difference at all between the two. So running water in general is the government forcing medicine into you apparently.
Holy shit this is the most debate pervert argument I've ever seen.
Fluorosis is real thing you can get that fucks up your bones. It's a real issue in parts of the world with naturally high fluoride levels/ industrial contamination. I'm not saying you can get Fluorosis from tap water, but if you do get it from environmental exposure tf are you gonna do, only drink and bathe in distilled water?
Toothpaste is already fucking fluoridated idiot. You act like what I was talking about is some impossible task when it already exists. Also homeless people usually don't have access to tap water genius. That's kind of one of the major downsides of being homeless, no access to any plumbing/running water.
Homeless people can easily access tap water. I am friends with numerous homeless people and noe have died from dehydration nor are they buying bottled water. You go anywhere and either fill a bottle in a public restroom if that's around or any fast food place cause legally they have to provide water and that water will be tap water because it's essentially free.
So you're saying these fluoride packs (and I was using your own words there, dumbass) are toothpaste which means you need a tooth brush. So those are also available for free and as easy to access as running fucking water? The difference in infrastructure to provide the exact same thing based on a concern you have that isnt real is astounding. Are you sure you're not a libertarian?
I've literally been homeless before. 1. Just because they legally have to doesn't mean they will. 2. Going into a fast food place 5 times a day to beg for water isn't very practical. Also a lot of fast food places actually filter their water to be softer which removes minerals including fluoride.
Fucking blockhead