184 points

Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.

Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA

-Food companies, basically.

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108 points

Fun fact:

The precursor to the FDA was created during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. After the book was published, Roosevelt sent federal investigators to the Chicago slaughterhouses to validate the conditions detailed in the story.

The investigators reported that the conditions were worse than described in the book. And that was after the slaughterhouse owners got wind that the feds were coming and had everything cleaned from top to bottom.

Hard to imagine what “worse” looks like because the conditions detailed in the book are truly appalling.

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71 points

Additional fun fact, The Jungle was meant to highlight the poor working conditions in slaughter houses, but the outrage was related entirely to the poor consideration for the meat that the public was eating.

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45 points
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Love the cover:

[Incidentally and entirely off-topic, it reminds me of the book(s) I’m reading right now: Josiah Bancroft’s Tower of Babel tetralogy - urban steampunk jungle, vertically]

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The book cover has the same vibe as the album cover for Pink Floyd’s “Animals”, which also happens to be a scathing critique of capitalism.

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2 points

I loved that series, enjoy!

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40 points
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Not sure if you intended this, but you can absolutely get what you wrote to work with the timing (and same rhyme sounds/pattern, basically) of the first few lyrics of Guns N Roses ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, with minor modifications.

Welcome to the Jungle,

where we play dirty games.

Food safety sure costs a lot,

so fuck the FDA.

We are the people who hate fines,

Whatever they may be.

If you got no money, honey,

We got your disease.

etc.

(Wonderful that some of the lyrics don’t have to change at all, nor really the chorus, yay internal bleeding.)

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12 points

I read the original to the tune without thinking about it!

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12 points

It gives “Watch it bring it to your n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n knees, knees” an entirety different context! 🤮

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12 points
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I mean… the original song’s use of that phrase arguably references a woman basically being forced to give bjs to her dealer in order to get drugs she’s now addicted to…

All of this is terrible!

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10 points

That was my intention. Good on ya!

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6 points
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Sha na na na na na Shingles, eeeeek!

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14 points

if Upton Sinclair was alive today he would flip his lid

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10 points

such a good read. should be required by all.

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3 points
126 points
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they used to put brick dust in chocolate bars, and sawdust in bread

edit: heck, they just caught someone recently intentionally putting lead in applesauce cinnamon that was used in applesauce, which has been used off and on as a sweetener since at least ancient rome, where a bunch of people went crazy and died from consuming a sweetener made by boiling grapes in lead pots

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51 points

I mean if you think about it, cinnamon is essentially sawdust right?

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29 points

Not wrong…

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2 points

Very wrong. Cinnamon is king.

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4 points
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Spices lose their flavor over time. Yours are too old; throw them out and replace them.

Or at least start using a fuck-ton more than the recipe calls for until you use up the old stuff.

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21 points

You’re missing the point. Copying what I wrote above:

I just mean because cinnamon (the spice) is the bark of the cinnamon tree, which when ground up is a form of sawdust. Delicious sawdust, but sawdust, nonetheless.

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23 points
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Copper sulfate used to be added to canned peas because it turns green when it oxidizes, making them look greener.

Copper sulphate is straight up poisonous, enough will kill a passion and low amounts will hurt them.

Anyone who wants to learn more about this history, there is a great episode of the “ridiculous history” podcast that goes into the story that finally got food regulations in the US. A team of people who volunteered to be poisoned to help prove that certain things are unsafe to put in food.

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19 points

enough will kill a passion

Those poor, poor passions!

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20 points

It’s also HEAVY, so something light sold by weight just needs a liiiiittle lead to be a lot cheaper to make

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23 points

This is what caused that pet food scare back in the 00’s. Some Chinese manufacturer realized that they were being paid by weight, not volume, so they added heavy metals to their cat food and it poisoned a few cats here in the US.

China executed that guy btw.

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9 points

recently

My wife loves apple sauce, who did this to her

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24 points
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WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree pouches, Schnucks cinnamon-flavored applesauce pouches and variety pack and Weis cinnamon applesauce pouches were recalled

it was actually the cinnamon in the applesauce being cut with lead to significantly increase it’s weight, thus it’s value. It was an Ecuadoran cinnamon processor called Carlos Aguilera

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5119336/cinnamon-lead-fda-recall-what-we-know

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6 points

Thank you!

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3 points
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That should be okay now. I totally expect no subsequent tests with results showing any contamination.

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7 points

Wasn’t there lead found in other spices, too? Like tumeric or something?

Yep!

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5415259/

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111 points

My favorite “we had to regulate this” is coal mining. You see, the larger a coal mine tunnel, the more work and time it takes. So smaller tunnels will be more profitable. So in some places they preferred smaller women and children, so they could make make smaller, easier tunnels. This one I only ever found one source on, but supposedly one mine owner noticed that snags on clothing were slowing things down in the narrow tunnels so he insisted on sending them in nude. Nothing more capitalist than naked coal mining children.

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20 points

The fact that these fucks were not regularly dragged from their mansions and beaten to death blows my mind

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12 points

as humans, our arguably greatest trait is the ability to adapt to almost any circumstance. unfortunately that also often makes us accept unacceptable living conditions because changing them involves too high of a personal cost.

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1 point
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You’re not dragging Trump out and beating him to death. So why expect of your ancestors what you can’t do today?

I’m not shaming nor advocating btw, just explaining.

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1 point
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I mean a single rich guy owning a mine in a time pre-internet seems a lot more doable than the literal most protected guy in the country.

Plus my children aren’t literally dying in the mines

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1 point

That’s because you view things like this as isolated acts done by a few people. But don’t forget, only 1/3 of US voters tried to stop a man who openly declared himself a fascist, had already had a direct hand in the spread of a world wide plague that killed millions.
The “they didn’t know what they were getting into” excuse is no longer valid. And yet 2/3 of voters were fine with him being reelected . The reason those people weren’t dragged from their mansions and beaten to death was because of all the other monsters who were protecting them. The people who weren’t committing atrocities themselves, but benefited from it enough to help it keep happening.

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2 points
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I realy would like to fact check you on this, but i will definitely not search for “naked coal mining children”. “Trust me bro” will have to do it for this one.

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2 points

That miners often worked naked or partially naked is definitely true. That children, men and women worked together in mines is also true. If it’s legally allowed, then it’s going to happen basically.

That there were owners who preferred children/women over men, is probably false. They will have tended to do different jobs in the mines, but I can’t recall having ever read anything about a mine that preferred to not employ any male miners.

That the workers worked naked because of owner mandates is also going to be false, because those miners used to be paid according to how much they extracted, so there was no reason for the owner to have such a mandate. Instead it was the workers their own choice: some clothes hinder them in their work (heat, snagging, dust) + the job eats up clothes + they have to pay for their own clothes = they’re not going to be wearing many clothes at work.

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104 points

Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.

Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don’t know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.

You’d think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.

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58 points

Hence, the defunding of education, and specifically critical thinking. That is by design. You can’t easily control the population when they can read and think for themselves.

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17 points

Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.

It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for “opening their eyes.” Dude, he’s entertaining, I get that, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t lying to you.

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2 points

I was 12 or so when my dad started listening to Limbaugh. I had zero clue about politics, but I could tell the guy was a scumbag. So glad he’s dead. I danced a jig in my cubicle when I found out.

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27 points

but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.

Hell, I’d even settle for more people watching classic movies and TV shows. People need to maintain some link to the past to see the mindset of those who lived through fascism, wars, etc. and absorb what a society that rejects those ideas looks like.

Culture is a big part of our collective memory, and a society that can’t look back will just reinvent the same problems.

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8 points

It would be cool if someone made a “transported through time” miniseries that showed exactly what living in that period with those problems was like. I think it could be very popular.

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3 points
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Watch the show Connections. It was made by the BBC in 1978 and does exactly this, but more science focused. The show holds up really well.

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0 points
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I can see that being an isekai manga. Say, by the person who did Spice & Wolf?

Oh, by the way, check out Barefoot Gen. It was written by a person who was a boy when the atomic bombs hit Japan. It covers the post-war period, including the corruption and day-to-day life of a shattered Japan.

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26 points

I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.

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23 points

When I told my parents how we got things like the 40 hour work week they were fucking mortified. Something seemingly so inconsequential, many people died for.

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2 points

Yup.

People died to give workers rights and now we’re electing anti-worker presidents and giving those rights away. It’s sickening.

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69 points

Vote with your dollar! If tainted baby formula kills your kid, simply refuse to buy that brand anymore!

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62 points

3 stars. I dislike that it killed my baby, but shipping was really fast!

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8 points

- review found under a pack of rechargeable batteries

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30 points

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4 points

there’s like four companies in america. Soon to be 1 no doubt.

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2 points

At least they’re not american. At this point I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather buy Nestlé just to make sure Trump doesn’t get any tax dollars.

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4 points

This, so much this…

I tire of people saying “VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET”, when the problem is far more systemic than a “couple bad actors greedy for the green”

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1 point
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