The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem | Hacker News Reader

The Internet Has a Rat Poison Problem

audubon.org

336 pointsaxiomdata316206 comments

I use the old-fashioned snap traps. They work fine. Sometimes it's necessary to tweak the catch to make it more sensitive. They're made of wood and wire, and aren't an environmental problem.

I live near a greenbelt and there's a never-ending invasion of mice. If I leave the garage door open and unattended, they're in in a flash and setting up shop. The only way to get rid of them is the traps, and you have to get rid of them.

Peanut butter bait is irresistible. I used to use gloves to bait them cuz the books say they mice are deterred by human smell. They aren't. They aren't deterred by The Cat, either, as they know The Cat prefers human flesh. They're not very smart, either, as if you put two traps adjacent, they'll crawl over the body of their buddy dead in the first one and get caught by the second.

Rats tend to be more clever, and harder to trap than mice

The snap traps still work on them every time.

For a Cat to work on mice it has to be a Mouser. I can't pretend I know the full theory of Mousers but it seems that females brought up by Mouser mothers in a mouse-rich environment are the best Mousers, since they are taught to kill from their earliest years.

All I did was go to the adoption place and ask for a slightly older cat who'd been on the street long enough to be a hunter. They were very happy I wasn't asking for a cute kitten. He came litter trained, fixed, and kills everything that gets in the house.

I would have thought they were thrilled that you picked an older cat.

Then all you have to be concerned with is avoiding toxoplasmosis exposure.

The most important precaution is daily cleaning of litter boxes, since the parasite does not become infectious until after a day of being expelled from the cat through its feces.

Also, cats only spread the parasite for up to three weeks after becoming infected themselves.

This has more info about this: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/gen_info/faqs.ht...

Also, for anyone curious about parasites, this book is a gem: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_Rex

True, some cats couldn’t care less about mice. I had an outdoor cat that was into pigeons which I didn’t have a problem with. At the same time the dog we had was a natural mouser. She got the problem under control.

I don't need a mouse exterminating machine, I just need to dissuade additional mice from showing up. Even my untrained cat is okay at that; she'll eventually kill a mouse, but gets disappointed when her plaything stops moving.

They don't have to be all the good of a mouse hunter to lower the number of mouse sightings you'll have. Rodents have a built in fear of car urine and cat dander, so just their presence will deter mice.

> Rodents have a built in fear of car urine and cat dander, so just their presence will deter mice.

I thought so too. But nope.

Of course, a good mouser is also likely a good birder.

That’s not been my experience, and I’ve lived with dozens of cats. Currently we have three cats, siblings. They were found orphaned, a few days old, and raised bottle-fed by humans. They never had a cat mother. All three of them regularly delivery rodents to the house as gifts.

If anyone is interested there is a YouTube channels dedicated to mouse traps and other rodent traps: Mousetrap Monday.

Edit: he also has a bit about rat poison somewhere where he explains how to prevent non-rodents from eating rat poison. I cannot vouch for it but it sounded smart to me (farming background).

Edit 2, here's the video: https://mousetrapmonday.com/videos/why-rat-x-is-the-only-rat...

In a couple of the cuts we can see ingredient names, but I, like Shawn in the video take the declaration with a pinch of salt.

For me I'll use traps anyway at my current "farm".

I think it's highly variable, depending on the size of the population, how hungry they are, if they have other food options available, and their culture and genetics. Sometimes the traps get them, and sometimes they definitely don't. And if the traps don't get all of them, the problem isn't really addressed.

I sometimes get mice in the house, and found snap traps to be totally ineffective. They worked at first, but when I had more than one mouse in the house, they seemed to learn to avoid them and even how to eat the bait without setting off the mechanism.

The most generally effective trap I have found is glue traps. They are an awful device but very effective. Unfortunately, you have to kill the trapped mice yourself. They have usually sustained serious injuries in an attempt to free themselves, so even if you wanted to free them, it's too late. They will also catch other pests (like insects), while being relatively safe for any larger animal - I wouldn't put one anywhere a cat, dog, or child could get into it, but if they did, liberal application of a solvent like rubbing alcohol will solve the problem.

One time that did not work either, and after seeing an HN post on the matter, I filled a pyrex mixing bowl with cooking oil. It turns out this is fairly effective too. The video posted showed that dozens of mice had climbed in - I only had one left, but it worked. They get in and they can't get out. If you want a nonlethal trap for some reason, this is a good choice, and it's easy to put together if you don't have time to run to the store for a glue or snap trap. Of course, if you would like it to be lethal, well, you have the same problem you have with glue traps: it's up to you to deliver a coup de grace.

I have actually wondered why people go with poison - as the article even mentions one of the reviewers complaining about, you end up with rotting mice/rats in inaccessible places.

The people who go with poison are probably trying to get rid of rats on an industrial scale, in warehouses and such.

I used to live in a rural area. As soon as it began to get cold the mice - and sometimes a few rats - would start their annual pilgrimage from the freezing, dangerous fields into the nice warm safe human houses.

I bought some live catch traps. The mice blocked the entrances.

Really. They collected all kinds of crap that was on the floor and pushed it into the entrance holes.

If I'd known about the cooking oil trick, I'd have used that instead.

There are better mouse traps than those sold at grocery stores.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082LP4VS1 - snap traps of this type are easier to set, and were more reliable at killing mice for me.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Authenzo-Humane-Mouse-Trap-Smart-... - live traps were also effective for me. You have to be strategic about where you put them. I kept a bucket of water on the porch and would dunk the whole trap with mouse inside to drown it. Less humane perhaps than snap traps, but better than glue or poison. If you rotate between kinds of trap week over week you can get pretty reliable results.

I find glue traps as inhumane, the mice get trapped and they die an agonizing slow death. Once trapped they cannot be detached from the glue bed without their skin being ripped off their bodies.

Usually when they were caught in the trap, I woke up to them squeaking or thrashing around within a few minutes to at most hours of them being caught and drowned them by placing the trap upside down in water.

I agree it is not a merciful way to go, but they do not make good houseguests and other methods proved ineffective.

Yah, I was horrified at that. Never used glue traps again.

> I sometimes get mice in the house, and found snap traps to be totally ineffective. They worked at first, but when I had more than one mouse in the house, they seemed to learn to avoid them and even how to eat the bait without setting off the mechanism

They work, you just have to give it time. Keep the peanut butter fresh and smear it all over the mechanism to increase the probability of them setting off the trap.

The daredevils will come back night after night and get bolder each time.

Also … the simple snap traps are sometimes badly calibrated.

As a poster further upthread alluded to, you can fix them. I bend the vertical plate a tiny bit so that there is a bit less “shelf” for the tension wire to rest on.

Be careful - you can take this too far and make it a hair trigger…

ALSO: I always mix a pinch of quinoa or tiny seeds into the peanut butter so it can’t be licked clean - they must bump and move it to get the peanut butter.

Also be sure to work the peanut butter into the inside of the curl of the plate. That'll set the trap off when they try to get that last bit out.

I didn't realize it at first, but the snap traps are diabolical in that if they go off when the mouse is licking there, the wire will catch them on the back of the neck, crushing it, which will kill the mice quickly and humanely.

I don't want to kill them. Once, there was one running across the counter. Quick action with an inverted glass caught the little bugger. I slide a card under the glass so I could pick it up, took it outside, and let him go a hundred yards away.

> They worked at first, but when I had more than one mouse in the house, they seemed to learn to avoid them

In my experience they never learn.

> and even how to eat the bait without setting off the mechanism.

That happens sometimes. I just bend the tab a bit so the trap becomes a hair trigger, when the slightest vibration will set it off.

Cats definitely work against mice, you just need cats which actually hunt them. Most of today's domestic cats probably didn't learn to hunt.

I miss my cat, we called her triple-kill Mari since many times we would wake up and see the dead rats neatly arranged on the deck.

Our cat certainly hunts mice. The problem is she considers them presents to give to bring back home.

My barn cat likes to present me with just the organs. One time, he presented them on a bed of grass, like a fancy chef. He's got a closet in the back of the structure with a (cat) door to the outside and a ramp, so he had to work hard to get those blades of grass up and into his room to show me.

? I thought cats just instinctively know how to hunt mice; I've yet to meet a house cat that didn't.

If you have a big enough garden, you could put an owl nest box in a calm place when the owlets constant screeching noise will not suppose a problem. Owls can be territorial and attack to protect the nest also, so leave them far from the house and alone. Unlike traps, they will catch ten mice by night each night and will dispose of the corpses so you don't need to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-KWBSbis4

If you're lucky enough to have one move in. I have a bat house in hopes of natural mosquito control. It's been a few years and there's no sign of use.

Bats are amazing neighbors. For years our neighboor had a massive pine tree that was hone to a pretty significant bat population. We would always see them come out at night and start feeding. Mosquitoes were never an issue. A few years ago the tree had to be cut down because it was rotting inside and was at danger of falling down. Unfortunately the bats haven't returned, and everyone in my neighborhood is now fighting the mosquito.

The only issue I have with bats is I am now terrified of them. Several years back my kids Taekwondo instructor, a 21 year old picture of perfect health magnificent human being, was killed from rabies after a bat brushed against him in the night while taking a pee on the side of the road. Months later after it was too late signs of rabies appeared and he died in hospital. It was devastating. The bats in my neighbourhood commonly swoop down near you if in the yard and it is now scary.

https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/human_r...

This is absolutely nuts. Also how would he know that he wasn't bitten if it brushed up against him.

He didn't know. Bat bites are barely perceptible.

I am not sure by what part you think is nuts? Worrying about bats? I don’t like to play with odds and now personally know someone who died from it. I would rather not take a chance. Here is an article about his death and the rabies in the bats in our area. https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/mobile/man-21-dies-after-...

I woke up one night with a bat flying circles around the ceiling of my bedroom. It flew all over my house until I trapped it in a room. It flew with total precision, like it was at home in a cave, nothing like a confused bird flapping around in your house.

I paid $400 to have it captured and tested (which involves killing it). It was negative. It could have bit me in my sleep, and I was glad to not get that series of shots (at the time it was those ones that go into your gut) or wait it out and wonder if I would die a year later.

We're fortunate enough to have an owl (I assume a pair) and a couple of hawk pairs in my neighborhood (I can see them in the nest). There are also snakes (I've had to coerce a 3' black racer off my porch). Rodents have never been an issue.

The problem with denser city living is there isn't a lot of habitat for natural predators.

We have a couple of Red Kites nesting quite close by. Love watching them, and don’t seem to have a rodent problem.

There's a natural predator in cities whose habitat is "your couch."

But people say that allowing cats to be "outdoor cats" is a bad thing.

(Cats do hunt a bunch of species that aren't going to try to enter your house, and may in fact be endangered. But then... so would owls, hawks, and snakes living in the same areas. My point isn't so much that having cats outdoors is good; but rather that we should apply the same standard to having any of these other predatory species in our neighbourhoods that we do for cats.)

Because cats hunts for fun and don’t even eat what they kill half the time. They’re just out murdering birds for sport.

Morality aside the uneaten dead birds never go to waste. If a raccoon, opossum, coyote or bird doesn't eat the carcass something else will and it all goes back into the mix. The only way it becomes an actual loss is when a human interferes by putting it in a plastic bag or throwing it out in the trash and dooming it to decompose in a landfill.

Bacteria bringing up the rear.

Yeah but they too good at hunting the ones who aren't going to enter my house. They're little psychos[1], but I love my little psychos.

[1]: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill

I'm not sure it's actually true that we should apply the same standard to predators who are naturally present in an ecosystem and predators introduced by humans. The natural ones have to some extent demonstrated that they're capable of existing without causing their various forms of prey to go extinct.

cats are not local species, except you live at their original region. cats are invade species, local animals do not evolve with them. cat can easy extinct most small animals in your region, local predators will not. please do not claim "they are same".

The GGP commenter was waxing on about having owls in their neighbourhood to such a degree that you'd expect that they'd be interested in introducing owls into a neighbourhood, as an invasive species, for pest control — the same way farmers traditionally introduced "barn cats" as a pest-control measure.

My point is that any invasively-introduced predatory species can and will end up hunting local wildlife to extinction. A species that has never been invasively introduced before isn't suddenly a more "noble" creature. That's the halo effect. One should treat the statement "we should get a pet owl, and let it roam the neighbourhood freely" with exactly the same suspicion as "we should get a pet cat, and let it roam the neighbourhood freely." There will be an equal environmental impact from both.

(And any predator kept as a pet will hunt "for sport", because you're already feeding them, so any hunting they do — and they will hunt, if for "practice play" if nothing else — will be done on a full stomach.)

I use a reflective metal owl to deter woodpeckers who love destroying my house. It seems to be effective because I’ve not seen or heard the little peckers since. Your comment makes me wonder if these would also help with mice.

Just saw that my neighbor installed one on his fence. I'll ask him in a week how that's going.

Probably not. Mice don't even know what hits them

I see the balls of crushed bones and fur on my driveway all the time (what comes out of a coyote after it eats a mouse). There are eagles and owls around here, too. Still plenty of mice.

I wonder if there is a more sustainable way of dissuading rodents from ever entering a building.

I once had a terrible ant problem, they would always find their way into the kitchen. I tried a variety of products either intended to kill off the actual ant nests directly or trap the invaders, but there was always some quantity of ants remaining that would persist. Then I tried one product that was to simply be sprayed around the entrances like an invisible barrier, the ants would encounter it and just turn around. This turned out to be far more effective, and I felt like less of a jerk by not carpet bombing all the local ant nests.

I guess it might be harder to induce such behaviour in a rodent, I think the spray exploits the fact that ants leave chemical trails, so even if one of them figures out a path the rest wont follow. But the constant game of killing and collecting invaders must be exhausting.

I managed to control my serious ant problem by feeding them. I would set up plates of sugar or sugary food outside, away from the house. Over time I got fewer and fewer scouts coming in to the house to snoop around.

I would expect this only works for you because something else is preventing population growth in ants near your house.

Either this or confirmation bias. Ants will reproduce colonies and expand to take as much resources as you're willing to give them.

Fire ants seemed at first a scourge in Texas but they also eliminated certain pests. During the time I presided over a condominium we had no need of termite or carpenter ant control, thanks to our ever-alert fire ants.

Once the pests are gone, if necessary you can reduce the fire ants' population with say, Amdro. By simply paying attention, you can keep your lawn and buildings in a steady state vis-a-vis insect pests.

I was not so successful with alleged mice/rats. Some tenants insisted there were rats present. We do have an abundance of possums but I've never seen a rat or mouse here and baby possums are often mistaken for rats. So I put out some mouse/rat bait boxes. The results over the first season was only two dead very small baby possums, indeed small enough to enter the rat/mouse trap, eat the anticoagulant and die before leaving. After that I threw out the rat/mouse traps.

I have done this as well. An abundance of food and water near their nest will keep them from wandering. If you occasionally remove the food you get the bonus of them scouting your house frame for termite larva. If they find even one larva, there will be an army of ants eradicating them within minutes. Ants can go where termite control can not.

Salt. Ants taste with receptors on thier feet. Walking on salt is painful to them. Smear some salty water and let it dry. No ant scout will ever cross the line. Ive used that trick countless times to keep ants off of counters or from crossing open doors in summer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_a_better_mousetrap,_and_...

The problem with most traps is that they only catch one at a time. By far the most effective way to deal with a mouse problem is a bucket with a ramp leading up to a cylinder(bought online) that spins and drops the mouse into the bucket when they come for the peanut butter taped to the cylinder. You can fill the bucket with water to drown them or something non lethal.

It can catch many mice at once, they stay inside the trap once caught, and there’s no messy cleanup/ rebating.

There’s nothing worse than a maimed mouse dragging a snap trap around your house all night…

Yup. I had some in my attic with the start of cold weather. I put the bucket out for a night and had 7 in there the next morning.

> There’s nothing worse than a maimed mouse dragging a snap trap around your house all night…

Glue the trap to the floor?

Now you have a mouse trap glued to your floor?

I had one of those and somehow the fuckers would always clean the cylinder and not fall in. I lubed the shit out of the cylinder too. I put a video camera on it. They would keep their back feet on the top of the ramp and stretch their whole body along the cylinder to lick it clean without tipping in.

That's crafty. I put the peanut butter in a ring of tape hanging around the middle of the cylinder. I did this to keep it from falling off into the water and eventually, getting moldy (I keep the bucket permanently set). It also means I almost never have to re-set it... I wonder, if something like that would be more difficult to reach stretched out. You also must have large mice.

There's a YouTube guy who does mouse trap reviews and he loves the rolling log thing. he recently put up a new video on it and pointed out that you don't want the rolling log to be too easy to roll because then they are more careful venturing out on it.

I also have one of those that I lubed up as well (not realizing that was a bad idea) in my garage and last fall I caught 11 mice in just a few days. 3 so far this year.

> is this a tongue-in-cheek joke or am I missing some evidence?

Snap traps work great. Mice are INCREDIBLY stupid. I set some snap traps at my cottage. I ran out of almonds, but I was too lazy to go inside for more, so for the last trap I just used an acorn. Sure enough, it caught a mouse. With thousands of acorns all over my yard.

A bucket with a free-spinning dowel across it works very well too. Although, where I live they are illegal to use unless you empty them twice daily. And any use of water or chemicals with them is illegal.

Ew. Not surprised you can buy the stuff that professionals shy away from for being too damned toxic, to your door, overnight delivery. Plus good reviews, hard to leave a bad review for it when you're bleeding out in the ER.

I don't use poisons for pest control. We have too many owls, hawks, and the occasional eagle overhead. I'll kill stuff mechanically (damned pocket gophers...) and toss the carcass out where something will find it and eat it, but I won't poison them. The best mouse trap is actually a slightly erratic supply of cat food.

Good reviews also barely mean anything these days. The worst item I have ever bought online, which damaged itself on opening for 100% of buyers, had ~4.1 rating. At this point, it is fair to say getting less than 4 stars means the seller was too poor/naive to hire "online promotion" services or whatever they are called, rather than anything else.

Redordering reviews by date helps a lot.

Similar to eBay seller ratings where 99.9% positive feedback means you might get your item, whereas 95% positive feedback implies the seller is stealing the goods from the factory that counterfeits them and whether you receive anything depends mainly on how the shipping carrier handles a package that catches fire in transit.

Less than 80% positive feedback has never been observed but would presumably involve the seller coming to your house to murder you and steal your identity and then using your account to leave negative feedback for themselves.

I spit my tea all over at that last sentence.

This has the same energy as that "you wouldn't steal a car" ad in IT Crowd.

But it's not far from the truth, and unless 10 news websites report on it online platforms won't even bother with an empty statement. Amazon for example lets vendors transfer good reviews to any other product by just replacing the product entry (name, description, price). Sure you then have reviews for coffee cups under some solder wire, but it fools enough users. And if the reviews are too negative you can just remove the product offer and immediately create it again.

I think it's also review shyness. My wife yelled at me once (like real, oh shit I'm in trouble, yell) for leaving a 1 star review for an Uber driver who sped the whole way and ran a red light.

That's caused by excessive metric tracking on the part of companies, and passing the blame down to individual employees. When a 5-star rating is the default and anything else is a push for the person to be fired, of course people won't leave negative reviews, that's going to prevent people from leaving accurate reviews.

If I could trust reviews to be used in good faith (e.g. by paying employees a living wage and not implicitly requiring dangerous behavior to meet quotas), then I could leave more accurate reviews.

If they were driving recklessly, then they should be fired though. Uber prices are pretty much completely dictated by supply and demand. By taking a higher volume of passengers at the cost of safety, you're increasing the supply of trips and pressuring safer drivers to match your volume. Firing the reckless drivers creates a landscape where safer drivers can fairly compete.

What was her concern about leaving a bad review?

I’m this case a bad review could threaten someone’s livelihood and ability to feed/house themselves and their dependents. I feel a lot less bad leaving a bad review on an object on Amazon, but a bad review of a person who I know might very well lose everything because of even small changes in rating makes me nervous to rate them anything worse than a perfect score.

If you genuinely thought they were driving dangerously, then isn't it better to report it than to not? It's not really your fault that Uber's internal culture is so toxic. On the other hand, your choice to use Uber supports them. On the third hand, traditional taxi services often deliver exceptionally worse service, so what is someone to do?

Regarding the driver's livelihood, it seems to me like you should not worry so much about the choice of clicking a button in an app on your phone. For one thing, the driver probably isn't actually on the edge of ruin, and if they are it was due to a sequence of events that started long before you got into their car. If that's not the case, and Uber's in-app rating system is indeed a life destroyer, then at the very least maybe you should uninstall that app immediately, give the app itself a 1 star rating, and not associate yourself with Uber in the future, even at the cost of your own personal inconvenience? Would you ride in a taxi cab that included a loaded revolver in the back seat next to a sign that read, "satisfaction guaranteed, no questions asked"?

The question is less is someone driving badly but more is someone driving so badly that I think they deserve to risk losing their livelihood.

But then why do star ratings, why not directly ask "Does this person deserve to continue working yes/no?"

It's not like I get to pick Uber drivers based on their ratings.

Their job is driving. If they do that dangerously, then yes they do deserve to lose that job. They don't get a free pass to endanger the lives of others just because they'd be financially ruined if they are fired.

> Amazon for example lets vendors transfer good reviews to any other product by just replacing the product entry (name, description, price).

Huh. I wondered why often the reviews were for clearly a different product than the one in the description.

I bought a small wastebasket years ago that was the perfect shape, size, material, and finish. Lots of people agreed and it had really high ratings. Recently I wanted to find the official size to buy tighter fitting bags, maybe buy another wastebasket, only to find the listing now shows a meat slicer from a different company, with all the obvious trash can reviews still in place.

I have a terrible pocket gopher problem. They absolutely have to be dealt with when they come out of hibernation this year. What's you're favorite trap for them?

After years of trouble, my wife finally found success with a GopherHawk.

That does indeed look very effective.

I've got some long black traps with a "flag" on them that pops when triggered, and those seem to work well enough. A chunk of rebar to poke around and find the tunnel, a bit of hand digging, and I can start pulling 'em out in a hurry.

Sounds like a great way to give your cat toxoplasmosis, which will eventually infect you via feces spread if they’re indoor/outdoor.

Anyone surprised that the title is not a metaphor?

The article is about the literal sale of substances which are harmful when ingested by rodents.

Yeah I was like, hmmm who are the rats in this? What is the poison? Maybe it's me?? I have to change my ways!

Yep, I totally thought that it would be about some law that ruins the internet for everyone while at the same time does nothing to stop bad actors. Like the EU cookie warning mandate.

Yes! I thought it was going to compare the fight against <insert internet problem> with the Hanoi rat problem of 1902, where giving people the wrong incentive exacerbated the problem.

That raises an interesting question. What ARE the Hanoi Rat problems of the internet?

Calling out "ists" for karma and kudos. If there are no "ists" around, sockpuppet one or just claim you saw an "ist" somewhere else and put them in their place. Karma and kudos will follow.

Harmful when ingested directly or via carrion by rodents, along with basically anything else, including dogs, cat, birds, and people.

This has been a problem in my suburban neighborhood the last couple of years. Each spring, there's a very sudden die-off among the local chipmunk population. I've found a couple of the bodies, showing classic signs of SGAR poisoning. Haven't particularly noticed an effect on the local raptor population, but I don't see all that many even in the best of times so it's hard to tell. One pet dog has died, another couple have become severely ill. The close timing and extent suggests that it's a careless pest-control contractor rather than dozens of homeowners acting independently, but no culprit has been identified yet.

These chemicals are supposed to be used for rats because many rats have developed resistance to other chemicals, but I very much doubt that rats are the problem around here. Never seen one, or signs of one. People are using these poisons to control mice, which most definitely are a problem, and it's literally overkill. Personally I burn through a handful of snap traps every year (PB and Nutella are my baits of choice). There are other effective techniques as well, several mentioned here. Like "last line of defense" antibiotics, SGARs should be a last resort for pests which can't be dealt with by other means.

Happy to report I can't seem to find any products that contain either brodifacoum nor bromethalin on Amazon in Canada (not that I searched super-extensively). Sadly I could see a review on one product where someone specifically says "Don't order this from Amazon.ca! Order from Amazon.COM and pick it up at the border, because the chemical it uses is banned in Canada!" ... Really great advice there, buddy...

Brodifacoum? I don’t buy that on Amazon, I buy it at my local supermarket. Not the US, Australia. I’ve never heard any controversy about availability of brodifacoum in Australia (maybe some environmental or animal welfare group has complained, but if so I haven’t heard about it)

Glue traps, now that’s controversial. In the state of Victoria, illegal to use in residential settings (on animal welfare grounds), but still legal to use in some agricultural and industrial settings. I’m in New South Wales where residential use is legal, but you won’t find them on sale except in rural supply stores

What’s so bad about a glue trap that it weighs up against massive internal hemorrhaging over the course of 5 days?

Because most people think poison is like in the movies/tv where the victim chokes for 30 seconds, and drops dead immediately with a little bit of white foam dribbling out of their mouth.

That's cyanide. That is also the most painful thing ever, but at least quick.

Because instead it’s death by starvation over 3 days. And often the rats will tear off their own limbs in an attempt to escape from the glue.

Yup. A neighbour here used to have glue-traps. I once found such a trap with two (!)stumps of mouse-legs still attached to it. Mouse gnawed off its own legs.

The difference is that you see it. As somebody that had rescued a mouse from a glue trap once, I find them nasty. Having a totally restrained animal dying from hunger in your kitchen over the course of hours and days while looking at you terrified is a really unpleasant experience.

You can kill it of course, and I'm not against killing an animal, but is a mess of glue and liquids and spring traps are more fair in that sense.

[1] After a while I just couldn't keep typing without doing something about it. Some people laughed at me, and a bald and almost naked mouse was released some weeks later into a dry stone wall when fur started to grow again. It was a lot of work but I don't regret anything.

I'd rather die by internal hemorrhaging than being stuck to glue until I starve

That comparison doesn't make sense. Glue traps are not a risk to humans. Poison is a risk to humans, including that of internal hemorrhaging.

Some humans might be considering the experience of the intended target of the control device.

Leaving mammal traps unattended is cruel whether in the woods or in the home. If I check my traps every 8 hours or so, I'll be sure to find and kill any mice long before they start gnawing off limbs. Although, personally I just use the spring traps for mice, and leave the glue traps for crickets. Possibly this is cruel to the crickets...

"I buy it at my local supermarket. Not the US, Australia. I’ve never heard any controversy about availability of brodifacoum in Australia....)."

I can confirm that, just went to my armory where I stockpile my weapons and ammo for use in the never ending war against four and six-legged house invaders and read a few packet labels.

I live in a location that I unashamedly call Ratsville or Cockroach City depending on species that is causing the most mayhem at the time so it's always advisable one's armory is well stocked with pleanty of ammo. OK, what I found was two new 200g packets of pellet-type Talon brand Rat and Mouse Killer, each pack consisting of four 50g sub-packs which are used still hold/contain the pellets when distributed. I also found two Talon All Weather Wax Blocks (remains of a larger pack). Rats just love those wax blocks - much more so than the pellets (they're my 88mm defenses. ;-)

Both the blocks and pellets were purchased at the local supermarket and contain 0.05g/kg brodifacoum. These are just the domestic packages, bigger packages can be bought at hardware stores, on eBay etc. without effort.

Note: both the full packaging and sub-packs are clearly labeled Ready to Use Bait : For Use in & Around Buildings : Controls Species Resistant to Warfarin.

In my opinion, the packaging and presentation is about a safe as you could make it for a domestic product.

- It's clearly labeled in large white lettering 'POISON' under which it says 'KEEP OUT OF THE REACH OF CHILDREN' - all on a bright red background.

- Printed in big type on all packaging is the following: 'POISONS INFORMATION CENTRE : 131 126 : ALL HOURS : AUSTRALIA WIDE'.

- The packaging has a proper comprehensive 'how to use/bating strategy'.

- There's a well written section about not contaminating waterways, dams, drains, etc. Also says not to be used to control native species, etc. without wildlife authorities permission, etc.

- A section about disposal of remaining product, it too is clear and well written.

- Section on Safety Directions including details about the antidote Vitamin K1 (Phytomenadione).

- Has a special section 'Note to physicians and veterinarians' about the blood-thinning nature of the product and the correct administration of the antidote (vit K1).

- Packing advises in bold red type that the product contains 'Human taste deterrent BITREX, prevents accidental consumption by children'.

[My comment: BITREX is the chemical denatonium, a type of QUAT/quaternary ammonium compound, it's the most bitter substance known to human tase, some other animals cannot taste it - rats for instance. For the same reason it's also used for denaturing ethanol, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), etc.]

I'm not going to comment on whether brodifacoum is the most appropriate rodenticide available or not as that is not my expertise. However, I've had some training in chemistry and I've seen a lot of toxic substances over the years (and labeled as such), and I'd go so far as to say that this is the most responsible labeling I've ever seen on any poison for domestic use.

Right, there are fuckwits out there who cannot be trusted with anything and they'd screw this product up too given half a chance. That said, if the simple and clear instructions are followed, it's likely reasonably safe to use.

I contrast that with the common rodenticides of yesteryear some of which I personally recall - thallium and strychnine for instance.

(When I was about eight/nine years old I watched my lovely pet kelpie sheepdog Binky die of strychnine poisoning - poisoned by some damn lowlife for no good reason (even now, if I knew who it was I'd have to be restrained from attacking him/her).

Watching my pet dog die in such utter agony was one of the most terrible moments of my life and it's still etched on my memory as if it were yesterday. Strychnine, which could easily bought at the local pharmacy when I was a kid, is one of the most diabolical poisons known: it not only kills with great potency but does so with a vengeance - with terrible pain and convulsions. It keeps its victim fully conscious until the bitter end and even then that's not enough, by nature/in small doses strychnine is a stimulant so all the victim's senses are heightened - while killing it concomitantly tortures its victim in the most excruciating way imaginable.

By contrast, brodifacoum is noting like as merciless, and its vitamin K1 antidote is very effective. It's a great improvement over that 'evil' from the Strychnos nux-vomica plant.)

I suppose it's better than strychnine in that there is a chance for antidote. But that presumes there is the time/knowledge to apply the antidote for the pet. And of course that won't help with wild animals or "utility pets" like barn cats.

I'm not sure why the metal phosphide class isn't more popular in America. They hydrolyze in the stomach to produce toxic phosphine gas, which doesn't persist. Seems to be used in conjunction with SGARs but not as a first-line.

Yeah, right. As I said, I'm no expert on the subject but I don't understand why metal phosphides, zinc etc., aren't popular either.

My gut reaction is that some of the 'inappropriate' regulation of poisons (and chemicals generally) has to do with the process of regulation itself. In earlier times, regulations almost inevitably resulted in response to incidents (blue glass bottles introduced in Victorian times to reduce accidental/mistaken swallowing, thallium removed in the 1950s when too many abusive husbands were being bumped off by unhappy wives - thallium being so easy to administer, etc.). Such responses always left patchwork regulations with anomalies - such as why was strychnine available to anyone from my local pharmacy when I was a kid (that was mad even back then).

Lately, chemical companies and governments do regulations 'deals' in a more formalized bureaucratic way (which both parties prefer - as chemical companies see regulations as being protective of them and keeping the GP and other vested interests away from the process is desirable. Thus not all issues are covered. There's also the 'change' problem - changing regulations can involve much work - thus the well-known axiom comes to the fore 'don't change anything unless compelled to do so.

Environmentalism in the US started with a book, Silent Sprint, in 1962, which pointed out that when you poison pest species, you also poison the predators that prey on them, and risk shooting yourself in the foot that way.

So pretty much the #1 line item in American environmental law was to restrict access to pesticides.

Silent Spring*

Whoops.

Interestingly, the AG of Washington state just settled with Amazon over this same kind of borderline and illegal sales:

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-agrees-t...

As someone who needed some rodenticide, what is actually needed is not restriction on these poisons, but rather very authoritative sites with advice on the best stuff to get, that is actually safe and effective.

It's surprisingly hard to research what poisons are actually good to use, you'll either gets sites shilling stuff that completely doesn't work, but is "eco friendly" (for example "Rat-X"), and sites that simply give you the "most effective", i.e. most poisonous (like the ones in this article).

What's needed are sites explaining, for an average person, what's they should be getting. People aren't trying to kill birds, they just are getting really bad advice on what to buy.

Bromethalin is a good choice, if you use a bait station (it has no antidote, so always use a bait station, never just tie the blocks somewhere).

Eh, I'm not sure I agree. I think the natural tendency for people is to think "My case is different, I need the strongest tool for this job!". People stock their medicine cabinets with Extra Strength Tylenol instead of regular, or buy anti-bacterial soap instead of normal soap, because it's easier to go straight for the big guns.

Even in these small cases the information is tremendously easy to find and people don't look for it and/or care about it. The consequences of the wrong Tylenol or anti-bacterial soap are small comparatively, but when the consequences of bad choices get in the way of ecological conservation for no good reason, it seems like that's prime territory for regulation.

No, they aren't thinking "my case is different," they are expecting the market to be flooded with ineffective products marketed as "safe alternatives." Because it is. They are grasping at any piece of information they can find to fight the overwhelming tidal wave of ineffective non-solutions.

Get the old wood-and-wire snap traps. The design is centuries old, and they work. They make them rat-size, too.

I’ve used the wooden and wire, and they do work. Setting the small ones I always get a little nervous about my fingers. I saw the rat size ones in the store and yikes..

There's a plastic snap-trap that's easier to set and less risk to your fingers.

They're particularly useful for someone who's older and has muscular or nerve disabilities.

Both the wood and plastic traps are effective in my experience.

I tried the easier to set plastic ones. They're easier to set because the spring is much weaker. The mice have lighting reflexes, and would pull away before the trap could close. Either that, or the spring wasn't strong enough to crush them, and they'd pull out and run away.

Whenever I'd check them, they had tripped, the bait was licked off clean, and there wasn't a mouse hair left.

I don't recall ever having the metal ones trip and not catch the mouse. Once all it caught was some long grey hairs, and I tot quap, dat's a wat. Got da bigger an' badder wat twap version, an' caught da wascally wat.

For someone who really can't functionally set a wooden trap, the difference isn't of degree but is a 1-or-0 situation. There are different manufacturers, the Time's Up or Snap-E have performed well:

https://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/times-up-plastic-mouse-trap/p...

https://www.grainger.com/product/SNAP-E-Plastic-Mouse-Trap-3...

The one weakness I've discovered (recently, as it happens) is that if the target is trapped in such a way that it survives and has freedom of movement to gnaw at the trap, it will chew the plastic shell off the bar, and other exposed plastic parts (much of the trip-lever in the case I have in mind).

I present my experience as an option. The wood-and-wire traps are less expensive and quite effective as well IME. They're harder to set, however.

I've seen bait thefts with both versions. One learns to be creative in how and where the bait is applied, and sets multiple traps for redundency. The trapper only has to be lucky once, the mouse, every time.

No experience with rats, fortunately.

A wat trap must be quite large:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat

https://www.amazon.com/Victor-M201-Rat-trap-Pack/dp/B01N6IM6...

I know their littler bretheren well.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t care what’s recommended for their needs, because they just want the strongest stuff imaginable. Particularly when they’re pissed off at pests.

There’s a good number of people who’d happily buy flying murder robots to blow rats up with missiles if they were readily available and affordable.

most people absolutely do not read documentation, imo you should need to pass a license exam to use certain substances like bromethalin

Ok this is insane.

A couple days ago I was trying to purchase some new inexpensive but highly reviewed smoke detectors for my apartment. However I ran into an issue that due to some California law, they can’t be delivered because they have to be “10 year” units. The 10-year units are 2-3x the price.

On a whim just a couple minutes ago, I did the same search the author did in the article for “bromethalin” on Amazon. Lots of products showed up. I picked the one that had next day Prime delivery for San Francisco. At this step I just left it in my cart.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005BV0DD2?ref=ppx_pt2_mob_b_...

I read a bit further into the article where he talks about California it’s banned. To double check that, I went ahead and completed the order. Went through just fine. Confirmed delivery by tomorrow, 12/12/2021.

Then I had a momentary minor freak out and cancelled the order asap.

So yeah OP has an entirely valid point and it’s incredibly easy to buy this stuff. I even went with Amazon’s recommendation and got free shipping.

An empty, upright, open 5 gallon bucket is an effective mouse trap. Put something beside it so they can get up to the rim, and make sure the inside's empty and smooth so they can't get out. After the first one falls in and dies of thirst, others will follow to investigate the smell. If you want to bait it initially a bit of peanut butter near the rim for smell should be enough.

We make a habit of leaving water and garden buckets upside down, outside, so we won't discover dead mice in them when we use them.

It also has a gray market problem.

I ordered a webcam on Amazon, some time ago. Amazon had it listed as “official,” and had a link to the manufacturer’s store page at the top. It was a “Fulfilled by Amazon” product, which should have told me that it wasn’t actually coming from the manufacturer, as the listing led me to believe.

However, when I received the device, it was the Chinese version (gray market), with a fairly crude sticker on the box, claiming that it was the US version (it wasn’t), even though all the packaging was Chinese. After I returned it for a refund, I attempted to write a review on the page, warning of the scam, complete with a photo of the sticker, and the review was rejected by Amazon. They completely ignored my reports. As far as I know, the item is still listed, with hundreds of positive reviews (I just checked -it is).

It’s fairly obvious that Amazon is directly and knowingly working with sketchy vendors, and actively suppressing attempts to expose these practices. I’m wondering if there’s a bottom to this. I think it would take a fairly aggressive effort, by multiple governments, to stop it, and I suspect the will is not there. There’s probably a lot of money being made, and many people would be perfectly happy with the gray market device (until they try to upgrade it, or get it fixed).

I did let the manufacturer know (when I ordered the real device, directly from them). I saw many complaints on the manufacturer’s support site about the same exact issue (which is why gray markets are such a brand-damaging problem). I would not be surprised if the manufacturer was afraid to do anything about it, as Amazon is an 800lb gorilla.

Amazon's inventory commingling means that if a product has both a legitimate and illegitimate seller, you can order “from” the former and get the latter's product.

Amazon used to have a webpage that clearly stated they commingle inventory from all sellers, so it has long been public information that when you buy something on Amazon.com, the seller you buy from does not matter.

It does matter.

If you order real stuff, and get fake stuff, then it matters.

The act of choosing seller A vs seller B on Amazon does not matter for the purposes of trying to ensure the source of your item.

What I never understand: Why do they not put a sticker with an unique ID on the items (or require the seller to do so, with occasional compliance checks)? That way they could match customer complaints to the company that delivered the item, even if it is not the seller the customer bought from.

I assume they do have a method of keeping track for their own purposes.

I also assume the reason Amazon commingles is it makes their 2 day shipping promise cheaper or more possible to fulfill. If seller A’s items are on the east coast, and seller B’s items are on the west coast, and the items are identical, then it makes sense to send you the closest one.

Obviously, the problem is items are not identical, and quality control is not something I am interested in doing as a customer of Amazon’s.

One thing that the article didn't mention is that second generation rodenticides are actually not especially dangerous to pets assuming that the owners are aware of the symptoms (usually lethargy and discolored lips). For warfarin the LD50 for cats is actually quite high - quite surprising for an animal that is vulnerable to kidney damage - and the treatment is a series of vitamin K injections. So good news for pet owners with crazy neighbors.

None of this is helpful for wild predators of course, and rodenticides are more likely to be used in rural areas where both rodents and their predators are present.

What's surprising is why people would buy this over the more obvious search result 'Rat Poison'. Perhaps Amazon has already adjusted the search results but the top results for 'rat poison' were Cholecalciferol and Bromethalin based products.

Does Brodifacoum work the best? What's driving consumers to search for a specific type of poison.

> Things haven’t quite worked out as the EPA envisioned. When I first started browsing Amazon, neither the cost nor the size seemed particularly egregious to me. A single bucket—similar in size to a container of birdseed—seemed sufficient for my small yard.

Is putting poison over an entire yard a common/reasonable usage? I've really only needed to put poison out in a few problematic locations i.e where rodents have been seen like garages, basements, food pantry, etc. Covering an entire area like you would with grass seed or rock salt seems almost deliberately malicious.

One can easily imagine the thoughts of the uninformed internet researcher: "Well, when I shopped around, these 12 gallon buckets we're the minimum size, so I guess you need to use a lot of it..."

I don't know if that's what they mean, but the pest control guy advised me to put poison in every single room, and in large rooms at several locations as often you will not know where they really stay/forage. E.g. you might notice the one mouse that goesi in the kitchen but not the others that live in the attic. Then again, maybe he was just trying to sell more.

Never had to deal with a rat problem, but lemme put myself in the shoes of someone who tried using cheap single-mouse traps and found they didn’t work. At that point I would google for the most effective poison (using some metric like time to death or LD50 per kg), check exterminator forums to see what they use as a last resort, etc. If the product is as deadly as promised, I’d give it a 5* rating and recommend it to all my IRL friends.

Personally I’ve been burned by milquetoast products such as “eco friendly” cleaning liquids that just don’t work. Product with many warning labels that are clearly targeted towards professionals are so much more effective in general.

"Eco Friendly cleaning liquids" i.e Water + Fragrance + Food Coloring

This mirrors my experience pretty well with most everything. It seems the only markets where you can find quality is stuff sold to professionals. It’s not foolproof but hot damn is it noticeable.

Well, in my case, I have a cat. Nice to have around, and I have never had a rat problem with her in my life.

I stumbled across corn starch a while ago, after I nearly killed one of my dogs with these poisons. Corn starch, as in the packet of "corn flour" many people will have sitting in their pantries (it makes a very good thickener) that we all eat and is totally harmless to just about anything.

Anything except rodents, apparently. What I stumbled across said it's a very effective rodenticide:

http://www.ratpoisonfacts.org/low-toxicity-rodenticides/

My initial reaction was "bullshit". But intrigued I searched further. You can't use anything in the EU without some declaration, and indeed there is a declaration saying you are allowed to use corn starch as a rodenticide in the EU:

https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/44bfef85-fb69-79f0-c0...

It's even mentioned on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdered_corn_cob and you can buy it off the shelf: https://myhousepests.com/rats/natural-rat-poison.html.

Needless to say, it's total harmless to cats, dogs, kids and owls. And painless for the rodents. They starve and dehydrate, dying of heart failure in the end, but yet don't feel thirsty or hungry, apparently. But they do feel lethargic and generally wander off outside to die in a burrow somewhere, so the smell isn't a problem. It is in short the perfect rodenticide. It's almost magic.

But not in Australia, because it's not approved as a rodenticide in Australia. I have no idea why. Maybe it really is a scam, or even a giant conspiracy by the rats to trick us into feeding them. The Australian government is very good at proactive protecting it's citizens from scams. (I think that's why we are one of the worst countries in the world at falling for internet scams per capita - because this person wouldn't be contacting me if the government didn't allow it.) And if it's so cheap, natural and safe, why the hell isn't everyone using it instead of these other poisons???

I'm leaning towards a conspiracy. A conspiracy by the rats, or a conspiracy by the poisons manufacturers so they can keep selling us expensive poisons. But definitely a conspiracy.

It feels like no one in this thread lives in an urban area with a persistent rat problem. We tried multiple types of traps; snap, glue, electrification. "Eco friendly" sprays, bait boxes, you name it. Nothing works.

When your wife is hesitant to leave the house because of the rats gamboling near the front door drastic action is needed.

I'm not advocating for brodifacoum but the comments here seem tone deaf and one dimensional.

Amazon skirts a lot of consumer protection laws for the sake of profit.

Pill presses are regulated in Canada. [0]

If you bring one into the country the government wants you to register that fact with them.

Amazon.ca doesn't even try to hide the fact that they sell pill presses. [1]

They're branded as "vitamin supplement devices" but they're definitely, obviously, pill presses.

[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/meeting-lega...

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=pill+press&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

If governments could put half the effort they put into chasing drugs into actually policing these substances…

We (younger than 30ish) are in for some crazy times IMO

You can order parts to reliably make guns fully automatic straight to your door, thousands of rounds of ammunition for a weeks worth of minimum wage work straight to your door, poisons such as what this article refers to straight to your door… gun suppressors straight to your door…

I just think were going to see a ton of people in the US snapping and doing crazy shit if we fall into economic decline & keep dismantling our social safety nets.

When I was living in San Diego, I became aware of a dude in a totally normal ass suburb leaving poisoned meat around the entire block, for months on end, after the apparent last straw of dog shit on his lawn snapped. I’m not entirely sure why, but everybody knew - and the cops/city did nothing/were unable to do anything about it. Would be crazy to find out if he was getting whatever poison he used straight from Amazon.

You can order parts to make your gun fully automatic straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can order suppressors straight to your door without filling out a Form 4 if you want to commit a federal crime that the ATF likely will follow up on. You can _not_ buy thousands of rounds worth of any ammo other than .22 with a week's worth of minimum wage pay (if you know something that I don't, let me know where you're finding these deals). The time will probably come for poison like this very soon.

None of this is to say that terrorism isn't fairly easy, all things considered. The law does very little to stop these things before they happen. The big takeaway is that the vast majority of people aren't violent and unreasonable. You've always been able to do these things, usually more easily in the past than you could today, but we've never had issues with it (at least in the US) to the point where the average person you bump into on the street will have personally experienced it.

"You can _not_ buy thousands of rounds worth of any ammo other than .22 with a week's worth of minimum wage pay (if you know something that I don't, let me know where you're finding these deals)."

It's pretty close. Ammoseek shows 9mm starting at ~$0.30 per round, and most other popular pistol calibers starting at ~$0.40 to ~$0.45 per round. And it's easy to find better deals if you're checking the r/gundeals subreddit periodically. That puts 2000 rounds of 9mm at around the gross income weekly income for someone earning $15/hour.

600 bucks also buy a lot of cheap gasoline and matchsticks.

Three (3) whole YEET Cannons

The West Coast is not the entire US. Most states don't have a $15 minimum wage. That pricing is mostly at 1000 round quantities. 50 round boxes are usually between $20 to $25 a box.

The assertion is correct in the sense that somebody living in a state with an exceptionally high minimum wage can buy a thousand rounds of ammo that isn't .22 in a week's pay if they have absolutely no other expenses is just barely correct in a strictly technical sense, but doesn't really add up for the purposes of this conversation. Even if you were willing to go completely broke spending every cent you make on ammo, you would need another $500 minimum to buy a cheap carbine and enough magazines to carry 200 rounds with you in a reasonable manner.

You’re correct on the vast majority of people aren’t violent and unreasonable part… but I very much think you’re missing a point.

Yes, you could mostly always buy something like a part to make a gun fully automatic or a suppressor online. Anybody with the slightest technical skills could make the full auto parts with some metal stock & a dremel. But a lot of people aren’t thinking into it that much when they’re impulsive.

But in the year 2000, you would have to put a bit of effort into finding these things online, and if you were underage it would have been much harder to instantly/easily purchase.

Now wish.com and everything else exist - you can find the parts in seconds, and you have a plethora of ways to easily purchase them underage & shipped to your door in two days.

Yes, the vast majority of these are ATF/Fed or whatever else honeypots… but sometimes that doesn’t really matter if you already have a plan & are ready the day your parts come in.

1000 rounds of 7.62x39 is ~$350. Do minimum wage workers not take in ~$350 weekly anymore?

Minimum wage where? $7.25 for 40 hours is still $290 before taxes, yes? That's federal minimum wage in the United States, and that's only for untipped workers on W-2 who can manage to get a full time schedule.

Some states have substantially higher minimums, though, and don't allow wage discrimination against wait staff.

You can make any firearm with a pistol grip that has the charging handle fixed to the bolt carrier full-auto by tying a string to a charging handle, wrapping it around the grip and then the trigger. You could very easily figure this out by just sitting down and looking at the gun. I can't think of a single instance where somebody has done this in a mass shooting. The fact of the matter is that full-auto guns are nowhere near as dangerous or "useful" for mass shootings as people think they are.

1000 rounds of Russian steel-case can be found with some effort for a price like that right now. With the Russian import ban, it's getting significantly harder to find. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 -- you might be able get 1000 rounds of 9mm if you find a deal and are willing to spend literally 100% of your paycheck on it. 1000 rounds of anything other than 9mm on federal minimum wage is a fluke that cannot be reliably repeated.

Yes I am very much aware of the shoelace machine gun per the ATF.

The shoelace machine gun is essentially non-useable for any real form of attack. It’s stupid & a straw man to bring up imo.

What you can order with overnight to two day delivery is quite a bit different in function than the shoelace machine gun. I think you are very much missing the bulk of the point here.

The dismantling of safety nets is a circumvoluted problem.

Safety nets are a feature of rather leftist politics (To me, helping others is the core of leftism). However, the same ones who set up the safety nets, have a racial preference towards helping those they perceive as in the worst situation. Yesterday it was the factory workers, today it’s women, african americans and LGBTQIA+.

So, by increasing the safety nets, we are not making things better for the people you are talking about, the white men. For them, no help is coming: They are the subject of the joke, the black sheep of people who want to help.

This incongruity ensures that the divide will only widen, not reduce, as you increase help for people in need.

As an example, shooters in school are often white kids getting bullied, who snap. Did we end bullying? Do we make documentaries on who bullied them? No, we further pile upon the hate towards the people who snap (hard to do otherwise). It ensures that the next guy won’t find help against his bullies, and this beautiful circle continues… I say beautiful because, to abstain from finding solutions, there has to be people who find this beautiful.

Anyway. If social help went to everyone, and if everyone were considered as important parts of the society, people wouldn’t snap that much.

> To me, helping others is the core of leftism

People on the right wing also want to help others, but the method is different: helping people to help themselves.

I think there are risks to both. People can become dependent on safety nets. People can also need more help than just "pull yourself up by your bootstraps".

> I say beautiful because, to abstain from finding solutions, there has to be people who find this beautiful.

From an outside perspective, shootings are an intractable US problem because of the US's relationship with guns. It's not that people are "abstaining" because they somehow like the situation.

To play devil's advocate and be only a little cheeky, it seems the way the right of recent American politics tries to help people help themselves is to offer them military-grade weaponry, deregulated environmental protections, laws to enforce sexual and vice Christian-specific rules not widely agreed on by non-Christians, and decreased worker protections. This seems almost perfectly calculated to help them become criminals or wage slaves to modern robber barons. The people most served by the modern right are the robber barons themselves (except for the weapons part). If I was a robber baron the last thing I'd want is all my workers watching their livelihoods disappear to all have automatic weapons.

I think this is why so much messaging goes to convince people that their worsening situation is because LGBTQ+ or immigrants exist and God is punishing them for the "wickedness of the land."

I myself very much would prefer a model that helps people help themselves, but I am unclear what policies would achieve that goal that aren't already supported by the left. Many Americans don't want hand outs, they want dignity and a good job that pays them a thriving wage.

However, they also will vote against policies that enforce a fair wage, because it's coming from the mouths of "sinners" who for all they know are causing this via "wickedness." The left can be very condescending and is large enough to have lots of people who similarly think that lack of ideological purity is the cause of the nation's issues, only the ideology is not completely agreed on by any of followers, so it's always shifting, which gives the impression that it's less serious and is very easy to mock. There's a lot about making places safer, which runs counter to how many Americans want to see themselves: they don't want places to be safer, they want to be tougher individuals, so such attempts feel weak to them.

As someone who's studied the Bible far more than average (I read New Treatment Greek and went to seminary for a bit), I feel like there is _very_ little thought about sins like pride, hatefulness, and gluttony in the modern church, so it's only a partial truth according to the Bible. Describing the classic "fruits of the Spirit" does not sound anything like the modern Right: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

It seems a situation where the messaging has just enough Christian ethics to resemble some of what one would hear from church leadership, but without the inward reflection required of most of the New Testament. It's very Old Testament with messaging that implies "it's these sinners among you who are the problem and need to be stopped or killed." The New Testament would instead lead someone to conclude that if they are being punished it is from their own personal sin. This is enforced with lessons like "let he without sin cast the first stone."

I really diverged a bit here, but I've been thinking a lot about the situation of politics. The right cannot be understood without understanding how much of that worldview is shaped by religion, but also that it really isn't a Christian worldview, it's an Old Testament worldview. Too many people crave "righteous" wrath against sinners, not humble admission that all are sinners all the time, and we all need grace and forgiveness not a murderous rampage.

As it pertains to policies, I'm not sure how to even start to deescalate the situation. But attempting to do so without understanding the worldviews involved will never work.

I think this is oversimplifying the political compass. There are a whole class of people that believe helping people should be voluntary, not mandatory. Dignity is something that comes from within, but if you want a "thriving wage", negotiate for it. The left supports all sorts of policies that make helping people compulsory, at which point it starts to more resemble slavery than charity.

How would you define a "fair" wage? Enough to stay alive? Raise a family? Own a house? A car? A TV? An air conditioner? I personally don't see how entitling people to these things is remotely "fair". You'll note that none of this has anything remotely to do with religion.

> I'm not sure how to even start to deescalate the situation.

The best way would be to refrain from imposing your view of "good" or "fair" on other people. Society is about coexisting peacefully, not binding everyone into a single ideology.

You're right, it's definitely an oversimplification.

I don't think though we live in a society that could allow people to negotiate for a thriving wage without a power as large as the government. It is in no way a hyperbole to state that if the American government's worker protections weaken much more we will have companies with their own private armies forcing people into company towns like what happened to our great grandparents. It wasn't that long ago, and a lot of people have forgotten how much blood was shed to give us the safely nets we have today. And yet so many people act as if individual freedom is what earned us those rights, not the government's strong arm and labor unions.

You've rather hit the nail on the head - companies shouldn't be allowed to use violence (private armies) in order to force people to cooperate. Likewise, government should not be allowed to force terms of employment on employers. When things turn violent is the exact point the government should intervene, no sooner. It should otherwise refrain from interfering with private, peaceful negotiations between its citizens.

Kellogg's is a perfect example here - the employees tried to collectively bargain for higher wages, and the employer decided that the cost of replacing the workforce was lower than the cost of meeting their demands. No violence required, just a voluntary basis for cooperation. This is how it should work.

And yet the power Kellogg's has means that they can just find enough desperate people elsewhere to take their unlivable wage. It's a race to the bottom, and the end is a few massive companies all colluding to pay slave wages. See Amazon and Walmart for examples of this happening right now. People think that market will reach equilibrium, but don't realize that equilibrium will be reached with third world style factories with 12 hour days and dorms for the "employees" and nets outside the windows so they can't even die the way they want.

heh, define "unlivable", these people are clearly still alive. Unskilled labour is usually in surplus. The only reason the likes of Walmart pay as little as they do is because our government subsidises their employees. We've already reached the equilibrium, we've just offshored all the suffering so we don't have to look at it. We still consume goods made in these places. By the way, the factories in places like Bangladesh offer an improvement in quality of life compared to subsistence farming, which is why people work there. Isn't that a good thing?

I suspect it’s not the US relationship with guns, but the US relationship with violence.

The national myth about the founding of the US is about using violence to solve problems. And Americans seem very quick to turn to violence when under any sort of perceived threat.

I doubt getting rid of guns, even if you could find a way to do it, would solve the problem.

Other countries have violence too, but it's scaled down from military grade assault rifles, to fist-fights.

How old are you?

This is factually incorrect, when I was in school bullying was considered totally and completely normal and not something to be concerned about at all.

Now we have high-profile national and international anti-bullying campaigns by both governments, NGOs, and private for-profit companies. We have anti-bullying legislation and bullying is even something the CDC studies.

The way gun suppressors work in movies and TV is complete fiction, in real life suppressors can attenuate gun shots by maybe 15-35 dB SPL at best. 140 dB SPL is the threshold at which sound causes pain, 120 dB SPL is the threshold that risks instantaneous noise-induced hearing loss, and most rifles and handguns using standard ammunition are in the 140-170 dB SPL range. Even with a suppressor the volume a typical gun produces is enough to be painful and to cause permanent hearing loss if no additional hearing protection is used. In the typical best case scenario using an extremely underpowered subsonic .22LR round with a suppressor a gun shot will still be in the 120 dB SPL range, and for reference, hunting even small muntjac deer with a .22LR would be considered inhumane and in many parts of the world (including many American states) it is illegal to do so. It is a round intended to shoot rodents and birds.

I realise this comment is a nitpick but it's something that needs to be brought up any time suppressors are brought up. The only relevance suppressors have on the gun control argument is that their use and sale means that gun operators have less risk of suffering from hearing loss (especially when shooting indoors in a range) and people living near shooting ranges are less likely to complain about noise, i.e., there's no public safety argument here, it's purely ideological, and that's fine if it's what you're going for but it's not a compelling argument or one that holds up to scrutiny. As a point of comparison, there's very little controversy over suppressors in Europe and typically no additional regulations are placed on their ownership beyond the regulations necessary to own the guns that they're used with.

No, you can get literal Hollywood quiet with suppressors. If you’ve never gotten to experience that, sorry I guess haha.

A Kel-Tec CP33 or Ruger MKIV with various forms of attached suppressors or integrated suppressors shooting CCI subsonic .22 is Hollywood quiet. Less noise than a BB gun.

There are various other calibers that can get pretty damn close to as quiet as those as well.

For your traditional military calibers across the globe - yes, they’re still pretty damn loud suppressed. I think .50 bmg or Lapua suppressed is still as loud as 7.62x39 unsuppressed.

But to say you can’t get Hollywood quiet is simply incorrect, and there’s still a factor of louder calibers pitch being changed to something that a person not in the immediate vicinity could confuse as construction instead of gunfire.

As much as I personally enjoy suppressors… I do have issue with the fact anybody can get their hands on one next day. Just work for a gun range in any mid sized town for two weeks and your honest thoughts about just about literally anybody being able to obtain a firearm will likely change. People are fucking dumb man.

Said Hollywood quiet is in excess of 80 dB still, though it sounds like someone having a carburator engine pop and not a gunshot.

Having seen videos of a suppressed MP-5, they make a rapid clicking noise on full auto. It’s still loud by my estimation but it doesn’t sound like a gun.

What you're hearing is camera attenuation. They are still very loud, they just won't outright blow your ears out. It might not sound like a gun if you don't know what a suppressor sounds like, but you will still be able to hear it unless the noise of the environment is hearing-damaging loud. Just about the only things that are Hollywood-quiet are subsonic suppressed .22s and .45s, but the former is incredibly anemic and the latter is not cheap.

You should be able to easily find on YouTube/Reddit or other parts of the internet- actual decibel testing.

For the CP33, with some of the higher quality suppressors, the action of the gun is actually louder than the fired munitions. I haven’t checked on things in a bit, but people were trying to work on the action to reduce noise created by it.

It’s essentially slightly louder than a handheld staple gun irl (there’s videos of this comparison on YouTube) - and I’ve saw somewhat reputably claimed, but not actually demonstrated - there are now some integral aftermarket barrels for the Ruger MKIV that are quieter than the CP33.

As you’ve stated though - these rounds definitely don’t have much power behind them and will do practically nothing to anything that isn’t human flesh like. They can quite literally bounce off of an obese person or get caught in a modest cold weather coat.

Can confirm that fully automatic AR-15 is effect against both rats and mice.

I can’t stand that we live in world where one day in the need it questions things like but apocalypse and the disappearance of them, then the next I’m reading rat poisons easily bought to kill rodents (not confusing bugs and rodents but hate that we kill things in general). My city sprays lots of herbicides every year as well which is debatable if it is harmful to insects. Why are people so against bugs? I’ve let spiders live in my room for a long time. Rodents can be kept out of your house by securing your perimeter and making sure their are no holes in your vents or cracks in the wall. Why people are allowed to buy such poisons with no oversight how to properly use them is a failure in my mind. Can we please stop the attack on unwanted plants and animals through the use of toxic chemicals please.

Amazon should pay for cleanup, at least then there is some self regulating pressure.

I don’t really think this is Amazon’s fault since they sell a huge amount of products aimed at professionals. For SMBs it’s not common for Amazon to be their main supplier.

Exterminators are a licensed profession in most states and rather than leveraging that system to control poison distribution they said “eh just don’t sell it at Lowes” and hoped people wouldn’t find out what stores you can actually buy it at.

I think it should be cleaned up but punitive damages for online retailers seems a stretch since it seems arguable they were following the law.

Is there really any benefit to poison? There're variety of effective traps. At least with traps you know where the dead (or live) rat is and it's not going to cause problems like dying behind a wall or something.

Poison is convenient. For one thing, it's effective even without any effort or skill. Setting an old-fashioned trap is not hard, but it does take a bit of practice to get the sensitivity just right. I've known lots of people who set theirs so that they wouldn't trigger for anything smaller than a capybara, watched their bait get stolen a couple of times, and then gave up. Also, the very same feature of knowing whether you caught something also means you have to see it and dispose of it. I have no problem with any of this, but many people do. Usually they only find out about poison's down sides when it's too late.

BTW some of the older poisons advertised that victims would actively seek to get outside before they died, which would avoid the "died in the wall" problem. Such claims might or might not have been true, but people continue to believe that for all poisons.

I wonder if this is what killed our beloved cat Eli. He was just dead one day laying in the doghouse, no apparent trauma of any kind. I can see the idiot show hog owning neighbor using a lot of baits like this.

A neighbor-kid found our cat, Ziggy, in the grass early in the morning. Ziggy was in a terrible state. Soaked (it was raining), shaking, full on hypothermia, foam on his mouth and terrified - apparently he was conscious of his surroundings still, but could not move.

Brought him to the emergency vet. Made it. But barely. Vet thought he wasn't, but we asked to try anyway. They give the cat loads of greasy puree. Rat and mouse-poison binds to that. Cost us an arm and a leg; something I thought I'd never do for an animal. But stress and full on "sunken cost fallacy - we already drove all the way, might as wel...". He made it, which makes it worth it in the end though.

Emailed all neighbors not to do this. We live in a nature-reserve, so with all the hawks, storks, buzzards, badgers and minks, it really is unacceptable. Two neighbors confined that they got some poison illegally (this is The Netherlands where no such poisons may be sold to consumers) on the internet, unaware of the risks, and harm to animals.

Me: "you were unaware of the harm that a poison for animals, does to animals?" I'm a beekeeper, the same happens there too "Huh? Never realized that insecticide is bad for bees, thought it only worked on wasps and flies. ...".

I never liked using DCON and other rat poisons because it just means they crawl off and die somewhere in the wall where they have their nest. And then they rot and stink there, where you can't get at them.

I think it's worth noting that there's tons of small businesses that plug holes in their supply chain or obtain rarely used things using regular old eCommmmerce channels.

The farmer or the facility manager should not be forced to deal with b2b supply houses who price gouge on retail sales (HVAC and metals are two industries that come to mind) in order to buy his pesticides, or any other substance because people in high end subdivisions are spraying too many chemicals on their foundations (or whatever, you get the drift).

It's amazing how quickly one's scruples about using pesticides disappear with a persistent pest problem, but yes, this does need to be controlled at the source.

Here is a cool mouse trap video that also shows you that Google not only censors white supremacists, terrorists and similar content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKyIcX6I_AQ&t=726s

I've also seen Termite pesticides with similar sales restrictions for sale -- and there are plenty of how-to videos now on how to apply them yourself, without the need for some company to come over and tent your house, etc.

That is the thing people often do not understand about regulations, even EPA regulations.

It is very often not about safety or protection of environment, it is about protectionism of businesses. No Pleb you are clearly to dumb to do anything for yourself, you must depend on "The Experts" that are government approved "professionals", never ever do anything for yourself....

I mean I think I would be fine with a world where anyone could buy the stuff so long as they went through and passed a class on how to use it. I think that would be a fine middle-ground.

No poison needed.

https://www.youtube.com/c/ShawnWoodsprimitive-archer

Warning: some people may find some videos disturbing.

my parents have mice in their attic & have pretty much just been letting the problem go after 8 snap traps only got one. They don't leave the attic & are only there in winter. What's the harm of ignoring them?

Chewed wires and ruined insulation

They can cause structural damage and their urine and feces are a human health hazard.

I moonlight as a YouTuber showing how to GROW food on 1/3 acre.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZIumjXukI

The answer is snap traps not poison.

Fight when the LAW of NATURE is violated, alarm systems all over the Conscious, Subconscious, and Unconscious UNIVERSE.

Stop the CIRCULAR destruction of NATURE.

The ONE verse of the UNIVERSE is a Trivium, Inputs > Process > Outputs

Let's only put GOOD in the world.

Wot

Poison kills the target and has a blast radius down the "food chain".

Humans are terrible at 2nd order (or more) affects.

timecube

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