FDA may allow some toxic chemicals to be added to food without safety review
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I would really like to see more policy (from whomever: local, state, federal, judiciary, legislative, executive, red, blue, green, black) that actually accomplishes some of the things that RFK Jr says that he wants to accomplish.
Even more informative in this case: did he sell his endorsement to said rapist/fraudster in exchange for a cabinet position?
You could know literally zero percent of anything about anything in the world and know that this is not a person to be trusted.
Shame on you. Glad you’re opening your eyes now, but it’s your shame to wear now too.
I definitely understand being angry, there is certainly blame to be had, and perhaps there is an argument to be made that supporting RFK Jr was a poor idea even before he joined up with the destructionist grifters. But save your vitriol for the ignorant ones who actually voted for Grump, and most especially for the unrepentant ones who are still cheering as our country's institutions burn.
This regime thrives on hate, including the hate for it.
For example if I told you that you should be ashamed of your original comment, does this make you immediately feel shame? Or perhaps does it make it feel like I am personally attacking you?
In fact, I'd say that emphasizing and playing up this difference was a pretty successful campaign tactic for the destructionists. Remember how "deplorables" ended up backfiring so hard? The characterization was entirely technically correct! But yet with the way people work, it ended up doing the exact opposite from what one would naively hope.
(in general, I honestly don't even know if feeling shame from being shamed is a thing any more with the way impersonal online communities work. You can now easily find a different community that will validate whatever you did)
There's no evidence whatsoever that excusing and forgiving these people's credulity and contempt has done any good whatsoever.
If you fuck up, especially in a way that damages your country so deeply, then you need to feel bad, and you need to suck up the fact that your countrymen will criticize you for it. That's the downside of fucking up.
You don't get to say "okay I'll acknowledge that I fucked up as long as you guys be nice to me for doing so." No. A literal 3rd grader couldn't get away with such a position, and neither should any adult capable of having an opinion on any of this stuff.
That's ego for you. It does not like frontal assaults! When someone is in the middle of realizing something for themselves, the last thing you want to do is interrupt them.
I personally saw someone in my family literally use the name "deplorable" for an online account in response to that kerfuffle. Not social media or anything like a public persona, just a web service they wanted to use. Look up sociological labeling theory. One small silver lining to their passing is that I didn't have to witness them spiral into full rabid social media dementia.
And reflexively reaching for this feel-good "no evidence whatsoever" research-assistant-with-a-deadline-quality proclamatory bullshit is one of the ways the Democratic party shares the blame for Grump. That is some "culpability for this administration" that you yourself would seem to share, and that you would say you should reflect on.
Go back and read my original comment. I most certainly would not have written my comment if you had been responding to someone still unapologetically supporting the destructionists! But no, you were taking your anger out on someone who didn't deserve it - exactly like all the maggots who continue to cheer on the performative cruelty.
Or just continue helping to throw gasoline on the corpo-manufactured divide-and-conquer "culture war" pyre! It has been working out so well so far, hasn't it?
And? Were they a Clinton voter before that moment? Spoiler: No.
> [this] bullshit is exactly how the Democratic party shares the blame for Trump 2024
No, it's not. Clinton was one of the most disliked people in the entire country going into the election, and Harris came to a close second. Especially in an era of high inflation where incumbents were ousted in pretty much every single election in the entire world. The DNC put up truly horrible candidates and lost.
> It has been working out so well so far, hasn't it?
We have just as much evidence that your strategy of coddling the culpable is to blame. Arguing is easy if you just presume (without evidence) that you're correct, and then in fact dismiss the very idea of forming evidence-based beliefs as a problem in and of itself.
Maybe it should be generally accepted that to gain a minimum level of familiarity on a topic, you should prioritize hearing from scientists and experts in the field, rather than influencers and political actors.
Like... that's the whole MO of the administration. None of the "reasonable" positions are genuine; they only exist to entice leniency from the gullible. It's been that way since day 1.
Maybe because he launched missiles at them last presidency?
It's a lot of things, but one thing this admin does is take a reasonable grievance that requires reasonable change, and amplify anger in order to take drastic measures for their own benefits and ideology.
Spot on! The people who actually care the most about the issues the regime champions should really be their loudest critics! Instead they seem to be content just "being heard" or "owning the libs"? They'd better be enjoying it while it lasts, because what it's actually doing is burning (arbitraging) all the political capital that these issues had accumulated.
Like despite being pretty ambivalent about it, I don't want to hear a peep about "immigration enforcement" for the next decade - its proponents had their moment, they had their mandate, and they mostly just squandered it on having an anti-Constitutional tantrum.
> ... and ideology
The only ideologies I've found to line up with the regime's actions are 1. self-enrichment, 2. anarcho-capitalism, 3. malevolent foreign influence, 4. religious fundamentalism. 2/3/4 are essentially all just aimed at destroying the government/society for different reasons.
To be fair, it's the same type of self-perpetuating destruction they've been playing with education the whole time.
What was the purpose of putting this man at charge if not punishing citizens? All this people are foreign agents.
His long term goals and opinions are 100% consistent with his current actions and decisions.
> would really like to see more policy (from whomever: local, state, federal, judiciary, legislative, executive, red, blue, green, black) that actually accomplishes some of the things that RFK Jr says that he wants to accomplish.
You are getting that and seeing that. Including measles and sick people dying more.
I was always team "RFK Jr clearly bad," but to be honest I didn't put much work into forming that opinion.
What you are seeing today is the inevitable and wholly consistent outcome of putting the messaging of MAHA into practice.
And you’re response, like many others here, is basically “you’re dumb”
That type of bad faith divisiveness will keep us locked into a political tension that continues to allow charlatans to gain power by taking advantage of desperate people.
Most people are good, and most people want the same basic things (good economy, fair pay, peace, good outcomes for their family and children). It would be wonderful for people to focus more on these commonalities and the divisive bullshit media feeds us to keep us angry.
I too want good things, and I am perpetually frustrated by those who actively work against those outcomes. You don’t get a gold star for good intentions when you actively contribute to the opposite.
When GP directly got what they asked for—even when they didn’t realize it—they immediately assumed that the answer must simply be that RFK is corrupt and in the pockets of evil people rather than the more straightforward but uncomfortable answer that would require self reflection.
Basically people just ought to be nicer to eachother and understand that, anyone of us or them can be misinformed. Very get people are actively trying to lie or knowingly do the wrong thing. So giving people a little grace and not making them feel like idiots is the way.
But yes, I know that’s can be exhausting as fuck after over a decade of madness. But that’s to only way out, the make the country stop hating eachother.
If you voted for a candidate and you realize afterward it was a mistake—regardless of the reason—the path forward is to figure out why your picker was wrong, not to write it off as the fault of the guy you picked.
Being wrong is human. Being wrong and using that to self-correct is noble. Being wrong and digging your heels in or looking for others to blame is shameful.
You’re right that acknowledging a mistake and correcting is the right and noble path, but my approach of compassion, understanding, and common ground is the only way that leads to that outcome. When instead you brow beat them and call them dumb, they always double down. Then points of difference turn into anger, which turns into hatred.
At some point each of us have to take the personally responsibility to stop getting high off the fumes of our own self righteousness.
What I said might have been firm and to the point, but it was certainly gentle.
I’m not sure what exactly you expect someone to say if “Why don’t you try X instead of Y, if you are surprised and disappointed by the outcome of Y?” is considered too hard for someone to handle.
It's better to focus on the simple facts about RFKJR, he cares about celebs and cocktail parties, he doesn't really care about leadership or running a health agency.
I've long suspected the RFK jr's role is simply to exploit that for his, and his political owner's, benefit. Thata all. The man has no redeeming qualities.
Note that I am French so this question is because over here he has always been seen as a conman
Not a public servant.
What exactly are you expecting someone who doesn't think germ theory is true?
* https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/06/14/nx...
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/1...
i guess it sounds scary? but it almost implies rocket fuel is somehow involved in grain transport lol. the real reason for its use i guess is to control static electricity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate#:~:text=control-,s...
this is like that one time people came to my school to talk about vapes, and one of their talking points was "vapes can contain formaldehyde, and formaldehyde is used to preserve dead specimens/tissue samples" ; they did not get my issue with the lack of causal reasoning in that argument :P
Apparently burning toast can generate trace amounts of acrylamide.
This was enough to convince me a subset of these people are complete lunatics.
That leads lots of companies to go the low cost route and use the notification safe harbor, but it also creates an incentive to find alternatives and so on. You get cases like you mention, but the alternative to the evidence based approach is to hand wave that it's not harmful.
Meanwhile, the credibility of the scientific establishment in Joe Sixpack's eyes takes another hit, with all-too-predictable consequences.
Regardless of the strength of the evidence, which is yet another problem with the whole idea.
Similarly, imagine if nutrition facts labels only had to state whether the food could be potentially unhealthy, without any other nuance.
A sensible version of Prop 65 would acknowledge the specific substance, its dosage, and the best known safe dosage. Equipped with that information a consumer can make an informed decision.
1. Starbucks because they are a particular case where acrylamide is a normal byproduct of roasting, and there's basically (as I understand it) no way to have it not be part of the result.
You are also begging the question, asserting that the law has no useful impact and is thus useless or even harmful.
That didn't happen. Instead, Proposition 65 was a case of "Oh, no! Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, it must be done."
Something did have to be done because water standards were abysmal and its because of all these laws you think they’re not needed.
If there’s one tiny part of the law people have problems with; it’s probably a good law.
Couldn't you fix your water standards without subjecting the rest of us to something this stupid?
But once the momentum of having these labels on _a lot_ of products gets established, customers start to un-see them, and the sales risk of applying the label drops to negligible. So just slap it on everything, which adds more noise to the signal, which further derisks adding the label, etc.
At this point it probably just needs a hard reset; tear out prop 65 in the process of replacing it with something that learns from these lessons. Maybe make the warning label cost something e.g. mandate that its application include quantitative risk backed by a third party lab test.
I think a useful addendum is that I think the government should be in charge of testing very common combinations (ie the bread example).
It would get expensive real quick for everyone otherwise.
Note that the state did eventually modify the communications that the law required.
https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/crnr/proposition-65-clea...
No, I didn't consider, I muttered "this is fucking stupid" under my breath and tossed the bread in my cart.
When you dilute the meaning of a warning so much, it becomes meaningless.
and with the vapes thing, they could just say "formaldehyde is a human carcinogen, can cause permanent adverse effects to nervous system, irritate mucous membranes and aggravate asthma etc" instead of talking about tissue preservation yk?
Still, six months after it published its data, the FDA reapproved perchlorate for use in super sacks. Advocates say the agency used flawed science and manipulated the data. The FDA wrote that there was no meaningful increase in perchlorate across all the 250 foods it measured. But critics countered that the problem was not in all the food – the problem was in kids’ cereal.
The FDA largely ignored the cereal findings, and mostly does not consider endocrine system harms when developing regulations, said Tom Neltner, a former scientist with the EDF who is now director of the Unleaded Kids non-profit. He helped lead litigation over perchlorate, which was ultimately dismissed.
From European point of view even bread sold in USA is Molotov cocktail
The answer always seems to be “we don’t like these big companies putting additives in food but we’ve tried nothing and are all out of ideas”
I guess US people are not damaged, dumbed down enough. Now the Trump admin wants to make sure kids are at high risk for brain damage. At least the cuts to colleges by Trump will not matter once TOR hits "critical mass".
Surely there is a middle ground, where processes can be improved.
Meanwhile, this article is fear-based. “FDA may add..” means they didn’t.
so many clowns to chose from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_cabinet_of_Donald_Trump
Hegseth, Kennedy and Vought I think would be most productive focus
But if Dems don't get Senate country is doomed anyway so pointless
Beyond that there are numerous repeated and scientifically proven to cause permanent brain damage or even death in sufficient concentrations. How long will Washington insiders profit while our nation continues to sicken.
It's an unrestricted work visa: 3 years, unlimited in/out, no requirement to get a job in Taiwan (or work at all), total allowance for remote work for foreign companies, lower tax rate, and eligibility for the state-subsidized national health insurance program after 6 months in the country. How'd you like to pay 10$ for an xray after being scanned and seen by a doctor within 30 minutes of walking into an ER? That's our life here!
We have lots of tech folks from all over the world here and regularly have co-working meetups, hackathons, fireside chats, and talks. Also our food doesn't have toxic chemicals in it :)
You can learn more here: https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/en/
p.s. YC startup school is coming here this year https://events.ycombinator.com/startup-school-taipei
The time zone would make it tough for non global teams I imagine. Interested to hear what types of companies make it work.
Every once in a while I meet someone that's keeping to USA time zone work hours but they usually don't last. I've been working USA / UK gigs for 5 years now keeping to my time zone without issue. Sometimes gotta catch an 11pm meeting, not bad. For software engineering it kinda doesn't matter what time of the day works get done? Companies: for me it's all been startups, two YC ones and a couple random other ones.
There are some hardware folks I know out here and they are both way busier and way more successful than us hordes of coworking software engineers that chill at cafes all day. Also I know a couple that gave up their tech jobs and started a hotsauce company, they're doing pretty well. People get up to all sorts of stuff out her. I even made a restaurant play. Not recommended!
Something about the story doesn't add up. Either people are dying every day in the coating factory (unlikely), or the coating, whilst measurable, isn't as dangerous as the article implies.
How did you arrive at six orders of magnitude? Are the workers ingesting the bags?
https://www.fishersci.co.uk/store/msds?partNumber=10031501&p...