Kayla > Recent Status Updates

“We learned to say that there was “no alternative” to the basic order of things, a sensibility that the Lithuanian political theorist Leonidas Donskis called “liquid evil.”…criticism became slippery. What appeared to be critical analysis often assumed that the status quo could not actually change, and thereby indirectly reinforced it.”

I had never heard about the Reichstag fire before now. Why do we study the Holocaust so hard but not how he came to power so that those things can never happen again?? We say it was the treaty from WWI and that’s all we learn but…! The gaps in US history and more will radicalize you.

“In the year before the president was elected, American journalists were often mistaken about his campaign. As he… accumulated victory after victory, our commentariat assured us that at the next stage he would be stopped… one group of observers who took a different position: east Europe. To them, much about the president’s campaign was familiar…”

This book was written right around Trump’s first presidency and I’m realizing now there’s a lot of stuff he did that I just completely forgot about. The man honestly does so much it’s all hard to keep track of.

“At the beginning, certainly they were not Nazis. About fifteen of us would get together to talk and to try to find arguments opposing theirs… From time to time, one of our friends said: “I don’t agree with them… but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews…” etc… Three weeks later… would become a Nazi… Towards the end, only three or four of us were still resisting.”

10. Believe in Truth — “You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case…truth dies in four modes…the first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.”

“Forjust this reason, people and parties who wish to undermine democracy and the rule of law create and fund violent organizations that involve themselves in politics. Such groupscan take the form of a paramilitary wing ofa political party, the personal bodyguard of a particular politician—or apparently spontaneous citizens’ initiatives, which usually turn out to have been organized by a party or its leader.”

“We do not subscribe to the view that Mr. Hitler and his friends, now finally in possession of the power they have so long desired, will implement the proposals circulating in [Nazi newspapers]; they will not deprive German Jews of their constitutional rights, nor enclose them in ghettos… They cannot do this because a number of crucial factors hold powers in check…” — Feb 2, 1933 newspaper

”But the world is about to end!” he said. He was shouting now.

“Of course it is,” Mother said. “But let’s not discuss it over dinner.”

How the author even survived her childhood is a god given miracle. Oh my god.

“The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.”

“…and after that the accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.”

"One molecule turned out to be particularly abundant--trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA... The researchers found that this chemical alone accounted for 90 percent of forever chemicals detected in Germany... Similarly, when researchers from Emory University measured the levels of various PFAS in tap water from homes in Indiana, they found that TFA accounted for 85 percent of the total."

"Her tiny daughter, who had entered this world just five months earlier, had 75,000 parts per trillion PFOA in her blood--far higher than most people in Hoosick Falls, where the average was about 28,000 parts per trillion. This meant she would be vulnerable to serious health problems for the rest of her life."

"...the forever-chemical saga was following an entirely predictable pattern. Our regulatory system presumes most chemicals are safe and, when problems arise, investigates them one by one. As a result, when companies come under pressure... they usually replace it with unvetted substances that have similar structures... the substitutes often turn out to be just as harmful, though this can take years to establish."

"By the mid-1990s, when the Tennants' cows started dying in droves, the levels had soared to more than eighty times DuPont's internal safety threshold. DuPont even dispatched employees to monitor the creek around the clock and dump anti-foaming agents into the water when black foam appeared."

"...all the animals' symptoms were linked to the endocrine system, a network of glands that controls growth, metabolism, and brain function, using hormones as its chemical messengers. This system also plays a key role in fetal development. Colborn eventually concluded that hormone-altering chemicals... were permeating the water and causing subtle changes to developing animals' brains and organs..."

"Then, around 1980, DuPont approached the couple about buying some acreage abutting their home for a landfill... But Jim had been having health problems, including unexplained fainting spells, and they needed money for medical bills. Plus, the company assured them it would only dispose of nontoxic material... so in 1983 they agreed to sell."

It all makes me just wanna fight someone.

"Up until the 1960s, most Americans saw synthetic materials as an unqualified good--marvelous inventions that enabled rapid social progress. Then in 1962, the naturalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring."

I know I have a problem at this point that I lose my mind every time Rachel Carson is mentioned xD I fangirl so freaking hard. It's my girl!

"But in the mid-1960s, after a fishing trawler dredged up a barrel, resulting in some embarrassing publicity, DuPont began secretly dumping Teflon sludge into unlined pits around its Parkersburg [West Virginia] plant--and directly into the nearby Ohio River."

I'm pretty sure WV owes a lot of its poverty to practices like this -- chemical dumping and coal leaving. Infuriating...

"What was the mystery substance accumulating in the blood of so many... There were, he discovered, two very different fluorinated substances detectable in people's blood. One was the fluoride ion, which occurs naturally in certain rocks and clay and, thanks largely to Hodge, was being put in a growing share of the nation's drinking water. The other was fluorocarbons, which were almost exclusively man-made."

"...in the hopes of sowing "doubt as to the origin" of the pollution and possibly pining blame on other factories. Hodge and the Public Health Service began an ambitious campaign to persuade communities across the entire country to put fluoride in drinking water, touting the benefits for dental health. Their real goal, though, was to convince the public that fluorine compounds were safe..."

"After touring the orchards, Sadtler concluded that "practically all the vegetation" had been damaged... At a grade school near the plant, he noticed that something had eaten away the surface of the windows... Other pastures in the area were littered with dead chickens and horses. Sadtler also met farmers who were struggling with strange symptoms, including bouts of vomiting and muscle weakness."

The vivid imagery of a cow so poisoned and weakened that it has to scoot on its belly to graze is so sickening I want to go fight something.

“…fluorocarbons were a virgin frontier mined with poorly understood hazards, and the frenzied pace left little time for developing safeguards. At DuPont’s Chamber Works, the dangers of the fluorocarbon processing areas were legendary. Fires and explosions were commonplace; employees were regularly hospitalized with breathing problems, chemical burns, or worse… Workers weren’t the only ones affected…”

“The rest of the executive team shared Stine’s skepticism, and it wasn’t only the stunning complexity of the task that worried them. DuPont was still struggling to shed its reputation as a “merchant of death.” Just a few months earlier, Congress had learned that a GM joint venture had cut a deal in the late 1930s to supply the Germans with the secret for making leaded gasoline… Lawmakers were livid.”

“These events opened the door to the widespread sale of leaded gasoline, which would wreak havoc on public health for decades. They also established the bedrock principles that have governed our system for regulating potentially harmful substances ever since: first, that industry can be trusted to serve as an unbiased arbiter of science, and second, that products are to be presumed safe until proven otherwise…”

“Midgley worked his way through thousands of substances, from ammonium chloride to melted butter… But he eventually found two that solved the problem. One was ethanol… The other was a toxic compound called tetraethyl lead. In a 1922 letter…very poisonous if absorbed through the skin… But unlike ethanol, the tetraethyl blend could be patented—meaning GM and DuPont would profit on every gallon.”