Kayla > Recent Status Updates

“…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.”

“But none of your cousins has a freckle under her left eye like this girl does. What Ma Ma and her sisters call a ‘bad luck beauty mark’ because it means the owner will always weep. But you have often wondered in times of quiet reflection if it okay for someone to cry throughout their entire life story if that’s the way they feel and if it gets them through in the end to become a stronger person.”

“…I was told by a teammate that they’d all expected me sooner, but when word of my first supposed promotion got out, a white woman who had also applied complained and said that because I hadn’t been at the company as long as she had, it was obvious that I had been promoted because I was black. She had threatened to sue, so the promotion went to her instead.”

I don’t know if I agree with e v e r y t h i n g with the police brutality section, there’s some things mentioned about the specific history of where police even came from that I want to further research, BUT when Cru partnered w Impact in college, 3 out of the 4 cars we had on our Houston trip were pulled over, and it was only the cars with black drivers. So. (And they requested ID from the non-drivers too)

“But the same hammer won’t tear down all of the walls. What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.”

It’s so haunting. It’s written in 1938, before she even knew what the war would bring… “The quicksand of despair held them, it was at their chins. Then just before they died a man came and pulled them out. All they know now is, they will not die…God grant that it is a true leader and no black angel they follow so joyously.”

“When I went to investigate my mothers claim that the adults around her were ignorant of the camps, I discovered that on June 25, 1942, the Daily Telegraph in London published a story with the headline ‘Germans murder 700,000 Jews in Poland: Traveling Gas Chambers.’ …It was published on page 5 of a six-page issue of the paper…No other newspapers took up the story.”

Just the preface has me thinking back to Silent Spring (at this point Silent Spring should just be mandatory reading for every human on earth) and I’m excited (also nervous. Silent Spring should remain history, not have a refrain for current day)

The metaphors. are driving. me. insane. And not in a good way. Whyyyyy

Why is this book written like this? Man I’m really ready for it to kick up, drowning under all the exposition of every single little thing :/

“..which is named after an Indigenous child, Jordan River Anderson, who suffered from a rare neurological condition that required constant medical attention in Winnipeg. His doctors recommended that he stay…near the hospital, but the provincial and federal governments couldn’t agree on who was financially responsible for his care; during the extended time these arguments went on, Jordan died in the hospital.”

“‘I don’t like it when people say that Cross Lake is beautiful,’ he murmurs. ‘Because I remember what it was like before. You think you see beauty but you are looking at ruins, ruins of the land and the water.’”

“…been a pattern of sustained…abuses against Indigenous Peoples by law enforcement, including the infamous “starlight tours,” conducted by the Saskatoon Police Department in which Indigenous men who had been arrested were driven to the perimeter of the city in the dead of winter, had their shoes taken from them, and then were abandoned… Several men died of exposure from the late 1970s… early 2000s.”

“The residential schools also carried out extreme medical testing and nutritional experiments on students… Canadian physicians were experimenting with Indigenous children, withholding riboflavin, thiamin, and other essential nutrients to study the impact of malnutrition, even while children sickened and died… The last residential school in Canada did not close its doors until 1996.”

“Not only were the provinces granted the right to expropriate portions of the Native reserves for public works, an allowance that remained in place until 1985, but in 1911 they also instituted a rule permitting the government to relocate any reserve located near a Canadian town of eight thousand or more residents…did not definitively overturn the law and award the Squamish compensation until 2002.”

“My father’s later Pakistani citizenship has…made it extremely difficult for me to travel in India because of new visa rules that prohibit people with Pakistani ancestry from being allowed to apply for multiple entry visas and that require them to apply for their visas not by mail but in person… Those rules resulted from recent tensions arising from the victory of Hindu nationalist parties…”

“…And because Leonard is right here, stepping on my floor-length train, causing my head to yank painfully back. Dad eyeballs my dog. It’s clear he has a short-term plan, which is to toss Leonard on an iceberg and push him off to sea for the good of society.”

“…That somebody, who is all-knowing, then needs to patiently explain how much in love you need to be in order to spend the rest of your life with someone, as well as all the differences between loving somebody; being in love with somebody; love that’s really just lust or passion; and love that’s really just a thick, white plaster cast over a broken hole of loneliness.”

“But if there was one thing I learned about the day I found the price tag, it’s that you have to watch yourself. Because when something starts going off inside, you probably won’t realize it. Mom didn’t. Maybelle didn’t. And it’s not like anyone will tell you that it’s happening, either, especially when you’ve arranged things so there’s never anyone there to see.”

“Tornadoes are rare. Only a small fraction of thunderstorms produce them, and EF4 and EF5 tornadoes are exceptionally rare, accounting for less than 1% of all twisters. Only one EF5 is recorded in the United States in a typical year. In 2011 there were six. Four struck on April 27…”

“It’s the best moment of his life, because it’s the moment when Eustace Conway first grasps the concept that he has survived.”