Prions seem to accumulate in the brain and spinal cord. Stay away from those and you’re probably good!

The process is simple and simple enough to do safely with automatic equipment without exposing workers directly to the lead. However Europe seems intent on phasing out lead acid batteries completely via suppression of demand with taxes.

Lead acid batteries truly are an example of an old and highly reliable technology with some tradeoffs. Yes, everyone knows lead is toxic, however modern battery designs are very well sealed so they never leak. The other tradeoff is that lead is very heavy such that lead acid batteries are too heavy for electric car use. However this last tradeoff doesn’t matter so much for stationary (such as a household) or low power (such as a motorcycle or ebike) use. In fact I would go so far as to argue that lead acid batteries are safer than lithium for some uses due to the latter’s fire risks.

Lithium batteries are not simple to recycle. They’re full of plastic which is wrapped in many fine layers like a roll of cling-film that’s been baked together. To recycle they probably have to be burned and the lithium re-smelted from them and then remanufactured in an energy and materials-intensive process.

From what I can tell, lead acid batteries in Europe have taxes applied to them to pay for recycling. Other places don’t have these taxes so lead acid batteries are very cheap there.

Having said that, I watched a video of a guy in Bangladesh recycling lead acid batteries by hand just using simple tools and a pot to melt the lead over a wood fire and a simple mold to pour the lead plates.

It’s a very basic, easy thing to do. It’s just labour intensive so it ends up very expensive if you have to pay Europeans to do it.

It’s always going to depend on what you’re searching for. I just tried searching for home coffee roasting on Swiss Cows and all of the results were legit, no crappy spam sites.

Marginalia is great for finding obscure sites but many normal sites don’t show up there. Million Short is a similar idea but with a different approach to achieving it.

The problem of search is actually extremely hard because there are millions of scam and spam sites out there that are full of ads and either AI slop or literally stolen content from other popular sites. Somehow these sites need to be blocked in order to give good results. It’s a never-ending, always-evolving battle, just like blocking spam in email (I still have to check my spam folder all the time because legit emails end up flagged as spam).

I still use web search all the time, I just don’t use Google. There are great alternatives:

• DuckDuckGo
• Ecosia
• Marginalia
• Million Short
• Swiss Cows

Relegated to slavery… just like the past thousands of years of human history.

How is that not a return to normal?

How does killing a bunch of them with crowbars begin a better world? Did that work the first time? It sounds to me like we’re trapped in a cycle.

Thanks! You too!

Cheers! I’m in the exact same boat! Perhaps we’re the vanguard of the AI-jobpocalypse…

I’m sure there’s some kidnapped wives historically. Some wives bought from their fathers. But there’s also plenty of women who have consented to marry a man who already has a lot of wives. The issue has to do with resources and political power.

A rich and powerful man has a lot of resources available for his wives and children. A poor and weak man has few or none. Your chances of escaping starvation and death are much higher with the rich and powerful man.

Notice that I made zero mention of love. Marriage for love is a luxury of modernity, of wealth and power overflowing. You didn’t marry for love in the days when a bad year meant there was no food to last through winter.

Soooo true! I can’t believe how much they’ve made the damn computer fight you on this!

Multiple wives => redundant wives. Solves the issue of mothers dying in pregnancy. The more wives you have, the more you expect to survive to be able to care for the children. Having only one wife, on the other hand, means all your eggs are in one basket (apologies)!

Yes I mentioned that earlier in the thread. Polygyny = some men have many wives, others have none.

Avast, ye mateys!

Netflix selection is crap anyway!

I guess I’ve forgotten what the problem was exactly. High maternal mortality? How is that not solved by having many redundant wives?

The birth rate of XY babies is actually slightly higher than XX babies. On the other hand, babies with higher testosterone tend to have weaker immune systems and so are more susceptible to infant mortality from disease.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what the problem is with men who don’t have wives? They simply don’t reproduce. Throughout history men have reproduced at a lower rate than women. In polygynous cultures it’s only the very powerful and wealthy men who have many wives. The poor and powerless men have few or none.

High maternal mortality meant that having more than about 7 children per woman was rare. Total fertility rate was about 4.5 to 7 in the pre modern era. Population growth was low due to infant and early childhood mortality though.

If you start having children at age 12, you can have a child every year and reach 7 children by age 20. Without contraceptives, people weren’t having such large multi-year gaps between children like we do now.

Polygyny is where one man has many wives.

There are definitely cultures who have practiced polygyny to get around this issue. Some still do today, for example in many different countries in Africa where people still practice a pastoral life.

What was it like outside of Western Europe?