swim

Almost all chewing gum contains plastic, and as such stands to be a big source of microplastics in your body (and the environment, especially when not disposed of “properly”).

In the US, companies are allowed to list “gum base” in the ingredients when the “gum base” could mean anything - but it almost always means PVA (polyvinylacetate; a plasticizer).

Some gum marketed to people who realize this uses chicle, as gum originally did, or some other non-plastic, but it needs to explicitly state this. “Gum base” = “not telling you” = undoubtedly chewing microplastics into your body.

The problem is that the “irrelevant” culture wars (identity politics, wedge issues) that don’t affect any given individuals directly are about important issues, and they’re being used by the rich as hostages. We can’t help but care about those issues, even if they don’t impact us directly, and the rich are using them as human shields while they take our watches and wallets and force us to sign over our properties

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessities of life, places them in conditions in which they cannot live,—forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual.