I mean, you literally just open it in a browser with a paywall remover. It takes less effort than fucking moaning about paywalls -

Tiny pieces of plastic that pollute the environment can be produced by simply opening a plastic bottle or tearing a food wrapper.

Microplastics are between 0.001 and 5 millimetres in size and are usually either produced directly, or form when large plastic debris breaks up. We now know that millions of tonnes of microplastics are abundant in the environment and can harm marine life by entering the food chain. Microplastics are also found in our food, although the effect on human health is still unclear.

“Plastic is everywhere and enters our daily lives – and microplastics might be there as well,” says Cheng Fang at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

He and his colleagues tested whether everyday activities could release microplastics. They opened common plastic items such as bags, bottles and packaging film by twisting the bottle cap or tearing the bag, for example, or by cutting them with scissors or a knife, which deforms and fractures the plastic. Read more: Plastic tea bags shed billions of microplastic particles into the cup

The team used a scale that is sensitive to weights as low as one nanogram to collect and measure the microplastics that landed on its surface. Between about 10 and 30 nanograms of microplastic were released from opening the plastic items, which amounts to between 14,000 and 75,000 individual microplastic particles. But the team says that the true amount released is probably even higher, because many microplastics are statically charged and remain in the air.

Studying the microplastics with a microscope revealed that most were in the form of fragments or fibres of varying shape and size. Some could be seen with the naked eye, such as those from cutting bottles. The team also used a technique called spectroscopy to deduce the microplastics’ chemical composition and found the majority were made of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.

“This finding sends an important warning,” says Fang. “We might need to take our own responsibility and work with industry together to reduce [microplastics].”

“You’d love to say that you’re surprised and shocked at the results, but unfortunately, you’re not. We’re now realising that microplastics are literally everywhere,” says Christian Dunn at Bangor University, UK. It is now crucial that we work to find out the possible health effects of microplastics and cut back on unnecessary plastic use, he says.

Nature Scientific Reports DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-61146-4

Number three will shock you 😲

I automatically downvote headlines like this.

Here’s how

Downvotes duh

It’s almost as if another company with interests in a different but similar field that’s run by a fucking psychopath is trying to get rid of the competition

Does for 96% of the market lol

I use Windows because it just works

I lived in Paris for a year, speak french and respect people who work extremely difficult jobs in the most tourist-heavy city on the planet

I think I met three or four grumpy cunts in that year. Considering everything, that’s a miniscule percentage

Bear in mind these people aren’t being false-nice. They don’t rely on tips to feed their kids

Who complains the most about the so-called french “attitude”?

Brits and Yanks, the ones that think cleaners and waiters are beneath them and need to dance to earn tips

Makes sense

France - treating people the same no matter what they do for a living.

It’s really nice to be respected even if you’re a cleaner or a bin man, and very much deserved

Hold on, I’ll phone the Romans and ask them why they didn’t make the pont du Gard wheelchair accessible

In my dad’s era, a bit of crumpet was something completely different

2024? I remember seeing this in the early 1980s

I love monkey puzzle trees! They look like they’d be so easy to climb

I don’t like trying to climb them though

A pendantii

What’s the resistance of fuckin SPAM in ohms?

See?

The “whilst obvious hyperbole” bit is the clue. The two situations/comments/opinions are just examples, never happened and never will

It wouldn’t have mattered what examples I’d made up, someone like you would come along and go “wELL aKShULLy”

Fucksake!

There was one user that was constantly creating communities for Japanese cartoons

Fuck me it was like swatting flies, but then I realised I should just block the user!

Ta-dah, no more suspiciously-pseudo-pedo shit cluttering up my “all”

To be honest, “citrussy” just means “We’re not very good at making beer yet so we just chucked hops at it until it was drinkable and called it craft”

They’re the same types that appear in comment threads with contradictory arguments to literally fucking anything -

“We should save the whales”

“Yes but my cousin got splashed by a whale on a boat trip as a toddler and now has a terrible phobia that makes her wheeze whenever she sees one. Do you want that, is that what you want?”

“We should plan walkable cities”

“OH MY GOD SHES IN A WHEELCHAIR TOO DO YOU ONLY EVER THINK ABOUT YOURSELF YOU ABLEIST”

😂

My theory is that they’re just unbelievably bo-o-o-o-oring, humourless people with nothing to add to a conversation but a desperate need for attention