Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito confirmed Friday he’s staying on the nation’s highest court, weeks after a swell of speculation about a possible retirement.
“Obviously, I’m here for another term,” Alito, 76, said in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial section.
Discussion of Alito’s future hit a fever pitch in June, when a mistake by a veteran Supreme Court reporter at National Public Radio resulted in the erroneous publication of a previously prepared retirement story.
Lead and being raised in a time of plenty…
Lead effects people at even tiny levels, a baby born today will experience the same thing boomers are, just to a much lesser extent. Because lead never really goes away, it just gets buried in the dirt or absorbed into plants/animals/humans.
As we age and naturally lose critical thinking (60ish, but varies) to compensate we fall back on patterns from when we were teenagers to early 20s. Evolutionarly speaking, stuff was supposed to be mostly the same and it wasn’t a problem.
But now it is, because not just technology but society and civil rights have changed drastically.
Lead effects critical thinking the same way, and the brain compensates the same way
So people who were running around when leaded gas was a thing, didn’t just get it early, they’re getting it harder now.
In their heads they’re all 20 and in prime health, they think they’ll live for ever and everything will workout, and they never see the consequences coming when it doesn’t.
That’s why they don’t retire, not just politicians, a lot of them just worked till they died even if they didn’t have to. Every single one was breathing leaded gas exhaust as a kid, and the older they get, the stronger the symptoms get.
In 60 years, they’ll say the same about something else we all use. Not just the obvious like plastic, something we genuinely think is awesome right now.
Not likely. People knew in 1921 when, tetraethyl lead was being added to gasoline, that it was extremely hazardous. They just, as is the style, got bought out by lobbyists.
Thomas Midgley Jr. was one of the worst people in history, maybe accidentally, maybe not.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/one-man-disaster-scientist-who-36285595
Probably some material used in all the glass people are putting right on their skin all day long…and then there is what a laser printer emits…
Is there a reason it can’t be plastic? Surely it’s not like the negative effects of lead poisoning were unknown 50 years ago, with people instead just ignoring it because it was the only option or was cheaper or everyone else was using it or something, all of which excuses apply equally to plastics.
I mean, we already know plastic is fucking us…
50 years ago plastic would have been the answer, but none of us would have guessed that.
My point was, statistically there are things right now we think of neutrally or even positively that future generations will say was a major contributer to something really fucked up that might not even be manifesting yet.
Actually, I think I know what the thing we’ll be disappointed in will be: rubber tires. Tire wear releases non-trivial amounts of carcinogenic particulate into the air, and as far as I’m aware that problem just goes unacknowledged.
It so happens lead based paint was banned nearly 50 years ago (1978), so it’s not like it was exactly ignored.
Restrictions on lead additives in gasoline also began in the 1970s…