We knew Lead was poisonous back in roman times. That didnt stop us from using its derivatives in paint, gasoline, solders (still used today), bullets and other common products. The disaster in Flint for example, was the result of the use of Lead and its alloys in the water pipes used there combined with poor decisions made in the name of cost cutting. Dont assume that people individually or as a society do dumb things only because they dont know any better. People do dumb things they know full well they shouldnt be doing all the time.
This is like a viking asking what the value of a silver pennigar is in 2024. Which you probably wouldnt understand because they dont speak modern English. And even if the conversation were mutually intelligible, most people wouldnt know or care what a silver pennigar is to be able to give an answer and the ones that do would point out that because that particular coin hasnt been used at scale in commerce in hundreds of years, it doesnt really have a modern answer aside from "this is a collector's item not a form of recognized currency." And even if it did, its likely not going to be easy to explain what that value is in a way that they understand. i.e dollars wouldnt mean anything to them and the value of most things has changed dramatically since that time.
The universe is as far as we can tell so far, devoid of intelligent life other than ourselves. The "great filter" is a collection of hazards that life must avoid. For us
an example would be nuclear war or hostile AI.
Most plastic that we use shows evidence of endocrine disruption activity and it isnt just BPA as a byproduct of the manufacture of certain plastics. We know it is bad for the environment too. Microplastics are pervasive and also known to have negative health and environmental consequences.
Higher end Samsung ssds were dying a lot faster than they should. I dont know what drugs your friend is on thinking they cant fail but theyd better have enough for the rest of the class.
There are good and bad things going on in the world and while it isnt all bad news, this doesnt strike me as being anything other than another form of bias.
There are serious problems with this planet and pretending there arent doesnt make them go away.
You need cows to produce all of that just like you would meat. The way cow physiology works requires that calves be birthed periodically to maintain milk production at large scale. The dairy industry is to a large extent, a by product of the meat industry. Those new calves have to go somewhere. And you have to keep in mind that 70% of the world's population is lactose intolerant as adults. They rely on nondairy meat products for the majority of the B12 they get. OR you switch people to vegan substitutes that have B12 added to them. Right now those are niche/luxury products which is problematic for developing nations. Like... imagine going from small scale cattle and poultry farming to relying on B12 bacterial fermenters and soy production at large scale. That might be doable if new processes for using certain strains of B12 producing pseudomonas bacterial cultures can be developed for fermented soy products like tempeh can spread there but again, those arent there yet. More R&D is needed.
The vast majority of the minerals that your body obtains are from food and drink. The danger of drinking distilled water (due to the lack of mineral content) is very overblown. And the osmotic pressure of tap water is essentially the same as distilled water.
There is no group of people that cant be othered. Women, minorities, LGBT, people that differ in religious/areligious beliefs, physical characteristics like weight, mental disorders and neurodiversity, poverty/lower income, the list goes on
We only have one planet with life on it to go off and finding life is like looking for a needle in a haystack. So while other exotic forms of life may exist, it would be a lot harder to search for and recognize. And the conditions under which life on Earth exists are understood better so we can look for those range of conditions rather than aimlessly search every conceivable but less likely set of conditions. eg. liquid water. Life can survive two of the extremes of acidity, salinity (saltiness) and temperature but not all three (that we know of) and there has to be a chemical and/or energy disruption of equilibrium of the system. eg. CH4 in the presence of O2 etc. In the needle in a haystack analogy, we are using a magnet to sift through the haystack first because needles that we know of tend to be magnetic. If we dont find anything we might search for bone or ceramic needles using different search methods etc.
This game screams "we never gave a shit"