Popcorn ceilings, leaded gas, and other inventions that have "done more harm than good," according to Reddit

Trickle-down economics.

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FTFY (at least here in the states) :wink:

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Aluminum and plastic tray’d tv dinners (I’m looking at your family, fucker swanson carlson), pre-packaged snacks, most chemical fertilizers and weedkillers (I’m looking at you, monsteranto corp), monsteranto’s suicide seeds (google and be horrified), breast implants, cigarettes, planned obsolescence, the stock market, billionaires, top 40 radio, polyester doubleknit, pantyhose…

Will edit as I think of more.

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The UK plugs and receptacles are ginormous, but they are really smartly designed with some clever safety features.

But there’s really no excuse for those silly shaver sockets.

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Nope.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/om030621b

You have to add a hell of a lot of ethanol to gasoline to get the same effects as a tiny droplet of TEL. So it ends up being quite a bit cheaper, for both the manufacturer and the consumer. Still toxic as hell.

And judging from this paper,

a gallon of ethanol cost between 27 and 40 cents per gallon to make in 1949 but a gallon of gas sold to the consumer for 27 cents/ gallon that same year. Fact #741: August 20, 2012 Historical Gasoline Prices, 1929-2011 | Department of Energy

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The ones that all look the same and plug in the same, but its’ near impossible to tell what you have. Is it a USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2, USB 3.2 Gen 3, or a USB 4.0?
Does the cable you have let you power 10W, 40W, 60W, 80W, 100W?
It it thunderbolt 2, or thunderbolt 3 or thunderbolt 4?

Blech.

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Harmful inventions? More harm than good?

GOLF!!

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Not an invention, but a fantasy. A right-wing fuckwit economist’s wet dream.

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…and calling it voodoo economics insults an ancient religion.

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Umm, see my earlier post. :wink:

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XLNT point. Vodoun is, of course, also a pre-colonial, non-colonial culture.

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The big advantage of ethanol in fuel is that it’s carbon-neutral. The two downsides are that it’s less energy dense than petrol, so you’ll go 30-15% less far on a tank of E85. The other problem is that it eats away at basic rubber hoses, so you need to use ethanol-safe hose (and possibly pump etc.).

I still think burning only 15% as much dino-juice is a big win though.

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Hah! Ditto what @anothernewbbaccount said, fantasy does not equal invention.
But I concur, definitely has done more harm than good.

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Gunpowder

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And you have to frequently run your engine to avoid gunging up carbs and injectors.
And fibre-glass tanks on motorcycles can go soft.

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II’m pretty sure that some of my USB 2.0 devices just paint the connectors blue.

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Oh God yes, this is legit evil. Even the micro-USB b standard (with the exception of the C connectors) is a pain since the tension on the holders will inevitably fail. I prefer the C connectors as they just work fine enough and don’t have the weird tensioner problem.

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I found a decent video on that recently

(it’s an awesome channel BTW, i highly reccomend it)

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The puns and word play on his twitter feed are also worth a look.

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