you’re invited to a special program that lets redditors purchase stock
I loaded a page on reddit due to a search result and found out that I'm among the chosen few. Message sent yesterday. They must've gotten fewer takers than expected on the first round of invites if they're now offering shares to people who haven't posted, commented, voted, or done anything else on the site for the past 8 months.
They are definitely scraping the barrel. I got one. Meanwhile, my account was wiped of comments (and a lot of my comments were very anti-reddit and/or pro-fediverse). The account has been dormant for several months. I had fairly high karma, but mostly from 2 or 3 dumb/funny memes that the hivemind loved for whatever arbitrary reason of timing/ subreddit.
Reddit always had a weird vibe / momentum to the votes. Say the dumb thing in a fan service way and they eat it up. Gallowboob was the master manipulator, but it wasn’t overly difficult to get lucky and pick up 10k to 20k upvotes with a single well-timed pithy remark or predictable joke.
Also, if a comment got early down-votes it tended to keep going in that direction, even if the comment was adding to the discussion. Simple momentum, even with vote fuzzing in play. Occasionally you’d see one bounce back up if others called out the BS of the down-votes.
I’m grateful Lemmy doesn’t aggregate karma. Keep posts and comments self-contained. Fresh start on every new thread!
Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres
A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.
But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.
It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.
"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.
"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.
"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."
"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.
"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"
"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."