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http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/24/caitlyn-jenner-halloween-costume-sparks-social-media-outrage-.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...een-costume-labeled-817515?utm_source=twitter

It's nowhere near October, but one ensemble is already on track to be named the most controversial Halloween costume of 2015.

Social media users were out in full force on Monday criticizing several Halloween retailers for offering a Caitlyn Jenner costume reminiscent of the former-athlete's Vanity Fair cover earlier this year.

While Jenner's supporters condemned the costume as "transphobic" and "disgusting" on Twitter, Spirit Halloween, a retailer that carries the costume, defended the getup.

"At Spirit Halloween, we create a wide range of costumes that are often based upon celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes," said Lisa Barr, senior director of marking at Spirit Halloween. "We feel that Caitlyn Jenner is all of the above and that she should be celebrated. The Caitlyn Jenner costume reflects just that."
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As someone who's autistic to enough to vape, I'm going to take a wild guess that he either put the batteries on the wrong polarities or as mentioned was using some $5 china batteries because he was cheap as fuck and didn't do even a bit of cursory research on what the fuck Mech Mods are all about. I've had batteries go into overload before and it's as simple as popping the battery chamber and dropping the batteries to stop the reaction. Here's the thing though, you have to know when you're playing around with batteries that powerful, you need to pay attention and be careful with them.

It's just every time one of these stories come out about "VAPE BATTERY EXPLODES AND BURNS MAN SEVERLY" it turns out that the guy was carrying loose batteries in a pocket full of change or something like that. I'd think it's a safe bet that this dude tries to further mod his set up for "PHAT CLOUDS BRO" and fucked up the whole electrical balance.

Edit: Sorry, if it's not clear, almost all of these incidents are attributable to user error. If vaping was super dangerous why are the Tobacco companies dropping so much R&D on creating their own vapes? why would you start seeing all these new stories about "unoffical" vapes being dangerous? just seems convenient to me.
 
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Well it sounds like this happened right after he bought the thing. Wouldn't be surprised if he walked into the store and said "give me the thing that gives the biggest clouds possible" and the geniuses behind the bar sold him a mech and then this dude decided to cheap out on the batteries.

This one's a bit of a bummer to be sure. Vaping is silly but if we apply the "reasonable person" standard I don't think a reasonable person should expect something that they bought at a retail store to literally explode and kill them. We all assume that the things we're allowed to buy at a store are pretty safe unless they're absolutely covered in warning stickers. I'm not calling for more regulation on vaping but from a retail point of view you should try to gauge the user's experience level before selling them a race car when all they needed was a bicycle.
 
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No smoking? Hawaii lawmaker wants to say goodbye to cigarettes forever
Hawaii may once again be at the nation’s forefront when it comes to setting smoking policy.

The first state to raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco products to 21 is considering a measure that would effectively forbid cigarettes in five years.

State Rep. Richard Creagan, a medical doctor, sponsored legislation that aims to phase in a ban, raising the age requirement to 30 in 2020, 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022 and 100 in 2024. The bill, likely to be debated in committee this week, would exempt electronic cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco.

Should the measure become law, it could mark the first step toward a more comprehensive prohibition down the road. Five other states – California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon and Maine – followed Hawaii’s lead in raising the legal smoking age to 21, implemented in 2016.

Cigarette-smoking rates have tumbled nationally for years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the figure sank from 20.9 percent of American adults in 2005 to 15.5 percent in 2016, the latest year for which national figures are available. For those younger than 18, the rate is below 7 percent.

“Because smoking rates are getting so low, we can actually start thinking about what I call end-game strategy, meaning we’re at the point where we can feasibly just make smoking history,’’ said Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. “We couldn’t even talk about it when there was a large percentage of people smoking because there were too many people affected.’’

Siegel said the five-year target for banishing cigarettes is probably optimistic. Creagan’s ambitious bill may get watered down in the Legislature, and it will probably face opposition from the tobacco industry.

Leading cigarette producer Altria, formerly known as Philip Morris, did not return calls seeking comment.

Siegel pointed to two factors that may pave the wave for cigarette smoking to eventually become a distant memory preserved in film noir movies.

First and foremost is the emergence of e-cigarettes – also known as vapes, mods, ENDS (electronic delivery nicotine systems) or the brand name Juul.

Though unsafe for youths and highly addictive in general because of their nicotine content, e-cigarettes have nowhere near the 7,000 chemicals found in the smoke from regular cigarettes. For adults who smoke, they are regarded as a much safer option.

The other key development has been the evolution of the tobacco industry, which doesn’t wield nearly as much political clout as it did in past years.

Battered for years by campaigns that highlighted the deadly nature of its products, Big Tobacco had to adapt, and it found a useful vehicle in e-cigarettes, which derive their nicotine from a type of tobacco plant. In December, Altria bought a 35 percent stake in Juul for $12.8 billion.

“The tobacco industry itself is preparing for this," Siegel said. “They see this coming, and they are already diversifying. The cigarette companies themselves are talking about shifting from combustible nicotine to other forms of nicotine."

Even though Hawaii ranks toward the lower end nationally in smoking rates, Creagan said he introduced his legislation because taxes and regulations were not effective enough in keeping people from lighting up.

He wants the Aloha State to be the first in the country to ban cigarettes entirely. He countered charges of governmental overreach by saying the state is obligated to protect its citizens from dangerous products.

“In my view, you are taking people who are enslaved from a horrific addiction and freeing people from horrific enslavement," Creagan told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald. “We, as legislators, have a duty to do things to save people’s lives. If we don’t ban cigarettes, we are killing people.”

Lynn Kozlowski, an expert in tobacco policy who teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo, questioned whether legislation is the right approach in further snuffing out smoking habits.

He said he approves of exempting e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco because they provide less harmful alternatives to smoking, but cigars don’t quite fit into that category, at least not when their smoke is inhaled.

Kozlowski said history has shown forbidding access is not the most effective way of modifying adult behavior. He’s wary a black market for cigarettes may develop if they’re banned.

“If you can use ways to make the public fully aware of how dangerous cigarettes are, understand the differential risks, differentially tax these products, that’s been shown to have an effect on bringing smoking down," Kozlowski said. “A ban is not a tool I would turn to at this time."
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...an-cigarettes-tobacco-legislation/2774631002/
 
Dr W said:
Remember how Prohibition just made a massive black market and tons of at home moonshine?

Well imagine that but with cigarettes.
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TBH even when I was smoking a pack a day I think I'd quit before having to wait in a car park at 2AM for a friend of a friend who knew a guy to show up with half a pack of home rolled cigarettes cut with dry hay.
 
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Book claims global population will start to decline in 30 years despite UN predictions - and says once it does 'it will never end'
"Earth’s predicted overpopulation crisis might not be as dire as we’ve thought – instead, a new book argues our numbers will soon start plummeting.

The United Nations has long warned that the world’s population is fast approaching a point at which Earth’s resources may not be able to support humanity.

There are currently 7.7 billion people living on the planet, and this is expected to climb to 9 billion by 2050.

But, Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker have found that these predictions may have missed the mark completely.

In Empty Planet, the pair re-examines the forecasting models to conclude that global population will start dropping in about 30 years, and warn ‘once that decline begins, it will never end.’

Empty Planet upends the long-held assumptions about global population, using statistics and interviews with people all around the world to paint a fuller picture of the issue.

The UN forecasts rely on fertility rates, migration rates, and death rates, the authors explain in an interview with Wired.

But, other factors such as urbanization speed and the expansion of women's education have been left out.

Much of Africa, in particular, is experiencing both of these things.

Taking improvements in female education into account causes the estimates to drop to 8-9 billion for the year 2100, from the currently predicted 11 billion, according to the researchers.

‘And that’s just one cultural variable,’ Bricker told Wired.

‘So you can say that the old models always worked in the past, but what if the past is not prologue?

‘What if we’re moving into a different cultural moment? What if it’s accelerating? And what if that cultural moment really is about the personal decisions women make about their lives?’

The team polled 26 countries to get a better idea of family plans around the world, and found that many people are choosing smaller families.

Soon enough, the authors say, the number of young people will dwindle.

‘A lot of people who are thinking about the future of the world, the future economy, the future of city planning, they’re basing their projections on that future size of the human population,’ Bricker told Wired.

‘And people are actually making decisions based on this.

'If you dig in and see that there isn’t going to be a lot of growth of young people coming into the population, a lot of growth is actually going to come from older people hanging around longer because we’re getting better every day at keeping them alive.’"



For over a decade I have been hearing about the low birth rates in the US, UK and Japan and other industrialized nations, but I guess they're making more predictions. Hikikomoris rejoice?
 
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I saw this one in a random fb friend on newsfeed. Perhaps a future zoosadist thread for this guy? Lol these eyes
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http://khak.com/iowa-officials-looking-for-person-of-interest-in-cat-torture-case/

IOWA OFFICIALS LOOKING FOR PERSON OF INTEREST IN CAT TORTURE CASE

Disturbing news out of eastern Iowa this afternoon as officials in Benton County are searching for a person of interest in an animal torture case.

According to KCRG, Benton County authorities are asking for the public's help in locating 30-year-old Chad Alan Toney for allegedly stealing and torturing a cat. The report states that this investigation comes after a widely-shared social media post. The post "alleges Toney stole a cat named Gladys." The post also reportedly includes "photos and videos that appear to show the cat in stages of being tortured. Some of the photos include captions like 'Say bye bye little kitty' and 'Look at that not moving no more'." No other details have been released, but the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information regarding this disturbing matter is encouraged to contact the Benton County Sheriff's Office at 319-472-2337.


If you ever see an animal being neglected or abused, please do not hesitate to inform local law enforcement or area shelters. Last Hope Animal Rescue, Safe Haven of Iowa County, and Dogs Forever are among several rescue organizations in the area that will help get abused or neglected animals out of poor or life-threatening situations and place them in loving homes.
 
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BScCollateral said:
Because when I hear "selfless commitment to customer safety," I think "tobacco company."
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Touché. I still maintain my claim that most of these stories are extremely cheap vape pens, people keeping batteries where they shouldn't, and idiots who don't know what they're doing trying to emulate shit without looking up how to do it. These things are powered mostly by extremely powerful batteries and the mechmods require a bit of electrical knowledge to operate, if you don't have that you shouldn't be buying them. I don't know if it's on the shopkeeper to discern how much knowledge a customer has really though, but I believe someone already brought that point up.
 
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