It's self-inflicted.

You just seamlessly switched from plastic straws specifically to all microplastics from all sources. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. How much do plastic straws contribute to microplastics? It's utterly negligible. But it's something that a public panic can be whipped up over, and people end up thinking they're actually accomplishing something meaningful by switching to paper straws. It's outright counterproductive. If I was a Captain Planet villain then I would consider it my greatest accomplishment to get people worked up about plastic straws and thinking that they were significant.

Same here with these fibre optics. The environmental impact is trivial, be it plastic or glass. The cost of worrying about it is far greater than the cost of just going ahead and using it.

I love how sci-fi this sounds. Just need mention of verteron particles thrown in there somewhere.

Ah, good, that makes this less of a dilemma then.

If it's under the topsoil then it's not going to be eaten by mice or oysters.

I really think this is one of those problems where people are looking for problems to make a big deal out of, like the massive panic about plastic straws a while back. Especially in this case where it turns out the fibers are plastic to begin with.

On the one hand not fond of the CCP, and this is a step toward making Taiwan more "safely" invadeable.

On the other hand not fond of the United States throwing its weight around like it's in charge of the world and not fond of monopolies in general.

So hard to settle on a reaction for this.

Canada and Mexico are doing fine. The United States isn't North America.

Only if the glass gets into your lungs, though. If it's mixed with the soil it's just sand.

Wasn't aware they used plastic fibers. I guess that would make it lighter, too.

Could never have guessed.

I wonder if perhaps the trade war against Canada isn't really about fentanyl, either.

It has an eerie beauty to it.

I remember seeing some photos a while back of bird nests made out of fragments of fibre optic cable, those looked pretty neat too. On the plus side, when this stuff degrades it just turns into sand. So at least there won't be a toxic waste problem on top of everything else.

I do, however, enjoy it when various flavors of Nazi fight each other.

Not only that, but apparently the head of the Russian military intelligence, General Andrei Averyanov, was on board and was killed by the strike.

This should really highlight the shenanigans that these "shadow fleet" ships have been getting up to beyond simply transporting sanctioned oil.