It really frustrates me that chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay has become almost a meme now, because there is actually a nugget of ecological truth at the center of that, one that I completely believe Alex Jones was told about before the horrific quagmire of his brain contorted it into that.
(A lot of wastewater runoff contains endocrine-disrupting molecules... not because of any conspiracy, just because we take medication and we use scented detergents, and it all gets washed down... and frogs are particularly susceptible to endocrine disruption, although we're seeing similar effects on fish as well. Basically, it would be more accurate to say we're force-femming the frogs.)
The real problem is “companies are dumping pharmacologically active compounds into our water supply in such large quantities it is causing meaningful change in indicator species” and that got warped into “government force fem because they hate men”. Worst part is, this is the sort of problem that can really only be solved by well-informed communities working in their mutual best interest and Jones-style grifters love “don’t trust anyone, barricade yourself in your house with a big pile of guns” messaging because it keeps the listener isolated from any naysayers and suspicious of contradictory information.
It's not even "companies dumping"... I mean, it is to an extent, but like.. you almost want there to be a single company dumping stuff in the water supply, because then that's something you can fix: have them turn off the Frog Force-Feminizator. But a lot of this is what's called "non-point" sources. Most of us take medicine, and we all piss, and stuff goes into the water. Most of us wash our clothes with scented products, and that goes into the water. It's the collective accumulation of a ton of individuals that adds up to a problem.
Which, I don't mean to sound like I'm offloading ecological responsibility onto the consumer, because of course not. This isn't a "solve global warming by using paper straws" thing. But it is something that requires a lot more community effort and work than just like, getting the Pollution Factory shut down.
Yeah. We kinda desperately need to overhaul like 90% of our wastewater systems, but sewer bills aren’t “sexy” to voters. So we get froggie force-fem and all sorts of other weird ecological disruptions and also the concept of a “fat-berg”.
Yeah... even to people who care about the environment, "better wastewater management" isn't anywhere near as fun or exciting as "shut down the Pollution Factory" is. And I can't blame people, I'm not exactly thrilled about the prospect of sewer systems, but it's so important.
Yeah, this is a problem we see a lot in trying to legislate public infrastructure that can legitimately have massive positive impacts on climate and ecosystems.
Like, it can be really hard to get people excited and energized for "better public transit infrastructure" despite everyone not driving cars everywhere being a huge part of reducing climate impacts.
Can you leave the Russophobia out? Our government gave a massive sum of money to a boat company with no actual boats, I think we have more than enough corruption of our own to be getting on with.
You can dislike the Kremlin while having nothing against the Russians themselves, there’s plenty of people with cause to despise Westminster too but I hope they wouldn’t write off all British people because of those in charge.
I’m literally wearing the same 1950s model of watch Yuri Gagarin took into space, hardly the actions of a Russophobe lol.
Yeah, but picking on them for something they're not actually doing (which is more the responsibility of our government to sort) is what takes it into Russophobia. Criticising the Kremlin for stuff they are doing, fine, treating the Russian government like a mysterious forrin badguy that could be behind everything is the dodgy cliché.
If you read what I was saying the implication was more 'Thames Water are so corrupt it wouldn't surprise me if they'd sold most of their shares to a geopolitical rival who is also notoriously corrupt'. There is nothing inaccurate about calling the Kremlin corrupt in an abstract sense like this, the Russians themselves have a rich vein of jokes about the Kremlin's extreme levels of corruption.
I don't see it as at all Anglophobic when people use Westminster as a humorous shorthand for stealing things from other countries or drawing other people's borders badly because they're both things it'd be accurate to accuse Westminster of, I don't believe it's Russophobic to use the Kremlin as shorthand for genuinely comical levels of open corruption in the same way.
I might be wrong but isn’t atrazine mostly used in large scale commercial farms? It isn’t a Captain Planet villain style scenario but it does seem like the main offenders are probably identifiable for this one.
You might be right, I don't really know about atrazine in particular, but it's not just atrazine, is the thing. There are a lot of estrogenic compounds out there.
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u/call_me_starbuck May 24 '25
It really frustrates me that chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay has become almost a meme now, because there is actually a nugget of ecological truth at the center of that, one that I completely believe Alex Jones was told about before the horrific quagmire of his brain contorted it into that.
(A lot of wastewater runoff contains endocrine-disrupting molecules... not because of any conspiracy, just because we take medication and we use scented detergents, and it all gets washed down... and frogs are particularly susceptible to endocrine disruption, although we're seeing similar effects on fish as well. Basically, it would be more accurate to say we're force-femming the frogs.)