When HN users recommended it
1 HN user recommended this in 2023, in one comment.
20072026
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
1 HN user recommended this in 2023, in one comment.
Each tall tick is one HN user's first recommendation. A short tick is the same user again. Click a tick to jump to the comment.
> We sold a highly radioactive substance to Jim, and endanger more than Jim.
Gasoline + air is a high explosive. Most fluids at a hardware store are poisonous and some of them taste sweet. The MSDS for the things under your sink will tell you all the ways they can destroy you.
You can have hydrofluoric acid send to your front door. It can kill someone if you spill it on them, but it also has legitimate uses and is such a simple compound that there is no point in prohibiting it because anyone can make it themselves.
Dangerous things are widely available and everywhere and it's rarely a problem.
> Oops, Karen from HR brought in deadly nightshade muffins to share ("small amounts are said to be good for the liver, I heard it on my favorite podcast!").
https://www.amazon.com/Belladonna-Seeds-Atropa-belladonna-Fl...
> There's a middle ground here, where if it's dangerous enough, we don't allow it to be sold.
Many of the things all around us are even more dangerous than the things that have been banned.
If you ask someone to choose a central example of things they think should be banned, they'll often start with military explosives like C-4. Military explosives are designed to be stable. You have to use a blasting cap to set them off because the last thing you want is unintentional detonation.
If you fill your house with propane or natural gas, the slightest spark from anything will vaporize the entire building and everyone inside. Natural gas is dramatically more dangerous than C-4.
But C-4 is scarier because Hollywood shows it being used in a different context, and that's how politics decides what's banned.
And once you get into the banning things business (because you have to ban C-4, don't you?), people relentlessly want to add more things to the list. Which doesn't happen in any more principled a way.