Mine owners should be responsible for sealing these death traps when they leave a site. We see a similar thing with abandoned oil wells in Texas. I was reading about it while filling out my mail in ballot for the 2024 election, though the bigger problem with the wells is toxins spilling out rather than people going in. And the worst part is that once the mines/wells close, the locals are no longer benefitting from the economic boom, so their suffering is doubled.
A lot of these mines are leftover relics from the 1800s and early 1900s; the companies that dug them often not only don’t exist anymore, but the people who owned them are long since dead, as are their children and likely even grandchildren. If you go into the Sierras, the Rockies, or the Appalachians the mountains are just dotted with countless gold, silver, iron, and coal mines that have been abandoned for more than a century, possibly even two.
I hadn’t considered that. Then it should fall to the government to protect the people. Shame that people are being hired to clean up the mess instead of to prevent it, but i guess that’s par for the course here.
In the US regulations were passed that meant any mine after the 80’s had to be made safe instead of abandoned, and yes there are a lot still open from that time. but there are lots of modern companies trying and succeeding at dodging this by doing what the commenter said, “oops we transferred ownership to a failing company that went bankrupt how could we possibly clean it up when we don’t have the funds”
i think it’s cute when americans talk about being from the ‘great state of connecticut’ or like ‘the great state of wisconsin.’ not when it’s texas or new york or california obviously because then there’s the fear that they’re being serious. but when americans adopt that really earnest tone and are like ‘god bless the great state of delaware’ in response to a picture of a seagull swallowing an entire ziplock bag full of cheese-its. I think that’s very endearing
Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the “Privacy Sandbox,” is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven’t been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it’s built directly into the Chrome browser. It’s been in the news previously as “FLoC” and then the “Topics API,” and despite widespread opposition from just about every non-advertiser in the world, Google owns Chrome and is one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, so this is being railroaded into the production builds.
This is a response to the laws that eliminate or severely limit third party tracking cookies. Since Google makes so much money on advertising, it had to figure out other ways to get your data. It’s already been tracking people who use the web while logged into Google, but now they’re baking it into Chrome.
As someone who works in advertising, the reason I new use Firefox is because I heard the industry rumblings about this for the last 3 years. It’s finally here, so if you care about making it harder to be tracked/advertised to, switch to Firefox.
amhrancas 