New and Old #44

Friday roundup and commentary

How bad are plastics, really?, The Atlantic, Rebecca Altman, January 3, 2022

I like pieces like this mostly for their bits of cultural and commercial history and neat storytelling. I don’t doubt that plastics are a big environmental problem, but this is the kind of thing that most grabs my attention:

Dad, back in the 1960s, had manufactured a more resilie…