No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
I think it's because they're not allowed inside the buildings, so they just pop out to the bare minimum distance to smoke. In their defense, probably hard to get very far with all that tar in your lungs.
I smoked for a while. It’s not the distance, it’s the wind. Most entryways have wind blocks that make it more comfortable to stand there and also make it easier to light a cigarette.
While I completely understand that smoking is not a habit that passersby want to subject themselves to all the time, I do think some people are a little oversensitive about the sight of a smoker in a public outdoor place. The stuff that comes out of cars is equally if not more dangerous than second hand cigarette smoke in an outdoor area, but people tolerate it without complaint because they can acknowledge the universal utility of a car. Regardless of that utility though, it is still poisoning the earth and its inhabitants with every mile driven, and a cigarette is mostly only poisoning the smoker when used outdoors with reasonable distance from others.
If we decided 6 feet is good enough for COVID, then it seems like 10 is more than enough for a cigatette.
I know many will disagree with this—please be gentle.
Ah, the wind isn't something I thought of. I grew up around 2 smokers (who still smoke decades later), and have always hated the smell, though I do appreciate when people tuck their cigs away when I walk by with my toddler. You bring up good points about the environment as well; I think it's more of a personal annoyance being burdened with the smell. Similar to people who douse themselves in cologne XD
I've seen conferences outright ban the use of scents because of people who get irritated by them. Fair enough, if you ask me.
In my case at least, it's not a matter of seeing a smoker in a public place, the smell starts irritating my nose and throat and then I have to play a game of "find the smoker". I agree that car exhausts are also harmful, I agree that we should also reduce driving as much as possible, but at least I can tolerate the smell of car exhaust much more easily if I have to be next to it. Everyone else seems to be able to enjoy their (outdoor) meal or concert, and I'd love to be able to get back to the point where I can think "yeah this is harmful, I should probably not subject myself to it" instead of "I can't breathe".
Regarding your car example: I agree, but as you said, cars have utility. Cigarettes don’t. They are a deadly concoction of carcinogenic substances that damage almost every organ in your body. And as you said, they are even unhealthy for bystanders. The fact that we haven’t outright banned them yet is beyond me… And that’s not to shit on Smokers, they are the primary victims of this disgusting industry that shows no signs of having a sense for morals.
They unfortunately do have a usefulness for the smoker though—that’s why people get started. The advantages are subtle intoxication without impairment, socialization rituals, and built in excuses for a break. I work in healthcare and you’d be amazed how many nurses smoke, not because they’ve been fooled by the industry, but rather because they don’t have a better substitute for the benefits that smoking provides them during their stressful day.
No, they smoke because they are addicted. Again I don’t blame them, they are the main victims. They most likely started smoking during adolescence, depending on their age because it was seen as cool, a sign of maturity, group pressure and so on. Add to that the Tabacco industry’s year long investement in marketing. First they paid some “Doctors” to promote their product, then they hooked themselves up with the Movie industry and most of their anti-smoking campaigns are inneffective or even deliver new customers as they are seen as beeing “responsible” (http://tiny.cc/dbf8vz). They added an Ammonium based compounds to Cigarettes that make them more addictive, basically the same principle thats used in crack (http://tiny.cc/9bf8vz), or sugar so that they taste better and you can inhale them easier
By the time they feel the first adverse effects, their hooked and apmost 80% of Smokers who try to quit, fail to do so at one point. () And when 7 out of 10 Smokers say they do want to quit (http://tiny.cc/ibf8vz) you can hardly make the argument that they chose to smoke. They are addicted and don’t really have much if a choice anymore. And quitting is hard as hell. There are studies that suggest that it realistically needs about 30 attempts for the average person to successfully quit smoking (http://tiny.cc/kbf8vz).
And when someone tries to sue them after people died because they used their product, got linger cancer and died, it’s aleays the same:
It wasn’t OUR cigarettes who killed them. They knew the risk! Or they just draw it out so long that the people suing die or run out of money before they ever get a chance of justice.
And nowadays, the came up with vaping. Something that’s at least equally addictive, but now tastes like bubble gum and cotton candy, and you are telling me that this is a responsible industr? That people smoke because there are so many benefits? I’d rather give people extra breaks instead of having them smoke. We as a society have a responsibility to protect those who fail to protect themselves. And a substance that’s inevitably killing it’s users at a rate that’s almost grotesque, is legal tobe consumed in public while some US states arrest your for HOLDING a liquor bottle, is absolute madness.
Smoking kills 8 million people every single year. That’s 1 human every 4 seconds, 1.2 million of them die because of secondary smoke exposure. (http://tiny.cc/vbf8vz).
Again, how can they be legal?
Oh and regarding nurses or health personel in general: What they know professionaly and what they do privately are enormously different things. When the pandemic started here in Switzerland, a local Newspaper asked people in different fields if they would take a vaccine once we had one. Over 40% of people in the healtcare sector said no. That’s the second highest number. Only construction workers were less willing to take a shot with about 2% more.
And when it comes to smoking, yes they smoke, but not because they think it’s healthy or they like it so much, not really. Most of them are addicted cause they started as kids and stopping is about as hard as stop using heroine or cocaine (see links above).
There are some major generalizations in your points here. I know my example is anecdotal, but the picture you paint doesn’t fit my experience. A lot of my coworkers started smoking as adults specifically because they were stressed out and saw their smoking coworkers get a little relief from the habit. One nurse in particular got a lot of the others started by simply offering it when she would go outside for her own break.
So I get what you’re saying, and there are definitely examples like you describe, but it is not accurate to imply that the vast majority of smokers are only doing it because they were duped at some point. Some people know the risk and choose to do it anyway, just like any other dangerous pastime.
There are some major generalizations in your points here. I know my example is anecdotal, but the picture you paint doesn’t fit my experience. A lot of my coworkers started smoking as adults specifically because they were stressed out and saw their smoking coworkers get a little relief from the habit. One nurse in particular got a lot of the others started by simply offering it when she would go outside for her own break.
So I get what you’re saying, and there are definitely examples like you describe, but it is not accurate to imply that the vast majority of smokers are only doing it because they were duped at some point. Some people know the risk and choose to do it anyway, just like any other dangerous pastime.