a step to a more sustainable future that doesn't involve the cessation of plastic production is a step toward the foot of a volcano that's actively erupting.

it's interesting and hopefully some less-bad will come of the plastic we're currently dealing with but that really doesn't factor in the continued permanent damage done by petroleum extraction, refinement and plastic production.

it's the andromeda strain

Some discussion (26 points, 1 month ago, 13 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43961573

That is worrying yet inspiring. I can only hope that resistance to the anti-microbial substances and plastic eating are mutually exclusive because the two going together would be nasty.

At the same time it suggests some distant future where they'll be able to come up with a good bacteria based microplastics 'vaccine'.

If I had to develop a building designed to incubate the most horrendous possible types of pathogens (w/o bioengineering), it would end up basically being a hospital.

Obviously hospitals are good, but they are inevitably a perfect environment for pathogen incubation and there’s no easy solution to this