Paywall free link: https://archive.ph/6YIDb
Sellers on Amazon and TikTok Shop have sold jewellery containing illegal amounts of a cancer-causing metal, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found. Items have been sold on the marketplaces containing large amounts of cadmium, a toxic heavy metal that is carcinogenic. The legal limit for this element in the UK is 0.01 per cent in any piece of jewellery. One £2.99 ring bought on Amazon that was advertised as 925 silver contained more than 9,000 times the maximum allowance and was estimated to be made of 92.3 per cent cadmium.
Perhaps that is the point. It’s a bit dark and a bit paranoid, but once AI can manufacture the basics, 90% of us aren’t “needed” anymore. Maybe that’s why they don’t care about climate change or the cost of living. The age of AI utopia they envision is meant only for those of a certain social standing so if the herd gets thinned they won’t have to figure out what to do with us later.
That’s a lot of doomerism, but god damn, poisoning your customers with poisonous jewelry used to be the domain of wicked magicians and fantasy novels, now it’s happening on an industrial scale.