<story><title>Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory</title><url>https://zenmagnets.com/public-releases/6-2018-6-years-of-battle-ends-in-victory/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>I like to play with liquid nitrogen. We have parties and make cocktails with it and do instant ice cream. In a couple weeks, we&amp;#x27;re going to do a thing where we make Dippin&amp;#x27; Dots with them. Liquid nitrogen is fun stuff.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also dangerous, and not in obvious ways. It&amp;#x27;s like the opposite of a cauldron of 400f peanut oil --- if that oil could also quickly asphyxiate you. And your intuition for how to mitigate the risk is bad; for instance: gloves would be a mistake. And that&amp;#x27;s just for handling it; freeze something the wrong way and give it to a friend to ingest and you could perforate their alimentary canal.&lt;p&gt;Should people be able to play with LN? Absolutely.&lt;p&gt;Should someone start a company and sell super-fun mini-dewars to people as a novelty item, like the Soda Stream of chilling? If they did, a lot of people would get hurt.&lt;p&gt;I am fine with it being a little bit of a hassle to get LN, and I am fine with it being a little bit of a hassle to buy a pretty boring desk toy. The CPSC appeared to have been fine with that too; its problem wasn&amp;#x27;t with you &lt;i&gt;owning&lt;/i&gt; little magnets, but with companies selling them as novelty stress relieving desk devices to rekindle your sense of childlike wonder and also make excellent refrigerator art (all things on Zen Magnets current page).&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think HN&amp;#x27;s take on magnets and the CPSC is very sophisticated or interesting or really even all that well informed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Zen Magnets: 6 Years of Battle End in Victory</title><url>https://zenmagnets.com/public-releases/6-2018-6-years-of-battle-ends-in-victory/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>flashman</author><text>People love to say that they shouldn&amp;#x27;t be prevented from owning these toys just because some other person&amp;#x27;s child might get injured, and I sympathise with that point of view. But at their peak, three thousand children a year were visiting emergency departments for suspected magnet ingestion (a number which declined after the CPSC ban).[1]&lt;p&gt;Lawn darts were banned on a mere 750 ED visits annually.[2] The fact is, we live in a society and (as with fireworks and other dangerous toys that could be labelled &amp;#x27;adults only&amp;#x27;) the cost of being able to have these magnets on your desk is probably dozens or hundreds of kids getting very sick.&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europepmc.org&amp;#x2F;abstract&amp;#x2F;med&amp;#x2F;29135818&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europepmc.org&amp;#x2F;abstract&amp;#x2F;med&amp;#x2F;29135818&lt;/a&gt;
[2]&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mentalfloss.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;31176&amp;#x2F;how-one-dad-got-lawn-darts-banned&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;mentalfloss.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;31176&amp;#x2F;how-one-dad-got-lawn-da...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>