Yesterday, I watched a magical concoction being prepared before my eyes. It happened at a local fair where there was a booth for a mystical magician. At first, I was skeptical of his abilities, thinking it was all just a clever illusion. However, as I watched him work his magic, I became increasingly captivated by the process. The magician started by placing a small cauldron on a table. He then took out a vial containing a vibrant blue liquid.
[Florian] created the info-beamer package for the Pi for video playback (including multiple videos at the same time), displaying public transit information, a twitter wall, or a conference information system. A while back, [Florian] was showing off his work on reddit when he got a suggestion for auto-configuration of multiple screens. A few days later, everything worked.
If I understand correctly, this supports video playback across multiple Pi s; it s not doing video capture and scaling warping across multiple outputs. The nonstick pan craze, and it was a craze, was concurrently happening during the waterproof military grade outerwear phase, followed by the leggings and all-terrain fabrics-to-make-you-a-Mount-Everest-trekker phase, alongside the take-it-to-go chemical food and sugar product phase and so on with many of these still surging concurrently.
He then took out a vial containing a vibrant blue liquid. As he poured it into the cauldron, the audience gasped in wonder. The cauldron began to emit a soft glow and a sweet scent filled the air.
Devil’s Piss
When the diabolical term PFAS must be uttered in a formal meeting, the person will often begin with stating the acronym as P-FAS and follow with…or whatever they are called, whatever the term is supposed to be. I’ve never heard P-F-A-S and only the brave presenter will venture into the birth certificate: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. This conversation ends abruptly with a short discussion on whether the “A” in PFAS sounds like the “A” in faucet or the “A” in pass. Whomever wins this last bit automatically knows more about Forever Chemicals: they win.
Pronouncing chemical compounds is distracting. The problem with grasping the concept, effect, and dangers of PFAS persists despite its name or, in part, because of its name. Perhaps the ambiguity of the PFAS haze begins with PFAS representing thousands of chemicals—an umbrella term for an array of forever chemicals all with subsequent varying acronyms of their own. PFAS isn’t any one thing. In this way they are ubiquitous and mysterious. Which one is bad? Which one is where at what time? If the public can’t grasp the name and meaning, we can’t easily dedicate actionable responses to the threat. It would be like shooting a water gun at a moving target blindfolded with a strong wind and the gun only has 10ml of water and the toy is plastic and then you are worried you used well water to fill the toy and it’s a plastic nonstick toy, you’re wearing a waterproof GoreTex rain jacket while fish from the river are grilling behind you in a Teflon pan and then you begin to shriek in horror turning in circles as you see you are dripping in Devil’s Piss—everywhere.
It may have been easier to grasp PFAS if PFAS was instead named: Ubiquitous Plastic Byproducts: UPB. UPB feels good on the brain and tongue, but no one ever said PFAS are plastics and SLUB feels even better so: Slimy Leftover Ubiquitous Byproducts. Here Plastic is left out and so is Forever. SLUB sounds gross, drippy, and like something you don’t want on you…or in you. Now the leap from acronym to name and meaning is a short trek, manageable, and we can go forth on the same page discussing what to do about all the SLUB in our water etcetera. Careful though, in an effort for maximal transparency and optimization we could consider: UPBIEEOTP: Ubiquitous Plastic Byproducts In Everything Everywhere On The Planet. Subtitle: BYWSP, Because You Wanted Slicky Pans; All together: U-BEEP-S or possibly: SLUB BEEPS…which ends up being slightly redundant and poetic and I now see why naming newly formed chemical compounds can create headaches and we end up with PFAS because the original team, probably working for the Navy, just wanted to go home, and be done with it.
Sometimes we don’t know what we want until the market lets us know and so the nonstick pan trend surfaced as a brow-wiping, stress-reducing solution to the annoyance of the need to get out the elbow grease out and scrape. To scrape, a verb. To soak. To burn the scallop. All inexcusable. Truly! Who hasn’t slid a fried egg from a nonstick pan and watched in ecstasy as the whole entity, an orb of a planet, slides cleanly onto the plate and the elation that follows of deciding when you get to pierce the yolk yourself and deciding how the mess will eventuate on your plate and not the pan. It is magic and besides, we like oil and oily things, cue the image of me pregnant while inhaling deeply a newly paved parking lot of asphalt—an ode to oil itself.
The nonstick pan craze, and it was a craze, was concurrently happening during the waterproof military grade outerwear phase, followed by the leggings and all-terrain fabrics-to-make-you-a-Mount-Everest-trekker phase, alongside the take-it-to-go chemical food and sugar product phase…and so on with many of these still surging concurrently.
The market plays on the cultural beliefs of autonomy, freedoms, and individuality to invoke brand loyalty as a severe right and privilege over harder won ethical concepts we will have to fend for autonomously. I love when water droplets collect on a waterproof glove, coat, covering, or accessory when I fish, in essence a form of glee. Ha!…a full hijacking of my evolutionary survival instinct.
More than oily things we like the illusion of autonomy. Of easy. Of toasters. Of coasting. Of our bubbled, separated lives. To summons. To live in our manifest expression is to be away from all other humanity and reach them through a pixel. Ahhhh. But we are not at fault here, not necessarily. Labs are ping-ponged all over the globe spending precious hours mining the human mind, body, and soul to discover how we tick, how we addict. With each new discovery we are marketed to and shown the exact thing our double-helixed bondage desires and low and behold it’s on sale this weekend or in a drive-thru.
PFAS were born in the 1940’s and eventually would unify humanity in a shared trait. PFAS would find us and coat us all in an unescapable blanket of slippery debris. The world is soaked in the devil’s piss, is how John Oliver explains it on HBO’s Last Week with John Oliver, October 3 rd , 2021. He shares an embedded clip of the testimony by Mr. Glenn Evers, FMR. Research Scientist, Dupont: “It doesn’t go away, this is a manmade chemical, we just pass the baton to our generations of kids. In fact, if you were to incinerate and cremate me, I would technically be a fluorochemical hazardous source. The Teflon mesh that’s used in my hernia produces a very toxic gas and decomposes to something called Devil’s Piss, which is hydrofluoric acid. You can’t kill this beast. You can only control it.” In a mythic battle for survival there would be a beast and arsenals would be deployed. Unfortunately, our arsenal is lame. It begins with knowledge, choice, and engagement. That’s no chalice, no sword, no potion.
When I go to ewg.org/pfasmap I find the giant red bullseye on my community. I think of the granulated carbon tanks in our basement. I think of a massive PFAS settlement…of our reverse osmosis filter. I think of the ever-evolving list of cancers and horrid health risks of PFAS. I think we should move. Move somewhere cleaner, but the idea of escape is a misnomer. The idea of clean. We will return to Forever Chemical. PFAS will find me. June of this year saw a new record low for EPA recommended PFAS in drinking water from 2,000 parts per trillion (ppt) down to 0.004 ppt—dare I say negligible.
PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) aka C8 is in my blood and in 99.7% of Americans. We are all here together. It’s time to call it what it is.
Comments
- Pam Sinicrope says December 16, 2022 at 3:57 pm
Amazing! This piece resonates with sadness, humor, and excellent quotables. ‘To live in our manifest expression is to be away from all other humanity and reach them through a pixel” and “and besides, we like oil and oily things, cue the image of me pregnant while inhaling deeply a newly paved parking lot of asphalt” –incredible lines to say the least. And yes, I hate acronyms and PFAS leaves the scent of nightmare… but thank god for Cole Williams!
SLUB is a good one, though I think “forever chemicals” has a greater impact on the general public because the term is self-explanatory. “Devil’s piss” certainly catches the attention but sounds like something that could float away, which these chemicals do not. Thanks for bringing the topic to readers’ attention.
Next, the magician added a handful of glittering purple flowers to the concoction. The flowers seemed to dance atop the liquid, creating a mesmerizing display. The magician then muttered an incantation under his breath and waved his hands over the cauldron. Suddenly, the liquid began to bubble and froth, creating a swirling vortex of colors. As I watched, I couldn't help but feel a sense of anticipation. The magician reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jar containing a shiny silver powder. He sprinkled it into the cauldron, causing a burst of sparks to fly into the air. The crowd erupted into applause, amazed by the spectacle before them. After a few more minutes of stirring and chanting, the magician announced that the concoction was complete. He poured the contents of the cauldron into a crystal goblet and handed it to a spectator. The recipient took a sip and their eyes widened in astonishment. The drink had transformed into a sparkling potion, shimmering with magical energy. In that moment, I realized that the magician's abilities were far beyond anything I had imagined. His concoction was not just a clever trick, but a true feat of sorcery. The experience left me in awe of the power of magic and the wonder it can inspire. Overall, witnessing the creation of this watched magical concoction was a truly enchanting experience. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of the supernatural and reminded me of the beauty that lies in the unknown..
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