No brain, thoughts empty

what you’re saying is ‘you’re only allowed to act faggy if you are willing to come out as queer. if you’re straight, or closeted, or unlabelled, or questioning, or you simply wish to keep that private, you need to start acting in an acceptably heterosexual way right now’

The hero interrogates the villian but it seems they have more history than the others thought.

(maybe they grew up together, used to be friends as kids, etc etc and nobody knew that they knew each other this well)

"You're lying."

"Am I?" the villain raised an eyebrow.

"You always cross your legs when you lie."

The villain's legs immediately twitched, as if to sit properly on the chair, only to pause. As if the very act of adjustment damned them. They scowled at the hero.

The hero beamed sunnily back.

The detective looked between the two.

"Yeah, well," the villain said, "you wouldn't be so good at reading people if you weren't trained to be a desperate people-pleaser to avoid setting off your shitty parents."

"Um," someone said.

The hero's smile dropped. "You're bringing family into this? Really?!"

The villain shrugged. "I find it's good for you to yell at someone occasionally. I'm happy to provide you a much needed outlet for your anger issues, darling."

"I don't have anger issues."

"They said angrily."

"You're dodging the question!" The hero stabbed a finger in the villain's direction. "We know you were at the gallery when the painting was stolen. The only question is who took it."

"I'll never tell you where it is."

"You didn't take it," the hero said, rolling their eyes. "That would imply you have taste."

"I have taste."

"Do you, though?" the hero asked. "Because I've seen your bedroom and-"

"-I'm sorry," the detective said, "you've what now?"

"-I was fifteen!" the villain snarled.

"God, that carpet. Tragic."

"Get it all out," the villain said, venomously. "There you go. You want to call me daddy to really add to the fantasy of being able to stand up for yourself?"

The hero's hand twitched violently and they took a step forward.

"O-okay!" The detective swiftly stepped between them, eyes wide. "So I'm sensing some not professional tension here."

The room was quiet, for a long moment.

The hero drew in a long steadying breath and let it out.

The villain sighed and uncrossed their legs, as if slumping in their chair dramatically, head tipping back, properly masked the gesture.

"Anyone want to explain the conflict of interest?" the detective asked. "Before my investigation is completely screwed?"

"We knew each other as kids," the hero muttered.

"We dated."

"We never put a label on it."

"That's because you have commitment issues."

"I committed to stopping you, didn't I?"

"And yet," the villain said. "The painting is gone. And you're wasting your time whining at me instead of chasing the thief."

"So I was right and it wasn't you."

The villain paused, jaw twitching.

The hero smirked.

"Well," the detective said. "Isn't this just fascinating. I love my job." They sounded like they were trying to remind themselves of this pertinent fact.

"Does that mean I can go?" the villain asked.

"No," the hero said. "It means you can tell me what you saw before I call your grandmother."

"Now who's invoking family."

"You started it."

"She wouldn't tolerate your calls half as much if she knew we'd broken up."

"You didn't tell her we broke up?!"

"Neither did you," the villain pointed out.

"That was for information."

"Are you listening, detective? I'm pretty sure that counts as getting evidence illegally."

"They're not technically under our employ," the detective said, stare turning to the one way glass, as if for back up. "Different rules for civilians."

"I'm not a civilian," the hero said, sounding mildly offended.

"Well," the villain said. "Now I'm definitely not chatting to you about the painting."

"Are you really so incompetent that you didn't see anything?" the hero asked.

"Your bait is obvious and beneath you."

"I'm not the one who can't identify a suspect and had my painting nicked beneath my nose."

"I thought you said I'd never take Love is Altitude Sickness because I had no taste?"

"It's cute," the hero said, "that you care so much about what I say and what I think."

The villain once again ended up scowling. The hero once again summoned a sunny, biting smile.

The detective pinched the bridge of their nose.

"You know what," they said. "I don't care anymore. I can't do this. Both of you out."

"WHAT?" Both hero and villain turned, outraged, to the detective. "But the painting?"

"But my sanity," the detective said, blandly. "Go on. Shoo."

"You need to undo my cuffs," the villain said.

"Oh, please," both hero and detective said, "you unpicked those at least five minutes ago."

Both hero and detective turned to look at each other, perturbed.

The villain considered, then shook their cuffs free, standing up.

"You can't shoo me," the villain said. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

"Unhelpful," the hero offered.

"A walking migraine," said the detective. "If you wanted to kill me, you could have already done so."

The villain pouted. "And if you wanted information, you could ahve got on your knees and asked nicely."

The hero scoffed. Barked an incredulous laugh.

"And you could try a pretty please some time too, hero," the villain said. I know you're good at it."

They sauntered out.

The hero whirled after them.

"I know that you're an utter ASS! You-"

The detective watched them go, bickering, and sat down on the chair head in their hands.

"Boss-" The door opened.

"Give me five minutes," the detective said. "It's fine. I'm fine. Everything is fine."

Five minutes later, on the dot, the door opened. A regrettable prediction.

The detective looked up.

The hero stood there, shoulders squared, a touch of pink on their cheeks.

"So," they said. "I know who took the painting."

"Uhuh," the detective said, dryly. "I don't want to know."

"It was just-"

"-I really don't want to know," the detective said. "Just stick to filling me in on the suspect on the way, okay?"

"Okay," the hero said.

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

you can think of this sort of like how water wicks into a paper towel. the water gets stuck to the paper because it's attracted to it via capillary forces, even though there's no chemical reaction going on.

the two main methods used are granular activated carbon (GAC) adsorption and ion exchange (IX).

activated carbon is already pretty familiar to a lot of us; it's the stuff in a lot of replaceable water filters. the activated carbon has a huge internal surface area, and that allows for the fairly weak intermolecular forces to add up and allow contaminants to get "stuck" onto the surface of the activated carbon. over time, the activated carbon gets filled with junk, and you have to replace it.

GAC is essentially this, except that the activated carbon is granularized and produced in specific ways to maximize how much it attracts certain chemicals. this can be tuned because activated carbon gets its massive surface area from internal "pores", and various processes will change how large and frequent those pores are.

It's essentially a Russian nesting doll of pores, and controlling the size of the larger pores influences the permeability of the activated carbon and controlling the size of the smaller pores (micropores) influences what exactly is most attracted to the activated carbon.

However, GAC has a few major downsides:

It is not specific to PFAS. This is more of a mixed blessing because it was already frequently used and well understood, and the infrastructure for producing and distributing it already existed. However,

It loses effectiveness over time and must be replaced. This is a continued cost, albeit a low one, but this has one final major issue

As time goes on, the PFAS previously adsorbed to the activated carbon is desorbed and replaced by other things that have a higher affinity for the activated carbon.

As such, ion exchange (IX) was always very compelling. The whole point of it relies on the fact that PFAS molecules are predominantly made of two parts: An acid head group (either a carboxylic or sulfonic acid group) and a perfluorinated tail.

The head groups on the right are what become ionized—or specifically, deprotonated. A hydrogen leaves and is replaced with a metal cation (usually sodium), forming a PFAS salt (chemical meaning of salt!). These are much more soluble in water because of polarity reasons, and so the mobile PFAS molecules are almost always in that salt form.

By passing through these PFAS salts through a permeable polymer matrix that has (1) numerous positively charged groups like quaternary amines and (2) highly mobile negative ions loosely attached to those stationary positive groups (most often chlorides), you can actually get the PFAS to be "stuck" inside the polymer matrix and what comes out is just good ol' sodium chloride, or salt (culinary meaning of salt!).

This shows a version with hydroxide (OH-) ions as the mobile anion, but it's the same idea. The +NR3 in yellow are stuck to the polymer matrix, but the OH- can freely move around. However, without another anion to replace the OH-, the ionic attraction prevents the hydroxides from leaving.

In comes the PFAS. Despite being slightly soluble in water, the anionic PFAS aren't really that mobile, and when they pass through, it's much easier for the hydroxide ions to leave. Another very important effect is that the long perfluorinated tail of the PFAS is attracted to the polymer matrix, whilst the counterions are ONLY attracted via the ionic force. Thus, PFAS would much rather hang out in the polymer matrix.

Of course, IX has its own downsides

These resins are much more expensive, both to manufacture and to transport.

While they can be "regenerated", it's a tricky process that currently requires the use of nearly anhydrous methanol, which is both poisonous and extremely flammable, increasing the operating costs.

As the hydrophobic tail is a key part of allowing the PFAS to stick to the matrix, short-chain PFAS are very poorly dealt with by this system. This is exacerbated by competition between different PFAS molecules, as long-chain ones will cause short-chain ones to desorb.

Overall, the best method appears to be using a series of ion exchange resins followed by an activated carbon filter. The ion exchange will capture the bulk of the PFAS molecules, and the activated carbon will grab any stragglers. Effective filtering of other contaminants prior to the PFAS removal system will also ensure minimal competition in the activated carbon.

Also a welcome reminder that just because a Big Problem doesn't seem practically solvable right now doesn't mean it won't become solvable in the future!

the peel is gonna somehow

spawn more banana

"In the middle of a "forcing party" where friends and I are forcing one another to do the things that we've been avoiding.

So far: [bullet list] A passport has been filed for; An inbox has been zero'd; A personal website has been created; & more.