Loopine Metalworks

My roommate has a queen size Nectar mattress. Friday night, she spilled some water on the bed and took the cover off to air dry. She unzipped the cover, and a flame retardant sleeve (that we hadn’t known was there to begin with) made of woven fiberglass began shedding small fiberglass particles. They were airborne. The whole room and everything in it is contaminated, and there are few surfaces elsewhere in the apartment that don’t have at least a little. Nowhere on the mattress’ tags or on the Nectar website does it say there is a fiberglass sleeve. In fact, it makes a big deal of how there are five components: top of cover, three layers of foam, bottom of cover. Nothing about the flame retardant sleeve there. The label on the cover doesn’t say you can’t take it off, just that they suggest you don’t. It does not mention fiberglass as a material found in the mattress at all. The website even has a page explaining that you CAN take off the cover and wash it, if you must, just that they suggest you don’t. No real reasons given. No mention of fiberglass.

Our apartment is sparkly with fiberglass. We have had to drop money on a HEPA filter vacuum that could safely remove some of it, and on new non-permeable mattress covers to contain the worst of the source. We have had to garbage-bag up almost everything in her room. No amount of runs through the laundry seems to get it all out of clothes, and we have to thoroughly wipe out the washer and dryer drums every load. All her pillows were ruined, the chair in her room, her clothing, some expensive bras, a nice area rug, and I’m sure there will be trouble on the horizon with our landlord regarding the carpet, even if we do vacuum it as well as we can.

Lilly has been having nosebleeds, before the mattress was unzipped, but the worst one I’ve seen yet was the one that evening. She’s been sleeping on it almost a year, and it could have begun coming through the fabric cover. Nosebleeds are a sign of fiberglass inhalation.

We have contacted the company, and their response was honestly insulting. We were told that we shouldn’t have taken the mattress cover off to begin with, and that it can no longer be covered by the 365 night guarantee, despite us having had it for under the full year. I have just now, after three days trying, finally spoken to someone willing to look into our case, so here’s hoping we’ll get even a fraction of what we are, frankly, owed.

It really feels like there could be some sort of lawsuit here.

In fact, there is one, with a situation nearly identical to ours but with a different company. This was the first hit when I searched our problem online.

https://topclassactions.com/…/zinus-class-action-says…/

Anyway, if you have a Nectar mattress, don’t ever open the easily accessible warning-label-free zipper! If you have had it under a year, and it’s in its original condition, it can still be returned. If you were planning to get one, maybe don’t! A lot of the foam-mattress-in-a box types have the fiberglass, though most of them disclose the presence of the fiberglass rather than hiding it like a dirty secret. Make sure you do a search for mattresses WITHOUT fiberglass as a flame retardant.

My partner had changed the sheets, and then later while outside we saw that he was covered in shiny fiberglass (like the video above). I remembered this post and immediately knew we had to check the mattress. Sure enough there were glittery fibers EVERYWHERE in the bedroom, all over the floor, sheets & laundry, etc.

We are still trying to figure out just how bad the damage is & how much we need to throw away vs. what can maybe be salvaged.

Again, we NEVER removed the cover. And there is no evidence of the cover having been damaged anywhere.

It just was 3-4 years of regular use and then suddenly, one day while changing the sheets, there was glass everywhere. It’s probably been leaking into our laundry, and likely our bodies, for who knows how long.

Lots of people saying these mattresses are safe as long as you don’t remove the cover - it’s NOT true. Maybe it’s fine for a year or two, but at some point the fibers break down and start to come out THROUGH the cover.

Or

Thanks! Here you go 🥰

Some other additions:

Inspired by @unicorn-in-the-library:

And because @surfs-up-roxy wanted an ace one:

I didn't want to make the message ace-specific because I wanted to make a point of how all of the above include aspec people, but I tried to use an ace colour palette for the background :) I also think the message applies especially (even if not exclusively) to the ace community!

I played around with the concept a bit, I hope you like it anyway!

I feel like this also needs to be said:

we need to acknowledge this because pretending love isn't work will never make people like me feel less guilty for accepting love. we need to talk about it so people don't feel bad for having boundaries and not always being up to do the work. we need to accept it so we can properly appreciate what others do for us and what we're doing for them.

Indigenous People Have Reclaimed the National Bison Range

After 113 years of fighting the U.S. government and systemic racism, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are once again managing 18,800 acres of wildlands, and its resident bison herd.

In December, a bipartisan bill that would transfer the lands and management of the National Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes looked as if it might die in Congress with the end of the session.

Instead, it was attached to a must-pass package of COVID-19 relief and government spending bills, and, unexpectedly, it passed. After a century of work, it felt sudden, said Morigeau, a tribal member and attorney for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and a Montana state legislator. “It happened so fast, it just really hasn’t sunk in.”

Finally, after 113 years, the 18,800 acres of grassland, woodland, and wildlife that comprise the National Bison Range, along with its resident bison herd, will be returned to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Today, the transfer has broad support from the community, conservation groups and politicians alike. But the long journey included three rounds of failed agreements between the U.S. and the tribe, numerous lawsuits, a federal investigation, and a massive public education campaign to quash racist rumors and stereotypes.

It comes at a time of a broader conversation on the return of land stewardship to tribal nations, with an Indigenous woman—Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo)—poised to oversee public-lands management as Interior secretary for the first time in history…

Americans:

The thing is, I don’t know why I feel like a man.  I was teased and bullied for it a lot when I was little.  I’ve never had stereotypically American male interests.  I never cared about sports or cars or guns.  I was more interested in music and cooking and the arts.  I’ve always been emotionally in tune and sensitive, even when I did my best to suppress my emotions to survive a childhood of abuse from other children.

It’s not physical either.  I don’t feel like a man because I have a penis or a beard.  If you put my brain in a robot body or any other body, my essence would still feel male (I assume).  I literally can’t imagine what being any other gender would feel like, since I feel so acutely male.

I think that’s why the concept of being transgender always made sense to me.  I’m a man.  I don’t have any bloody clue why I feel like a man, but I don’t feel that it’s tied to my body or my interests or the way that I’ve been treated.  I feel like a man because of something beyond that.  Something ephemeral.  So, why couldn’t others feel the same?  Why couldn’t a person who’s been misidentified as a girl feel like a boy for the exact same nebulous reasons that I do?

And, since gender really doesn’t make any sense to me anyway, why couldn’t there also be people who feel as if they don’t have one?  Or who flow across genders like a ship on a map?

Are there people out there whose sense of their own gender is inseparable from their physical form?  If you put those people into robot bodies or, simply, other physically different bodies, would their gender identity also swap?  If so, why?  Are they actually more lost in their gender identity than I am and they need to hone in on the physical in order to anchor themselves?

And I replied, “well, I could ask you the same thing.” And I moved on, continued, tried to explain why I feel the way that I do, but I don’t think he heard any of those things that I said afterward. 

Because six days later, we talked about it again, and this is what he told me: 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said last week. Because all my life I identified it as ‘these are the parts that I have, and so I am a man’. But you’re living proof that gender is not limited to what is attached to your body, so I asked myself, why am I a man? And all I can say is ‘because I have no idea what it feels like to be anything else’. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a woman. Or neither, or both, or any other gender. I have always been a man.”

And I replied, “that’s exactly what it feels like for me.”

This is so shocking to me, as this might be one of the biggest events in human history.

I wanted to share my photos from my trip to Poland, where there used to live the biggest Jewish community, a community that today is nonexistent.

The 'grave' of the famous teacher Janusz Korczak, who said he prefers to die with his orphanage children when given a chance to escape the death camp:

A famous synagogue, that is now a museum due to lack of Jewish people that can operate it:

Auschwitz, 2014, after the nazis made sure to hide the existence of the death camp back when they left it:

Real suitcases of Jewish people who got to Auschwitz, most of them probably died in a gas chamber moments after they gave away their belongings:

(At this point we were asked to not take any pictures, so I can't show you the hair art the nazis made out of Jewish hair)

As part of a ceremony we did, we created a small monument with peace and remembrance in our minds. Mine is a growing tree with roots, to show how we grow using our history as guidance:

Today we have names of 3 million Jews who died in the holocaust, documented by friends and families. The other 3 million are unknown, because there was no one to remember them- their entire family and friends circle died with them.

I have my own family story, and my own grandfather is a holocaust survivor. It's hard to find Jewish people who don't have a holocaust story to tell because every single Jewish person has some connection to a descendant of a holocaust survivor, or is himself a descendant of a holocaust survivor.

There are 6 million Jewish people living in Israel today. Around 75 years after the holocaust. You do the math.

Please, remember this event. Please, don't downplay it. This is not another illuminati conspiracy. This is history, it has evidence, and if we don't learn from it we will get there again in no time.