seven heads and six hundred teeth

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

#my old phone looks like this on my shelf lmao #im too scared to touch it to throw it away #idk what trash this even goes into when its at this point

The pillow-shaped object here used to be the phone’s battery. It’s not a battery anymore. Now it’s a balloon full of corrosive, pyrophoric chemicals and hydrogen gas and it’s one puncture away from burning your house down. I am 100% serious. You should be scared to touch it.

But you gotta touch it, because you gotta get it out of your house before the pressure builds up to the point where the balloon pops. This isn’t going to happen soon – there is no need to panic – but it will happen eventually.

And, indeed, it doesn’t go in the ordinary trash. You put this in the ordinary trash and you’re gonna set the garbage truck on fire. Don’t do that to the garbage collectors, their job is hard enough already.

The first thing you need to do is get a fireproof container. The most common household item that qualifies as a fireproof container is a cast-iron cookpot with a cast-iron lid – often sold as a “Dutch oven.” Any other cooking container that’s unreactive, has a very high melting point, and has a lid made of the same materials will also work: enameled or stainless steel, Pyrex with glass lid, etc.

However: Do not use a pot with a PTFE-based non-stick coating. If the battery does explode, the fire will probably be hot enough to degrade a PTFE coating, producing toxic smoke. (Not that you should breathe the smoke from the battery fire either, but PTFE breakdown products are worse.) Do not use a pot made of aluminium or copper. The fire might even get hot enough to melt those.

Whatever container you use, you might have to throw away along with the phone, so don’t use your good Dutch oven for this. Go to a thrift store and buy a cheap one.

Once you have the fireproof container:

Gently pick up the phone and put it in the fireproof container. If possible, gently tape the phone to the bottom of the container to prevent it from bouncing around. Don’t put any padding in there, that’ll just make a fire worse if it does happen. Put the lid on and tape it shut.

Put a label on the container, something like “DEFECTIVE LI-ION BATTERY – FIRE HAZARD”.

It is now reasonably safe to move the container around. However, if the battery does explode, the container is very likely to leak smoke and get hot, so keep it in a well-ventilated area and away from things that will be damaged by heat. Don’t leave it exposed to the weather, either.

You need to find either a hazardous waste disposal site, or an e-waste recycler that will accept defective Li-ion batteries. I can’t help with that because I have no idea where you live.

However, your local fire department, if you have one, will probably be happy to help. Call their non-emergency number. Nothing is on fire yet, so this isn’t an emergency, but things that can easily start a fire are still within the fire department’s responsibilities. Tell them you have a phone with a bulging lithium-ion battery, you put it in a fireproof container, and you want to know how to dispose of it safely.

If the fire department tries to tell you this isn’t dangerous or it’s okay to throw it out in the regular trash (with or without fireproof container), hang up on them and write a cranky letter to your local government representatives, then keep looking for a proper disposal site.

i am deeply saddened by the loss of him to our community. i wish i had been able to know him better personally. i admired him a great deal. i am thankful he was here. i am glad we were both around on this earth for enough time to know each other. he made the world a richer and better place by having been here at all. i can't thank him enough.

suicide is an immensely personal and final choice. he was unhoused, disabled, and without options for a life that felt meaningfully survivable. it was his right to choose to end his life, he expressed this himself. as painful a choice as that choice is, i am glad he felt able to make it with an appreciation for life and a genuine belief in our ability to fight for a world where disabled trans people never have to make this decision out of desperation again. i am glad he went with a sense of peace and love for himself and the world.

His final words on his last post are: "Keep fighting comrades, and never lose your compassion for yourself and others."

i feel like its important to share some of ansel's posts from April and May, to provide context in his own words:

i'm sharing this because i myself am a disabled trans person. i have family support, but have also dealt with neglect, being blamed for being a "moocher," and struggling to access official resources and do things the "right way." i've feared how little the people in my life seem to understand how precarious everything feels for me being disabled and trans. how easily i could end up homeless and unemployable. every time i saw him posting about this i thought, that could be me.

please think about disabled trans people. please care about us. please fight for us.

happy pride, ansel.