why are you buying clothes at the soup store

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Gilbert baker rainbow, huge intersex circle, the design is cluttered but in a good way 10/10

1) Figured this out.

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

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!

Link to the pdf of the tool kit

listen. 67 is not 69. it's not 420, or 21, or 42.

it's E.

you remember this shit?