polymers are cool

He/him plastics and more i like sustainability, biomaterials, and polymer science leftist

[headspace-hotel]

The closest experience I've ever had to discovering "the vitamin" was buying a 100% wool outfit and wearing it in the winter.

Not only was I not freezing anymore, I was not sweating and overheating either. The horrible sensory nightmare of winter clothes disappeared.

In particular, I bought a pair of wool pants. They were a thrifted pair of fancy dress pants like you would wear at an important office job, and they were easily the most comfortable pair of winter-appropriate pants i'd ever worn. I wore them Every Single Day.

From that point on I realized a lot of my clothes were making me feel bad, and the common thread was polyester. Especially polyester blends.

It's a trap because the polyester clothes are the ones that always feel sooooo silky soft when they are in the store, whereas cotton, linen and wool can feel comparatively rough and scratchy. But when actually wearing them for hours throughout the day, it's the natural fibers that feel more comfortable.

Maybe the secret to sensory comfort is not about the presence of softness, but the absence of overloading sensations. Or maybe the sensory stress and agony is not triggered by texture of the fabric, but by how it breathes and regulates temperature.

Then there's the problem of clothing life span: polyester blends, no matter how soft they seem at first, become rough and scratchy and covered in hard, itchy pills after wearing them 10 or 20 times, whether or not they have been tumble-dried or even washed at all. (I tested it!) Linen and cotton become softer and more comfy the more you wear them, polyester but ESPECIALLY polyester blends become a constant stressor. Polyester blend t-shirts I used to love for their softness now feel bristly and irritating.

So now I'm trying to change my wardrobe to as many natural fibers as possible, and the more natural fiber clothes i have the more I realize that the plastic fibers stress me out. It's so easy to overheat or freeze in them and they're always degrading and becoming less comfortable and it sucks.

[headspace-hotel]

A lot of wool items are scratchy but some of them are not. There's a whole spectrum of scratchiness and I haven't figured out what the commonality is. I bought one wool sweater that is 100% too scratchy to wear without an under-layer (and haven't worn it yet), and a different wool sweater that is soooo cozy and comfy and not scratchy at all.

Why is wool so unpopular? My professor was talking about how the school used to keep a herd of sheep for educational purposes but wound up selling them because the wool was so worthless they ended up using it to mulch greenhouse plants. Wool is a miracle. I love you wool thank you sheep

[headspace-hotel]

like sure I also hate polyester for the environmental impacts (its a huge part of microplastics) but isn't it infuriating that this environmentally harmful material we are using everywhere also just...sucks way worse than the natural alternatives

[polymerfan]

The reason polyester (PE) is used for so many things is because the ingredients to make it are waste products of crude oil cracking. In fact, there was so much of this waste product that polyethylene was seen as somewhat of a miracle when its creation was discovered. (Yes, it was an accident, haha) Polypropylene (PP) also comes from this process.

When oil comes out of the ground, it needs refining before it can be used for things like gasoline or natural gas. Below is a diagram showing the refinery of petroleum and what the byproducts are used for.

Due to the oil and gas industry, there is a LOT of this waste product. That is why PE and PP are so incredibly cheap- MUCH cheaper than more reusable, recyclable, and/or sustainable alternatives, like glass, metal, natural fibers, etc. You can make a LOT more money if you bottle your soda with PP or make clothes out of PE.

So, the best solution, imo, to minimising plastic pollution is not recycling, or making plastics illegal. It is RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES.

If we all powered our cars with electricity from wind, solar, or hydro, we would have less need for oil- therefore minimising the amount of product that can be turned into plastics. This would make plastics more expensive due to scarcity, and would (hopefully) encourage companies to return to using infinitely recyclable metal and glass. (By the way, PE is the number one made plastic in the WORLD. PP is second place.)

Sorry this is off topic but i wanted to chip in!

[polymerfan]

GUESS WHAT. Gas prices are rising, and so are the prices of crude oil byproducts! Even polyethylene, the cheapest shit ever.

[exxos-von-steamboldt]

[delicatefury]

I just googled this and… yes, it’s absolutely real.

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Thank God someone bothered to check.

[kiralamouse]

Since I hate having to do my own searches to verify stuff, here’s a Science Daily link and the journal article it cites for any similarly lazy-but-conscientious people after me. (And the University of Michigan press release, for what it’s worth.)

[polymerfan]

Oh….. my god …….

[hands-off-my-dinosaur]

log (😅) = 💧log 😄

[elbiotipo]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

[elbiotipo]

If you read ecology books printed in the 70s and 80s, they were absolutely convinced that whales and tigers would not survive the century. There's a whole plot in Star Trek about how whales are extinct actually. Here in Argentina, we were sure that yaguaretés would have gone extinct. It was thought that rainforests would be forever lost, because there was no way that such complex ecosystems would be restored.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

Millions of people are working on this. You can learn about it, perhaps even become one of them. Or be a pointless doomer in my ask box. Your choice.

[crabussy]

if there are people who care, it's never a lost cause. at one point, kākāpō, a nocturnal flightless parrot species from aotearoa, were thought to be entirely extinct for decades. until 1977, where booming calls from males were heard on the small island of whenua hou. now, thanks to people who care so much they dedicated their lives to caring, kākāpō numbers are close to 300. despite the setbacks. despite the small gene pool causing infertility and health problems. people cared so fucking much that they survived. this is one of COUNTLESS, countless similar stories. I'm studying ecology so that I can go into conservation and all around me, every day, I see people who care enough to put years of their lives into learning about and solving environmental problems. I don't know man. hope isn't just some nebulous thing. it's tangible if you do something with it.

[duamuteffe]

Right into the 90's they were telling us that all tigers would be extinct in the wild by the year 2000. This was presented as a fact by legitimate scientific outlets. And people stood up and said no, not on my watch, amd there are still tigers in the wild. There was a hole in the ozone layer that got bigger every year until the world banned cfcs and it began to shrink. DDT brought bald eagles and a lot of other birds to the brink of extinction, and now they're back.

Nonny, there's a quote about cynics by Lois McMasters Bujold that you need to hear:

"Now, there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace."

[auroras-void]

Not to mention, even if there is a nuclear war, is that not just when ecological restoration will be among pur greatest needs?

The collapse of the state does not mean complete annihilation for us all as much as the state would like you to believe that. There will be survivors, more than you think, a lot more. There will be areas free of fallout. The nuclear winter will pass.

The apocalypse would not be a time about the toughest and the most violent like it is in the movies (as much as the state wants you to believe it would be), any more than any other natural disaster is. Even in war zones, refugees stick together.

Those cursed to live through such times, will find themselves needing more than ever, to restore the environment, as a matter of more immediate life and death. An environment shaped by human hands to be able to recover from nuclear war, is an environment that can help feed people, that can accelerate the recovery of the planet from our mistakes, that can weather radiation and provide shelter.

Even Chernobyl is not a wasteland, you can visit, very safely in fact, and see an environment that recovered and is recovering, faster than we expected it to. Imagine what it would be like with active effort assisting it.

Nuclear war would be a setback, of unimaginable proportions, it would cause great senseless suffering. But a strong, diverse environment going in, is one that is more capable of weathering great storms and mass extinctions, and a humanity that cares is a humanity that survives and rebuilds.

Even in the worst case scenarios, which we do *not* know will happen,which we can *not* say will "definitely happen", do not mean that we need to stop trying, now or ever.

[sub-at-omicsteminist]

[polymerfan]

Oh dear

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[polymerfan]

Polymer mentioned ✅

[horreurscopes]

it's insane how normalized 3d printing is i don't think people born post 2005 can comprehend how fantastical "appearing things with machines" was as an idea. kind of like cryogenics or VR indistinguishable from being somewhere. like i remember learning about 3d printing about 10 years ago and feeling like it was a little bit sci fi teletransportation magic like it was truly a mind=blown technological moment and now it's just like. do you want to buy this figurine of dawyne the rock johnson as pikachu on etsy

[thememedaddy]

[zeraparker]

Stop talking to your fucking chatbot

[crippled-peeper]

“Imagine passionately defending plastic straws” imagine getting mad because someone’s meemaw or child can drink liquids without also wearing them all over their body and clothes and the floor. shut the fuck up you hypersensitive ableist crybaby

[polymerfan]

Most medical devices cannot be made from recycled plastics because of the incredibly high standards of quality that are set for medical-use plastics.

Every time plastic goes through the recycling process (getting melted down and re-formed into something new), the quality of the plastic goes down. So, usually, you have to add in “virgin” plastic to any recycled material to keep the quality high enough for whatever application.

But, medical devices need to be REALLY high quality. If you have a bad-quality coke bottle, worst case scenario, you may spill coke on yourself. If you use low-quality plastics for medical purposes, people can LITERALLY die.

So, recycled plastics are not generally used in medical devices.

Note: Using the best material for a medical device, even if it is potentially damaging to the environment, is ALWAYS the morally correct thing to do. Plastics are honestly miracle-materials, and they have made so many lives SO much better. They’ve helped disabled people have more accommodations and better quality medical devices, therefore giving them a better quality of life.

Plastics are heavily abused by corporations looking to maximize profits, but if we just used them responsibly, we could have all of the good and none of the bad.

[cripinpain]

hello physically disabled person reading this. it is not your fault that your medical supplies are made from a lot of single use plastic and you can continue using them guilt free. your health comes first. thank you for existing.

[crippled-peeper]

if your insulin pump has lithium batteries and the tubing is plastic,

if your ostomy bags, incontinence supplies, and sanitary wipes are single-use,

if your joint replacement, bone plate, pins & screws, or spinal hardware is cobalt & chrome,

if your meds come in a plastic container you can’t recycle or reuse for sterility,

you are still innocent. you didn’t choose this particular life. we all must do what we can to survive and that includes using technology and consuming resources. it is only human and we all do it.

some people out there own several yachts and don’t ever consider the impact it has on the world. there’s nothing to be gained by beating yourself up for doing the bare minimum for a comfortable, livable, safe & long life.

[weirdstrangeandawful]

Just want to add, don’t cut corners. Don’t risk your life when there are people who could do a lot more without risking theirs.

Don’t reuse the syringe. Don’t use cloths over alcohol swabs. Choose the battery powered device over the rechargeable if it means you can carry spares. Don’t use the reusable container if you can’t get it open. Don’t choose the reusable option if you can’t keep it clean. Don’t overfill the sharps container. Don’t improvise the tourniquet. Don’t eat the expired food if you can’t afford to be sick. Don’t choose the sustainable option if it doesn’t meet your needs.

Your life is not others’ priority so it has to be yours.

[cephalopodvictorious]

Hi I work in sustainability, specifically with regards to rules and regulations around waste disposal and recycling and the #1 rule is that your health and safety as a human person comes first

There’s a lot said in the news and in activist circles about your personal carbon footprint but BP came up with that to deflect responsibility for their various and horrifying behaviors and to make us turn on each other. You know what’s more dangerous to marine life than straws? Literal tons and tons of commercial fishing nets abandoned in the ocean, and the microplastics and forever chemicals dumped by corporate manufacturers and oil companies

YOU the person, the individual, have to live, and whatever that takes? That’s good. That’s a good thing, because it means we get you in the world. Use your medical equipment, your medications, your AC, whatever you need

You physically cannot do the damage of a fleet of oil tankers or a fracking company, even a thousand or a hundred thousand disabled people cannot do the damage of someone with a personal jet

You aren’t doing anything wrong, something much bigger than you is trying to trick you into hating yourself so that you don’t hate them

Please don’t fall for it. We need you.

[alyx-still]

You physically cannot do the damage of a fleet of oil tankers or a fracking company, even a thousand or a hundred thousand disabled people cannot do the damage of someone with a personal jet

👏

[polymerfan]

Honestly, even if an individual person DID make a difference in their use of single-use plastics, people would STILL need single-use plastics for medical purposes! And that is NOT a bad thing! Plastics are genuinely AMAZING materials. They SHOULD be used for the betterment of humanity.

Yes, plastics are being abused to make coke bottles and vapes and fast fashion. But there are SO many LIFE SAVING medical devices that simply CANNOT be made without plastics. Or, it is much more dangerous to use other materials.

Using plastic for medical purposes is not just morally neutral- it is a GOOD THING.

Using plastic to accommodate a disabled person is a GOOD THING.

[cripinpain]

hello physically disabled person reading this. it is not your fault that your medical supplies are made from a lot of single use plastic and you can continue using them guilt free. your health comes first. thank you for existing.

[beemovieerotica]

every time I see some bigshot scientist revealed as a fraud my knee-jerk reaction is "hell yeah elisabeth bik got 'em good" AND IM RIGHT

PubPeer enables scientists to search for their publications or their peers publications and provide feedback and/or start a conversation ano

SHE NEVER QUITS!!!!

ICONIC!!!!

[beemovieerotica]

> Elisabeth Bik is on patreon <

She is not directly paid for her work to vet papers, she has been hit with legal action & death threats by scientists who hate that she's exposing them and their financial fraud, and she keeps at it every single day, combing through thousands of papers to make science more fair. Please consider supporting her!

[chiknluvr]

actually beautiful

About

Elisabeth Bik is a renowned microbiologist and science integrity advocate known for detecting image duplication in scientific publications.

[headspace-hotel]

The closest experience I've ever had to discovering "the vitamin" was buying a 100% wool outfit and wearing it in the winter.

Not only was I not freezing anymore, I was not sweating and overheating either. The horrible sensory nightmare of winter clothes disappeared.

In particular, I bought a pair of wool pants. They were a thrifted pair of fancy dress pants like you would wear at an important office job, and they were easily the most comfortable pair of winter-appropriate pants i'd ever worn. I wore them Every Single Day.

From that point on I realized a lot of my clothes were making me feel bad, and the common thread was polyester. Especially polyester blends.

It's a trap because the polyester clothes are the ones that always feel sooooo silky soft when they are in the store, whereas cotton, linen and wool can feel comparatively rough and scratchy. But when actually wearing them for hours throughout the day, it's the natural fibers that feel more comfortable.

Maybe the secret to sensory comfort is not about the presence of softness, but the absence of overloading sensations. Or maybe the sensory stress and agony is not triggered by texture of the fabric, but by how it breathes and regulates temperature.

Then there's the problem of clothing life span: polyester blends, no matter how soft they seem at first, become rough and scratchy and covered in hard, itchy pills after wearing them 10 or 20 times, whether or not they have been tumble-dried or even washed at all. (I tested it!) Linen and cotton become softer and more comfy the more you wear them, polyester but ESPECIALLY polyester blends become a constant stressor. Polyester blend t-shirts I used to love for their softness now feel bristly and irritating.

So now I'm trying to change my wardrobe to as many natural fibers as possible, and the more natural fiber clothes i have the more I realize that the plastic fibers stress me out. It's so easy to overheat or freeze in them and they're always degrading and becoming less comfortable and it sucks.

[headspace-hotel]

A lot of wool items are scratchy but some of them are not. There's a whole spectrum of scratchiness and I haven't figured out what the commonality is. I bought one wool sweater that is 100% too scratchy to wear without an under-layer (and haven't worn it yet), and a different wool sweater that is soooo cozy and comfy and not scratchy at all.

Why is wool so unpopular? My professor was talking about how the school used to keep a herd of sheep for educational purposes but wound up selling them because the wool was so worthless they ended up using it to mulch greenhouse plants. Wool is a miracle. I love you wool thank you sheep

[headspace-hotel]

like sure I also hate polyester for the environmental impacts (its a huge part of microplastics) but isn't it infuriating that this environmentally harmful material we are using everywhere also just...sucks way worse than the natural alternatives

[polymerfan]

The reason polyester (PE) is used for so many things is because the ingredients to make it are waste products of crude oil cracking. In fact, there was so much of this waste product that polyethylene was seen as somewhat of a miracle when its creation was discovered. (Yes, it was an accident, haha) Polypropylene (PP) also comes from this process.

When oil comes out of the ground, it needs refining before it can be used for things like gasoline or natural gas. Below is a diagram showing the refinery of petroleum and what the byproducts are used for.

Due to the oil and gas industry, there is a LOT of this waste product. That is why PE and PP are so incredibly cheap- MUCH cheaper than more reusable, recyclable, and/or sustainable alternatives, like glass, metal, natural fibers, etc. You can make a LOT more money if you bottle your soda with PP or make clothes out of PE.

So, the best solution, imo, to minimising plastic pollution is not recycling, or making plastics illegal. It is RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES.

If we all powered our cars with electricity from wind, solar, or hydro, we would have less need for oil- therefore minimising the amount of product that can be turned into plastics. This would make plastics more expensive due to scarcity, and would (hopefully) encourage companies to return to using infinitely recyclable metal and glass. (By the way, PE is the number one made plastic in the WORLD. PP is second place.)

Sorry this is off topic but i wanted to chip in!

[polymerfan]

@bisexual-engineer-guy this is the meme lmao

[mindblowingscience]

Common catalyst works by cycling between two different forms, upending a long-held supposition

The process of catalysis—in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction—is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our

The process of catalysis—in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction—is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work. A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds. Previously, it had been thought that only one of the two forms was needed. The new findings are published today in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT graduate students Deiaa Harraz and Kunal Lodaya, Bryan Tang, Ph.D., and MIT professor of chemistry and chemical engineering Yogesh Surendranath.

Continue Reading.

[vampirecatprince]

They're recalling every single cybertruck.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T FUCKING GLUE SHIT TO A CAR.

Or, okay, look, I work in manufacturing. You would be shocked to find out how much shit you can glue to other shit. And so there is probably a glue out there that could actually be used to glue parts of a car to other parts of a car and do just fine. Adhesives are fucking wild.

But.

BUT.

THAT AIN'T THE ONE THEY USED. THEY USED A GLUE KNOWN TO GO BRITTLE. WITH ABSOLUTELY STUPID TEMPERATURE REQUIREMENTS TO KEEP IT FROM GOING BRITTLE ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.

According to Tesla's website, the glue can withstand up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Which SOUNDS like it's fine, but it's glue under stainless steel, which can easily get to nearly 200 degrees if it's only 90 degrees out. Also, the heat limit should be listed as a range, not a flat number. Odds are, it CAN get up to 212, but it's the upper limit. It'd be much more truthful (and safter) to list it as, say 200-212, which gives a margin to work with. But if they did that, people might actually look up how hot stainless steel can get in direct sunlight.

My point is, the glue goes full brittle at 212, but also, it's going to take a hit to its overall integrity before that. Which is why shit's falling off these damn things. Because it's made as stupidly as possible to try and prove all the safety regs we have for cars are stupid.

And now they're all getting pulled off the road. Because they aren't road safe. Because shit keeps falling off of them.

[iamnmbr3]

the exploding Nazi cars are literal death traps. There is no reason to drive one other than being deeply dedicated to funding fascism

[polymerfan]

pro FUCK teslas oh my god, theres so so many adhesives they could have used that would be safe. theyre fucking idiots 😭