No Stupid Questions

Teflon. Goddamned Teflon. Did your podcast mention Dr. Kenneth Berry? (No, not the nutrition quack. The other one.)

Dr. Roy J. Plunkett gets all the credit for the discovery of Teflon and it's true that his name appears on the patent for the process for creating the actual material. As it was the dry powered precipitate wasn't terribly useful as a consumer product and mostly only saw use being pressed into solid forms for making highly corrosion resistant gaskets and seals for e.g. nuclear equipment.

Dr. Kenneth Berry's picture is not hanging in the hallways in DuPont's offices. His name appears on no plaque. He's not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Teflon. When it comes to DuPont's puff pieces and their official history, you'll notice that in the gap between the accidental discovery of that weird slippery white powder and its advent as a consumer product there is inevitably some dismissive handwaving and use of the passive voice. Oh, "it was discovered that..." and "DuPont engineers determined that..."

They don't mention that Dr. Kenneth Berry was the inventor of the solution form of Teflon. He figured out how to dissolve and suspend it in liquid, and by extension how to actually apply it to surfaces in a useful manner. He did not invent the pan, but he was instrumental in figuring out how it could be done. And it was Dr. Berry who ate the first fried egg cooked on a Teflon surface — not Marc Grégoire. It's quite clear. Dr. Berry's patent was applied for and granted in 1951. Grégoire's, 1954.

DuPont doesn't mention this because Dr. Berry also knew damn well what nasty chemicals DuPont was using to produce Teflon, and to some degree he knew where and how they were dumping them. He documented all of this he could, stored it in a bank deposit box, and wrote it into his will that these documents were to be released to the public when he died in 2008. In retaliation for this, DuPont memory holed him. He is persona non grata there, even in death.

I know this because he told me so. Dr. Berry lived in the town I grew up in. It's not in whole thanks to him that we know the full story of the deeply evil things DuPont has done, but it is certainly in part. I was knee high to a grasshopper at the time so the significance of this was surely lost on me. I know, however, why my mother was so insistent that we never owned any Teflon pans.

Dr. Kenneth Berry: Lived, invented, developed a conscience, once shot my stuck kite out of a tree with his shotgun, tattled on DuPont, died.

• the money men who finance fascism
• the media men who sell fascism
• the racists who vote fascism
• politicians who take bribes

Turn your aggression toward building up alternative systems that allow us to reduce and eventually eliminate our need to rely on capitalist systems dominated by sociopaths. That could be taking part in a mutual aid group, creating a free food fridge in food deserts, or learning how to grow your own produce along with your friends and neighbors.

For more info on exactly how to do that stuff, look here: https://slrpnk.net/post/34794436/21025333

Yes we need to direct our anger to the wealthy elites that do anything for a profit regardless of what it does to the planet or the people living here. Problem is they own the media that controls the masses, and they've got a good chunk of people convinced it's actually the poor and powerless that are the cause of the worlds problems. They sit like dragons on their piles of gold. We should eat the rich.

I remember learning about DuPont, goodness, more than a decade ago?

Im anti consumerous. I dont buy platics that are easily avoidable, I cook with steel, wood, and cast iron, my tupperware is all glass. I buy spices/beans/graims in bulk at the co-op. I havnt used amazon in years, walmart I avoid like the plauge. By this I mean, avoiding plastics basically. I try and feed myself and my family homecooked meals from scratch always. My Kid (anyone for that matter) gets second hand or locally sourced gifts. I do with less, I am poor. I practice gardening though im not very good.

Most of these giant chemical companies are evil. they polluted the mississippi river, we had acid rain in the 80's and regulation fixed it. They are now undoing the regulations.

I been mad for decades. I get so mad when the general populace continues to use these products from companies who dont give a fuck about their emoloyees nor their consumers. Money wins, profits over all and its disgusting.

years ago I went to a dinner party. A southern girl was dating my friend. A lovely person, but, if we set aside the meal she prepared had not a single veggie, her teflon pans were all peeling. like, if you made something in the pan, it looked like you added cracked pepper but didnt. Horrible. We were both pregnant. I used being pregnant (nausea) as an excuse not to eat as everyone else did.

Couple years ago the guy my husband paid to mow our lawn showed up with roundup. started spraying right by my broccoli. I said not to spray, they didnt ask, and fired them. Took over the lawncare from my husband. I let my grass grow longer than anyone elses in my neighborhood. I plant native plants, and leave the leaves for the bugs.

I changed many many habits while learning about all this. Keep learning, change your buying habits, dont give the fat bastards* your money, and try to educate folks when appropriate.

*edited the word choice here

Marketing. It rapes all cultures and destroys politics and democracy, as well as spirituality and religions.

It's probably one of the foundational causes of everything fucked up in the world. Psychological manipulation that bleeds soul and innocents from genuine human beings. It's what creates the false gods and false idols and takes people off the path the universe meant for them until they are wandering lost.

It makes the elites. It's what helps feed their greed.

The other enemy is the willingness and stupidity of regular people that blindly buy into this culture of manipulation and passive slave ownership.

Politicians. Always politicians. They are the ones who are supposed to protect us from companies like that. DuPont, Nestle and the others can only exist because your government lets them.

The ruling class

Its always capitalism. With collective ownership of production and the removal of the profit motive, almost none of these problems would exist. From politicians, to over policing, to marketing, to the poison in our food. It is all in the name of capitalism and forever increasing profit. They built a system that requires infinity in a very finite world. Capitalism will kill every thing on the planet unless it is abolished.

Is this a question? Or are you just venting?

Pick your battles and go to town. You can’t fight them all, but you can fight for what you feel is most important.

I’m my home town as a child we took a field trip to the DuPont wetlands. Wetlands near the DuPont plant.

I hadn’t thought about that field trip until just now.

We made plaster casts of animal footprints and brought them home to our parents.

The thing is we didn’t go out looking for animal footprints. They had rubber molds ready for us to use.

Didn’t think much of it at the time but as an adult I’m sitting here thinking “holy shit DuPont is using children to make it seem like there still plenty of animals near the DuPont plant.

I turned my attention to the aggression and the aggression went away.

It's impossible to stay angry at anything for longer than a few seconds unless you keep feeding that anger with the stories you're telling yourself. You don't have to keep telling those stories - unless you want to stay angry, of course.

Remember that smart decision you made while angry? Yeah, me neither.

~~Eat~~ Compost the rich.

Oligarchism is just 1 face of concentration-of-wealth-archy: monarchism, communist-party-archism are other variants of it.

The REAL enemy is our unconscious-nature, our unconscious ego-addiction-to-ignorance-preventing-accountability-or-responsibility-while-assuming-inherent-authority-and-inherent-validity.

ALL prejudices are rooted in that, not just class-prejudices.

Until human-nature is force-changed, as it is going to be by the end of this century ( The Great Filter ), we're going to keep enforcing DarkTriad's rule for OUR supremacy, no matter what kind of "us" it is that we are identifying-as, gender, race, class, age, culture, ANYthing!

Nothing can change that.

It's simply our world-species equivalent-to-puberty.

EITHER some subset of humankind force-grows-up COMPLETELY, this-century, XOR.. whole-species DarwinAward.

Ever seen an addict fighting for their own life against their own unconscious-mind's addiction-to-obliteration-and-nonresponsibility?

We're looking at planet-wide equivalent, now.

_ /\ _

Soon you'll be tearing up your carpets like Mark Ruffalo.