10 ms·

Since I watched the movie “Dark Waters”, I’m trying to avoid those PFO(A|E) as much as I can. Threw all non-stick pans away and learnt how to cook with just ca

Since I watched the movie “Dark Waters”, I’m trying to avoid those PFO(A|E) as much as I can. Threw all non-stick pans away and learnt how to cook with just cast iron or inox pans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Waters_(2019_film)

blindriver 4y ago
I ditched them a while ago as well. I only use cast iron or stainless steel and it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with non-stick before.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Because in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Nutritionists declared all fat bad. We now know that to not be the case. Your stainless steel, high carbon steel, and cast iron pans require using a small amount of oil/butter to have nonstick cooking properties.
  - alostpuppy 4y ago
    I have trouble with stainless. What’s the trick? Do you use cast iron for skillets and stainless for slice pans?
    - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
      The trick is get the pan hot (not smoking hot, you’ve preheated too much), then put 1-2tbsp butter or cooking oil in the pan and spread it around. It should sizzle a bit and then mostly disappear, leaving behind a nonstick coating.
    - devadvance 4y ago
      For stainless, I've found it to be a combination of making sure there's enough heat before adding food, being OK with using a bit more fat (e.g., oil, butter) than I initially expect, using the right utensil while cooking, and deglazing as necessary.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      I use stainless for acidic foods (e.g. tomato sauces) and frying eggs. I use cast iron for pancakes, meats, and other items that benefit from the pan not being a perfectly flat texture or heat retention. If I had to have a single pan, I’d probably go high carbon steel.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    They weren’t completely wrong about fats, we just know there’s a difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats now. Don’t throw the baby out. Canola oil looks like a superfood when you swap butter for it in the literature.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > They weren’t completely wrong about fats, we just know there’s a difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats now. We knew that in the early 2000s, too. And in the early 1990s, which is more when when the war on fats was actually happening; by the early ’00s, the diet trend had focused on low-carb diets, reversing the war on fats.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - hombre_fatal 4y ago
        Good point. You can find research that links saturated fat to increased blood cholesterol back in the 1950s. Perhaps it's only a reminder how much the zeitgeist may be divorced from science, or how little impact the latter actually has on the former unless it's convenient. Though that's for another discussion.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Because in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Non-stick was popular well before the early 2000s, its popularity is not due to any “war on natural fats” that occurred at that time. (And the early ’00s is late for that, anyway.) Non-stick is (and has been for a long time) most popular for particular forms of cooking that use natural fats, whereas particular steel designs (sometimes referred to as “waterless” because of their properties in other applications) were specifically promoted (including in the early 2000s, though they were around before and remain on the market now) as eliminating the need to use fats as one would with conventional and non-stick cookware.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Nutritionists declared all fat bad. We now know that to not be the case. Saturated fats were and remain to be generally thought unhealthy (if we say things like 'all' or 'always', we're almost certainly spreading misinformation; the world doesn't work that way). Other fats (polyunsaturates and monounsaturates) are believed to be healthy or neutral. There is ongoing uncertainty and debate; the degrees and nuances change; we don't get sure, hyperbolic answers. https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/saturated-fats https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/well/fda-healthy-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/well/fda-healthy-food.htm... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.h... I'm not a grammar and spelling critic, but I'm going to be a style critic here (sorry to the parent; lots of people write this way): Hyperbole commonly leads to misinformation. 'War', 'all fat', 'nutritionists declared', 'bad' etc. divert us to an emotional, adversarial contest with a strawperson enemy, rather than into the pursuit of truth, whose object is always nuanced and whose pursuit is difficult enough as it is.
    - topaz0 4y ago
      "A war on all fats" is a pretty good summary of a lot of popular nutritional messaging in the '90s though. Low fat or fat free was a big selling point on lots of food packaging, even when it didn't make sense. Magazine articles about how you could cut just a bit more fat out of this or that recipe. I'm 100% in agreement that the reality is more nuanced, including that dietary fats, some more than others, can be harmful to health when consumed in excess. In other words, that it's not just the other extreme from that 90s consensus. I think the GP would agree too (the only hyperbole in their post was a statement attributed to nutritionists of the time). But the war on fat was real, and had a big presence in the culture.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        > "A war on all fats" is a pretty good summary No, it's pushing hyperbole. It tells the world your emotional position - you think it was a war. Let's try something more factual, that reveals the underlying issues - if we know the facts. Low fat and fat free is still a big selling point. Look at the NYT article on the FDA's plans, for example.
  - blindriver 4y ago
    You hit the nail on the head. Yes, now that you bring it up, it was this low-fat disinformation that caused all these unintended consequences.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Scotch pancakes. Scotch pancakes is still the one thing I can't cook without non-stick. If anybody has any tips that doesn't include half a kilo of lard, then I am very interested.
  - gregwebs 4y ago
    I use a lot of ghee for pancakes. And then you don't need to put butter on them before eating.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I'd never heard of scotch pancakes, but they look like what we make in north america. I use a cast iron griddle and the swipe of a lightly oiled rag. The trick is to get the griddle to exactly the right temperature before making your pancakes, using drops of batter to make "test pancakes." The drop should be big enough to get a few bubbles; when the bubbles stop closing in on themselves, the bottom should be a perfect golden brown. It can take several minutes of fidgeting before you dial it in, but if you're cooking with cast iron, that's the whole lesson: over-temperature burns and sticks, under-temperature sticks and burns.
- plasticeagle 4y ago
  Cast iron, stainless steel AND carbon steel. A carbon steel wok is my favourite cooking implement of all. Non-stick is not for people who know how to cook.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > I only use cast iron or stainless steel and it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with non-stick before. Because they are incredibly useful when it comes to certain kinds of food, especially eggs and fish. I find all the "self-congratulatory" posts on the topic of non-stick pans, and demonization of people that use them, of the "thou doth protest too much" quality. Tons of renowned chefs, like Jacques Pepin, have spoken of the benefits of non-stick. There are ways to get closer to the quality of non-stick with other techniques (e.g. a meticulously cared for and seasoned cast iron pan), but it takes a lot more work and is still finicky. I totally get it if you don't want to use a non-stick pan because of health or environmental concerns (I find there isn't much to be concerned about if you're not using too high heat on the pan), but this pretending that non-stick pans aren't super useful is silly. I'd challenge anyone to make a perfectly light and golden French omelette with, say, just butter on a non-nonstick pan (it can obviously be done, it's just way harder).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - akira2501 4y ago
    > especially eggs Cooking eggs on a stainless pain isn't particularly difficult, you just need to change your technique and use quite a bit more preheating along with more oil or butter than you traditionally would for a non-stick pan. So, it's useful in that sense, but it's not as if we wanted for pan fried eggs before non-stick existed.
    - reissbaker 4y ago
      Making eggs on stainless steel is definitely more difficult... I'd say it's pretty easy with cast iron or carbon steel though, which were the traditional ways to make eggs pre-nonstick pans.
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      Here is the quote from Jacques Pepin about the utility of non-stick, starts at 1:35, https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000001116746/jacques-pepin-makes-an-omelet-.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000001116746/jacques... Basically, yes, it's certainly possible to get non-stick properties with a well-seasoned, very well-maintained pan. But even someone like Pepin, who has more than enough knowledge and experience to keep a pan in good working order, went the route of "that's too finicky, nonstick is just easier."
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  Do you know the chemical composition of your pan’s seasoning? There are a decent number of carcinogenic compounds (for example acrylamide) produced just by heating natural foods.
  - blindriver 4y ago
    I don't season my frying pans at all. I hand-scrub it clean with SOS pads every time. I don't believe in seasoning the pans and just use butter or olive oil every time. I'm not a Michelin star chef, so to me it doesn't matter, but for example my kids really love my pork chops that I make on the $20 cast iron Lodge pan, so that's good enough for me!
kragen 4y ago
that movie is fiction probably neither any kind of fiction, nor any kind of movies, but least of all fictional movies, are a good source for information about scientific facts, toxicology, or risk assessment
- monetus 4y ago
  It is a dramatization of a real story, one that happened to be testified to in congress not long before the movie came out. Please take people in good faith.
  - kragen 4y ago
    i don't think the grandparent poster is posting in bad faith, i just think they're getting their information about that real story from an intentionally unreliable source movies lie to you on purpose to manipulate your emotions there are lots of reliable information sources about pollution risks, like mmwr, the cochrane collaboration, msds, toxicology textbooks, wikipedia, epa assessments, and so on there is no need to make yourself dumber by making life decisions contingent on beliefs you acquired from movies
    - bricemo 4y ago
      What in the movie was false?
      - kragen 4y ago
        this is a ridiculous question i am not going to subject myself to hours of manipulative propaganda for which truth is not even a consideration in order to write a 'rebuttal' nobody wants to read, thus implicitly affirming all the errors that i missed or that didn't seem important enough to mention dramatizations are works of fiction literally everything in them is false with the occasional exception every word, every facial expression, every event, every chemical reaction, every purchase, every article of clothing, every motivation the exceptions where they say something objectively true are enumerable; the falsehoods are not don't base your beliefs or life decisions on fiction finding out what is true and making good choices are hard enough without deliberately sabotaging the process
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Thanks. Side note: I wish HN would change Wikipedia links to desktop by default. It seems most people post the mobile version. It is a bit annoying, because when you are on mobile, a desktop version gets switched to mobile by wikipedia; but if you are on desktop, you end up with a mobile version which is not optimized for desktop reading.
- orhmeh09 4y ago
  You can accomplish this with user scripts on mobile and on any desktop browser.
- suprjami 4y ago
  I've seen browser extensions which intentionally change to the mobile URL on desktop. Some people consider it the superior interface. Ironically the whole thing should be done with CSS, not with different URLs. That's such an old concept. Shows how outdated Mediawiki is. But make sure you donate to Wikipedia today! lol
  - bawolff 4y ago
    Hey now, you can do that with mediawiki if you want (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless ), for some reasons wikipedia/WMF decided they did not want to. Not mediawiki's fault.
- ZoomerCretin 4y ago
  I filed a ticket with Wikipedia about this exact issue years ago. I get pinged every other year when a new ticket is merged with it. Apparently, some journalist wrote an article years ago about mobile Wikipedia being a better experience on desktop, and now they refuse to do anything about it. All you can do now is get an extension that redirects you. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirect-mobile-wikipedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirect-mobi...
  - bawolff 4y ago
clolege 4y ago
I was gifted a nice Our Place pan set for Christmas which uses Ceramic nonstick [0]. Ceramic nonstick doesn’t use PFOAs or PTFEs so some people think it’s safe. From Our Place’s FAQ [1]: > our Always Pan uses a sol-gel non-stick coating that is made primarily from silicon dioxide which is known in the cookware industry as "ceramic non-stick." It's tested not only to the standards of a ceramic coating (meaning no heavy metals are able to pass through the coating) but also tested to the standards of a polymeric coating (which means that absolutely nothing can pass through the coating). They seem to be refuting that things can pass through the coating, but isn’t the concern more around the coating itself leaching into the food? And the claims around impermeability of the coating go out the window once it wears down too, right? I’d love to believe that these pans are safe. But is it just wishful thinking until more extensive testing has been done? [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-stick_surface#Ceramic https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-stick_surface#Ceramic [1] https://fromourplace.com/pages/faqs https://fromourplace.com/pages/faqs
- hedora 4y ago
  I'm reasonably sure non-stick ceramic pans are unsafe. They are certainly disposable, and misleadingly marketed. Also, the stuff under the coating should be cookware grade iron. It is fine if that leaches through. Why are they concerned about heavy metals leaching through? Is manufacturing leading to lead contamination or something?!? There is an older technology that involves coating cast iron with actual ceramic. It is non-stick "enough", lasts generations and is safe. Example (high end) manufacturer: https://www.lecreuset.com/ https://www.lecreuset.com/
  - musicale 4y ago
    A pure SiO2 (sand or glass?) non-stick coating seems like it would be reasonably safe. But "made primarily from" gives me pause since they don't say what the other ingredients are.
- topaz0 4y ago
  I haven't tried them. I read this profile and decided I never will: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/always-pan-our-place/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/always-pan-our-pl...
aerojoe23 4y ago
Sadly it seems to be everywhere. It even lines the inside of microwave popcorn bags. It also lines the inside of disposable fast food containers very often. I haven't watched the movie you mentioned so I don't know if you know this stuff already.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
PFOA hasn't been used in the processing of Teflon for pans in nearly a decade.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
There's also a documentary on netflix about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know I grew up in the area during the worst of the dumping. It destroyed basically all of my baby teeth and created cavities in a couple of adult teeth that no dentist has ever seen before. None of us at the time understood why it was happening. I had so many teeth basically just crumble that I had steel caps on one with a spacer where another was missing. Both my parents assumed it was something I was doing/poor care when I was at the other one's house. Turns out it was the goddamn water supply. My stepdad actually worked at the plant long enough to retire from there too. I think he had mesothelioma from asbestos, or god knows what from the plant. A lot of people in the area were heavily contaminated: https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/legacy/healthnews/2017/05/high-levels-of-pfoa-found-in-mid-ohio-river-valley-residents-1991-to-2013.html https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/legacy/healthnews/2017/05/h...

blindriver 4y ago

I ditched them a while ago as well. I only use cast iron or stainless steel and it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with non-stick before.

bushbaba 4y ago
Because in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Nutritionists declared all fat bad. We now know that to not be the case. Your stainless steel, high carbon steel, and cast iron pans require using a small amount of oil/butter to have nonstick cooking properties.
- alostpuppy 4y ago
  I have trouble with stainless. What’s the trick? Do you use cast iron for skillets and stainless for slice pans?
  - Our_Benefactors 4y ago
    The trick is get the pan hot (not smoking hot, you’ve preheated too much), then put 1-2tbsp butter or cooking oil in the pan and spread it around. It should sizzle a bit and then mostly disappear, leaving behind a nonstick coating.
  - devadvance 4y ago
    For stainless, I've found it to be a combination of making sure there's enough heat before adding food, being OK with using a bit more fat (e.g., oil, butter) than I initially expect, using the right utensil while cooking, and deglazing as necessary.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    I use stainless for acidic foods (e.g. tomato sauces) and frying eggs. I use cast iron for pancakes, meats, and other items that benefit from the pan not being a perfectly flat texture or heat retention. If I had to have a single pan, I’d probably go high carbon steel.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  They weren’t completely wrong about fats, we just know there’s a difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats now. Don’t throw the baby out. Canola oil looks like a superfood when you swap butter for it in the literature.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > They weren’t completely wrong about fats, we just know there’s a difference between saturated fats and unsaturated fats now. We knew that in the early 2000s, too. And in the early 1990s, which is more when when the war on fats was actually happening; by the early ’00s, the diet trend had focused on low-carb diets, reversing the war on fats.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Good point. You can find research that links saturated fat to increased blood cholesterol back in the 1950s. Perhaps it's only a reminder how much the zeitgeist may be divorced from science, or how little impact the latter actually has on the former unless it's convenient. Though that's for another discussion.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Because in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Non-stick was popular well before the early 2000s, its popularity is not due to any “war on natural fats” that occurred at that time. (And the early ’00s is late for that, anyway.) Non-stick is (and has been for a long time) most popular for particular forms of cooking that use natural fats, whereas particular steel designs (sometimes referred to as “waterless” because of their properties in other applications) were specifically promoted (including in the early 2000s, though they were around before and remain on the market now) as eliminating the need to use fats as one would with conventional and non-stick cookware.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > in the early 2000s there was a war on natural fats. Nutritionists declared all fat bad. We now know that to not be the case. Saturated fats were and remain to be generally thought unhealthy (if we say things like 'all' or 'always', we're almost certainly spreading misinformation; the world doesn't work that way). Other fats (polyunsaturates and monounsaturates) are believed to be healthy or neutral. There is ongoing uncertainty and debate; the degrees and nuances change; we don't get sure, hyperbolic answers. https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/saturated-fats https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/well/fda-healthy-food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/well/fda-healthy-food.htm... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/good-fats-bad-fats.h... I'm not a grammar and spelling critic, but I'm going to be a style critic here (sorry to the parent; lots of people write this way): Hyperbole commonly leads to misinformation. 'War', 'all fat', 'nutritionists declared', 'bad' etc. divert us to an emotional, adversarial contest with a strawperson enemy, rather than into the pursuit of truth, whose object is always nuanced and whose pursuit is difficult enough as it is.
  - topaz0 4y ago
    "A war on all fats" is a pretty good summary of a lot of popular nutritional messaging in the '90s though. Low fat or fat free was a big selling point on lots of food packaging, even when it didn't make sense. Magazine articles about how you could cut just a bit more fat out of this or that recipe. I'm 100% in agreement that the reality is more nuanced, including that dietary fats, some more than others, can be harmful to health when consumed in excess. In other words, that it's not just the other extreme from that 90s consensus. I think the GP would agree too (the only hyperbole in their post was a statement attributed to nutritionists of the time). But the war on fat was real, and had a big presence in the culture.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > "A war on all fats" is a pretty good summary No, it's pushing hyperbole. It tells the world your emotional position - you think it was a war. Let's try something more factual, that reveals the underlying issues - if we know the facts. Low fat and fat free is still a big selling point. Look at the NYT article on the FDA's plans, for example.
- blindriver 4y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. Yes, now that you bring it up, it was this low-fat disinformation that caused all these unintended consequences.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Scotch pancakes. Scotch pancakes is still the one thing I can't cook without non-stick. If anybody has any tips that doesn't include half a kilo of lard, then I am very interested.
- gregwebs 4y ago
  I use a lot of ghee for pancakes. And then you don't need to put butter on them before eating.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I'd never heard of scotch pancakes, but they look like what we make in north america. I use a cast iron griddle and the swipe of a lightly oiled rag. The trick is to get the griddle to exactly the right temperature before making your pancakes, using drops of batter to make "test pancakes." The drop should be big enough to get a few bubbles; when the bubbles stop closing in on themselves, the bottom should be a perfect golden brown. It can take several minutes of fidgeting before you dial it in, but if you're cooking with cast iron, that's the whole lesson: over-temperature burns and sticks, under-temperature sticks and burns.
plasticeagle 4y ago
Cast iron, stainless steel AND carbon steel. A carbon steel wok is my favourite cooking implement of all. Non-stick is not for people who know how to cook.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> I only use cast iron or stainless steel and it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with non-stick before. Because they are incredibly useful when it comes to certain kinds of food, especially eggs and fish. I find all the "self-congratulatory" posts on the topic of non-stick pans, and demonization of people that use them, of the "thou doth protest too much" quality. Tons of renowned chefs, like Jacques Pepin, have spoken of the benefits of non-stick. There are ways to get closer to the quality of non-stick with other techniques (e.g. a meticulously cared for and seasoned cast iron pan), but it takes a lot more work and is still finicky. I totally get it if you don't want to use a non-stick pan because of health or environmental concerns (I find there isn't much to be concerned about if you're not using too high heat on the pan), but this pretending that non-stick pans aren't super useful is silly. I'd challenge anyone to make a perfectly light and golden French omelette with, say, just butter on a non-nonstick pan (it can obviously be done, it's just way harder).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- akira2501 4y ago
  > especially eggs Cooking eggs on a stainless pain isn't particularly difficult, you just need to change your technique and use quite a bit more preheating along with more oil or butter than you traditionally would for a non-stick pan. So, it's useful in that sense, but it's not as if we wanted for pan fried eggs before non-stick existed.
  - reissbaker 4y ago
    Making eggs on stainless steel is definitely more difficult... I'd say it's pretty easy with cast iron or carbon steel though, which were the traditional ways to make eggs pre-nonstick pans.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Here is the quote from Jacques Pepin about the utility of non-stick, starts at 1:35, https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000001116746/jacques-pepin-makes-an-omelet-.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/100000001116746/jacques... Basically, yes, it's certainly possible to get non-stick properties with a well-seasoned, very well-maintained pan. But even someone like Pepin, who has more than enough knowledge and experience to keep a pan in good working order, went the route of "that's too finicky, nonstick is just easier."
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
Do you know the chemical composition of your pan’s seasoning? There are a decent number of carcinogenic compounds (for example acrylamide) produced just by heating natural foods.
- blindriver 4y ago
  I don't season my frying pans at all. I hand-scrub it clean with SOS pads every time. I don't believe in seasoning the pans and just use butter or olive oil every time. I'm not a Michelin star chef, so to me it doesn't matter, but for example my kids really love my pork chops that I make on the $20 cast iron Lodge pan, so that's good enough for me!

kragen 4y ago

that movie is fiction probably neither any kind of fiction, nor any kind of movies, but least of all fictional movies, are a good source for information about scientific facts, toxicology, or risk assessment

monetus 4y ago
It is a dramatization of a real story, one that happened to be testified to in congress not long before the movie came out. Please take people in good faith.
- kragen 4y ago
  i don't think the grandparent poster is posting in bad faith, i just think they're getting their information about that real story from an intentionally unreliable source movies lie to you on purpose to manipulate your emotions there are lots of reliable information sources about pollution risks, like mmwr, the cochrane collaboration, msds, toxicology textbooks, wikipedia, epa assessments, and so on there is no need to make yourself dumber by making life decisions contingent on beliefs you acquired from movies
  - bricemo 4y ago
    What in the movie was false?
    - kragen 4y ago
      this is a ridiculous question i am not going to subject myself to hours of manipulative propaganda for which truth is not even a consideration in order to write a 'rebuttal' nobody wants to read, thus implicitly affirming all the errors that i missed or that didn't seem important enough to mention dramatizations are works of fiction literally everything in them is false with the occasional exception every word, every facial expression, every event, every chemical reaction, every purchase, every article of clothing, every motivation the exceptions where they say something objectively true are enumerable; the falsehoods are not don't base your beliefs or life decisions on fiction finding out what is true and making good choices are hard enough without deliberately sabotaging the process

simonebrunozzi 4y ago

Thanks. Side note: I wish HN would change Wikipedia links to desktop by default. It seems most people post the mobile version. It is a bit annoying, because when you are on mobile, a desktop version gets switched to mobile by wikipedia; but if you are on desktop, you end up with a mobile version which is not optimized for desktop reading.

orhmeh09 4y ago
You can accomplish this with user scripts on mobile and on any desktop browser.
suprjami 4y ago
I've seen browser extensions which intentionally change to the mobile URL on desktop. Some people consider it the superior interface. Ironically the whole thing should be done with CSS, not with different URLs. That's such an old concept. Shows how outdated Mediawiki is. But make sure you donate to Wikipedia today! lol
- bawolff 4y ago
  Hey now, you can do that with mediawiki if you want (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless ), for some reasons wikipedia/WMF decided they did not want to. Not mediawiki's fault.
ZoomerCretin 4y ago
I filed a ticket with Wikipedia about this exact issue years ago. I get pinged every other year when a new ticket is merged with it. Apparently, some journalist wrote an article years ago about mobile Wikipedia being a better experience on desktop, and now they refuse to do anything about it. All you can do now is get an extension that redirects you. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirect-mobile-wikipedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirect-mobi...
- bawolff 4y ago

clolege 4y ago

I was gifted a nice Our Place pan set for Christmas which uses Ceramic nonstick [0]. Ceramic nonstick doesn’t use PFOAs or PTFEs so some people think it’s safe. From Our Place’s FAQ [1]: > our Always Pan uses a sol-gel non-stick coating that is made primarily from silicon dioxide which is known in the cookware industry as "ceramic non-stick." It's tested not only to the standards of a ceramic coating (meaning no heavy metals are able to pass through the coating) but also tested to the standards of a polymeric coating (which means that absolutely nothing can pass through the coating). They seem to be refuting that things can pass through the coating, but isn’t the concern more around the coating itself leaching into the food? And the claims around impermeability of the coating go out the window once it wears down too, right? I’d love to believe that these pans are safe. But is it just wishful thinking until more extensive testing has been done? [0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-stick_surface#Ceramic https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-stick_surface#Ceramic [1] https://fromourplace.com/pages/faqs https://fromourplace.com/pages/faqs

hedora 4y ago
I'm reasonably sure non-stick ceramic pans are unsafe. They are certainly disposable, and misleadingly marketed. Also, the stuff under the coating should be cookware grade iron. It is fine if that leaches through. Why are they concerned about heavy metals leaching through? Is manufacturing leading to lead contamination or something?!? There is an older technology that involves coating cast iron with actual ceramic. It is non-stick "enough", lasts generations and is safe. Example (high end) manufacturer: https://www.lecreuset.com/ https://www.lecreuset.com/
- musicale 4y ago
  A pure SiO2 (sand or glass?) non-stick coating seems like it would be reasonably safe. But "made primarily from" gives me pause since they don't say what the other ingredients are.
topaz0 4y ago
I haven't tried them. I read this profile and decided I never will: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/always-pan-our-place/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/always-pan-our-pl...

aerojoe23 4y ago

Sadly it seems to be everywhere. It even lines the inside of microwave popcorn bags. It also lines the inside of disposable fast food containers very often. I haven't watched the movie you mentioned so I don't know if you know this stuff already.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

PFOA hasn't been used in the processing of Teflon for pans in nearly a decade.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

There's also a documentary on netflix about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_We_Know I grew up in the area during the worst of the dumping. It destroyed basically all of my baby teeth and created cavities in a couple of adult teeth that no dentist has ever seen before. None of us at the time understood why it was happening. I had so many teeth basically just crumble that I had steel caps on one with a spacer where another was missing. Both my parents assumed it was something I was doing/poor care when I was at the other one's house. Turns out it was the goddamn water supply. My stepdad actually worked at the plant long enough to retire from there too. I think he had mesothelioma from asbestos, or god knows what from the plant. A lot of people in the area were heavily contaminated: https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/legacy/healthnews/2017/05/high-levels-of-pfoa-found-in-mid-ohio-river-valley-residents-1991-to-2013.html https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/legacy/healthnews/2017/05/h...