#but it is such a nasty insidious vicious substance

[pastafossa]

Hey!! Now I’m straight up terrified every time I read the word fibreglass - do you have a post explaining how all of this happened and how we can avoid it?

Typed out the answer, and if you'd also like to see the posts as they occurred in real time, I've gathered them all up:

Major Fiberglass Nightmare Posts Sections

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen | Seventeen | Eighteen | Nineteen | Twenty <- we are here

Answering the question now and it’s long so imma put the wall in

Honestly I can't say I don't relate because I'm kinda traumatized by the fiberglass now and therefore experience a certain amount of visceral chills every time I hear someone say the word. Ironically, it started really innocuously with this post here which was just a brief, casual, entirely unsuspecting update that I threw out for anyone interested, and from there it just began to spiral. That's why there's no real easy way to jump from part one to two and three, because for a little while there was no realization that anything was wrong. Essentially ya'll got to watch me breathe it in, get sick, and then discover in real time that my entire room had been coated in fiberglass dust. It's almost surreal looking back at those early posts now, tbh. How This Happened: The house I moved into is almost 100 years old so my attic bedroom had no insulation (unlike the rest of the house), since a lot of that space up there was DIY'd, but there was no reason to think this phase of reno would be any different than the other phases. Hell, I hired the (well rated) insulation company for spray-in insulation, and had no plans for fiberglass, which is why I left a lot of my stuff up there uncovered. I was told that was fine, and this would be easy - they'd come in for one day, punch a few small holes in the walls to spray the insulation in, then patch the holes up. I didn't need to cover or move anything, and I'd be able to sleep up there that night. And in fairness, they did that right. Those areas are fine. But there was a section of the walls that had weird joists and that section couldn't use the spray-in. That's where they decided to use fiberglass, and that's where they fucked up. And they fucked up in so many ways, all of which essentially piled up on top of each other to make this into a real nightmare.

These are the things the shitty company did that I'd warn people about if they're looking to avoid a similar situation:

They left the floor vents uncovered/unsealed, which blew the fiberglass dust around my room. They also left my portable AC unit blowing, AND my fan, which worked with the vents to essentially blast the dust up into the air and blow it all over and across every surface.

They were, I believe now, in a rush to get things done in one day. Before I could even ask if I needed to take things out of my room (or at least cover them), they'd already taken the fiberglass up. Taking things out like my bed or my furniture, my plushes, my clothes on their hanging racks, would have taken up time. So instead, they left it all uncovered and exposed to the dust. This is a huge one - so much of this could have been prevented if they'd taken my things out (or even let me take them out!) so that all that would have needed to be cleaned was the floor and walls. I also wouldn't have lost any of my belongings.

They lied about ease of cleanup. Despite the fact that they put on tyvek suits and respirators and gloves to install the fiberglass, they told me that there'd be 'just a little dust' for me to cleanup as it settled over the next few days, and that all I had to do was sweep and dust. As I found out later, this isn't just bad advice - this is actively dangerous advice. Anyone cleaning up fiberglass should not, under any circumstances, try to dry sweep and dust - this just throws the dust up into the air. The INSTALLERS are meant to clean everything up with heavy-duty vacuums with HEPA filters, as well as clean up using a wet-mop. Whatever you're using to clean has to be either wet or a powerful, HEPA vacuum, because anything else will throw it in the air.

Oh hey, so you're also advised to wear a respirator (please remember they also told me I could sleep up there THAT NIGHT - which essentially left me to breathe in fiberglass unprotected), gloves, and goggles to deal with the fiberglass. None of which I was told. I was just told, repeatedly, even after calling the company to tell them about all the fiberglass dust, 'it's just a little dust, you just need to sweep and dust a little. It's safe.' Rot in hell you lying fuckers

According to my friends who have experience in contracting - you are not meant to be the one to clean fiberglass up. It never, ever should have been left to me. Fiberglass is a hazardous substance, it is fucking vicious, and it requires knowledge and training to clean up safely, which the company should have done for me. You can try to clean it up on your own, and some people have to because they either don't have a company nearby that can do hazardous cleanup or because they can't afford it, but it's a nightmare that takes ages (*gestures at how long it took me even with help*). I'm not sure I'd ever have been able to get that room cleaned up on my own.

In short, if you're looking to avoid this happening: at this point if you're ever looking to have insulation put in, do whatever you can to avoid fiberglass. There are easier, safer alternatives. If you do wind up needing to have fiberglass insulation put in:

Make sure the company or person you use has experience with fiberglass. The ones who knew what they were doing have been baffled at just how badly the insulation installers fucked up my room. Do not be afraid to ask them questions - ask them what their safety precautions are, ask them how they'll keep it contained, ask them about cleanup. Hell, tell them you have sensitive lungs if you think it'll help them take it seriously.

Get your shit out of the room, first off. EVERYTHING. Just in case there's a fuckup. Do not assume they'll do everything right. This will also ensure it's as easy as possible to mop and wipe down the walls from end to end.

Make sure the air vents are closed (and a good insulation company will make sure those vents are closed). You want the dust to be able to settle. Don't allow a fan or ac unit to run up there, either, obviously.

Invest in a decent flashlight (you'll need to hunt for the dust and strands of fiberglass) and a good HEPA air filter to pull that shit out of the air if it's there.

I don't care if they say they vacuumed and cleaned. Examine it, hunt for fiberglass, and then run through cleanup even if you find nothing. Mop from end to end, wipe down the walls and all surfaces with something wet (in all my research, vinegar helps break down fiberglass, so invest in some for cleaning and mopping). Do this for days. Wear a mask, good gloves, long sleeves and long pants to protect your skin if you even THINK there's some dust left. Shower the second you leave that space - and shower cold to start. You need to close your pores to stop the fiberglass strands going any deeper, and only after a few minutes should you let the water warm up some to wash away any remaining strands.

Document document document. I'm not just talking pictures. I'm talking video, too, of any issues you find. Record any phone calls if it's legal in your area, and if it isn't then write down EXACTLY how the conversation went with dates and names and times. Get shit in writing, save emails so you have a paper trail ("I'm just emailing to confirm the details of the conversation we had about -insert issue-"). Cover your bases because if you wind up with a company like mine, they'll happily fuck you over and you'll be left holding the bag like I was.

In short... fuck fiberglass. And I hope the above helps if you ever need anything done with fiberglass. It is absolutely not something to fuck around with, and I am still having to throw things away RIP nightstand i finally gave up on and threw out yesterday. Sadly a lot of it could have been prevented if they'd had even a modicum of care, and yet here we are. Hopefully I can use it to help other people avoid the same nightmare happen, though.

Major Fiberglass Nightmare Posts, Part:

One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen | Fifteen | Sixteen | Seventeen | Eighteen | Nineteen | Twenty <- we are here

[jennaschererwrites]

Clowns, Cults and Trump: Why New 'American Horror Story' Is a Missed Opportunity - Rolling Stone

There's nothing subtle about the historical moment we're living through. A man with no impulse control and a vicious disdain of anyone/anything who does not resemble him has ascended to the highest office in the land. Americans are wearing their political proclivities and hatreds on their sleeve (sometimes literally, often swastikas). It's a dumb, ugly, blunt time to be alive, and to it has come an often dumb, ugly, blunt TV show. It is called American Horror Story: Cult. And it's a major missed opportunity.

Unlike previous iterations Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck's anthology horror series, which rely on tweaked horror tropes in lieu of tackling contemporary issues head-on, the seventh season of AHS stridently and purposefully locates itself in an America reeling from the recent Presidential election; it isn't just the setting but also the substance of the horror. In its attempt to parody and comment upon the fear, cruelty and paranoia of Trump's America, however, it instead becomes an artifact of it. The show is reductive where it should be incisive, dull where it should be sharp, turning liberals and alt-righters alike into equally repulsive monsters – "on both sides," as someone once sneered.

AHS all-stars Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters feature as two Michiganites on opposite ends of the political spectrum: Ally Mayfair-Richards is a left-wing lesbian restaurateur with a loving nuclear family and a host of anxieties; Kai Anderson is a wild-eyed alt-right loner with a literal hard-on for other people's rage and fear. The show's first four episodes set the two on a collision course, starting the night of the 2016 election and spinning out from there like the aftermath of a 10-car pileup.

But here's the thing about these two, in addition to every other character on the show – they're not people. They're cartoons. And while the show's usual modus operandi is to go big and go broad, it's a bit of a death blow to anything resembling a satirical impulse. "What was wrong with CNN for not giving us a trigger warning before they announced the results?" Ally moans improbably into the arms of her long-suffering wife Ivy (Alison Pill), whose only character trait is that she is long-suffering. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Kai jubilates, "Fuck you, world! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" while dry-humping his television screen. Later, Ally will chew out her son for giving his pet guinea pig a cisgender name and feel deeply tortured about Jill Stein, while Kai will rub a slurry of ground Cheetos on his face and lob a condom full of urine at Latino workers. Nuance, thy name is not Ryan Murphy.

There are no human beings here – only walking, talking sound bites, straw men lifted from poorly researched headlines. "The proudest moment of my life when was Lena Dunham retweeted me," one character blurts out in a job interview, apropos of nothing. (Speaking of which, the Girls creator is slated to make a cameo later this season.) "I got almost 6,000 followers from that. Just not enough to elect the first woman president." In another scene, two "angry liberal" women tie up a would-be Trump voter in a basement on election night so that he can't cast his ballot. "People like you don't matter anymore," one of them spits, becoming the leftist bogeyman that right-wingers fear but who doesn't actually have a real-world counterpart.

And this being AHS, fear can't just be a feeling; it also has to take a shape – so cue a roving band of murder clowns sporting rubber masks and bloody knives. It's an easy phobia button to push, as well as a current boogeyman du jour and a callback to autumn 2016's bizarre series of creepy clown sightings along the East Coast, which felt like a symptom of the undiagnosed madness sweeping the country pre-election. A year down the line, however, those perma-grinned lurkers seem almost quaint in comparison to the very real monsters who have come out of the woodwork since. Clowns are scary. IRL Nazis are scarier.

Which brings us to the overall problem of attempting to make a TV series that limns the present moment: By the time it comes out, it's already the past. Cult feels like a show that was simultaneously made too soon and too late, poking at fresh wounds while also picking at old scabs. The free-floating anxiety that many Americans felt in the days after November 8th, 2016, is no longer free-floating, as embodied in Cult by Ally and her host of phobias; it has located itself in daily horrors like white-supremacist rallies, nuclear saber-rattling and the stripping of immigrant and minority rights. Kai may be an unhinged megalomaniac, but he perversely seems more reasonable than the 71-year-old manchild with his finger on the big red button.

Let's talk about Kai for a second. He's a classic genre villain in the vein of the Joker, with his thirst for power blended with charisma, intelligence and psychopathy. (And to Peters' credit, he totally sells it.) But as the metaphorical figure Murphy and Falchuck seem to want him to be, he's pretty muddled. "There is nothing more dangerous in the world than a humiliated man," he declares early on, a signal that he's a stand-in for Trump's red-meat supporters who felt disenfranchised by an increasingly diverse and progressive world seemingly leaving them behind. Yet the first people he recruits to his side are a Hillary Clinton supporter (Billie Lourd), a frustrated gay man (Billy Eichner) and an African-American news anchor (Adina Porter). Please call us if you ever see a real-world right-wing mob this diverse.

Perhaps the most insidious thing about Cult's sadistic parody of current politics is who it excludes. This is a show, by, for and about white people – and white people only. With the exception of Porter, the show's few minority characters are used as murder victims and/or punch lines to the show's mean jokes. When a Latino character is shot and killed, his death is parlayed into a winky parody of the Black Lives Matter movement. As for the consequences, Cult treats him less as a person than as a symbol that the show's white protagonists can feel or not feel a way about.

Maybe some people get a kick out of slumming in this fictional nasty world, in which every person – regardless of what side of the political fence they're on – always gives into their worst and basest instincts. But for the rest of us, it's a misaimed kick in the gut when we're already down on the ground, winded from the real gut punches of the latest headlines. In Trump's inauguration speech, the newly sworn-in president spoke of us living in an age of "American carnage." His grim diagnosis of our society rang false for many Americans, but perhaps not to the AHS creators. The country is sick, yes, but not in the way Trump – or Cult – seems to believe it is.