I bought a pair of grey pants online that turned out to have been dyed with that black dye that smells like sulfur (if you've ever had bad smelling black jeans, you know) and the absurd part of my brain is tempted to try soaking them in Pepto Bismol to see if it binds with the stank particles. It's probably a bad idea because I don't want to stain the pants pink, but I also can't stop thinking about it?
@erinbee it sounds like a really fun experiment tbh
@checkervest @FrazzledBrynn I might try soaking a cloth in Pepto and washing it to see how stain-y it is in general first.
@erinbee @checkervest Oh yeah that's more sensible lol
@erinbee <whispers> do it
@erinbee I think you kinda have to do this. Maybe you’ll end up with Black 3.0 jeans. Hell, maybe you’ll have just created Black 4.0 and you could grant Stuart Semple the single right to use it.
@coolpowers No Anish Kapoors Allowed!
@erinbee Kaopectate's got the same active ingredient, and they have a "vanilla" flavor that lacks all the red dyes of the other stuff. You should do it!
@jcarlson I looked that up ("bismuth subsalicylate not pink") before heading to the pharmacy, and nobody near me sells it. But good news, the pink washed out of a cotton washcloth, so I'm going to give it a try!
@erinbee peppermint scented jeans doesnt sound that bad to me tho
@bnys It's not the peppermint (which I agree would be kind of amazing), it's that they're grey and adding pink is not necessarily going to turn them a colour I want to wear.
@erinbee project time!
@erinbee it depends what makes the Pepto Bismol pink; it is not necessarily a textile dye. You could try washing a rag in Pepto Bismol and see if it turns pink?
@gannet That's what I'm thinking of. It's got D&C Reds 22 and 28 in it, and enough people saying that peroxide can remove the stain that I'm going to try a rag and Oxyclean.
@erinbee that seems sensible! I think I’d see if it actually dyes the rag before adding the Oxyclean; something’s tickling at my brain about those reds.
@gannet That's what I did, I let it sit for a while, rinsed it, and then did an Oxyclean wash.
@erinbee perhaps that's how they created vantablack
@alinanorakari Maybe I can get into a good old internet beef with Anish Kapoor!
@erinbee … oh no, you have to disguise your experiment. maybe ask the person who took the photo of the white and gold / blue and black dress how to create some plausible deniability
@erinbee this reminds me of the time I did an backyard bismuth extraction from the pepto tabs using Sulfuric Acid. So many fun pepto projects.
@moon_baron I'm going to have to try that too!
Then again, if the sulfurous smell actually is sulfur it might not matter because bismuth binding with sulfur is what turns your tongue and other stuff black after taking it 🤔