I made Beacon, a tiny iOS app for answering: “which of my friends is free to talk right now?”
It’s basically a one-to-many phone call that only one person can answer. Send a beacon to a group, and everyone gets rung at the same time. The first person who answers gets connected for a 1-1 call, and for everyone else the signal drops silently. No missed-calls or pressure to answer. Works pretty well given most people keep their phones on silent (and there are in-app settings for quiet hours too).
iOS/TestFlight only for now. It works best if you're able to join with at least four people you don't speak with as much as you'd like. I have a couple dozen connections on the app now, and it feels like magic to me. Would love feedback from both introverts and extroverts who still like phone calls, or wish they had more of them:
Laboratory.love lets you fund independent plastic chemical lab testing of the specific foods you actually buy. Think Consumer Reports meets Kickstarter, but focused on detecting endocrine disruptors in your yogurt, your kid’s snacks, or whatever you’re curious about.
Find a product (or suggest one), contribute to its testing fund, and get full lab results when testing completes. If a product doesn’t reach its goal within 365 days, you’re automatically refunded. All results are published publicly.
This project was inspired by Nat Friedman's PlasticList.org and we use the same ISO 17025-accredited methodology they did, testing three separate production lots per product (when possible) and detecting down to parts-per-billion. The entire protocol is open.
I just published new results today! Turns out Muir Glen's caned Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes are incredibly low in plastic chemicals. Yay!
Laboratory.love lets you fund independent plastic chemical lab testing of the specific foods you actually buy. Think Consumer Reports meets Kickstarter, but focused on detecting endocrine disruptors in your yogurt, your kid’s snacks, or whatever you’re curious about.
Find a product (or suggest one), contribute to its testing fund, and get full lab results when testing completes. If a product doesn’t reach its goal within 365 days, you’re automatically refunded. All results are published publicly.
This project was inspired by Nat Friedman's PlasticList.org and we use the same ISO 17025-accredited methodology they did, testing three separate production lots per product (when possible) and detecting down to parts-per-billion. The entire protocol is open.
I just published new results today! Turns out Muir Glen's caned Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes are incredibly low in plastic chemicals. Yay!
In 2024, PlasticList found plastic chemicals in 86% of tested foods—including 100% of baby foods they tested. Around the same time, the EU lowered its “safe” BPA limit by 20,000×, while the FDA still allows levels roughly 100× higher than Europe’s new standard.
That seemed solvable.
Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent lab testing of the specific products you actually buy. Think Consumer Reports × Kickstarter, but focused on detecting endocrine disruptors in your yogurt, your kid’s snacks, or whatever you’re curious about.
Find a product (or suggest one), contribute to its testing fund, and get full lab results when testing completes. If a product doesn’t reach its goal within 365 days, you’re automatically refunded. All results are published publicly. I'm actually thinking about turning off crowdfunding and making it a pure "service to be purchased" as all fully-funded products have been single-contributor driven (the refund process creates labor without a clear upside).
We use the same ISO 17025-accredited methodology as PlasticList.org, testing three separate production lots per product (when possible) and detecting down to parts-per-billion. The entire protocol is open.
*Stats as of Jan 2026*
- Since launching almost one year ago, laboratory.love has received $16,835+ in contributions across 38 products!
- 12 products have been fully funded, representing 36 batch samples (that's three unique production batches per product) and 72 total chemical panels (two separate tests for each sample, BPA/BPS/BPF and phthalates)
- 9 product results have been published, with 3 currently in progress
- One manufacturer has already kicked off an internal investigation as a result of our testing (more to say here soon).
- Product pages with published results tables can now calculate the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Tolerable Daily Intake Percentage (%TDI) for toddlers (assumed to be 14kg) and adults (70kg).
- Monthly Subscriptions are live. Funds are pooled and allocated to the leading unfunded product anytime the pool can get that product to its funding goal.
The goal is simple: make supply chains transparent enough that cleaner ones win. When consumers have real data, markets shift.
100% this, I built laboratory.love almost entirely with my voice and (now-outdated) Claude models
My go-to prompt finisher, which I have mapped to a hotkey due to frequent use, is "Before writing any code, first analyze the problem and requirements and identify any ambiguities, contradictions, or issues. Ask me to clarify any questions you have, and then we'll proceed to writing the code"
burning man dust is definitely an irritant (alkaline), but salton sea dust seems to contain many additional contaminants (pesticides, metals, biologicals)
Currently building Laboratory.love — a community way to crowdfund independent lab testing of everyday products for plastic chemicals (BPA/BPS/BPF, phthalates).
We buy three different lots per product, test at an ISO 17025–accredited lab, and publish all results. If a product doesn’t reach its goal within 365 days, contributions are refunded.
We recently added pooled donations to auto-fund the leading unfunded test and I’m iterating on more readable result summaries.
For an individual acting on their own, single tests for phthalates and BPA/BPS/BPF normally cost ~$500. Laboratory.love tests three samples from different lots to ensure reliability (as PlasticList found variation of up to 59% between lots of identical products). Thanks to volume pricing and operational efficiency, we're able to target $425 per sample ($1,275 for triplicate testing). This covers not just the chemical analysis but also product acquisition, shipping, and operational costs. Right now there is only about 10% margin left as breathing room.
My partner lab specifically offers 300+ unique tests across the following categories: Contaminants, Elemental, Allergen, Preservatives and Additives, Microbial, and Phytochemical, Vitamin, and Actives"
So yes, expansion is definitely possible! If a billionaire wanted to fund a project like this it could certainly convert dollars into data, it's just a matter of choosing which products and contaminants to start chewing through first to ensure the data creates positive change in the real world.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I will look into Labdoor and their funding models. I'm definitely open to expanding to other types of testing if/when this project grows. I'm actually already able to test for nearly everything you'd want to check for in a consumable, I'm just keeping the focus of the public website on plastic chemicals for now to avoid feature creep and scope management issues.
I have considered creating specific ad-hoc campaign pages for folks with special interests and let them drive people to the page (like a more focused Kickstarter or GoFundMe with a lab on the back end).
If anyone has a special interest I'm happy to mock up what funding targets would be.
Thanks, and yes these improvements are on my roadmap!
I'm working to make results more digestible and actionable. This will include the %TDI toggle (total daily intake, for child vs adult and USA vs EU) as seen on PlasticList, but I'm also tinkering with an even more consumer-friendly 'chemical report card'. The final results page would have both the card and the detailed table of results.
Thanks, and yes these improvements are on my roadmap!
I'm working to make results more digestible and actionable. This will include the %TDI toggle (total daily intake, for child vs adult and USA vs EU) as seen on PlasticList, but I'm also tinkering with an even more consumer-friendly 'chemical report card'. The final results page would have both the card and the detailed table of results.
It’s basically a one-to-many phone call that only one person can answer. Send a beacon to a group, and everyone gets rung at the same time. The first person who answers gets connected for a 1-1 call, and for everyone else the signal drops silently. No missed-calls or pressure to answer. Works pretty well given most people keep their phones on silent (and there are in-app settings for quiet hours too).
iOS/TestFlight only for now. It works best if you're able to join with at least four people you don't speak with as much as you'd like. I have a couple dozen connections on the app now, and it feels like magic to me. Would love feedback from both introverts and extroverts who still like phone calls, or wish they had more of them:
https://trybeacon.chat/
Android coming soon!