Untitled

According to the CDC, in 10 percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch the child do it, having no idea it is happening. Drowning does not look like drowning—Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene magazine, described the Instinctive Drowning Response like this:

“Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled before speech occurs.

Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.

Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.

From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.”

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble—they are experiencing aquatic distress. Not always present before the Instinctive Drowning Response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long—but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water:

Head low in the water, mouth at water level

Head tilted back with mouth open

Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus

Eyes closed

Hair over forehead or eyes

Not using legs—vertical

Hyperventilating or gasping

Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway

Trying to roll over on the back

Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder

So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks OK—don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Source/article: [x]

I’ve been a lifeguard for 6 years now and of all the saves I’ve done, maybe two or three had people drowning in the stereotypical thrashing style. And even those, like the save I made last weekend, it was exactly like OP describes where the person’s head is going in and out of the water but it isn’t long enough to get any air. Mostly you recognize drowning by the look on someone’s face. If someone looks wide eyed and terrified or confused, chances are they’re drowning. That look of “oh shit” is pretty easily recognizable. And even if you can’t tell for sure: GO AFTER THEM ANYWAY. I’ve done “saves” where a kid was pretending to drown and I mistook it for real drowning, but that’s preferable to a kid ACTUALLY drowning.

Also please remember that even strong swimmers can drown if they have a medical emergency, get cramps, or get too tired. If your friend knows how to swim but they’re acting funny get them to land. And even if someone can respond when you ask them if they need help, if they say they do need help? GO HELP THEM.

However . If the victim is a stranger, I can’t recommend trying to get them. Lifeguards literally train to escape “attacks,” because people who are drowning can freak the fuck out and grab you and make YOU drown as well. If you do go in after someone, take hold of them from the back and talk to them the whole time. IF YOU ARE GRABBED: duck down into the water as low as you can get. The person is panicking and won’t want to go under water and should release you. Shove up at their hands and push them away from you as you duck under. Don’t die trying to save someone else.

When the lifeguard got us both out, a woman came running down and accused me of harming him and said he had been completely fine in the water. That there was no reason to drag him out of there. The lifeguard had to explain to her that her son had been drowning, to which her response was to say that she didn’t hear him call for help.

You’re allowed to care even though lots of things are going bad. Some things can’t be fixed or saved. But it’s okay to hold onto hope for something good to happen tomorrow. Good things are always going to pop up like flowers in war zones.

“The world is not on fire, there are just lots of fires.” Don’t lose hope that some fires can be put out. So much is still easy. Build a safe zone within the flames, and persist putting them out. Accepting we are in a bad place does not equal rolling over to let it get worse. No matter how bad things will get, you can still put out flames in different spaces.

You can give yourself the freedom of acknowledging life right now is in a state of unrest and we don’t know when the chapter will close, while also being happy we are here with other people and things that make it worth it. Because it is worth it. All hard things are worth it.

Fortunately for him, it is a very important communication signal, especially given what he's going through right now. It says, "This is, in some way, unsatisfactory." Unfortunately, it's not very specific and he doesn't understand much about how to deploy it.

You have to understand, the stomach ache that he has right now is the worst stomach ache in the universe, because as far as he's concerned, the universe is maybe a month old and there's been a limited number of stomach aches in it. Or, the loneliness and anguish he felt when he couldn't see you was the most terrifying isolation in the universe, akin to being adrift in the Boötes Void, for the very same reason. He does not have guidelines to cope with these things. He has barely accumulated enough of a dataset to start evaluating things like, "Most times, when people I know go away, they will reappear eventually," or, "that particular stomach ache will go away if I eat something." He doesn't even know which particular problems can be cured and which can't. He just knows that "technique: scream like fucking banshee" does have some sort of a success rate.

Here is what the backside looks like. OP notes this takes more fabric than paper piecing, but that excess fabric makes it already triple-layered. Besides not needing backing fabric, I don't think you'd need batting for this quilt at all. It's already thick and soft just from folding all that fabric into a hexagon.

Each hexagon begins as a 6" circle. camelscrafts does this by creating a paper template using a compass. According to the video, a 6" circle will create a hexagon that is 2.5 inches tall.

These hexagons are hand-sewn. Thread the needle.

With the fabric right side facing, find the center of the circle by folding it in half right sides together, then folding it in half again (wrong sides are facing). The top of the triangle shape is the center of the fabric circle.

Make a small stitch into the center of the fabric. The wrong side is still facing.

Unfold the circle. There will be a small stitch in the center.

Now the hexagon is created by folding the circle into itself: Take the needle to one of the edges of the fabric (it doesn't matter which one). Pull the needle through and pull the thread tight. This will fold down the fabric and create an edge of the hexagon. Crease the fold with your finger.

This fold has two corners, one at the top and one at the bottom. Put the needle into one of the corners and pull the thread taut. This will create another fold.

Continue this going around the circle until all of it is folded down, creating the hexagon. camelscrafts notes that the last corner pulled in may be a little bit "wonky" (no precise point in the corner) if the corners were not done precisely. However, that corner is pulled into the back, so is not visible from the front.

The hexagon is now formed. Sew around the folds in the middle of the circle to hold the folds in place. Tie off and cut the thread.

Posted by The Library of Congress on Facebook:

Once more, due to annual popular demand, we like to share Rosa Parks’ pancake recipe on National Pancake Day. Jotted down on an envelope, it came to the Library along with the rest of her papers, a gift made possible by the generosity of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation in 2016. Learn more about the Rosa Parks Collection: https://www.loc.gov/.../rosa.../about-this-collection/...

Here is the Library of Congress page for the recipe!

And the full transcription (text) of the envelope!

And the recipe itself:

Featherlite Pancakes Sift together:

1 C flour

2 T B. Powder [presumably baking powder]

1/2 t salt

2 T sugar

Mix:

1 egg

1 1/4 C Milk

1/3 C peanut butter melted

1 T shorting or oil

Combine with dry ingredients Cook at 275° on griddle

-----

so there are a lot of patterns for soft prosthetic breasts for breast cancer survivors, but there's no reason you cant make yourself some boobs:

Ravelry: Knitted Knockers Double pointed needles pattern by KnittedKnockers.org

Ravelry: Knockers (Crochet) pattern by Claudia Barbo

Ravelry: Tit Bits pattern by Beryl Tsang

Ravelry: Quick & Easy Round Knocker pattern by Janet Dawson

patterns for packers:

Ravelry: Perfectly Reasonable Packer pattern by Janet Dawson - this is a pattern i have actually made. i found it really easy to make and to customize/adapt for different yarns.

Ravelry: Soft Packer pattern by Marian Fournier

Ravelry: Trans Masc Packer pattern by Marcy Fank

Ravelry: Knit Packer pattern by Finn Beaton

fun pride themed patterns:

Ravelry: Progress Pride Flag Cutie pattern by Nicola Newt

Ravelry: Transgender Symbol pattern by Sara Allen

Ravelry: LGBTQ+Equality for Shawl pattern by nycraft craftivist

Ravelry: Pride & Trans Pride Flipsy pattern by kawaiicuddlebug

Ravelry: Transitions Trans Pride Cowl pattern by Elizabeth L. Schell

Ravelry: Trans Pride flag handwarmers pattern by Cassian Lotte Lodge

Ravelry: Protect Trans Folks Tapestry pattern by Ashley Gorecki

Pride Flag Knitting Chart! — TINA TSE KNITS

Ravelry: Pride Flag Hearts pattern by Grace Grommes

Ravelry: Pride Headband pattern by Indie Child

Mini Pride Progress Flag Free Crochet Pattern – Unicorn Hideout

Free patterns: Bi Bee, Enbee, Lesbeean – With Love, Feli

That text post that's been making the rounds that goes something like "Omg you made it to the same red light as everyone else but faster and more dangerously and recklessly, should we call nascar? Do you want a medal?" summarizes exactly what I'm trying to talk about.

It's like when I have to change buses at one of the bigger and busier bus stops, and the people who get off the same bus as me shove and elbow past me to get off before me, and then shove and elbow past anyone even slightly in their way on the way to the bus they're switching, only to end up on the same bus as all the people they shoved and elbowed with several minutes to spare before it leaves and plenty of open seats left.

I think this unnecessary urgency a lot of people feel in their day to day lives drives a lot of bad behavior. I'm not saying I'm innocent of this, I've felt it too in plenty of situations that didn't call for it, and regrettably was less kind than I should have been as a result. But I try to be aware of it, and always try to ask myself it it's really as urgent as my lizard brain is trying to tell me it is, and even if it was that urgent, does that still justify unkind behavior?

Is shoving or elbowing another person aside going to make the difference between whether or not you make it to the bus before it pulls away? (hint: at least where I live, most of the time that's a no because the drivers usually won't leave if they see people from another bus heading towards their bus). Is shoving and elbowing people aside in a crowded grocery store going to make any noticeable difference in how quickly you get your shopping done?

That fully rewired my brain.

screenshot of a tweet by @pot8um: “Does anyone have that recent study that determined all 8 billion of us could be easily housed and fed with only 30% of the current global labor output and that our collective suffering is manufactured by capitalism...”

reply by @jasonhickel: “Yes: sciencedirect.com/... [a url that is cut off in the screenshot]” and an attached image of text:

“With this approach, good lives can be achieved for all without requiring large creases in total global throughput and output. Provisioning decent living standards (DLS) for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments. Such a future requires planning to” [text is cut off here].

Second image transcription:

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

Progress.

ya got

gochujang butter noodles

peanut butter noodles

chili crisp fettuccine alfredo

miso butter noodles

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Word for today: wisdom of repugnance

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

An alternative app store:

when you deposit a paycheck in a traditional bank account, you go online and see the number in your balance. to you, it looks like there is a single account that quarantines your money away from everybody else’s. you may think that when you deposit money in the bank, the bank is just holding that money for you, but actually, by depositing money is a bank, you are lending the bank company your money.

a bank company’s core function is to make money by bundling together the deposits that many customers have lent it, and investing that money in the stock market. the bank’s investments earn interest, which is the bank’s profit. if you have a savings account, you’re essentially telling the bank “hey, I plan to have this money sitting here for a while without drawing on it.” a savings account is a more stable investment base than a checking account for the bank, which is why the company incentivizes you to have one. when you earn interest on a savings account, that is the bank giving you a tiny kickback of the money they are making through investing your (and others’ blended) deposits.

the traditional banking system is insured by the federal deposit insurance corporation (FDIC), which is a government agency. if you took all your money out of the bank and hid it under your mattress, if somebody broke into your house and stole it, you will lose all your money. but the government insures money in traditional banks, usually up to $250,000 per consumer account. this means that even if the bank company’s investments all fail and the bank company loses all your cash, the government will bail the bank out, and you will not lose your money.

by putting your money in a traditional bank, you ensure your money is protected, you get a small kickback of interest, and you get access to the convenience of the bank’s online platform to track your finances. you also get a debit card to easily make purchases by drawing directly from your accounts. for the bank company, they get billions of dollars of interest-free loans, in the form of their customer’s deposits, to invest in the stock market. at its core, ignoring fees and credit cards and mortgages, this is how the banking system works.

bankification is the idea that non-banking companies are trying to operate like banks. this includes tech companies like Apple offering credit cards, but an aspect of bankification that is less understood is companies incentivizing consumers to give them interest-free loans. while banks are regulated by the government in exactly when and how they can operate within this business model, other companies trying to profit through this model are not always beholden to these regulations because their activities are not technically considered banking. let’s look at an example: loyalty programs.

in 2025, starbucks has an estimated $2 billion in deferred revenue from their loyalty program. deferred revenue is like a gift card; the company receives money because the customer paid up-front for the gift card, but the company is beholden to discount a future purchase by the pre-paid amount. there are multiple advantages to receiving deferred revenue for a company.

when a customer loads money onto their starbucks loyalty account, they are essentially buying a digital gift card. remember how banks encourage consumers to put money into savings accounts because it is a long-term holding account, which makes it a more stable investment base? once you buy a gift card, you cannot convert it back into cash. the money cannot leave the company, making a very stable investment base. starbucks offers a lot of benefits and discounts for customers who load money onto their loyalty accounts because starbucks recognizes the value of a captive investment base of interest-free loans. when many customers prepay through the loyalty program, starbucks is using that pooled money the same way a bank does: investing it to make even more money.

as a side note, two other major advantages of this gift card model for companies is inflation and breakage. money loses value over time through inflation. when you buy a gift card, you pay the money upfront, and the company can invest that money sooner at its higher value. breakage is the idea that if a gift card is bought but never redeemed, then the company essentially got money for nothing.

now, does this bankification through loyalty programs directly hurt consumers? well, not really. consumers who participate in these sorts of loyalty programs get benefits like discounts. the problem is indirect harms: that this money is uninsured for the consumer, and the deferred revenue investment base is less regulated than traditional banks.

if starbucks’ investments failed and the company died, any money those customers had paid into the loyalty program but had not yet used on purchases would disappear. the money is not insured, so the customer wouldn’t get it back. the same is true for keeping your money in any non-FDIC insured company, including companies like PayPal and Cashapp*. (*some services from those platforms, usually the credit cards, are insured because they have a backing partner bank. but a sitting balance in a free account is usually not FDIC-insured. don’t leave your money sitting in these accounts.)

because companies investing their deferred revenue is regulated and taxed differently than traditional banks’ investments, not only if there less protection for the consumer, but there is less protection for the wider economy. If a bankified company with significant investments into other bankified company fails, this can cause a shockwave effect similar to the 2008-9 financial crisis wherein all the interconnected bankified companies are destabilized. banks are heavily regulated to avoid that happening again, but bankified companies are not beholden to that legislation.

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.