𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑠 𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑎.

hi everyone! i’m living in a part of the world currently encased in winter, but i’ve seen the news stories of the heatwave hitting north america - and the rising temperatures in europe - and i wanted to make a post amalgamating advice for staying cool and staying safe in the heat. this comes from a variety of sources - personal experience, medical sources and advice shared by others - and i hope that some of you will find it useful!

keeping cool: preventative measures

easier to store and more compact than ice, try to keep 2-3 ice packs in the freezer if you’re able to and rotate them out as needed!

drink cold water! it sounds like an obvious thing, but i’ve seen some people suggesting to drink room temperature water because it makes you feel less thirsty. thats true, but it can also be dangerous for your brain/body to be tricked like this in extreme heat so please drink cold water and stay hydrated as much as possible! you can also freeze them as needed to keep them cooler.

similarly, if you’re going outside, try to remember to always take a bottle of water with you.

wear loose clothes! anything too tight or too thick will trap the heat in. if you have a hat, wet it before wearing it when going outside.

leave wet towels for your pets! if you’re a pet owner or you live with pets, please keep them in mind too - especially if they’re the furry kind. wetting a towel for them to lie down on if they need to could keep them cool while they deal with the heat and all that fur.

if you live in a multi-storey house, go downstairs! heat rises, so try not to stay holed up on the second floor or the attic if you’re able. if you live in an apartment building or shared living space, please do this carefully and responsibly in our current pandemic climate!

if you have the water and ability, sit down somewhere and put your feet in some buckets of cool water! like our heads, our feet play a vital role in our temperature regulation.

if you have sun-facing rooms, keep the curtains closed over the windows to try and keep inside cool

keep an eye on your neighbours! especially if they’re elderly or live alone.

keep your local homeless population in mind! if you have the ability to, offering the homeless population near you small heat-beating things such as cold water (if you have spare water bottles or are capable of buying some) or a spare umbrella could do wonders in protecting those who may not be in a position to easily find shelter to take refuge in.

also keep an eye on the people around you who may be pregnant or who are very young.

try to plan your required activities or tasks for earlier in the day if its possible, so you don’t have to be out when the sun is hottest.

cut back on heavy meals! try to eat more snacks - more fruit, less meat - as is responsible. of course, do this carefully and eat when is necessary, but try not to have anything too heavy if you’re able!

if you have the space and ability, try putting your bedsheets into your fridge/freezer about an hour before you plan on going to bed. i swear it helps!

avoid drinking excess alcohol where possible

especially if you have to go outside, but just as a general tip, simply wetting a towel and wearing it over the back of your neck can to a lot in making you feel cooler

get plenty of sleep! i’m a hypocrite for saying it, but i promise a good night’s rest can help.

if you need to go outside, i highly recommend taking an umbrella or even a funky parasol to carry and create moving shade.

wear high spf sunscreen! even if you don’t necessarily burn easy like i do, please keep your skin safe! and moisturise!

heat exhaustion: the signs

loss of appetite / nausea

dizziness and confusion

headaches

exhaustion and/or general weakness

excessive sweating + pale and clammy skin

muscle cramps

rapid pulse / breathing

heat exhaustion: how to help

move (yourself/the symptomatic) to a cool place

loosen tight clothes and remove excess layers where possible (if someone else, of course do this with permission)

lie them down and raise their feet slightly

ensure they drink plenty of water - sports/rehydration drinks are okay, but water is obviously preferred

if there are muscle cramps, gently stretching the affected muscles can help ease the pain

cool their skin down - sponge or spray them with cool water, fan them, and if possible ice packs around their necks or armpits will help too.

stay with them (or keep yourself in the cool) until feeling better - they/you should start to cool down and feel better within about 30 minutes

when heat exhaustion gets serious: heat stroke symptoms

if still feeling unwell after 30 minutes of following the above advice (or, of course, local advice) for heat exhaustion symptoms

even if feeling too hot, there’s no sweating

red, hot, dry skin

irritation or aggression

a temperature above 40C/104F

rapid breathing / shortness of breath

lingering confusion

a seizure / fit

loss of consciousness

non-responsive

if you/someone is showing signs of heat stroke, immediately dial for emergency services.

further treatment while you wait:

continue with heat exhaustion treatments. wrap in wet towel or a wet sheet and direct a fan/fan the person if possible

if shivering occurs, however, reduce active cooling

continually monitor!

prepare to give CPR if necessary

a Bn size is the mean between An and An-1

Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.

Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.

Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.

I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.  

OP also invented armsocks.