Reference Blog

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)

It took less than 5 minutes to switch to a ProtonMail account, less than 2 hours to download and/or offload every byte of data from my Google account, and less than 3 days to change every single account or service I've ever signed up for to the new address.

As of today, the only single one I have that's still tied to it is YouTube. It's the only thing I'd lose access to if I deleted my Google acount entirely.

They really, really want you to believe that it's a hassle to switch to a different email system. But it's not. Most websites and/or services allow you to change the email address associated with it.

You can and should switch to a free, encrypted Proton email account. You also get all of the below perks. For free. There is no trick. It is paid for by the people with paying plans. I am one of them. The (completely functional) free tier is there to entice you into getting a paid account with even more perks. (It worked on me.) But there's no penalty or pressure for staying with the free account.

Also get your stuff off the google drive and put it on Proton's drive. It is encrypted. Only you with your password can access it. Not even Proton can see what you put in there.

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.

here's one place that will let you see what is available but there are a number of sites -

go to About:config find media.mediasource.enabled and toggle it to false find media.cache_readahead_limit and change it to 9999 find media.cache_resume_threshold and change it to 9999

additionally if you'd prefer mp4 to webm

also in about:config, find: media.encoder.webm.enabled media.mediasource.webm.audio.enabled media.mediasource.webm.enabled media.webm.enabled and toggle them all to false

note! this will limit video to 1080p

So if the sound of that leaves your mouth tasting of tar, here's what you want to do:

In the url bar, type in about:config

It'll give you a big scary warning page that you might poke holes in your browser. Good. You want to do that. Click continue.

One by one, you're going to need to put each of these into the search bar in the page, not up top:

browser.ml.enable browser.ml.chat.enabled extensions.ml.enabled browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled

Each of these are gonna have a lil toggle icon on the right hand side that looks like a funky double-ended arrow. Click that and the value next to it should change to false. It all auto saves as you go. Some of these might already be set to false by default and that's peachy.

The next best thing you can do for yourself is to set your default search engine to udm14 or Qwant, but for now, we're just tidying the garden a lil bit.

Edit: This wildly broke containment for a post that was supposed to be me basically ranting and grumbling like an old man on my porch to my homies. If I’ve inspired you to follow through with this, peachy. That was mildly intended. Better yet, I hope I’ve spurred a buncha you on to do your own bit of digging and research.

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.

My mom (72) recently downsized and moved close enough to me that checking on her in person regularly is not really out of my way, but when I was obvious about it she wouldn’t let me “stop-by” because she was, “fine”.

- ask for something they can actually help you with. Elders have skills. Mending? Advice about knitting, gardening, home repair, nevermind professional training?

-ask about their experiences. “I was reading about xyz event the other day & I would love to know what that time was like for you. Can we chat about it over tea?” Goes double for family history for relatives.

-“Someone gave me this [or, I ended up with extra] & I don’t need/want it, but I bet you have a use for it. Can I bring it over? I would hate for it to go to waste.”

1. Do not do age verification.

Oh no I dropped my link, what a horrible thing! Sure hope this doesn't get reblogged until it reaches users from the UK and Brazil!

Here's how that works:

say you get a text from your internet provider, let's say it's Comcast (whom i hate). So you have this text that says it's from Comcast about your bill with a contact number and a clickable link -- could be real, could be a scam.

Don't touch anything about this text. Open a web browser and look up the customer service number for Comcast. Or get the number from the bill they send you. However you do it, get the contact info for Comcast from a trusted source, like an official phone directory or the Comcast website itself.

Get in touch with them using that information.

So. Let's run the example both ways it could go.

If it IS a scam: you reach out to Comcast and tell them you were contacted about a problem with your bill, they look you up in their customer database, and they tell you there is no problem with your bill.

If it's NOT a scam, you do the same thing, they look you up, and they explain the problem. In this case, neither Comcast nor the employees involved give a single shit whether or not you clicked the link in the text vs. going through their official website.

This works the same for the your bank, the IRS, Amazon, political causes, charities, everything.

...