Baby Astrologer

(also, she was never judgey - if my meal was a single potato chip she would simply say good job eating a potato chip today <3 )

Textpost by "tapir worf" @‌eggy_egregore, that reads:

If you don't go outside every single day during the day and look at the sky, you are performing a punishing biological experiment on yourself previously reserves for prisoners

End ID.]

On the social side, preventing transition is an enormous overreach with regard to freedom of expression. Legal gender change is a necessity to protect privacy.

This is all downstream of the simple idea that you should treat trans people like a type of people, an idea that a lot of people get really offended by, as they do with women, racialized people, disabled people, gay people, pretty much any marginalized group in history.

Because the moral argument is trivially against them, bigots will try to frame themselves as a rational, scientifically-minded group trying to rein in the naive optimism of their opponents. They will insist that the science is on their side, and by doing so handwave the moral argument because their point of view is "true".

It is not.

The playbook of these groups is old, reliant on a few rhetorical tricks that play on confirmation bias, and generally tries to do one thing: Engineer talking points that are wrong in ways that take scientific competence to debunk, so that a fully accurate debunking loses general audiences.

That's why it's important to get ahead of them and attack the foundations they're building their rhetoric on.

It's tempting to just fall back on the moral argument, it really is, because these shitheels are arguing positions that are pretty fucking heinous. That should be enough. Unfortunately, it gets you liberal "allies" who seem genuinely embarrassed to be on your side, because they're not confident that their position is empirically correct in addition to being morally correct.

That's why stuff like debunking "concerning" scientific results about trans youth in Finland matters.

If you wait until your AC goes out to make sure you have enough fans, there will not be fans available for you to buy. If you wait for a wildfire, no one will have KN-95s for you to buy. They will all be sold out, especially as climate change makes summers more and more severe, and fire season longer and longer.

Other tips for keeping cool in extreme heat:

Do not ever leave a child or a pet in the car while it is off. Ever. Not "just for a few minutes," nothing. Kids have died from being trapped in hot cars in temperatures as low as 70 degrees F (21 C)

Especially if you live somewhere that doesn't typically get hot, make sure you own at least 2 tank tops and 2 pairs of shorts if at all possible. Thrift them or search them on Buy Nothing/something similar if you don't have them already. You will want the option

Cotton fabric evaporates moisture quickly and sheds heat fast. Cotton clothes are great for the heat for that reason, and if you're really desperate for relief, get cotton shirts/towels/cloths wet and either wear them or hang them up in front of a fan. The fan will blow the cooler, moist air throughout the room, cooling things down

Open windows and doors on opposite sides of rooms to create airflow

Hydration tablets and electrolyte drinks are magic for dehydration. You need to replace the salts you're sweating out. Salty trail mix is also great for this (you eat it on hiking trails for a reason)

Make sure your pets stay cool! Cold packs inside fabric can be really good for this (and for you!)

Most efficient place for a cold, wet towel to cool you down is the sides of your neck, your hands, and the soles of your feet (but NEVER put ice against your bare skin!)

Don't really expect anything of yourself between 1pm and 4pm - that is the hottest part of the day, and so it's the time you need to be the most chill (ba-dum tss). Movement creates heat (hence why you shiver, hence why exercising warms you up), so try to do as little as possible, and especially try to save errands and exercise until dusk

Many places now have heat shelters. Look them up in your area. The public library is often a spot for these, and if not, still a really good and FREE place to stay all day with AC

Plants cool things down. Standing on the grass will leave you measurably cooler than standing on the asphalt two feet away. Stay on plants, stay in the shade, and do what you can to add plants and green spaces to your area, to help keep it cool

If you live in a wildfire hotspot, try your best to get an air filter or air purifier now, because there will be none left by the time you need one

If you do end up near a wildfire zone: any smoke you can smell is smoke that can affect your lungs. Leave the house as little as possible. Duct tape the seams around windows and exterior doors to help keep out the smoke. And pack a go bag (change of clothes, toiletries, important documents, medications, spare food and water, essentials for pets or kids)

Know what heat exhaustion and heatstroke look like, and how quickly you are at risk. Particularly if you are chronically ill, have/had long covid, or are taking certain medications, you may get heat exhaustion really fast. (I've gotten it in literally 15 minutes flat. It does not need to take very long - if you're beet red and have a pounding headache, that may be heatstroke, take it fucking seriously.)

If you do have known issues with heat tolerance, consider carrying around a thermometer on hot days. Check your temperature if you start feeling "off", or routinely while in the heat. If you're running a fever, you're either sick or have heat illness, get the fuck out of the heat. (Be aware that for oral temperature, you need to have not eaten/drank anything in the last 15 minutes. Armpit will do in a pinch. I am not sure how well infrared works if you're in the "clammy" stage of heat exhaustion.)

If you already have heat exhaustion or heatstroke, fans and wet towels may not cool you down sufficiently. Cold drinks, icepacks, or a cold shower/bath are faster in an emergency - they cool you directly, rather than using sweat/evaporation to cool your skin. If you have limited resources to cool yourself, focusing on pulse points/big veins can help, like putting an ice pack on your neck or the inside of your wrist. Think like a vampire.

Cotton can be ok, but linen is better if you can get it. Polyester and other synthetics are typically fucking hot, avoid, avoid. Check your clothing labels - even "obviously" cotton things like t-shirts may actually be 50%+ polyester.

An adult human can only absorb about 1L of liquid per hour. Staying hydrated in extreme heat can be very difficult, because you may be losing more than 1L per hour. Using a timer to make sure you remember to drink can help.

If water suddenly tastes disgusting, check your electrolytes. Having emergency Gatorade (or similar) on hand can be helpful, because not only does it have electrolytes, but it tastes gross and sweet and chemical to most people who aren't low on electrolytes. No shade toward people who inexplicably like Gatorade on its own merits - but if it suddenly starts tasting way better than usual, take that as a sign. The rate at which people lose electrolytes through sweat varies wildly by person, even without chronic illness in the mix.

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for your pets. Providing cool water and cool places to lay down is helpful. Panting is bad, but many animals are uncomfortable well before that point. (Mine usually start laying around on the coolest ground available and refusing to play around 80F. They are, however, extremely fluffy cats.)

Know what discomfort and heat-related illness look like for anyone you're responsible for, especially children and elderly people, who are more vulnerable.

Support and patronize your local libraries; they're an invaluable resource for anyone without A/C in this fucking world, in addition to all the other great work they do.

Watch Duty absolutely does do more than just SoCal - they’re expanding coverage as fast as they can and trying to build relationships with as many orgs as possible to expand that coverage not just geographically but technically as well. You can use the app to track firefighting aircraft, get timely updates on evacuation warnings and orders, track wind direction and see updated fire perimeters, watch fire cams, check AQI, and set it to notify you of any new fire in your area. They have live humans working as reporters monitoring fire and police frequencies and often have more up-to-date info than local news stations, and are a better resource for updates on firefighting progress than twitter used to be (a lot of fire departments and cal fire units stupidly provide most of their online updates through walled sites like twitter and facebook, and WatchDuty is a much better - less dystopian - way of getting that vital info).

So some asshole has thought up a new Tumblr scam: it's a post on a Tumblr account that's named something to make it look official-ish.

Variations include:

account-help

account-sync

account-update

account-updating

These posts show up on your dashboard, telling you that because they think you've monetized your Tumblr account, they're putting you in the penalty box sending you to the cornfield setting you to "Lurker Mode" where you can post but no one will see your posts. And, naturally, all you have to do is click on the helpful link to give tumblrsupport your account data to get it fixed.

Friends, this is a big fat lie.

The official location of Tumblr Support is https://www.tumblr.com/support or https://support.tumblr.com. And guess what? They'll already have your account information.

Tumblr has no such thing as Lurker Mode.

If you right-click on their link, you'll see it's a munged/shortened link. You can go to a site like https://www.expandurl.net to expand that link and see where it takes you: it's not Tumblr Support.

@staff, please be aware this is happening.