Just Another Tumblr User

So I started listing all the birds I’ve tried and didn’t like going, “Chicken, turkey, duck, squab, pheasant, Cornish game hen, I didn’t like any of them.”

“What about ptarmigan?” the guy asked.

I kinda thought he was joking since that’s such a random bird but I shook my head no.

The woman though went, “What the hell is that?”

“Oh,” I said, “They’re a little ground bird, kinda bigger than a pigeon? They make a really cute call, you should look it up.” I refrained from saying that their tracks confuse people in the snow because they look like massacred rabbits.

I realized the man was staring at me and the woman was fully just lost.

“You didn’t expect me to know what a ptarmigan is, did you?” I laughed.

“I really didn’t,” he admitted. “I’m from up in Alaska so I’ve had them in stew, but no one knows what the hell they are.”

“I really like birds.”

“Oh. Sorry for eating them.”

I’ll be real I don’t know much about Phoenix Wright. But! I do know a lot about birds.

The mighty ptarmagin! Practically a feathered rabbit, these magnificent creatures are built for the snow.

Look at those boots! Wonderfully feathered. They spend most of their time as little snow lumps.

In fact, they’re very well known for the above phenomenon.

then I looked in the notes and y’know.

some people seems confused.

Why a shopping cart with stained glass? 

or This would be cool to shop with

or something about religion and NO

NO

THIS. Is about HOMES.

That style stained glass? Those diamonds? They speak to me, and they say “Townhouse”. and FANCY townhouse, at that. They say “City home, old home, a home that is RICH, a shelter from the storm and a safe place for a family”.

But on! a! shopping cart!

That evokes - to me - Homelessness.

The person on the street who had no other choice but to steal the best cart they could from a store’s corral just to have a way to transport the meager belongings that are all they fucking have in this world. And it’s NOT a home or a safe place or a shelter but it’s all you fucking have!

And this piece goes and puts them fucking together! AND NAMES IT.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

ice tucked in a hair bun = great cooling.

Or soak a baseball cap or other cloth hat that won’t be damaged by water.

Water needs energy to evaporate. As it dries, it consumes a little heat in its immediate vicinity.

Therefore any significant amount of water — buckets, wet towels, damp laundry— in a small room can cool it a degree or two, although this doesn’t work as well if the air is already humid.

Soak a tea towel/hand towel and then roll it up long ways. Stick it in the freezer in a U shape if possible. Wait for it to freeze and sling it around your neck. Preferably have a few so you always have one ready to swap out once the current one is thawed completely.

Wear light color clothing if outside, preferably COTTON. Polyester and acrylic are fucking terrible for heat transfer away from the body.

Conserve energy when possible. If you can get away with it, be your laziest on the hottest days. The less movement you make the less heat you generate.

Get a big fuckin oversized straw/paper hat. Really any sort of hat that will block the sun but still allow heat to dissipate.

Along with drinking lots of water, suck on ice cubes. You can even make your own fancy flavored ice cubes so it's a nice treat.

Try to avoid being directly on or right next to concrete or asphalt during the hottest part of the day. It does literally get hot enough to cook food on sometimes. Additionally you will find that, say, a big parking lot will remain hot long after the sun goes down but dirt and grass cool off pretty quickly.

If you don't mind being dirty and you're already outside, soil is significantly cooler even just 6 inches below the surface. If you're out gardening for example and just need a few minutes to cool down, use a hand spade to just turn some soil over somewhere and shove your hands in the cool dirt. (You could, technically, dig yourself a very shallow trench if you had the space and then just lie down in it for more cooling but at that point you may as well just go inside lol)

Try not to use any heat-generating appliances. Plan on cold meals. Let your clothes air dry (it'll help very slightly cool down your room too). Don't even turn your gaming PC on at all.

If you're working in a restaurant with piss poor or no AC, the walk-in cooler is your friend. Take 5-10 minute breaks in there frequently. Do not do that with walk in freezers though unless you absolutely have someone to check on you. (Walk in freezer doors tend to be heavier and have a much stronger seal and latch. The blowers are much stronger as well. Even if you got stuck in a cooler, most of them aren't cold enough to be a problem unless it's like. Literally all day long. A walk in freezer can start hurting you in as little as 5-10 minutes especially if you aren't clothed for it.)

If you have a lower level room in your house, stay in it as it will be the coolest. Bonus points if you have a basement you can hang out in. It'll be pleasantly cool in a basement most of the time.

Change your bedsheets to pure cotton if you can. Microfiber is just a fancy way of not calling it a polyester blend. Polyester will not keep you as cool as cotton will.

If you have west-facing windows, you may as well just go ahead and foil them up. Or get some reflective foam and cut to size. If you can put anything in them, then get some heavy blackout curtains.