I probably get even more disturbed at some of the shit people get up to, as someone who did grow up around guns-as-tools.
When you seem to have gotten much better safety training drilled in by the time you were 10 than too many actual adults who want to carry on a regular basis, there’s something bad wrong. Maybe at least some of them do know better and are “just” ignoring very basic safety precautions, but that really doesn’t make me feel any better about going near them.
A popular post I’ve seen on my dash a few times now, rewritten by me so as not to perpetuate abuse myths and technophobia:
If you want to meet in meatspace someone you met online, you can ask them to video chat to make sure they are who they say they are. If they’re unable or unwilling to video chat, you can ask them to voice chat and/or send selfies of them doing a highly specific, unusual thing, such as holding up three fingers.
Perhaps more important than the above is meeting in a public place, such as a public park or a coffee shop. Genuinely looking a certain way or being of a certain demographic doesn’t guarantee that a person isn’t out to harm you, but meeting in a public place gives you a chance to look at a person’s body language, etc. before putting yourself in a potentially vulnerable situation like being alone with them. It’s also often a good idea to bring along another person.
If the other person is offended by your taking safety measures, you should steer clear of them altogether. People who don’t think much of your small boundaries aren’t likely to respect your large boundaries.
As you know, we live in a horribly ageist society, and young people have more reason to be cautious than older people. But this advice is relevant to people of any age. Even people 30+ regularly take all of these precautions when meeting up with internet friends.
Some people on the internet are looking for people to harm, so please, only put yourself in situations you feel good about, and don’t hesitate to bail if you’re feeling uneasy. At the same time, remember that you’re far more likely to be abused or harmed by someone who has a close in-person relationship with you, particularly someone you depend on for something (e.g. housing) or someone you can’t get away from, such as a classmate if schooling is compulsory for you. Being alarmist about how “strangers from the internet might be rapists and serial killers!” feeds into abuse myths that cover for and excuse the far more common and dangerous typical abuse situations.
Lastly, I want to say that, particularly if you’re a young person, you might be getting a lot of these alarmist messages. People who don’t have a lot of experience with new technology are often afraid of it, and furthermore, we live in a culture that discourages young people from consensual friendships, and steers them toward the kind of abuse-prone relationships I described above. You might be feeling the urge to forgo safety measures in order to underscore the ridiculousness of this alarmism. That’s understandable, but I just want to say that these are just ordinary safety measures you can use to make you and others more comfortable and safe. They aren’t proof that online communication is less real than offline communication, or evidence for abuse myths. Hell, you probably take analogous measures when getting to know people in meatspace, without even thinking twice about it.
Trust your gut, seek out people who respect your boundaries, and stay safe.
help I just read the words “take peppermint oil in addition to your inhaler” with my own two eyes
@thebibliosphere help how do I reach through the internet and smack the oils out of somebody’s hands
<pterodactyl screech> YOU DUMB FUCKS ARE GOING TO KILL SOMEONE
Here’s a list of posts about the dangers of EOs
This one probably has the most pertinent information about EOs and how they gonna kill people [x]
On learning about EOs from cults [x]
On using EOs (more informative, less aggravated screeching) [x]
Another, which contains links, because I really do shout about this a lot. [x]
Sadly, in my experience, no matter how much you tell these morons they’re all completely brainwashed by the “I’m so enlightened with crunchy granola superpowers that nothing mother earth provides can hurt me” nonsense that there is little reasoning with them.
I swear if you put hemlock in front of these people they’d take it out of spite.
ok kids repeat after me
vinegar and bleach makes chlorine gas, which is highly toxic
ammonia and bleach makes chloramine, which is highly toxic
rubbing alcohol and bleach makes chloroform, which is highly toxic
hydrogen peroxide and vinegar makes peracetic/peroxyacetic acid, which can be highly corrosive
be careful about your cleaning products and dont get yourself injured or potentially killed ok
why it so dangerous to be clean
As someone who’s job is to handle chemicals like this, I need to state that this information is IMPORTANT. Plenty of people have accidentally injured or killed themselves at home because they didn’t know what kind of reaction certain substances have with one another. Play it safe and don’t mix chemicals.
Also don’t use bleach to clean up urine it’ll create chloramine bc of the ammonia in it and you can give yourself chemical pnemonia that way
Every time I see “helpful” posts telling people to mix these things while cleaning I cringe with my entire body.
I am so glad you did not put straight up tea tree oil on his head. That would have been very uncomfortable for him.
I am actually aware of it, and from what I can tell it is an okay brand? I’ve never used it so I don’t know.
The oils in use are good for keeping lice away (and treating them) (side note, if he does end up with them, olive oil smothers them. Shower cap on over night, wash out in the morning with a lice comb. May have to repeat a few times if there are any eggs left to hatch. But smothering the adults is a good place to start. My school had a lot of outbreaks. The chemical treatments burned my scalp a lot, olive oil was my savior.) and they are appropriately diluted by several good carrier oils.
The only thing I’d be worried about would be how old he is, and whether he has sensitivities of his own to contend with. So if it were me, I’d try a very very small amount to see how he does. If you’re able to find it in a store, maybe let him sniff it and see if he likes it or not. Menthol can feel “funny” to kids, which is a way of saying they know they don’t like it but they don’t know why and that’s a good enough reason to avoid it tbh.
Another thing you could do, would be to boil some fresh rosemary leaves (provided he’s not allergic to rosemary) in hot water for about 30 mins (about 3-4 stalks) let it cool, and put it in a spritz bottle and use it as a periodic treatment after bath times. Rosemary is a generally good scalp stimulant and good for making hair shiny, but lice also don’t like it. So it could be a better alternative if you’re worried about putting anything on his head that has menthol in it, which Fairytale does, cause it has peppermint in it.
Anyhoo. Just use your judgment, and his. If he tells you “smells funny” or sometimes they even let you know it smells “fuzzy” which is a way of letting you know it makes their chest go warm (one of the warning signs of a menthol sensitivity in kids) I wouldn’t use it. And hopefully you wont need to use the olive oil trick but if you do, good luck.
We really have harmed a whole generation of trans and gnc children by failing to communicate how serious a decision binding actually is, how there’s no ACTUALLY safe way to bind, how it permeneantly damages the body, how it can make top surgery more difficult in the future. I don’t think we should be keeping trans kids from binding (we let kids do all sorts of things they’re really not old enough to understand the potential consequences of) but we owe them the ability to make informed decisions at LEAST
So this is definitely an important conversation to have, but can you point me at some reading about “permanent damage”? I might just be lucky, but I had zero lasting effects from binding. I’d like to at least read up on it so I can have this conversation and be more specific than “be careful.”
Of course! I can’t easily source right now but I am more than happy to provide further info when I am not at work and on mobile. Unfortunately, like a lot of trans healthcare, a lot of what we know about binding is anecdotal and word of mouth. BUT permeneant damage can include:
-Musculoskeletal damage. Binders are indiscriminate compression tools; they can’t flatten the chest without applying pressure every other anatomical structure underneath including the spine, ribs, lungs and heart. Many people who bind experience chronic back pain, shoulder pain, sharp stabbing chest pains, permeneantly decreased lung capacity, literal spine deformation, etc etc.
-A continuation of the above but the ribs are actually jointed bones. Their ability to flex is absolutely vital to their ability to withstand trauma and protect your vital organs. Imagine the damage that would be done to your elbow if your bent your arm to full flexion and then tightly bound it closed like that, for six, eight, twelve hours per day, every day, for weeks or months or years. And you don’t NEED a functioning arm to live!
-Tissue atrophy. Forcing chest tissue to lay in an unnatural way can and will change the way that tissue looks, even to risk of atrophy. Some people who bind and only moderately dislike the way their chest looks find that they HATE the way it looks after binding for a period of time. Tissue atrophy can also make top surgery more difficult in the future, and increase the risk of complications like nerve damage.
-Worsened dysphoria. Once someone starts binding and becomes accustomed to seeing themselves with a flat chest, it can be much more difficult to see yourself without one, and dysphoria that much more intolerable. You can imagine the psychological feedback loop of binding more in response.
The typical safety measures passed around about binding are harm REDUCTION measures and should not be advertised as making binding “safe.” Binding is not safe. It is a very serious health decision with long term consequences and should be treated as such. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision, but it should not be considered the DEFAULT decision for chest dysphoria which is frankly how it’s currently treated.
gonna drop some links to read more:
Health impact of chest binding among transgender adults: a community-engaged, cross-sectional study
Holy shit
How to Self Rescue in the Event you Fall Through Frozen Ice
With that music I was not expecting this to be a completely serious and informative video
Guys, check this video out!
How to rescue yourself, having fallen through thin ice.
Very useful and easy to remember.
WarriorMale
Y’all really gonna make me bring back the essential oil discourse over whether or not you can ingest essential oils? Really? Really?
Short answer: no, essential oils are not safe to ingest in any way shape or form. They are for atmospheric diffusing or for topical application via the correct dilution methods via the use of a carrier oil. Water cannot dilute an essential oil. It’s basic chemistry.
Long answer: food extracts and tinctures are not the same thing as essential oils, and no, it doesn’t matter if they’re organic or not.
“Therapeutic grade” and “food grade” are non regulated terms used by essential oil companies to sell more products, and are not recognized by health governing bodies, including reputable aromatherapy and holistic schools.I say this as both a patient and practitioner of holistic therapies with nothing to gain or lose from telling you this. I have no motive other than your well being and that of the people around you. As I have stated, many, many times I merely wish you to be safe. (warning, link contains mention of child death.)
If you reblog this post with some variation of “okay but some oils are safe to ingest”, I am sorry, but you are misinformed. And I suggest you read
Essential Oil Safety: A Guide for Health Care Professionals by Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young, as your education on the subject has been remiss, and I would hate for your to accidentally harm yourself or someone else through good intentions.A good holistic practitioner does not reject science. Nor do they advocate for the rejection of conventional medicine. It is not your place to replace the doctor. It is your place to support the person through needing care. Remember that.
I always wonder what kind of uninformed nonsense you must be seeing to feel the need to make these PSAs.
It’s usually people seeing my old posts, deciding to come into my inbox and yell at me because they drink essential oils and they’re fine, so I must be a big pharma plant to discredit their lord and master doTerra/young living.
Cause y’know, that seems more plausible than the idea that they might be wrong.
@thebibliosphere do you have any suggestions on credible, science backed resources for those of us who would like to use essential oils safely? I’ve been wanting to work with them but haven’t because I know I’m uninformed and I know how dangerous they can be. Since you clearly know a lot about them is there a book or website you’d trust?
The book I listed up above is pretty much what I consider to be required reading at this point in terms of safety and also the science of essential oils.
It doesn’t give you the “here’s how to make xyz” the same way other books will, and there’s no feel good factors to it, but that’s not what it’s for.
It is there instead to teach you the basic chemistry of essential oils, the safety of using them (including drug interactions, risks to children, toxicology etc) and to give you the means to think critically about whether you should or should not do something.
It’s rather expensive I know (compared to the mass produced feel good aromatherapy guides written by people with as much scientific knowledge and depth as a tea spoon) but it’s a worthwhile investment. I believe you can actually rent it on Amazon, but you can also ask your library to find copies too.
If you’re looking for recipe books, I might be able to rec a few once I get back to my computer and run through my library (same for websites) but it’s worth bearing in mind you will always read something that conflicts with something else because too little research and education has been done on this kind of thing. I have some authors that I really liked, but in recent years they’ve fallen for the big multi-level-marketing lies companies are spewing and are recommending things they’d have never suggested twenty years ago. (And then usually you find out they’re in sponsorship from them and so much begins to make sense.)
The learning and knowledge most of us have is from years of hands on experience, selecting carefully which advice to follow (ie filtering out the bullshit), and learning from others with decades worth of experience.
So really my best advice is to read broadly, (utilize your local libraries!) and learn to differentiate between the snake oil merchants, and those who actually do their research.
A lot of the harmful stuff can be spotted once you know some basic physiology and chemistry.
Things like “water doesn’t dilulte essential oils because while oil is denser than alcohol, it is less dense than water, ergo it floats on top of water* and cannot be diluted by it” should not be news to people in this field, but unfortunately it is.
*which is how people get chemical burns from dropping non diluted essential oils into their bathtub. The essential oils literally create a film on top of the water, which then comes into contact with the skin.
If this does happen to you, flushing with water might reduce the pain but it won’t get the oil off your skin. Grab a carrier oil (jojoba, coconut, vegetable glycerin, heck even plain old olive oil) and gently swipe liberal amounts of it over the affected area to dilute the molecules further. THEN flush with water.
Now imagine how dangerous it is to get a chemical burn in your esophagus that can’t be diluted by drinking more water. And you’ll understand why I flip my lid when people advocate drinking them.
And no that doesn’t mean you should dilute them with olive oil and drink them either. Use a food extract or tincture instead, they’re designed to be absorbed by the body, and have been distilled for their INTERNAL health properties. Essential oils are distilled for EXTERNAL use.
Essential oils are GRAS chemicals and are intact used for ingestion, however in these instances they are (1) heavily diluted and (2) mixed with fats or fat substitutes.
“Generally Recognized As Safe” however also comes with the caveat of “we don’t really know too much about this, so used correctly this is likely safe” which multi-level-marketing companies have taken and twisted into “just drink some oils sweeties, it’s super healthy for you and totally safe!”
Which is NOT the correct use of them.
Heck, some people even get esophagus burns from peppermint oil capsules—widely used and effective in the treatment of IBS—because the capsule casing doesn’t remain intact until it reaches the gut. (And those burns suuuuck. I speak from first hand experience.)
Which is why I absolutely implore people to not drink essential oils in their water or use them to flavor things (extracts are right there in the grocery aisle, and usually about a third the price) because people do not seem to understand the risk they are taking. They’ve seen the GRAS disclaimer and think it’s harmless, and that’s how you end up with things like internal burns, rapid onset renal failure, sick pets and dead children.
GRAS is not a green light, it’s the amber, and you don’t know if it’s about to turn red or green and it’s better to slow down and assess your situation before plowing on into something you’re not fully prepared to deal with.
Which is why I also urge people find a certified herbalist or functional doctor if this is something they want to pursue because my god, do the majority of people not know what they’re getting into. Heck, I’ve been doing this for over 15 years and I don’t proclaim to know everything. If anything the only thing I’m profoundly aware of is just how much I don’t know.
But I know enough not to kill someone, and that’s a good place to start.
but i know enough
not to kill someone and that’s
a good place to start
^Haiku^bot^9. I detect haikus with 5-7-5 format. Sometimes I make mistakes.
Hey, we’re in line for some absurd temperatures here in the southwest this week. This is very important to know and keep in mind. Be safe, stay hydrated, stay out of the sun as much as you can.
Guys, please this is no fucking joke. I’ve had heat exhaustion that lead up to a heat stroke, and it’s really not a game. Something about heat related illnesses that a lot of people don’t know and that I didn’t know until it happened to me is how quickly it happens, and how severe the symptoms get in the blink of an eye. It’s so exponential it can become life or death in actual minutes. Also when the heat stroke is “over” you can potentially be dealing with months of flu like symptoms. It took about 3 months for me to feel entirely healthy again. The pain is incompacitating and you can’t think straight enough to even call for help, I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened to me had my friend not been there with me. By far the biggest factor in why this happened was dehydration. I was already dehydrated before going outside, and severely underestimated the weather. To give you an idea of how much summer doesn’t give a fuck about your feelings: When I was 14 I developed frostbite after wandering around lost and alone for hours in the worst blizzard in that state’s history to date. I mean it when I say that actually sounds like a vacation compared to the utter torture that was 30 minutes of heat exhaustion/stroke as a fully grown adult with a friend there to save me. Here’s some stuff on heat related illnesses, how they work, how to prevent them, and what to do if it happens to you.
LISTEN UP AGAIN KIDS
STOP REBLOGGING THIS FUCKING GARBAGE POST. IT IS 100% FUCKING BULLSHIT AND CAN AND MOST DEFINITELY WILL LITERALLY KILL.
DO YOU NOT SEE WARNING LABELS THAT SAY “DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING”? THEY AREN’T FUCKING AROUND. YOU CAN FUCKING BURN THEIR ESOPHAGUS BY CAUSING VOMITING, CAUSE CHOKING, DROWNING, OR MAKE IT WORSE!
AGAIN DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING DOWN ANYONE’S THROAT. THEY. CAN. DROWN.
IF SOMEONE IS LOSING CONCIOUSNESS ALL THE CHIT CHAT IN THE WORLD WILL NOT PREVENT IT AT THAT POINT THEY ARE IN SERIOUS DANGER.
“Buuut i don’t wanna take them to the hospital!!!”
WELL SUNSHINE GLAD YOU’D RATHER HAVE A DEAD FRIEND THAN A LIVING ONE BUT YOU’RE IN LUCK
CALL FUCKING POISON CONTROL. THEY ARE NOT THE COPS. THEY WILL HELP YOU.
AND IF THEY SAY GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL YOU GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL. NO EXCUSES. 0. NONE.
I have seen this shit cross my dash SO MANY TIMES so PLEASE fucking reblog this and prevent some well meaning idiot from accidentally killing someone they love!
For the love of god PLEASE REBLOG THIS
I see this stupid fucking post one a goddamn week and someone is going to literally fucking die from it
Seriously just fucking call poison control if someone’s eaten something they maybe (or definitely) shouldn’t, or too much of something, but you’re not sure if you should take them to the hospital.
Tell the operator what they consumed and how much of it and they’ll tell you how much you need to worry, what to do to treat them (SOMETIMES inducing vomiting is good, other times it’s a terrible idea, it depends on what the poison is), or what symptoms you should look out for (because sometimes one person has a much higher sensitivity than another to the same substance).
They’ll probably ask you questions about the substance and quantity consumed, about the poisoned person’s current condition and how long it’s been since they consumed whatever poisoned them, and if the person has any pre-existing health conditions that might cause extra issues (like… if someone has conditions of poor kidney or liver function, they’re more at risk from poisoning because those organs are critical to processing and eliminating toxins).
Poison control lines exist to give you information. They’re not the cops, they’re there to save lives. And even if they were the cops… you’d rather have your friend get arrested for doing drugs than die, right? RIGHT? Call fucking poison control. And then you fucking do what poison control tells you to.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.