I’m home sick from church because I’m an idiot that didn’t get their flu shot so I’m mainlining saltines and watching Hallmark Christmas movies. Anyone who wants to come watch some real cheesy nonsense, join me here: https://togethertube.com/rooms/squad-goals
since it’s hanukkah and people might be paying attention to jewish people for once, some stuff to note
don’t call a jewish person a jew unless you know they’re okay with being called that
antisemitism is still very real (you’d be surprised how many people ‘forget’ this)
goyim (or gentile) means non-jewish people, goy is singular.
undermining and erasing jewish traditions is antisemitism
if you say to ‘get over the holocaust’ or anything along those lines i will come over and bash your head in with our spare menorah
Don’t tell someone they can’t be Jewish because “they don’t look like a Jew.” That’s not for you to decide.
EDIT: this post is going around again and i’m not really sure why. i know it isn’t hanukkah, this was made last year. and some jewish people don’t like being called jews because the word jew is often used in a negative light (“jew nose”, “greedy jew”, etc) and we don’t like goyim saying those things.
I love this so much. Because the star of Nixon’s impeachment hearings was a black woman, Rep. Barbara Jordan, and she ended up giving one of the most iconic speeches of all time because of it. Basically a speech about what it means to be a true American as a black woman in a tyranical society.
👏🏿
Her vocabulary 🙌🏿🙌🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿 this is an awesome speech. Her eloquent use of language and text. Yassssssssssss
****Please for the love of your chosen deity this is for writing and educational purposes only- I know its tempting but do not try any of this at home!!!****
Medical ether and industrial ether are basically the same.
Medical oxygen and industrial oxygen are also basically the same (industrial oxygen for welding is actually more pure than medical oxygen, but this doesn’t matter much).
Most drugs are completely effective (>90% of expected active drug) for at least 5 years after their “expiration” dates provided they are kept in their original, unopened packaging. Some drugs are completely effective for decades if kept in controlled conditions.
According to one study, that fact includes EpiPens.
In patients who have never chronically used opioids, a combination of 1,000mg acetaminophen (tylenol, paracetamol) and 400mg ibuprofen (motrin, advil) every 6 hours have been shown to be equivalent to the
standard starting dose of oxycodone/hydrocodone in treating acute musculoskeletal (breaks, strains, sprains, dislocations) pain.
Rotating these medications (giving the acetaminophen, waiting three hours, giving the ibuprofen, waiting 3 hours, giving the acetaminophen again, and so on) makes them more effective. This works pretty well any time you have more than 1 medication for the same thing.
Benadryl can be used as a local anesthetic if you can find (or make) a form of it that can be safely injected.
Nitrous oxide cartridges for artisan whipped cream dispensers (naturally found in an abandoned Starbucks in the aftermath of an apocalypse, or on Amazon) can provide up to 3 minutes of decent conscious anesthesia each (they need to be emptied into a whipped cream dispenser and given with 25-50% regular air or oxygen and breathed in order to work well).
Wound-wise, you don’t need saline or sterile water to clean an already dirty wound. If you would drink it, its safe for wound cleaning.
Speaking of that, you can make an irrigation syringe by poking a small hole in the top of a pop bottle filled with irrigation fluid (or tap water).
Many venoms can be at least partially degraded by soaking the bite site in very hot water.
You can make a spacer for an albuterol inhaler out of a 16oz pop bottle by cutting a hole in the bottom, placing the inhaler through it (with some space around it for air to get in), and breathing through the top.
A pressure cooker (stovetop or electronic) is basically just an autoclave re-purposed for food. Throw a shelf in there to sit over a small amount of water and you can quickly sterilize temperature/pressure resistant equipment like metal scalpels.
If you get the balance right, you can centrifuge something/blood with a hand drill by attaching a test tube to each side of the spinny part.
It seems counterintuitive because generally bacteria eat sugar, but raw honey works as well or better than most antibiotics when preventing/treating wound infection (the honey goes in the wound, btw, but eating it would still taste good).
Regular insulin does not actually need to be refrigerated unless its being stored for long periods. Even open, it will still last about a month at room temperature without significantly degrading.
IV is not the only form of rehydration. Oral rehydration is actually best, but you can infiltrate sterile IV fluids slowly into fat, or provide a very slow enema of tap water or even slightly brackish water that the body will absorb and utilize.
Smelling isopropyl alcohol or peppermint oil can help with nausea.
Fishing line is extremely similar to suture material. Dental floss is less so.
You could, theoretically, hook up as many as 4 people to the same ventilator as long as they all had relatively similar ventilation needs and they were all chemically paralyzed to the point where assist-control mode would be appropriate. Programmed tidal volume would be the total of all four patients.
You can re-locate a dislocated shoulder by having the person lay face down with the dislocated arm hanging off the side. Tie about 10-15lbs to it and let the weight slowly release the muscle and reduce the shoulder.
Most of these came from the book Improvised Medicine: Providing Care in Extreme Environments, By Kenneth V. Iserson.
Feel free to add any you’ve heard of!
Do not try this LONG-ASS LIST at home, etc. I’ve got some medical and generalized survival shit to add based on some fucked-up shit that’s happened to me in my life! My trauma should benefit your fic, so here:
I went back in the day when Main Hall still had dorms in it, I think they switched it out when they got tired enough of hearing about the ghosts. I remember learning about that little place name trick while going there but I can never remember the word for it.
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I have a personal theory that how a dream makes you feel is more meaningful than the content.
What I got from your dream was a sense of wonder and privilege (the good kind), followed by the need to bear witness and advocate for the cryptids. Topped off with a disturbingly accurate example of the attitudes you’d face.
(staring nobly into the distance) yes. yes, you understand. you understand.
I’m so sorry but this is what came to mind and so this is what I drew
Holy
Thank you so much for sharing that dream, it was EXACTLY what I needed to stop feeling like shit. Now I, too, am honored by the knowledge of adult teletubbies.
Rooster sketch
“Sometimes he looked incredibly adult, like a middle aged man was staring out, just happy to have a companion to make sense of the brilliant scramble of his brain, far too old and settled to prune himself into ghastly shapes for the idiotic populace’s pleasure. And sometimes Roost looked so incredibly young and confused, like he was lost someplace he had never been, and never learned the language, and couldn’t find his parents, and just wanted to fly away into a million pieces.” ( @thursdayplaid , Bantam Wars)
Rereading the Wee Doctor series again (what is my life 😂😂😂) I can’t quite nail down Roost’s age and expression and the bird bone gentleness he possesses, the gentle version of Sherlock that he is. Will need to try again.
Speak with Tenderness 