One of the most important things I learned in my Language and the Law class is that law enforcement will intentionally misinterpret every type of statement asking for a lawyer as not asking for a lawyer. Even directly saying it like this “I will not speak to you without a lawyer” can be taken as a simple statement of fact rather than a request for a lawyer. You literally have to state “I am now invoking my right to a lawyer” and every time they try to proceed with an interrogation you have to answer every question with “I am invoking my right to have a lawyer present”. You can’t just tell them you won’t talk without a lawyer or that you want a lawyer. You have to state that you are invoking your rights. Otherwise they could just say “well they just said they wouldn’t speak without a lawyer present. That’s not invoking their rights to a lawyer. It’s just stating a fact.” even just stating your right to a lawyer doesn’t count!

<>PLEASE share this addition. I am a lawyer who works in criminal defense, and this is one of the most avoidable things that people consistently get wrong about the Miranda rights.

Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have fo<>und DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

<>Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

<>1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

<>2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent <>will not<> invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

<>3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and <>legally<> unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, <>and then say noth<>ing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated �� if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

<>Putting it all together:

Ask: <>“Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say:�<>�“I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and <>do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

<>Finally, a very important disclaimer:

I may be a lawyer, but I’m not your lawyer, and I cannot guarantee that what I’ve just laid out here will always work for every situation. We didn’t get to this bizarre and absurd place overnight – we built this ridiculous system piecemeal, by deciding on a case-by-case basis that certain phrases were “too ambiguous” or certain types of questioning weren’t actually questioning at all. The law is still in flux, and is still fundamentally out to get you, and willing to bend plain meaning beyond all recognit<>ion to do it. Even if you invoke your rights perfectly, exactly as I have specified above, there’s a chance that your invocation of rights will be disqualified on some new technicality that no one’s even thought of yet – and that’s precisely the problem.

Watch this video: “Don’t Talk To The Police”

Communique from an Ex-Cop - Christopher Dorner

Who Needs Fascists When There Are Police? - Reflections on the Anti-Fascist Mobilization in Portland of August 4

The Thin Blue Line is a Burning Fuse - Why Every Struggle Is Now a Struggle against the Police

Slave Patrols and Civil Servants - A History of Policing in Two Modes

Cameras Everywhere, Safety Nowhere: Why Police Body Cameras Won’t Make Us Safer

Seven Myths About the Police

The Two Faces of Fascism: How Police Are Complicit in the Rise of Fascism

“Dear Citizens, This Is Your Police”: In Praise of the Police-Free Zone in Hamburg

Collusion Between the Police and Alt-Right Is Inevitable

When the Police Get Into Doxxing

Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind

A post that imagines a series of common public safety concerns and the ways they could be dealt with without police

Police and Thieves: Insurgency, Control, Crime

We Want a World Without Police. These Organizers Are Charting the Way

More Trainings Are Not the Answer to Police Violence Against Disabled People

The Myth of State Neutrality

Against the Logic of the Guillotine - Why the Paris Commune Burned the Guillotine—and We Should Too

The Anarchy Police: Militant Anti-Fascism as Alternative Policing Practice

Incarcerated Anti-Fascists Report Targeted Beatings by Guards

Good post with links about prison abolitionism

Another good post with links about police and prison abolitionism, and transformative justice

The #coronavirus and the police

The other death toll from the coronavirus pandemic - The police are harassing, beating and killing people while enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns across the world.

Unrest in Beaubreuil, France: “We are at war”… against the police!

Internet Piracy 101

because everything should be free anyway, so until it is, just steal what you want.

Torrent Client

torrenting is a way to share files from one computer to another without the need for a centralized server to hold everything. to start torrenting you need to get a torrent client. there are several different options for all operating systems but my favorite one that is compatible with Linux, OS X and Windows is called Transmission. you can download it from here: https://transmissionbt.com/

Torrent Tracker

now that you have the application you need to download stuff, let’s find something to download. trackers come in two varieties: public and private. private trackers are beyond the scope of this post, but the main advantage to them is security. it’s much harder for your ISP to tell what you’re downloading, so you’re much less likely to get sent a copyright claim email if that’s something your ISP does (more on that later). they also typically have higher quality and more obscure content, and usually enforce seeding ratios so that files are always available. by their nature, private trackers are very strict about who they allow access to. there are more extensive guides online for how to gain access if you’re interested. i’m going to focus on public trackers for this post. these don’t require user registration but are susceptible to snooping by some ISPs and their contractors, which i will detail how to get around later in a couple paragraphs.

there are many trackers out there. my favorite public tracker right now is called 1337x and can be accessed at 1337x.to. one thing to keep in mind about trackers is that due to their legal-grey-area nature they often resort to sketchy shit to stay afloat, such as displaying ads for malware and scams, and dark patterns such as fake “Download” buttons which dont actually lead where you want. a good way to avoid those things is to install an adblocker like ublock origin. 

using a tracker site is pretty self explanatory: search for what you want and hit download. if you have a torrent client installed, it should automatically come up and ask you to confirm the download. then you just wait until the download finishes, at which point you can open it. tada!

each torrent on a tracker has a certain number of seeds and peers. these numbers indicate how many other people have copies of the files, and consequently determine how fast your download can finish. try to pick torrents with the higher number of seeds when you can.

keeping the files in the same directory that your torrent client downloaded them to allows you to act as a seed. this means that when someone else wants the torrent, their torrent client will download some parts of the files directly from your computer. this is the basis for all peer-to-peer sharing and it’s encouraged to seed as much as you can, so that everyone can have consistent access.

Evading Your ISP

some ISPs in the US, such as Comcast, have automated systems in place that detect copyrighted material in torrent traffic. when they detect it, you get sent an automatic email that lets you know that they know what you’re doing and you’d better stop right now. in practice, legal action against torrenting is on shaky legal ground, since you can’t actually prove that just because something was downloaded from your connection, it was actually you who did it - after all, it could be a random person who broke into your wifi, or a guest, whatever. these kinds of emails are still scary, however, and i dont trust the courts to protect people forever, so i prefer to go the extra mile by paying for a VPN in those situations. i use mullvad which is $5 per month. again though, not all will ISPs require this; if you’re on a provider who doesn’t care, you don’t have to bother. 

Torrent To A File Server

you can torrent stuff directly to your computer but i like to keep all my torrented media on a file server on a network share, because then your files are accessible from any computer on your home network, and they’ll still be there if your computer breaks. there are many software projects that exist to facilitate this; i tend to just build these systems myself but i really like what FreedomBox is going for, so if you have a spare computer and time, i encourage you to play around with that.

<>what to do instead of calling the police �<>��

<>here’s a thread by user a_busy_woman on twitter

���take a community class on how not to call the cops and how to deescalate [...]“

<>all the links in the thread

Soft skills for the apocalypse

Let’s face it, if the world ends, so many of us will flee somewhere else for safety that we’ll end right back up in communities again. There’s going to be more to it than growing your own food and knitting handspun socks.

I’m linking to resources, but a many of these skills, being interpersonal, are best taught in live trainings by professional instructors, where you can see and feel all the interpersonal dynamics going on in the room, and by experience, trying them out on real people in an educational setting.

When the world ends, it will be helpful to be able to::

Even small local pieces of activism today, like organizing a protest march or lobbying your municipal government to make public spaces more accessible, have a double reward: There’s the work you’re doing, and the skills you learn when you do it.

the assumption that people with violent killing skills should be given priority/power in a post-apocalyptic society is the reason it stays post-apocalyptic and doesn’t actually rebuild society

the assumption that people with violent killing skills should be given priority/power in a post-apocalyptic society is the reason it stays post-apocalyptic and doesn’t actually rebuild society

Mental Health Must Reads

As promised, here’s a list of mental health must reads that I’ve  personally read and recommend. I read or listened to all of these books for FREE with my public library card and Libby App but linked to where you can buy these books from the aut<>hors.

<>Abusive / Narcissistic Parents:

<>Addiction (haven’t read a lot on thi<>s):

<>Anxiety & Stress:

<>Body Image & Disordered Eating:

<>BPD:

<>OCD:

<>Sexual Assault / Abuse / Trauma: ��

<>Workbooks:

Why we need masks for all

Okay, I am going to put myself out here: we need masks for all. If you live in a country that doesn’t have widespread use of masks in public, this one is for you.

Here is a graph of coronavirus trajectories by country. All those countries in blue have widespread public use of masks, in addition to other measures.

Obviously I am not basing all of this on a few countries that have managed to slow the spread. Here is a link to a summary of 33 scientific papers that show that masks (even handmade ones, we’ll get to that<>) reduce spread of infection for the general population. Many of these studies are themselves meta-analyses of data. The evidence is mounting that public mask usage is an important strategy to reduce COVID-19 transmission. I want to highlight this paper in particular which modeled tha<>t public mask usage could slow or even stop the spread of an influenza pandemic.

(The CDC and WHO still maintain that healthy people should not wear masks. Preserving them for healthcare workers is important, but that is a separate question from whether they work or not. It seems likely from the evidence presented above that they do help at least somewhat)

Of course, there is a nationwide shortage of masks in most countries. Medical grade masks must be reserved for healthcare workers (if you have some, look for local ways to donate them, many hospitals are accepting donations). So where do we get the masks for the public? We follow the lead of the Czech Republic and Taiwan and <>make our own. Here is a great summary of how the Czech Republic went from 0 to 100% public mask usage, in less than two weeks.

A person makes masks and a “mask tree” where neighbors could donate handmade masks to others. Note that masks (or anything really) can be effectively sterilized by heating above 70C (158F) either in the oven for paper masks or using regular cycle in your washer and dryer for cloth masks.

Studies have shown even basic household materials like t-shirts can be effective at blocking droplets that contain viruses.

Are they as good as n95 respirators? No. But outside of certain medical procedures, the disease mainly spreads through droplets, and these homemade masks are still pretty good (though not perfect) at blocking those. This goes both ways: the masks provide a layer of protection to protect you, but ALSO contain a lot of the droplets you could be spreading. Some people with the disease don’t have any symptoms at all, so wearing masks is also importan<>t to reduce the chance of infecting others.

Masks, like social distancing, don’t have to be 100% effective in order to help flatten the curve.

Here is a model from the Seattle area, which shows how small changes in social contacts can effect total case numbers. You can see that even reducing contacts 25% has a profound effect on case numbers after a few weeks. The same thing would be true if wearing masks reduced transmissions by just 25%.

I want to point out that as long as you don’t take risks you wouldn’t take otherwise and keep your hands off the mask, there is very little risk to doing this now as we wait for further scientific evidence. And the evidence is mounting that simple ma<>sks reduce risk <>and slow spread.

In the Czech republic, they went from no one wearing masks to 100% (it is now mandatory in public) in about 10 days. While the mandatory order to cover your mouth and nose is only a week old, they have seen a slower growth of cases than the rest of Europe despite lots of testing.

Basic masks can be made with just a t-shirt and scissors, no sewing required. This video shows you how, just wear your mask higher on your face than this guy. (Video is changed from original post to one that doesn’t require Facebook login)

And a few more tutorials

Simple mask that can be made with a sewing machine, from Craft Passion

If you get good at making homemade masks, especially the ones with HEPA filters, some hospitals are now accepting donations of homemade masks as well. Check to see what is going on in your local area.

If the papers cited above are correct, wearing a mask now when you need to leave the house for essential chores will reduce the time it takes to bring our cases down, and public use of masks could be invaluable in keeping cases low when people start to go back to work.

<>We can change our culture from stigmatizing masks to expecting people wear them. It happened in the Czech Republic in less than two weeks. We can do it too.

If you have the time, please watch this video. It was the thing that really made all of this click for me, and it has a ton of great information. Here is a shorter video from the Czech youtuber who started the movement in his country which I also recommend watching & sharing.

Please reblog & add resouces, tutorials, or mask selfies! There are three main things you can do to help spread the word and normalize mask wearing: 1) share videos & other information on the topic; 2) take a selfie of you wearing a home-made mask; 3) spread the message, with hashtag #masks4all.

March 30th updates:

A lot has happened in the four days since I wrote the post. Some news:

George Gao, director-general of the Chinese CDC, gave an interview about the biggest mistakes other countries are making:

�<>��The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role—you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others.”

President of Slovakia, Zuzana Chepalova has been matching her masks to her outfits this week. Slovakia has also made masks mandatory in public.

A team of public health experts at American Enterprise Institute included public use of masks a key part of their strategy:

There is emerging evidence that asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 is possible, which complicates efforts to pursue case-based interventions. <>To reduce this risk during Phase I, everyone, including people without symptoms, should be encouraged to wear nonmedical fabric face masks while in public

(Link - it’s worth reading the whole section on masks if you are interested)

US Senator Pat Toomey calls for the public to wear homemade masks to prevent the spread of covid-19.��

Not news, but important, here is the conclusion of a study that evaluated homemade masks against surgical and n95 respirators for protection against respiratory infection:

�<>��Any type of general mask use is likely to decrease viral exposure and infection risk on a population level, in spite of imperfect fit and imperfect adherence, personal respirators providing most protection. Masks worn by patients may not offer as great a degree of protection against aerosol transmission.”

A great new summary video to share, featuring experts from the Czech medical community and the Minister of Health of the Czech Republic:

In addition to the t-shirt method in the original post, here are three more face-covering tutorials that do not require a sewing machine:

This one is disposable!

Here is how to turn a t-shirt into an impromptu face covering, no cutting or sewing required.

5 more new sew styles. Could potentially be reinforced with a paper towel, or additional cloth.

I want to end with a plea not to treat the masks as a substitute for quarantine, social distancing, hygiene etc. The biggest fear in recommending masks to the public is that people might get a false sense of security from them. <>If people use masks as an excuse to take these other precautions less seriously, it could undo any benefit they have and even make the situation worse. If you wear a mask, you MUST continue with all the social distancing and hygiene measures as before. Don’t think of the mask as permission to do risky things: think of it as a constant reminder of how careful we must be.

Remember, mask or not: isolate yourself when sick, stay home as much as possible, keep a safe distance from others when you must go out, avoid touching your face, and wash your hands frequently and well! We need to do everything we can to get through this thing.

In the czech republic the change was done exactly overnight. Coverage of mouth and nose was made mandatory by the government after closing schools and services, declaring the state of emergency and combined with the stay at home rule. Some people used store bought which they still had, hankies or scarfs and a few days later, almost everyone had home sewn ones.

The masks are made of cotton or linen fabrics, shirts, bed sheets etc boiled and ironed, exchanged after every usage. They are an excellent option for the general public as the professional ones should be saved for medics and other critical service staff.

Now a few czech companies are working on non woven filter fabrics that will be cut and inserted into these masks so the protection is even more effective.

According to the epidemiologist Roman Prymula who runs the show, the mandatory usage of masks was significant in slowing the spread.

We do not wear them because we don’t want to get infected, we wear them because we’re mindful of other people and groups at risk.The usage of masks lowers the spread of aerosol emission from your mouth by almost 80%.

Side note, the president of Slovakia is Zuzana Čaputová. Yes diacritic is important.

Thanks for sharing your perspective - the Czech Republic is really an inspiration for so many other countries right now and we have so much to learn from you!

It seems we are finally starting to catch up to you here in the USA. Today, April 3rd, the US CDC started recommending that we wear fabric masks or facial coverings when we go out in public.

US friends, it is time to get to work making masks, educating friends & family, and setting a good example by wearing them for essential activities. The Czech Republic proved that it is possible to change the culture around masks. Now it’s our turn to change the culture here.

<>Why you should never buy sex toys on Amazon.

I see people on here all the time talking about buying sex toys on Amazon so it’s time to run through this again. I know it may seem like you’re saving money but when something seems too good to be true it usually is.

America Has an Extremely Disturbing Sex Toy Problem

'Some had bodily fluids on them, and some even had pubic hairs."

https://www.inverse.com/article/30641-sex-toys-testing-regulations

Why Buying Sex Toys from Amazon is a Risky Gamble — Dangerous Lilly

Buying sex toys from Amazon is risky. I get a lot of complaints about counterfeit sex toys, misrepresentation in brand/materials and even us

http://dangerouslilly.com/2014/11/sex-toys-from-amazon-gamble/

Why You Should Be Very Careful About Buying Sex Toys on Amazon

Amazon's Sexual Wellness section is chock-full of sex toys, but it's a mixed bag, with ple

http://www.kinkly.com/why-you-should-be-very-careful-about-buying-sex-toys-on-amazon/2/16954

<>In summation, buying from Amazon is NOT safe for you, will most likely rip you off, and you could even be getting used products.

Below I’m listing Dangerous Lily’s list of best places to buy. I recommend reading her reviews before purchasing anything expensive.

Where to buy:

SheVibe

Early to bed

Smitten Kitten

Good Vibes

Come as you are

Be vibrant

HotOctopuss

And directly from the brand retailor like we-vibe, Lelo, body wand, etc.

Apparently the sale of sex toys on amazon have spiked since everyone is stuck at home so I’m bringing this back as a PSA.

PS: a LOT of third party sellers on Amazon have jumped onto the sex toy bandwagon and are offering “free” toys for reviewing - but the thing is they ask you for your Paypal so you can make an order, give them the order number, and then refund the amount thru Paypal.

This is sales padding and it’s reportable to the FTC, they’re having you pose as an actual customer but refunding you behind the scenes so its “free”. It’s a scam to boost their numbers.

If a company or online store wants you to review products for free, it will actually be 100% free and there will be no talk of placing orders and being refunded for them.

I was forwarding these to a friend and figured it’d be worth sharing them all here too so enjoy some free books and essays and things in no particular order:

Jeanette Winterson - Art Objects

Does Your Daughter Know It’s Okay To Be Angry? - Soraya Chemaly

Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Zami, Sister Outsider, Undersong - Audre Lorde

Garments Against Women - Anne Boyer

Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price

Learn Socialism Resources

Do Economists Actually Know What Wealth Is? - Nathan J. Robinson

Love Dialogue: CÉLINE SCIAMMA on Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Carlos Augilar

Teaching To Transgress - Bell Hooks

Sexing the Cherry - Jeanette Winterson

Sinister Wisdom Archives

Why Pop Culture Links Women and Killer Plants - Amandas Ong

How To Suppress Women’s Writing - Joanna Russ

Women’s Voices Now

The Life of Tove Jansson

Unbearable Weight; Feminism, Western Culture and the Body - Susan Bordo

‘A Simple Favour’ and That Whole Lesbian Psycho Thing - Ciara Wardlow

OUTWEEK Archives

AirPods Are a Tragedy - Caroline Haskins

Devotions - Mary Oliver

Go Tell It On The Mountain - James Baldwin

Nevertheless, She Feasted: Why Girls Get Hungry in Horror Movies - Francesca Fau

Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson

Sula - Toni Morrison

Not Vanishing - Chrystos

The Fever - Wallace Shawn

Portrait of a Lady on Fire director Céline Sciamma: ‘Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze’ - Alexandra Pollard

Minimalism Is Just Another Boring Product Wealthy People Can Buy - Chelsea Fagan

AIDS, Art and Activism: Remembering Gran Fury - John d’Addario

In the Day of the Postman - Rebecca Solnit

Blood and Guts in Highschool - Kathy Acker

Mark My Words: The Subversive History of Women Using Thread as Ink - Rosalind Jana

Exploring Frida Kahlo’s Relationship With Her Body - Rebecca Fulleylove

Ravens have paranoid, abstract thoughts about other minds - Emily Reynolds

The Lady in the Looking Glass - Virginia Woolf

Angela Carter talks beauties and beasts with Terry Jones

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Eimear McBride

Why Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate - Kate Robertson

Lesbian Herstory Archives

Bartleby

Guggenheim Books

We Are Lisa Simpson: 30 Years with the Smartest and Saddest Kid in Grade Two - Sara David

On Beauty - Zadie Smith

Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado

How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation - Anne Helen Petersen

Why the Popular Phrase ‘Women and Femmes’ Makes No Sense - Kesiena Boom

Ask No Man Pardon: The Philosophical Significance of Being Lesbian - Elsa Gidlow

Taking Care - Callista Buchen

Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (1977) - Mariposa Films

Why you should give money directly and unconditionally to homeless people - Matt Broomfield

Yo Soy Así (2010) - Jodi Savitz

Liuzhou “Luosifen”: Slurpy, Spicy, and Absolutely Satisfying | Liziqi Channel

Root intelligence: Plants can think, feel and learn - Anil Ananthaswamy

East Bloc Love (2011) - Logan Mucha

Why Do Rich Kids Do Better Than Poor Kids in School? It’s Not the “Word Gap.”  - Molly McManus

They Shut Me Up In Prose - Emily Dickinson

The Importance of Friends with Similar Disabilities -  Elizabeth Mazur, Ph.D.

The Lesbian Archives at the Glasgow Women’s Library

A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver

Teaching Community. A pedagogy of Hope - Bell Hooks

Working Class History

Why don’t doctors trust women? Because they don’t know much about us - Gabrielle Jackson

In Our Brutal Modern World, Science Shows Our Brains Need Craft More Than Ever - Susan Luckman

Why were the lives of ordinary 16th and 17th century women largely undocumented? | Suzannah Lipscomb

Caliban And The Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation  - Silvia Federici

Mother’s Touch (엄마의 손길) -  Jane Yeon and Audris Park

Gene Wilder Was Right: Gilda Radner Didn’t Have To Die, And We Need To Talk About Why She Did - Abby Norman

Why 1984 Was a Vital Year for British Gay Culture: An interview with Paul Flynn - Hanna Hanra

R&B Legend Jackie Shane On Growing Up Trans in the South - Zackery Drucker

The Journey - Mary Oliver

The Fictional Spinster Classification Index - Daniel Mallory Ortberg

What kind of country have we become? Try asking a disabled person - Frances Ryan

The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

The Best Ingredient Substitutions

Follow for recipes

Is this how you roll?

this tip tho!!!!!!!!

I need to try this for trips I only bring a carry-on to.

I use to do this all the time in the military. Just forgot how to over time o.o

I wish I’d known about this when I was homeless.

I could’ve taught it to all the other ladies at the shelter and Darlene could��ve sucked a sour one because she never would have been able to bitch at us for “having too many clothes.”

reblogging this to have it forever because holy god damn

This, and then put it into a large ziploc bag, squeeze the air out and seal. Waterproof.

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

hidrihime

why it so dangerous to be clean

the-militant-catholic

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.

Rubbing alcohol + bleach not only creates chloroform - dangerous enough - but when that chloroform is exposed to air+sunlight, it creates phosgene, an even more dangerously toxic gas which can<> kill you with very little warning up to 48 hours after exposure.<>

If you forget about this warning until you realise you’ve accidentally created phosgene, you need to leave the area immediately and call emergency services. (999 in many places/911 in the US) and tell them exactly what happened.

Phosgene smells like newly mown hay or green corn, but the scent is mild and you may not notice it.

If you’re concerned you might not remember these warnings, try writing them down on a card or sheet of paper and keeping it where you’ll see it when you get out your cleaning products (for instance, taped to the inside of your cupboard door or to your cleaning caddy). Make it visually clear at a glance that they aren’t recipes for good products, but warnings.

Use vegetable scraps and spices to dye your Easter eggs this year with homemade plant dyes. A fun DIY craft kids and adults can both enjoy! 

Save the recipe for later!

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Show me what you cooked!

Why "doing something relaxing” does not help your anxiety

A lot of the time when people give advice intended to relieve anxiety, they suggest doing “relaxing” things like drawing, painting, knitting, taking a bubble bath, coloring in one of those zen coloring books, or watching glitter settle to the bottom of a jar.

This advice is always well-intentioned, and I’m not here to diss people who either give it or who benefit from it. But it has never, ever done shit for me, and this is because it goes about resolving anxiety in the completely wrong way.  

THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO when suffering from anxiety is to do a “relaxing” thing that just enables your mind to dwell and obsess more on the thing that’s bothering you. You need to ESCAPE from the dwelling and the obsession in order to experience relief.

You can drive to a quiet farm, drive to the beach, drive to a park, or anywhere else, but as someone who has tried it all many, many times, trust me–it’s a waste of gas. You will just end up still sad and stressed, only with sand on your bu<>tt. You can’t physically escape your sadness. Your sadness is inside of you. To escape, you need to give your brain something to play with for a while until you can approach the issue with a healthier frame of mind. 

People who have anxiety do not need more time to contemplate, because we will use it to contemplate how much we suck.

In fact, you could say that’s what anxiety is–hyper-contemplating. When we let our minds run free, they run straight into the thorn bushes. Our minds are already running, and they need to be controlled. They need to be given something to do, or they’ll destroy everything, just like an overactive husky dog ripping up all the furniture. 

Therefore, I present to you: 

<>THINGS YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN ANXIOUS

–Go on a walk

–Watch a sunset, watch fish in an aquarium, watch glitter, etc.

–Go anywhere where the main activity is sitting and watching

–Draw, color, do anything that occupies the hands and not the mind

–Do yoga, jog, go fishing, or anything that lets you mentally drift 

–Do literally ANYTHING that gives you great amounts of mental space to obsess and dwell on things.

<>THINGS YOU SHOULD DO WHEN ANXIOUS:

–Do a crossword puzzle, Sudoku, or any other mind teaser game. Crosswords are the best.

–Write something. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. Write the Top 10 Best Restaurants in My City. Rank celebrities according to Best Smile. Write some dumb Legolas fanfiction and rip it up when you’re done. It’s not for publication, it’s a relief exercise that only you will see. 

–Read something, watch TV, or watch a movie–as long as it’s engrossing. Don’t watch anything which you can run as background noise (like, off the top of my head, Say Yes to The Dress.) As weird as it seems, American Horror Story actually helps me a lot, because it sucks me in. 

–Masturbate. Yes, I’m serious. Your mind has to concentrate on the mini-movie it’s running. It can’t run Sexy Titillating Things and All The Things That are Bothering Me at the same time. (…I hope. If it can, then…ignore this one.) 

–Do math problems—literally, google “algebra problems worksheet” and solve them. If you haven’t done math since 7th grade this will really help you. I don’t mean with math, I mean with the anxiety. 

–Play a game or a sport with someone that requires great mental concentration. Working with 5 people to get a ball over a net is a challenge which will require your brain to turn off the Sadness Channel. 

–Play a video game, as long as it’s not something like candy crush or Tetris that’s mindless. 

<>THINGS YOU SHOULD DO DURING PANIC ATTACKS ESPECIALLY:

–List the capitals of all the U.S. states

–List the capitals of all the European countries

–List all the shapes you can see. Or all the colors. 

–List all the blonde celebrities you can think of.

–Pull up a random block of text and count all the As in it, or Es or whatever.  

Now obviously, I am not a doctor. I am just an anxious person who has tried almost everything to help myself.  I’ve finally realized that the stuff people recomme<>nd never works because this is a disorder that thrives on free time and free mental space. When I do the stuff I listed above, I can breathe again. And I hope it helps someone here too. 

(Now this shouldn’t have to be said but if the “do nots” work for you then by all means do them. They’ve just never worked for me.)

This would’ve been great an hour ago

This is good advice for anxious peeps and peeps with anxious friends. Seems obvious now but I hadn’t thought about it this way before.

intro to lit theory

• Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?
• Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry
• Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies
• Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus
• Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power
• Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble
• Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;
• Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?
• Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory  

these are about 2/3 of the readings for my intro to lit theory course, if you’ve ever wondered what one studies on such courses, the links lead to free pdfs  

Had a doc appt (just my yearly checkup) a couple days ago and I asked her about checking to see if my measles vaccine from when I was a kid was still good, since I’d heard it could lose effectiveness over time. She nodded and had a lab done and turned out I was NOT still immune to measles, so got my booster today.

Get your vaccines, folks!

“I have a question about a vaccine,” I say, and the look of ‘god fuckin dammnit not again’ that flashed across this poor doctor’s face, followed by abject relief when I said “I’ve heard that the measles vaccine can lose effectiveness over time and I’d like to make sure mine is still good.” says everything really. 

“Oh thank god,” she literally said. “Yes of course. That’s true, and we can do a blood test and see. If you don’t still have antibodies we can get you a booster scheduled.” 

“That question goes poorly a lot, doesn’t it,” I say. 

“You have no idea.”

I had mine checked last year - it’s really simple to do to make sure you’re still vaccinated and safe. Ask your doc to add this to your physical this year!

I had mine checked and turns out the mumps part didn’t take so I got the whole shot again. A+ do recommend

In Canada there’s a gap generation where they thought only one dose was needed, not two, for the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine. I got my booster last year because I’m in the gap generation. If you were born between 1970 and 1996, check to see if you should get a booster.

When I started University I had to provide my shot record. It was “up to date” but I asked the doctor the same question about effectiveness. Especially, since I had chicken pox as a kid and I’m also in a weird age group. Instead of opting for the blood test, I got boosters anyway.

Even though my 2 siblings both have had shingles, the doctor says my insurance will not cover the shingles vaccine. Once I stop breastfeeding the doctor is willing to talk about if I really need it, and pay for it out of pocket.

Vaccines are important, even as adults.

Free Black History Library

awholenotha

Please keep boosting this, free knowledge is so important people.

Simple mutual aid ideas

Many people are demotivated from providing mutual aid to their community because they assume it’ll be expensive, complicated, and/or illegal. Not so! You can make a big difference in your neighbors’ lives just by sharing what you have and building solidarity with them (Note: Your local public library, community garden, or makerspace may be happy to host one or more of these if you get in touch with them!)

<>Connect on social media: A good first step is to start a group message, Facebook group, Discord server, email list, or anything else that allows people to talk to each other consistently. From here you can start to build solidarity and discuss what unmet needs your community has and how to address them

<>Bartering, time banking, and free stores: From there it’s easy enough to start the conversation about how to provide each other with material aid. Poor communities often have needs and the ability to meet those needs right next to each other, but they are never matched together just because people don’t have enough pieces of paper to give each other. A way around that is to start trading with each other - a jar of jam for an old unused bike, car repairs for fresh honey, 2 hours of guitar lessons for 2 hours helping repaint your deck, etc. This doesn’t have to be formalized and kept precise track of - “I’ll owe you one”s or just a general culture of “homies help homies, always” are a great way to build up trust and a sense of community

<>Buying coop: Buying wholesale can save a lot of money, but a lot of people never have enough money at one time to take advantage of that (besides not needing an entire pallet of dish soap). A buying coop lets a group of people pool their money to buy wholesale instead, saving everyone money in the process

<>Food sharing: Food waste/excess and food insecurity are a perfect match, and as such there have been plenty of ideas for bringing them together. Community pantries can pool and hold nonperishables inside something like an apartment building; a simple veggie share can be built and set up outside for communities with a lot of gardeners/farmers; a people’s fridge can hold perishable items if you can get a hold of the appliance itself and space/power for it; a setup like MIT’s FoodCam can connect hungry people to unwanted leftovers; and Food Not Bombs collects commercial food waste to share with communities all across the world (your city might very well have one already - look it up!)

<>Tool share/library of things: There are a lot of things that you use once or twice a year at most and then let sit in your attic the rest of the time. Post hole diggers, Batman-shaped cake molds, 3D printers, turkey basters, etc. Not only do these sit around unused for a majority of the time, but worse, if someone in your community needs one, they’ll likely go out and buy a whole new one. Instead, try finding a community area where you can put a lending library. That way, everyone in your community can pool their scarcely-used resources, and rather than owning 20 hammers altogether, everyone can share 2

<>Little free seed library: Little free libraries are a fairly well-known way to informally share resources with your neighbors, but if you live in an area with a lot of gardeners, or hopeful gardeners, saving seeds can be another way to use the same design. Just set aside the seeds from your harvest, or your groceries, then put them in reused envelopes from your junk mail and leave them in the box to be picked up by your neighbors. You can also share cuttings and clones from your garden!

<>Community composting: Composting is a dead simple process for turning food scraps and other organic waste into rich fertilizer - saving any gardeners in your neighborhood money (and keeping harmful pollutants out of the environment) with no ongoing investment needed. Personal setups require specific inputs in specific quantities for best results, but in large enough piles those rules can be largely ignored and still give great compost. If you get enough people involved, then, your composter can be as simple as a large box on the side of the road. ShareWaste can connect you to people with food scraps, whether you have a personal or community composter

<>Bike/car sharing: People aren’t moving around at all hours, meaning a majority of the time their transportation is sitting in garages or driveways unused. Starting a bike share can be a fairly easy, low-cost way to address this and improve people’s mobility. A car share can be a lot more involved, but worth it for all the money and carbon it can save (especially for areas with little or no public transit)

Feel free to share other ideas below!

killer-snail

Albany Anarchists Organize Really, Really Free Market

by Black Cat Connolly / Love and Rage – NY ALBANY – Another successful Really Really Free Market was organized by a local group of anarc

https://loveandragemedia.org/2018/02/08/albany-anarchists-organize-really-really-free-market/

Another idea: a Really Really Free Market! Since we live in a world with an abundance of stuff, it’s perfectly feasible to have a market space where everything donated is completely free to take by anyone who needs it. I’ve been to this particular market before and it’s really cool because everybody gets the necessities they need without worrying if they have the money for it.

socalledunitedstates

I just found out about Freecycle Network and the Buy Nothing Project, both surprisingly widespread and definitely worth checking out!

Please, reblog! IIt’s called self defense. Apart from having here, in the US, one of the highest cases of homicide and rape in the world and high rate of GBV, think about how this could help your mother or sister

If you’re shorter than the assailant, what I usually do is use the ground to anchor myself and use my legs for any movements