I need UK journalists to not show 43 degrees is not beach weather like people are gonna die
Americans do not interact
Im Australian, and 43C is NOT beach weather. That is VERY hot, even for us, but for the UK its apocalyptic. At 43C you should not even be going outside if you can help it, treating it like beach weather is a one way ticket to heatstroke.
I agree with not going outside for long periods of time but you will have to plan something to reduce the heat within your households. Especially if your house is designed to retain heat
Fans pointed at open windows will pull out hot air and allow it to circulate - don’t put them IN the window, leave some room by the side for extra air to get drawn in.
If you can’t afford cold packs (and if you can, stock up on some NOW), get some ziplock bags and freeze them, with wet washcloths or ripped up towel inside. You want them to be ready in the freezer when you need them. Wrap them in a tea towel and put them on your wrists and ankles.
A big bowl of ice water in front of a fan will blow cold air into the room and make a massive difference. Again, if you don’t have ice cube trays get some and freeze them *now*, don’t wait until you’re already in trouble (although I am melting at quarter past nine but my thermoregulation is bollocks so I don’t know if that’s the heat or just the me). If you can’t afford to get any, clean out empty yoghurt pots or Tupperware or whatever you have that can hold water. Even if you end up with a giant ice cube from a lunchbox, it’ll help.
Even just opening two windows at a crack will allow some air circulation - I sometimes prop open my bedroom door and leave the bathroom door open, both windows are locked at a crack because of the cats but it creates a nice little line of wind along the landing.
If you’re someone who needs something on them to sleep, take your duvet out of the cover and just use the cover.
Remember that water acts as a lens - you do NOT want to wear a wet t shirt in the burning sun. I did this when I was 8 and if I tan on my back you can still see the scars.
Read the instructions for sunscreen carefully, and use the highest spf you can find. Reapply as per the instructions. If you get burned, Malibu do an amazing aloe-based spray on after sun, I got mine from Savers for 3 quid and it lasts ages. I keep it and any other after sun in the fridge, which means it’s incredibly lovely to put on. Aloe is magic for burns so definitely gravitate towards that if you can. My son got badly burned (he’s ginger, he went to an outdoor pool and they forgot to give him sunscreen) and he’s had 2 helpings of it and you wouldn’t believe how much better he is (he couldn’t even really wear a shirt).
Make sure your pets have plenty of fresh cold water to drink, and if they usually have dry food consider giving them some wet food for one of their meals (cats are notoriously not always great drinkers but wet food will get them some liquid). Keep the curtains and/or blinds closed in south-facing rooms. I have blackout curtains in the front room and the front bedroom (my son’s) and they make a MASSIVE difference to the heat. Make sure pets have access to these cooler spaces if you can create them.
Keep oven/hob use to a minimum if you can. I like making a massive pot of something that can be reheated in the microwave if necessary - the oven especially adds a lot of heat. Or get some wraps and ham and cheese and eat those.
Cordial or fruit juice can be better than water if you’re sweating a lot. Cordial is cheap as chips. Salty snacks are also good.
Go to Iceland and buy a billion lolly ices. It’s especially a good way to make sure kids stay hydrated.
I realize op asked for Americans not to interact, and whether or not they’re being cheeky, I feel obligated to reblog this to save lives.
That temperature is absolutely murder, even moreso with humidity.
Please, be safe and stay hydrated!
For reference, 43 degrees celsius is roughly equivalent to 109.4 degrees fahrenheit. That’s bad.
This is nearly DOUBLE the typical average temperature of the UK. I don’t care if you grew up in Satan’s asshole, if you woke up one day and it was twice as hot as it usually is, you’re gonna have a bad fucking time. The infrastructure is not built for 40+ degrees, and with the government doing… The thing it’s doing, I doubt they’re gonna even bother to help people, so people need to see things like this post to be able to help each other instead.
Heads up UK folks, we’re looking at hitting 40°C again in about two weeks. Now’s a great time to prepare however you can, figure out what you can do to make things more bearable
Putting a wet tea towel in the freezer for 20 minutes (in a freezer bag so it didn’t stick to anything) then tying it to my wrists/ankles helped a lot last year, so I’ll share this post in the run up in case it helps anyone else
Keep an eye out for people struggling, including yourself
What’s the point of grinding to the bone your whole life for money if you aren’t even gonna be there to spend it…
“The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.” -Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
“The thing about money is, we can always make more, so let’s go out to eat tonight!” —My dad, after being laid-off, working odd and probably demeaning jobs so we could have dinner.
“Ah, baby, I want to buy this for you, it’s not like I can take the money with me when I go.” —My mom, when she bought me new clothes while I was between jobs.
“There’ll always be a job out there you can work, but we’d prefer you happy instead.” —Both my parents on jobs (“I can always get ya a job ditch diggin! They’ll always need ditch diggers. Hard work, but no college necessary. I can talk to the Hall.”—My proud, union dad, enthused, three seconds later.)
“It doesn’t matter what they do with the money after you give it to them. Drugs, beer, it doesn’t matter, maybe that’s what they need? How do you know?” —My dad on giving money to the homeless.
“Nah, we’ll never make any money, my husband has morals.” —My mom’s friend, fondly reflecting on the fact her lawyer husband isn’t working for a big money firm.
“Don’t worry! I’ve got this!” My equally poor friend buying me dinner when my debt card declined.
“I know we didn’t have furniture in the living room when you were growing up, but—ha!—remember Balloon Ball?” —My dad reflecting on the made up, mock-volleyball game we’d play in the open living room, using balloons. He had used electrical tape to make the court.
“I’m sorry we could never take you anywhere greater growing up,” —My mom, reflecting on our “stay-cations.” (“Why?” I asked, reflecting on all our trips to the park, zoo, public swimming pools, libraries, free theater, two dollar movie days, and her and my dad right there with me and my brothers.)
Bring poor is hard and it’s not right that it happens, but I prefer it to the hustle because at the very least, poor taught me what love is and I won’t let a shitty job deny me that.
It’s a fantastic point, but John Boyega’s net worth also puts him at $6 million. When he says eat the rich, he isn’t safe either…
There’s a pretty big fucking difference between six million and one trillion lmao
Not to mention the way the money was made
An actor being paid for a role / doing some advertising is a world away form a man setting up a cooperate money machine that horrendously exploits workers
This is something I hate SO MUCH about how tumblr talks about money.
Like, I get that famous actors have large amounts of money, some of them are even probably overpaid (I have complicated thoughts about how actors are paid because of the nature of acting as a career), but they are exchanging labor for money, and their salaries are an expense involved in making a movie.
But like… an actor is paid for a job. They’re a worker like the rest of us. Bezos isn’t paid for a job, he’s paid for being the person who owns Amazon and despite being obscenely wealthy, he does all sorts of shitty things and to underpay and exploit his workers, and avoid paying taxes, so that more of the money Amazon generates will be profit (worker’s salaries are not profit, they’re a business expense).
These two mechanisms of acquiring money are fundamentally very different.
The reason why billionaires are evil aren’t because having money is bad, its because to get a billion dollars you have to cheat. You have to take it from someone else. If Bezos paid all his workers and suppliers fairly and treated them well, and paid his fair amount of taxes, and etc, then it literally wouldn’t matter how much money he earned, because he wouldn’t be doing anyone any harm. But its not actually possible to amass a billion dollars (a full order of magnitude bigger than a million) while behaving in an ethical manner.
The last post is everything.
Also wanna say that John Boyega specifically does a lot of proper grassroots good work and actively puts himself in a position where he knows the racists will keep on coming for him, to actively and materially help marginalised communities.
The fact a black man is never able to say a single word without being criticised is not being missed btw.
we really are on a journey. we are meant to feel lost because that is literally the point. we are going to uncover pieces of ourselves the longer that we are alive. trust the process and surrender! you will find your way!!
Juneteenth is about Black people who were officially technically supposed to be freed from enslavement. Nobody else. Nothing else. It’s not a POC day. It’s not a “freedom for all” day. It’s Black folk, Black culture, Black emancipation, SPECIFICALLY. Any other observation for Juneteenth is gentrification.
It’s specifically about Black people in America. Specifically.
my strangest legacy - in high school, for one reason or another (I can’t remember) my friends and I wrote “34 days until March 2nd” on the whiteboard in the drama classroom. It was completely arbitrary but we kept it it up, “30 days until March 2nd” ”23 days until March 2nd” etc. It spread around enough that the entire school is buzzing about what is going to happen on March 2nd. We figure we should think of something and decide to bring in cake. There were about 13 of us in total committed to bringing a cake. On March 2nd, during 3rd period lunch we all entered the cafeteria in a line (the parade of the cakes) and laid them out—a grand cake buffet for everyone in that lunch period. We did it the next year. And after we graduated it kept going.
This past March 2nd was the 9th year they’ve done it. It’s become a school sponsored event. There are t-shirts for this thing every year. March 2nd is cake day. I am a god.
my former teacher sent me a package. it’s the 10th anniversary this year. they’re already getting ready for march 2nd. it’s january.
it’s March 2021 and i’ve been told there will be cake on the 2nd. I was recently sent the t-shirt design for this year. it’s the 16th anniversary and it will be the last March 2nd Cake Day at school for my former teacher who is retiring this year
tumblr might enjoy this one. humans are cognitively incapable of properly conceptualizing big numbers so it’s important to find other ways to think about just how much money the wealthy have.
And people will point out: most of this money is fake. It’s theoretical. It’s an idea of how much their investments are worth and it can vanish over night because of ‘the market’. They’re not stockpiling an actual valuable resource somewhere, a kind of vault that we could break into to take their wealth.
But because they have this vast imagined wealth, they can decide which resources are gathered and created, how they are used and how they are distributed. They can decide that we need to build a private jet and not a new clean energy plant. They can decide who gets drinking water.
So when you’re talking about taking that wealth, you’re talking about taking all that power.
☝️☝️☝️
the technical term for this by the way is ‘fictitious capital’
For reference, the federal minimum wage would have you earning roughly on average $1,256.66 a month
It’s recommended your rent only be 30% of your total budget, so with an average monthly rent of $1,827 that would mean your average renter’s monthly income should ideally be $6,090
That would be roughly $35.13hourly or $73,080annually
However, the average renter’s household income is only $42,500 annually or $20.43 hourly (as of 2019 according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey)
This means either rent prices are too unsustainably high and price gouging or wages are too unsustainably low and predatory
