Ren's World

gothiccharmschool:

mordantcuriosity:
doomhamster:
prismatic-bell:
prismatic-bell:
IMPORTANT REMINDER TO MY EUROPEAN FOLLOWERS AND OTHER TUMBLR DENIZENS FROM AN AMERICAN DESERT-DWELLER:

Climate change is a bitch and summer is coming. If you don’t already have an air conditioner and/or fans, NOW is the time to get them.

THINGS YOU SHOULD BE SHOPPING FOR NOW:

—clothes made of cotton or linen
—air conditioner
—fans
—frozen meals that can be cooked in the microwave
—potable bottled water; you want five days’ worth per person and pet in your household
—bottled fruit juices; it does not matter if these are sugar-added because you’ll want the electrolytes
—electrolyte drinks
—electrolyte pills (you can get these online, I get mine from Amazon)
—popsicle molds to use with fruit and juice
—ice cube trays
—nonperishable salty snacks like peanuts
—one charger brick per adult in case of rolling blackouts or power outages; charge these at the beginning of May, and drain them via use once a month if they’re not needed

YOUR TO-DO LIST:
—check your home’s HVAC system if you didn’t do it at the beginning of winter. Make sure all the filters are clean and replace them if needed
—check the seals on your sinks and bathtub in case you have to run water to handle shortages
—make and freeze meals you can cook in the microwave or simply defrost. Remember to select light summer fare, not hearty winter soups and gravies
—purchase and freeze lunch meats and cheeses you can defrost and use this summer for sandwiches when it’s hot
—assemble your check-in list: elderly, pregnant, disabled, and immunocompromised friends and relatives who may struggle to get things they need when the heat wave hits. Have this list posted and ready to go through daily once the heat gets high. DON’T JUST ASSUME YOU WILL REMEMBER. WRITE IT ALL DOWN.
—create a list of emergency contacts in case of fire, heat stroke, and other heat-related emergencies. This should include your local version of 911 (I think in most of Europe it’s 112, but don’t rely on me as an American, LOOK IT UP NOW before you need it), your doctor’s phone number, and two emergency contacts. Keep it in a place where it can be easily found if someone needs to make these calls on your behalf.
—ask your doctor for an additional prescription for any medications you take, and fill it now. Extreme heat can cause disruptions in the supply chain. Make sure you cycle these meds; that’s to say, always use your oldest bottle first so you don’t end up with expired meds in an emergency.
—stock your first-aid kit. If you don’t have one, now is a good time to make one.
—if you own a car, get your yearly maintenance done now. You don’t want to be dealing with an inoperable vehicle if you need to evacuate.

Staying safe this summer starts now. Get your prep done.
Someone in the notes tagged this as yet another sign of Tumblr’s aging user base, and while this is kind of true (I’m 35), if you are a European minor I ENCOURAGE YOU STRONGLY TO SHARE THIS POST WITH YOUR ADULTS. If these are not things you can do yourself—I don’t expect a 15-year-old to know how to check the HVAC filters, for example, although if you’re old enough to be on Tumblr you’re definitely old enough to learn how to do it—enlist those around you who can.

This isn’t just a post for the adults. It’s for teenagers to use to educate their families and those around them, as well. I want ALL of you safe in July. (And yes, as we get a bit closer to the summer months I’ll make another post detailing how to utilize the items I’ve told you to purchase now.)
Re: the “stock up on medicines” part - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A COOL PLACE TO STORE YOUR MEDICATION. This is important year round but ESPECIALLY during a heat wave. Most pills aren’t meant to be stored above 25 degrees Celsius; prolonged exposure to temperatures above that means they can start to break down, and become less effective or even toxic!
Find a space in your apartment that doesn’t get above that temperature even during hot days. Alternatively, check with your pharmacist if your particular medicine is safe to store in the fridge, or with a freeze pack - it’s not a *great* idea because of the damp, but it could work for pills in foil packets, for a limited amount of time. As an absolute minimum don’t put your meds anywhere where they can be exposed to direct sunlight.
OK, Tumblr on mobile is not cooperating with me so no links, but please look up your medicine + sun sensitivity or photosensitivity, or even better, ask your pharmacist- every year, I see friends on antidepressants and similar get unpleasantly surprised by this and say they’ve been on them for years and never knew.
(This is very definitely not exclusive to antidepressants- again, please check with your medicine provider- but the people I know are mostly on those).
Anyway, it’s probably a good time to find a sunhat, sunglasses, SPF that doesn’t make you break out, etc- @gothiccharmschool.tumblr.com has written some nice stuff about being a goth in the sun, which I think can be useful here. Hopefully most people know about medicine side effects already, and I’m just posting out of caution.
Thank you for the shout-out, @mordantcuriosity!

Here’s the most recent Gothic Charm School article about goths and summer (from 2018, I have got to find the energy to start writing again); if you search “summer” on the site, you’ll find more articles.

In the tags there was a comment about electrolyte pills, especially if you’re sensitive to heat. I agree, especially if you’re susceptible to migraines. I like Vitassium Fast Chews; they taste like chewable kid vitamins, and are one of the “oh no, I feel a migraine lurking” or “oh no, I am overheating” treatments I always turn to.

im-a-dragon-cawcaw:

cartoondog:
ilikeit-art:
we are gonna be vacuuming up this post for the next five years

falcon-fox-and-coyote:

sometiktoksarevalid:
THE WOODCHIPS

skullamity:

femonologue:
femonologue:
Many years ago, I was wandering around downtown Ottawa with my best friend. We ran into a friend of his who offered us some hash (it sucked), then said there was a really good house party nearby if we wanted to go. We were like, yeah, sure. So that’s how we ended up at some completely fucking random person’s house.
I look around to ask if my friend knows anyone here and he’s simply gone, as is his friend. And this isn’t some red solo cup hangout; this is a party. There’s people counting out pills on the kitchen counter. I am clearly neither as cool nor as drug-savvy as the kitchen people, so I back away and instead wander aimlessly into the living room, which seems to give off more of a chill vibe.
A bunch of people are seated in a circle on the floor. One of them is fiddling with a big wad of newspaper or something. A really cute grunge girl with piercings and tattoos scoots aside to make room for me, so I sit down.
“What’s that,” I ask her, gesturing at the newspaper wad.
She gets a really big smile on her face. You know the smile. It’s the I’m About To Watch This Innocent Soul Get High As Fuck smile. “You’ve never smoked a tulip?”
“What’s a tulip?” I ask.
“It’s like if a joint was also a bong,” she replies. “You gotta try it.”
“Alright,” I reply, a little uncertainly. This will not be my first encounter with weed. I am more comfortable with the janky newspaper bong than I am with whatever the fuck is going on in the kitchen. Besides, this girl is really cute and I would like to have a friend here now that my existing friend has turned into vapor or been transported to the Upside-Down or whatever the hell happened to him.
I watch as one person holds the newspaper joint-bong upright and holds a lighter over the top while another gets beneath it, tilting their head back to take a puff. Apparently smoking this Cheech & Chong monstrosity is a two-person job.
“Oh,” I say, looking at the fist-sized knob at the top of the wonky newspaper joint. “Yeah, it does kinda look like a tulip.” Grunge girl smiles at me.
I watch as the tulip is passed around the circle, along with the lighter, and hits are cooperatively taken. It reaches grunge girl, who takes a huge puff and holds it for an extended moment before exhaling an impressive blast of smoke. She smiles expectantly and holds the tulip up for me, preparing to spark the gigantic meteor of dank that makes up its tip. By this point I have completely forgotten about my missing friend. I only care about making a good impression on grunge girl. I tilt my head back and hit the tulip like a smokestack.

It is the following morning. I am sleeping between a couch and a wall. I’m not positive that this is the same house I was just in. My memories are gone. Someone is yelling at me: “dude! Dude! Wake up, dude!”
I sit up. My mouth tastes like cigarettes. I do not smoke cigarettes. “Wha,” I ask the yelling man, who I am quite confident I have never met before in my life.
“We’re going on a quest,” he tells me, gravely. “You have to come with us.”
I look around. Neither my friend nor his friend are anywhere in sight. I also do not see grunge girl anywhere. I shrug helplessly. “Okay.”

We embark from this house. I learn that the destination of this quest is Tim Horton’s. This is a relief to me, as coffee and a donut sounds really fucking good right now. Somehow, the route to Tim Horton’s takes us past the Governor-General’s residence, which everyone else in the group loudly heckles on the way past. I do not know what the Governor-General has done to raise their ire, nor do I particularly care. I trudge along with my hands in my pockets, pleased to note that I still have my wallet, phone, and keys. I fervently wish that I could remember anything about last night. Maybe I talked to grunge girl. Maybe she’s why my mouth tastes like cigarettes. The tulip tasted nothing like cigarettes.
I am asked about my politics. I voice my frustrations with corporate corruption, the pay-to-win electoral system, the lack of transparency and accountability. This is met with great approval. The guy who was yelling at me claps me on the back. I get the impression that we became friends last night. I don’t recognize his face. I do not know his name and he definitely does not know mine. I behave as though we’re friends anyway. We are comrades on a quest.
By the time we make it to Tim Hortons, the gaggle of stoners I’m walking with have all run out of energy and/or attention span. People order snacks and break away in pairs or solo, to call for rides or plan the day’s events or just vegetate and wait for the drugs to leave their systems. I look around and find that my nameless friend has also gone to the Upside-Down. As I wash the cigarette taste out of my mouth with coffee, I unsuccessfully try to remember whether I saw grunge girl smoking tobacco at any point. I remember nothing. That tulip was so fucking powerful that it instantly sent me a whole day forward in time.

Alone in the city, I try to call my best friend and get no answer. I walk to the nearest bus stop, catch a bus most of the way home, and call up my parents to ask for a ride back. They ask where my friend is. I tell them that I have no idea; we went to a house party and I don’t remember anything else.
When they pick me up from the bus station, they ask me some very safe, nonspecific questions, and seem to relax when I describe what little I can remember. It isn’t until years later that I realize they were probably terrified I’d gotten rufied or something, and were so relieved to learn otherwise that they didn’t even bother chiding me for smoking myself unconscious in an effort to impress a strange woman. In any case, they were probably happy to find out that I did, in fact, like girls; I suspect they had been privately wondering whether I was gay.
After getting home, I finally manage to get my best friend to answer his phone. I discover that he tried the kitchen pills, spent most of the night crossing the entire city on foot, and crashed at his cousin’s house. He sounds like shit. I tell him that he should have tried the tulip, instead. He fervently agrees with me.
I never see grunge girl again.
That’s okay, though. She got to see a clueless stranger get fucked the entire way up on some ungodly strain of giga-weed, and I got smiled at by a cute girl, and then I got to go on a quest. Wherever grunge girl is, I hope she’s happy. I hope she’s smoking the fattest fucking blunt and smiling as some kid passes out behind a couch.
Anyway, my parents were right about me not being straight. A couple of years later, while walking out of the bank, I passed a tired-looking grimy young construction worker with dirty blonde hair and bright blue eyes as he went in, and I actually stumbled and turned to stare after him over my shoulder because my heart had straight up skipped a beat. Guy was hauntingly, harrowingly cute. I didn’t even have time for denial. It was just “????? I guess? I’m bisexual??”
Like, right in that moment, I knew without question that I absolutely would have let that guy rail me bareback. I went from straight to queer as hell in the blink of an eye. Cannot stress enough how gorgeous this dude was, grime and exhaustion notwithstanding.
Anyway that experience fucked up my sexual wiring and that’s why I get funny feelings when I watch Tom Hardy play Max in Mad Max: Fury Road because he’s a) cute, b) tired, and c) dirty.

schakerin:

owlpellet:
i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate’s computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.
so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching “advanced system settings”, go to performance settings, and uncheck “show shadows under windows” and anything else you don’t want. hope that helps someone else.

penrosesun:

PSA: Don’t use Open Office
I keep seeing people recommending Open Office as an alternative to Word, and uh… look, it is, technically, an open source alternative to Word. And it can do a lot of what Word can, genuinely! But it is also an abandoned project that hasn’t been updated in nine years, and there’s an active fork of it which is still receiving updates, and that fork is called LibreOffice, and it’s fantastic.
Seriously, if you think that your choices are either “grit your teeth and pay Microsoft for a subscription” or “support free software but have a kind of subpar office suite experience”, I guarantee that it’s because you’re working with outdated information, or outdated software. Most people I know who have used the latest version of LibreOffice prefer it to Word. I even know a handful of people who prefer it to Scrivener.
Open Office was the original project, and so it has the most name recognition, and as far as I can tell, that’s really the only reason people are still recommending it. It’s kind of like if people were saying “hey, the iPhone 14 isn’t your only smart phone option!” but then were only ever recommending the Samsung Galaxy S5 as an alternative. LibreOffice is literally a version of the same exact program as Open Office that’s just newer and better – please don’t get locked into using a worse tool just because the updated version of the program has a different name!

runcibility:

ellingson.tv on instagram

queenie-blackthorn:

garlic bread to share to your aspec friends :)
rb to share

russetfoxfur:

refrog to have good luck

trickstertime:

lordsmaf:
I will forever respect Animorphs for tricking kids who are just really into animals to read a book series by going “Hey you, you daydream about what it’s like to be a dolphin or a bird or a wolf? Have I got a book for you!” and then slowly radicalizing them with 50+ books of “There are no winners in war. Whatever ‘victory’ you perceive comes at the cost of sacrificing your own morals and killing the part of you that is human. In the end you will resort to murder, torture and war crimes and the knowledge of what you have done will haunt you for as long as you live.”
I also respect the author for putting them all online for free

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PSA: Don’t use Open Office