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
-misting yourself with a spray bottle while sitting in front of a fan can help you feel much cooler
-it can often be best to keep your windows open at night and at dawn, then close them during the daytime to keep the cooler night air in (tho ymmv here based on how your house is built and how high the temperature variation is between night and day)
-consider using an umbrella/parasol when you need to walk outside. you may feel strange or old-fashioned, but the shade really does help you keep cool
-loose clothes are generally cooler than tight clothes, and natural fibers are often better than artificial
The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States
I’ve been in the middle of the ocean at night and now live in texas and it is so hard to explain to people that no, they have not ever seen the night sky. It is so hard to explain to people that what they think is a proper night sky is fucking pathetic. A disgrace.
People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.
So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.
The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.
Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.
The sky is full, fucking FULL, of stars, and you’ve never seen them.
I remember the first time I saw a properly dark sky and was like ‘oh that’s why it’s called the milky way’ and promptly started to cry
When we were on a field trip to the middle of the red sea, I remember us all crowding at the end of the boat that didn’t have lights and just lying on our backs and staring
When you see a properly dark starscape
You understand why people wrote poems and made up legends and built rockets and said heaven’s in the sky
The universe is infinite. So are the stars
I’m trying to find a picture on google images to show you what I mean and I can’t find any
You think of the night sky like fairy lights on black velvet, but it’s not it’s not it’s like, like, dust in sunlight, like - I can’t find the words.
The stars are everywhere, like sugar, like glitter, like dust. You can’t find the constellations at first, not because you can’t recognise them, but because there’s so many stars you can’t pick out the familiar line of Orion’s belt. The North star has gone from bright familiarity to almost vanishing among a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million other lights. The milky way is a line of light arcing across the sky like a moon-trail on water only infinitely, infinitely bigger.
And for the first time in your life you’ll understand why people call it a dome, because it is, it’s three dimensional in exactly the way a city skyscape isn’t.
You’ll understand why Luthien Tinúviel danced under starlight, not moonlight, why people in a time before we knew the earth was round still looked up and wondered and built telescopes and dreamed about the stars.
The stars are endless and ancient and infinite and you will stand with your head craned back and your rucksack forgotten at your feet and you’ll feel like you’re falling upwards into that great bright sky like it’s calling you home and you’ll wonder how you ever thought the stars were beautiful before tonight when all you’d ever seen were the naked empty skyscapes of your home. And you’ll cry and you’ll spend the rest of your time there gazing up and wondering and imagining what it would be like to stand among those bright silver flecks
And then you’ll come home, and look up, and fall in a different kind of love with that handful of blazing stars to stubborn to be outdone by the whole of human invention, leading you home despite the light pollution and the clouds and the endless bustle of this shrinking planet.
I always knew something was fucked up with that artificial sugar shit. Never liked it, I was genuinely confounded by the number of people who claimed it tasted identical.
White moms are going to go apeshit
NO.
this is about the IARC not the FDA. the IARC (international agency for research on cancer) is part of the WHO (world health organization) and not a food safety agency. they classify “agents” (chemical, physical, or biological entities or exposure circumstances) based on how likely they are to cause cancer:
Group 1: Carcinogenic to humans (126 agents)
Group 2A: Probably carcinogenic to humans (94 agents)
Group 2B: Possibly carcinogenic to humans (322 agents)
Group 3: Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans
this new classification of aspartame as 2B “possibly carcinogenic to humans” is the result of a review of available studies, and mostly intended to encourage additional research. it is not aimed at consumers/the public and it does not take dosage or frequency into account.
for context: apart from aspartame, group 2B includes things like “aloe vera, whole leaf extract”, “carpentry”, “magnetic fields”, and “traditional asian pickled vegetables”
“occupation as a hairdresser or barber”, “very hot beverages at above 65°C” (149°F), and “consumption of red meat” are all classified as 2A
and Group 1 includes “alcoholic beverages”, “epstein-barr virus”, “salted fish”, “processed meat”, and being a painter.
anyway. this is fearmongering and disinformation. stop using memes for news and dont reblog “news” posts without sources.
me for the first 33 years of my life: my dad used to say “what would happen if you woke up on the titanic?? think about it” when he was tucking me in at night from at least age 5 and up, a form of psychological torture
me in my 33rd year of life: my dad optimistically thought i would have $250k to blow on something stupid by now and shut that shit down at the jump in the 90s
