just a quick reminder

life-with-bpd-things:

selfishness is putting the wants of yourself over the needs of others. 

self respect is putting the needs of yourself over the wants of others.

one is disregarding others, one is taking care of yourself. 

the difference between the two is the difference between being a friend and a doormat. 

taking care of yourself does not make you a bad person

i repeat:

taking care of yourself does NOT make you a bad person

A PSA about trucks from a truck driver

delightfullysuperbruins:

thehumantrampoline:

I and some colleagues were talking about how we wish everyone could see the safety videos that our company was showing us, because I don’t think most people understand how traffic works in a truck. So here’s some things we wish everyone on the road knew.

– we’re not kidding about tailgating. If you’re right behind us on a straight highway? Chances are we have NO IDEA you’re there, which means we can’t anticipate any of your movements. Plus slowing down takes multiple downshifts, so we might start decreasing speed way earlier than you expect.

– We’re not kidding about any of our blind spots. WE CAN’T SEE YOU, GUYS.

– That bit about slowing down taking a while? The same goes for when you’re in front of us. Don’t cut off a truck. Oh god, PLEASE don’t cut off a truck. If you cut me off, I’m not irritated, I’m terrified. For YOU. It can take 7 to 9 seconds for us to stop. DON’T CUT OFF TRUCKS.

– Before you get mad about how slow we’re going on the highway, keep in mind that many companies govern their vehicles so they literally CAN’T go over 60 or 65. This is a good thing, I promise. Because…

– Do you know what happens when a car meets a truck in an accident? The car gets totaled and the truck needs a new coat of paint. You will not win this fight. I know nobody likes getting stuck behind a big dumb truck, but it’s not worth your life.

We are trying our best to protect you from our 80,000 pound death machines. Please help us out.

This information is actually useful.  Thanks for posting.

orangepop712:

hey! regarding furbies:

-they cannot function without batteries

-the only way they can hurt you is if you like have one on the floor and you trip over it or something

-they dont swear or talk about murder. they speak a launguage called furbish and if you cant understand it then you will most likely mishear things.

-they! are! not! evil! demons! from! hell!

-they dont have any function whatsoever that allows them to walk. the closest thing is if a 2012+ is dancing on a smooth surface they might scoot forward a little

-they arent possessed. if a furby is acting weird, try changing the batteties.

-keep in mind that the ones from ‘98-‘01 are almost 20+ years old. they will have defects! that may be another reason why a furby is acting strange

-destroying them is a terrible waste!

-some people need furbies to comfort them if the have disorders such as autism, AD(H)D, anxiety, depression, etc. If you see someone out with a furby, please dont make fun of them!

-if you find them creepy, perhaps try to spend more time around them! i noticed that once i saw the insides of one and saw how it worked, i was a lot less freaked out by them.

botblr members feel free to add more!

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

thewoonderkabinett:

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

Oh my god, food extract is not the same as an essential oil.

Food extract is the flavoring of something cooked down into a carrier oil or alcohol that is safe for human ingestion.

Essential oil is the pure extract of the plant refined down and distilled for concentrated medicinal purposes to a significantly higher strength than simply adding ground up mint leaves to your water. The two are not comparable in any way.

Cinnamon extract and cinnamon essential oil are not the same thing.

One is about 100 times the strength of the other and can also cause acute organ failure. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the food extract.

Sweet gods I’m not trying to be mean, I want you to be aware and safe and stop putting yourselves and others at risk. Please.

Like maybe my tone is hard to read, maybe it just comes off as really angry but it’s not, it’s fear and worry. I read posts and clutch my head in alarm going “no! No! That’s how people die!” And then I get exasperated because a bunch of people not formally qualified chime in with “um actually this is a lie” and it’s not, it’s really, really not.

I’m not some big pharma advocate. I’m a crunchy witch hippy just like you with salt rock lamps and rose quartz all over my house. I just happen to have spent the last 15 years of my life studying the actual science of holistic medicines and I’m trying to help you not get hurt (or worse) becuase you trusted a sales person with no idea what the ever loving hell they were talking about beyond a sales pitch designed to maximize profit. Gah.

I see this so often in the Mommy world. There was a lady not long ago in one of the mom groups who was really worried about her toddler. He’d had a persistent cough for weeks and the doctor couldn’t figure out why. Someone asked, well what have to tried to treat it with, so far? She said she was using a humidifier, honey, and eucalyptus EO in the shower every night.

Yeah.

In case you were wondering, eucalyptus can cause respiratory distress in young children.

Sadly I don’t wonder. I have a friend whose daughter died from a home made menthol oil chest rub. She wasn’t even ten yet, but her mom– a qualified aromatherapist– thought she’d be old enough to handle it. She went into respitory distress and died seizing in her mother’s arms on route to the hospital. It was one of the most harrowing stories I had to listen to during my holistic training. She stood up there, on this podium next to a bunch of ponzy scheme essential oil sellers who looked like they wanted the floor to swallow them, and said “I killed my child with good intentions”.

I’ll never forget the look on her face.

So to reiterate, children under the age of ten should not be directly exposed to things like eucalyptus oil, peppermint or wintergreen. If you are using such things in your house and your child starts to complain of headaches, lethargy and general “feel worse”, don’t just assume it’s the cold/flu. Those are all signs of menthol sensitivity and they only get worse with increased exposure. Ventilate the room, take them outside if you can until the air clears. Do not apply again.

Rapid onset wheezing may be a sign of allergic reaction or possible asthma attack triggered by the menthol too. If they tell you their chest is warm or fuzzy when you use it, that’s another sign it’s not going down well with them. Again, ventilate the area or remove anything you applied to them. Administer inhalers if necessary. Watch for any more labored breathing or if they suddenly go limp or you can’t wake them up. If they do call 911.

This can also apply to people with allergies and asthma who are otherwise healthy.

One of the safest, natural ways to alleviate congestion is with just pure good old fashioned warm steam. Keep the air moist, drink plenty of warm fluids. Menthol can help relieve the feeling of congestion, but there’s limited evidence to suggest it actually clears the airways. And for the love of god don’t inhale mustard or horseradish (I’ve seen that suggestion on posts too, though how you’d get those oils I don’t know). That’s literally what tear gas is made of.

I apologize sincerely for bringing this long post back into your lives, fam, but I’m getting inundated with questions about what can the possible harm be if you dab a little neat peppermint oil on your child’s skin to help them with a little head cold, and this is the most succinct way I can put it.

The harm you may do, is in fact death. I am not telling you these things to be a kill joy, I’m telling you so you won’t accidentally kill yours.

frodobell:

pizzaback:

pizzaback:

pizzaback:

sewing is one of those skills everyone with the ability should know IMO. i’ve known too many people who just throw out perfectly servicable clothing and bedding because of tears or buttons that have fallen off and these can be fixed at home. sewing’s not hard either. 

sewing, like baking bread, is one of those basic skills that corporations have convinced people is just impossible or too expensive for the average person to do in order to manipulate people into buying things.

i’m not saying sewing is possible for everyone, but if you have motor skills fine enough to, say, replace lead in a mechanical pencil, you can learn to sew, and you can help people who can’t sew. here’s a good guide with gifs.

this is what we mean when we say civilization de-skills us to make us dependent

enide-s-dear:

moralistically:

parisianqueen:

During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.

Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse – one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.

I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.

When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.

So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat – maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.

poor people deserve things they want, too. it is unfair to expect poor people to only buy things they “need”.

My grandfather used to tell me: if you only have 20 kr left, you buy grocery for 10 kr and flowers for the other 10 kr because you need a reason to live as well.

boggoth:

coffee-khaleesi:

When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either. 

Op I’d like to thank you for sharing this. Ever since the first time I’ve read it I’ve held it in my mind and it really has helped me to be kinder to others and to myself.

sunflorally:

so you dated the wrong person and learned a hard lesson. you chose the wrong major and had to start over again. you cherished a friend who backstabbed you. it sucks, but it’s also going to work out. that’s life; you learn, hurt, love, cry, laugh, and keep going. you experience setbacks and you grow and it’s all okay.

chicklette:

saga-carolin:

sleyby:

pervocracy:

You can ruin almost any social system with enough bad faith.

It takes very little cleverness to go to a toilet with a sign reading “please do not flush paper towels,” flush gravel until it breaks, and then declare victory.

But victory over what?  You haven’t debunked the warning sign or the plumbing system; you’ve just abused them.  You have not made a persuasive case that the warning sign should read “please do not flush paper towels or gravel,” because obviously your wise ass is just waiting to see that sign so you have an excuse to flush a third inappropriate thing.  You also haven’t made a persuasive case that the toilets should be continuously guarded and all visitors frisked for non-flushable objects, because the vast majority of people aren’t as big of a jerk as you.

“This system can be broken by someone who exploits its rules in the most malicious possible way” is true of many otherwise fine systems, and unless the system is safety-critical or there’s a very large group of people motivated to break it, it’s not really an important point to make.

There is nothing original, helpful, or insightful about pointing out that one person with a firehose could ruin a whole sand-sculpture competition.  Yeah, it’s true, that is a risk we are taking.  Please don’t show up with a firehose just to prove your point.

This is how I feel about people who create fake donation posts, and take actual money from real people, to “teach them a lesson” about being too kind. It’s obvious that they don’t care about people getting tricked out of their money, because if they did, they wouldn’t be so eager to do it to people themselves. What they object to is kindness, and they’ll do anything they can to destroy it where they find it.

I’ve seen several posts about health insurance, welfare, paid maternity leave + + (that have all turned out to be written by americans, just saying) that go on about how if we help a bunch of people, SOME are going to take advantage of the system and that’s unacceptable. And.. what IS that? Why is it that helping 1000 people among whom 5 maybe don’t need that help, is seen as worse than helping no one? Why is it so terrible a risk that kindness may fall upon the occasional individual who doesn’t deserve it as much? If ONE of your guests turned out to have already eaten, would you cancel dinner? No!

There are ALWAYS gonna be a small amount of people who take advantage of kindness, but it seems to me only a very fucked up society would consider that a solid reason to not be kind.

This is what American-style capitalism does: it commodifies *everything*, and when it finds something that cannot be bought or sold, it sets about destroying what it doesn’t understand.