This heat wave is absolutely bone crushing, and I'm so glad that I installed central air two years ago.
But if you are without central air, or you're dealing with a heat wave for the first time because it's reaching areas that don't historically get this hot, here are a few tips from my years of poverty in a desert:
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Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •If you are using ceiling fans, make sure they're rotating counter-clockwise (they should have a switch)
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Drink water, tea, etc (not soda). You don't need sports drinks unless you've got POTS or you're exerting yourself.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •You can just carry those around. Take them to bed. Put them on the couch and put your feet on them to cool off. They freeze faster and stay cold longer than regular ice.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •This horrifies all of my partners, historically, so YMMV. Not for the faint of torso.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •If you have to go outside in intense sun or heat, loose lightweight long sleeves, hat, and pants/skirts/whatever, are actually much cooler and safer than exposed skin.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •8. Studies (and certain cultures) show that drinking hot beverages in the drier heat actually helps you cool down. Right back to the tea, here.
Here's one link, there are several:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/225747…
(Also my own anecdotal experience)
Body heat storage during physical activity is lower with hot fluid ingestion under conditions that permit full evaporation - PubMed
PubMedLoose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Chill your watermelon. Freeze your grapes.
Cold dill pickles.
Get those snacks in ways that will cool you off and get something in you.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •- Tack up thick blankets to cover the whole window pane, to block out sun and hot air
- Cover cardboard with aluminum foil and tape that in the windows foil side out to reflect sun out
StarSloth
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •11. If your fans aren't very good at cooling, you may need to clean them. But you can also make a fan shroud to focus their air power. This is easiest with a box fan and some cardboard.
The CR box crew has directions!
A CR box can filter smoke, too.
cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filte…
DIY box fan filters – Corsi-Rosenthal box - Clean Air Crew
Admin (Clean Air Crew)Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •You can also get chilly pads (frogg toggs) which are spongy material made just for this, and they work great.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •But the coolest sleeping material is always going to be a lightweight cotton, or linen if you can afford it. "Bamboo" cloth is just rayon. It works until washing wears it out.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Run all those things early in the morning or after 6pm in a heat wave.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •But if you're living in a house (or an apartment with a balcony and only those windows), green living things help lower your localized heat vs concrete and bare materials.
Grow tall stuff by your windows, in between your home and the sun.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •I'm serious.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Clouds don't protect you from UV!
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •20. Know the signs of different kinds of heat illness conditions, and how to recognize them in yourself.
Heat exhaustion and sun sickness can do permanent damage, and if you've ever had them you'll be more susceptible in the future.
webmd.com/fitness-exercise/hea…
Note that not sweating is A 🚩
Heat Exhaustion: Symptoms and Treatment
WebMDLoose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Run cold water in a sink over your hands and/or feet.
Take off the socks in the house (sorry, sock autists).
Throwback to running through the sprinkler/hose.
Don't do ice baths, they could impair your ability to monitor your own body responses.
DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to DoomsdaysCW • • •Mostly, same! But not barefoot in the "sandals are better than closed toe shoes" way, because grit under my feet is no thank you.
DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Heh. Grit under my feet isn't as bad for me as sand or grit in my bed! My grandmother nicknamed me, "Princess Pea" (after the Princess and the Pea story) because I was so fussy about my bedding.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prin…
fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to DoomsdaysCW • • •@DoomsdaysCW
I, too, am the Prinx And the Pea 😂
Deep Mud
in reply to DoomsdaysCW • • •@DoomsdaysCW you are my sister, or brother, or whatever. I vigilantly avoid getting grit and schmutz in my bed. And for this, I am called the princess and the pea type.
Hell, they're just slobs.
Poloniousmonk
in reply to DoomsdaysCW • • •I'm a sock autist and didn't know that was a thing until I read this thread. Thanks!
DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Poloniousmonk • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Be gentle with this one life of yours.
Marcos Dione
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Octavia Con Amore Succubard's Library
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •(please excuse me if these were mentioned, though I read through everything once)
・When cooling your body, go for the neck, wrists, and ankles. The large current of exposed blood vessels allow you to cool yourself by using your circulatory system
・For hydration, water is not enough. When you sweat, you sweat out water *and* electrolytes. If you go down to 50% water and 50% electrolytes, then only replenish the water to 100%, you will still get heat stroke. If you really have to, dump salt in your palm and consume it. It doesn't raste nice but neither does heat stroke
・"Laze" about. You're not being "lazy", you're working hard to conserve energy for a better part of the day and recouperating expended energy. Don't let capitalism convince you to harm yourself. Heat injuries are cumulative, i.e. each one makes you more susceptible to the next
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Octavia Con Amore Succubard's Library • • •@OctaviaConAmore
The reason I mention sports drinks in the thread is actually because most people can't sweat enough to lose more electrolytes than regular food will replenish, unless you're actively working in the heat (or experience a condition like POTS). Electrolytes also aren't just salt!
You're better off eating pickles.
The reason we think we do (sweat it all out) is mostly marketing by those name brand sports drinks, unfortunately.
La Guiri
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •A couple suggestions. I live in the Mediterranean.
If you have a porch or balcony that gets a lot of sun at the worst time of the day, get (or make) a rug and get it wet. it will absorb the heat while it dries.
If you live in a dry place, hang clothes inside, next to a fan. Your comment about racist swimming pools applies to bans to hang clothes to dry outside.
For windows or glass doors, there are blocks of scrapbooking paper, often with seasonal decoration, which work like cardboard and also protect from the cold when you have nothing else. They really are better as cold isolation (I have them in the kitchen).
Estarriol, lucozade dragon
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Mx. Luna Corbden
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Tip for preventing heat exhaustion, as someone who has been susceptible to it since childhood:
If you feel yourself overheating, get your wrists under cold running water. Neck is a good spot to splash with water as well, but the wrists are easier to keep under running. Your major arteries go through there, and the cold running water will quickly remove heat from your blood, which will circulate and start to bring you back very quickly.
I always know I've crossed a line when my ears turn red and I suddenly feel like crying for no reason.
Bat Shark Repellant
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to Bat Shark Repellant • • •Honestly, that far north, I would expect you to basically not venture outside for large portions of the year.
Bat Shark Repellant
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •We mostly stayed in during the heat dome in 2021.
Also, unplug anything that generates heat when it isn't doing anything.
Smart phones can play music or audiobooks without using much power.
Some people like to freeze tinned fruit, just take it out of the tin first.
cwicseolfor
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •*sparkling anxiety* Evelyn
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •I've had good luck with placing a tub of ice cubes center front of an oscillating fan*, tilted down a bit so that the air sort of "bounces" off the ice water before being blown over towards where I'm sitting.**
*might work just as well with a static fan, I just like the oscillator.
**this in fairly dry 90 F weather in the PNW***
***yeah, I'm a wimp w/r/t hot weather- that's part of why I moved to the PNW
DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •#SolarPunkSunday #StayingCool
Esther Payne
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •can confirm that one, we do that with a stair window that doesn't have shutters.
It really makes a difference.
In the winter I put it behind my old fashioned radiator to reflect heat out into the room.
cy
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •They sell "sun shades" for automobiles that are not just for use on automobiles! There's also "emergency blanket" material, which reflects heat like a mofo, for staying warm in subzero cold, but also for blocking the punishing effects of the sun.
I might want to add:
11. Wear a mask. When (inevitably) your world is drowned in choking smoke because of the fires that they can't stop on account of muh property, those "N95" masks catch the large particulates, though not the carbon monoxide or ozone.
Loose Leaf Queer
in reply to cy • • •I mask everywhere, but it definitely doesn't cool you down. That's the only reason I didn't include that in this specific advice.
cy
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Ma Quest
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •Loose Leaf Queer
Unknown parent • • •It's really clear through the history fashion of cultures in hot climates, but colonialism sure tried to destroy all that.
Robot Diver
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • • •DoomsdaysCW
in reply to Robot Diver • • •That's a great idea! Thank you for sharing, @RobotDiver !
@Genderqueerwolf
#Heatwave #KeepingCool #StayingCool #HeatwaveHacks
8Petros [$ rm -rv /capitalism/*]
in reply to Loose Leaf Queer • — (Internet) •- siesta is a must. You will catch up, waking early morning, when it is (relatively) cool.
- "space" aka SOS blanket, glued (even with tap water) on the outside surface of the glass, silver side to the sun, will protect interior from heating up.
- use shades and ventillation in a smart way.
More: see appropriate sections of this book
annas-archive.org/search?q=The…
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