#malevichsquare

[lindsaydenniberg]

#pandora #pandorasbox #pandorastalkboxproductions #abstractart #videoart #taneri #aruhoshinoshi #hikarinotabi #malevichsquare #digitalbaby #offthegrid

[notrefined]

I am going to keep asking you questions until you answer one publicly. Today's: Why is peeing on jellyfish stings not a thing? And why did Friends lie to me and say that it was?

Haha this makes me want to just keep answering these privately so I can get a new question every day. But I loooove talking about jellyfish so let’s do this!

When you get stung by a jellyfish, you’re basically hit by a couple thousand of these bad boys, a.k.a. nematocysts:

Some of them will fire immediately (the “sting”) and some of them will not. There’s about 5,000 of them per tentacle, and they are no joke. Your #1 goal, when you get stung by a jellyfish, is to neutralize the nematocysts that are on your skin but haven’t fired yet, so they don’t go off and cause you even more pain.

The problem is that nematocysts react to physical and chemical changes in their surroundings - meaning you shouldn’t scratch them, because that will trigger the release of more toxins, but also that you shouldn’t mess with the pH. Dumping freshwater on a jellyfish sting will set them off and put you in SO MUCH MORE PAIN, and it’s same thing for urine! Use seawater to rinse the area instead, and then use something flat (like a credit card or a razor or whatever) to scrape the tentacles/excess nematocysts off (be careful not to squish them! or touch them with your hand!). 

Hypothetically, I guess, you could rinse them in urine, but only if your urine was about as basic as seawater? Also you can just use seawater and that would be more likely to work and not as gross?

For some jellyfish, like the hyper-deadly box jelly, you should rinse the area in vinegar. Scientists aren’t sure why this works. For other jellies, you should rinse the area in hot water. Scientists aren’t really sure why this works either. And for other jellies, vinegar will actually exacerbate the sting, and you should wash it in a baking soda-sea water solution. You guessed it - we don’t know why. But basically there are a lot of ways to deal with a jellyfish sting and none of them involve peeing on people, which is gross and will also actively make it worse.

As for why Friends lied to you and said it was a thing… I’m assuming the writers thought it would be funny to have people running around beaches peeing on each other for the next decade or so :P

[foucaulttheh8rs]

Also, seriously I have the best fucking friends like I AM SO BLESSED (although i know god is ded tbh) 

[thelifeguardlibrarian]

Which book has had the greatest influence on your life? And which "classic" books that everyone loves have you been unable to appreciate? (For me, it's always The Great Gatsby. Always.)

Greatest influence: Mansfield Park

Unappreciated classic: Anything by Dickens. Man needed no less than 6 pages to describe a doorknob.