Not all those who wander are lost

But I certainly am

[catasters]

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles | Chicago Convention, June 4, 2023 [_AlanaKing_ | x | x ] 

[ruinedchildhood]

[bajn]

b just wear the seatbelt

[immortalismortem-deactivated201]

Mmmmmmm

I gotta naysay here. Seatbelts do a LOT of harm. Not everyone can wear one  and not everyone wants to risk it. Just among my own friends and people I know in general; 4 females had a breast cut completely or partially off due to a seat belt. 6 people had their throats cut, to an obviously non-lethal degree. 2 had their stomach’s cut open to a horrifying degree that I won’t elaborate on.

Not even counting the uncomfortably awkward belt locations for particularly large, small, fat, skinny people. Females with large breasts get the joy of holding the belt in place or adjusting it every couple seconds.

They’re awkward, uncomfortable, painful, and can often cause the injuries in an accident. Sometimes it’s just better to forgo the belt.

[chiiri-h]

Those injuries caused by seat belts more than very likely would have been deadly had they not been wearing them. To have enough force to cut skin or cut off a breast in an accident is far more than enough to cause someone to go flying through the windshield of a car, to slam them into the steering column, or through a window resulting in deadly injuries or causing an even bigger accident for other drivers now that your body is in the road along with your crashed car. Are you really going to risk being a smear of ground meat on the pavement because your seat belt was a little uncomfortable or it might cut you? Then I got good news for you, there’s a wide variety of devices made specifically to make seat belts more comfortable and reduce that risk.

These make it so that your seat belt won’t cut your neck, a simple sleeve of padded fabric that velcros around it, meaning you can put it anywhere on the belt. 

This one does something similar, by readjusting the positioning of the seat belt to move it farther away from your neck and hey, helps a bit with having boobs in the way.

They even make ones for children too.

Boobs still in the way? While it’s pretty silly looking, this helps keep the seat belt in place so you don’t have to keep adjusting it.

And if you’re overweight, they make seat belt extenders so you can still be safe. 

But maybe you’re still unsure, then listen to the CDC and all of their sources. 

“More than half of the people killed in car crashes were not restrained at the time of the crash.1 Wearing a seat belt is the most effective way to prevent death and serious injury in a crash.Seat belt use is on the rise. Laws, education, and technology have increased seat belt use from 11% in 19812 to nearly 85% in 20103, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. “

“Most drivers and passengers killed in crashes are unrestrained. 53% of drivers and passengers killed in car crashes in 2009 were not wearing restraints.1Seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury. Among drivers and front-seat passengers, seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45%, and cut the risk of serious injury by 50%.4Seat belts prevent drivers and passengers from being ejected during a crash. People not wearing a seat belt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle during a crash. More than 3 out of 4 people who are ejected during a fatal crash die from their injuries.5Seat belts save thousands of lives each year, and increasing use would save thousands more. Seat belts saved almost 13,000 lives in 2009. If all drivers and passengers had worn seat belts that year, almost 4,000 more people would be alive today”

Or this one

“ The number of those who escaped injury [by wearing a seat belt] increased by 40% and those with mild and moderate injuries decreased by 35% after seatbelt legislation. There was a significant reduction in soft tissue injuries to the head. Only whiplash injuries to the neck showed a significant increase.”

Or this

“ Fifty-five percent of those killed in passenger vehicle occupant crashes in 2008 were not wearing a seat belt…”

“Wearing a seat belt reduces the risk of fatal injury by almost 50%. For children, the risk of fatal injury is reduced by 71% with the use of child safety seats.“

“Of those thrown completely out of a vehicle in a car crash, 75% died. Only one percent of people totally ejected from their cars had on a seat belt during the crash. Over 30% were not wearing seat belts.“

Conclusion? Wear your fucking seat belt. Tell your kids to wear their fucking seat belt. Tell your friends and family to wear their fucking seat belts. Time and time again it’s been proven that you are significantly more likely to survive a crash if you’re wearing one. Most people think they’re uncomfortable, but when you’re in a crash it can save your life. I’d rather be mildly injured than dead.

Wear your seat belt.

[badgengar]

2017 and people are still trying to spread the myth that you don’t need to wear a seatbelt.

[hebangshebangs-deactivated20180]

People really don’t wear a seatbelt????

[hunter-rodrigez]

This reminds me of a story from WW1 

When they first introduced Helmets to the troops fighting in trenches the number of head injuries suddenly skyrocketed and people wanted to take the helmets away again.

Until they realized that the reason for this was the fact that most of these head injuries would have been fatal if it wasn’t for the Helmets.

You always need to look at the bigger picture.  

[metamelonisle]

Do not forget about survivorship bias. The only reason those people are here to complain about seatbelts is because those seatbelts kept them alive in the first place. Always, ALWAYS wear your seatbelt.

[pkmatrix]

WEAR YOUR DAMNED SEATBELT

It drives me nuts, personally, that all of the adults who insisted that I wear a seatbelt as a child Now as adults refuse to wear seatbelts themselves. Now I have to sit there and play the grown up to people 30 plus years older than me insisting they put their seatbelt on every time I’m the driver. I just took a road trip with my parents, and literally it was every single time we got in the car I had to tell them (My mom in particular, who kept randomly just taking her seatbelt off while we were zooming down I-95 and made a big face every time I told her to put it back on - you’d think after a while she’d figure out that she could not do it secretly, because I have a newer car and the moment a passenger takes their seat belt off while the car is moving it starts screaming at you until the person puts their seatbelt back on).

Why are people like this? Le sigh.

[hellkat9940]

I’ve been in two car accidents where the car I was in was completely totaled. My sum total of injuries was a friction burn in the second accident because my arm was on the rubbery plastic arm rest on the passenger side door.

One involved us skidding on ice, rolling over, and hitting a frozen pond hard enough to crack the ice and start to sink.

The other involved us getting T-boned because a lady blew right through a stop sign at top speed.

In the first one, the only one injured was the family dog, who couldn’t wear a seat belt and was thrown out the back window. My mother, siblings, and I were all wearing seatbelts.

In the second, my mother suffered several broken ribs and brusing to her arm, hip, and neck. Her husband behind her was okay.

We were all wearing seatbelts.

I hate riding in cars and refused to go on school trips as a small child because the school buses didn’t have seatbelts.

Had somebody NOT been wearing a seatbelt during the first crash, they would’ve been thrown against the ceiling and the side windows.

Had my mother not been wearing a seatbelt during the second crash, she would’ve been thrown across the car and into me.

Had her husband not been wearing a seatbelt during the second crash he would’ve been thrown across the car and into the window.

Seatbelts are not just for your protection. They’re there for the protection of other people in the car and in the environment around you so that you don’t become a couple dozen pounds worth of high velocity meat missile.

[omgshiftercat]

For anyone who’s thinking, “But what if I have the kind of accident where I have to get out of the car, and my seatbelt gets stuck?”

That is why I have one of these attached to my rearview mirror:

It’s called a Resqme, a combination window-breaker and seatbelt-cutter.

I haven’t had to use it, but apparently it does work:

(Apparently it might not work on the laminated glass of a Tesla car, but that is yet another reason not to have a Tesla.)

[tzikeh]

“In the first one, the only one injured was the family dog, who couldn’t wear a seat belt and was thrown out the back window. My mother, siblings, and I were all wearing seatbelts.”

[tinierpurplefishes]

When I was going in to the hospital for one of my pre surgery appointments, I shared an elevator with a guy in a motorized wheelchair with a massive neck brace who made a point of telling us to wear seatbelts. He had stopped while driving home to talk to a friend, and then decided he didn’t need to put his seatbelt back on for the last two blocks to his house. He got hit by a drunk driver and broke his spine when he was thrown out of his seat. Docs said it probably would have only been pulled muscles and bruises if he’d had his seatbelt on. Wear your damn seatbelts.

[dandelionsresilience]

Some more info on canine car safety:

How To Keep Your Dog Safe in the Car

Learn how to keep your dog safe during car rides and discover the best dog car safety practices, equipment, and tips for a stress-free ride.

Dog car safety is critical. We put together a guide on crash-tested safety accessories, car safety tips & preparing for travel to keep you a

Dog Car Safety: Do You Need a Dog Car Seat, Dog Seat Belt, Barrier or a Carrier?

You have a variety of options when it comes to dog car safety devices. Find out if you need a dog car seat, dog seat belt or a dog carrier w

[kettle-bird]

Jackass Jenny #4 (featuring Clyde): Outcast Solidarity

(Wanna support these comics? Consider checking out my ko-fi!)

[butchfagminotaur]

i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

[butchfagminotaur]

“oh iran is a dictatorship!” “oh palestine is homophobic!” i don’t care like literally i don’t care that’s not a problem to be solved by other countries blowing innocent people up

[catasters]

[hope-for-the-planet]

Extensive testing validates reuse of 23-year-old second-life polycrystalline solar modules

Researchers in Brazil tested second-life polycrystalline PV modules for two years and found they retained 87–88% of their original power, wi

From the article:

Researchers at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in Brazil have conducted a 2-year testing on second-life polycrystalline solar modules deployed at their campus and have found that they can still ensure “stable” behavior, with performance consistent with annual degradation rates of up to 0.44%. “Despite the many aspects making it a difficult sell, circular economy and sustainability issues might work in favor of second-life photovoltaic modules, due to the huge amount of panels that will become available with the exponential growth this technology is undergoing for nearly a decade,” the research's lead author, Ricardo Rüther, told pv magazine. 

This is so cool! They found that solar panels over two decades old still retain 87-88% of their original functionality.

If somebody can figure out how to build a sustainable business around secondhand solar panels we could see the price of solar installations become shockingly cheap. And it would save so many resources to just re-use the existing mostly-functional-but-older solar panels rather than recycling them for parts.

[crazysodomite]

does this to you

[honey-fire]

My dad was eating pistachios so I reached my hand out and he just started peeling them and giving them to me. Then suddenly went “I really hope you find someone who loves you a lot” and I went “enough to peel my pistachios for me?” And he laughed and said “yeah exactly” before carrying on giving me more

[peopleareaproblem]

The Raincoat

by Ada Limón

When the doctor suggested surgery

and a brace for all my youngest years,

my parents scrambled to take me

to massage therapy, deep tissue work,

osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine

unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,

and move more in a body unclouded

by pain. My mom would tell me to sing

songs to her the whole forty-five minute

drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-

five minutes back from physical therapy.

She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered

by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,

because I thought she liked it. I never

asked her what she gave up to drive me,

or how her day was before this chore. Today,

at her age, I was driving myself home from yet

another spine appointment, singing along

to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

that I never got wet.

[stomachforcrows]

Big fan of media that makes you feel like this

[catasters]

[catasters]

[hope-for-the-planet]

Study Finds Rainforests Bounce Back Much Quicker than Expected

Text and image from this article in the New York Times:

Scientists once thought it would take a century or more for animals to return to deforested land in the tropics. Now, new research has found ecosystems can recover in mere decades. “It’s been a huge surprise for all of us,” said Timo Metz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and first author of the study, published in the journal Nature. “None of us expected it to be so impressive and so quick.” Rainforests have been disappearing at an alarming pace for at least a century, and millions of acres a year are still burned or cut down for logging, farming or ranching, or are lost to wildfires. In 2024, the rate of loss was as fast as 18 soccer fields per minute, adding up to an area nearly the size of Panama. At the same time, hundreds of millions of acres of formerly deforested land are thought to be regrowing. Scientists have generally found that it takes more than a century for trees and plants to fully resemble the old, original pristine forest. It was long assumed that animals would take just as long to return. The new study found that’s not necessarily the case. “The expectation was that the animals would need the forest to come first,” Dr. Metz said. “But surprisingly, many of the animals recover much more quickly than the trees.”

[corvidcall]

to anyone in the areas impacted by the wildfire smoke, my #1 biggest piece of advice as someone whos been dealing with wildfire smoke in the NW united states for years, is build yourself a Corsi-Rosenthal Cube

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

i think it took us maybe a half hour to put ours together, if that, and we replace the filters every 3 months. it's really made a HUGE difference, both when the air quality is bad, but also with our allergies

[o0fyuu0o]

Saw these easy to read instructions on Twitter. Stay safe 💚

[sun-cheyne]

Also just a handy, DIY air filter in general, if a bit bulky. For a less bulky and cheaper (but also less effective) solution, you can simply tape one filter to the fan, cut a shroud if you'd like.

[snowriddenwolf]

just FYI, this is quite literally what the climate scientists at my work who specialized in wildfire smoke impacts recommend. it works great, it's cheap to make, and it will make a noticeable impact on your air quality.

[mechanicalriddle]

i have asthma & keep one of these running in my room perpetually. after I set it up the difference in my sleep quality was pretty much night and day. Dont waste your time on proprietary air filters; SIMPLY bust out the duct tape

[blumineck]

The Royal Armouries let me play about in their armour!

(This was a set from someone similar in size to me, but it wasn’t exactly correct in all dimensions. Real knights often wore armour that was made to measure, which would allow for a slightly better range of motion. However, for a video game or film character that has looted armour, then something that fits as well as this would be a best case scenario, so it still tells us a fair bit!)

[pastelispunx]

My emotions about space travel, and the history of, are strong today.

[carolsturka]