PSA: how to save lives in case of cardiac arrest emergencies
Dunno why this is on my mind, but it is, and I can't stop thinking about it until I type this up, so.
There are a lot of guides out there on what to do in case of someone suddenly experiencing cardiac arrest. Please study https://www.stlukeshealth.org/resources/plan-it-cardiac-arrest-how-respond right now. It is short.
This guide, like almost all guides, omits the actual "crisis management" parts. Which is fine; teaching someone what to do and asking them to do it is the most approachable way to get the information out there. However, about half of people who collapse of cardiac arrest in public receive no help. Most people know they should at least call 911 (or your local emergency services shortcode), but don't, because they are confused and afraid and don't know who should do what.
It does not matter who does what as long as all the steps are performed as quickly as possible. You will decide who does what and you will do it immediately because it does not matter what the decision is but it does matter that the decision is made, and nobody without this specific crisis training starts yelling orders at complete strangers, which is the correct thing to do because then people do things instead of stand around alarmed and confused.
* Act. If someone suddenly collapses, YOU intervene immediately. Inaction kills.
* A person who cannot breathe and has no clear pulse is dead. You are reviving a dead person. It is impossible to hurt a dead person. Correct action will probably crush their ribcage. Inaction will guarantee they stay dead. I will refer to the person who has collapsed as "the dead person" as a reminder that your emergency response will not make their situation any worse.
* Direct. If nobody is already yelling orders, you will. Order individuals around: nobody responds to "somebody" because nobody knows who "somebody" is. If anyone you give an order to does not respond after two attempts, pick someone else. Give them a third attempt in case of "What?", but not a fourth if they stay confused and immobile.
At the top of your lungs, towards the largest group of people in the area who are not already involved: "CPR! CPR NOW! EMERGENCY! CPR NEEDED NOW!"
Yell "YOU! HERE! CPR!" at the physically most imposing person who responded. If nobody responds, start chest compressions and yell "YOU! HERE! DO THIS!" at the physically most imposing person around. Demonstrate chest compressions and emphasize: "All your weight. Do not stop. Break ribs." If you have the most upper body weight among people who can move freely, perform chest compressions yourself.
You cannot hurt a dead person. If you are not breaking ribs, your chest compressions are likely not effective. "Alive with shattered ribs" is much better off than "dead".
Yell at any one person not already using their phone: "YOU! CALL 911!" (non-Americans, replace with your local emergency number.) This may be redundant, which is fine, multiple 911 calls are much better than none. People texting, photographing, or recording video are preoccupied, it is not worth your time to try to get through to them.
If you know where an AED is: At anyone who looks like they can read signs and run quickly: "YOU! GET THE AED! RUN!" Point at the nearest "AED" sign. This may get a "What?", to which the answer is "There is an automatic defibrilator near that 'AED' sign. Get it! RUN!"
If you cannot get anyone to run for the AED in two tries, or you know where the AED is but the sign is around a corner, get it yourself. Run. Yell "MOVE! EMERGENCY!" at anyone in or almost in your path.
Use the AED. It will give you directions. If someone else got the AED and begins to use it, do not interfere.
Continue following AED directions (which will include when to resume chest compressions) until emergency services arrive. If whoever is performing chest compressions gets tired, find someone else.
* If an AED is close by and the dead person looks like an adult, use the AED before any other steps. Be conspicuous and loud and order a bystander to call 911. Adolescents and children need chest compressions for at least one minute before using an AED.
* The AED has sensors to determine what it should do. It will not deliver an electric shock to the dead person unless it might help. Do not be afraid to use an AED: it won't do anything if it doesn't need to.
* If you do not know where an AED is, yell "FIND AN AED" at nobody in particular. If someone knows what an AED is, this should start them running. Regardless, start picking random people who look like good runners: "YOU! FIND AN AED." You'll probably have to clarify: "Look for a sign that says AED. It has a picture of a heart with a pulse on it. It is probably over a doorway and probably near a bathroom. An AED is a defibrilator and it is this person's best chance to live. GO!" Then point in the direction of where you think the nearest bathroom might be. Repeat, sending people in different directions.
* If someone else is yelling orders at strangers, let them. If you know where the AED is, yell "GETTING THE AED" and sprint for it. You will save time. Time saves lives. Otherwise, if you know CPR, push your way to the dead person and start. If someone smaller than you is doing chest compressions, interrupt them with "I can push harder" unless the sound of breaking ribs informs you that they are doing well enough.
* You will probably fail. Even with the best possible bystander response, with an AED immediately available, most dead people stay dead. 40% of people who experience cardiac arrest in public and receive bystander intervention survive. Without intervention, less than 5% survive.
* About half of people who die of cardiac arrest in public receive no help from bystanders. 35% of these people were killed by the inaction of bystanders.
on the nature of my otherkin identity (long)
This seems like as good a time as any to remind folks that I'm otherkin. I don't need to preface this with some explanation about how identity is all in your head and is whatever you make it; my cosmology allows for past and parallel incarnations, a universe that we can only begin to glimpse at from over here while physically incarnate on earth, and allows souls to acquire a form - which does not have to match their incarnation. I am a dragon, I have been a dragon for aeons, and I will continue to be a dragon after this planet's star burns no more.
None of us are bound to any one place or time forever. Incarnation is transitory, but souls are eternal; a consciousness is an indivisible spark of will and experience, but it has no power to act or experience anything on its own; incarnation is the only way out of an insensate hell. (Or an insensate nirvana, if you are better at keeping company with only yourself than I am.) Incarnation is, to a first approximation, recursive; I am a soul, incarnated as a complicated crystalline being of fractal nature that exists alongside itself in a multitude of places and times, which again incarnates to experience and explore forms of the universe that it cannot exist in, which incarnate and reincarnate subject to local forces and whatever passes for "metaphysics" (or just plain physics) wherever it happens to be. What else is there to do, but unwind the mysteries of the universe? We're here, we might as well figure out what "here" is.
Most of the time, I incarnate in something that at least resembles a dragon, for reasons of comfort and personal preference. This was *supposed* to be a sapient lizard planet but apparently my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide was sixty-five million years out of date, so I've made do with the species that at least has smartphones. I can exfiltrate some brilliant works of engineering, electronics, and reinventing the process of logic for the benefit of machines - pure machines, with no souls, engaging in reasoning! Few places have laws of physics so strict that there's no easier way to do it, leading to spectacular development in large-scale mathematics and hyperminiaturized electronics, all of which can be re-applied to places that don't *need* it so didn't develop it, but could use it.
So perhaps I'm a little "old-school" by local standards, because not a word of this is figurative. I have beliefs that I freely agree are unusual, and a self-consistent and unusual cosmology to match. I read Tarot (although I'm badly out of practice) and am reasonably convinced that it works, when applied well. My consciousness is not primarily local, although it's running on a monkey meat computer that I'm not entirely happy with (but who is?) but I make it work and I know it's doing its best.
I neither require nor expect people around me to believe that my view of the universe, and my place in it, and my nature, is accurate. I believe it to be accurate, however, and I will not make psychological excuses for why; it is a reflection of the sum of what I am and have experienced and perceived; it is not abstract.
About ten years ago a flying squirrel snuck into my house and spent a few hours playing hide-and-seek with my cat. Anyways. Here's the best photo you're likely to ever see of a flying squirrel hiding inside a #sunmicrosystems E4000 server chassis. #retrocomputing #mammals
new dragon just dropped:
courtesy of @Zest (ember)!
Sometimes I have good taste in music. Sometimes I listen to https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=HUbudH4AQ9Q&feature=share instead. It balances out.
avoidance becomes self-perpetuating. I rarely have a good reason for just disappearing for months or years and I feel increasingly guilty for doing so, by which I convince myself that my absence is offensive and I can’t return without a sufficient explanation and amends for my disgraceful behavior, which I typically feel incapable of, and the barrier just gets higher over time.
Balloon, belly, mentions of TF
Here's some art of my main sona, Eleven!
A balloon raven android comprised of latex and nanites, living on a space station run by AI clones of itself. It's a pretty chill birbloon, just enjoying a peaceful life - but it also uses its nanites & whatnot to offer transformations to willing subjects, granting them similarly synthetic, balloony, benign-AI-hivemind-connected bodies to enjoy~.
🎨: Myself, KieliIndustries, Balloondra, me again
very fetishy thought debris
I want to be bred with great force and enthusiasm, claws digging into my latex hide as a massive cock plows into me, absolutely flooding my fertile rubbery womb with seed, leaving me swollen and bulging so extremely I might not even be able to move
and then all but immobilzed again with the increasing weight of the eggs I carry, their large rigid outlines clearly visible in the shape of my taut latex flesh; clearly if i was anything other than rubber through-and-through there's no way i'd be able to lay them at all, but, fortunately for me...
mh -, unmet emotional needs
I have a very high need for touch, which often becomes a craving for sexual touch.
I live with my partner, who is asexual and mostly indifferent to touch, albeit with limited patience. they used to be very touch-averse due to the physically abusive home they moved out of, but fifteen years of living together has at least relaxed that.
so I have very, very unmet needs for touch and sex and feel hopeless to ever do anything about that. a lot of today has involved fighting off the belief that I am a disgusting, repulsive creep who doesn't deserve to be around other people, which is apparently a response I have learned for fighting off touch-craving. predictably it is extremely ineffective and emotionally harmful, and really fucking hard to stop doing.
it's impossible to explain just how much regret is tied up in the bonfire of burned bridges my inability to maintain relationships has left behind. apparently my behavior is typical of the "disorganized" attachment style? when people warm up to me I fucking panic because I'm not good enough for them, if they really knew me they'd hate me, maybe I can't tell real invitations and social warmth from keeping up appearances and being polite and I'd be an abusive creep if I didn't take it as a sign to back off, if they knew how much I was into them they'd want me to get the fuck as far away from them as possible, they have every right to demand that but I haven't given them the chance because I've never shown them who I am, I'm a manipulative creep who should be excluded from society for the good of everyone else but I'm too cowardly to admit it.
this very familiar trail of distorted thinking replays itself again and again. it's why I don't stay in contact, this is what's happening to me when I sit at a message window trying to convince myself that it really is okay to start a conversation. also what happens when I freeze up or act implausibly oblivious when I think I might be getting flirted with but I don't know that it's okay that I'm really into them. this happens much more often than I'd like.
once again I have picked up a book on hypnosis and within one chapter found myself highly amused spotting very familiar patterns of hypnotic suggestion (familiar because I use them myself for that purpose!) embedded in the prose.
Sometimes it looks deliberate, sometimes it looks like it's just the author's habit by now. And, sometimes, patterns of hypnotic suggestion are simply ordinary in educational text; nudging someone to build one kind of mental association is much like any other.
Warning for furries: A production company is sending a deceptive casting call for a film that appears to be a furry documentary but is actually a hateful smear film.
It's the same deceptive tactic Matt Walsh used to trick trans people into appearing in "What is a Woman". They want to do the same for furries.
Please be careful and warn others!
https://mobile.twitter.com/PleasantPicnic/status/1618898371133210625
Dragon who has been rar-ing at other dragons for a while now. Professional nerd, Seattle-ish, Otherkin, weird cosmology, genderqueer. Hypnoswitch. 🔞content to expect under CWs: scalies, avians, latex, inflatables, inflation, goo, tentacles, vore, hypnosis.