fidzu : django

Should you put a tourniquet in your first aid kit? Maybe, but you should know some things before you do:

• Training is more important than any piece of gear. Most bleeds can be stopped with direct pressure and/or proper wound packing - and both can be done with your hands and any old piece of fabric you have lying around. If you don't know what "direct pressure" or "wound packing" means, or if you want to practice, take a course! A Stop The Bleed course is an excellent investment, and will go into all forms of bleeding control (including how to properly apply a tourniquet.) Most basic first aid courses will also cover bleeding control to some extent, though wilderness-oriented courses (for example, Wilderness First Aid) will typically go into more depth.

  (These are US-oriented suggestions; readers from other areas, I'd love for you to get in touch and let me know the equivalents in your country.)

• Once you do take that training, you'll learn that the most important supplies for bleeding control are gloves, a stretchy bandage and plenty of gauze. Get those first, then think about other supplies.

• You probably don't need a tourniquet in your first aid kit. Major bleeds that require tourniquets and aren't immediately fatal - are rare outside of some specific circumstances (see below). Most people will never encounter one of these circumstances. While there's nothing wrong with having one (if you're trained to use it), they're expensive and don't last forever. If you've got disposable income, and the training, sure, go ahead; but for most people, your money is better spent on something else. (Narcan, for example: you've got a much higher chance of saving a life with Narcan than with a tourniquet.)

• You probably do need a tourniquet if you:

  • work with highly dangerous power tools (e.g. table saws, chainsaws),
  • use firearms (e.g. target shooting, hunting) or are likely to be shot (e.g. military), or
  • ride a motorcycle.

  This isn't an exhaustive list; you may be able to think of other situations. The common factor is exposing yourself to a risk of sudden massive hemorrhage. If you're in one of those situations, you should have a tourniquet and know how to use it.

• If you do decide to have a tourniquet, you need to know how to use it. They're not intuitive to use, especially if you're stressed, and putting one on yourself can be tricky. Most people, without training, don't make the tourniquet nearly tight enough - they need to be shockingly tight.

  Take a course, and buy a trainer tourniquet to practice. You don't want to practice with your real tourniquet, because they're single use. Tightening them correctly can weaken the strap to the point that they may not work a second time; hence the need for the trainer. (This is another reason why I say that tourniquets are expensive.) Practice applying a tourniquet to yourself and to someone else, and crank it down correctly. It should cut off circulation (that's the point), and will hurt. Practicing like this is safe as long as you don't leave the tourniquet tightened for longer than a few minutes.

• Buy a windlass-style tourniquet- that's the kind with a velcro band and tightening stick. Other styles (like the stretchy strap you might see when you get blood drawn for lab work) don't work as well, and improvised tourniquets (e.g. a belt or climbing rope or whatever) don't work at all. Get it from a reputable source: places like Amazon often sell fakes that'll break under proper tension. They should be expensive (around $40 each).

  The gold standard are C-A-T tourniquets; I get mine from North American Rescue.

• An alternative to a tourniquet that's nearly as effective and easier to use is an Israeli Bandage. They're much cheaper (typically less than $10 each), and are easy to apply (but still practice). They're great, you should have one in your FAK even if you also have a tourniquet.

• Some people put clotting agents or bandages (e.g. QuikClot) in their bleeding control kits. Opinion on these is split: they do work, but they leave gunk in the wound that your ER doc is going to need to cut out. This'll prolong recovery and cause worse cosmetic outcomes. They also can't stop the big bleeds that you'd need wound packing or a tourniquet to stop. Many ER doctors and nurses I've talked to don't like clotting agents, and recommend against them; but on the other hand, several remote/austere medicine practitioners I've spoken to make compelling cases for them. So: think about the tradeoffs.

• Tourniquets expire - the nylon weakens over time, to the point that tightening an old tourniquet might break it. So that tourniquet your friend kept when he left the army should go in the trash, and you need to check your kit yearly-ish and replace any past their expiration date.

So what do I do?

I have tourniquets in two places:

1. In my shop. I have a table saw in there, and several other things that spin sharp metal at high speed.
2. In a small first aid pouch that I wear on my belt when I'm using my chainsaw.

Both of those bleeding control kits also have an Israeli bandage, vetwrap, and gauze. I probably ought to have gloves but I don't; the person doing the bleeding is going to be me or a loved one, and I can't be bothered to keep replacing them as they get all gross and sticky from the heat.

None of my other first aid kits have tourniquets. My backcountry kits don't need them; I'm not going to encounter a situation in the wilderness that requires a tourniquet. (I would add one if I went on a hunting trip.)

There's an argument to be made that I should carry one in the kit in my car - because I have emergency medical training, I'd want to stop and help if I witnessed a traffic accident, and those are situations where perhaps a tourniquet could make a difference. However, I'm concerned that the heat of the car will degrade the tourniquet faster than I'd expect, and so if I did apply it, it could fail. And I'm confident enough in my ability to control bleeding with pressure until EMS arrives.

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Was this helpful? I've been thinking about writing a longer series about first aid kits (how I think about building them, and what goes in mine), of which this could become a part. If that's something you'd like to read, get in touch.

21 Sep 2026 5:00am GMT

I'm running a workshop in Lisbon next month, and you're invited!

It's a small, in-person, hands-on session on optimizing Python code, with a Django flavour. Here are the details:

• What: Python optimization workshop
• When: Saturday 10th October 2026, 10:00-13:00
• Where: Martinhal Lisbon Oriente, Parque das Nações, Lisbon.
• Cost: Free, but places are limited and registration is required
• Size: Up to 10 people
• Led by: Myself, Adam Johnson
• Organised by: Mafalda Marques

Register on Luma

19 Sep 2026 4:00am GMT

News

Executive Director Search Extended to September 22

You don't need to be a Django or Python expert, or already part of the community, to apply for the DSF's first Executive Director role. Applications now close September 22, anywhere on Earth.

DjangoCon Europe 2027 is heading to Innsbruck, Austria! 🏔️⛷️🚠🇦🇹

Tickets are on sale and the Call for Proposals is open for five days of Django, Python, and community in Innsbruck, February 17 to 21, 2027.

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Django Software Foundation

DSF Board monthly meeting, Sept 10, 2026

The board approved DEP 0019, discussed next steps in their Executive Director search, committed to funding Djangonaut Space for the next three years, later launched a new corporate sponsorship page, and more.

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Python Software Foundation

Announcing the 2026 PSF Board Election Results!

Elaine Wong, Laís Carvalho, Ee Durbin, and Georgi Ker take the four open board seats out of 670 ballots cast, as Cheuk Ting Ho, Chris Neugebauer, and Denny Perez finish their terms.

Announcing the 2026 Python Packaging Council Election Results!

The first Python Packaging Council is seated: Brett Cannon and Pradyun Gedam on two-year terms, Donald Stufft, Henry Schreiner, and Ralf Gommers on one-year terms, so roughly half the council turns over each year.

Announcing the PSF Strategic Plan 2026

Feedback on the June draft reshaped the PSF's five-year plan, which now adds security baseline and vulnerability management objectives, folds translation into accessibility, and clarifies how companies can fund specific work.

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Updates to Django

Today, "Updates to Django" is presented by Raffaella from Djangonaut Space! 🚀

Last week we had 9 pull requests merged into Django by 8 different contributors - including 3 first-time contributors! Congratulations to Loïc LEFEVRE, Paul K. Gerke and Rickey Shideler for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board!

• Support for GEOS 3.10 is removed for Django 6.2
• Fixed a data loss issue in Django 4.0 where network rasters were deleted by GeoDjango when closed.

Thanks to the persistence of the contributors, a great deal of work has been done on the dajngo-admin yes-icons to make it rectangular, which helps people with dichromatic viewing deficiencies.

Kudos for the great work updating the tutorial and cleaning up a section to help newcomers focus on the essentials.

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Django Fellow Reports

Django Fellow Report - Natalia

A quieter week, with a mix of security work, reviews, and follow-ups from ongoing work. I spent a good chunk of time on a security report that needed a second triage, including a detailed review of the proposed patch 🔎.

I also wrapped up more of the follow-through from DEP 20 by adapting the release checklists to the new release calendar, and resumed a PR to make EmailValidator more flexible.

And, in particularly happy news 🥳, we welcomed two new members to the Ops Team and two to the Security Team 🎉. I'm thrilled to see both teams growing!

Django Fellow Report - Sarah

This week was quite admin heavy but all positive things! The usual tickets triaged, reviewed, and authored, as well as four security issues, and lots of meetings.

Django Fellow Report - Jacob

An early report for about a day at my desk before heading out for some vacation. Multiple tickets reviewed and authored, along with security/ops/steering council/Fellows meetings.

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Articles

Django: introducing django-mcpz, for making MCP servers

Because the new MCP version is stateless, a server is just a Django view: route path("mcp", server), decorate functions that take an HttpRequest, and msgspec validates arguments against schemas generated from your type annotations. No ASGI or Channels needed.

Share how you use Django with Django Probe

Tim Schilling wants decisions about what Django adds or deprecates to rest on more than gut feel, so django-probe counts which Django classes, methods, and functions your codebase actually uses and submits the tally. Sign up at djangoprobe.org, then scan and submit.

The Ultimate Question of Architecture, the Universe and Everything

Four projects, one lesson: make being wrong cheap.

Django Management Command for Bulk Import

A walkthrough of writing a custom Django management command to bulk import data.

Django: serve the change password well-known URL

One RedirectView at /.well-known/change-password lets password managers send users straight to your change password page, and Django's default 404s already pass the spec's check for servers that answer 200 to everything.

The PyLadiesCon Portal Was Spammed: 2,249 Fake Accounts. Four Months Before Anyone Noticed

A bot signed up 2,249 accounts on a Django volunteer portal to borrow its sending reputation for email bombing, and at 30 a day nobody noticed until fake accounts were 91% of the database. The fixes: django-simple-captcha, per-IP hourly rate limits, and a scheduled purge of unverified accounts.

Creating Web Widgets Using the Document Picture-in-Picture API

Picture-in-picture isn't just for video: this API floats any HTML in an always-on-top window, and the display-mode: picture-in-picture media query keeps your CSS from breaking once a component leaves the page. Desktop Chrome and Firefox only for now.

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Django Forum

Add Plausible Tracking to DjangoProject.com?

Plausible tracking is now live on djangoproject.com and docs.djangoproject.com. This was a long-running discussion over the past 2 years. Thank you to everyone who participated.

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Events

Django on the Med - Sept 23rd to 25th

The second Django on the Med development sprints are taking place next week in beautiful Pescara, Italy.

Django Day Copenhagen 2026 - October 2nd

Djangonauts from in and around Denmark are meeting up for the 6th edition of Django Day Copenhagen, to be held on October 2nd. It will be a full day of talks, either to be experienced online -or- at our venue.

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Sponsored

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New strings in your .po files, translated on-brand before they merge. Localhero runs as a GitHub Action, with a review page where the whole team can tweak the copy. No export, no re-import, no sync step to forget. Rails YAML and JSON too.

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Django Job Board

The DSF's search for its first Executive Director, now open through September 22, leads this week's board, alongside a new Django role at The Developer Society, machine learning work at Provision, and a backend seat at The Cruise Brothers.

⭐ Executive Director at Django Software Foundation

🆕 Django Developer at The Developer Society

Machine Learning Engineer (Hybrid) at Provision

Django Developer at The Cruise Brothers

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Projects

codingjoe/django-letter

Write an email once as a Django template, and django-letter sends it as HTML with inlined CSS plus a plain-text alternative derived from the same markup.

adamchainz/django-mcpz

The package behind the article above, for building MCP servers inside a regular Django project.

18 Sep 2026 3:00pm GMT