side quest

How to identify, and then deal with, your emotions

Emotional regulation skills

Conflict resolution skills

Creating and enforcing boundaries

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy skills

Emotional intelligence ideals to aim for

Axes of self-care/wellbeing

Self-care self-evaluation (find out where you’re starting)

How to make a self-care checklist

How to start a self-care habit

Reparenting resources

Crash Course Psychology

KhanAcademy: Understanding the Self and Society (some units more relevant than others)

Emotional education activities for children and teens

Consider this a sequel to this morning’s post talking about that SOS from that woman.

To kidnap people, starve them, beat them, torture them and even rape the whole taking their personal belongings? HOW does someone NOT being here “legally” justify that EVIL treatment?? Because guess what fuck sticks? NO ONE but Native Americans are here legally.

But thankfully a group called Haven Watch is formed to help these victims. You can donate if you can but if you can’t just spread the word!

My mom and her teacher friends have a similar group here in New York and me and my friends have a similar kind of group going on.

For my non-Canadian followers, please share this petition and hopefully this will further the reach to other Canadian users on this platform. It is abominable that any company in this country help or in any way facilitate the unconstitutional and dehumanising acts that ICE has done. In my city of Vancouver, we have been protesting and boycotting Hootsuite, a social media platform that has a $2M USD contract with DHS providing them with social media services from 2024 to 2029. Hootsuite claims they don't use tracking or surveillance with their tools, but the mere fact that they have chosen to work with the violent group in whatever social media capacity, despite previously *turning down* a contract with them back in 2020, is egregious.

Jim Pattison Group is a enormous conglomerate also based in Vancouver, owned and run by one man, Jim Pattison. Pattison previously considered selling an industrial building in Virginia to ICE for them to use as another "holding and processing facility," or more accurately, a goddamn concentration camp, but because of backlash he reversed that decision. Thank fucking god for that, but that does not mean he won't reconsider it again in the future. In Ontario, ICE ordered 20 armoured vehicles from a Brampton firm called Roshel to the tune of $7.3M USD. Canada should not be arming a violent group that has shown itself to be nothing more than a racist group of masked kidnappers and power-tripping thugs that has violated the rights of US citizens and violated numerous court orders.

Americans:

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

The first is that you don't pull the marshmallow off the roasting stick and somehow put it on the chocolate. Your staging area will look something like this, with the graham crackers and chocolate already set out (though not usually on the fire like this, for us it was always someone's lap or a picnic table or something)

And when your marshmallow has reached appropriate roasting perfection, you use the graham crackers to slide it off the stick.

and ideally, as a CHILD you are using a literal stick. Like you walked around and spent time looking for The Perfect Stick off the ground while the adults set up the fire. It has to be thin enough the marshmallow will fit, sturdy enough that it won't bow, long enough that you won't burn yourself roasting your marshmallow. And preferably doesn't have a lot of bark that's sloughing off, OR so much bar sloughing off you can peel it all back and get to the clean stick under it. If you're smart, you might stick the tip into the fire first to "wash" it/burn off anything that was still lingering, but. well, most kids don't.

When you bite in, the marshmallow and chocolate SHOULD ooze out all over you. If you don't kinda look like this eating it, you've probably done it wrong:

You find a spot, not above all the logs where everyone sticks their marshmallows by default, but at the heart of the fire. Ideally between a couple logs already glowing gold. Something like here:

Below the leaping flame. Near the logs. There's probably only one or two spots good enough for this on any given fire, but that's okay because everyone else is up above. They will get their marshmallows faster. They will be either firm or burned or both. That's not your goal.

Rotate the marshmallow slowly. Ideally come in at an angle so the part closest to the flame is the side, not the tip. The spot closest to the fire is the spot that turns a crispy golden brown, and you want that everywhere, on the tip and around the circle.

You keep going, slowly turning, for several minutes. Several people will rotate in and out of the higher sections, getting their fast delight. Eventually, your marshmallow will start sagging badly, risking falling. Maybe it does fall and got start over. But eventually it will be golden brown all over, and so liquid it no longer clings to the stick. It is ready, finally.

You say "who hasn't gotten one yet?" And deposit it onto their waiting graham crackers and chocolate. You've made an excellent marshmallow. It isn't for you. Get another while you're over by the bags and go back to the heart of the fire.

That's your evening. One, slow, perfect marshmallow at a time, given to whomever still wants s'more. You're making art for children to stuff into their mouths cheerfully. You're watching the movement of the fire and the heat of the logs, like you would if you were maintaining it — maybe you would be, maybe you were the one who built it — but right now that's not the goal. Let someone else put more logs on, while you take only the one stick and find the best spot for it to live.

You will, eventually, finish a marshmallow and find that nobody moves to accept it. Maybe they're all eating right now, or maybe they've gone through so many they're hesitating. Eat your masterpiece then. Enjoy it, the hardest and most perfect result from a fun and beautiful moment. Go back in for another, until you've run out of marshmallows and the fire is too low or until even you are done with s'mores, until you have made enough.

HEY YALL.

USAMERICAN DEMOCRATS SUCCESSFULLY REMOVED EVERY ANTITRANS RIDER FROM EVERY FUNDING BILL

Spread the fucking word because LORD knows democrats fucking suck at spreading it themselves and will fail once again to inform their base

But just in case you’re sitting there going “the Dems aren’t doing anything,” THEY ARE

IT IS JUST SLOW

AND MOSTLY INVISIBLE

BUT THEY ARE

A definite breath of relief for now! Though, the bills still must be voted on before the end of the month and if that fails, another government shutdown will follow.

The tough situation is that these bills are still ass, and one in particular is about DHS:

“Some aspects of the remaining appropriations bills may still be hard for Democrats to support. The Homeland Security bill does not include deep cuts or broad reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrats and many others have criticized ICE policies as brutal, especially after the killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer this month.

DeLauro issued a statement saying she shares her colleagues’ “frustration with the out-of-control agency” and that they should vote based on what’s “best for their constituents,” NBC reports. But “the Homeland Security funding bill is more than just ICE,” she added. A lapse in funding would mean Transportation Security Administration agents would work without pay, and Federal Emergency Management Administration services could be delayed, she said.

Republicans have agreed to hold a vote on the Homeland Security bill separately from the others, “which would give Democrats an opportunity to oppose it, without moving Washington toward another shutdown,” according to NBC.

Image Source: The Brown Girls Project

In a statement posted on social media, the American College of Nurse-Midwives called Dr. Green Smith’s death a “profound failure of the systems meant to protect birthing people.”

“That a Black midwife and maternal health expert died after giving birth in the United States is both heartbreaking and unacceptable,” the statement said. “Her death underscores the persistent and well-documented reality that Black women—regardless of education, income, or professional expertise—face disproportionate risks during pregnancy and childbirth due to systemic racism and failures in care.”

Let’s remember everyone that we know of who died in ICE custody due to neglect and “undetermined causes” in this past year alone. Again, these are the deaths that we know of:

Genry Ruiz Guillén, Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, Maksym Chernyak, Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez, Brayan Garzón-Rayo, Nhon Ngoc Nguyen, Marie Ange Blaise, Abelardo Avellaneda, Jesus Molina-Veya, Johnny Noviello, Isidro Pérez, Tien Xuan Phan, Chaofeng Ge, Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas, Oscar Rascon Duarte, Santos Banegas Reyes, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, Miguel Ángel García Medina, Huabing Xie, Leo Cruz-Silva, Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh, Gabriel Garcia Aviles, Kai Yin Wong, Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, Pete Sumalo Montejo, Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani, Jean Wilson Brutus, Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, Delvin Francisco Rodriguez and Nenko Stanev Gantchev.

You can read their stories here: