Taylor_Tot Casserole

Homeless encampments are a social issue, not a criminal problem and should be handled accordingly.

Homelessness is a humanity problem, a dignity problem, an opportunity problem; it's an issue centered around the question, "how can we allow this to happen to even a single one of our own kind?" Cruelty is never the answer to anything, but is particularly vile when applied to those who are already suffering so much.

Hi, can I interst you in some Housing first?

Housing First is a policy that offers unconditional, permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people, and other supportive services afterward. It was first discussed in the 1990s, and in the following decades became government policy in certain locations within the Western world.[1] There is a substantial base of evidence showing that Housing First is both an effective solution to homelessness and a form of cost savings, as it also reduces the use of public services like hospitals, jails, and emergency shelters.[2] Cities like Helsinki and Vienna in Europe have seen dramatic reductions in homelessness due to the adaptation of Housing First policies,[3][4] as have the North American cities Columbus, Ohio, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Medicine Hat, Alberta.[5][6][7][8][9][10]

Housing First is an alternative to a system of emergency shelter/transitional housing progressions. Rather than moving homeless individuals through different "levels" of housing, whereby each level moves them closer to "independent housing" (for example: from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from there to their own apartment or house in the community), Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelters into their own accommodation.

Housing First approaches are based on the concept that a homeless individual or household's first and primary need is to obtain stable housing, and that other issues that may affect the household can and should be addressed once housing is obtained. In contrast, many other programs operate from a model of "housing readiness" — that is, that an individual or household must address other issues that may have led to the episode of homelessness prior to entering housing.

Housing first strategy should be considered in its entirety, as it is a comprehensive solution incorporating support for homeless people in all aspects of their personal and social life. It does not intend to provide housing for the people in need and forget about them.[11][12][13][14] The housing first philosophy is a paradigm shift, where quick provision of stable accommodations is a precondition for any other treatment to reduce homelessness. Meanwhile, this approach relies on layers of collaborative support networks that promote stability and eliminate factors that cause or prolong homelessness. The supporting system addresses issues such as healthcare, education, family and children, employment, and social welfare.[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First

That’s just her bare bones, this is the full river and it’s tributaries.

Isn’t she gorgeous. Literally the veins of life. Love her. Appreciate her.

And here are the pipelines in the area :)

The blue color explains the interstate pipelines and the red color explains the intrastate pipelines of the United state.

Now here is Mississippi again but this time I overlayed it on that map of the pipelines that cross it. And you know, threaten it, the ecosystems that rely on it, and 80% of humans in the USA who source their water from it.

You can show your respect by fighting pipelines and demanding cleaner energy

okay, reblog this version instead

i must once again criticize the girlbossification of mary shelley

just ran across someone very distressed to learn about the racism in frankenstein and this is what ignoring the orientalism of safie's narrative and the casual mention that clerval wants to help the english colonize india in favor of a flattened narrative about mary shelley's #feminism because she wrote a pivotal novel will get you!! it gets you people who forget that mary was an upper class english woman in the 19th century

since this has breached containment let me be extremely clear that i am not canceling long dead author mary shelley or her book which forms a fundamental cornerstone of my personality i am saying forcing historical figures into two dimensional Feminist Icon status is bad and leads people to have unrealistic ideas of those figures and their work. people who are grown ups can read work with problematique ideas without catching moral cooties

Obsessed w her

She just gets it

Teachers have tried this and are amazed when their classes don’t go feral like in the book.  It’s almost as if the book was supposed to be satire and not a treaty on the nature of humanity.

there’s a timeskip

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

THERE’S A TIMESKIP

after losing control of the signal fire there’s a FUCKING TIMESKIP and when the next chapter starts everyone’s hair is several inches longer and their clothes have rotted to shreds and they’re still just kind of chilling!!!!

IT TAKES THE TERRIBLE IMPERIALISM MIND-POISONED EXCESSIVELY BRITISH BOYS IN THE ACTUAL BOOK SEVERAL MONTHS TO COMMIT A SINGLE ACT OF INTENTIONAL VIOLENCE, EVEN THE ONE (1) CHILD WRITTEN AS AN ACTUAL SOCIOPATH

AND then when they DO turn on each other it is because

THERE’S AN UNSPECIFIED WORLD WAR HAPPENING

AND A PILOT’S CORPSE CRASH LANDS ON THE ISLAND POST-DOGFIGHT AND THE CHILDREN MISTAKE THE PARACHUTE FOR A MONSTER AND SPIRAL INTO PARANOIA

BECAUSE CHILDREN INHERIT THE LEGACY AND TRAUMA OF VIOLENCE FROM THE ADULTS WAGING WAR AROUND THEM

HURR DURR IN THE REAL WORLD IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN LIKE IN LORD OF THE FLIES -

IT DIDN’T HAPPEN THAT WAY IN LORD OF THE FLIES EITHER YOU JUST HAVEN’T READ IT SINCE HIGH SCHOOL IF EVER AND DON’T REMEMBER WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE GODDAMN BOOK

#tbf the dude wrote it to be a dick

yes. yes he did. i’m also gonna direct you to the real life ‘lord of the flies’ which occured in the 1960s, when six tongan schoolboys got stranded on a desert island for over a year before being rescued by an australian fisherman (who, it should be noted, later took on all six as crewmembers because the reason they were out in the first place was because they wanted to see the world, and named his ship the Ata after the island they were stranded on). nobody died. the only injuries that occurred were accidental, and when one of the boys broke his leg falling down a cliff, the others braced it and looked after him so well that it healed perfectly. if they argued, then they would literally go to opposite sides of the island until they’d cooled off. after leaving the island, they remained friends for the rest of their lives. here’s a photo of them as adults, with their rescuer (who is third from the left) and other members of his crew.

i read about this in rutger bregman’s human kind, a book i cannot recommend highly enough, but if you don’t want to go and read a whole book about the inherent goodness of humanity (which again, you really should) then the relevant excerpt can be found here.

*slams reblog*

Klezmer dolphins.

I don’t know that I’ve reblogged anything faster in my entire tumblr life.  

It’s time to activate it…

Bites The Dust! now this entire post will be reversed!

Am I having a fucking stroke

what the fuck was that

World heritage post.

Here’s a great explanation as to the psychology behind posts like this

when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”

when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”

when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

me: the college of winterhold is a terrible faction questline with terrible characters and i wouldnt recommend it to anyone

also me:

girlfriend goals

food sovereignty >>>>> absolute veganism for everyone

im not kidding when i say it makes your life 1000x easier when it comes to this subject if you just abandon the vegan vs antivegan dichotomy entirely and invest in learning about food sovereignty

for those who have never heard about it: "Food sovereignty, a term coined by members of Via Campesina in 1996, asserts that the people who produce, distribute, and consume food should control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution, rather than the corporations and market institutions that have come to dominate the global food system. It also encompasses the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. The phrase "culturally appropriate" signifies that the food that is available and accessible for the population should fit with the cultural background of the people consuming it."

food sovereignty is inclusive of both vegan diets and those who cannot go vegan whether it's because of chronic illness, sustenance needs or anything else

it also addresses the economic root cause of animal and land exploitation, ie who controls the means of production and whether their goals are to feed the people or expand profit margins

food sovereignty is an indigenous and peasent led movement that seeks to end the abuse of land and animals by empowering the workers who grow and harvest our food instead of greedy corporations

i highly suggest checking out via campesina's website to start learning about food sovereignty and i encourage everyone to stop investing so much time in endless arguments about veganism when we could all be doing much more useful things to organize against the big agribusiness that is harming all of us– humans, animals and the land

I think an extremely important part of mental health awareness and intervention is acknowledging that no, help isn’t actually always available. Or the “help” that is, isn’t actually helpful.

When I was 22 I hit a wall. I called the suicide hotline from my car so my roommates wouldn’t hear me crying. I explained that I could barely shower, feed, or dress myself. I needed immediate intervention.

They asked me if they could send an ambulance for me. They wanted to hospitalize me. I explained that I was a week away from finals. And graduation. If I were hospitalized, I couldn’t graduate. The inpatient program also didn’t allow phones or visitors, and I knew how disastrous it would be for me to lose contact with my family support system.

I didn’t need to be hospitalized. I needed daily solutions. Simple ones, even. I needed a few precooked meals in my fridge so I could use my menial energy to keep my body going. I needed a doctor to contact my school and ask if I could have some extensions on my class assignments. I neededna few excused absences so I could catch up on my lost sleep.

They told me there was an intensive program that allowed residents to live in an inpatient care facility and get daily help with tasks like eating, therapy, medication, and showering, while still leaving for work and school, but it cost $30,000. I told them half the reason I was calling them was because of my financial pressures and fear.

In about 10 minutes of back-and-forth, it became clear that they had no true solution for me. I could go into the hospital and an inpatient program which would interrupt my entire life, and which I knew did not create very good results and had traumatized some of my own friends, or, well, I couldn’t even go into debt for the other program. They didn’t accept any new patients without half of the cost upfront. So it wasn’t even an option.

No therapist or psychiatrists or social workers could fit me in for 3-8 weeks.

So I said thank you and hung up, emotionally spent. I felt utterly empty.

Sitting in my car I realized I had a choice, to live or to stop. Nobody was going to save me. Nobody was going to help.

So I went inside, and I cried myself to sleep, and when I woke up I still hadn’t made a choice. So then I did. I chose to live no matter how terrible, just in case things turned around down the road.

It was unspeakably difficult. I didn’t shower. I barely ate. I either slept too much or not enough.

But I did survive, and a year later I got with a therapist who started to make things a little lighter for me.

I still struggle now, but things are usually much better, and I’m glad I’m still here.

I just think it’s important to acknowledge that for many people, especially in rural areas, and for people without money, which is most people, that the “help is always available” line feels hollow. Because often times it isn’t, actually.

But that doesn’t mean there will never be.

Overall, we need to build an entirely new system for mental health support in this world.

But for now, ask yourself or your friend in crisis what might make things a little more bearable until help actually is available.

A meal? Emailing a professor? Clean laundry? What might make things a little lighter?

I know that on the very brink, things like this may seem totally pointlessnor trivial. But if you can’t stop yourself or someone from falling, sometimes the only way to save someone is with a softer landing.

Sometimes the best stop-gaps or solutions, are the things that you’ve been taught to disapprove of. 

Getting a week’s worth of frozen meals, to get nutrients into your body, because you know meal prep (even the basics) will be too much.

Eating off of paper plates for a year, because it’s distressing to keep walking by all of your unfinished dishes, but you aren’t managing to get them done. 

Putting a bunch of cheap laundry baskets (or cardboard boxes) in different rooms, so dirty laundry is less obstructive to your space when it piles up, because you always have somewhere to toss it. 

Throwing out the container full of moldy food in the fridge, even though the container could be washed and salvaged, because you don’t have the spoons. 

Offering to do something you can manage for a partner, roommate, or sibling, in exchange for them taking care of a chore that is unmanageable for you.

Saying “I just can’t do  ____ right now” to the other people in your space who it will impact, to start a conversation about how else it can be dealt with. 

Getting extensions, even if you theoretically Can do the work without them, if it will mean less panic.

Cancelling plans and asking for space, rather than burning yourself out further or lashing out at friends.

Turning in an assignment “embarrassingly” late.

Throwing your laundry in the washer in a messy heap, then washing it on cold to avoid color bleeding, instead of sorting it. 

Starting, then not finishing, tasks. Picking up 2 pieces of trash in the living room without cleaning the rest, instead of saving it for a theoretical future time you can “do it all.” 

Saying “no” to things that sap you of energy, dignity, or autonomy, and not having a detailed explanation for why. 

Saying “yes” to things that are relaxing and pleasurable, and not having a moral-focused or self-conscious explanation for why.

Doing things for recreation that are healing. Discarding the idea that medicine cannot be fun, and fun cannot be medicine: Eating food because it tastes good, or taking a substance (as safely and mindfully- whatever those things look like personally- as you can manage) because it feels good, can meet needs and be therapeutic. 

Throwing away your planner, because you have unhelpful shame over forgetting to use it. Instead hanging a large piece of paper or corkboard or whiteboard next to your bed, to scribble disorganized reminders and doodles on. Or sticking post-it-notes to your mirror. 

Forgiving yourself for reactive behaviors and “bad habits,” because a) it’s more helpful to understand what needs your system is trying to meet than to feel guilty, and b) and and because one behavior- which may not be your ideal or ultimate goal- may help in avoiding a more harmful one.

Sleeping “too much” in order to avoid more acute forms of self-injuring. 

Self-injuring in a less harmful way than your first impulse, then caring for the wound. 

Smoking more weed than you hoped to, in order to avoid restricting food. 

Some of these things involve reaching out and self-advocating, and it can feel painful or even impossible to do that. Not everyone has access to people around them who can help. But if you do, it’s so, so worth it. 

And if you have friends who are struggling (or aren’t sure), making it clear to those around you that you’re willing to do these things: go buy a basic supply for them, email someone for them, make a phone call for them, help them clean something up… It can make a world of difference, and set up a culture where those same things will be reciprocated when you need them. 

These strategies are so important, especially when trying to survive within a toxic, overwhelming, or under-resourecd environment. 

So much self-work / self-help is a completely uphill battle without a foundation of environmental change.

If you’re struggling to change something about your reactions, mood, or behavior, while none of the realities around you have changed, and you have no more resources or access to safety than you did before: you are the norm, not a disordered exception. You are reacting normally. 

Reaching out to multiple people to brainstorm ways of establishing baseline comfort/safety/stability, to address unmet resource needs, build a better environment, or work together to survive or change a toxic environment, is more helpful than 1,000 different moralistic self-work tips you’ll read, or hear from therapists focused on an individualistic/pathology-focused model of mental health. 

Self-work and self-effective change are built organically off of those deeper, roots-level changes in access to resources, safety, and connection. 

This means working in compassion + collaboration with “non-professionals”: friends, family, classmates, coworkers, community members. The sterile professionalization of mental healthcare has taken so much from us re: our ability to work together, and hold each other up. 

that “oooo” when someone got In Trouble in elementary school… that was a greek chorus