#/ ask to tag

[the-crystal-femmes]

[ Image ID: a twitter post by Yung Kidney Thief (@ BrianIsZe) that reads "Give yourself permission not to be accessible at all times. Ignore that voicemail. Leave that message on read. Turn off your phone. Don't answer emails. Destroy your SIM card. Burn your house down. Disappear under mysterious circumstances." /end ID ]

[chipper-smol]

miserable, having an identity crisis -> 5 years later -> gender momence <:3

(big thanks to this tutorial)

[twistedtoms]

[gorillawithautism]

A little over a year ago, on February 3rd 2024, Clark Joseph Harman was murdered. He was 12 years old. Not even 24 hours prior, He had been legally kidnapped by two men from a "transport" or "escort" company that had been hired by his parents. He was brought to Trails Carolina, a "wilderness program" and part of the troubled teen industry. The act of being legally kidnapped in this manner is often called getting "gooned" in survivor communities.

Before I properly start, I have a note: I learned of his name because someone in the r/troubledteens subreddit found it not long after I heard of his case. I did not learn his name because it was consensually released by his family. As such, I will use only his initials (CJH) throughout the rest of this post. I decided to head the post with his name because I think it's important that people know it. It was not consensually released, and that should be respected, but he was still a whole person. He was a twelve year old boy with a name and a family and so much life left to live. All of you should witness what was taken from him.

The medical examiner's preliminary report states that after CJH was gooned, he went through a check-in to process him into the program. He was uncooperative at first, demanding a phone call with his parents, but was able to cooperate after talking to them. He was placed on a 1-1 with a staff member who was with him at all times. The staff member says CJH chose not to eat dinner. Then they went to bed. According to Trails' protocol, he was to sleep on the floor of the cabin with a staff member sleeping beside him. His set up was a thin mattress with a thick plastic sheet folded into a canoe-like shape and set on top of the mattress. Above that, a sleeping bag inside a bivy with a zipper alarm that would go off if he tried to leave his tent. CJH slept but he was restless and mumbling. He had a (staff-permitted) moment outside his tent around 11pm but then goes back to "bed." Around midnight, he is restless and mumbling in his sleep once again, and he begins thrashing. It eventually subsided. Routine checks were performed by staff, but the bivy being opaque meant that they did not actually see CJH. I will note that this detail was against protocol. Normally, the bivy has a mesh interior door and the staff would have been able to see CJH in their routine checks. However, the mesh door on the tent they used that night was broken, so they used the weather resistant outer door instead. Despite these routine checks by staff, the thrashing at midnight is the last noted incident until morning.

And yet morning comes, and a little boy is dead. Staff find him in his tent lying on his right side with his feet at the head of the bivy and his head at the tapered end of it. He is cold and unresponsive. 911 is called, CPR is unsuccessful and a little boy is dead. A little boy is dead and they don't notice until morning. A little boy was kidnapped and now he's dead. A little boy was in the troubled teen industry for less than 24 hours and he's dead because of it. He will never get out of the industry and he will never leave that wilderness program and he will never heal from the trauma he was forced to endure because he's dead. They killed him. The program killed him, the staff killed him, our government killed him, those goons killed him, his parents killed him, you killed him. A little boy is dead, and an uncountable number of people are at fault.

There's an extent to which his parents are victims too. They lost their son because of an awful choice they made. And while I don't know these people personally, I do know enough about how this industry works to know it's highly likely that they believed in what they were doing. Everything they did was legal, and everything they did was advertised to them as something that would help their child who they didn't know how to care for. I'm not saying it was a good decision, but I know how predatory this industry is. A parent who doesn't know where to turn, a child who clearly needs help, and suddenly a web page. Or a hired educational consultant. Or another parent. Or a pamphlet. Something or someone that tells them "There are schools and programs for children like yours. There are options for parents like you." They say "Send your kid to Trails Carolina. It's like a summer camp for kids who need help." According to several cult researchers, the troubled teen industry is much like a cult. The parents are often people who genuinely care about their kids and truly believe this will help. The cult drew them in as cults do. CJH was killed by his parents and their choice to send him to trails. CJH was killed by his parents, and that cannot be changed. They will always have to carry that responsibility, and I cannot stress enough how it was their fault and they do have a part in this. But if I let a single person come away from this with the impression that they are entirely or even mostly to blame for their child's death, I will have failed to communicate just what this industry is and what it does to children and their families.

The system at large is what's at fault. The program itself, Trails Carolina, has killed kids before (Alec Lansing, 17, died of hypothermia after being injured while attempting to run away from the program, Trails Carolina, November 23rd 2014). Other programs have killed kids before, both recently (Cornelius Frederick, 16, killed in physical restraint, lakeside academy, May 1st 2020) and further in the past (Phillip Williams Jr., 15, official cause of death was a "brain aneurysm" but this was determined with no proper investigation and he had been severely beaten in some sort of "therapeutic boxing ring" before his death, Elan School, December 27th 1982). These programs are not made to help us. They are made to fix us. And in practice, all they do is kill us and traumatize us. They manipulate, they brainwash, they abuse, they hurt, they kill. All of them do. Even the ones that supposedly don't utilize physical restraint methods. Even the ones where staff don't sexually or physically assault the kids in their custody. Even the most tame and least violent of programs. Even the ones that don't interrupt our academics, even the ones that don't drug us with excessively or incorrectly prescribed medication, even the ones in tourist hotspots like hawaii, even the ones where a kid can work with horses or dogs or rabbits. They all abuse us. All of them.

And it's legal. It's all legal. Even our deaths are legal. Trails Carolina was forced to shut down after CJH's murder, but other programs still exist and the DA chose not to press charges. Let me say that again. The District Attorney. Chose not to press charges. For manslaughter.

On November 6th 2024, District Attorney Andrew Murray issued a press release where he stated that while CJH's case was "heartbreaking" and "tragic," that it "did not involve criminal intent or recklessness sufficient to warrant criminal charges for involuntary manslaughter under the law." The carelessness of having CJH sleep in an opaque tent where the staff could not get sights on him during their routine checks was not enough. Letting him to sleep in a tent where such suffocation was even possible in the first place was not enough. Having an alarm on the door so he would be unable to get out without consequences was not enough. Forcing him to sleep in this tent despite the fact that he was both "audibly and physically upset" about this sleeping arrangement was not enough. A dead child was not enough. And it will not be enough so long as these programs exist. Everyone that put him in that situation and everyone who allowed it to go without any sort of legal charges or reform is at fault for this child's death.

And that includes you. Every single one of you who is not a victim or survivor of the troubled teen industry. All of you who watch these children die and say nothing. All of you who force survivors and victims to trigger themselves over and over again in an attempt to speak up against the system that hurt us. All of you who don't listen. All of you who listen once and then let yourself forget about us. Every single one of you.

A child is dead, and more will die. And it feels like TTI survivors and victims are the only ones who care. How many of us will die because of you?

[shelter-clangen]

🕸️ WUHEEHEHE FOR KINDRED!!!!!

[redwinterroses]

Hopefully this might be useful to other folks looking to keep track of All The Everything that's going on in the US right now.

This is a spreadsheet that I'm doing my best to keep updated (please forgive me if I fall a couple days behind, it's amazing how long it takes to list and source everything) and is a catalogue of events, grouped into (for now) 7 categories:

Events (basically anything that Happened but doesn't fall into the other groups)

Executive Orders (soon to feature specific numbers, but for now I haven't added that)

Pardons (in the future this category will also include actions of pardoned individuals after their release)

Firings (also including dismissals and the dissolving of positions)

Memos (specifically ones from the Trump administration that give direct orders)

Coup (for actions taken by Elon Musk's DOGE crew)

Resistance (for judicial rulings, protests, and other pushback)

I've personally been very overwhelmed by trying to keep up with everything, and have found it helpful (if exhausting) to keep a list that I can reference.

I'm attempting to keep the sources I link neutral in terms of bias (you'll see a lot of Associated Press and Reuters, in addition to the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, BBC, and MSN), and to use pages that I either archive myself or that have been archived elsewhere. This way, even if my links get broken, the information should still be accessible in any case.

I'm primarily using the daily reports of Heather Cox Richardson (historian and political expert) and the Alt National Parks feed (a coalition of 90k+ federal workers collaborating to keep the public informed) as my starting points, as well as various watchdog-type accounts that report on things as they come up.

Please feel free to make your own copies of this and update or edit them as you choose, or bookmark the original and use it as a reference guide. I don't claim to be unbiased or to catch every single event or issue, but I'll do my best to keep this updated as long as it remains useful.

[binomech]

also another compilation that i like to call "irving fucks and loves consent"

[faggottonystark]

Hey guys, finally watching the new spiderman series. Um. Im a minute in and i had a panic attack bcuz.

Is he in this fucking show. Oh my fucking god. I dont even care this is awesome look at him hes A LITTLE AIR FRESHNEER KFKFTGI9

[raviposting]

Lumon Project Management Program - LUMP Has woe poisoned the well from which your team replenishes gaiety? If so, you may have a case of low morale on your hands. Don't panic, morale shortages can be reversed by reminding your team of what matters most. Their quarterly objectives. Purge all distractions. Employees are most fulfilled when focused on their important and mysterious work! Isn't that right, Ms. Huang? [long pause] Huh? [long uncomfortable laughter] In summation, remember the worker loves to work. If productivity suffers, so do they.

[gottastim]

shopfleeky on ig

[galaxygermdraws]

I miss S8. Did you know that? Did you know this? I miss season 8, so have some Candy Man Impulse. Memes under the cut

With and Without Words <3

[twistedtoms]

[teethbomb]

oops

[jaredthebc]

God just the fact N doesn’t heal from his trauma in a linear way and if anything is self destructive in the way he handles it especially in BW2 staying in the room that is basically the physical representation of his trauma (AND technically repeating his trauma just self inflicted instead of from an abusive father) makes me insane.

Like normally kids media would traumatize a character and then after like one or two events go “They’re doing much better now and making strives in recovery!” And just depict it as either a non issue now that it’s been “addressed” or at most show them going to therapy or something. But no Pokémon has the balls to go “Yeah you’re not mentally recovering from this stuff that easily, if anything you seek comfort from the things that hurt you and you very much will inflict that pain on yourself again for the sake of stability and normalization”

Like him staying in his room indefinitely in BW2 is most likely just a mechanic so you can rematch him and talk to him and obviously the story isn’t endless so at some point he has to run out of things to do (Kinda like how Cheren in BW1 is in that cave indefinitely after the story) but the fact he says he’s in the castle to wait for the protagonist, SPECIFICALLY HIS ROOM. Like damn Pokémon you really have the balls to make N basically inflict mental self harm on himself like that it really is just an emotional gut punch

[shelter-clangen]

[dove-tears]

cards to send to that special someone this valentines