Betterment and Praxis

A maintained list of DEI and Anti-DEI companies.

As we enter an era of increased authoritarianism in this country, it will be critical to stay true to our values. The siren song of the right is intended to entice many to abandon their principles, and their fellow Americans, capitulating in order to protect themselves or in a misguided attempt to attract conflicted voters. To fall into this trap is to lend credence and credibility to the MAGA Agenda. Americans consistently favor progressive policies – from our freedom to decide if and when to start a family, to our freedom to join together in union, to our freedom to shine bright as our true selves - and we must continue to promote them.

Over the next few years, MAGA leaders will launch attack after attack, perpetrate outrage after outrage, commit injustice after injustice with the goal of keeping us disoriented, demoralized, and demobilized. Rather than exhausting ourselves reacting to each new indignity, we must expose the throughline between attacks and remain consistent and determined. We do that by telling a single, clear story about who we are, what our opposition intends, why they scapegoat, and how we build power to defeat them.

An option to take action.

Let me know where to post this if not here, thanks in advance.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18172576

A hilarious video explaining how not to look like a Not-So nice guy if you're giving a speech to many people!

To be in shape for the long haul, we have to get our minds and spirits ready, as well as jump into action.

When we’re in bad shape, our power is diminished — we’re less creative, more reactive, and less able to plan strategically. If we intend to stay active and effective in the world, we have a responsibility to tend to our spirits.

Here are 7 behaviors we can use right away to strengthen ourselves, so we can keep taking more and more powerful and strategic actions.

Maybe you’re wondering, “What should I do in these times?” What we have put down here are some meaningful places to start — doable, local, impactful, and important.

It is not intended to be inclusive of all options — we’re trying to offer places we see people making impacts and avenues that as experienced organizers thinking about these times we see as worth going down.

Where possible, we offer names of groups who are organizing such things and can help you plug in to their strategy.

No matter where you come from, here are some ideas if you want to help stand for a world with tolerance and love, racial justice and acceptance of all people.

Hello everybody.

Since about half a year, i am recovering from a set of psychological problems (self worth problems, porn addiction, lonelyness, etc) - and i have made great success by repeatedly listening to affirmations, meditation and hypnotherapy. I specifically want to highlight one professional clinical hypnotherapist whose work i enjoy a lot. The link is from their blog, where you can buy a few things to listen to.

But they also have a youtube channel, which i recommend. Some files i enjoyed a lot:

• 10 Minute Guided Meditation - I love My Body https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJZHi0aTWfM
• Train Your Brain To Focused On The Long Term Goal Hypnosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl_6CUOATlg
• Freedom From Perfectionism Hypnotherapy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52N-DBA2FCo

how and why does it work?

(i am not a professional, my explanation might be slightly wrong)

when you have psychological problems like bad self worth, then this is also implemented in a set of thoughts in your brain. So your brain believes deeply that it makes sense to have a bad self worth. When you listen to positive suggestions that say otherwise, the brain thinks this is not true and rejects that. However, this control mechanism by the brain can be reduced/turned off when you are deeply relaxing.

Like: while sleeping, your brain is sometimes very active. This is the subconscious, that tries to process things in dreams for instance. There, the control mechanism are obviously shut down. When you are deeply relaxed, this state is not similar to sleep, but similar to a state right before sleeping.

And hypnotherapy first have a deep relaxation part to reduce the brains control mechanism where the suggestions are more effective. However, the subconciousness also has some protections, which means listening to bad things will still be rejected by the brain. so you are safe.

And secondly: the brain learns through repetition, so thats why repeatedly listening to the affirmations (even while doing sports or hanging up washed clothes!) makes your brain believe things over time. The resistance protecting the bad self worth will be reduced over time, making it easier to overwrite it with something healthy.

In general, it works a lot with your imagination. So for instance, the link about perfectionism is about you writing examples of perfectionism on some board and then you imagine to clean the board again and feel relief. Then you start write new things you want to learn instead.

how has it helped me?

• my addiction kicks in when i feel especially bad about myself. for instance when i feel not beautiful and attractive. The "i love my body" affirmations are great for remembering to care about myself. This worked wonders.

bad things?

yes! hypnotherapy is not magical and you have to be careful. For instance, i have once listened to a hypnotherapy file from this person where you would try to feel strongly about the bad things you want to cut ties with (in my case, my porn addiction), and then stuffing everything into a backpack and boxing it and walking away from it (i think). While great in theory, it didn't work for me and i was left with the strong imagination on my porn addiction, leading to a relapse.

Basically, it strongly depends on your specific situation. These files are not specifically for your triggers, for your situation and therefore some might not work.

Therefore, i made more success with the positive hypnotherapy/meditation/affirmations stuff.

So be careful. I recommend to first listen to things while having full attention and looking inside your heart, how you feel what the person says. When it feels great, you can do it while relaxing.

Mōrena buzzy bees!

I've been off hunting beach treasures on some more remote beaches in the area. The amount of fishing and building waste is unreal! , buoys, treated timber posts and framing. A lot of plastic crab pot pieces and rope ends. We even found a piece of a pontoon which I'll be making into a new garden bed! We also saw a dead albatross, which was fascinating, but with the birdflu, we decided it was best to keep our distance.

Fellow dumpster divers and rubbish gremlins, what has been your favourite find?

Kia ora and happy new year 🎉

What are our hopes and dreams for 2025, and how are we going to work towards making them happen?

A helpful guide on how to be less frustrating towards people of color.

With recessions and political hardship around the globe, this holiday season is feeling a bit rough for a lot of us. I've been thinking of ways we can try and make minor improvements on a microscale. Here are some of my thoughts and please share yours in the comments:

More casual no or low-cost gatherings. As it's summer in Aotearoa, we are doing weekly meet-ups in the local park for shared kai. It's bring what you can and shame free for those who forgot or couldn't afford to bring anything. We are also continuing our workshop events with free reusable gift wrap making and summer holidays sewing and crafts club.

On a more personal mission, this holidays I am starting a new calendar/journal to keep track of birthdays and likes/dislikes of the people around me so I can start my newest project, "Max happiness", where I try to maximise the happiness stats of everyone around me through flowers, baking, and produce from my garden. I plan to focus on growing favourite flowers or produce next year so I have casual low/no cost gifts and can show my appreciation with gifts that are meaningful and not a burden on our planet. I'll be starting with something a bit more achievable in the next 4 weeks with home baking for friends and neighbours.

For those who don't already have an established community, I recommend going to some mutual aid events for distributing food or resources into your community. You might also find shared spaces holiday events through your library, community garden, or community workshop. These are the sorts of places where community thrives and I'm sure you will find yourself right at home 🥰

This is the original source for the link I posted in !science@beehaw.org. I hope it can help someone in our community.

This is depression, alcoholism; it's getting pretty late-stage. All of this is wrong, and everything I've gone through insists they're fucking Reifenstahl.

Yes, I have mentioned her twice this week. It's because it's germane. I'm using that word a lot more, too. It holds a certain connotation.

But that aside, I do not want 988. I want a solution, not some attempt to make me believe rich people shall be my saviors.

On a summer afternoon in 2019, nurse Charlotte Lay got ready for her night shift as normal but "wasn't feeling quite right".

Within a short space of time she had decided to end her own life close to a West Yorkshire railway station.

...

I found this interesting and relevant. Nothing actionable, but oddly comforting.

Covers way more than just the title, but an interesting experiential take.

Pretty cool guide.

The guy says that he only recently realized that cleaning isn't intuitive so people need to be taught. This is for people who maybe haven't been taught how to clean or want to freshen up on their skills :)

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