"Delusions are strongly held beliefs that can remain resistant to contradictory information, even when other people see the situation very differently. To the person experiencing the belief, it often does not feel like a possibility they are considering. It may feel obvious, urgent, personally meaningful, and supported by what they believe they are seeing, hearing, remembering, or noticing around them. This is one reason simply presenting more facts often does not resolve the belief. When a person feels certain that something is happening, attempts to disprove it can easily turn into a debate about evidence. The supporter points out an inconsistency, the person offers another explanation, the supporter introduces additional facts, and the discussion becomes increasingly detailed. What begins as an attempt to reassure can turn into a long argument about motives, timelines, who else might be involved, what particular events mean, or whether certain experiences “prove” the belief." More: https://www.authenticlivingtherapy.co/supporting-someone-with-delusions-the-leap-method-validation-and-healthy-boundaries

Incarceration is usually framed as the justified removal of freedom of movement. Criminal Law Professor Federica Coppola argues this is a misidentification. Imprisonment is a form of manufactured exile, punishing not just the body's freedom but the self's very capacity to exist in relation to others. Against the Kantian notion that personhood is a self-contained bundle of autonomy, Coppola argues the deepest harm of imprisonment isn't the loss of liberty itself but the loss of belonging. "If belonging is as fundamental to human well-being as basic physical needs such as food and water, then a punishment that systematically frustrates it raises difficult questions." Tap the link to read more. https://iai.tv/articles/the-self-cannot-exist-in-isolation-auid-3685

September 27, 2026 Happy Sunday! Here are a few things worth reading, watching, and thinking about from this past week. A thread kept appearing while I was putting these together: What happens when we define racism primarily by individual intention, while institutions continue producing racial patterns? That question shows up in schools, workplaces, immigration policy, and even in how we teach people to recognize and respond to racism. As always, you don't have to agree with every author or conclusion here. The practice is to notice the framework being used, examine the evidence, and ask what becomes visible, or invisible, through that lens. 🏫 1. Can systemic racism exist without an individual racist? NEWS REPORTING | Associated Press | September 25 This one connects directly to something we've discussed repeatedly. The AP examines changes in federal civil-rights enforcement in schools under the Trump administration, particularly disparate impact: the idea that a seemingly neutral policy can still be discriminatory when it predictably produces significant racial disparities. The administration has withdrawn longstanding regulations allowing some discrimination claims to be evaluated through racial outcomes and has instructed schools not to consider race when designing discipline policies. The administration argues that prior disparate-impact approaches could pressure schools to treat students differently according to race; critics argue that abandoning the framework makes structural discrimination much harder to identify or remedy. And that gives us a clear distinction: Interpersonal racism asks: Did someone discriminate? Systemic analysis also asks: What does the system consistently produce? [Read the AP report via ABC News](https://abcnews.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-administration-moves-limit-fixes-systemic-racism-schools-136743667?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Everybody, let’s talk about it: 🧵 I saw something at the trampoline park on Wednesday and I still don’t know if I handled it right. I wasn’t even entirely sure if the woman with them was the mom or the nanny. She was Black, the kids looked white? or maybe not related to her by blood at all, and something about how she was dressed made me lean toward nanny, but I couldn’t say for certain. She just seemed more like a helper. She just didn’t give me the impression that she was their mom. Maybe it was the way she was dressed, maybe it was how she carried herself, I don’t know. I just assumed she was probably there to take care of them. I actually kept looking around for another adult who looked like they belonged with the kids, but nobody came over. The kids were dressed really nicely, too, so I assumed they probably came from a pretty well-off family. I wondered if maybe she was just having a bad day at work, but then I thought, if someone is paying you to watch their children, shouldn’t you at least be watching them? She was on her phone the entire time, completely checked out from the two kids with her. The only real interaction I saw was when the little boy dropped some of his snack and she snapped, “Stop, stop,” at him. No comfort, no help, just irritation, then straight back to her phone. That’s what broke my heart the most. I kept thinking about how I would never leave my kids with somebody who acted like that, and how somebody needed to tell her that wasn’t okay. I kept thinking, if those were my children, somebody would absolutely say something to me if I was sitting there ignoring them. I probably would have felt differently if she had looked more engaged with them. I don’t know. She just seemed so detached. The little girl eventually started playing with my child, so I tried to ask her if she was okay. She just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I tried again, and she still didn’t really respond. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t understand what I was saying, if she didn’t speak much English, or if she just didn’t want to talk to me. I remember thinking that if something was wrong, surely she would tell me. The fact that she seemed much more interested in playing with my child than going back over to the woman made me feel even more uncomfortable.

Ballroom was born, in part, because Black and Latino LGBTQ people were navigating racism and exclusion in predominantly white pageant spaces. Decades later, the culture they built is becoming more mainstream, global and inclusive — but that growth is creating an uncomfortable conversation. As predominantly white ballroom spaces emerge and voguing travels further from its Black and Latino roots, parts of the pageant world still remain noticeably divided along racial lines. So what happens when a culture created by people who were excluded becomes more inclusive than some of the spaces that once excluded them? We’re taking a deeper look at ballroom’s history, its growing diversity and the complicated line between inclusion, appreciation and cultural erasure. #BallroomCulture #LGBTQCulture #BlackCulture #Vogue #QueerHistory https://aintstraight.com/2026/09/24/as-ballroom-becomes-more-inclusive-all-white-balls-are-popping-up-while-pageant-culture-remains-divided/