All fucked up and I make it look good

Blessed are the fires that have burned me. | It's hellpunk, you've probably never heard of it. | it/its fae/faer es/ihm | one whole entire adult queer | mostly void, partially masc, possibly proxvir | .de | Current alignment: chaotic lawful | Mood: 😶| Cringe culture is dead y'all | YKINMK, ship and let ship and for fuck's sake don't police queer people's identities. | blog title / first line of desc is from Birth of the Cruel by Slipknot

[chaotic-carnifex]

Look, I made a carrd!

[creature-wizard]

So, you know how certain Christian missionaries are trained to act in a very obnoxious way, so that most people they preach to will reject them outright, so they feel like the world hates them for being Christian and they can only be friends with fellow Christians? You know that thing?

I think as activists, we sometimes need to stop and ask ourselves whether we're acting like those missionaries. I think this type of behavior is a little more ingrained into our society than some of us realize, and some of us have internalized it without realizing what it's actually meant to do.

[penrosesun]

OP I know that this is probably a different direction than you were going, but genuinely this advice would do so so much to help people not fall into secular political cults.

A lot of high control groups use this tactic to isolate their members. It’s absolutely not just evangelizing Christians. New age wellness cults often encourage their members to make outlandish and offensive accusations regarding the mental and physical health of other people or their children, because they know that the backlash their members receive will reinforce the idea that the “mainstream” simply has no room for people who like crystals and essential oils. White supremacist cults will seed the vocabulary of new recruits with Nazi dog whistles that fly over those recruits heads, specifically so that they will get clocked as possible neo-Nazis and shunned by anyone who might offer them another perspective and help them to get out before it’s too late. And a lot of left-leaning political cults strongly encourage members to share their views in the most inflammatory ways possible, and then say “you see? everyone outside of this small circle is evil and cannot be relied on” when, inevitably, that produces bad results.

Sometimes I think that activists fall into these patterns completely accidentally, either because they were raised in culturally Christian evangelical environments and never unpacked it, or else because they just aren’t any good at approaching things in a non-inflammatory way and no one’s shown them how.

…But sometimes, these structures emerge in activist circles because those circles are legitimately becoming high control groups.

I think some things to watch out for especially in this regard are:

Are you being directed to behave in an extremely hostile and alienating way? (even if it’s by someone who you trust!)

Does the group you are in immediately shut down any conversation about the effectiveness of an antagonistic strategy? In particular, do they shut that conversation down using in-group stock phrases?

Is experiencing harsh rejection seen as something of a rite of passage?

Do you receive more validation from the group you are in after you have been rejected by someone outside the group than at any other time?

Have you ever been concerned that the antagonistic strategy you are using hurt someone you cared about, only to be quickly advised by members of the group that that person was toxic and that you should actually completely cut them out of your life?

These to me are all pretty significant red flags about the group in question, whatever the specific thing that brings people together there is. If you start noticing them in a group that you are a part of, be that an in-person activist circle or a Discord server or anything in between, take a step back and seriously consider the possibility that the good thing that you joined is turning into something different, and possibly dangerous.

In the words of Jonestown survivor Deborah Layton, “Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization. They change so gradually, by the time you realize you’re entrapped – and almost everybody does – you can’t figure a safe way back out.”

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

this is a pdf detailing the BITE model of authoritarian control, a method for determining whether or not you're in a cult.

even if you feel confident you are not and have never been in a cult, it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the signs, just in case one begins to sneak up on you in the future.

[penrosesun]

Ok, I actually want to talk about this for a moment.

Jonestown, one of the most infamous cults in history, with a mass suicide / mass murder that left more than 900 people dead of cyanide poisoning, hundreds of whom were children… was a leftist political cult. That fact is an unambiguous and completely undebatable matter of historical record.

This isn’t a footnote in the story of Jonestown, and it isn’t a weird anti-leftist gotcha either. Jonestown attracted people to their cause with anti-segregation and anti-poverty activist work, and they did actual, meaningful good for those causes. The People’s Temple was a leftist org, unambiguously. They created mutual aid networks for food aid, and rent assistance, and job placement services, and clothing donations, and winter heating. They leaned heavily on the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in order to push desegregation, and led sit-ins and boycotts and protests. They participated in significant voter registration efforts. They led the fight against the eviction of tenants from San Francisco's International Hotel.

People joined The People’s Temple because it was a good thing when they joined it. They didn’t start out as brainwashed cultists, and they didn’t gravitate towards the leadership of Jim Jones out of masochism, or inherent submissiveness, or a perverse love of creeping authoritarianism. They fell in line under Jim Jones because he’d built a community that was genuinely helping people, and was advancing a political cause that seemed worth fighting. They followed Jim Jones because he earned their trust.

Jim Jones then used the trust and the social capital that he had gained from all of the above in order to elevate himself to the status of a messianic figure, and abuse and profit off of his followers. Slowly but surely, he boiled the frog. It was all good – and then it was mostly good – and then, well there was some abuse, but it wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t really his fault – and then there was a lot of abuse, but the outside world would destroy them if given the chance, so wasn’t it the lesser of the two evils? And then, eventually, it got so bad that hundreds of people poisoned themselves and their children at his command, and murdered everyone in the compound who refused and resisted.

Your cause of choice is not immune from abusers taking advantage of it!

It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It doesn’t matter if your cause is just. It does not matter if your good thing really is a good thing, because there is always the possibility that it will one day be co-opted by a monster. And if the fact that it started good is enough for you to ignore that gradual, subtle change, you could end up in a truly horrible situation.

One of my best friends in undergrad got sucked into a cult. Years later, we talked about it, and he told me something that I’ll never forget which is, it’s only when you look all the way back at things that they seem crazy. You start off with things that are totally normal and innocuous: “we’re stronger together”; “oppression is bad”; “you can accomplish more if you believe in yourself”; “empathy is important and we should all try to bring more of it into our lives”; etc. Then, you move to something that’s just a little step away from that. And then again. And then again. And then again. But it never feels like a big jump, because it’s not! A -> Z is crazy, but A -> B wasn’t, and B -> C wasn’t, and C -> D wasn’t, and…

This friend was smart, and rational, and independent, and normal, and by the time he and his wife left, they’d gone from just thinking that we should all practice more emotional mindfulness, to being terrified that leaving the cult and the cult leader would literally kill them, via the cult leader having magical powers.

If your only analysis is “Where I started was good, and no single step since then has been crazy” that is utterly insufficient to keep you safe.

“This can’t possibly be a cult, because when I joined it was a leftist political org and there’s never been a single instance where it suddenly changed” is literally the exact logic that kept people in Jonestown until it was too late.

[yakubut3u]

And this too. I feel a little bit more free rn. Oh and yeah, I improved in shadows a bit after drawing my price list with that coffin so :)

[weedle-testaburger]

What can I say but LOOOOOOOOOL

You didn't dodge the count because it wasn't safe, Farage, you did because you can't face that not even 2/3 of your voters on your home turf still want you, and more than a quarter of them wanted a man with a bin on his head more than you!

[idratherhavefreedom]

[wolfhoundwitch]

I think we need to bring local shrines back. Not in the sense of like, a church, but somewhere in a local community where offerings to the spirits, fae, deceased loved ones, can be left. not too dissimilar to community shrines to local spirits in Japan.

[hollyevolving]

There are roadside memorials, which are kind of related.

Understanding Roadside Memorials: Traditions and Controversies | LoveToKnow

Learn about the history, significance, and legality of roadside memorials, important tributes that honor loved ones lost in traffic accident

[sepdet]

My alma mater has a statue of Athena where students leave offerings, especially before finals, but also just to include her in current goings-on. A lot of people leave her copies of their dissertations or work.

Left: Summer. Right: end of spring term, right after May Day and farewell parties.

The gifts have been archived for at least half a century; I imagine the anthropology or psych depts could do some interesting studies on them by now.

[loveridden1999]

person (non-practicing)

[youthincare]

people should be allowed to have low ambition, and also be able to feed a family on the salary of a cashier at a convenience store.

[aetherograph]

And! We need cashiers. And convenience stores. And I think it's kind of broken that society says people who want to do stuff like that have "low" ambition (not you OP, I get you're using it illustratively because that's what society labels said jobs) and don't deserve to live at the same standard as people with "high" ambitions.

If we need someone to do a job, that job is a role in the community and deserves not just a salary but cultural respect for the role.

"high" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve domineering and controlling others. "low" ambition jobs are all jobs that involve service to others. Have you noticed? Because I have noticed.

But serving others is actually more needed than controlling them.

[the-haiku-bot]

But serving others

is actually more needed

than controlling them.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[thelatestkate]

Shop , Patreon , Books and Cards , Mailing List

[catchymemes]

[universejunction]

executive dysfunction

[caressthosecheekbones]

nasa is using a 3D world graphic for the solar eclipse thingy today where germany is still devided in east and west adjfglkafdhgadfg. buddies, it's been almost 40 years.

[chthonion]

So I showed this to a physicist and they were like "Oh! Yes! It's a figure from Fred Espenak's very old paper where he did a bunch of eclipse graphics! I've been looking at these my entire internet life, basically, for every solar eclipse! They called him Mr. Eclipse. He just passed away recently 🥺"

Anyway apparently Mr. Eclipse made 5000 years' worth of solar eclipse graphics, which you can find the simpler versions of here

So now instead of laughing at NASA for their outdated graphics I'm emotional about Mr. Eclipse and his hard work

[mysteryofvampires]

The term "Lustmolch" is such a banger of the German language. Yes, you're a horny pervert but you're also an amphibian while you're at it. Hilarious!

[eelhound]

"The word is aizuchi. Ai means together, mutual, in response. Tsuchi is a hammer.

In an old Japanese smithy, a sword was never hammered by one person. The master smith struck, and an apprentice struck the same glowing steel in the space between his strikes, one hammer answering the other in rhythm. To join that rhythm was called striking the aizuchi, the answering hammer. Fall out of rhythm and you ruin the blade. Strike nothing and the steel goes cold.

At some point, centuries ago, the word walked out of the forge and into conversation, and it has never gone back. Aizuchi wo utsu, to strike the answering hammer, now means to make exactly the sounds I was making in that phone call. The nods. The un and ee and naruhodo. The little hammer blows of the listener.

I find the metaphor a good one. Because the claim hiding inside the word is this: the talk is only the iron. A conversation is a blade that two people shape, and the listener’s hammer falls nearly as often as the speaker’s.

Linguists have a term for these sounds in English. They call them backchannel signals, which tells you everything about the difference. A back channel: something minor, running behind the real communication. Japanese put the same sounds at the anvil.

And Japanese conversation uses them constantly. People who count such things report that a Japanese listener sends these signals every few seconds, far more often than English small talk would tolerate. On the phone, the rhythm is so essential that a few seconds of silence triggers alarm. Are you there? The line must carry the sound of listening, or it is assumed to be broken.

One more thing, and it has caused decades of trouble in meeting rooms: aizuchi is not agreement. When a Japanese listener says hai over and over while you speak, she is not saying yes. She is saying, your words are arriving. I am at the anvil. Keep striking. My students used to find this almost impossible to believe, and more than one visiting businessman has flown home convinced a deal was done because the room kept saying hai."

- Kyo, from "What You Sound Like When You Listen." The Unsaid Japan Substack, 16 July 2026.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

at a cafe overheard someone say (loudly) "EVERYONE CHEATS" and perked up my ears bc hey free relationship drama.

turned out she was talking about filing taxes. i hold you in significant esteem ma'am

[welshrarebit]

I feel like this is a good time to verify that claim by mentioning that my great grandmother sewed items into the lining of her car when she and my great grandfather moved from Ireland to England because she didn't want to declare and thus pay tax on them. Her husband was very high up in HMRC and was basically the tax man (he was very unimpressed with her for this).

So yes even the tax man's wife cheats on taxes ^^

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

absolute GGILF material

[voidsetup1]

nothing here to run from

[notsoheterosapien]

INSANE!!! BEAUTIFUL AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE

[wordfather]

[80scifi]

if anyone ever asks why return of the jedi is my favourite star wars film i’ll just send them this gif

[doctorbutler]

[bluebandedagate-reblogs]

[luimnigh]

I think the funnier conclusion is that Luke did mean to physically kick the guy, missed, and then used the force to cover his fuckup.

[sadgi]

can I get a job as an editor but the only thing I do is correct when someone uses the word "prone" when they mean "supine"

[sadgi]

thank you wikipedia for this really good image

[sadgi]

a helpful mnemonic for everyone

[talkwithtatsu]

too good for tags