A Clockwork Lozenge

You never know when it's going to rain, so always carry an umbrella. 28yrs, discretion advised to readers.

[untentional]

[captain-price-returns]

they had 19 year old /pol/ users going through all federal spending and deleting anything where the words were too big to understand

[learntmyspots]

Cooking your produce is a way to protect yourself from cyclospora fyi

[agirlwithachakram]

[byjove]

at least now we know why he has yet to return when Britain is in peril

[kitkatmoose]

We need a flick where King Arthur wakes in modern Jamaica and is very confused.

[byjove]

I think that would be so much funny. He wakes up on a remote beach in Jamaica and he only speaks/understands Brythonic and Medieval Latin. Locals assume he was a tourist who fell from a cruise ship or received a head injury and floated away from a resort. The authorities cannot match his description to any missing persons reports and his fingerprints and DNA produce no hits on INTERPOL. They suspect he may be Welsh or French because the language he speaks resembles Welsh or Breton but France and the UK both state he is not a citizen of their country. Stateless and deeply confused, he is taken in by the community near the beach where he was found, being cared for by a number of local families and doing odd jobs. He slowly learns English and adjusts to the contemporary world, uncertain if his belief that he is the legendary King Arthur was formed by whatever traumatic event caused him to end up Jamaica or if he is actually King Arthur and Prydain is in eminent peril. Mysterious letters from Morgan begin to reaffirm his belief he is King Arthur. He must choose between staying in Jamaica and continuing the happy life he has made for himself or finding a way to get back to Britain without any documentation.

[a-daks]

ancient king white boy stuns locals by ordering in perfect Jamaican Patois

[byjove]

He gets to Britain and everyone expects him to sound like a posh noble Englishman because that is the picture Malory painted but he prefers to speak Welsh and when he has to speak English, he speaks with a thick Jamaican accent.

[therottingbones-sys]

dehumanization as horror is great and all but what about humanization as horror. Being forced into a role that was not made for you. Being forced to fulfill expectations that you can never achieve. Being made to exist in a society that so cruelly expects you to act in a way that is against your nature.

[unyieldingsilence]

‎ ‎

[lmtyl]

[moniquill]

(https://mountainmoonvolcano.tumblr.com/post/66762332783)

[writterings]

it's really funny teaching rhetoric to college freshmen because i explained ad hominem to them via example by arguing with a student over something silly (i kept insisting 25 minutes was a quarter of an hour, not 15) and then "insulted" her instead of addressing her argument (i said she doesn't have a college degree whereas i have two, so of course she'd be wrong - which the whole point is that it's a stupid insult but not something that's actually mean) but she got soooooo mad so even when i stopped the exercise and explained that she was indeed correct (15 minutes is a quarter of an hour). like she was still fuming. so i validated her feelings on that, complimented her, and even reminded the class that a college degree doesn't mean that a person is smart/right. and then i went on to explain that, yeah, dirty arguing techniques like that are meant to make you so unreasonably angry that you can't respond or that you lose your cool, so your opponent looks like they win by default. the student i was arguing with then just said that it seemed like professional ragebaiting and i was like. well yeah that's correct.

and then this kid, this one kid who is always very eager to answer questions and is always kind to his classmates, raised his hand looking a little bothered. now for context, i emphasize thinking for yourself in my classroom, even if that means disagreeing with something i say and he has echoed some stuff that his parents clearly have told him before. he's not a bad kid or an asshole, he's just an 18 year old with conservative parents who otherwise knows nothing about politics. but he just looks so bothered after i explain this about dirty arguing techniques. big frown on his face. looking unsure. when i nod at him to speak, he says, in a very quiet voice, "didn't -- didn't charlie kirk used to do that?"

and i was like. well yes. yes he was famous for stuff like this.

and then the kid looked down and was just like, "oh. i thought he was just really good at debating. i never watched his videos though, only clips. why would he do that?"

and that coincidentally lined up perfectly with the rest of the lesson, which was on propaganda

[dancinbutterfly]

this? is why conservatives hate liberal arts education

[lostinhistory]

[fouroclockwren]

YES OMG BRÜNNHILDE

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

always some new bullshit in the ocean

[local-demon-in-your-area]

Why is it always orcas or dolphins

Why can't a salmon do some bullshit for once

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

worry not ☝️ they're doing coke

[tsunflowers]

the sun is a sickly orange color today with a haze of smog blurring its edges. it truly looks like something you would use in a scifi movie to clue the audience in that something has gone very wrong

[tsunflowers]

here’s a pic from the local reddit that honestly looks even scarier than what I’m seeing now

[pumpkinsforsale]

Anyone else noticed the air is unbreathable and the food is poison and the sun is blocked out of the sky

[isuggesteatingtherich]

i have a suggestion

[depsidase]

[broken-horn-of-equius]

[thefairytaler]

My wife pointed out to me the other day that apparently most people were literally only taught how to say Sorry and not how to Apologize or even that they are different things so here.

If all you ever do is step 1, not only did you not apologize, but people will rightfully stop believing you and start getting pissed or hurt.

[segamascott]

[createmesanity]

Organic yarn holder

[createmesanity]

It’s because of the lanolin! Sheep naturally produce an oil, called lanolin, to protect their fleece and skin. Some of this lanolin still remains after the wool has been processed into yarn. Cats love the smell of lanolin. We don’t know exactly why this is, but it’s a common theory that the scent reminds them of their mothers’.

[allthefoolmine]

@parrishsrubberplant

[kefirstushyu]

Fallout commission again<3

[kropotkindersurprise]

New York sculptor spent $100,000 to make a Charlie Kirk statue no one wants to buy

Sergio Furnari said he thought the lifesize sculpture – which no one commissioned – would raise ‘millions’ of dollars

[themanwhooncedweltinavault]

[unfortunatelymerlin]

bbc merlin has a lot of faults but i do think the way they blithely ignored the existence of christianity was very funny of them

[literally-irreverent]

"#'old religion' they said. and then simply said nothing of a new religion" yeah Uther Pendragon, noted athiest. Entirely agnostic court. It's crazy that there's no belief system backing anything up. Like, we're going to get by on vague prophecies but also prophecies are magic which is evil. Divine right of kings but no divinity. Mirrors and mirrors but no windows.

[violentfille]

tags by @thanatologist

[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.