OceanEmbers

Just some nb. I don't bite.

[elierlick]

My new favorite thing is journalism that treats the United States like we do other countries.

[yandere-angela]

Forced participation in religious activities to be classified as child abuse in Japan

Telling children they will go to hell for not joining religious activities will be regarded as abuse. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read mo

looks like the government is doing something about cults

[read-marx-and-lenin]

wish we had this in the US, even if it would probably start a civil war if it were passed

[jackscarab]

The Contraptioning of Shinzo Abe remains the most effective assassination in world history.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Starting to think that decades of media in which the Scrappy Young Protagonist single-handedly defeats the evil empire just by winning a physical fight against the dread emperor has done real damage to people's perception of oppressive systems of power

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[seakins]

Hi! I've spruced up my commission sheet, and my commissions are still open! If you are interested, feel free to send me a message or fill out the form.

Send a message or an ask if you have any questions at all, and any reblogs/shares are much appreciated! Thank you!

(and for anyone curious, the reference image is of my oc Rowan!)

[nerdreamer]

[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.

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal

[angel-derangement]

I hate it too tbh

[killy-deactivated20241228]

[evilwizard]

[scragon]

Vampire and his human wife after years of marriage

[scragon]

Charles took her to macy’s

Vampire Husband on Webtoon

[rainbow-femme]

I had to add this one

[animentality]

[oceanembers]

I hate to be that person but fuckit: Bouldering is at least halfway to what some of y'all want. Go climb. It's so fun. It's whole-body coordination puzzles and jumping and swinging.

We do still have weird gymbros who like to do all the bulking and shit, but mostly it's just people hanging off the walls having a good time.

[gothhabiba]

diet talk is so inexpressibly nonsensical the instant you know anything about "the human body" or "nutrition" or if you think about it for three seconds

[gothhabiba]

"this is a great, low-calorie meal for meal prep!"

okay how do I explain this to you. "calories" is the part of food that makes it food. you actually need calories to stay alive. so "low-calorie" is the opposite of a selling point. kind of makes it sound like I'm going to be putting in a lot of time and effort just to not be nourished

[gothhabiba]

"I then immediately ruined the nutrition of the broccoli by pouring cheese all over it, but, hey, I tried"

okay hang on tight because this is a tough one. I'm going to try to explain the concept of "addition" to you. so the broccoli has a certain amount of calories, vitamins, and other nutrients in it, right? and the cheese has a certain amount of calories, vitamins, and other nutrients in it. and when you add the cheese to the broccoli, well... the nutrition of the resulting food can be found by adding the contents of both of its components to each other. I hope this helps

[milf--adjacent]

People who actually know about nutrition tell you to eat cheese and butter with your vegetables, because each has unique vitamins and minerals and other nutrients that your body struggles or straight up cannot absorb without something the other has. When you eat only raw veg because it's "healthy," you're missing out on half its nutritive value because some of those nutrients require additional lipids or specific vitamins like vitamin A or D or E to be readily absorbed by your digestive tract and again to be used in different parts of your body. Dieting makes it so instead of just dumping out all your pieces in a pile and following the instructions you can build your flatpack shelf, it's like placing each component in a different place in your house, and the shelf never gets built because you got tired of waking every time you needed something, so there it sits until one day you decide it's garbage and throw it out. A little butter or olive oil and a quick stir fry turns your vegetables from expensive fiber supplements to bioavaliable nutrients. Have your berries with some cream or full-fat yogurt: it's literally healthier and more complete nutrition. Put plenty of dressing on your salad. Have a steak: you need the iron. Stop starving yourself in the name of health because that's not how that works.

[yuumei-art]

In 2012 I painted the top image: Rise

In 2026 I am saddened to have to repaint this update: Fall

[mentalhealthmemesofficial]

[queselevaaser]

[ID: image of a cat dressed as a wizard holding a tea cup, with a volcano in the background. Text reads "every time i heal i come back weirder" /end ID]

[dietspam16]

[statisticalcats2]

There are gonna be people who won't like hearing this but if you want to live in a world where mixed marriages, families, and adoptions (particularly POC adopting outside their "race") aren't maligned and discriminated against, then you have got to get more chill about seeing someone partaking in something cultural that you don't think fits the "race" you perceive them as.

[statisticalcats2]

It's a vague memory now, it was a vague memory even at the time I made this post, but I think what sparked this was remembering stupid comments I saw about a Chinese-American cookbook that were complaining about it being written by a white woman and then I looked the white woman up and the briefest research showed she was adopted as a child into a Chinese-American family and just....

*pinches nose*

Fellas, is it cultural appropriation to inherit your family's culture but you don't pass the blood quantum test?

All of you are literally just racist. You've come full-circle. You're working under the belief that people are supposed to "keep to their own kind" and that means the socially invented concept of "race", and "race mixing" of any sort is unnatural.

[what-even-is-thiss]

You should be able to adopt adults for inheritance purposes like in Ancient Rome. Yeah this is Cathy the 23 year old and she’s my daughter now. She has my last name. When I die she inherits the tire shop.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Cathy will bring glory and dignitas to this America’s Tire franchise location just as I and my father did before her.

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

I think a lot of leftists truly need to intentionally shed the idea of retributory and/or punitive "justice" over reformative justice

Permanently ostracizing people who have done something wrong helps no one. No one is required to forgive and spend time with those who have hurt them, but I think that at the very least, it's worth being introspective and examining your motivations when it comes to deciding that someone has done something wrong and isn't welcome in a community.

Was that individual given clear, direct communication that their behavior wasn't acceptable, with specific examples provided when they were performing the questionable behavior? Were they given the opportunity to work on that behavior, and the grace to not be perfect right away?

We have to do better in our communities to help each other unlearn toxic behaviors, especially when that toxic behavior is coming from ourselves, and that means relearning what it means to responsibly manage our communities and expectations of each other.

Remember, one of the worst things you can do to someone is isolate them from every community that has a chance to build them up.

This isn't to say that you, personally, have to associate with EVERYONE. This isn't to say that there aren't people who will prove time and again that they aren't interested in changing. This is simply a request that everyone take a moment when thinking about community members' actions, and how we handle things.