Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
“It takes ships 20 hours to sail through Suez Canal” actually statistical error. Average ship takes 13 hours to sail the Suez. Container ship Ever Georg which has been stuck in the Suez Canal for 4 days 13 hours and 13 minutes is an outlier adn should not have been counted.
My hypothesis is that in like 10 years gen z is gonna have a big cult boom the way the boomers did in the 70s
It’s already happening on tik tok. There’s a fun new thing going round that’s citing common symptoms of depression and anxiety as signs you’re about to have your awakening and that you are actually an alien and the reason you don’t feel right is because you’re home sick for your own galaxy. So that’s fun.
agreed, and i don’t mean this in a “haha gen z is so dumb they’re gonna join a tiktok cult lmao” i mean that conditions are perfect for the formation of cults right now.
high unemployment and a lot of underpaying, pointless jobs = people are looking for things to do with their life, a purpose
skyrocketing cost of living = most young people will not be able to live on their own, meaning some will end up in a group living situation with people interested in recruiting them
it’s a time of great cultural and political upheaval, nothing feels real, people are desperate for meaning and human connection. cults promise that
there is a new wave of acceptance and understanding for ways of life outside the norm, which is great! …except for when cult leaders tell you abusive and controlling practices are just their culture, their religion, their lifestyle, their beliefs, their tradition, and if you disrespect it you are the problem
social media influencers have already shown us how easy it is to build a cult of personality and attract people from anywhere in the world who are interested in the exact brand you are selling
spirtuality is having a boom, as are things like astrology, crystals, tarot, meditation, energy… those things aren’t bad on their own but they are often used as tools of cult spaces
wellness. i think a lot of people are already in wellness cults. you can make people do a lot of things in the name of “wellness” and a big factor of maintaining a cult is keeping members in a state of decreased cognition….. like say, with regular fasting
i think people are just unaware in general of how cults function, especially because the satanic panic was a big stupid false alarm that convinced the youths that dungeons and dragons or doom were gateways to cults, which are scary evil child murdering, satan-worshipping gangs. people don’t know how to spot them in real life.
So if that’s the case everyone remember with me the cardinal rules of not getting cult’d
SOCIAL BUFFER: Learn what healthy social boundaries are and develop relationships which are within those boundaries.
Be wary of those who step on your or others’ boundaries. Be there for your friends, but don’t be their therapists or parents. Go get coffee or juice or snacks & chat casually with a friendly crew on a regular basis.
ESTEEM BUFFER. Recognize that you and every other person on this planet are owed a baseline of respect.
Respect means that what you wear, what/who you take interest in, and who/what you are are things which you decide on based on your own reasoning. If anyone is trying to change your mind, make sure to think critically about their side and decide for yourself whether you want to change. Ask: Why do they want you to change? Is that valid to your situation? Who / what would benefit from this change? Do you want them / it to benefit? Then decide for yourself.
RELAXATION BUFFER. Take time exclusively for yourself.
Take care of your body and mind when it needs to be fed, watered, washed, or nurtured. Have a couple hobbies that are just for you.Have more than one interest. Think about more than just one topic. Cults keep you focused on them to the exclusion of all else, so don’t allow yourself to be blocked in.
BUBBLE POP BUFFER: Learn from multiple sources, even ones you don’t like or respect.
Read multiple sources’ versions of events before you decide what you feel about something. Recognize that not all sources are valid, but understand what those invalid sources are trying to do. Are they misguided or malicious? Who are THEIR sources? What is the agenda? Who benefits? Why would they want to say what they’re saying? Do they have a point? Who pays them? What do they care about? Then make your decision.
BEWARE THE B.I.T.E.: Cults control people via Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion control. BITE
Look up the BITE model and consider it against groups you wish to join / have joined.
Remember. You are the arbiter of your mind.
You have the blessing and burden of making your own decisions. Other people who will love and care about you throughout your life will want you to think for yourself and will think for themselves.
You are not alone. You are worthwhile. Your thoughts are your own and you have every right to control them yourself.
ASAN is pleased to commemorate the 10th annual Autism Acceptance Month this year. Over the past ten years, autistic advocates have transformed our society’s conversation around autism — but much remains to be done before we can truly fulfill the promise of autism acceptance.
Autism Acceptance Month was created by and for the autistic community to change the conversation around autism, shifting it away from stigmatizing “autism awareness” language that presents autism as a threat to be countered with vigilance. Ten years ago, when Autism Acceptance Month started, advocacy organizations run by non-autistic people spoke openly about working towards a future in which “autism is a word for the history books.” In contrast, autism acceptance emphasizes that autistic people belong — that we deserve welcoming communities, inclusive schools and workplaces, and equal opportunities. In the last ten years, we have seen real progress. Many autism organizations run by non-autistic people initially resisted “acceptance” language; over time, some of them have come to adopt it. We welcome this change.
However, acceptance is an action, and it goes beyond changing the language we use. In order to truly practice autism acceptance, autism organizations must also change how they think about autism, and how they work to represent autistic people. Working toward acceptance means recognizing autistic people ourselves, not just our family members, as a core constituency. It means including autistic people in meaningful leadership positions throughout an organization — on staff, in senior leadership, and on the board. It means aligning advocacy and research priorities with the priorities of the autistic community. Advocating for things that autistic people routinely describe as harmful, such as Applied Behavioral Analysis, institutionalization, or research on “curing” or preventing autism, is not autism acceptance. Autism acceptance means standing up against those who promote debunked anti-vaccine rhetoric, attack self-advocates, or work to expand segregated settings like sheltered workshops and institutions.
Autism acceptance means respecting the rights and humanity of all autistic people. It means centering the perspectives and needs of autistic people with intellectual disabilities, nonspeaking autistic people, and autistic people with the highest support needs — not by speaking over them, but by listening and looking to them as leaders. It means fighting to ensure that the universal human rights of all autistic people are respected, including and especially the rights of those autistic people with the most significant disabilities. And autism acceptance means recognizing the ways ableism and racism interact in our society, following the leadership of autistic people of color, and making anti-racism a core part of our work. In particular, while police violence continues to threaten the lives of Black autistic people, some autism organizations focus on police training as a solution; this is ineffective and ignores the role racism plays in police violence, rather than reducing the power of police to do harm.
We welcome the necessary and long-overdue language changes increasingly being made by other autism organizations. But without understanding acceptance as an action, autism organizations led by non-autistic people will continue to lag behind the rest of the developmental disability community when it comes to reaching the goals of community living and inclusion. It is past time for parent- and provider-led autism organizations to make real, structural changes, and join self-advocate-led organizations in working to make acceptance more than just a buzzword.
It isn’t just autism organizations that need to put acceptance into practice. ASAN was glad to see recent improvements to the Autism CARES Act, including increasing the number of self-advocates who are members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC). However, we need true parity on the IACC, and a rebalancing of research funding to align with the needs of autistic people ourselves. We applaud the White House urging the public to “learn more about the experiences of autistic people from autistic people,” in this year’s proclamation for Autism Acceptance Day. Still, there is much more to be done. We will continue to work to ensure that autistic people have equal rights, opportunities, and access — in health care, education, housing, employment, and throughout our communities.
We have made real progress over the past ten years of recognizing Autism Acceptance Month. The conversation about autism has changed, thanks to the hard work of the autistic community. But there is more to be done, and words must translate into action. As autistic self-advocates have said from the beginning, we must move beyond acceptance — to representation, celebration, and liberation. Acceptance is not the end goal. It is the baseline, a call to do better, the starting line of the marathon. We can and must go beyond that starting point and run the race, even if we cannot even imagine the finish line. Only by continuing to move forward can we create the world our community deserves.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network seeks to advance the principles of the disability rights movement with regard to autism. ASAN believes that the goal of autism advocacy should be a world in which autistic people enjoy equal access, rights, and opportunities. We work to empower autistic people across the world to take control of our own lives and the future of our common community, and seek to organize the autistic community to ensure our voices are heard in the national conversation about us. Nothing About Us, Without Us!
PROS: cute, easy to care for, happy to sleep for 99% of the day, fairly clean if they have a natural inclination toward using litter boxes
CONS: everything will be covered in fur, everything may or may not be chewed (aka rabbit can coexist with the wifi cable for 2 years before suddenly noticing it and taking a bite), EXTREMELY UNSANITARY if they do not have a natural inclination toward using litter boxes, difficult to train (they mostly do whatever they want, so you must rely on them wanting things that are minimally harmful to your home and well-being), can be fairly confrontational and aggressive toward other animals, can be fairly confrontational and aggressive toward you (rabbits are naturally territorial, and if they decide to claim a busy hallway as Theirs then just wear steel ankle protectors and carry on), they shed every two months it seems like & if they ingest too much of their own shedding fur it can kill them, they’re good at hiding illness until the last possible moment, they can be picky and refuse food if you run out of their favourite brand, if they don’t eat for 24 hrs they’re at high risk of digestive stalling and death, they have big fucking nostrils that they love to shove everywhere but if anything goes UP a nostril during this you got yourself a slow death, if they have any white fur expect some level of pee stains, they are smart enough to cause a lot of trouble but dumb enough to suffer every consequence of the chaos they impart on the world, if you bathe their nasty pee fur that can kill them, when you look into their little pig eyes it can get harder and harder to find a soul looking back
yes my last rabbit was particularlyinconvenient in that she snorted a piece of hay up her fat nostril and waited until the thing was practically in her brain before showing symptoms, meaning my only options were to have a vet amputate both her ears (due to the spreading infection) and break through her jaw to try to fetch the now-petrified-straw, which would have been very questionably moral given her old age, or give hospice care with antibiotics for as long as I could. I chose the later, and you can see from the texture of her skull how much the infection was eating away at her at the point euthanasia
before her was Aglet and Furby. Aglet had mediocre litter manners until Furby arrived, at which point they both decided that every square inch of their pen needed to be constantly damp with piss. I tried every trick and then some to teach them litter manners, and nothing stuck. keeping two elderly rabbits and their enclosure clean was a constant, very un-fun fight, it meant I slept in a room that stank of urine for multiple years, and though I loved them both, when they died of old age I’d lie if I didn’t say I was relieved to return to more hygienic living.
and now I have Chiefcake, who is above and beyond the easiest/ best behaved rabbit I’ve ever had! in large part because, as a giant breed, she’s too lazy to commit many crimes. but she’s still a territorial warrior woman who picks fights with cats and people’s legs, and if I didn’t have good-tempered cats who have been rabbit-socialized for years, and VERY forgiving roommates, that would legitimately be a problem. she’s also caused a few hundred dollars worth of electronic damage, and flooded a couch with litres-worth of repeated pissing while being litter-trained as a baby (which is why we now have a jouch, jean-couch)
rabbits have unique behaviours that can make them hard at times to live with, and if you’re summoning one of these demons into your home to serve as a perverse sort of dog for the next 5-12 years, it does help to be knowledgable and prepared
i like this post because the only thing that’s changed in the past 3 years is that now people sometimes trade them for jpegs that someone else will trade for heroin
I was a trained soldier, I taught others how to fight.
I was a trained soldier, I taught others how to escape.
I was a trained soldier, I taught others how to kill.
I was a trained …..soldier….. I taught them… how to die well.
A flower was placed upon the stone, tears sliding down their face. Two dozen stones, each one with the same, white and red, flower, upon it. The old man’s head bowed. His caretaker, a gentle havenworlder, placed a hand on his shoulder. The human looked to them, bent, broken, the voice metallic from an artificial voice box, the prosthetic hand upon a cane. “Alright, we can go back home now. I just wanted to see my friends again.” – Fighting Fit
Humans have a saying for everything. If not a saying, then a quote. As storytellers, they are a species that have a way with words. The one that came to mind now was, There are old soldiers, and there are bold soldiers. There are no old and bold soldiers. Walking now through the serried ranks of Humanity’s dead, in a monument the size of a small city, Companion Thruk could understand why.
Human Sam marched past the monuments. Columns in the style of a past age, all cut short. Some were much shorter than others. This, the unspoken words said, is where the bold ones went. Human Sam was one of the rare ones who had grown old. They were lined up as they had been lined up in battle. Each troop. Each sergeant. Here and there, amidst the rows and columns, were gaps. Other old soldiers had yet to join the army of the dead.
Human Sam sometimes joked that ze was halfway there already. Two and a half legs, one arm, one eye, and a few internal organs had been replaced with artificial substitutes. Age had indeed wearied him. If the years condemned, he gave no sign. Companion Thruk had to trot to keep up with hir as ze marched through the troops of the dead. So many of these columns had had time to age. So few were complete, indicating that the deceased had lived a full life before they assembled for the hereafter.
The Henley-on-Todd is a fuck you “boat” race made to poke fun at the English’s Henley-on-Thames.
The Todd River is dry most of the time and as a result it hosts the only dry river regatta.
Behold the chaos.
My dad competed back in the 80′s and broke his toe. (Also my parents met and got engaged at the Todd Tavern which sponsors one of the above “boats”)
Unfortunately for the drunk people in Alice Springs with nothing better to do, the unseasonal wet weather of 1993 caused the river to flood, and the race had to be cancelled.
I’ve never seen anything more peak Australia in my life, not even the dude from Queensland who had a frog living in his downstairs toilet that he named George the Bog Frog.
