Anhelia Aescar

your ignorant ass is showing, anon, try reading sometime.

I can definitely understand worries about depicting this badly. And I haven’t seen it, so maybe this reviewer is reaching so hard they’re dislocating their shoulder. I don’t know.

raphael lemkin coined the term genocide after learning of the racialized mass murder of the armenian people, bringing the term into the genocide convention to be recognized as a crime punishable by international law.

the US only just officially recognized the armenian genocide in october 2019. turkey still denies the genocide. some countries still don’t even consider armenia its own country.

please take tonight and tomorrow to educate yourself about the genocide, reading/watching survivors accounts, and pray for those murdered, displaced, families of those effected and the armenian people. i recommend http://www.armeniangenocidemuseum.org/#home as a starting place to educate yourself. trigger warning for murder, rape, images of lynchings.

“Oh thank god,” she literally said. “Yes of course. That’s true, and we can do a blood test and see. If you don’t still have antibodies we can get you a booster scheduled.” 

“That question goes poorly a lot, doesn’t it,” I say. 

And the pharmacist said, “YES YOU MAY, THAT WILL BE ZERO DOLLARS AND THANK YOU”

More info here: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html

“If you’re unsure whether you’re immune to measles, you should first try to find your vaccination records or documentation of measles immunity. If you do not have written documentation of measles immunity, you should get vaccinated with measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. There is no harm in getting another dose of MMR vaccine if you may already be immune to measles (or mumps or rubella).“

(p.s. Please also get your tetanus booster every 10 years, it also contains the whooping cough vaccine so if you are ever in the vicinity of babies, please make sure your Tdap is up to date)

We can get tested too.  They can test for naturally acquired immunities, not just vaccine-acquired.  Booster shots can’t hurt even if you had the disease as a child.

VIA carried less than five million passengers in 2017. As in one ride per seven Canadians. The overwhelming majority of those trips were in the Windsor-Québec corridor - nowhere near most of the blockades, and not affecting the entire network east of there - which was also shut down in its entirety.

So at seventeen she had a first boyfriend and her parents were going to be gone for weeks, so sh decided to cook food for him. After all a recipe was exactly like a chemistry lab procedure, right? Science Girl could handle that!

Only problem is, the recipe asked for 3 cloves of garlic. My ex had no idea what a clove was, but logically it must mean 3 of the unit sold.

“i think we need to update the definition of “cults” to account for…”

any examples? I’m not familiar with cults beyond that kind.

@ani-mana21​ - okay, the problem with the word “cult” is that it’s one of those words like ‘racism’ or ‘democracy’ which have no one functionally agreed-upon meaning – it has a couple different meanings, some of which are more academic and clearly defined and some of which boil down to “religion/ideology I don’t like”.  if you were to say, for example, “the Catholic Church is a cult”, about all anyone could glean from that without context is “I don’t like the Catholic Church and think it’s Bad, For Some Reason, with a connotation of brainwashing and malevolence”. 

for the purposes of this discussion, I’m gonna define a cult as an organization that treats its members the way an abuser treats their victim.*

it’s really really easy to see this dynamic when you’ve got a single charismatic leader and a small flock of followers, because in that situation it really is an “organization” that is made up of one abuser and a handful of victims. you can clearly see how the charismatic leader controls and manipulates their followers to get them to do what the leader wants and stay with the group. it’s blatant and obvious unless you’re inside. 

but sometimes you get a group where the original charismatic leader’s been dead for a hundred years, but the dysfunction they built into the organization they founded lives on. everything about the way the organization operates is designed to get their members to obey leadership and stay with the group, even at the cost of their mental health and stability. 

or sometimes you get a group where there was no original charismatic leader, just a bunch of people on the internet coalesced around an ideology that is toxic as all hell. these people are a very loosely defined group, or a cluster of terrible tiny groups that fight each other all day long– but the group norms they’ve established encourage their members to follow the group’s ideology and stay with the group, at the cost of their mental health and stability. 

so sometimes it’s harder to spot a cult than you might think, because a cult can look like a legitimate religious, political, or ideological movement. a cult can look like a business, an exercise group, or even a fandom. you have to get a sense for what it’s like to be in the group and what the members act like before you can really say either way. 

and just like with smaller-scale “abuse”, there’s only a handful of things that are Obvious Cult Abuse Get Out Get Out Now. There are a lot of dynamics that could be abusive in context, but could also be something innocuous or beneficial. (In the same way that, like, a woman who’s always covered in bruises could be getting hit by her husband, but could also be really really kinky or into roller derby or something.) 

that being said: here are some signs that you might be in a cult.

is there always a crisis that your group is expected to solve RIGHT NOW? do you always feel like something is on fire and without you doing something the entire group will suffer? are you always exhausted from dealing with the last crisis and not prepared for the next one to hit? if so, you might be in a cult. 

do people in the group cycle between acting like they’re your BEST FRIEND and hating your guts? do people in the group constantly snipe at each other behind their backs? if so, you might be in a cult.

do people in the group treat anyone outside the group as a fool or an enemy? do people in the group yell at newbies for not knowing the correct jargon or acting the way people in the group are ‘supposed’ to act? if so, you might be in a cult.

do people in the group venerate some kind of Leader or Belief the way you’d worship a god? are you expected to venerate this Leader the same way, regardless if you think they’re right? if so, you might be in a cult. 

do people in the group expect you to share the same beliefs and never question them? do people in the group say that you’re allowed to question everything, but get angry if you come up with a different answer than the one they did? if so, you might be in a cult. 

does the group require you to perform happiness? do you feel like, if you’re visibly unhappy, you’d be letting the group down? if so, you might be in a cult. 

does the group require you to do things that will drive people outside the group away? does the people require you to push people you care about away? are you required to aggressively proselytize, “move product”, constantly “call people out”, or cut off ties to your outside family members/friends? if so, you are probably in a cult. 

do people in the group require you to divulge information you’re not comfortable divulging? do people in the group frequently violate your boundaries and laugh off your discomfort? do people in the group haze newcomers? if so, you are probably in a cult.

do people in the group require you to “re-educate yourself” or “unlearn” things that you knew before joining the group? is it a mandatory part of group membership to constantly “unlearn” things? will you be punished if you’re unwilling to “unlearn” something that’s important to you? if so, you are probably in a cult.

do you feel like you constantly have to assess what you’re thinking and feeling to make sure it lines up with what the group wants you to think and feel? do you feel like you have to criticize every piece of media you consume to make sure it lines up with what the group wants you to believe? do you feel guilty if you have thoughts you aren’t “supposed” to think or enjoy things you aren’t “supposed” to enjoy? if so, you are probably in a cult.   

does the group insist that there are some people who are so awful/sinful/toxic that they must be treated like monsters? does the organization treat these people like second-class citizens even if they join the organization? if so, you are probably in a cult. 

does the group insist that you have to give up your gender, sexual orientation, racial/ethnic identity, or other important parts of who you are to be part of the group? if so, that group is a cult.

does the group intrusively pry into your sex life? does the group try to force you to marry someone you don’t want to marry or have sex you don’t want to have? does the group try to force underage people to get married or have sex? if so, you’re in a cult.

do you feel like you’d be worthless without the group? do you feel like the group is your entire world, and without it you’d be nothing? do you feel like leaving the group is a fate worse than death? if so, you’re in a cult. 

yeah, this list is non-inclusive. But you see how you can have a group that meets all these criteria without having One Charismatic Leader, or a leader at all? 

it’s important to recognize cult shit so that you can a) stay far, far away from it, b) recognize when you’re dealing with someone who’s in a cult and will not see reason if you try to argue with them, and c) help the people you care about who are getting into Cult Shit and need an anchor to the real world. 

* this is a broad and vague definition. it is not one that you can objectively pin down, and it is certainly not one that would pass muster in a more academic context. Taken to an extreme you could probably make a case for the US government or the entirety of Tumblr being a cult. 

i think in colloquial use it is a more useful definition of a cult than the current colloquial definition, which brings to mind a lot of crap that “real” cults usually don’t do (like child sacrifice and doing Ominous Latin Chanting in robes and whatnot).