Something Pretty Clever

So Scientology has recently been purchasing ad spots on social media sites including Twitter and Facebook. Scientology has always worked hard to recruit young people it seems like they’re investing in social media as well now. I know most people think Scientology is a joke but it’s a seriously dangerous cult which uses fear, extortion, violence, vandalism and various other unethical actions against those who oppose them both inside and outside the church. Here is key information on the abuses committed by Scientology: 

•Scientology uses a form of pseudo-therapy called auditing which focuses largely on embarrassing and traumatic memories. Scientology collects the information you share and uses that information to threaten you if you oppose the church. They also charge huge amounts of money for auditing sessions (which is why they really are doing all this).

 •They are extremely anti-psychology and psychiatry and pressure you against taking any antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication or any other drugs for mental health.

 •They believe homosexuality can be “cured” and are blatantly homophobic. •Enemies of the church are labeled “suppressive persons” and it is forbidden to communicate with such people. This isn’t just to limit the negative press they receive but also is a manipulative tool. If you are in the cult and decide to leave or criticize the church you stand the risk of being completely cut off from your friends and family. “Suppressive Persons” are often also harassed, stalked, or threatened. 

•If you’re new to Scientology and your family or friends are worried about you being in a cult you’re instructed to cut them out of your life, increasing your reliance on the support system (though there’s nothing supportive about it) the church give to you. 

•Scientology’s doctrine includes the concept of “Fair Game”. This basically says that those who are judged a threat to the Church can be punished and harassed by any and all means possible.

 •Because of this, they have no moral qualms about having their members lie in court which they use to defend themselves from lawsuits or charges that they’ve broken the law and also to help win lawsuits against their enemies. •They essentially spied on and stole information from the IRS and tried to frame the mayor of Clearwater Florida for a hit and run. 

•Scientology filed 50 different lawsuits in one year against the Cult Awareness Network, an anti-cult organization. Using false testimony they won one of the suits and because the organization couldn’t pay the fine Scientology took the organizations name and logo so if you were calling to get out of Scientology you’d be unknowingly telling Scientology of your intentions. (For full transparency my mom was a member of the Cult Awareness Network before it was taken over and was sued individually by the Church of Scientology) 

•Scientology has an official branch known as the Sea Org, a mixture between a paramilitary group and slavery, comprised of their most dedicated members including many children/teens who’ve been raised in Scientology. This is where some of the most rampant and terrifying abuse in Scientology occurs. 

•Sea Org members often work over 100 hours a week for Scientology for around 2$ per hour.

 •Sea Org member’s living conditions are terrible; they live in overcrowded communal rooms with up to 12 other people, are not given healthcare unless there is a free clinic in the area, often are forced to miss meals or sleep in order to successfully completed their work. 

•Several former Sea Org members have accused the church of physical abuse. •Sea Org members may not have children and women who have become pregnant have reportedly been forced/coerced by their higher-ups to have abortions. 

it’s one of the scariest “religions” you’ll ever meet if not THE scariest because it was PURPOSELY created to make money. unlike most cults that do have some seed of genuine belief however twisted and off base the founders are, scientology was never a belief system - it was a get rich quick scheme for a terrible hack author who saw that there was more money to be made in manipulating people into a cult and then not letting them leave. higher and higher levels of scientology, which you have to take to be truly “clear” aka free of evil spirits, will cost you thousands and even millions of dollars. they will literally hook you into a billion year contract and then pursue you for any money you “owe” them, thousands of “back fees” for their religious training, if you try to leave.

oh and it has literally driven people to suicide as part of its goal to keep “suppressive persons” from spreading information. someone even made a fucking song about its abuses.

stay the fuck away from anything marked scientology or dianetics. narconon (NOT the same as narcotics anonymous, the 12 step program) is also their thing. never even step FOOT into one of their free dianetics “auditing sessions” because they will use it to manipulate you into joining. they are incredibly persistent and will use every trick in the book to get you on board.

Narconon

Dianetics

Associate of Better Living and Education (ABLE)

Criminon

Applied Scholastics

Delphi Schools

The Way to Happiness Foundation

Author Service Inc.

Bridge Publications Inc.

Golden Era Productions

New Era Publications

Citizens Commission on Human Rights

The National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice

YOU CAN’T VOTE ONLINE.

YOU CAN’T VOTE FROM YOUR PHONE.

IN MANY STATES THERE ARE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR BALLOT.

DO NOT WEAR CAMPAIGN GEAR TO THE POLLS.

DO NOT TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE AT THE POLLS.

DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY KIND OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE POLLS.

NO ELECTION IS EVER A SURE THING, EVEN IF YOU’RE IN THE BLUEST OR REDDEST OF STATES.  IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.

Act 1 Scene 1

“The reason women are critiqued for being too loud or too meek, too big or too small, too smart to be attractive or too attractive to be smart, is to belittle women out of standing up publicly. The goal is to ‘critique’ into submission. & That applies to anyone challenging power.:

-  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‏, replying to Tweet by @katgordon: 

I still remember when I was a young teen and he was playing a Nirvana song and he stopped it at this one line: “I miss the comfort of being sad”

He told me that when you start to get better, there’s a part of you that misses being sad and that if you start feeling that way you have to be extra extra aware and careful because if you indulge the feeling you’ll go down a self-destructive spiral

And even though that was years and years ago, I think about it all the time. Especially when I’m reading discourse on the idea of getting so attached to mental illness as an identity that you don’t want to improve things because you feel safe in it and don’t know who you are without it

Hey everyone, just wanted to make this is show y’all how I wash my binder and as a reminder to wash your binder!

So first off, I like to wash my binders every third day (unless it was really hot that day or if I spilled something on it, then I wash it that day)

So first I fill the sink up with warm water and put my binders in the water. Then I like to let them just soak in the water for a few minutes!

So next I use a Landry cleaner and softener

I keep them in small tubs cause I don’t need the whole bottle.

Now I leave them to soak for a couple minutes

Now I’m using dove body wash to make it smell nice and feel a lot softer

Now I let that soak for a moment

After I scrub them I drain the warm water

And then rinse them off with cold water

If any of your water turns a weird color do not worry! It’s not because it dirty, it’s just the dye!

Then I squeeze them out the best I can by hand and then I leave them to hang like this for the night!

To the point that McDonalds were asked by the police to stop selling them, and it didn’t help at all.

Someone with a gourmet giant shake today just drenched Farage and he looks like a sad milky weasel. Blessed day.

My brain IMMEDIATELY began scripting a screwball comedy in which a broke millennial who desperately want to finish his long-abandoned degree but is drowning in student debt pretends to be a senior citizen in order to attend college for free.

I’m picturing someone Channing Tatumesque, applying age makeup every morning before he heads off to class. It’s sort of a cross between 21 Jump Street and Mrs. Doubtfire. He keeps forgetting which hip is supposed to be his bad one. His classmates laugh every time he uses slang. There’s definitely a scene where he attends a college party and busts it up on the dance floor.

Our Hero is stuck in a job where he keep seeing people get promoted past him because they have a 4-year degree and he doesn’t. He can’t afford to go back to school until he finishes paying off his student loans for the degree he’s one semester from completing. If he got the promotion he wants he could pay them off a lot quicker. But he can’t get the promotion without the degree.

Along comes a clerical error in his almost-alma mater’s records which lists his birth year as 1948 instead of 1984. He gets a call from them about their “free tuition for seniors” program. “Wow, that sounds amazing!” he says. “I’ll be sure to tell my, uh, grandpa, as soon as he gets home.”

It’s one semester. If he can keep up the charade, he’ll have the degree, get the promotion, pay off the student loans. Hell, if they figure it out after the fact and come after him for the tuition, he’ll be able to afford it by then. He just needs to pass as a 70-year-old until graduation. How hard could it be?

Also, this is the first time I remembered to go find his name: Matthew Broussard. I’m not doing any in-depth looking, but a quick peek at his twitter produces bits like:

“As a Jew, I love three things: bagels, summer camp, and being told what is and isn’t anti-Semitic by gentiles.”

“The politicization of climate change is a conspiracy by introverts to avoid small talk about the weather.”

mocking the Tangerine Menace, his sycophants, and racism/sexism/anti-semitism/anti-science/etc in numerous posts

“Nobody knows more about the Dunning-Kruger effect than me.”

“I bet the worst part of hell for Hitler is all the selfies he’s asked to be in.”

“Stand up has allowed me to work with people from a wide array of social, economic, racial and educational backgrounds and also 4 women.”

“Trump fears terrorist immigrants because they’d be stealing a job from white people.”

“Jews secretly sponsored a caravan of Honduran refugees secretly containing murderous Muslims. This is a racist conspiracy turducken.”

“If you think women are too sensitive, try underestimating a man’s height by more than 2 inches.”

rt’ing someone else who named these decades:

1940s - Roland 

1950s - Donny 

1960s - Ricky, also Dicky 

1970s - Charles (Pt 2)/“Chuck" 

1980s - Bradley 

1990s - Jason/“Jase" 

2000s - Charles (Pt 3)/“Chaz”, also “Chase" 

Huh. Looks like vanilla.

British political shitheel Nigel Farage was doused with a cold milkshake while out on his BS campaign today. What a waste of a perfectly good milkshake.

He’s fine. It was indeed just a milkshake.

“Sadly some remainers have become radicalized, to the extent that normal campaigning is becoming impossible,” Farage tweeted after the horrifying incident, which he miraculously survived.

“For a civilized democracy to work you need the losers consent, politicians not accepting the referendum result have led us to this,” Farage added.

RIP the milkshake.

Here’s the Guardian video:

op is absolutely right. this is coming from someone who researches and teaches on age and society professionally. modern western society is age-segregated to an unprecedented degree and there is ample evidence that it is absolutely fucking us over. it’s linked to everything from economic hardship to mental health crises.

intergenerational friendships are important. adults who never interact with young people outside of a defined institutional relationship with a built-in power imbalance (like being a parent or teacher) don’t develop the capacity to treat young people as equals, which reinforces patterns of abuse, neglect, social disempowerment, and silencing. young people who lack meaningful connections with adults outside of those same institutions miss out on an incredible source of support and guidance. and everyone misses out on the basic human joy of friendships that could have been really meaningful if we didn’t have this weird, broken ideology that says young people have nothing interesting to say, and no value to adults who don’t either want to raise them or exploit them or both.

Thing is, she’s actually the same age as my biological sister. I never see my bio sister though so I was and still am closer to this friend. But my point is to me there was never anything weird about talking to a person that much older than me as a friends because I was expected to anyway.

It’s just like anything else in this world. There are bad people. There will always be bad people.

Another friend, 42, started out as a tutor and turned into this gay mentor/cheerleader who has always believed and supported me.

After that, I joined another forum, again, made a couple of adult friends, and again, they helped me deal with my crappy life. I left the forum when I was seventeen, but I still remember them, and how much they helped.

When I was 20 – not a teenager anymore, but not quite mentally an adult yet – I joined a roleplaying game where most of the players were 5-20 years older than me, and these days they’re some of my closest friends – hell, I liked one of them so much I married her. Two of them stood with me at my wedding, and several of them came from other states and countries to go to the wedding. 

My best friendships have been largely with people who are older than me. Don’t get me wrong, I met plenty of great people online who were my age (I’m going to her bridesmaid at her wedding this year, and she was the bridesmaid at mine last year), but adult friendships are what kept me sane until I could get tf out away from my parents. I’ve never forgotten, and I try to pay it forward with anyone who’s younger than me and happens to come across my path.

None of her same-age classmates and friends would be able to give her this clarity because none of them had this time distance of the situation. They were all freaking out over their own gpa scores too. An older person’s perspective can be really valuable to a younger person facing some challenges for the first time.