Daring Deeds

Learn to learn

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

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.

Sometimes people are just flawed, sometimes they’re well-intentioned but still growing, but that’s the point of red flags: they aren’t a sure sign of trouble, but they’re still worth taking note of & keep an eye on in case patterns emerge.

The reason I say this is worth learning and looking out for in more casual relationships is that these are mostly just abuse tactics carried out in a large-scale, more organized way. And because if someone is interested in recruiting you, they may employ these tactics on an individual, casual-seeming level as well.

(Information on BITE methods)

elrondhubbardapothecary

The only thing I would add is an

EGO BUFFER: Try to be at peace with your limitations, failures, and accept the impossibility of some of your dreams and desires.

I think this is the most important buffer for “smart, high achieving” people, especially if they were “gifted children”. There are a large number of cults and exploitative groups that collect ambitious and motivated people. From NXIVM to MLMs, these groups prey on your desire to succeed at your goals. Many of us create these goals at a young age, and they are often in response to some sort of emotional or psychological drive rather than a practical plan. The drive is usually for appreciation, admiration, and recognition from other people.

Cults can draw you in by saying that you are amazing and you just need some help reaching your potential. THIS IS A DANGEROUS TRAP. It is just as likely that your goals are not reasonable, or not possible given your situation and the overall conditions in society. In my job everyone wants to be a famous animator, beloved by peers and audiences, but if the economy is downturning and the industry is contracting, your opportunities to achieve that dream become much, much harder in ways that are beyond your control.

We are currently in a moment of social upheaval and economic precarity. This will likely get much much worse in the next 20 years due to climate change. In combination with the hyper achieving parenting trends of the last 20 years, I’m very concerned for GenZ on this front.

People often have grand plans for their life, and precarity can create insurmountable barriers to achieving these plans. Then people feel lost, angry, embarrassed, afraid, and desperate. They feel they have already put too much effort in to their life plans to quit (known as the sunk cost fallacy) and start searching for more and more fringe support that continues to motivate them towards an impossible goal. Their friends and family may even ask them to try something else, or become less enthusiastic in their support, leading the person to cutting those people off for others who “support them” and “push them to be better people”. This makes the isolation tactics of cults very easy, as they don’t have to do a lot of convincing.

I once heard someone say “never have a plan B, or you won’t fully commit to your dreams” and it was the stupidest possible advice to ever grace the written language. This was a common refrain for millennials during the great recession. We were the canary in the coal mine for this, and there were a significant number of people who bought into it. It will be much worse for Gen Z because now it isn’t about jobs or buying a house like it was for us. It’s hard to suck someone into a house buying cult, and yet it definitely happened. MLMs boomed under millennials. Every single one of my high-school friends ended up selling essential oils, let me tell you.

HAVE A PLAN B. And a plan C. And a plan D. Better yet, work to love yourself and believe in the value of your life even if you never succeed at all. It’s okay to just vibe, do a job because it pays the bills, do art because its fun, and get educated in a subject just because you like it. You do not have to be rich, or successful, or famous, or powerful to be happy. You do not need to reach your imaginary relationship goals. Instead of cutting out people who don’t support you in impossible dreams, cut out or set boundaries with people who demand success in exchange for loving you. If your parents only love you when you get an A+, they are devaluing you and being total garbage. Most likely they are trying to be successful vicariously through you or maintain the reputation they built for themselves in easier times. Millennials had to face the disappointment of our parents when we never reached the milestones they did like home ownership and stable careers. You know all those articles about how terrible millennials were? Those were written by our parents. The reason why people feel comfortable hating boomers is because millennials turned on them first. We had to tell our parents to go fuck themselves or they would die alone without their kids.

The best way to avoid these cults of ambition is to be a happy slacker. Do the level of effort that allows you to enjoy your life in the moment. Don’t hinge your self love and happiness on crossing the finish line, it’s better to just enjoy the journey.

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purplehawke

as a cult survivor who’s spent a half-decade diving into academic research on how these groups work, here are some quality, public-friendly educational resources to help you learn what high control groups look like, how they work, and the methods they use to influence, draw in, and control/coerce literally anyone.

education about this subject is SO important—high control environments and their methods for influencing and controlling people often go totally unnoticed unless you’ve learned about them, and there’s a long history of mainstream misinformation on what thought reform and cults are, what they look like, and how they work. there’s also a huge misconception that “no way that could be me!” when unfortunately, because of how high control influence works, it’s possible for anyone to get drawn into a high control group or relationship without realizing that’s what it actually is.

Cults/High Control Groups and Influence 101:

BITE Model by Steven Hassan: useful criteria for identifying undue influence and high control groups/cults. A good starting point.

Cult Research & Information Center website by Dr. Janja Lalich: comprehensive resource center for cult education AND cult survivor healing. For cult survivors, Janja Lalich’s books “Take Back Your Life” and “Escaping Utopia” are very highly recommended.

Dr. Janja Lalich “How Online Conspiracy Groups Compare to Cults” Interview. Dr. Lalich is back at it again with easily accessible but highly informed information about cult groups, especially online-based groups and nonreligious cults.

“Is Trump a Cult Leader? A Scientific Perspective” by Telltale. This video has a catchy title, but the creator does a great job on 1) knowing his stuff, and 2) explaining what’s required to be a cult, and what does/doesn’t qualify as a cult. The video also has really interesting insight/analysis on the current conspiracy theory cult movements we have today (QAnon, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers). The channel is a good source on both those subjects, as well as groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

TV Series/Films:

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (Emmy award-winning TV series, it’s on US Netflix now). Really digs into the specifics of Scientology, but they do a great job portraying to the general public how cults operate, and how even a destructive cult can recruit people, cover up abuses, evade the law, and keep members within the group.

Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult (2020 Docuseries, available on Amazon Prime Video)

The Last Stop: The True Story of the Elan School (Warning: All of the TWs.) Film on the Troubled Teen Industry, aka what happened when the War on Drugs combined with the 1960s anti-drug cult Synanon and LGAT seminars to create a still-active billion dollar industry of cult-based institutional child abuse in the name of teen rehabilitation. There is actual footage, use the trailer to gauge your limits. Spoiler: fuck Nancy Reagan.

If The Last Stop is too triggering, try the video “The Elan School: Death by Misinformation” by iiluminaughtii. It’s shorter and based off of The Last Stop, and gives you some of the information from The Last Stop in a less harrowing/triggering delivery format.

Wellness/Self-Help Cults, including Corporate Cult Seminars/Workshops:

LuLaRich (2021 Docuseries, available on Amazon Prime Video). Highly recommended, uses LuLaRoe as a case study on MLMs. Also covers how MLMs can develop into abusive cults.

“What is the Landmark Forum?” by iiluminaughtii. A 101 on the cult corporate seminar industry. Landmark is one of the most well-known examples of a corporate seminar/workshop cult.

Also check out Lifespring and Large-Group Awareness Training (LGAT) seminars. These are 1000% endemic, and yes, they’re high control groups. Their seminar methods are all various implementations of abusive high control tactics. Not good :(

Cult Origins of and Ongoing Destructive Cult Presence in the Modern US Drug Rehabilitation, Residential Treatment, and Troubled Teen Industries (including anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy camps):

“Help at Any Cost” by Maia Szalavitz (can’t recommend enough)

“Running My Anger: The Legacy of the CEDU Cult” by Medium Anonymous

The Awareness and Investigate sections of the Unsilenced Project website.

Current Survivor Activism/Support: Unsilenced; r/troubledteens; WWASP Survivors

Podcasts!:

Scientology: Fair Game Podcast with Leah Remini and Mike Rinder

Mormon Stories Podcast (very good resource re: Mormonism, as well as other experiences of fundamentalist religions)

Leaving Eden Podcast (focuses on US fundamentalist Christianity, but does branch out a bit)

A Little Bit Culty podcast. This podcast is hosted by former NXIVM members Sarah and Nippy, who are now cult education and survivor healing advocates. Episode 2 (titled “Cults 101”) introduces what cults are and why humans are universally vulnerable to cult abuse.

This list seems really long, but I actually cut a lot out. These links are meant to be easy-access for a general audience, but there are many more great resources besides these ones I’ve mentioned above :)

LAST UPDATED: Jan 26, 2022

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claudiagray

Also suggested viewing: “The Deep End,” on Hulu, about an online “spiritual teacher” who may be helpful to some in small doses (all cults offer SOMETHING, nobody ever joins a cult for the cult!) but gets increasingly scary the closer you get to the center.

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sashibunbun

So the bigger part is to not slavishly focus on B.I.T.E., which, while great back in the day is definitely going to cause problems. Already see a lot from the notes, calling fandom things cults, the focus on tik tok being a big source while using things from there that wouldn’t have been out of place here up to a decade ago. The big part of BITE and cults in general is that it’s always seeking to isolate you from anybody who might try to extricate you. NXIVM is actually a good reference here, because cults are basically just MLMs with a semi-spiritual side.

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psycheterminal

Search up the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Form if you are unsure if the group you are in is coercive. It is more specific than BITE, which can be useful to neurodivergents or twig people onto “oh, this is actually not okay.”

Sometimes people don’t know that something is abusive! Especially if they’re being manipulated! Having specifics before you can really help pop the unreality bubble these asshats build up. ——————————————————————————————

wowbright

Podcasts that are helpful:

Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and the Abuse of Power

The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steven Hassan

IndoctriNation

Free Your Inner Guru

Decoding the Gurus

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hexavonne04

GenZ here, I feel our generation is seeing an evolution of what counts as a Cult.

I guess it’s best described as a cult obsessed with the aesthetics of science and intelligentsia as the old ways of spirits and religion go.

I feel a great example of this would be Canadian Psychology Jordan Peterson and his fans (from experience talking to fans through YouTube comments, and other stuff I’ve learned about the guy and his audience. It’s not really that Peterson says anything Brave (his teachings when scrubbed of their overly flowery language are very basic and usually fall into conservative talking points), but rather because he provides a greater purpose to the problems of masculinity a lot of his fans have. They will fight you to the death to prove him right on everything because if he is wrong, then maybe the sense of purpose he gives them is also wrong.

This is what I feel separates the Cults of my generation from the cults previous (though these elements were definitely there) , it’s that the aesthetics of science and intellectualism are now dominant. Creator gods have been replaced with “Simulation theory”, Pascals Wager has been given a Skynet sheen to form “Roko’s Basilisk”, Magic and Spirits have been replaced with “Quantum Mysticism”, Pandora’s box and the eating of the Apple by Eve has been replaced with Alpha wolf dynamics and Lobster Heirarchies, and Armageddon and Battle of Good and Evil has been replaced with Qanon’s variation of the Day of the Rope. It’s What brings people to Elon Musk and his hair-brained sci-fi projects. Its the motivation for religious people to deny science like with Flat Earth and Anti Evolution. It’s everywhere.

The environment I am describing is based right now in ego though. The people flocking to this kind of stuff see religion as done and stupid but still lack a sense of purpose. This smart look provides the sense that the leader is smart and you are smart for agreeing with him, which plays into their wants to fight bro prove the leader a god amongst man.

Currently though, these have not formed into traditional cult hierarchies, and I feel the internet makes this a lot harder to achieve. But I feel this is a trend that should be looked out for as much as the spread of Alien and Wicca based faiths through Tiktok, Wellness cults, and Modern Spirituality. Because if the rise in Facism motivated terrorist attacks in recent years have shown, riling people into an apocalyptic fervour and waiting for them to act on that fervour, is very powerful.

P.S. I am not religious, It’s actually a major reason why I find this a bad thing. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing in all senses of the term, and like Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven’s gate before us, it’s the ones that prey on peoples desire to feel smart that hurt people the most.

I can only say that I hope I’m wrong

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gatorfisch

And here’s an easy, but BIG tip:  You can have your own opinion.  The minute that anyone starts to tell you that you’re wrong because you don’t think like them-walk the fuck away.  And this is something that Gen Z tends to have trouble with.  Most likely because they have only known the “us vs them” partisan mindset.  But, you can disagree on many things and still be friends.  Just because someone thinks cancel culture has gotten out of control, because we are all human, doesn’t mean they are advocating for pedophilia or an anything goes agenda.  And someone who believes in marriage equality isn’t trying to force you to marry someone who is your same sex.  Respectfully disagreeing is total good, in my opinion.  If you aren’t allowed to question things, how do you really know what you believe?  

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lycalpha

Also please remember that no one is immune! The first mistake you can make is thinking this can never happen to you. That’s when you let your guard down and lose awareness. Stay vigilant!

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teamkrissy

Learn from multiple sources, even ones you don’t like or respect

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oatmealcoloured

I mean this with all the love in my heart:

EVERYONE is susceptible to cults when the circumstances are right. No matter how smart or educated or critical or whatever you are, if the tactics are meant to draw you in, they can and will!

People who join cults aren’t stupid. Thinking you are too smart to join a cult can, in fact, put you at risk as you are not looking out for signs.

Please keep a balance between educating yourself and moral panics, but keep your critical thinking skills sharp.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)

The Monster of Sentan

The Witch’s Cat

Raise Both Children

Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)

Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)

My Arch Nemesis Cynthia

Pirates and Mermaid

Eindred and the Witch

The Demon King

The Cornerwitch

Grandmother Beetroot

Apocalypse Daycare Worker

Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon

New Year Saga

A Story About Changelings

Ranger in the King’s Forest

The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit

Also, here’s the wizard who lets people choose how they will die, in ‘The Martyrdom Of St Grainne’.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.

So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.

And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.

All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind. 

Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.

He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.

There are probably sound reasons why not, one of which is probably that getting yet another ‘Titanic’ project greenlit is far easier - name recognition, pre-sold property, multiple conspiracy theories to play with (all discredited, but when did that stop the “History” Channel?)

Here are a couple of stories about ‘Carpathia’:

As @mylordshesacactus has already said, her boilers and engines were rated for no more than 14 knots and, when she managed 17.5 for the only time in her life it’s said (I hate the phrase but I have to use it) that the Chief Engineer hung his hat over the main pressure gauge so no-one - including himself - could see how far its needle was into the red.

Captain Rostron, a religious man, was seen on several occasions standing privately on the exposed bridge wing with his own hat raised and his mouth moving in silent prayer, and when daylight revealed the extent of the ice-field his ship had passed without harm, he only said “There must have been another Hand on the wheel than mine…”

There’s another problem-of-sorts about a screenplay set aboard ‘Carpathia’ - an astonishing lack of that easy dramatic tool, conflict. Captain Rostron decided he was going to the ‘Titanic’s assistance, and that was that. AFAIK not a single passenger or crewman - not one - questioned the wisdom of his decision either then or afterwards, even when…

…‘Carpathia’ headed at more than full speed, in the dark, through dangerous waters where an iceberg had apparently just sunk an “unsinkable” ship.

It’s easier to write - and sell - a story about pride, arrogance, stupidity, rich against poor and lives lost through hubris, than it is to write one about people who rallied round and did the right thing at the right time, not for reward but because it was the right thing to do.

Here’s Rostron and his officers…

…the ‘Carpathia’ stewards and cabin crew….

…some of her passengers…

…and some of the people they helped.

Purchase tickets for either the in-person event or the livestream (with or without Virtual Meet and Greet) here:

Just like the Snixxmas fundraisers of the last two years, 100% of this year’s proceeds go to Alexandria House in LA. They provide transitional housing to women and children that are moving from emergency shelters to more stable, permanent housing. Naya supported this charity during her life - raising funds and volunteering her time there. These annual Snixxmas charity drives help raise money for this worthy cause - while also keeping Naya’s memory alive in a fun way that she cherished (her annual Christmas parties she called Snixxmas). If you’ve followed the Snixxmas efforts over the years, you know that this is spearheaded by Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, and Telly Kousakis - and supported by much of the Glee cast, Naya’s mom Yolanda, and Alexandria House itself.

If anyone cannot afford tickets, Mandolin does allow you to transfer tickets with a simple claim code after purchase. I can afford to gift some live stream tickets - and I would like to give more to this event than my one ticket - so if you would like a live stream ticket and cannot afford it, please send me a private message here on tumblr.

And don’t worry - Kevin and Jenna will be live on the Dec 8 livestream watching the Dec 6 taping with us all and chatting. So it’s not just watching a video. And if you can’t make the December 8 livestream, it will be available to replay for one week after if you have a ticket.

Merry Snixxmas all! Learn more about Alexandria House here:

🎞️Here’s a festive #TBT photo from 1969! On this Thanksgiving, the world-famous parade passed the Museum’s 77th Street turret with a very special float: a sauropod dinosaur.

🦕This inflatable Apatosaurus measured an impressive 60 feet long! The giant green dinosaur featured big eyes, a wide grin, and a 20-foot tail. The original Apatosaurus balloon made its first parade debut in 1963 and was retired from service in 1976.

Photo: Image no. 62158_21a, © AMNH Library

“Organic” isn’t better for you or for the environment. It actually means nothing of any significance at best and is sometimes even the more wasteful, more hazardous option.

A shitload of “natural” food including a lot of imported produce is grown and harvested through slave labor in inhumane conditions.

Pizza, fried chicken, french fries, fast food, candy bars and chips ARE nutritious. They are loaded with good things. Just because they have an abundance of excess fats and might not be healthy as a staple doesn’t mean they are “nutritionless” or that their calories are “empty.” Those are hokey buzzwords pushed by the people in charge of how much you pay for the alternatives.

Eating healthier costs more. Much more. Looking down on people for their reliance on cheaper food is extremely classist and expecting everyone to be able to live off fresh veggies and cage-free meats is insultingly unrealistic in the modern world.

“Processed” literally only means the food went through some kind of automated process. This can be literally the exact same thing a human being would have done to the food for it to be labeled “unprocessed.” Being processed does not make something less healthy.

Chemicals with long, scary names are part of nature. An apple is full of compounds you probably can’t pronounce. A shorter ingredients label only means they didn’t bother listing all 300 things the product is actually made of and HAS to be made of.

Preservatives, artificial flavors and other additives are not the devil. Most are harmless and in general they are part of the reason you haven’t already starved to death or died of a food borne illness.

MSG is not bad for you at all.

The fact that something might be made of “scrap” meats like pig snouts or chicken necks only means one thing: that we didn’t waste perfectly normal, edible meat.

This is about defining who is fully human and who is not. #RoeVWade

«At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book. We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding. Instead, we digitize it the hard way—one page at a time. We use the Scribe, a book scanner our engineers invented, along with the software that it runs. Our scanning centers are located in universities and libraries around the world, from Boston Public Library to the University of Toronto to the Wellcome Library and beyond. Eliza is one of our fastest and most accurate scanners. Next she will execute quality control checks and fix any errors. Then she ships the book back to our Physical Archive for long-term preservation. Now imagine this: scanners like Eliza have done this 2,000,000 times. That’s what it takes to provide you with a free digital library.» – Plus Internet Archive’s Modern Book Collection Now Tops 2 Million Volumes, by Chris Freeland, February 3, 2021

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Caramel Apple Pie

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So this mf Thom Cashman is an Australian comedian who's currently in the process of looking for a new apartment with his friend and he gets approved for a place and decides he's gonna keep looking. But, being a funny man with funny thoughts in his brain, he goes "you know why is it that when I apply to rent somewhere, the landlord asks me for references to prove I'm a good guy, but I never do the same?" So he does! He asks the landlord for references to prove they're a competent person who will like, fix shit when needed and not be a total dick and then suddenly the next day is approval is revoked!

And he admits that it probably isn't the best idea to do that if you want to get an apartment because the power dynamic is such a way where landlords are power hungry bastards who never want to have to prove themselves because they're not poors like us. But it gets even fucking weirder, cause this shit made national news in Australia.

For my good buddies who don't wanna watch a 2 and a half minute long TikTok, basically what happened is that he now is DESPERATELY in need of a place and he's getting rejected even when he doesn't ask for the reference thing out of, idfk, landlord schkeeviness solidarity??? Isn't that FUCKED??? Like landlords are so scared of the idea of people asking them to prove they don't suck that they're gonna drive this man to homelessness

Anyway here's a source to prove this is not one of those things I made up