Electronic Moose

i am scouring the internet like the victorians scoured and destroyed all trace of joy and color from stolen relics for the LOST NAME OF THE ANCIENT PROCESS of textile-creation akin to knitting/crocheting/nålebinding that at least one academic/crafter used to recreate the leggings on this Glorious Motherfucker:

Archer statue from the Temple of Aphaia (ca. 480 BC) next to a reconstruction of its original paint job:

The leggings and sleeves would have created using a method called SPRANG which predates knitting and is over 3,000 years old. What's even sexier is modern artisans managed to recreate the entire outfit using the original method!

Mmm-HMM, love me a shapely thigh in harlequin hosiery. Put👏men👏in👏clingy-ass👏clothing👏again👏👏👏

Unfortunately english sources are hard to find, partly because Google's a shithole, but also because this textile project comes from a German museum, in Germany, where people tend to speak (and publish) in German. That said, the original link is to a short-but-sweet article I would have had no problem finding in 30 seconds a mere few years ago. fortunately i have clever beautiful insane people following me, but alas not everyone has such luxury. thanks to everyone in the notes who shoved themselves down this rabbithole with me!

Two types of dogs

Actually they're not all cults and you're doing the work of making sure actual cults can slip under the radar when you say stuff like that

Cult leaders LOVE that trend, because they can point to it and say, "people will call anything a cult, it's basically meaningless"

However, scientifically the words "Religion" and "Cult" can't really be meaningfully separated. Any definition of religion narrow enough to exclude all cults also excludes things that are very much seen as legitimate religions and any definition broad enough to include all religions will include things that most agree are definitely cults.

Behavior - control member behavior via reward, punishment, manipulation, etc

Information - control information coming in and going out via isolation and propaganda

Thought - discourage critical thinking for oneself to shape attitude

Emotion - guilt, shame, terrorize, create a sense of community and family, etc

She's the only cult expert to have grown up in a cult. Specifically the Children of God pedophile sex cult. She was also in the army in intelligence. She has a perspective on cults that absolutely cannot be matched.

According to her, religions CAN'T be cults. But religious GROUPS can.

A religion is a concept and it's too big to ever create the kind of coercive control. Christianity isn't a cult, but Mormons and Catholics are. A Cult requires a shared sacred assumption or charismatic personality to center around.

Cults of personality only last as long as the leader does, and so MAGA is on its way out. Someone may take over the mantle when 47 dies, but MAGA will never be powerful again. Because a cult of personality is specifically about the cult leader. The leader is divine or something like it.

Cults of ideals are built around something that transcends a single person's lifetime. The Army uses the Constitution. Mormons have their weirdly specific rituals and commandments. The Catholic Church has the papacy. Scientology has aliens. The sacred idea is taught and maintained through a bureaucracy of some kind. The leader here is not divine, but a high priest of the divine, so to speak.

A religion is a set of beliefs and values that can be used for good or evil, depending on who has the reins. A small Christian congregation who splits preaching up among the members isn't a cult. A Sikh gurudwara that feeds the locals with volunteers and doesn't require anything from the people eating isn't a cult. A Norse pagan group that meets on the solstices to dance and feast isn't a cult.

A church that tells you to cut off non Christian family members? Cult. A boyfriend who controls who you can see and what you eat and demands domestic labor? That's called a two person cult. A social group that demands all of your free time and punishes you for raising questions? Probably a cult.

A religion is just... it's a D&D rulebook. It tells you what's possible but you make choices within it. A cult is when people use the rule book to extract labor and respurces from people. A cult actively and intentionally exploits people.

Including the fact that they literally use cult experts to design basic training.

I spent more than half of my life in cults and that doesn't make me an expert, but it does mean I recognized what she wrote about in her books as a mirror to what I grew up around. And she breaks it down in those books in a way I wouldn't care to on Tumblr.

For years after 9/11 we were constantly told “NEVER FORGET” and the idea was basically “keep feeling sad and afraid and especially ANGRY forever; don’t let time dull your emotional response like it’s naturally supposed to; continue to justify the injustices by feeling this way all the time.” And the 3000 deaths were constantly pointed to as this huge deal that justified any lengths to go to.

And then Covid hit. And there were several points during the height of the pandemic (because fun fact, according to the actual definitions of a pandemic, *it’s not technically over yet!* ) where we were having a 9/11’s worth of deaths every week or so. And suddenly 3000 deaths were not a big deal at all. Instead of being enough reason to go to war far away and strip us at home of many rights too, they weren’t even enough justification to make people wear a damn piece of fabric over their face.

3000 people died once and now the government can legally wiretap anyone without a warrant, and hold people at Gitmo under suspicion of terrorism (no need for due process)… 3000 people dying every week but we should all still be going out to brunch and concerts and who cares about the disabled and immunocompromised?

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.