Some others from the esoterica.

It’s really tragic how much conspiracy spaces have been overtaken by scary alt right ideologies. I think there was some purposeful targeting of seriously mentally ill and vulnerable people with some of those conspiracies.

I want a return to like Whitney Strieber’s Communion. I would shit myself with delight given the opportunity to attend a conference where people talk about the wars between the Dracos, and whether or not the Greys are on our side, but part of the Dracos plan is making us gay or something. There’s always been the antisemitism on the periphery, but David Icke started making that impossible to ignore.

Spirit Science guy I think still steers that line (Jews are space aliens, just good ones).

Roswell, New Mexico is amazing - the town eats that shit up, the museum is awesome, the McDonald’s is done up like a UFO.

I once went to a lecture on Bigfoot in a used bookstore in a small town, where a man described an encounter where he was terrified by a family of Bigfoot into staying in his RV to a captivated audience of 8 people, including myself, my ex husband (who was not eager in his attendance), the book store owner, and few elderly couples. It was great.

I have taken some classes in religious studies, although I don’t know if I can say I formally “study” it. But it has been a lifelong “special interest.”

I just grabbed Hymnody from the thrift store so haven’t read it yet. But yeah, I read most of them.

As far as criteria, it’s complicated. I get a lot of books by thrifting - there’s usually a lot of bulk generic Protestant stuff, which I don’t usually pick up because one probably could fill an apartment with just shit associated with the Left Behind series or the Purpose Driven Life. (Or I Kissed Dating Goodbye in that above picture, that just got pruned into an art project because I could get another one for $1 pretty easily).

I’m usually seeking ideas that I haven’t encountered yet or things that are so ridiculous and kitsch that they amuse me. (Which goes for my book collection as a whole.)

Ie, the value in that SDA textbook Light Bearers to the Remnant is comparing what SDAs claim about Ellen White and the Kelloggs to mainstream history, and it would be fascinating to write an article on. Or I grabbed a copy of modern reprint book from the 1800s that argued that the wine in the New Testament wasn’t alcoholic, and watching someone contort themselves in knots claiming that Jesus turned water into grape juice is amusing.

The really kitsch stuff I enjoy stoned. I’ll watch videos warning Muslim women of the evils of painting their nails (you can’t clean your hands properly for prayer apparently, because water can’t get to the nail) or Bibleman or those classic Mormon cartoons.

As far as personal beliefs, I’m something like a Discordian ultimately. I don’t really “believe” in her, but I have rituals I do to worship Eris. (She wants me to get stoned, pretend to be Jackson Pollock and commune with her by typing random letters in the YouTube search bar - which is what I want to do anyway. She’s an awesome Goddess like that.)

The most immediately accessible gems of the collection.

I have a genuinely Scientology folder thing for a course and a Spanish DVD of Dianetics, but that’s at a friends.

Oh yeah, if you have old BoM before some of the fun changes. Watchtowers would be fun too, only have got read through PDFs.

(I have training manuals for Mormon missionaries, the textbook on Seventh Day Adventist history as used in Seventh Day Adventist colleges, and watch the Left Behind with Kirk Cameron at least once a year or so.)

No!!! They are so much fun to collect! Keep them and send them to me!!!

Yes, this is a Chick tract, which are real comics you are supposed to give to people to convince them to become (Jack Chick’s specific variety of) Christian.

“When I was a waitress, a man and his wife would leave a tract for me with a tip. Eventually, they asked me to join them on a Sunday for church and the rest is history. Praise the Lord, these people cared for my soul…a complete stranger.”

Lisa. (Which I wonder if it inspired the video game Lisa at all - similar themes). It’s horrifically fucked up, but of note is that the doctor doesn’t report the dad for letting his friend fuck his daughter (giving her herpes), because the dad finds Jesus and promises never to do it again.

This is how it often happens to this day in parts of the Southern US - like they pulled it because of bad PR, not because they didn’t stand behind the message: it’s not “wow this was fucked up and we’re sorry to have ever thought this was a good idea” but just “we no longer stock Lisa”

It looks like the internet archive took down their copy, which is concerning. It’s been out of print for decades.

Bukele doesn’t give a shit.

Cut from the same cloth as Trump, Bolsanaro, Berlusconi, Orbán, Lukashenko…

I love how LinkedIn sends ten emails a day with names of very promising jobs, then when I click on them and go through the log-in prompt, it just takes me to the home page, and then I go back and click on the job while logged in, and it was posted 8 months ago and is no longer accepting applications.

(I also love ‘you were searched by people from these companies!’ - so useful, and I’m sure that’s accurate!)

Job hunting is very sane and rational.

Electric toothbrushes….

He was probably heavily influenced by the Essenes, so stuff very similar to the Dead Sea Scrollls.

I think the book of Tobit was also influential to historical Jesus’s thought, and maybe even 1 Enoch. If he didn’t read those texts himself, I think at least you can make the argument that he was influenced by the kinds of thoughts/movements those texts were associated with.

Weed is part of the equation, but it’s also become something I’m kind of dependent on as well. It can really fuck up your sleep if you use it regularly and stop too.

How does one get off the energy drinks to stay awake and beer to fall asleep train? I’ve been trying to cut back to 1 Monster a day, but I get too tired to function at work without it. (And then when I’m off - I want to feel awake and active during my free time too!)

Like, I know my stomach feels bad because 2 pipeline punches and then binging on a can of pringles + frozen dinner + beer when I get home from work is not good for me. Everything is happening too fast though for anything else to work.

It’s endlessly hilarious that the term incel was coined by a queer woman.

The unusual part is not that he sucked, but that he was presenting himself as a top player (because he bought an account).

Like, if I hand the controller to someone who’s never played Demon Souls and they get wrecked by the first few skeletons or wev, that makes sense. If someone brags about being among the top Demon Souls players in the world, and they can’t make it through the first level, that’s odd.

Most of us grow out of thinking our skills at video games have much significance or bearing on our self image, so it’s very odd to see an adult that feels the need to lie about their competence at a video game. If instead of buying an account and pretending to be a top player, he had been honest - “hey y’all, just going to show off Starlinks ability to stream by checking out PoE2!” - well, at most people might be making fun of him for taking time to play video games instead of running the dozen companies he supposedly does, but it wouldn’t be this pathetic.

Hegseth doesn’t think women should be in the military. The DUI-hire is gradually working on it - I think we will at least see a return to a ban on serving in combat roles within a year or so.

But what about relativistic effects? Getting off my ass is altering the passage of my time, at least somewhat.

I did manage to get up to get an energy drink; it doesn’t seem to be providing me any ability to do work though.

News articles are for fear mongering. They report on salacious cases. You can’t use them to make generalizations or arguments about crime as a whole, unless you’re doing some thick description full on qualitative research and analysis. (Even that can be doubtful. Gang Leader for a Day is a famous piece of bullshit - also probably the inspiration for that Xavier : Renegade Angel episode).

The data says there was a bump up during COVID, which is explained by COVID (schools closing is an obvious factor). But as far as larger trends.

Juveniles have been contributing to a shrinking share of major crime over time. In 2017, people under 18 accounted for 12.3% of all major crime arrests. By 2023, that proportion had dropped to 9.1%. As of September 30, 2024, it has edged up slightly to 9.7%. The same pattern holds for violent crime arrests. Juveniles represented 14.2% of violent crime arrests in New York City in 2017, dropping to 10.2% in 2023.

True. It’s just a slogan in the same way that “being White is all right” is or “All Lives Matter” is. It’s not supposed to mean what it means. It’s a code.

Like - once, 4chan (/pol/ and /b/ primarily, early mid 2010s) that it would be funny to make drinking milk a racist thing. It was explicitly discussed how this would make people upset about people drinking milk, and how this would be funny. The alt right weirdos in on the joke get the joke, leftists are befuddled and outraged, the stupid conservative weirdos are laughing at the dumb liberals and their cancel culture getting worked up about milk. Same thing with that pinched thumb and index finger “okay” symbol. 14 and 88 have lost their plausible deniability in most spaces at least.

Very similarly, the idea of MAPS was a /pol/ operation that was carried out to delegitimize the LGBT movement. The idea of people identifying with a sexual orientation based on being exclusively attracted to children, to the point of creating a pride flag, was mostly a /pol/ op. This is not to say that there aren’t creeps who did actually identify as such as a consequence of this movement, but it wasn’t a natural movement of creeps.

Language games. The limits of my language are the limits of my world. They mean something entirely different even in just human there.

Gotta love how “”””radfems”””” love the term “adult human female” too.