Recent reads

panels on cult-building

Utagawa Yoshifuji's "Rabbit Sumo". 1868. Ota memorial Museum of Art

Every time I go out into the world after spending all day online I feel like Peter Sellers in Being There

Peggy Bacon, 1960

Early Dungeons & Dragons #dungeonsanddragons

Elric of Melniboné art by Rodney Matthews

From Bruce Pennington’s ‘Eschatus’ (Dragon’s World, 1976)

Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,

Conan the Barbarian has long been a fave of mine but I still think my favorite part is the same from my first viewing, a tiny throwaway moment when they're talking about Thulsa Doom to some rando villager who shrugs and says "well it started out as just your average snake cult"

A fun thing you can do is imagine all of Pazuzu’s lines in THE EXORCIST dubbed by Sam Elliott. Try it.

every day is an opportunity to be awed once again by the majestic beauty of the Ramones’ “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”

Petards gonna hoist, amirite?

« Fate Sowing the Stars », 1977 by Barry Windsor-Smith (British illustrator, born 1949) Original oil painting, features in ”The Studio" artbook, Dragon's Dream, 1979 #vintagefantasyart #fantasyart #fantasyillustration #barrywindsorsmith #bws #mythologicalfantasy #TheStudio #DragonsDream

Doesn’t the devil live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead?

www.sify.com/ai-analytics... stuff you can't really warn people about enough. even basic algorithms like YouTube video curation can trigger this kind of thinking in the vulnerable.

Art by Darrell K. Sweet (1934 – 2011) who produced an incredible 3000+ images between 1975 and 2005 1/2

everything is cults

This. I grew up reading Schaeffer (certainly not the wide-eyed radical by that scene’s standards) literally lay out the rationale for overthrowing the government on moral/religious grounds, and the prolife movement openly debated the morality of targeted assassinations for decades.

Every decade or so the URCNA has had to make its members repudiate the Rushdoony/Doug Wilson "we have to remake the government in the vision of Old Testament" law stuff, so you know it smells crazy in there

Post your favourite "Lord of the Rings" character(s). Wrong answers only.

The WHCD gunman went to Caltech, so it's inevitable that the "staged shooting" conspiracy theory and the "missing scientists" conspiracy theory are going to link up.

Begging, screaming, throwing up

This is why you should try my strategy, never getting reposted

Art by the Brothers Hildebrandt for Tolkien calendars 1977-79

1. This History Thread is about the mountains of Burma (Myanmar.) The distinctive terrain has formed borders & provided population enclaves with safe havens & means of resistance. Mountains may be sacred. Or despoiled by mineral & timber exploitation. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar 🌄

Charles Vess, 1994

Gwen Danielson, who lived with Ziz (of Zizians fame) during the Rationalist Fleet days and left the group shortly before the killings started, has made a blog post. Tl,dr: "My understanding of Ziz's beliefs...contradict with the deaths that actually happened." www.lesswrong.com/posts/mbrmZm...

Frank Kelly Freas, “Saved by the Future,” 1975

For some people the Satanic Panic never ended.

Too late

this is a total tangent but rewatched Ferris Bueller the other day and was thinking about how it's a heist movie, they're stealing time and actually adulthood/respect/responsibility from a school/system that wastes their time and infantilizes them

Susan Entwistle. The Garden Path. #Acrylics #Pointillism

Art by Rodney Matthews ‘The Rainbow Room’ (1993)

Oh, it's literally called Everyman (1984) by Vallejo.

This is what going on the internet used to feel like

We inoculated one of our garden beds with winecap mushroom spores two years ago. We got nothing. Last year a few popped up near the bed. Last week dozens of caps were growing all over the garden. We harvested like 5 lbs today, and we'll get more after tomorrow's rain.

The political history of the U.S. since the 1970s is basically that thing where a species' predator disappears and the species overpopulates and destroys the whole habitat. If centrists really wanted a "Normal" right, their top priority would be to bring back the left

I wrote about Donald Trump v. The Pope

"Swann’s fantasies spoke to the feminist, gay-rights, and environmental movements. His intense focus on 'civilization' processed the growing sense of cultural malaise." Sean Guynes on Thomas Burnett Swann: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thomas-burnett-swann-fantasy-sf-queer-romance-wolfwinter/

Utagawa Hiroshige. Naruto Whirlpool, Awa Province. Japan, 1853.

Two pages into this book and I can say with confidence it is the worst written thing I have ever read. I think I got cancer by the third paragraph. I love it already.