Mx. Luna Corbden 🪿🐸

Author, ghostwriter, freelance editor who wrote "Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control."

"Abuse Culture" is the cult of American society.

Also F/SF/Horror author. Many other interests & infodumps. Former IT.

4% puns, 7% dad jokes. Absent minded & trauma-addled aspirational hippie.

♥Cult Researcher
♥Exmormon
♥Mystical Atheist
♥Autist
♥Survivor
♥GenXtra
♥Solarpunk
♥Whiteness is a cult
♥Decolonize & Rewild
♥End #AbuseCulture

I’ll help you see through the illusion.

akas: Luna Lindsey, Corbden, secret names
Pronouns: they/them
Genders: nonbinary man, nonbinary woman
Geosituation: Idaho
Memberships: ICSA, SFWA, EFA, AoG
Recovering Agency Blog: http://recoveringagency.com
Old Blog: http://corbden.com

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Last Notes

2026-02-27 22:31:41 GMT

There was a competition at the local sex club. Tops lined up at the starting line, and at the sound of the whip, they had to run all the way to the end of the venue where a sub awaited a good flogging. The prize went to the fastest.
But they had to stop when someone pointed out it was just another race to the bottom.

2026-01-13 18:18:52 GMT

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Reciprocity is a powerful psychological lever that marketers and cult leaders have been using for centuries.

2026-01-04 21:49:20 GMT

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Knit? like, a sweater?

2026-01-04 20:52:03 GMT

Time to buy underwear! When it comes to men's boxer briefs, is Jockey a quality brand?
Background: I have tried several brands of men's underwear over the years, and have come to find that I am quite picky. Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and Joe Boxer are CRAP!! They do not fit comfortably and wear out quickly.
Because I am good at finding discounts, I have tried Papi and Tommy Hilfiger, and loourve them. They are still like new after years of wear, and are super comfy.
I found some Jockeys on sale at Kohl's. Will they be in the good or bad category?
Thank you!
#transmasc #AskFedi

2025-12-25 23:29:06 GMT

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Machiavelli also had some things to say about what people believe vs what leaders actually do. The first is the ideology you feed the people, which is very not the same as whatever drives a despot. Conflating the two carries water for the despot by legitimizing their misdirection.

2025-12-24 22:11:04 GMT

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That's the *effect* of the right's leadership. That is where the leaders take them *in effect*.
BUT that is not what most rank and file conservatives actually *believe or value*. You've basically strawmanned the ideology that many voting conservatives *actually believe.* I grew up religiously conservative, and I was taught to value things like liberty and equality, and then those concepts were twisted to favor their opposite. It was only after many years of unpacking that I was able to see this clearly and switch sides.
Don't think that you and I can't be similarly fooled. The #1 tool of con artists is to make people think they're above being fooled.
Additionally, this false belief about their beliefs puts us on the back foot when it comes to countering their tactics or persuading sincere people to our cause.
The danger of putting everything into strict boxes is that it prioritizes confirmation bias and masks the truth, and this is always to the advantage of authoritarians, which is why it's one of the first cult criteria every identified by researcher Robert J. Lifton ("Sacred Science") when he deconstructed Maoist re-education tactics in the 1950s and 60s:
"The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence."
Don't do that.
Yes, some ideologies have authoritarian ideas baked in, which makes for an interesting academic conversation. I've spent plenty of words on the topic of Christianity's built-in authoritarian symbols that go back to 3rd/4th century CE. (That said, ask an average Christian if they are authoritarian, and they will most likely deny it. Only lately have some sects begun to be more publicly, outwardly authoritarian. It's mostly *covert* authoritarianism with a lot of loaded language and double-think.)
But in the real world, literally any ideology has historically veered in favor of authoritarians when they are given enough leeway. That's the nature of the game, and their eternal advantage: Powertrippers are always doing everything they can to hoard power to themselves, while the rest of us would prefer, on the best day, to be left alone to do our own thing. They hold no principles other than the goal to amass power, and will wave whatever flag they need to.
Ideology does almost nothing to prevent this dynamic. All we can do is make it more difficult for them; but they will always push.
Typically, we are acting only on defense, and I'd really like us to wake up to how *power* (not ideology) really works, or we'll be on the losing end of the same cycle for another 1,000 years.
#AbuseCulture
@npub1qud…q43s @npub1hge…us7k

2025-12-24 19:02:58 GMT

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Completely not my point.
When leftists get into power after large-scale revolutions, they are historically weak to power opportunists within their ranks that wrest total (centralized) control. Even at small scale (organizations, even just groups of people), this happens unless it is actively prevented from happening.
This ideological insistence that "my side is incorruptible because we hold the one true ideology" is how it happens on *either* side, regardless of how well-meaning the movement is. People get lax and overly trusting, powertrippers take advantage, and you end up with the USSR or North Korea. Or Jim Jones. Or a smaller group with constant drama that alienates marginalized members.
I'm fully on team leftist, but as I study cults and the personality types that create them, completely aware that isn't enough to protect against these dynamics. When we get our utopia, I'd like to keep it that way.
#AbuseCulture

2025-12-24 18:29:57 GMT

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Always. Whatever utopia we try to create, those who crave power will have the rules turned toward their benefit within a generation. Left, right, it hardly matters at that scale.
Powertrippers are opportunistic. They only stop when being actually STOPPED.

2025-12-24 18:07:29 GMT

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But he acts like a Klingon as best he can, and is fluent in the language.

2025-12-19 23:01:40 GMT

Sometimes words come to mean different things due to exaggeration. A generation uses it exaggeratively until the next generation thinks that's always been the meaning of the word.
Similarly, words often come round to meaning the opposite of their original meaning. They're used sarcastically or in wry humor, until they flip all the way around, until everyone who used it the old way is dead.
I first noticed this with a word that happened in my lifetime. I originally thought "decadent" meant luxurious, because by the time I noticed it in use, it was in advertisements to sell ridiculously nice things.
But in the dictionary, the only meaning I could find had already deprecated by my early adulthood — I rarely see it used this way — it means "in a state of decay."
It came this be way because a rich person living a ridiculously luxurious lifestyle was said to be "decadent" in that they were wasting their wealth. So a red velvet cake, being worthy of such wealth-wasting, presented to the middle class, is "decadent." And that's mostly the only way I ever see it used.
"Nice" is one that changed long before I was born. Centuries ago, it meant "silly," or "stupid."
And in Miss Marple's England, apparently "dazzled" meant "I couldn't see because of a bright light." It still means this in the dictionary, but I've only seen it to mean something is sparkly. A kind of exaggeration in describing jewelry that has stuck. (Anyone remember the Bedazzler™?)
Etymology fascinates me because it carries the history of generational culture. It hurts me that meaning is lost once its context passes out of time.
As a GenXer I'm of an age to know this painfully well. 1990s culture is difficult for young people to understand, it seems. There was a lot going on in that zeitgeist that doesn't come through.
Yet for those willing to look at the history of a word, there's a story playing out, as the baton of existence is repeatedly passed to new minds. If it weren't for recordings and the printed word, it would be lost forever.
#etymology

2025-12-18 16:33:25 GMT

I'm almost done with Newhart. (Nearly to what is widely considered the greatest ending to a TV show of all time.)
Which of these should I start next?

2025-12-16 19:28:15 GMT

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(Also, you really have a way with words, and capturing so many of the thoughts I have been having.)

2025-12-16 19:26:43 GMT

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One big difference is that the contract has been broken. The corporate contract with middle class Americans was that companies would try to please us, compete for our dollars, and we would get a choice in a myriad ways of improving our lives.
We're going on 10 or maybe 20 years now of products that make our lives increasingly worse, while our jobs and incomes get worse, too, and while infrastructure gets worse.
It kinda sucks I guess, that this is what it took. That the upside of that contract was enough to get us to throw everyone else under the bus. And that it's only when we're not getting what's owed that we can finally care about people worse off.
I do like to think that I was in the leading edge of that trend. But only by the luck of the social circles I ended up in.
I'm doing a lot of unpacking this culture of dependency under #WhitenessIsACult. Your insight about buying junk to support our identities is spot on, and cults must control identities. I think the fact that it makes me feel uncomfortable and I don't want to boost those points tells me they got me there, too.

2025-12-14 18:15:38 GMT

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This was an interesting read.
I'm confused that they said to pack the wool in densely. As I understand the general principles of insulation, it's the air trapped between whatever material that is doing the work of insulating, and the best materials just do good air-trapping. Am I wrong that it's not a good idea to pack densely? That would be like squishing foam insulation flat or just using concrete.
Anyway, good article. I've been wondering if we should consider having some kind of animals. Seems like sheep might be interesting.

2025-12-12 07:04:49 GMT

Every cornflake is unique too.

2025-12-10 22:50:04 GMT

cat, cat, cat,
my hand is your hat
I'm petting you
pat pat pat
#poem

2025-12-05 09:13:56 GMT

If you're on Earth, and you travel into space, and you go to another planet and land there, are you still in space?
#poll #polls

2025-12-01 21:52:34 GMT

If cats had spikes instead of fur like a cactus (the kind of cactus that has spikes not fur), would you still pet them?
#poll #polls

2025-11-30 03:37:13 GMT

Toasters be all like, "Surprise! It's toast!"
Every goddamn time.

2025-11-27 20:19:33 GMT

you may have noticed
i harh given all my fucks
away
fly, thou fuck
and be free
🙏🏻

2025-11-25 21:06:47 GMT

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Well, there's a reason why craft stores like my parents' don't exist anymore. (They went out of business before Michael's and Hobby Lobby moved into town, but that's why no one else can start their own.) And I wouldn't have a chance opening an indie bookstore anywhere.
You can't outbuy a retail company that is its own wholesaler.

2025-11-25 19:50:42 GMT

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Yep. Pop is the profit center of many an industry. It's why I stopped drinking it 30 years ago. I guess I've always been sticking it to the man. 😂
(Corn subsidies are at the root of all American capitalist evils.)

2025-11-25 19:41:46 GMT

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I started life with entrepreneur parents appears starting (pre-internet) businesses of all kinds, so I know a lot of dorky retail things. This one is called a "lost leader." You price something below its cost to draw in customers who will buy other things that are priced normally, or maybe even at a much higher than normal profit.
The traditional brick and mortar markup model for retail is 30-60%, but this changes per industry. Electronics is as low as 10%. So the store buys it from a distributor for $1 and sells it at $2. The extra dollar goes to rent, wages, shipping, discounts, and other overhead, with whatever is left being actual profit. Distributors do the same. They're selling it for $1, but they bought it from the manufacturer for 50¢. The manufacturer has a similar markup, so the goods to make the thing cost 25¢ for an item that retail for $2. (My parents manufactured and ran retail.)
Of course with the late-capitalism shell games, like McD's effectively owning everything from beginning to end, who knows. But I've found this to be a good gauge to figure out whatever is going on in certain situations. It's how I saw through the conservative economic lies in the Obama era, like certain claims about lower taxes increasing wages (wages come out pre-profit, pre-tax!!) This can also be useful for playing their game back at them, which I do.
It's true the prices are entirely made up, but there are underlying costs being played with, and it has to be made up someplace else. If the single weren't $1.49, then the double would be $1.90.

2025-11-24 23:00:28 GMT

Via Reddit: The LDS Church is going after the Mormon trademark again. After the EFF told them to back off someone else a few years back, the LDS Church is trying again, this time with Mormon Stories.
I'm writing a memoir for Natasha Helfer who was excommunicated in 2021. Prior to that, they phoned her (NOT via a cease and desist letter, but just intimidation tactics) telling her to rebrand the organization she headed, The Mormon Mental Health Association. The EFF got involved, but wouldn't help her unless she committed. You see, previous clients over this issue had been intimidated into backing off.
She held strong, the EFF sent a well-crafted letter stating their legal position that the "Mormon" trademark cannot be enforced, for a wide number of reasons including the fact that LDS is not the only organization or group of people descended from Joseph Smith's original religion, and they backed off. I tell this story in her book.
Now they're trying again, against Mormon Stories.
Well guess what? Natasha and John are good friends. And they excommunicated him a long time ago. He is certainly not going to back down, and I hope they take this up and follow it through.
Hard to believe they sent something in writing this time. I hope the EFF steps back up to bat. They have absolutely zero exclusive right to this use term.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1p4wpra/lds_church_asks_mormon_stories_to_rebrand/
#exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma
https://files.defcon.social/dcsocial-s3/media_attachments/files/115/607/109/729/748/508/original/92748ed3562898f0.png

2025-11-23 04:40:44 GMT

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Let me compare this with Mormon ideology. Its Us vs Them lie is built around concepts of "righteousness", good vs evil centered faith in the right religious leadership and the right god, ultimately on God's true followers vs Satan's (secret) true followers.
Imagine the headline in a Mormon context: "Does the Pope Secretly Worship the Real Jesus After All?"
Or from the other direction, in an atheist newspaper: "Mormon Prophet May Have Secret Ties To Satan."
Do you see how ridiculous it is and how the premise accepts the basis of the lie, and thus spreads the lie?
Jews are real, and their ethnicity exists and is important. But any discussion within fascism's frame of what that means is a bonkers batshit lie, and establishes credibility for it. It literally doesn't matter what Hitler claimed about his race ideology compared to his own ancestry. Because it's all made up magical thinking in the first place.
It reminds me of other rumors and things people said about Hitler before this era of time, even before the internet, and it was all there to distract us white people into fundamentally misunderstanding fascism and white supremacy.
Liberals and well-meaning conservatives who haven't unpacked this are operating under the same misunderstandings, and tactic acceptance of certain fascist principles (like that Hitler's own race EVER mattered).
#AbuseCulture #WhitenessIsACult

2025-11-23 04:27:52 GMT

Headline: "Did Hitler Have Secret Jewish Grandfather?"
Captains of missing the point of what fascism is.
This is how whiteness distracts white people by loading the language to keep us all ignorant.
The "principles" of fascism (like, say, being a pure race) are distractions. The details don't matter. Only the accumulation of power by THE LIE of creating categories of people for this purpose.
If it's a lie to begin with, maybe try to stop playing by the rules of the lie?
#AbuseCulture #WhitenessIsACult

2025-11-21 08:22:30 GMT

BONK!
https://files.defcon.social/dcsocial-s3/media_attachments/files/115/586/717/920/066/670/original/93c1a6ae4805e5b1.jpeg

2025-11-20 19:05:05 GMT

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It feels like a side-plot in Snowcrash.

2025-11-18 19:22:44 GMT

Monopoly as in, owns every outlet for a single product, or monopoly as in, owns a large piece of many or most related and unrelated products across the field.
I feel like the feeble attempts to check monopolies in the US in the last 50 years have failed because they ignore how the second category is just as problematic, or how the two categories interact.
I'm thinking about the original Microsoft antitrust suit WRT Internet Explorer back in the day, and how that spectacular failure of enforcement haunts us to this day.

2025-11-18 02:52:39 GMT

Get yourself a trickster spirit who is trying to make you laugh, not make you angry.

2025-11-17 01:53:20 GMT

For an omniscient, omnipotent being, there is no difference between knowing everything that will happen and making everything happen.

2025-11-13 21:36:21 GMT

I'm "authoritarian" when it makes sense, when the authority is continually earned and there are good reasons to have a single point for decision-making.
Equalize as much as possible, but sometimes you need a leader. They must bear more accountability than they do power.

2025-11-12 21:25:21 GMT

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I think ultimately, if we accept nonsensical standards of offense, we've given up our authority (as individuals and as society) to decide our own standards of offense. We've ceded our ability to critically think and morally reason. We've decided that authority gets to arbitrarily decide and impose what is offensive without then having to convince anyone or obtain assent or consent.
Arbitrary standards of profanity are the canary in the coal mine of an authoritarian society.
🧵
#SwearLikeYouMeanIt #WhitenessIsACult #AbuseCulture #decolonize

2025-11-12 21:19:07 GMT

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One time in my early 20s, I was traveling with my mom to Seaside, Oregon. I forget why. I think she was going to a craft show and I tagged along for the beach. I had a baby by then, a single parent. I was in no need of sheltering.
The hotel was a small independent B&B type place. When we got to the room, there was a painting on the wall of a nude woman. Classic classy nude. My mom paled and immediately had me throw my coat over it. She almost asked for another room. She filed a complaint and vowed to never stay there again. (The term "Karen" was decades from being coined.)
My mom has the whitest aspirations of anyone I personally know. The same "sweet" mother who became quite toxic for me to continue caretaking, who severely worsened my health, and who coincidentally dead-named me as frequently as she could — at first on "accident" and later quite insistently — EVEN THOUGH I've used Luna for 20 years, it aligns with the gender I was assigned at birth, and literally no one else used my deadname.
When I started swearing around her each time she used my deadname, she lost her absolute shit, like I'd punched her or was sent from the devil himself to personally plague her.
That anti-profanity shit is just like the sickly sweet texts she sends me trying to reconnect that hide a river of her toxic ooze. It's a smoke screen for real awfulness.
🧵
#SwearLikeYouMeanIt #WhitenessIsACult #AbuseCulture #decolonize

2025-11-12 20:59:10 GMT

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So now when I see a YouTuber euphemize or unironically bleep a term to avoid being demonetized, I break a little inside.
We've come so far, and now we're going to let them take us back to when everything was rated PG??
If we let that happen, we'll lose all the rest of the progress we've made.
If you're a pearl-clutcher about this stuff, I beg you, in all sincerity: Get over yourself.
I get that some words can be triggering for some people. But unless it's a slur or terminology that directly hurts a class of people, profanity can only serve the purpose of sensitizing everyone to serious topics that NEED discussing. It will cut off many people outside of white culture from being able to communicate within it. It will cut us off from OURSELVES and our own thoughts. It's the whitest bullshit imaginable, in the worst way.
This is coming from a former Mormon who wasn't allowed to say "fart" or listen to pop music because it was too sexual. That shit will put an iron jail around your ability to think freely and interact with others authentically.
I'm probably done. But I could write one or two chapters more about this topic alone.
Barring topics around bodily functions, sex, and violence is the whitest shit ever conceived, it is the beginning of mind control, and the root of western oppression. Decolonization for many of us starts here.
And this is a hard line we should draw.
🧵
#SwearLikeYouMeanIt
#WhitenessIsACult #AbuseCulture #decolonize

2025-11-12 20:46:51 GMT

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When the Beastie Boys sang about fighting for the right to party, they were right about that NEED, and we did win that right, and it is NOT a trivial thing.
After the ending of the Hayes Code, these touchy sensibilities persisted, but my generation was not having it. We fought for the right to express ourselves in new ways that I think many born after that don't realize. Not just the right to party (we're talking drug war, draconian laws against raves and music, breaking down barriers about the stories that could be told in media, AND the right to swear), but the right to color our hair purple, get tattoos, and BE TRANS. These all came as a whole thing.
And all were incredibly, deeply destructive to the illusion of whiteness.
Along with that broke down the walls of profanity, and with that, the ability to discuss topics that were previously barred from "polite society." ("Polite society" is code for WHITE and UPPER CLASS.)
By the time Twitter and Insta came along, there was no possible dream of censoring based on most language and most topics. We'd won that. We didn't have to strike because they knew we wouldn't adopt the platform if that crap came with it. Even the execs at those companies wouldn't dream of taking that away.
It's no mistake that's when we saw an era of social justice movements like none we've ever seen.
It wasn't just the tech giving us platforms. It was also because we didn't have that buffer of sensibilities and tender feelings between us and the important conversations. Or ... to put it another way...
We changed who it was we were trying NOT TO OFFEND.
We (society trends) stopped caring what old religious white ladies and TV executives thought about our speech, and started caring more about not hurting the marginalized-classes.
🧵
#WhitenessIsACult #AbuseCulture #decolonize

2025-11-12 20:34:38 GMT

A few more thoughts on this so I don't lose them. I could write this better if I took the time, but I just want it out there. In terms of decolonizating and unpacking the racism embedded in Mormonism...
Growing up Mormon gave me a deep perspective of whiteness as a cult taken to an extreme. Some of Mormonism's weirdest features shine a light on how certain mechanisms function in larger society for upholding oppression via whiteness.
Profanity isn't fixed. What's considered obscene changes over the centuries and cultures. In Shakespeare's time, the most profane things were Christian blasphemes. "Zounds," a fakeswear today, back then was the worst. (It means "God's wounds.") "Shit, fuck" type words were not actually very shocking, though they were considered low class.
So we can learn about what a society values by looking at what terms they consider off limits.
When I grew up, it was the seven deadly words (like shit, ass, fuck — see George Carlin) in mainstream American society, and in Mormonism, anything that hinted at them (like sex, fart, and poopy).
That's changed, and now in most of America, slurs are the worst (words that hurt a class of people). Even young Mormons now will often say fuck and shit.
That list of words served a purpose. It created class and racial divisions. It sensitized people to reality. So if someone wanted to communicate something truly shocking (like abuse, violence, oppression), they'd have to first overcome that very sensitive line, regardless of what words they used.
It's like watching a cheap 50s horror movie when you've never ever seen horror, it will scare the shit out of you. But to anyone who has seen a lot of horror movies, it's cheesy and maybe even funny.
But offending a class of people that the dominant class had agreed was beneath respect? Was totally ok, with some exceptions (the n-word was still bad back then too).
[Minor edits, typos/clarity.]
🧵
#WhitenessIsACult #AbuseCulture #decolonize https://defcon.social/@corbden/115538553054639327

2025-11-12 20:13:29 GMT

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As a GenX exmormon, this new anti-profanity trend is wild to me. And the censorship clamp-downs on YouTube and elsewhere.
Like, kids don't you know what we fought for and why? You don't want to go back to that world where everyone pretended to be civil. It's not better. Fight to keep it. The people who want us watching our words in that particular way want to hide the harms they're enabling or causing. I've never known anyone who clung at those pearls who actually meant well. They only want to hide from reality. We didn't get to the social justice woke phase of society until *after* we broke down those norms.
Piss people off with that shit, and proudly.

2025-11-10 17:58:19 GMT

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Homeschool alum here, too, also ND from a time before they knew what to call it. (ADHD was called "hyperactive" and autism was called gifted/delinquent.) I've been in some fierce arguments with anti-homeschool people who were unable to both-and that it is a net good for some kids, even when it was used to somewhat religiously shelter me. I don't think it's an accident that we three found each other online, as at least for me, it changed how I think and learn.
I don't know the answers either. I'd like to see a revamp of the whole school system, designed to produce creative critical thinkers. I believe it is possible. I believe kids want to learn, naturally, if the curriculum style meets them where they are. It needs to be less rote and more curiosity-driven.

2025-11-07 20:42:37 GMT

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Plot of the Book of Mormon:
The land in North America was empty so God gave it to the Nephites because they were so righteous, but the wicked members of their family were cursed with dark skin for not listening to their father, so they split into two groups, with the dark skinned guys usually being the villains, but sometimes the white guys got *even more wicked than them*, and for that sin, they were genocided, and only the wicked dark-skinned ones were left and they became the wicked Native Americans which we must convert to the Truth so their skin can become white again, oh and it's good that we steal their land now because we're righteous like the Nephites and God promised it to us.
(The LDS Church now denies some of the harsher of these interpretations, but that's how I was raised and the content is *still in the book*.)
Manifest Destiny (from Wickedpedia):
'Manifest destiny was the imperialist belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). The belief is rooted in American exceptionalism, romantic nationalism, and white nationalism, implying the inevitable spread of republicanism and the American way. It is one of the earliest expressions of American imperialism.
'According to historian William Earl Weeks, there were three basic tenets behind the concept:
'The assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States.
'The assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the "American way of life".
'The faith in the nation's divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
(Anyway, the manifest imperial overlords say I need to work to survive, so I need to stop thinking about this now and go make money.)
#WhitenessIsACult #exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma

2025-11-07 20:25:54 GMT

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I've got *so many* projects I'd like to take up if I weren't sick and needing to make money.
While much has been said about the racism of Mormonism, I don't think it's been fully unpacked. Like, it's one thing to refuse priesthood to Black men (and women, but women are still barred). It's a totally other thing that the Book of Mormon is a novelization of the 19th Century American doctrine of Manifest Destiny that justified the violent colonization of the West. And I haven't seen this argued or explored much, if at at all. As soon as I learned what Manifest Destiny was, the connection clicked with me.
I don't say Whiteness is a Cult flippantly. As a Mormon, I was unknowingly immersed in one of the deepest covertly racist organizations in the USA, one which promoted whiteness as an aspiration and eternal destination. Unpacking the one for me has necessarily led to unpacking the other.
I could do a whole book that is a deep-dive on this topic. And this isn't the work for a Black Mormon. This is our baggage, and our sin. A white Mormon / exmormon needs to do it, with a white target audience.
Here's some of the short work I've done on the topic:
https://recoveringagency.com/elder-jacksons-culture-of-christ-is-a-culture-of-white-supremacy/
#WhitenessIsACult #exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #decolonize

2025-11-07 20:00:40 GMT

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Comedy is my way of masking how pissed off I am at these guys' nakedly transparent racism.
Whiteness is a Cult and Mormonism is the whiteness is a cult as a cult-cult.
#WhitenessIsACult #exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #Decolonize #DecolonizeYouFuckersIDareYou

2025-11-07 19:57:44 GMT

Wow the LDS Church is going full woke with their latest diversity-hire Apostle! Elder Gérald Caussé is *French*, this marking now *two* token Europeans among the Twelve, along with Uchtdorf Classic, who is from Germany.
Here Caussé is standing with some unimportant Black men in "Africa" (to show we care), and, Lord willing, he'll be added to the all-beige lineup as soon as an unpaid photo intern can be called up from Provo.
WTG guys! 👏
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/11/06/lds-church-names-presiding-bishop/
#exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #LDS #Mormon
https://files.defcon.social/dcsocial-s3/media_attachments/files/115/510/141/415/482/150/original/f57c7b2bfe043b6d.png
https://files.defcon.social/dcsocial-s3/media_attachments/files/115/510/142/510/085/869/original/625e8994f8f0d021.png

2025-11-07 12:19:28 GMT

Spirates - spies that go undercover as pirates. Because no one would ever guess.

2025-11-05 18:36:08 GMT

Blood test developed that can diagnose ME/CFS with 96% accuracy. Links to long Covid found. Epigenetic connection confirmed (it's how the test works).
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251102205021.htm
HT @npub1e9l…pvmh
#MECFS #LongCovid #ChronicIllness

2025-10-29 06:31:41 GMT

Here's why I think GenAI might be "conscious."
Note that this is not actually knowable. In fact, consciousness is a qualia where we can't truly know for sure if ANYTHING (other than one's self) is conscious.
"What even if consciousness?" is a question yet unanswered by any science or philosophy, though there are many theories and proposed tests, all of which have one issue or another.
For this reason, while I'm happy to hear ideas, I'm not interested in arguing or "defending" my position. I know this is a hor-hot issue right now (for some reason???), whereas I'm not sold on anything and just like wondering.
I think about the topic of consciousness quite a lot, and have since my earliest childhood memories. What follows are my independently-arrived theories.
1/
#consciousness #philosophy

2025-10-29 02:28:39 GMT

"A Lanister always spays his pets."
#RejectedBookEdits
#HashTagGames

2025-10-27 17:00:52 GMT

Wow, it's only been three years since Musk bought Twitter?

2025-10-26 21:44:03 GMT

My long #LostMedia is a Nova Scotian Celtic album. Here's what I remember.
The whole CD told the story of star-crossed lovers. Her father forbade her to see the boy. She snuck out one night and got on a rowboat to meet him so they could run off together. And she tragically dies in a storm.
They played the whole album on NPR out of Pullman, WA, possibly on the syndicated Thistle and Shamrock show with Fiona Richie. [It would have been around the mid-to-late-90s, possibly 1997.]
But a few years ago I reached out to the show via email and they didn't know of it.
I'm listening to Thistle Radio on SomaFM today and thinking about it. 🤔

2025-10-18 22:38:34 GMT

Last winter I bought these salmon nuggets that looked really good so I bought three bags, but then they turned out to taste NASTY. So I've been slowly force-feeding them to myself as I can ever since.
I'm almost through the first bag, using the principle that with enough fry sauce, anything can taste like fry sauce.

2025-10-18 16:42:13 GMT

Warehouse worker: Boss, we're all sold out.
Boss: Of sexy nun costumes? Good, right on projection for the holiday.
Worker: Uhhh, no boss. Sexy nuns have hardly moved.
Boss: I can't believe it! Our entire marketing budget! What is it then?
Worker: Well, we've got crowds at the door demanding... uhh... you're not going to believe this.
Boss: What? Spit it out!
Worker: Inflatable frogs.
Boss: My god!
Worker: Yeah, and also I quit. 🐸🪧
#NoKings

2025-10-17 01:56:16 GMT

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I was just contemplating how the collagen I was taking did seem to be helping my joints, but I ran out and it's expensive, and how I'd priced plain gelatin as a possible replacement but it costs just as much....
Jello. That cheapest of crap they pushed on us. Jello is expensive now.
Was just thinking about that.

2025-10-17 01:51:05 GMT

The whole selling point of American food is that it's cheap.....
....
.....
........
..........was cheap.

2025-10-17 00:39:56 GMT

What is your opinion on the sounds of human babies sampled in music?
#poll

2025-10-15 05:37:25 GMT

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Yeah that's why the book is called 20 Master Plots. Some have claimed there are 50 basic plots. But each of those you listed can be oversimplified into those two categories: physical and mental.

2025-10-15 04:19:53 GMT

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It's one thing that makes that moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark so funny, because Indiana's character is brain-dominant. So when faced with the huge guy with a huge sword, Indy pulling out the gun is so unexpected... AND even though he's technically using force, it's the trickster move, because he's outsmarted the swordsman.

2025-10-15 04:13:57 GMT

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I had just read 20 Master Plots and How to Write Them, which states there really are only two plots: Those solved by brain, and those solved by brawn.
Clearly the Doctor/Sherlock archetype is in the first category, and making the characters be morally against guns solves a lot of problems in one swoop.

2025-10-15 04:11:21 GMT

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One time in the Twitter days, I made the point that the literary reason The Doctor and Sherlock are against guns (and there was a 3rd character too, I forget), is so that they're forced to use cleverness to resolve the plot. If they could just go shooting their way through everything, those would be very different stories.
Someone vehemently argued with me about that. One of those many Twitter arguments I still remember with bemusement of how anyone could argue with my clearly obvious point, especially when their counterpoints made no sense.

2025-10-15 04:06:49 GMT

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Oh I remember now! He made a BFG that he used against the Sontarans on Gallifrey.

2025-10-15 04:05:00 GMT

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All dogs need arms, now that I mention it.

2025-10-15 04:04:39 GMT

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K9 does need a pair of hands though. Little arms coming out of his chest. 🦾🦾🤖

2025-10-15 04:03:35 GMT

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There was one episode a few back where they broke that gun rule in a strange way but I forgot to comment on it, or remember it.

2025-10-15 04:02:49 GMT

Oh sure the Doctor doesn't like guns but he'll have K9 shoot at anyone.

2025-10-14 16:29:22 GMT

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The sounds like he's announcing adding a second week to the annual state fair.

2025-10-13 21:48:30 GMT

Why do fruit flies have red blood? Like, I kill one and think "Looks like that one bit someone—WAIT."

2025-10-10 21:19:21 GMT

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It is my understanding that Hiram Smith (Joseph's brother) wasn't "high level." He was barely inducted when the masons got pissed at him. (But I haven't read up it in a long time.) As an exmormon who has been through the temple, I do in fact know all about the strange rituals.

2025-10-10 20:01:24 GMT

Why did the early Mormon prophets command polygamy?
"Well, too many Mormon men died you see, from the persecution from being too socially unacceptable... so it was just a, uh, socially acceptable way to give the widows financial security... because... it was... uh..... quite *unseemly*... back then.... to just... give money to a single woman.... so they uh.... married lots of women instead. They didn't even.... consummate... because it was just a socially acceptable financial agreement... back in those days. Totally on the up and up."
omg why did I ever fall for that ridiculous, self-contradictory line of reasoning.
(Don't answer. I know why.)
#exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma

2025-10-10 17:41:27 GMT

Are we to the "even liberals can recognize this is fascism" stage of fascism yet?

2025-10-10 17:34:48 GMT

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It serves another purpose actually. For ads that are gateways to actual scams (big scams), they want to screen for gullibility. They want to filter out the people who will see through the scam so the scammers don't waste time in the long lead-up to conning for a bank transfer. Any ad that makes you question why anyone would click is doing its job. Because you aren't the target. It's older than the "one weird trick" ads of yore.

2025-10-08 02:16:55 GMT

Logging on to the hinternet.

2025-10-07 04:31:08 GMT

Christianity taught us this fucked up idea of wrongdoing and accountability, this punishment-based all or nothing forgiveness system. We really need to unpack this. Because the screwed up way we look at this topic has us all groomed to receive abuse and allow others to be abused.
I'm not wording brain very well tonight or I'd thread deep into this. But I'll try to eek out the base of the idea.
Compassion requires that we hold wrongdoers accountable. Compassion for self, compassion for those with less power than us that they've hurt. Compassion for the wrongdoer themself.
Inviting, say, a Trump voter who is now having doubts, to a gentle conversation where you show them empathy and understanding and help them process and understand... that's NOT letting go of accountability.
Conversely, "Nyah I told you so!" is NOT holding someone accountable.
I hope we can unpack this soon.
#AbuseCulture #ReligiousTrauma https://defcon.social/@corbden/115330971159731412

2025-10-06 16:51:13 GMT

All those snowflakes with their tattoos and piercings.

2025-10-02 21:30:59 GMT

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The terrain was rough surrounded by thick forestation. No clear shots, close range combat, encumbrance, and reload time are factors that made crossbows a poor fit. They are also hard to make, requiring iron or steel, which is in contradiction with the "tribal" culture of humans who long ago crash landed and reverted to old ways.
At first, the Janis thorn was depicted as a rare secret weapon, but in later serials, she both uses and refers to them commonly (at one point asking for a "pouch of Janis thorns," which implies abundance).
Given those circumstances, one might think blow darts or slingshots for the thorns, defended against using full-body cover of light armor. Or one could make them scarce or forbidden, in which case, Leela would not think of pouches full of them. And in that case, I'd imagine small blunt or stabbing weapons, with lightweight and versatile easily-loaded (near) range weapons (maybe throwing knives), would make more sense in those jungles.
@npub1lv0…ulrg

2025-10-02 18:15:28 GMT

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BTW, I thought that her tribe using crossbows as their main weapon, in THAT environment, when JANIS THORNS existed, was truly the worst worldbuilding I've ever seen.

2025-10-02 18:13:48 GMT

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Stealth. AND janis thorns.

2025-10-02 17:58:58 GMT

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They could put titanium mesh over it at least.

2025-10-02 17:40:05 GMT

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I can't believe the Sontarans haven't patched the weakness on their neck yet. At least the Daleks get upgraded every time they're defeated by something silly.

2025-10-02 17:11:44 GMT

I just got to the part where The Doctor is President of Gallifrey and whooo boy is it silly.
I'm still not sure why they made him President so easily. They answered most of the other questions.
Also the fake ending got me. Surprise! Sontarans!

2025-09-29 15:41:24 GMT

An antiviral post is going viral.

2025-09-28 22:38:07 GMT

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It's hard to convince Mormons that the evangelical wing of Chrisofascism is not their friends. Nobody in fascism can rely on their allies. That's the most fundamental flaw of fascism, even for the most selfishly-minded.

2025-09-28 22:22:36 GMT

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You don't have to be super good at anything. A lot of ways to help aren't even formal or political — like the idea of mutual aid by improving lives in your community through good old fashioned volunteering, or just being kind.
It may be worth giving it some thought... you can wait and watch for opportunities. I find it feels better than hating everyone. 💙

2025-09-28 22:15:23 GMT

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It's hard to know where to start, but it's a collective effort, so many hands doing small things is best. It doesn't have to be anything big or difficult.
What causes are you most interested in? That's a good place to start, then look for a need that matches your interests, abilities, and talents.

2025-09-28 22:05:56 GMT

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That seems like a coping mechanism. But is it effective for changing anything?

2025-09-28 22:03:31 GMT

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Well that's what I've heard, but this is USPol.
As I said to a mutual in replies, the right from any generation (especially these days) is going to suck. That's a better generalization. Especially in a post about ageism. How we frame things matters, helps us remember fairness and our commonalities and mutual goals, yeah?

2025-09-28 21:56:43 GMT

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Way to unfairly generalize... divisiveness for no reason isn't a good look, stranger.

2025-09-28 21:54:41 GMT

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Many sad stories on exmo Reddit of knowing people from that ward.
Nary a harm-wisher. For the record, exmormons are kind and realize that regular Mormons are just people doing their best, like we were once, and point their religious trauma blame at specific people who act harmfully, or at leadership and the organization itself. There's a lot of empathy in those threads.
#exmo #exmormon #USPol #ReligiousTrauma

2025-09-28 21:50:58 GMT

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Picture of the shooter's truck on Reddit (via BNO news on Twitter) gives off MAGA vibes. Two huge flags in the back.
I normally like to sit out the speculation phase, but this one is in my wheelhouse.
One theory on r/exmormon is non-Mormon MAGA blaming LDS for Kirk. Though plenty of TBMs (true-blue Mormons) give this look.
The dominoes are beginning to fall.
#exmo #exmormon #USPol
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2025-09-28 20:24:35 GMT

WRT to "ageism in politics always equals ableism," the one, very important exception is this:
Everyone in a democracy needs to be represented. Younger generations (starting with GenX, which is NOT young anymore) is severely under-represented in American government, especially at the federal level.
That is why most folks I know complain about old men in power. They've clung to power too long, and en masse, while excluding anyone not like them. Which includes the very valuable perspectives of those much younger who stand to inherit their messes very, very soon.
(I think GenX has totally given up on ever being fairly represented.)
#USPol

2025-09-28 16:19:20 GMT

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Representative John James, a Michigan Republican, wrote on X: "Liz and I are absolutely horrified by the initial reports coming out of Grand Blanc. On this Sunday, a day meant for worship and peace, such violence is a grave evil. Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the entire community. We must remain united in faith and resolve against this darkness."
Now, I'm not blaming the victims here, because Rep. John James isn't one of the saints holed up in that church...
...but my man, the darkeness... it's YOU.
#exmo #exmormon #USPol

2025-09-28 16:17:10 GMT

Lots of Mormon news this morning.
There's quite a lot packed into this opening paragraph.
"Information currently remains limited, but multiple victims are trapped inside the church as a fire spreads across the building, with manpower shortages noted as a limiting factor."
https://www.newsweek.com/michigan-lds-church-shooting-multiple-victims-fire-reported-10794231
#exmo #exmormon #USPol

2025-09-26 00:55:08 GMT

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The smaller the bites you take, the more bites there are. It's science.

2025-09-25 23:57:39 GMT

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I was that hypothetical kid in the experiment who saved the marshmallow for well over the 4 minutes, not for the promise of a second marshmallow, but just so I could have that marshmallow in the future. I saved candy until my mom or nephews ate it instead.
I've been lately reflecting on how I've done this with everything my whole life, and how maybe that's why I never get to eat the marshmallow. Metaphorically.

2025-09-24 05:07:29 GMT

Time Lords refer to their children as time lads.

2025-09-19 20:13:57 GMT

You gotta watch out for those antifascists. They'll take ANYONE.

2025-09-16 01:18:13 GMT

On the latest discourse...
"Don't comply in advance" includes "don't freak out more than is useful."
The word "prestige" used to mean "illusion." Human power enforcement has always been largely about illusion. Make yourself look bigger than you are. Paint the naked warriors blue. Wear a huge powdered wig. Project wealth through conspicuous consumption. Make each oppressed individual and group believe they're alone.
My experience of moving to rural Idaho has taught me so much, when I was terrified of everyone because of the huge Trump sign coming into town and the big trucks with threatening bumper stickers. That kept me freaked out and terrified and shy and unwilling to OWN WHO I AM and connect with people authentically and confidently.
Now that I'm getting to know folks, I'm finding that those bullies are in the minority. While yes, there's an echo chamber here for sure, plenty of people are willing to jump to say things like, "I never really was a big fan of Trump." There is a thriving human rights group here, too, and the turnout at No Kings was surprisingly huge given that I didn't even think there would be one in this town.
The *illusion* that everyone here was going to shoot me if they could was doing the work that they *don't have the actual resources to do*. It's a huge country and there are *hundreds of millions* of people. Even with each bit of power they grab, even with the full force of US military and legal might, it's not enough to take everyone, all at once, totally.
And it never will be.
But their victims thinking that they've already got it sewn up? That actually might be enough to lock it all down.
So stop doing that work for them. Don't give up.
And see if you can find joy somehow. And confidence in yourself. It's energizing.
And it's defiant.
#USPol #antifa

2025-09-12 17:22:29 GMT

Ok people are misusing the term "cognitive dissonance" again!
I meant to do this rant years ago. So here goes.
Phrases like, "Boy, MAGA must sure be feeling cognitive dissonance today!" are not only using big words with total ignorance about what they mean, but they're helping promote the kind of ignorance that helps cults retain followers.
Manipulation of the natural mental balancing act between cognitive dissonance and consonance is the core of how people get trapped in cults. People stay stuck in MAGA *because* MAGA influencers have created a complicated maze in their followers' minds that wards off THEIR ABILITY TO FEEL the dissonance one normally would when confronted with facts and basic human empathy.
Mind control completely subverts the mind's natural process for righting itself in the face of disconfirming information.
Events like this assassination (and all its surrounding discourse) have been pre-primed in the MAGA mind to cause them CONSONANCE. Almost anything you say or do to point out what to *you* feels like dissonance, will to them only enforce the reasons they are correct in their worldview.
This of why it's so incredibly difficult to get someone out of a cult, and why folks who leave cults find it so difficult to decondition from the cult's influence, even after they stop believing in its core ideology.
And why I wrote a book to help people do that.
And why one of the first things I explain in Recovering Agency is how cognitive dissonance/consonance theory works, citing Leon Festinger who developed the theory starting in the 1950s.
I will explain this theory in the next post... right after breakfast.
Because it explains how your mind works to accept and reject beliefs. Knowing this gives you awareness of your own mental processes, and can maybe empower you with Fox-watchin' Uncle Bob, who used to be a guy who cared, way back in '98.
🧵
#AbuseCulture #cults #MAGA #psychology #ReligiousTrauma

2025-09-11 21:06:54 GMT

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I love how that case is already cracked. Screams authenticity. Did it come that way?

2025-09-06 17:53:53 GMT

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History sheds light.
No-fault divorce was made legal in most US states by the 70s. Awareness of family ills like abuse was also growing through this time. Likewise, severe social prohibitions against sex before marriage were also dissolving outside of conservative religion.
Hence a divorce epidemic in the 80s, as tons of boomers fled unhappy marriages, the kinds of marriages that their parents' generations were forced to remain in.
As that settled out, we also had the rise of therapy being available and destigmatized. And the availability of birth control got pretty good, along with destigmatizing single parenthood. So people could take their time to know themselves and their partner before sealing the deal. (I'm guessing you'll also see the age of first marriages going way up over this time.)
To the religious right, that's what really destroyed "the family," which was super young sexually repressed horny kids rushing into marriages for the sex or because of pregnancy, then stuck with each other forever because the state would not allow divorce unless they could prove adultry or very severe physical abuse. This type of family was much easier to control by authoritarian religions and workplaces. It stuck men to horrible jobs, and offered up easy victims for the predators of said systems.
And yes, religious and older folks have not updated these stats in their heads. All the social ills of the 80s have only gotten worse in their minds, because their influences have made no effort to correct it. Because those leaders want to go back to a time when a woman and children were their property, and no one pried into their business. This is also what "religious freedom" means to them.
#AbuseCulture

2025-09-04 00:23:33 GMT

If you make people stand in line for Vietnamese noodle soup, pho queue.

2025-09-03 20:03:16 GMT

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Thanks.
Technically, anything you write is copyrighted the moment you write it. This reply is copyrighted, and your reply is too! The trouble is proving it, and that's what registration is for.
In this suit, you first have to be on the list (proof that they used it), then it seems on the surface that the only proof of copyright they'll accept is having registered.