“What Makes A Cult A Cult?”

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It’s a little surprising how many cults I’ve seen come and go over the years. Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidians, Peoples Temple, Aleph (formerly Aum Shinrikyo), Moonies. And let’s not forget Scientology. Yes, most of the members considered these religious sects. But who you gonna believe, me or some guy in a cult?

A fascinating essay in The New Yorker Magazine (What Makes A Cult A Cult?) got me thinking about cults. A few of my favorite bits from the piece:

“One stratagem favored by Keith Raniere, the leader of the New York-based self-help cult NXIVM, was to tell the female disciples in his inner circle that they had been high-ranking Nazis in their former lives, and that having yogic sex with him was a way to shift the residual bad energy lurking in their systems.”

“A great many people were, after all, able to resist his spiral-eyed ministrations: they met him, saw a sinister little twerp with a center part who insisted on being addressed as “Vanguard,” and, sooner or later, walked away.”

“Few of us believe in our heart of hearts that Amy Carlson, the recently deceased leader of the Colorado-based Love Has Won cult, who claimed to have birthed the whole of creation and to have been, in a previous life, a daughter of Donald Trump, could put us under her spell.”

Easy to laugh at these folks but they were never funny (and getting less so). Down in Jonestown, old Jim sometimes conducted “White Nights.”

During such events, Jones would sometimes give the Jonestown members four options: attempt to flee to the Soviet Union, commit “revolutionary suicide”, stay in Jonestown and fight the purported attackers, or flee into the jungle.

The Soviet Union is no more so I’m thinking I might flee into the jungle.

WWI Hero: Warren Aaron Ransom, Jr.

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My friend Jamie shared with me a bit of family history that I found fascinating. With his permission, I’m sharing it here. (links at bottom of post)

It’s a letter from his paternal grandfather who fought at The Battle of Soissons in WWI. His grandfather received the Distinguished Service Cross from General Pershing for saving his commanding officer who was wounded under fire. They were forward observing (he was in the artillery unit that fired the first shot of American participation in WWI.)

Here’s an excerpt from the letter…

“Then, we were suddenly put into trucks, leaving the horses to follow behind us as fast as they could, and shot up to the big counter attack of the 18th of this month. We were on the left of the 1salient near Soissons, and fought along with some of the best troops France has – the Foreign Legion, the Moroccans, and the 20th Corps. You know all about the scrap from the papers. It was a wonderful experience but not particularly jolly.”

“The artillery followed the attack right up, and two hours after the first wave, we advance for 5 km into what had been German territory. It wasn’t jolly as I said, because both sides have good scrappers, and they scrapped! The first place we were er took up our advance position, was in a reserve German trench. They must’ve been preparing for breakfast, because they left us some good food and cigars, etc.”

You can read Jamie’s transcription of his grandfather’s letter here, and a scan of the original typewritten letter here.

William Gibson on the apocalypse

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“It’s been happening for at least 100 years”

From an article in the NewStatesman:

The Jackpot “…is the mundane cataclysm of modernity itself. It is hundreds of millions of people driving to the supermarket in their SUVs, flying six times a year, and eating medicated animals for dinner.”

What piece of information would William Gibson most want to have?

“I would probably ask to know, in a fairly detailed way, what the future – say, 100 years from now – thinks of us,” he says. “History teaches us that it won’t be what we think of ourselves. What we think of the Victorians would have appalled the Victorians, it wasn’t at all what they thought of themselves. “In learning that, I’d be able to infer a lot about the future. And about what’s really happening right now.”

Gibson has fans across the political spectrum…

“…but he compares those to the right to “those Midwestern teenage boys who think that ‘Born in the USA’ is a patriotic anthem. They haven’t yet realised that Bruce is a big liberal. And when they do, they’re downcast. With my Twitter, I probably manage to do that to someone a few times a week.”

Some workers won’t be going back

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“A vast majority of workers idled by pandemic restrictions will go back to work — mainly out of sheer necessity, but also because for many, work is a source of meaning in their lives. However, forced unemployment gave a significant number of Americans a chance to discover both that they really disliked their jobs and that they can manage financially without them, even without special government aid. Such workers won’t be going back.”

— Paul Krugman (NYT)

How to Remember You’re Alive

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“One way to appreciate virtually any moment of your life is to pretend that the whole thing is already over.

Your life came and went a long time ago, but for some reason you’ve just been sent back to this random moment, here in this office chair, or in line at Home Depot.

It isn’t clear why you’ve been sent back. Maybe it was a cosmic accounting error, or a boon from a playful God. All you know is that you’re here again, walking the earth, having been inexplicably returned to the temporary and mysterious state of Being Alive. Continue reading →

Hyperlinks

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In the early days of HTML (“WWW“) I looked for every opportunity to embed an in-line link on the websites I was responsible for. The more links, the better. It was all about the “user experience” back then and links added value.

Seems like I don’t see that many links these days and I only had to wonder for about three seconds. Why would they send me off to another page/site? Maybe we were always just “eyeballs.” I miss those links and the places they took me.

Honeywagon

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A nice young man showed up this morning to pump out the contents of our septic tank. Watching him work, I was reminded of the slang term, “honey wagon.” Let’s go to Wikipedia:

A honeywagon is the slang term for a “vacuum truck” for collecting and carrying human excreta. These vehicles may be used to empty the sewage tanks of buildings, aircraft lavatories, passenger train toilets and at campgrounds and marinas as well as portable toilets. The folk etymology behind the name ‘honeywagon’ is thought to relate to the honey-colored liquid that comes out of it when emptying the holding tanks.

They honeywagon has a long history:

The honey wagon was originally a horse-drawn vehicle that went through back alleys to collect human excreta. Houses at that time did not have flush toilets or indeed any form of indoor sanitation beyond the chamberpot. In rural areas the outhouse (privy) is associated with a pit latrine of various sorts, but many towns and cities depended on some variant of the pail closet, which needed frequent emptying. At each outdoor toilet, the driver would stop the wagon, flip up the back hatch door (trap-door) of the outhouse, slide out the pail (bucket), pick it up, and dump the contents into one of eight oak half-barrels in the wagon box. The half-barrels had no lids.

Like the young man told me this morning, “Somebody’s gotta do it.” In the television and film industry, the term has a different meaning.

In America, the term honeywagon is usually given to a truck, trailer or combination of both with a number of dressing rooms for the actor. These either have individual toilets or a communal set built in. Some honeywagons will be just two large toilets. Others are a combination of variously sized rooms for specific purposes: these rooms can be private dressing rooms assigned to a single person, larger rooms configured for the wardrobe, or makeup departments, small individual toilets for the crew to share, and multiple user or individual shower rooms for bathing.

What, you thought Meryl Streep used a Porta  Potty?