“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Rules and leaders are needed, but they always have the chance of being misused. That why checks and balances are always needed.

You have the normal rules and norms, but what if you take them to an absurd level. Let’s say your in a Club. It has a rule that only members allowed and every member has to dress nice and be clean and presentable at all times inside. Well one member falls into the food table, getting food all over them and breaking their leg. Does the manager of the Club demand the person who fell get up and leave immediately? After all they are no longer clean and presentable. Well a reasonable Club would care more about having the person not move and getting emergency services in there. A cult would demand they get up and leave. The emergency personnel wouldn’t be allowed inside anyway since they are not members.

I see the parallel because I see cults as normal behaviors taken to the extreme.

A philosophy group could turn into a cult. A lot of cults start out as going against whatever everyone else is doing/thinking.

I agree. Science is a tool, people don’t believe in science. You use science. You don’t believe in gravity you accept it and our current understanding of it. Which may change as our tools to measure and understand our environment get better.

Atheism isn’t really a community either. The atheism community is more people who lack a belief in a god who banded together in various areas to protect themselves and others against having religious things forced onto them. Now an atheist group could turn into a cult because once you have a group systems of control can take over and it could turn into an authoritarian group.

Any group can become a cult, because cults are systems of control. Loosely organized groups are going to have a harder time becoming one, but sporting club which probably have rules and hierarchies, a soup kitchen is probably a nonprofit so would need rules and leaders. Artistic communities may have rules to use the space. Any group can become authoritarian if they get structured enough.

AA could be a cult. Synanon which was a drug rehab organization became a cult. A lot of cults start out as positive and affirmative groups.

I think of cults as more of systems of control. MLMs, jobs (Theranos), large-group awareness training (nxivm), political groups (Maga), exercise groups (CrossFit), fandoms, book clubs, families, online groups, etc can all be cults.

I suggest the podcast IndoctriNation⁠ by Rachel Bernstein to see many ways these “systems of control” as she calls them can manifest.

I personally think that cult behavior is just normal behavior taken to the extreme so there really isn’t an opposite. Maybe being alone with no relationships.

The various types of groups we are on family, friends, work, recreational, etc have various controls on how you act and speak. This isn’t necessarily bad. You probably want to be a little different with family than with your hobby group. I explained the broader meaning of cults to my Dad and he said the Marines have those aspects. I think an important part to know if a group is probably fine is if you can leave with no issues. If there are consequences to leaving the group that’s a huge red flag.

I suggest looking at the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. Which is a useful tool to check if a group is a cult. You can read up on problems with this tool, but it’s still a good starting point.

Edit: No one joins a cult. They join groups for positive reasons and then those groups either turn into cults or as they get deeper into the group the control parts are introduced.

We all probably brushed up against cults without knowing. You could go to an exercise/spiritual/hobby/other group and what you don’t know is if you had gotten more involved and took the special classes, or volunteered and became a part of the in group you could have become a part of a cult.

Bloody, but just because when I had a period I would say things like “I’m on my bloody period!”

Tech support is mostly turning things off and on since it fixes a lot of things. And I mean actually turning them off and on, not just turning the screen off and on. Then turning setting off and on. Lots of checking what should or shouldn’t be on and trying it the other way.

Financial institutions are not as secure as you think.

Every once in a while I will see someone ask “We bank online why can’t we vote online?” Banking is secure enough that the money the banks lose is less than the money they make. Also not all lose of funds will hurt the bank if the individual is scammed, since individuals are supposed to keep their accounts secure and not fall for scams.

Your bank is using old technology and Excel for a lot of internal records keeping. Most fraud detection is a cost to the bank not a money maker. Stopping money laundering, human trafficking, ect means the bank doesn’t get that money and has to pay people to investigate it and shudder report to the government.

Like almost every other business out there they work off of poorly made or old tech and the lowest paid people are push to more work with less time and resources.

I’m going to move over to Mint on my laptop, it’s older but still working great after I swapped an SSD drive in. Biggest issue is backing up the laptop before installing Linux. I have another computer I plan on duel boot with Windows 10 so I have access if I need windows for certain programs. I have no control over my work computer so Windows 11 there.

And unless one of my brothers steps up and buys our Dad a Windows 11 computer (I bought the Windows 10 computer, which is why it was so cheap it can’t take 11. 😆 ) since I’m his tech support if my brothers don’t step up he is going to Linux. No matter what I’m going to have to listen to him complain about how it is different so it will be a good time to move to Linux. Probably a version that tries to mimic Windows.

Give Google all your data. Well you have already given it because you used their services. So give it again and they will tell you when it shows up on 3rd party sites and you can request that info not show up in Google’s search results. Note that the info would still be on the 3rd party site.

The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood.

I’ll just steal the description from Amazon "Billie Scott is an artist.

Her debut gallery exhibition opens in a few months.

Within a fortnight she’ll be completely blind.

Zoe Thorogood’s first graphic novel is a story about what it’s like to get something you want, have it immediately taken away from you and then how you put it all back together again. Set in a world of people down on their luck from Middlesbrough to London, it’s a graphic novel that speaks of post-austerity Britain and the problems facing those left behind."

The art is great, the characters feel real, and the issues with it are minor. I read it for a book club and loved reading this and discussing it

The anime Perfect Blue. It was ahead of it’s time. 1997 but the parasocial aspect of society it explores was in it’s infancy compared to current time.

I think that part of the point of Wikimedia complying with the Order. Which you can read the Order at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International_vs._Wikimedia_Foundation . Also the page the lawsuit is actually about is still up, but frozen.

It is a public concern and any organization/people not a part of the lawsuit can talk and discuss it. Which we are doing. I even used the Wikipedia page we are talking about to discuss the lawsuit since it has the Order is on it. The full lawsuit isn’t on that page, I made a mistake last night.

If there is a ongoing lawsuit that Wikimedia isn’t a part of then they can have a Wikipedia page and discussion going on. That’s their right.

My agreement is with the request in the Order for Wikimedia to not having ongoing discussion about the lawsuit. This isn’t a gag order on everyone, it is just Wikimedia removing the info on the page about the lawsuit. And Wikimedia has info why they removed it and allowing people to read the Order so I think that is Wikimedia saying something without discussing it and it makes the Indian government look bad.

The order mentions more than “complicates the issue” so you might want to read the Order and gives more examples of what you see of their vagueness because it seemed reasonable to me. I find the lawsuit itself wrong and should have been thrown out.

I think this is confusing so tried to understand it and here is what I understand. The Wikipedia page for Asian News International is up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International And it says things like ANI is the “mouthpiece” of the Indian government. There is a section about the lawsuit and it quotes what ANI didn’t like about it. This is what the lawsuit was first about, but this page and the discussion page are still up as of 27 Oct 2024. The page can’t be modified and given what you can see it looks like there was some editing wars that happened before editing was taken away.

Now about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International_vs._Wikimedia_Foundation The article and discussion page that was taken down is about the ongoing lawsuit. It been replaced with a page saying it was taken down and a link to the actual lawsuit. Which I suggest people read. I do think the Indian government has a point if you read the lawsuit. This is a ongoing lawsuit and the page taken down had info on it and a discussion page where people were talking about the ongoing lawsuit. The lawsuit says that this “…Complicates and compounds the issue at hand.” And if you know anything about lawsuits the first thing people do or are told to do is to shut up about it. This page was really the opposite. I can see why Wikimedia complied.

That the lawsuit happened in the first place is disturbing. But I think Wikimedia replacement page for the ongoing lawsuit is not surprising and reasonable. If they had taken down the main article, now that would be disturbing.

Are there any communities on Lemmy that do anything similar?

Over my life I’ve had several shoes and other clothes that I wish when they wore out I could have bought more. Thankfully my favorite shirt right now I can. It is a tshirt from Hot Topic. It says it is the Dark Phoenix but I know it is Kitty Pryde using shi’ar tech to look like the Dark Phoenix and it amuses me to wear it. I have several times worn it and said “Do you like my Kitty Pryde T-shirt?” And people being confused. The shirt is also very comfortable.

I went to a small concert and you could buy their music on a flash drive. That was awesome. I like that option

At a anime convention there was a table with various CDs of the band playing that night. I couldn’t go to concert, but bought a CD to support them even though it was going to be a slight inconvenience to rip it. I still have all my old CDs (I don’t really have that much so haven’t gotten rid of them. I keep them in a plastic container) so just put it with the rest.