Norway, 1953. Erling Jørgensen, a local journalist, visits the isolated parish of Hernes, accused by many of being a cult.
His unpublished notes and photographs are the only remaining source on this group, and the events that culminated in its destruction.
The small parish was based around a modern church. Though initially unremarkable, starting around 1947 the community would take an isolationist turn.
Parishioners started shunning external contact except for the occasional missionary, sent to recruit people into the group.
In August 1953, journalist Erling Jørgensen was allowed to visit the community, take pictures and interview their members.
Though Erling was given relatively free rein, he was not allowed to enter the church during sermon hours, at which time he was put under watch.
The community was headed by Tore Hagen, often just referred to as the Bishop, and his 3 sons.
The self-proclaimed Bishop and his entourage had essentially broken contact with the Church of Norway, forming their own hierarchy. The priests wore masks as part of their vestments.
Many of the particular rituals of this group were centred around their youngest members. They wore white clothing, and were referred to as "initiates". The purpose of their initiation was never made clear. In an interview, a 7-year-old claims "One day, I will be one with God".
According to Erling's notes, on the day of his departure, he was taken over by curiosity.
Instead of leaving, he sneaked into the church and hid there, waiting for the sermon he had not been allowed to watch.
As it started, he saw an immense creature appear behind the altar.
"The church has been silent for hours, as that thing pulsates on the wall. I need to do something."
Erling's unpublished notes end there.
A fire destroyed the church that day. Erling never admitted to having been there. After his death, it was revealed that he had lit the match.
// This is part of the Megalomorpha series. Read it in full here: twitter.com/i/events/13223…
Big thanks to @saintsart_ for modeling the mask! Image sources: Library of Congress, Digitaltmuseum, iNaturalist.
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FRACTAL
July 23rd 2006. When a transport ship capsized, an unidentified liquid leaked into the ocean. It formed a perfect Mandelbrot’s fractal pattern. In the following months, strange fish were reported in the area.
Little did we know, this was only the beginning. (🧵)
September 2006. Hurricane Julia approaches the US East Coast. Its strange fractal patterns and iridescence can’t be explained by meteorologists. Organisms put in contact with it would begin developing odd symptoms in the following days.
As the fractal spreads through the atmosphere, its effects first start to be seen in nature, from plants to flocks of birds. The patterns would infect anything they touched, changing their growth and behavior. The longer the contact, the stronger the effect.
I don't use Adobe's Creative Cloud because I like keeping my files locally.
But seeing how they think they can use anything you upload there for AI training purposes, I'm filling up my entire 20 GB storage with random Nightshade-poisoned images.
I encourage others do the same!
For those that don't know, you can check out Nightshade here:
And support the @TheGlazeProject team, they're doing incredible work to protect artists in this time of mass stealing!nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
Here's a little guide on how I'm doing this efficiently:
- Put a bunch of photos I took, showing a variety of concepts, into Nightshade. Fastest settings for speed.
- Put each into photoshop to save as PSDs. Apparently Creative Cloud only allows their proprietary file extensions?
We all better get used to explaining what an AI image generator is quick, because we're about to see a new wave of endless machine-made disinformation sent directly to our parents' less discerning eyeballs. And no fact-checker is going to be able to keep up.
"Yeah mom, you know that app that turned my face into a drawing? Yeah, the japanese-style ones. Well that picture of Joe Biden eating a kid was made the same way. No mom, not by the japanese. It's a machine."
This is also one case where the AI's weaknesses might work in its favor. "This person got a covid vaccine and look at how fucked up their hands are now"
Last surviving photographs from the secretive De La Cruz family. Mexico, 1910s-20s.
The following documents were smuggled out by Adrián de la Cruz, a disowned relative. According to him, the thing in the photo is who the family called "Tío Alfredo".
The De la Cruz were local landowners. They lived in an isolated estate in Morelos for generations, surrounded by croplands and pastures. They were rarely seen outside, leading locals to circulate many rumours about the family and their sickly disposition.
Adrián de la Cruz was the only household member known to have escaped. After fighting in the Revolution, he chose not to come back and left to Mexico City, where he studied chemistry and met his wife Cristina.
The pictures were retrieved by him, sent with the following letter:
Does anyone remember those old "Not-People" conspiracy websites? They claimed there were some entities pretending to be human online, catfishing people. They said you could sometimes see their disguises "slip". I wonder if there are people that still believe that stuff!
I got reminded of this because I had a strange interaction recently. This user appeared on my twitch channel, their messages were mostly coherent but always a bit off... I assumed English was just not their first language, no big deal. But then it got weirder.
They jumped from Twitch to Discord and started chatting in the server I run, where they mentioned they were American. Which really didn't click. They also tried to DM me. Their profile picture was weird, but too hard to see in the tiny Discord size. So I googled their username...