stay there for decades

Yeah. I read that book 20 years ago, and I can still vividly remember someone microwaving some meat and discovering that it was their own ass cheek, or a cis woman being accused of being trans and being sexually assaulted, someone falling into a spring at Yosemite, and of course, “Guts.”

He has a schtick with memorable twists, similar to Fight Club. I think Choke was the only novel of his I remember not really having a giant record scratch moment - Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, etc have huge twists. Like discovering the orgy heaven at the end of Haunted which really just serves to punch you in the gut - absolutely all of the fucked up things that the characters were doing to try to be famous was absolutely pointless, because everyone on Earth is killing themselves anyways.

The only fiction authors I can think of that have given me the same level of intense shock and revulsion would be Ágota Kristóf with the Notebook trilogy (which is spectacular and everyone should read) and Samuel Delany’s Hogg (which no one should read under any circumstances.)

The short story collection/sorta novel Haunted by Pahlanuik ends with the discovery that the planet Venus (I think? Might have been Jupiter) is essentially an eternal awesome orgy heaven, which everyone will eventually end up reincarnating on when they die. So everyone on earth essentially decides to kill themselves. Stores have to start locking up suicide kits because people will just take them in the store and die before paying.

That entire thing is fucked up. I read it somewhere around sophomore year of high school and existentially traumatized me. There are stories in there that somehow 4chan shock image level in just written words.

FATAL lets you generate a character with negative health that dies instantly. It’s funny to imagine someone popping into existence and then immediately realizing the setting and offing themselves.

There’s also an obsession with the Battle of Tours. “Catholic” to them is more the idea of white heritage.

There’s an evolving strain of US Catholicism, exemplified by weirdos like JD Vance, who like the aesthetic of Catholicism (especially the Deus Vult thing) without really caring about any of the actual Catholic beliefs. It’s more like they have a childish misunderstanding of Catholicism as just being a more serious Christian. Which is not uncommon a misunderstanding in the south/Midwest, oddly enough - the desire for fundies to create a coalition to fight abortion in the 70’s/80’s really ended a lot of the more typical anti-Catholicism of the south.

Similar to the “American Orthodox,” which is the same idea with more of a Russian flavor.

Did you know that recruiters LIE?

Imagine being broke and struggling through college. You get an email from a recruiter - they have access to the university’s entire mailing of course - telling you that all you have to do is show up to a few weeks of boot camp, and do drill on the weekend.

You’re 18, and don’t know that recruiters are not just allowed to sell you up the river, but encouraged to. It seems like a nice alternative to student loan hell debt and living off jars of peanut butter.

I do ASVAB prep occasionally, which I have mixed feelings about, and have a client who I’ve just gotten to being able to borrow when subtracting. Do you think he’s equipped to make an intelligent choice when a recruiter promises him the world?

Abughazaleh is awesome. She was just a guest on Behind the Bastards - she’s been doing a lot of researching/keeping up with/exposing the alt right for several years now.

Heritage Foundation is working on making HRT illegal.

The story isn’t strictly on rails - you do get some choices (especially how your character reacts in the end.) When you reach the part where you are told that you have to kill one of two guys, you can actually refuse to kill either and take on a massive firefight.

There’s a story I heard from Judaism, where the rabbis were arguing about whether god was cool with something or not. One rabbi was against all of the other rabbis, and asked god to prove him right. God personally spoke up, and was like “yeah, he’s entirely correct” - but the rabbis end up telling off god. They point out that they only have the rules he sent down to work with, and having to call him for help every time they need a ruling wouldn’t be fair or reasonable.

The physics of knitting is so complicated that SciShow fucked it up and had a bunch of people mad at them.

Textiles are complicated crazy wonderful things. The drape of a fabric is going to be related to the materials it’s made of (cotton, linen, wool, acrylics and polyesters, blends of all of the above and more to various percentages…) as well as just the process of making.

Woven is very sturdy and doesn’t stretch. You can’t unwind the whole thing by getting it caught on something. Your jeans and slacks are probably made of woven material, because otherwise you’d accidentally lose your pants to the bump of a nail in a chair or something.

Knit stretches, but accidentally bump into a door hinge and you’ve unraveled a good chunk of your sweater. It’s good at moving though. Most things are done on knitting machines in “stockinette” stitches - look for little ‘v’ shapes.

Gotta keep in mind that the upkeep of clothing was something people use to be spend several hours a week on - beyond just laundry. Weaving takes forever and it’s not particularly exciting. Just imagine how many outfits you’d have in 1600 BC or 1600 AD versus now.

It’s just really crazy that we are all surrounded by billions of tiny fibers that were twisted into single strands that then become fabrics that then become clothes. Each stage presents uniquely complex and beautiful physics problems.

Also assuming that mental health care even exists in your state…. Oklahoma doesn’t even have providers to get that expensive evaluation from…

I tutor, and I’ve ran into lots of rich boys with disabilities who learn that they can get their parents to pay for their homework to be done for them (or the mom does it herself…). Fired a client because he had too much of a “reading disability” to do the required reading for the paper we were writing - previous tutors would write his papers for him!

The DOJ has had a moratorium on pursuing any Title 9 claims related to gender identity for several years now. The EEOC has not been investigating claims of discrimination related to gender identity in several districts also for several years now.

These are specific items that need to be addressed. I’d like there to be separately pushed, because “Trans Bill of Rights” already sounds like it’s going to be nuked from orbit.

I had more than one job offer explicitly revoked because of my gender identity, including a federal one (cited Trump’s EO.) I sought help and did not find it. Living in a red state gives you zero recourse.

He’s not even cool enough to have invented meat shoes.

I’m just glad the media called it “racist.” Not “controversial” or any other sane washing crap.

This is disgusting.

the women obsessed with this kind of thing

Right wing women redirect their frustrations with being treated like breeding sows to an acceptable target. Gives them a feeling of power and control.

The Girl Scouts let trans girls in though?

There is an entire erotica sub genre about this. Don’t look up “dolcett.”