My apartment has two rooms. One is a storage room, the other is the living room/bedroom. TV (a computer monitor hooked up to a PlayStation 4 for YouTube) is right in front of the pile of blankets and pillows where I sleep, and is on 24/7.

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.

If you’d like some advice as to how to start, let me know. I’d be happy to provide you with some advice on how to start.

Do you have established communities of national board certified teachers with Google drives full of resources who are happy to provide timely advice on classroom management?

The people who use social media platforms and the content they post are sometimes enough to make you have to ignore how shit the platform is, especially when those groups are hard to find elsewhere. I’ve not seen a lot on Lemmy, piefed or mastodon that makes me feel I can confidently talk shop teaching wise.

My elected representatives, as well as representatives of government departments are also often much easier to reach via Facebook than any other platform.

But the definition of a small town in US is much bigger than most other developed places

This is the type of town that I had in mind when I was writing my comment..

Closest high school is Elk City, which you have to drive to, on the interstate. There is no public transit anywhere on this map.

It was an email address, listed in a profile. Clickable, but not copyable. Was happy to pop as a new email draft up in the IOS Mail app. Just not able to populate into the field of the drafted email I had already written and had open.

It would be nice to discard Facebook, but unfortunately activism and awareness raising requires going into the spaces people already are. It’s also where most teacher communities are, and the kind of 50 year plus classroom management wizard that I want to be getting advice from is not going to be on the fediverse.

Along those lines, I’ve noticed autocorrect has gotten somehow worse in the past ten years - it’ll sometimes try to correct words that are correctly spelled but uncommon to completely random words.

There are enough kids in nearby schools

Maybe in a big city. The district I worked the most for was big enough that most matches were within the district. But when you think about most small towns, which maybe have one or two high schools, that’s not going to be true at all.

Even with that - are the nearby schools the same division? Lots of sporting leagues have restrictions on who can play who (bigger schools playing bigger schools instead of smaller ones, an attempt to be fair usually).

Heck, even leaving sports out I drove an hour out for a FIRST tournament recently.

“Common sense” is completely and utterly irrelevant to the legal system. It is simply a matter of who can afford a better lawyer. And LA Fitness can hire a better lawyer than you can.

I’m not really talking about the pigment quality so much as the binder texture (I’m pretty blind to color change in general, except when it’s really obvious/disappointing as with natural pigments)

It goes from being a thick gooey paste to very thin liquid - stuff that seems more like alcohol in density than water. It still binds well to canvas, wood, and most plastics - anything that I normally use acrylic for, I just have to use it for paint pour techniques because it’s too runny to even really use a paint brush with. Doesn’t even feel like watercolor, but very much like a more opaque alcohol paint. It’s unfortunate that it smells so miserable.

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?

MAGA being cucked by Israel.

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.

I’ve been stockpiling books my entire life for such a Fahrenheit 451 or other style future.

Because I’m thirsty and would like a drink?

My problem is mostly that HFCS tastes like ass. I was expecting it to be a blend of apple juice, pear juice, and a hint of passion fruit.

The health aspect is more about always keeping an easy to access non-beer thing in my fridge.

Have you watched the Sagan Cosmos? I like it better than the NDT one, although I usually recommend NDT because it’s an easier sell. I love Sagan so much though. He’s just so gentle and kind, almost the same kind of vibe as Mr Rogers.