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We talked about cordyceps and nobody mentioned Instruction for a Help? Some shameful goons 
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May 19, 2014 20:34
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Jack Gladney posted:I've never seen this before, but it's so clever that I'm really sad that I can't read anything about its reception since archives went down. It was a pretty big hit--it is very clever, and the mixed-media format fit the venue perfectly and allowed for lots of exploration and elaboration that you couldn't accomplish with a regular novel. And if you weren't aware, Zach went on to write a few darn good books, including My Tank is Fight! and Liminal States. The former is a sort of non-fiction-mixed-with-fictional-accounts description of insane/awesome WWII technologies, and the latter...is a lot of things. A sort of preview/prelude is available right here on SA: http://www.somethingawful.com/news/reificant-battle-spire/1/ GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 11:59 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 11:56
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Hummingbirds posted:I live in Tampa, right next to the scientologist capital of the world (Clearwater/Ybor). It's really fun to go to Ybor and see 30 scientologist drones literally forcing dianetics pamphlets on people. They really don't come off as being normal people. I should engage one in conversation next time and see if they say anything crazy. Way back when I was an undergrad, our campus had a sort of "religion day" once in a while, where groups or churches or whatever could ask to have a table set up in a frequently-traveled area near the student union, so they could talk to interested students. I had nothing better to do that afternoon, so when my classes were done for the day, I wandered over to see what was up. There were more than a dozen tables set up, each one staffed by a couple of people, and most covered with pamphlets. I spent over an hour visiting with people, chatting them up, and learning quite a bit. Nobody was pushy at all--everyone just wanted to have a chat and maybe invite you to a service or a meeting or something. I'd been speaking with some hilarious guys from the Jewish fraternity (who told me every horrible Jew joke they could think of) for a few minutes when someone walked up behind me and grabbed my arm. "...Can I help you?" "We can help you!" "Um, what? I don't get it." The dye-job blonde with a spray tan and enormous fake breasts wearing a shirt cut so low that an on-duty stripper would say "honey, you gotta cover up your junk" responds, "I'm with the Church of Scientology! Come over to our table and--" The Jewish guys were turning red in the face and trying their best not to laugh, so I thanked them and took off walking, but she wouldn't relent: "Hey, were are you going? We can help! We have answers to all of your questions!" Sure. I loving bet.
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May 29, 2014 17:36
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:This is one of the craziest loving things I've ever read. I love how loving a dolphin was such a minor thing for her. "Oh yeah he was horny all the time so I helped him with that. Anyway, back to what I was saying about the Dolphin House..."
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Jun 12, 2014 14:34
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What kept going through my head when that happened was the multitude of other, far better solutions to the problem. Dude couldn't just let them get in the basement and lock them down there until the cops showed up, or hire home security professionals to better secure the property in the first place (he'd already paid for the security system, why not more sturdy entrance doors and locks?), or hide in the dark with a starter pistol and scare the crap out of the thieves--he was determined to actually kill people. That was his goal. "I'm going to let them get in and I'm going to loving kill them," is undoubtedly what he was thinking. What a piece of poo poo.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:03
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Please stop this "sympathy for serial killers" argument. It doesn't belong here. Nobody needs the last word--please just quit.
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Aug 1, 2014 16:50
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Nckdictator posted:James Bulger Wikipeida posted:In June 2007, a computer game based on the TV series Law & Order, titled Law & Order: Double or Nothing (made in 2003), was withdrawn from stores in the UK following reports that it contained an image of Bulger. I bought that on a random whim last week at a thrift store. I had no idea about the inclusion of the abduction image or even Bulger's murder until I read this. 
GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 13:42 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 13:40
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Alcohol withdrawal (or even the fear of it) can lead a person to make some poor choices. She was clearly a career alcoholic who was in so deep she needed booze to function on a day-to-day basis. gently caress her husband for not getting her help. That kind of dependence doesn't just happen overnight--he probably had six months at the very least to help her out of it. People can be really good at hiding addiction, but when your tolerance has gotten to the point where you reach a BAC of .19 and you're not only still ambulatory but can engage in normal conversation, it's drat well past the time when your loving spouse should've intervened.
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Dec 1, 2014 00:31
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Rucksack 2K14 posted:How about a town in Oklahoma where children used to play on hills of lead-tainted debris? The city was founded in 1920 and shut down in 2009 after lead mining ruined the groundwater, stirred up lead dust that would coat houses inside and out, and left a third of the children with developmental delays/disorders due to ingestion. I passed through that godforsaken place on Highway 69 earlier this year. I'll allow you to arrive at your own conclusion as to whether I meant Picher or the State of Oklahoma
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Dec 12, 2014 03:33
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Why not find the most desolate, uninhabitable shitbox of a place on the planet and just dump it there? Nobody willingly goes there anyway, and it's not like the people living in New Jersey will even notice the difference
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Jan 8, 2015 21:26
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Jack Gladney posted:It has some hallmarks of fraud, like going the media route before establishing a business to make or sell the stuff and never letting anyone do more than some initial testing, plus being a huckster showman about it. Plus, it really plays into the lone maverick genius myth that Americans love so much, but what could some guy do in his garage that dupont couldn't? It's not like there aren't lots of people trying to make heat shielding. The only thing he was missing was "I'll only release the secret on this day at this time!" I'm glad the hairdresser-turned-amateur-chemist had a hobby he was interested in, but convincing people that vastly safer fire-fighting equipment and aircraft were totally possible but only with his help was a lovely thing to do. The super-secret formula lives on, though, as fuel for clickbait articles, so I guess he accomplished something
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Jan 11, 2015 05:38
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Pilchenstein posted:I was looking for video of it just to reassure myself that I hadn't imagined the whole thing and there's a youtube channel of it being tested by various people. Looks like it might just have been a variation on aerogels to me now that I see it in action again. Do we have any cutting edge material scientists handy to give an opinion? Making aerogel in any significant quantity in your garage would be obscenely difficult and expensive, and literally impossible using only off-the-shelf goods available at the grocery/hardware store. I know it's fun to believe this small-town hairdresser with no formal education was able to cook something up in his garage that would change the world, but it's clearly a sham.
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Jan 11, 2015 16:44
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Phobophilia posted:I don't like to get partisan on random poo poo, but the republicans had passed a bill forcing all Helium stocks to be dumped on the market for way below what it is really worth. It'll rise back up eventually.
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Jan 22, 2015 16:26
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JacquelineDempsey posted:A little derail, sorry. Going back to the Henry Darger posts from a couple days ago: y'all think there's enough interest for a PYF thread on outsider artists/musicians? Most aren't necessarily scary enough to post in here (some might be unnerving, like Daniel Johnston crashing a plane), but I find some of their stories fascinating as heck. Disclaimer: I have an MA in art therapy, so I probably find outsider art/music more interesting than other folks. There are currently threads in PYF about your favorite songs that are about cannibalism and for posting photos of things you've bought recently. I think there's plenty of room. Go for it. It'll make some people happy, and we might learn something, too!
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May 8, 2015 13:42
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Chichevache posted:I don't get the joke here. Can someone explain it to me? The artist of The Far Side, Gary Larson, wrote a sappy letter to the Internet years ago asking people not to share digital copies of his comics because he and his agent and lawyer and whoever wanted to be able to keep making money from creating and reselling compilations of his work without fear of decreased sales due to file sharing. Goons fell for this poo poo hook line and goddamn sinker and would dogpile anyone who posted a The Far Side image. You were able to post whatever the hell copyrighted poo poo you wanted but goddamn you even try posting "Cow Tools" or whatever he asked nicely he asked nicely nicely he asked nicely he asked nicely he asked nicely he asked nicely
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Jun 30, 2015 23:48
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pookel posted:Texas Monthly has shown up so many times in this thread, and it's always, always excellent. Do they just specialize in well-written longform crime stories? They do all sorts of longform articles. A 12-month digital subscription is only USD$14.99 and hella worth it.
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Dec 11, 2015 17:08
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pookel posted:Btw, I just looked this up and saw it was directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, of all people. I am so drat glad he realized that his oh-so-90s standup persona wasn't going to cut it anymore and switched over to writing and directing. He's a talented guy.
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Feb 11, 2016 20:58
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YeahTubaMike posted:Grieving people don't always make perfect sense. Two years ago, a gal from my town was the driver in a horrible car accident that killed her and two of her friends instantly. A fourth passenger lived, but had broken bones I didn't even know humans had, and was in a coma for a while. Holy moley, it was a tragedy, but according to her family and friends, everyone was at fault but the driver. It took the police a few days to finally release a report, and during that time (and even afterwards), social media was a raging firestorm of blame, with people screaming that it was the county's fault for not having safe enough roads, the state's fault for not culling the deer population (many people believed that a deer had jumped out in front of her despite no evidence of deer in the area of the crash), the auto manufacturer's fault for not making the car safer, the county's fault for not putting lighting up on rural roads (the crash occurred at 2:00 A.M. on a dirt back road north of town), and even the comatose fourth passenger's fault for not preventing his friends' deaths somehow. From the outside, what happened was painfully obvious (but no less tragic). She'd had a history of DUI, there were numerous open alcohol containers in the vehicle, and police eventually released a statement revealing that her BAC was .22 (the legal limit is .08 in just about every jurisdiction in the U.S.) at the time of her death. She was driving drunk and flipped and rolled the car until what was left when it came to rest was unrecognizable as a motor vehicle. It was so bad that the local news wouldn't show it. Clearly, the fault was with the driver, who chose to drive drunk and ended three human lives. But grief doesn't let people see clearly, or accept that their friend or daughter or coworker made a terrible mistake. Sometimes, even with time--the fourth passenger (who has enough metal rods, pins, and plates in him to legally be a cyborg, and is still undergoing physical therapy) decided to delete his social media accounts recently because people kept saying poo poo like "it's your fault, you should've died too"
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Feb 25, 2016 19:43
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bean_shadow posted:It was good special effects if it was fake. It's fake. Well done, but fake nonetheless.
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Mar 18, 2016 22:38
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Centripetal Horse posted:Apparently, Gay Talese has been in regular contact for several decades with a hotel owner who turned his hotel into a private voyeur preserve. Fifty years after the hotelier installed special vents in the ceilings of his rooms so he could watch - and record in detail - the sexual escapades of his patrons, he is ready to have his story told. Huh. Didn't know "Gay Talese" was one of Stephen Glass's pen names.
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Apr 6, 2016 21:30
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Karma Monkey posted:I wonder how much he fabricated or embellished. The thing with his necktie in the vent was almost too cute to be true. We can confirm with a reasonable level of confidence that Colorado is indeed a state, and that there may or may not be motels there. The rest belongs in the STDH.txt thread
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Apr 6, 2016 22:02
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FiftyFour posted:How about a mining disaster that didn't kill any miners? Well, this sounds like a heartwarming "almost catastrophe" in which everyone involved was just fi goddamnit you son of a bitch Also echoing the praise for Droogie's writeup. Thank you so much, and take all the time you need to recover from your no-holds-barred cage match 
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Apr 25, 2016 22:23
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Excellent work 
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Apr 29, 2016 16:23
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FourLeaf posted:XOJane may be one of the worst websites in the entire world. I don't know how brain dead their editors are to have okayed an article like this: If it helps anyone sleep better, most of the articles on sites like xojane are fiction penned by aspiring writers trying to make a quick buck. The more ludicrous, the better--those sites will gladly pay third parties for completely ridiculous stuff like this because it means more clicks/shares/ad impressions/whatever and no liability whatsoever on their part if someone calls bullshit.
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May 17, 2016 22:20
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It's sad to see that there are still so many of those "pay someone to whisk your kid away without their knowledge or consent and indoctrinate them through horrible means" businesses still running. I also know someone it happened to. There was a gal in my graduating class who, during our sophomore year (grade 10), just vanished. When asked, the teachers would just shrug and say, "they said she moved." Something was immediately suspect about this explanation that had everyone suspicious: her family still lived in the county. Her father, a pastor, still had regular services at his church. Her brothers (who had severe behavioral issues) still went to our school, and would say the same thing when asked. They'd done a great job keeping what really happened under wraps, though. This was a very small rural community, and it's nearly impossible to keep a secret in a small town like that. We speculated for a while. We ruled out boot camp/boarding school/etc. because she was a good kid. She was especially well-behaved considering she was a pastor's daughter. She got good grades, did track & field, was in band, and was pretty easy to get along with. Sure, she had a raunchy sense of humor sometimes, and was caught more than once smoking cigarettes with her friends behind the gas station, but tons of us did far worse, and we didn't vanish. Also, her brothers were weapons-grade assholes and regularly got into all kinds of trouble with the school and the sheriff, and they were still around. So, we decided it definitely wasn't some kind of reeducation camp. Was she kidnapped? Held for ransom? Sold into child slavery? Did her parents or siblings accidentally (or intentionally) kill her and they had to come up with a story? Was she recruited by some shadowy government agency? Abducted by aliens (illegal or extraterrestrial)? Over time, we just sort of forgot about her, being the self-centered highschoolers that we were. Years went by, we went to college, and the most thought we'd give her was an occasional "Huh, I wonder whatever happened to that girl?" The year I finished my undergraduate degree, I got a call from Paul, one of my highschool buddies, who lived with his fiancee back in our hometown. "Fai, you're not gonna believe who just moved in next door." My buddy invited me to a cookout at his and his fiancee's house, and he made sure he invited his new neighbors. Sure enough, it was her. She, her husband, and their young twins had moved from "out East" because he'd found work in the area, and her family was nearby. He did all the talking, and she wore a static smile. Blue polo tucked into pleated-front khakis, wearing a silver cross on a fine chain outside his shirt. The twins had matching polos tucked into their matching pleated-front khakis. She didn't speak a word to anybody the entire time. No "hey haven't seen you in ages," no "wow you've changed," no "how was college?" I was actually more bewildered by the circumstances of her sudden return than by her disappearance. But it had been more than six years, and people change, so I had already written it off as "she grew up and that's how she wants to be" when Paul called me up a few months later. He'd found out what happened to her. Paul's fiancee had noticed that their new neighbor had a habit of sitting motionless on the front porch, staring into space. We're talking from the time her husband left for work and the bus picked the twins up for school to the time he got back and the bus dropped the kids off. It freaked Paul's fiancee right the gently caress out, so she took some iced tea over one morning and, after some small talk, whipped out an icebreaker, hoping to get her to open up a little in case she needed to tell somebody that something was wrong at home: "Paul says you two went to school together?" She apparently didn't stop crying for hours. Paul's confused fiancee had to piece the story together between sobs. Back when she was in school with us, she'd had several tiffs with her father about her desire to be more independent. She was about to get her driver's license and had decided that it was time for some of the "family rules" he'd outlined governing her behavior to be relaxed. More time alone with friends, being able to stay out later, etc. He would steadfastly refuse, and then get angry when she pushed the issue. Just imagine a really conservative dad yelling "no daughter of mine will act like that!" and you've got the idea. The tiffs quickly became arguments, and she started getting punished for disobeying his command to stop bringing the issue up, and then punished more heavily when she pushed back. She said all she wanted was to be able to drive into town to see a movie with her friends on a Friday night, and he wouldn't budge. Things escalated further, and she began acting out in retaliation, until, in the heat of a windowpane-rattling argument, she blurted out something so insulting that he hit her. Not "slapped" her. Full-on right hook to the face. I wish I knew what the hell she'd said, but the list of "things you say to your pastor father to make him mad enough to smite you" can't be very long. After that, things were quiet for a while. He'd never hit any of his children before, so I imagine he was pretty shaken. She just kept her head down and stayed quiet at home, but at school, she was talking. She vented to her friends about how awful it was, how much she hated him--all that teenage stuff that seems so important at the time. Among all that talk, two very important points were overheard (remember what I said earlier about keeping secrets in small towns?): she knew a guy in the college town half an hour away that would give her a tattoo without an ID, and that she was considering telling her father that she was a lesbian. She had no idea anybody was listening (and wouldn't find out until years later), so the trademark nighttime abduction came out of nowhere. Same story as described in earlier accounts in the thread--"cops" with flashlights, lots of yelling orders, wrist and ankle restraints, and a long car ride to the airport. The way she described how the facility was run is right in line with the previous accounts, too. Psychological torture, exercising until total exhaustion, being made to stay awake for days and days with no sleep, kids that had been there a while punishing other kids, an "isolation suite" (an unlit, damp, unfinished basement) for when you really mess up, and during it all, non-stop proselytizing, with "rewards" waiting for you when you fell in line and accepted Jesus. She resisted for a while, but like all the others, she eventually gave in. She "graduated" a few months before her 18th birthday. After her parents took her home and marveled at what a good Christian she was and how well-behaved she now was, they unceremoniously took her to the courthouse. They'd arranged a marriage for her to tucked-in polo guy while she was away. She said they probably did it to prevent her from acting on her "lesbian desires" (at this point her parents had explained what someone overheard at school that day, and that it was the last straw, and that she had to be sent away for her own good). Thing is, she said she never actually planned on going through with the tattoo, and she definitely wasn't a lesbian--she was just an angry teenager when she said those things, which is something I imagine a reasonable parent would understand and deal with in some way other than sending his or her child to a Christian torture camp. As far as I know, she's never confronted her parents about what went on at the facility and if they knew how bad it was, or asked them why they, you know, sent their daughter to a loving torture facility over some poo poo they heard thirdhand. Did they know what went on there? You've got to imagine that a relatively intelligent, well-educated pastor would at least have some inkling of what goes on under the hood of a place that promises to take your unruly demon child and give you back a Stepford wife. It sure as hell isn't going to be weekend seminars and pizza parties, that's for sure. Could they really have looked at a pamphlet full of nice photos of children praying and playing water polo and reading bibles and said "Hmmm it says here they also come and violently abduct your child in the middle of the night because Jesus. Sounds legit, where's my checkbook?" I hope someone hurries up and blows the lid off this poo poo quickly so no more kids have to suffer
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Jun 9, 2016 16:11
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"Why did your parents send you here?" "Well I burnt our neighbor's house down on purpose, and I found a baby deer with a broken leg so I snapped its other three and then fed it its own poo poo before strangling it. You?" "Mom caught me listening to 'Sledgehammer'"
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Jun 9, 2016 17:34
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That drat Satyr posted:libel suit Haha gently caress, forcing kids to write positive reviews online so they can point to them later when the kids are finally able to speak out "Nuh huh! Look, you said right here on ratemytorturecamp.com that our place was awesome and that you'd totally send your own kids there!" How much time do these people spend coming up with new ways to be despicable monsters (in the name of Jesus)
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Jun 10, 2016 13:41
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The futility of trying to get them busted was also probably beat into their heads as part of their "treatment." "Go ahead, call the cops. They won't find evidence of anything wrong here, and you'll be arrested for filing a false report. Then, we'll sue your family into oblivion for slander." It doesn't have to be true, just convincing enough.
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Jun 10, 2016 17:59
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Imagined posted:People always have to come up with a reason why it's somehow the victim's fault or how they themselves would have done something differently to reassure themselves that random death is not sometimes just waiting for us and our loved ones just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People just can't live with the thought that something like this could happen to them, or their children. I promise you it can, and given the wrong circumstances, it will. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't poke holes in people's hero/revenge fantasies. At the top of the "seriously, don't bother" list are immortal, ultra-powerful, prescient MOTHERS and zombie apocalypse preppers. "If my kid was choking, I'd give him an inkpen tracheotomy. I saw it on TV. I'd save his life." "Um why not try the basic 'if someone is choking' steps before sawing a hole in your kid with a dull, unsterilized Denny's steak knife and jamming a dirty inkpen into his throat? You might even be able to clear the airway with your finger if--" "YOU DON'T KNOW poo poo BECAUSE YOU AREN'T A MOTHER SO SHUT THE gently caress UP ABOUT MY CHILD" GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 19:11 on Jun 17, 2016 |
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Jun 17, 2016 19:09
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Sarcopenia posted:http://www.yelp.com/topic/diamond-bar-my-friend-maribel-ramos-is-missing Great googly moogly 
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Jun 20, 2016 13:54
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KozmoNaut posted:loving civilians just wandering in Of all the stuff that occurred during the riot, this was the most unreal poo poo Imagine dozens of random townsfolk milling around the site of an ongoing, unresolved, actively hostile situation unsupervised, in zero degree weather for no apparent reasons other than curiosity and lack of a light on in the attic. I'm hoping that most of the "civilians" were journalists who were aware that they were risking life and limb by being there, but I can't help but think at least a few of them arrived after something like this: "Honey, wake up! Frank from next door just called and said there is a huge riot out at The Main. You know, that overcrowded facility where all those dangerous inmates are being held in terrible conditions? Frank and his wife invited us to meet up with them and the Jenkinses across the street in ten minutes to go poke around the unsecured prison full of violent dudes who are literally murdering each other with axes and cutting torches at this very moment. Get dressed and wake up the kids, I'll go pop us some popcorn"
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Jun 28, 2016 16:21
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Droogie posted:The scene sounds like a lot of press, a lot of politicians, but they heavily mention family, mobs of them. Both of the inmates and of guards. I was about to say "Whew, at least it wasn't random people totally oblivious to the danger" but it being tons of family is worse Instead of clueless idiots wandering around, there were people there with emotional investments in the victims and hostages (and probably in the suspects, too, but I've gotta say that if my brother were the type to take a cutting torch to a living human being, I don't think I'd bother showing up for his riot), and they were in crisis mode. Things could've gotten worse in any number of ways and we're drat lucky there wasn't another set of chapters for you to write up called "The Riot After the Riot." Speaking of, you've got a knack for writing, and I suspect you'd make a stellar freelance journalist. If you ever get a break from controlling animals, you might chat up your local NPR station/regional newspaper or other periodical/whatever and see if they'd be willing to buy stories about stuff in the region from you. The local joints eat that stuff up, especially when the author is someone with a history in the area.
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Jun 28, 2016 17:06
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Hollismason posted:If you want insane imagine you have responded to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina and you are now the on site Ambulance crew for 10,000 or more people. You end up locking yourself in the med room because a angry crowd believes you are withholding medicine from people suffering delirium tremens and narcotic withdrawal. You are now trapped inside a small room for several days with no access to the outside and no one who knows where exactly you are because your batteries ran out on your radio. Meanwhile through out the ordeal people continually scream in pain/ terror /anger at you from beyond the door and you know if they break through they'll probably murder you. I know the guys this happened to. Until now, I hadn't thought about how people experiencing withdrawal symptoms might behave during a disaster situation. So, thanks for that
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Jul 6, 2016 16:19
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R.L. Stine posted:If anything she's probably experimenting with stimulants and partying hard. Smart money's right here. Some people have a desperate, insatiable hunger for things to be concerned about so they can make a big show out of how concerned they are. I'm surprised there isn't a candlelight vigil scheduled yet.
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Jul 27, 2016 16:08
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I'd like to change my bet before the bookie slams the gate closed: Ten bucks on "youtuber seeking attention" If anyone's interested in an equity swap let me know
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Jul 27, 2016 19:25
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