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.

How many of them aren’t alive that we don’t know of though?

The context is big here:

Gradually, the social and cultural imperialism that the missionaries brought to the islands developed into the exploitative commercial power that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893.

Almost all of my books are thrifted, which gives me the luxury of no guilt. And I get to argue with previous marginalia, which is fun because they can’t respond.

This is kinda how books worked throughout most of medieval history. Paper was expensive and anyway, the margins often become teaching tools in and of themselves. It becomes a centuries long comment section, so ideas get passed down and develop through the centuries. Like one of the most important books of medieval philosophy that probably no one without a doctoral in theology gives a shit about is Peter Lombard’s Sentences which is just a collection of common comments people in about books that he thought were good for teaching. (I have been working on implementing a HTML cross reference version of it using Twine, and have been trying to parse [pun intended] a theological discussion about what it means to enjoy not use god. Larger project is to recreate an accessible “medieval curriculum” through Twine)

As much as I’d fantasize about all my books preserved as a library, they’ll probably be separated from each other someday. The least I can do is put my soul in them - tuck a pamphlet or bookmark, a movie ticket. I’ve never been unhappy seeing a comment in a book - I was reading a 60 year old middle school text recently, and discovered a kid had wrote “[clearly female name] is a MAGGOT F_GGOT!!!” which was just so fucking hilarious.

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.

Yeah, this isn’t “sexual repression,” this is sexual control. The point is that the attractive women is in a subservient position to you.

Religious hospitals in the US have certainly historically had problems reproductive health care. But they by and large exist to provide medical services. I imagine far less than 1% of a typical “St Such and Such’s” daily operations are telling women than abortion will cause them to have breast cancer.

Ectopic pregnancy is also one of those things that was until recently understood to be “yeah that doesn’t count as pregnancy and you shouldn’t die because of it” as an objective fact. I know a hardline pro lifer who had an abortion for because it’s not viable and you die.

These are things ran by small, local, powerful churches. These fucked ideologies are the type that are preached by the pastors some of the highest up in the nation - the congregations and preachers that states like Texas Oklahoma and Arkansas exist around.

It’s a warped death cult that wants more soldiers in its war against the world, which it calls Satan. Fundie evangelicals hate sex, music, dancing, art, and most pop culture, to the point where they need to publicly acknowledge they are Christian ™ every 20 minutes.

They make their own history textbooks, tv shows, etc, etc, which is justified under the idea of being not worldly, but all of it is bad and only exists to reinforce specific messages to them. all of it is obnoxiously polemical in a way the gamergate crowd always pretended the Last of Us Two was.

But to practically answer your question - services that solely provide pregnancy counseling that don’t explicitly offer abortion as an option are bad. Abortion is a standard part of reproductive healthcare, and if you are going to someone specializing in reproductive healthcare they should be frank with you about it.

The “how are the motives of the people running these facilities different” part - St Such And Such’s wants to keep you alive by and large as its primary and professional goal. These crisis pregnancy centers exist to talk people out of abortion, first and foremost.

In the story I linked, they gave a woman an ultrasound and confirmed to her that it was an intrauterine pregnancy. That seems to be “practicing medicine” to me.

The question is did they actually know that it was ectopic and lied to her (because the religious right is doing a huge push right now to convince people that ectopic pregnancies are somehow survivable), or did they lie to her about the ultrasound, or did they just fuck it up entirely?

All three extremely disturbing, and probably all three happening daily at this evil places.

Mostly Planned Parenthood. There are a few other places, but they have less to spend on advertising.

I’ve thought about calling up a few as a trans man to see how they’d respond. The reaction would probably help identify how legitimate they were.

This is apologia.

Why, through centuries of Muslim scholarship, was this conclusion not came to earlier? There are thousands and thousands of pages written by thousands and thousands of Muslim commentators and scholars that did not have a problem with her age at marriage, nor consider it particularly notable. It’s only now, at a Western university, in a world which unequivocally does not accept people fucking 9 year olds that the story changes.

Aisha was active a long time after Mohammad’s death. How old are we suggesting she was married at?

There are other hadiths that mention her being young (playing with dolls). So we’re throwing out a Hadith that many many Muslims have historically accepted, that seems to align with other hadiths that many many Muslims have historically accepted.

This is a clear Occam’s razor situation.

Is it “Christophobic” to point out that Mary was fourteen when God impregnated here? That seems to make the Christian god a clear pedophile.

Aisha was such a badass I wish some radical feminist Muslim women would retool the entire religion around her though.

Twelver Shia will let you get a temporary marriage, in case you want to fuck a prostitute. So you could probably rotate through a harem.

Bro, I dated a nurse who saw a girl die in the ER after an adjustment from a vertebral arterial dissection.

You pulled numbers out your ass and pretend they are authoritative. Here’s a fun number:

In this case report, we highlight a case of a 32-year-old woman who underwent chiropractic manipulation and had vertebral artery dissection with subsequent brainstem infarct. She quickly deteriorated and passed away shortly after arrival to the hospital. Although rare, one in 48 chiropractors have experienced such an event. We utilize this case to highlight the risk associated with cervical manipulation and urge open dialogue between chiropractors and physicians. Receiving medical clearance prior to cervical manipulation in potential at risk patients would drastically reduce morbidity and mortality.

Actual medicine does things. Chiropractic does nothing at best, and can kill you at worst.

Also the random bullshit about trump and queerness does zero to advance your argument, and really just embarrasses you. I am cringing as a leftist trans person myself.

Does any of what you just said prove that chiropractic or acupuncture is safe?

Acupuncturists and other “alternative” providers never kill anyone, of course.

your bible

Where has anyone mentioned Christianity? Sham science is sham science.

the answer is: you deny anything that isn’t in the bible.

Are you stoned?

Many of those studies in that meta analysis show limited short term effects.

Because there is no widely accepted sham protocol for DN research, researchers should incorporate cognitive influences that extend beyond the mimicking of tactile sensations to create a believable simulation of active dry needling.

I also think there’s a serious question about what sham/placebo dry needling would be, and if inconsistent standards could impact results.