every detail in the history of this AIDS humor zine is unforgettable
This Hazlitt longread by Jonathan Kauffman, Get Fat, Don’t Die, is spellbinding from beginning to end as it traces the history of a ‘90s AIDS humor zine called Diseased Pariah News along with the lives of its founders, who — “inspired by ACT UP but too introverted to join its protests” — employed the darkest humor imaginable to provide a counternarrative to the epidemic.
One of the regular features: a cooking column by Beowulf Thorne, one of the editors, that doled out ultra high-calorie recipes for things like “Calorie-Packer Hash” and “Hard-Hearted Hannah’s Pecan Buttercrunch,” not just to lampoon the diet-obsessed mainstream, but as a real service to the people with AIDS who experienced the wasting syndrome:
It was food for when you weren’t sure you wanted to eat, food that might just keep you alive. But Wulf wanted it to offer pleasure, too—and whether the appeal was trashy or refined didn’t matter. Larding a zine about AIDS with recipes didn’t just add a note of domestic camp that Biffy Mae, toxic-plant aficionado, clearly delighted in, the recipes interrupted the zine’s dark humor, visually as well as psychically. You may be dying. Fuck. Buy yourself a box of Bisquick and make this berry dessert.
Go and read it right now!!! You won’t regret it.
Signal Boost:
Business Insider is hiring for an editorial fellow for their retail vertical + an editorial fellow for transportation.
More info from deputy editor Jake Swearingen:
All of these would be for writers to work on stuff behind the paywall — so things that are more deeply reported and sourced than your average news hit. It's a great chance to build up clips, you work closely with editors and other reporters on how to source up and build out a beat, and there's absolutely no chance you'll be getting coffee (because we're in a pandemic ha ha).
If people have questions, you can email jswearingen@businessinsider.com, but in general, if you're a reporter early in your career, the answer I'm going to give is "You should apply!"
**They’re also hiring for a bunch of fellows in general — just head to here and Command+F "fellow."