Pathologizing social discourses are primarily a depersonalizing or dehumanizing register. There aren't personalities or the usual dramatic narratives, but rather listing of features in diagnosis of some disorder

Why does the disgraced journalist Rocco Castoro talk about John McAfee like this?

Kamikaze Survivors is now available on the Google Play store

So here's a bizarre literary machine short story about some kiln out in the west Red Kiln was the railroad's name for the works on a siding of the Alkali & Southern: a long brick shed, a water tank on stilts, and a lehr that ran its belt from the glory-holes to the packing floor. The country around it was greasewood and white ground. In the afternoon the wind came off the mesa and filled the shed with grit. At dusk the wind went down. That was when the night shift took the floor. Mira Fenn had come off a camp on the dry side of the mesa when the grass failed and the owner sold the water-rights to a cattle company that did not hire women for the remaining wells. The works took her to pull bottles at the cool end, where the ware came out of the tunnel dark and finished and could be lifted with a paddle onto the packing tables. The night man who had walked the catwalk over the radiant wash took a westbound and did not send word. Brask, who kept the shift-board, put Mira up there because she did not call across the heat and because the cool-end pullers were already two. The lehr was a brick tunnel with a chain belt. Bottles went in soft from the glory-holes and traveled through a wash of radiant heat that took the strain out of the glass, and then through cooler yards until a hand could hold them. The middle yards were the wash. You felt them on your face from the catwalk, a change of warmth as you passed. After a puller named Hesk went into the wash to free a jam, the wash sent him out without the use of his hands. The company hung horns along those yards, one to a bracket, one to a stretch of belt. The names came off the pay-book. A horn spoke if you came too near. It spoke the name. Mira learned the wash by the heat on her cheek. She learned the horns later. On her ninth night a bottle stalled in yard four, warped against a dog on the chain. She went down the iron ladder with a hook. The wash breathed on her wrists. The horn on the bracket said, "Mira Fenn." She got the bottle free and put it back in line, climbed to the catwalk, and stood with the hook. The name stayed in the brick. She went to the tool crib at the packing end and took a length of bar that had been used to open crate-bands. She walked back to yard four and struck the horn until the grille split and the housing left the bracket. The belt ran on. No one came from the glory-holes. She hung the bar on the crib nail and finished the night. At dawn Brask found the empty bracket. He did not send for her until the second horn came down, two nights later, when yard six spoke her name as she passed on the catwalk at a distance she had always judged safe. She smashed that one in the same hour it spoke. A gatherer named Calla saw the bar rise and did not stop her. In the morning the housings lay in a crate by the tank, tagged with the yard numbers. Brask waited by the shift-board. He was a long man with a burned forearm from a year when the lehr had no horns. He held a tack-hammer. "You took two," he said. "They spoke," Mira said. "They are meant to speak." "They spoke me." "You were in the wash on four. I have Calla's word. Six I do not have." "I was on the catwalk." "Then six was a false call." He looked at the board, at the nails, at the paper already curling. "The rail office wants the names. If a body goes into the wash, the horn is to say who. That is in the contract for the water-cars. I am posting that speaking horns stay." He tacked the sheet. The letters were the same hand he used for shift-times. SPEAKING HORNS STAY. FALSE CALLS TO BE DESTROYED. HORN-WALKER: M. FENN. Mira read it. The tank dripped. A freight went through on the main without stopping and the shed shook, as it always did. "I did not ask for a job," she said. "You have been doing it," Brask said. "I am putting a name on what you have been doing. You will walk the yards. You will break the ones that call false. You will leave the ones that call true." "How do I know?" "A true call has a body in the wash. A false call has a name and no body, or the wrong name. You will not take a horn for speaking. You will take it for lying." She said, "If I leave the true ones, they will still say me when I am near." "Then stay out of the wash," Brask said. "That is what the names are for." He gave her the bar from the crib as if it had always been hers, and he wrote horn-walker on the pay-sheet beside her name, in the column that had said catwalk. She walked. The lehr had seven yards of wash. Horns remained on one, two, three, five, and seven. Four and six were empty brackets, and the heat there was the same. Mira took the catwalk at the start of each night with the bar hung from her belt by a thong. She learned the distance at which a horn would speak. She learned it with her face, as she had learned the wash, looking for the small change as she passed. Yard one spoke Calla on a night Calla went down to lift a stuck paddle, and Mira left that horn, though the name followed her as far as the packing tables. Yard three spoke a batch-man named Witt when Witt was at the glory-holes, fifty yards off, charging the pots. Mira smashed yard three. The name had no body in the wash. Witt heard the blows and came as far as the tank. He looked at the housing on the bricks a long time. He went back to his pots. He did not ask. Yard two spoke a name from last season's book, a woman who had taken the westbound in March. No one of that name stood on the floor. Mira smashed yard two and put the tag in Brask's crate. He did not argue the tag. He marked the board: remaining, one, five, seven. Yard five spoke twice in one hour, the same name, Calla, while Calla was at the cool end with both hands on bottles. Mira waited through the first call, because a body might still come. No body came. The second call decided her. She raised the bar and took the grille down. Calla, stacking, said, "That was me, and I was not there." "I know," Mira said. "Don't take the one that has me when I am there." "I didn't." Calla nodded and went on stacking. The ware kept coming. The bottles had no names. The works hired off the freight when the freight stopped, which was not often. In the third week after the posting a boy stepped down from a boxcar with a paper from the junction agent. He gave the paper to Brask. Brask read it and put him on the cool-end pull, opposite Calla. "Oren," Brask said, to the floor at large, which was how names entered the pay-book. "You will not go into the wash. If you are too near, a horn will say your name. You will step off. You will not wait to see if it says it twice." Oren looked up at the catwalk, at Mira, at the bar. "What does she wait for?" he said. "The false ones," Brask said. Oren was slight, burned already across the nose from the freight roof. He learned the paddle in an hour. He learned the horns by watching Mira pass the remaining brackets, one and seven. He asked her, in the thin hour before dawn when the belt had a gap and the glory-holes were being skimmed, what a false call was. "A name with no one in the wash," Mira said. "Or the wrong name." "How do you know before it speaks?" "I don't." "Then you wait with that bar up." "I wait." He said, "If it says me, I get out." "If it says you, and you are the one in the wash, that is a true call. I will not take that horn." He seemed to take this as a rule that would hold. He went back to the cool end. Brask, from the board, said, "Don't teach him the wash. Teach him the table." Yard one remained. It spoke when it should. Mira left it. Yard seven, at the hottest stretch, where the brick itself had a dull shine and the change of warmth on a passing face was sharp enough to make a man turn his head, had gone quiet. It had spoken, the week before Oren came, the March name, the woman off the westbound. Mira had been on the catwalk with her hands down, the bar still at her belt. The name had no body in the wash. She had turned back to take it, and by then the horn had stopped, and Brask's rule was to destroy a false call in the speaking, not after. She had noted the name. She had gone on. Since that night yard seven had not spoken. She began to raise the bar at ten paces from seven, because a quiet horn after a false name was a horn she did not trust. One night she raised the bar, and the next, and one more yet, and the horn stayed quiet. On the fourth night she kept her hands down to see. It did not speak then either. On the fifth she raised the bar again. As the iron came up the horn made the sound that precedes a name, a click in the grille--it held. Witt was at the pots. No one was in the wash. Mira kept the bar up the length of the yard. The name did not come. She did not smash a silent horn. Brask had not given her silent horns. Brask counted brackets at dawn. "One and seven," he said. "Seven waits on the bar," Mira said. He looked at her face, which had the wash on it still, a flush that did not go in the morning air. "Then it times you," he said. He did not say what that meant. He wrote on the board: remaining, one, seven. He did not send for replacements yet. The rail office still had names on the wash. The stall came on a night with no wind. A bottle in seven wedged against a dog and began to drag the chain. The belt complained. Brask was at the tank, turning the cock for the morning water-car that would cut off at dawn. Calla had both hands on the table. Mira was on the catwalk, past one, which had not spoken, walking toward seven with the bar already in her fist, because that was how she had learned those ten paces. Oren went into the wash. He went because the stall was there and because he had been told that a horn would say his name if he was too near. Seven was the horn over his head. He took the hook from the ladder rail and stepped down onto the bricks beside the belt, where the air was a wall. He got the hook on the bottle. He waited for the name. Mira saw him as she came into the change of warmth at seven. The bar was already raised. She was looking for the shine on the brick, the turn of a head, a body on the bricks. The horn spoke. It said, "Mira Fenn." Oren's head was down over the hook. He was waiting. Brask had told him: if a horn speaks your name, you step off. He did not hear Oren. He heard a woman's name, and it was not a name that bound him, and he kept the hook where it was. The name was hers. The body in the wash was not. A false call. She brought the bar down to stop the wrong name. She took the grille on the second blow and the diaphragm on the third. The name stopped. The belt did not. Oren, waiting for a warning that no longer came, stayed on the bricks with the hook in the stalled bottle and the wash on his hands. He made a sound then that was not a name. Calla dropped her paddle. Mira came down the ladder at seven and pulled him by the shirt. The shirt came away at the cuffs. His wrists were already going, and the insides of his arms, and the place at his throat where he had bent toward the bottle. She got him to the packing floor. The ware came on and broke against the unattended table. Brask left the tank and brought the bucket that was kept for burns, and the grease, and the cloths. Oren did not speak. He looked at the empty bracket over seven a long time, as if a word might still come out of it. They wrapped him. At first light the freight that sometimes stopped for water took him on the caboose, bound for the county rooms at the junction. Brask wrote a paper for the agent. He did not ask Mira for a smash-report. The housing from seven was still on the catwalk, split. The floor worked the day out because the pots could not be left. At dusk the night crew stood in the shade of the packing shed, where the heat of the lehr was only a line on the air. Witt had cut tags from the tin of an old crate, one tag for each bracket that had ever held a horn, empty or not, smashed or not, seven tags. He set a nail keg on the bricks. "We are not waiting on the freight for new ones," Witt said. Calla said, "A name that is wrong is worse than no name. He waited." A puller from the day shift, who had come back because the word had gone to the bunkhouse, said, "The rail office will want them up again." "The rail office did not have its hands in the wash," Calla said. Brask stood with the shift-board under his arm. He did not tack a new sheet. He said, "You are sentencing the horns." Witt said, "We are." They dropped tags. The keg received them, one after another, tin on tin. Seven. Brask counted. He did not put a tag of his own. He looked at Mira. "You are horn-walker," he said. "You finish them." Yard one was still up. It had been true. The sentence did not keep a true call. Mira took the bar. She walked the yards. She struck yard one and the remaining metal from the empty posts, the bolts and the tongues and the split housing at seven, until the catwalk held only iron posts without mouths. She put the wreckage in the crate with the older tags. She took the crate to the dry wash behind the tank, where the works dumped cullet, and she beat the housings until they would not sit on a bracket again. The glass-dump took the pieces. The lehr, behind her, ran on. The wash did not cool. Cool had been gone from those yards long enough that the catwalk kept no memory of it, not for a smashed horn and not for a sentence. Brask came as far as the tank. He did not tell her to stop. When the crate was empty he said, "The freight will bring others." "I will walk them," Mira said. "The crew has sentenced what speaks." "Then I will walk what speaks, and I will finish it." He put her name on the shift-sheet again, same column. Horn-walker. There were no horns. He kept her on that circuit. She walked it. Nights after, the wash was the same seven yards of brick and chain and bottle. Without the horns the stall was only a stall. Calla shouted if she saw a body too near, and Witt from the pots; the shouting came late, when it came, and had no name in it. Mira walked the catwalk with the bar, which she no longer raised at ten paces, because there was nothing to raise it for. What called the walk now was only the change of warmth on her face as she passed the same yards. She knew them by little things. A breath at one. The door of heat at four. At seven the shine on the brick, and the turn of a head. She could have done it with her eyes shut. She did not shut them. Oren did not come back. A letter from the junction said he had been sent on to a sister in a town the railroad spelled differently from the sister. Brask read the letter to the floor and tacked it beside the old posting, which still said SPEAKING HORNS STAY, the paper browner, the tack rusted. No one took the posting down. The rail office wrote once about the contract and the water-cars. Brask wrote back that the wash was walked. He did not say by what. The replacements came on a Thursday freight, a crate of new horns packed in straw, brackets oiled, names not yet in them. The crew stood around the crate and did not lift it. Witt put his boot on the lid. Calla looked at Mira. Mira looked at Brask. They looked a long time. "The sentence holds," Brask said. He had the crate put in the tool crib, unopened. The names stayed in the pay-book, where they had always been. Mira went up the catwalk at dusk as she went up it every dusk. The belt started. The bottles came soft from the glory-holes and took the heat and gave it back and ran down toward hands that could hold them. She passed the empty posts. The warmth changed on her face. Brask kept her on that circuit. She did not leave.