I play it occasionally and enjoy it. Definitely wouldn't say it's awful. The parkour aspect is a ton of fun, as kirby mentioned the shotgun is insane if you're used to playing scout in TF2, and the Titans aren't as obnoxious as I thought they'd be. It sucks that the community seems to have died off but it's still worth picking up for blowing off steam for a few hours a week. I was pretty suspicious of Titanfall at first but I'm glad I ended up buying it.

Which is the very long end of that spectrum, and still a far cry from the incubation (that's not the right word but I don't know a better one) of HIV that can last years.

A lot of Henry James' work provides an interesting perspective about American society and how it differs from European nations.
Vonnegut is always a fairly simple and easy read and talks a lot about the American dream. Pretty popular in high school.
Death of a Salesman, Moby Dick, and Blood Meridian are all good options that have already been mentioned, but if you have a hard time staying focused and don't read much the last two might be a stretch.
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon is an excellent choice, talks about American society in the 60s vs. the Reagan years, has a lot of implications for the American Dream as well. I'd also recommend Against the Day by Pynchon, save for it's 1,000 pages and that might be a little much for you. Still an excellent book though. His writing is incredibly deep, but still survives at a surface level if you haven't read too terribly much.
Empire or Hollywood, both by Gore Vidal, are historical fiction novels that could apply as well. Vidal's an amazing author and there's plenty to work with when analyzing those from the perspective of the American Dream.
Steinbeck is a quintessentially American author, Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, or In Dubious Battle are all good options, even more so if you have a basic understanding of the Bible.

My father tells me the only time he had to use corporal punishment as a child was when I repeatedly ran out into the street, despite him telling me not to. Little kids don't realize how dangerous cars are, and it's especially bad if you live on a major thoroughfare like we did. I'm pretty grateful to him for laying down the law in that situation, and it sounds like you have a pretty good system too. That shit's important.

These articles are probably my favourite content in all of TF2. Keep up the amazing work.

We also played a 3cp map in the last season of 4s (cp_whitefrost). I wasn't a huge fan but some folks on my team were fond of it. I don't think it's any better of a format than koth though.

I'm pretty active there because I can't ever get enough comp TF2 content and there are usually questions I can answer.
That being said, it's almost as bad. The front page over the last week or so has been full of multiple complaints about the 6s metagame, complaints about the comp community in general, and tons of incredibly general threads about "how to play x class in y format." They're so general as to be completely useless, and they've also been posted literally dozens of times. I don't have a problem with people complaining if they have valid complaints that they back up with experience, but that's not what's there. All too often it's the "6s community won't let me run pyro to mid because it's too good/a circlejerk/elitist/whatever," and they refuse to take any other explanation.

I'd be scared that teams would run 4 demos and 2 medics, then Valve would use that as reasoning to bring back the sticky nerf.

If we're talking about caster combos, I'd love to see a energetic play by play commentator like Lange or Cbear combined with a more analytical person like Gggygly for the stalemates and breaks in the action.
That being said, TFTV has a lot of excellent casters and you can throw pretty much any two of them in and have a quality cast.

Anecdotal, but both my parents are teachers in low-middle class schools and have been assaulted by students multiple times in their careers. Worst case involved military grade explosives that some asshole somehow got a hold of. Claimed it was a prank.

It is, but my understanding was the streamer didn't want thousands of people see him getting arrested and so told the police to shut it down. Could be wrong though.

Any scout can point and click with their primary, but it takes a true master to cap points.

Everything they did was standard procedure. There were definitely moments when the officers grated on me too ("What are you laughing about?"), but when you have a call reporting a gunman in action, you won't worry so much about hurting people's feelings. I imagine we would have a different emotional response if we saw from the perspective of the officers (call comes in about reported gunfire, possible bomb, etc.) than from a streamer just playing some vidya games.

Eh, I put down $30 in the I49 auction (I think) for a rocket launcher signed by Boomer. Of course a lot of that has to do with a desire to take part in a community event, especially when the money is going to a good cause, but I don't think there's anything too obsessive about getting an "autograph." I would never pay real money to a trader for a signed weapon, but if there's a player you particularly admire for some reason, getting a signed weapon is a way to show that he's someone you enjoy watching and (somewhat) emulate in-game. Especially if that player's known for some specific trait, like going for melee kills with the sword, using the direct hit, something offbeat. Which is silly, but you can't deny a Pain Train signed by Ggglygy would have some appeal.

So does Valve legitimately not know about the invisible players bug? I assumed it was something they'd work on in the long run, but it seems like it should be more of a priority than scope jumping...