Saturday roundup (normal edition)

Nepal's child grooms' tough life.

For the gazillionth time: yes soy means deforestation, but that's mostly the soy animals eat, not the soy people eat.

Do what you will with this information, but the article has a very handy and reasonable take on what veganism is and isn't about.

Why does government research have to support animal torture?

It's silly to call vegan food "fake." Coconut milk and soy milk, for example, have always been called milks.

Cory Booker explains that plant-based eating shouldn't be considered subversive.

Factory farms continue to be the nightmare that keeps on giving.

As a child of Blockade survivors: I cannot overstate how f*ed up the concept of a 'Leningrad Blockade Diet' is. 

The haters can suck it; Picky Woman has found love.

Algorithms aren't everything.

Medical errors are significant.

Don't take medical advice from celebrities and certainly don't steam your genitalia.

Have you ever seen a small child try to crawl into a uterus? Are you confused when it's appropriate to refer to women as females?

Sadly, Tom Stoppard's latest appears to be disappointing, at least in the science department.

Why do we hate the sound of certain words?

 

This week has me thinking I've been unfair to Alexandra Petri; I've found her column to be a waste of space, or at least mostly so, but her take Obituaries for Men are brilliant (though you could also check out #myozobituary). Her other column this week was only a 50 percent waste of space; she made some excellent points, but could have made them in half as many words. So really, maybe it's just that her editor is falling down on the job. Because Petri really nails the leggings issue:

It is not your responsibility to protect men from themselves. Or to protect people from themselves. It is your responsibility to be yourself, as beautifully and fully as loudly as you wish. That should include being considerate, of course. That should include being polite, sure. It would be lunacy never to take anyone’s possible reaction into account. That’s the essence of politeness — making allowances for others. But you are not answerable for the thoughts and reactions of others. They are.

You are not here for their convenience.

That's it for this post... I need a whole other post for Chaitgate, and even then I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.