Lighter Monday roundup

I just couldn't talk about this stuff in the same post as those horrendous stories.

Apparently the majority of women think there's something wrong with their bodies (including their breasts).

I wrote the other day about how Rebecca Traister's "All the Single Ladies" was a snapshot into my life. The Times today ran a piece that could be called "All the Single Ladies: China edition."

“Because they are highly educated, they hold well-paid jobs, they lose the financial incentive to get married,” says Zhang Xiaobo, a professor of economics at Peking University’s National School of Development.

OMG, this is my life:

Suitable mates are simply hard to find, said Ms. Cheng, who describes many men her age as “not mature or irresponsible.” Referring to another former boyfriend, she said: “When we wanted to do something, or go for food, he only liked to act cute and say with a smile, ‘We’ll do whatever you like.’ It made me feel like I had a son.” 

It reminds me of that line--Lili Taylor's line--from Mystic Pizza: "I'm not going to marry an asshole! It's the 80's! Why would I marry an asshole?" My sentiments exactly.

Changing topics, this piece about the Mediterranean diet pinpoints--I never could--what I hate about the word 'foodie.' Someone called me that once, and I recoiled.

“There is no word for ‘foodie’ in Italian. Food is central to everyone’s life here. It’s normal to care deeply about food.” Quality and taste are held to a high standard in Italy and throughout the Mediterranean. There is a great respect for the craft of food production, and although dishes are often prepared simply, excellent ingredients are valued and shortcuts that compromise quality shunned. It was an important reminder of the wisdom of moving away from low-quality, hyper-processed foods — which are often laden with unhealthy additives, sodium and sugar — in favor of top-notch ingredients, served close to their source and simply prepared.

In the same way that I hate when people (eg RM) obsess about how "healthily" I eat. I just eat food. The best pinpointing of that was in the article about how France has never embraced superfoods, which have less appeal when people just eat food.

I guess at the root of it, it's weird to see people fetishize or exoticize something that's second-nature to me. Almost in the same way that it's weird to see high-end Russian food sold for a fortune. I've been making Russian beet salad every weekend--to last the week and at a cost of a few dollars. The Russian food that goes for a premium at restaurants is similar to what's derided as "poor people food" (another term that shocked me, for various reasons, the first time I heard it years ago).

RM isn't the only one who associates nutritious eating with some kind of cultish mania. There are people who legitimately think that eating healthily is a sacrifice. I have a morbidly obese family friend who just can't get past the idea that, at heart, I really want to eat animal products and my dietary choices are based on preternatural restraint. In fact, I don't believe that sustained dietary habits can be based on restraint; you have to truly love and enjoy your food. And I do. I eat my beet salad (which is really a salad of root vegetables), and my very flavorful pasta, and I feel for the paleos or other carbophobes who don't allow themselves those foods.

While we're on the topic of things people don't get: style is not only a personal thing, but a body-type thing. Clothes made for larger women don't work for smaller women, not just because of proportions. Larger women can pull off bolder, more experimental things. (I cannot.) This was a constant battle with my mother before she lost her mind: she would constantly try to foist on me clothes that would look awful. She insisted that they were very trendy, etc., and they well may have been but they wouldn't have worked on me. My first rule of clothing (and shoes) is, wear the clothes and shoes; don't let them wear you.

Friday evening roundup (brought to you by food poisoning and spring cleanup)

Don't let the meat industry convince you that you need meat.

Good for the U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic for being out and proud and inspirational.

God forbid women have ambition, exist, or act on what's attractive to them:

of all the awful things i've read on the internet, "women are the hitlers of sex" might be my favorite pic.twitter.com/0jgJY4EoYi

— stay at home cat mom (@Coruscating) April 3, 2016

Making abortion inaccessible only tortures women.

An excellent explanation of why veganism is consistent with choice:

That organic compound within the womb takes a long time to develop consciousness – and thus to hold sentience. But the woman, whose womb it is, is conscious the whole time. If she is suffering, or being tortured by carrying a baby she doesn’t want – or worse still, doesn’t want the pain or suffering of child birth – then that is something we should take seriously. And given that we have the medical knowledge to help get those cells out of her, we err greatly by denying her the right to do so. There’s no difference between a foetus in the earlier stages and semen, in rational terms. Cells are cells. So we should be pro-choice in abortion for the same reasons we are pro-choice about whether men want to carry ejaculated semen around in their pocket all day.

Dr. Nerdlove on boundaries and how toxic people abuse the social contract to erode them. So much RM in there.

Bilingual toddlers are smarter.

Halloween roundup

Laptop still acting up (maybe gone forever); blogging from the iPad.

By now, the regularity of toddler shootings is old news, as is this brilliant display of what's banned but not deadly .

On and from Svetlana Alexievich. also: love Marlon James.

When the default viewpoint is that male feelings take precedence over women's security.

On harassment in science.

If you really understand what I nonetheless appreciate to be a great explanation, more power to you.

I get not teaching kids gender roles but I'd tell this woman to chill the f* out.

How f*ed in the head do you have to be to ask cosmonauts how they'll manage without makeup.

An insightful set of perspectives about sex in the era of nobody cares.

I love, love this explanation of when it's controlling to make demands about your SO's appearance. Also love these two Ask Polly pieces (yes, I know I already linked to one) about being open about your needs and owning them (see also Modern Love). Actually, Tracey Stewart's profile speaks some to just saying no to people who don't accept you as-is, and to the ethics of eating animals.

The symbolism of Lisa's vegetarianism.

I never tweeted about my cat going down to the kebab shop; apparently I'm the only one.

Most vegetarians who eat meat aren't actually vegetarians.

Sunday roundup

It's scary how easy it is to perpetuate internet hoaxes.

This sexbots conspiracy logic is... amazing.

On a quasi-related note: dating is not quite a numbers-game.

Rebecca Traister is a national treasure.

I love the Muppets. I love Kermit. I do not need to imagine his felted member encased by hog flesh. That, after all, is what the non-ABC-affiliated internet is for. (Seriously: Don’t Google Muppet sex.)

Animal ag is bad for poor people and the environment, not to mention the animals (yes, even "human" meat). And for public health.

Take care in how you interpret nutritional news.

Saturday roundup

Butter is bad for you and also cruel, even if the dairy industry can buy The Onion.

I could have done without the author's quoting a sex offender at the end, but this live-tweet of a hyena sex-fail is otherwise amazing.

I'm not a fan of parental oversharing; must be because I'm uneducated.

Interesting piece about teaching masculinity. I've just disengaged from a Twitter discussion with someone who commented on my "Trainwreck" post. I disengaged because dude was repeatedly missing my points, although I did mean to eventually direct him to Dr. Nerdlove, who has written extensively about toxic masculinity and about how gender stereotypes hurt men, too.

Big Friday roundup

The heartbreaking story of an escaped fisherman slave and how to help those like him.

The Chamber of Commerce is pushing cigarettes around the world. Industrial ag is pushing industrial ag.

The NRA does not represent all gun owners.

There's no doubt what the Civil War and confederate flag are really about.

If slavery was ended in spite of how entrenched it was in the economy, can we do the same for our dependence on fossil fuels?

Gary Younge on having lived in the U.S. as a quasi-outsider.

I have no place commenting on the debate about whether black beauty-bloggers have a duty to incorporate activism into their internet presence, but I wanted to bring attention to it because it's an age-old issue for every writer, artist, etc.: is it possible to be apolitical in a world that forces you to choose sides, and what are the perils of speaking out?

Bree Newsome is AMAZING.

Misty Copeland is AMAZING.

Charles Blow remembers his cousin, victim of a hate crime.

The women transforming a Dhaka slum.

Dr. Francis on the shortcomings of the Nobel Prize, and the Royal Society on Tim Hunt. Phil Plait sums it up very well.

MRAs continue to lower the bar.

For those who cry "false advertising!" over make-up: women are being, not advertising; we're

not things for your consumption.

On anti-Americanism in Russia.

An interesting profile of the chef at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (link in Russian). She talks aboutsushi (turns out it's everywhere because it symbolizes the era when the country first opened itself to the world), sanctions (she's using more local vegetables), fashion (yes, everyone wears high heels, no matter her age, dill (we sure do love that stuff).

If you're going to eat animals, think about that when you get outraged about dog meat festivals. Also, meat and dairy are exacerbating the drought.

I'm left out of the global conspiracy, too.

I have no use for Kim K., but I object to her objectification.

Comedians who don't understand the concept of punching up, not down.

About that dildo flag.

Single people are people, too.

I really feel for both people, this is such a heartbreaking story. I've written before and linked to pieces about feminism and weight (and written about associated complexities). People are attracted to different body types, and we can't help what we're attracted to (though time is supposed to help).

This is awful but I've done the same to a lesser extent (i.e., I've talked about cats and food politics to try to drive dudes away).

Wow are guys really this distracted?

I wanted to do them all. Men – young and old, thin and heavy, coiffed and shaggy – walked past my gate in Hartsfield-Jackson as I waited for my connection to visit my sister in Connecticut. Not all rated attractive, but I found the idea of sex with each captivating.

The young man with the tight shoulders, the bookish guy with Clark Kent glasses, the soldier in fatigues? Yes, yes and yes. The sweatshirt-clad-torn-jeans man was not my type, but I ogled him anyway.

I had been taking estrogen replacement therapy for four years prescribed after my hysterectomy at 36. But two weeks ago, my doctor added a special cream to boost my testosterone. She warned me of “odd symptoms,” but she didn’t mention this constant sexual distraction.

This woman is absolutely right that schools have no business asking about birth methods in assessing kids' behavioral issues; but she errs in suggesting that vegan kids may be any more vitamin-deficient than omnivores. That's just as baseless.

This vegan-cheesemaker used to hate vegans.

Sunday roundup

Because of the nature of the apparel industry, even companies that genuinely try to maintain fair labor practices end up struggling with their supply chains.

Vox's very balanced explainer on Palin, Duggar, and Dunham.

Don't default on your student loans; take Dr. Rubidium's advice (expand on the thread). All that said, there's truth in this:

Moneyed stumbles never seem to have much consequence. Tax fraud, insider trading, almost criminal nepotism — these won’t knock you off the straight and narrow. But if you’re poor and miss a child-support payment, or if you’re middle class and default on your student loans, then God help you.

But I have little sympathy for the prior paragraphs, because I have made life and career choices based on the fact that I (still) have student loans. 

Guess what? Animal products are terrible for the planet! T-e-r-r-i-b-l-e. And you absolutely don't need them, even though society insists otherwise. No wonder vegans get the freak treatment; we're awfully threatening to the idea that plant-based eating is feasible and healthy.

Why the alpha-male concept is literally misguided.

There is so much wrong with this transphobic drivel that I almost don't want to link to it, but let's discuss. Here's an excellent rebuttal of the race analogy. As for everything else, I don't know where to start, in part because she mangles valid points (that Laverne Cox made in her post, which I linked to in my previous post). No, womanhood isn't defined by nail polish (but it is also not defined by anatomy). True, trans women had perhaps benefitted from male privilege and had been protected from the indignations women face, but who the f* cares; those indignations, also, neither define women or hit us all evenly. Haven't you heard (mostly young) women talk about how feminism is a crock because they've never experienced any sexism? Are they not women? Yes, women's colleges face challenges in officially incorporating trans women into their way of saying things, while still centering women, but they're savvy and they'll find a way. While still centering women.

On a related note: nobody's auditing your choices in personal care; feminism has better things to do than police your use of lipstick.

 

That said, I couldn't find anything to be offended about in Vernon's "I like being thin" piece; I identify with most of it, minus the part about other people caring. But especially about how the best part is not having to care.

I don't understand--rather, I don't want to understand--why people are hating on Serena Williams.

Friday ramble: the price of reasonableness

Not that it really matters, Anne and I still have a running joke going back almost seventeen years, from the time we arrived at her parents' beach cottage on L'Ile d'Oleron. We were settling in and dusting things off when she said--with a level of enthusiasm more understandable for getting dessert or seeing a movie--"A., tu sais ce qu'on va faire? On va nettoyer la salle de bain!" I called her on it--on speaking so excitedly about the prospect of cleaning the bathroom"--and we laughed, and continued to drop references to that moment in postcards and letters, and then emails. In fact, when I let her know that I'd be in her neck of the woods and asked if she'd be around, she naturally said, "on va nettoyer la salle de bain!"

I tell you this now because some dude (SD) just asked me out in an email that was a quadruple fail, the first fail of which was starting his email with, 'we worked together in painting the bathroom last weekend...' (in reference to National Rebuilding Day). I mean, I don't need much in the way of airs or flowery language, but... really? And that was actually the least discouraging part of his message.

A pretty wonky Friday roundup

A nuanced article about the challenges Europe faces in managing immigration while honoring humanitarian imperatives.

Don't justify the presence of minorities in terms of their contribution to society.

Poland, for all its wartime suffering, could stand to confront its own history.

The Middle East's long history of sectarian conflict is somewhat over-spun. So is the sectarian aspect of the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

I cannot overstate the quality and substance of this piece on proliferation potential (or lack thereof) in the Middle East.

How to interact with child (and other) beggars abroad--specifically, acknowledging their humanity without perpetuating the industry--is a really tough issue. I felt awful, most recently in Cambodia, not about not buying things from the child vendors (because you just shouldn't) but for reflexively turning away this one amputee who was making his rounds on this side street (in Siem Reap) full of outdoor cafes. 

I'm impressed with Playboy's response to Megan Murphy.

On a related note--one of not dictating how women own and otherwise manage their bodies and their sexuality--here's a lovely piece on the symbolism of Katy Perry's breasts. The takeaway: we needn't let our relationship with our bodies be limited or influenced by creepy dudes on the street (or elsewhere).

Guys may get all weird about your body. They’ll blame you for reactions they may have to it, act as if it exists for them, tell you to cover it up or show it off, adorn it or keep it plain. Just do what my daughter’s other pal, Taylor, says to do: Shake it off.

Honoring women's supposed superior emotional intelligence, can also be a trap.

The trouble is, there’s no real evidence that women are any more emotional than men. Women can be and often are more expressive of their emotions, but this is again largely due to cultural stereotypes. Men can be as emotional as women, if not more. Many women receive bombardments of violent threats online from men who are upset about her harmless opinions; this is not indicative of a gender that has greater control over their emotions.

What do men value in a partner? It's not always the same things they want for their daughters.

It's okay to have curly hair again! Unless you're on TV (that article, too, speaks to what characteristics "we" value in women). Speaking of hair... I've already written about its treatment in "Bad Jews," and now the Times is on it.


I'm the first to agree that (some) picky eating is unnecessary, but this seems to be a good context in which to point out that there are ethical reasons for not eating animals. On that note, I was re-referred to this piece by the author of a clickbaity piece in Slate that I won't even link to. I don't have the energy to point out flaws in the argument right now, but I will agree that eating one way or another shouldn't be a source of sanctimony. But it's silly to dismiss the environmental benefits of eating plants by comparing the caloric yield of beef versus broccoli. It's also absurd to dismiss those who think differently as dogmatic or anti-science. Besides, Jane Goodall wants you to eat plants.

Did I mention that you don't need dairy?

Yup, Eastern Europeans live with their parents.

Saturday roundup

North Korea outsources slavery. (You can also support slavery by purchasing shrimp from Thailand).

Justice reform is so common-sense that it's bipartisan even in this climate.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' powerful tribute to David Carr.

Heer Jeet on Giuliani and D'Souza, by way of the history of the National Review.

Embedding this so you have access to it:

The tragedy of Elie Wiesel http://t.co/f40oXH1JTb
— Rose glow barberry (@rgbrb) February 21, 2015

It baffles me that food politics is portrayed as elitist; the consequences of our destructive food system disproportionately damage the poor (here and elsewhere).


Here's the coherent, less ad-hominem response to Monica Potts that actually addresses Potts' valid point about how women's colleges must continue to center (all) women:

One of Potts’ main concerns is the push on women’s campuses to eradicate words like “sisterhood” from use. But this isn’t an example of trans activism, as Potts puts it, being “indistinguishable from old-school misogyny”; that’s just old-school misogyny disguised as trans activism. Trans activism fights to make a world that is better for trans people, and while trans men are an important part of that, the fight to make a place for themselves at women’s colleges has nothing to do with them being trans and everything to do with them being entitled men.

Few professional women are taken seriously in China.

Misogyny is driving women off the internet.

And it's hard to draw the line between well-meaning and aggressive online behavior, so these tips for well-meaning guys are mostly good, but I find some are over the top. Social media is social media, not an echo chamber; someone can respond, interact, etc. without being a dick. 

Part of me can only feel bad for these dudes who think anyone cares what they think about cellulite.

Passive aggression isn't always inappropriate; it's prevalent for a reason.

The orgies of the one percent.

I really should just give credit to Martha Rose Shulman for trying to accommodate vegans, but I guess my ethnic/linguistic identity is overpowering my eating habits: "kasha" is not buckwheat. Kasha refers to any kind of porridge, and it can be synonymous with buckwheat porridge but it could also be oatmeal, cream of wheat, etc. When you're talking about buckwheat beyond porridge, please don't call it "kasha."

Two notes: (1) for example, my dad would warn me to not overcook pasta (or something) so that it wouldn't turn into kasha. (2) I was buying raw protein powder at WF when a vendor asked me what I did with it; I told her that I put it in my oatmeal. At which point she started trying to sell me meal replacements--"if you like any kind of -meal, try..."--and I told her that I wasn't looking for meal replacements but I don't think she understood the concept of oatmeal.

Monday roundup

There's probably enough here for several theme-based posts... but let's stick with one for now.

Pakistan's water crisis has some roots in bad policy (doesn't every country's?).

Ukraine's impromptu aid workers risk their lives to save lives.

Two books about Russia today.

The First Crusade did, indeed, hit Jews hard. As that column says, religious violence rarely sticks to its intended victims; it likes to maximize its harm.

Nazi Nobelists and Einstein's Jewish science.
 

I can't even type this without getting angry: women scientists of color get mistaken for janitors.

 

Trying to hard to annoint the deserving poor and exclude the "undeserving" leads to screwing over the most vulnerable. Keep in mind that "welfare" is in the eye of the beholder.

People do change their minds (maybe just not right away). Also, even scientists are prone to tribalism when it comes to deciding what to believe.

Could everyone reveling in righteous indignation over the public health risks from antivaxxers please also find some rage for the threats--such as MRSA--from antibiotic resistance in pigs? It's an international threat.
 
Nasdaq is warning investors about the end of meat.

There've been many moving tributes to David Carr; Jelani Cobb's is beautiful. Heer Jeet's is informative.

Plant-based eating helps obese kids. Also: here are some polite responses to stupid vegan questions.

There can be value in unrequited love. And science.

Saccogate, the sequel, may deserve its own post but I don't want to deal with it. Adria Richards has come out accusing Jon Ronson of factual errors regarding her part of the story, and there's the larger overall issue of recentering. Ronson has an important case to make--and you do feel bad for one or two of his case studies, particularly the sign selfie girls--but by spinning the stories, he detracts focus from all that. That being, in this digital age, there's disproportionate punishment for what could be incidental transgressions. There's a mob mentality that relishes the takedown, and next thing you know, the instigator could be the next target. But spinning the offenses to make them seem like innocent mistakes--or just neglecting to explore the damage they inflict or the social context they stem from--takes away from that argument. He could say, "Sacco tweeted something stupid and offensive, here's why it's so offensive even if she didn't realize it" instead of "poor Sacco was misinterpreted." And the point has been made that's it's not the Internet that fired her, or any of those people; the internet merely amplified the transgressions. I maintain that we should forgive people for stupid tweets, statements, etc... but that only works when there's an honest apology.

 

Charles Blow points out that we're already having a conversation about race, and that we don't have to agree about everything to keep having it.

This Jezebel piece is so bad I almost don't want to link to it (read this instead). The irony is that the first piece rants about how uninteresting science is (while noting its importance), but the second, more sciency piece is much better written, more interesting, more compelling. In terms of content: remember when someone accused me of being on the payroll of big food (because I noted that science did not support the assertion that salt was unhealthy)?

Louisiana is getting back in touch with its French side.

This was painful to read. More sex don'ts here and here.

This isn't new, and Jennifer Weiner doesn't add much value to the conversation, but let's take this opportunity to note that we don't need products to fix us.

Monday roundup

Let's not detain today's refugees the way we did Holocaust survivors.

In Greece's economic crisis, a rash of fake nurses for hire.

Religions have been bloody, but not intrinsically so.

As good food finds its way to the dumpster, food brands are scamming the poor.

Dietary tribalism serves no one.

In matters of love, women dream and men regret.

Big Saturday roundup

Boko Haram is horrendously violent.

I can't believe people are in denial about Christianity's violent history.

People in Ukraine are really hurting. Even people who are hurting, need art.

Somalia can't afford a loss of remittances.

Genital cutting is a horrible thing.

Livestock is sucking the west dry. Agriculture's impact on the climate.

Food security isn't just about growing more.

Measles kills, and it's heartbreaking.

Guatemala's child brides.

There is no perfect victim, but Cathy Young sure goes out of her way to discredit women.

Everyone heals in her own way.

Self-declared feminist man preys on women (and men). That story is horrible, and I'm not equating my own (non-violent) experience with it, but it does remind me of the vocally self-declared feminist man I dated years ago. He was manipulative and gas-lighting, and he was either uncomfortable with women on their own terms or thoroughly confused about what feminism meant.

Meet the face of the Men's Rights movement.

Who else betrays some very unflattering views about women? I could go on.

This village in India got its first fridge.

Your tax dollars at work: diagnosing Putin from a distance.

Rich people don't understand why Picasso's granddaughter has to go lowering the value of their collections to make money for charity.

The problem with McDonald's pay-with-love campaign (link to the cited Nation article here):

But at The Nation, Bryce Covert argues that the campaign’s problems go beyond its potential awkwardness. She calls the mandate that McDonald’s employees request “lovin’” from customers “a pretty blatant example of emotional labor: the requirement that a low-wage employee not just show up to work and adequately perform her duties, but that she put on a veneer of happiness and cheer for the customer to elicit an emotional response in him.” Emotional labor, she writes, “requires poorly paid people to slather a smile onto their face and cover up the real conditions under which they labor.”

And, she adds:
“McDonald’s has been one of the fast-food companies hit by massive, repeated waves of labor unrest by striking workers demanding better pay, the ability to form a union and an end to retaliation for their actions. Workers have been vocal about the fact that they and their families can’t survive on the money they make. But the company instead wants its customers to see employees who are genuinely delighted that a mother hugged her son in front of them.”

For Ms. Bachelder, the “lovin’” campaign embarrasses customers and maybe McDonald’s itself. In Ms. Covert’s formulation, it may do something worse: force McDonald’s workers to do more work for their already-low wages, and to pretend that they like it.

Whither general relativity?

Thought experiment: would you rather your kid grew up to be this man who walks walked miles to work, or Conrad Hilton III? 

You don't need more protein.

What kind of entitled jerk doesn't understand that kids aren't welcome at all weddings?

Which languages are hardest for native English speakers to learn?

The quotative like has gone mainstream.

Cats, and the Times is on it.

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.

 

Saturday roundup

Here's the Times obituary of King Abdullah but don't miss the story of his encounter with Queen Elizabeth.

Will Africa's economic growth also usher in greater food security?

Inconscionable state sponsorship of animal cruelty, all on behalf of the meat industry.

On combatting food waste.

The oceans are hurting.

Carmen Guadelupe Vasquez has been pardoned, but this travesty never should have gone this far.

Letting your kids walk around on their own is now apparently a crime.

Posting graphic pictures of your kids' colds should be a crime.

Yup any woman who takes issue with things is just jealous.

The problem with exclusively health-motivated vegans is that they often go too far and then give up.

Immigration: a photo essay.


Is dumb-shaming anti-vaxxers not the best way to go?

An excellent critique of media exaggeration/distortion, with the longterm impact and the position it puts experts in:

Stories like this make analysts like me crazy. It’s obviously careless reporting, yet I will encounter claims of a Second Artillery Unit “near Baekdusan” for years, if not the rest of my miserable life. I’ll have to deprogram graduate students and be the jerk who corrects people in meetings. All because no one at the Chosun Ilbo bothered to check with a single competent expert before running that story. What? Mark Stokes doesn’t have email? Henry Boyd at IISS was on vacation? There are literally half a dozen people who would have been happy to correct Chosun Ilbo had they bothered to send a single, solitary email.

So, no China is not deploying nuclear-armed missiles on Mount Baekdu. Instead, the 810 Launch Brigade out of Dalian froze their balls off spending a month reenacting the opening battle sequence on Hoth from Empire Strikes Back.

Take my vegan card if you want it

I'd recently blogged about Bad Jews the play and bad Jews the thing, in which I wrote,

Never mind that Jews--even American Jews of Eastern European origin--are not unlike feminists, which is mostly to say that although we're perceived by our respective haters as some kind of organized cabal, we're not only not monolithic, but we in-fight, question each other's credentials, and otherwise undermine each other. 

We can easily include vegans in the same analogy, with the vegan police at one end and chegans like me at the other, with sanctimonious vegansplainers at various points in between (eg., "don't talk about health! it's about the animals!" or "don't eat processed imitation meat! it's too salty").

Could you all just shut the f* up? Nobody cares. There's no cabal; it's not a cult. It comes down to whether you see 'vegan' as a useful, pragmatic shorthand--more useful for food than for people--than as a statement of identity. I recently wrote,

about how I don't love the labels vegetarian/vegan not because, as suggested in the article, some vegans are jerks (guess what: some omnivores are jerks, too) but because I choose not to define myself by the way I eat. There's a fine line between "I don't eat animal products" and "I'm a vegan," and it's the line between "this is what I do" and "this is what I am."

So I don't understand the fuss over what people call themselves, over this nonexistent vegan badge of honor:

Because I eat oysters, I shouldn’t call myself a vegan. I’m not even a vegetarian. I am a pescetarian, or a flexitarian, or maybe there’s an even more awkward word to describe my diet. At first I despaired over losing the vegan badge of honor—I do everything else vegans do—but I got over it. 

I'm not here to argue oysters; I'm here to argue labels. And Christopher Cox makes the labels point in his article about oysters:

There are dozens of reasons to become a vegan, but just two should suffice: Raising animals for food 1) destroys the planet and 2) causes those animals to suffer. Factory farms are the worst offenders, but even the best-run animal operations can’t get around the fact that livestock are the largest contributors to global warming worldwide and that the same amount of land used to feed one beef eater can feed 15 to 20 vegans. Animals are terribly inefficient machines for turning plants into food, and an inefficiency of this scale is disastrous. 

And here, he makes the chegan point:

And when I pick out my dinner, I don’t ask myself: What do I have to do to remain a vegan? I ask myself: What is the right choice in this situation? Eating ethically is not a purity pissing contest... 

David Shiffman missed that point when he posted that article to his Facebook page with a snide comment:

Apparently it's ok for vegans to eat oysters because their harvest is sustainable and because they don't suffer. Ok then.

I thought that Mr. Cox effectively made the point that it's not helpful to talk about sustainability as "is it okay" or not. It's, what's the best choice in this situation. There are probably surely vegans who argue for purity and who suggest that a plant-based diet is impact-free; I'm not one of them. All diets have an impact. When we eat, we cause environmental damage. If we care enough, we can choose to minimize that environmental damage. And it's less about labeling oneself and losing nonexistent badges of honor, and more about the cumulative impact of individual choices. Jonathan Safran Foer said it very well in an interview about "Eating Animals"

I care about the environment, I try to buy good appliances, I certainly turn the lights off when I leave rooms, and so on and so forth, and yet I also fly. So should my getting off the plane say ‘Okay, I know that was bad, so I’m now bad, I’m going to leave lights on, I’m going to let my car idle.’ It’s nuts. I wish people would talk about food in a way that was more similar to how we talk about the environment. The question of ‘Are you an environmentalist or not?’ is nonsense. It just doesn’t make any sense.

And this is why rampant vegan-bashing is so mysterious to me. Cox wrote,

When I talked about this article with my editor at Slate, she said, “I won’t lie—you’ll be attacked viciously for being a vegan, and attacked equally viciously for not being a strict enough vegan.”

And indeed, look at the comments on the Facebook post and the replies to the tweet. Also, see how omnivores react with disdain at new vegan options--for example White Castle's vegan slider. It's kind of like dudes reacting with disdain to products for women; it's like they don't realize it's not about them.

I'm traveling tonight, and over the next few weeks, to places where vegan options may be hard to come by. I'll do my best, because I want to and not because I'm afraid the vegan police will pull my vegan card.

Quick Saturday roundup and ramble

Psychologists on the dark side.

Surprise! McDonald's treats its workers like $hit.

Misty Copeland on overcoming her struggle with body acceptance.

There are, unfortunately, many ways to be an annoying vegan (just like there are many ways to be an annoying omnivore), but disease-shaming people has got to be the worst.

I allowed myself to get into a Twitter pissing fight with a lesser variety of sanctivegan last night. I'd tweeted my love for Native Foods' vegan cheeseburger (in response to @vegan's tweet about research into a vegan cheeseburger). Which prompted someone to helpfully inform me that home-cooked "whole" food is healthier. OMG. ya think?! I was getting a (vegan) bacon cheeseburger thinking it was a superfood! She specifically called out the salt content--as more than is ever healthy. So I pointed her to summaries of the latest research on salt:

It's Time to End the War on Salt - Scientific American 
No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet - NYTimes.com
Is salt really so bad for you? - Salon.com 

But emphasized that the more important point was that it's good to indulge sometimes. I crave healthy food most of the time, but once in a while, a vegan cheeseburger really hits the spot, and it would be a pain to make at home.

I had this conversation in a less contentious setting earlier in the week, at happy hour. A very health-conscious, omnivore friend was disappointed with Native Foods because she'd hoped it would be healthier. She acknowledged that they had healthy offerings, but thought you could get better vegan at "regular" restaurants. Yeah, you can do pretty well at some regular restaurants... but sometimes a vegan cheeseburger really hits the spot. I get that that's hard to understand for someone who can just get a nonvegan cheeseburger whereever. For her, she was looking to 'vegan' as a proxy for healthy; to me, it's a proxy for more sustainable and less cruel. That's why Native Foods is for people like me.

I also don't dismiss the importance of nutrition for vegans in general. If you don't mind your nutrition, you risk ending up one of those assholes who vocally determines that veganism is unhealthy and that you immediately felt better upon eating animals. But the opposite can also be true: if you artificially limit your vegan diet with junk science (i.e., if you also try to eliminate gluten even though you don't have celiacs; if you eliminate salt because you're convinced it's bad; etc.) you also risk becoming one of those assholes who vocally quites veganism because you find it too limiting.

So do whatever works for you, but spare me the vegansplaining.

Massive Saturday roundup

Holy $hit, the torture report. And the political responses.

Why better policy needs data:

As scholars Dara Kay Cohen and Amelia Hoover Green argued in the Journal of Peace Research in 2012, such figures persist in part because there are incentives for advocacy groups to base their campaigns on dramatic claims. Assuming that a global public is ever more inured to tales of horror, it becomes tempting to choose the most shocking number over the most accurate one. This is not to say that advocacy groups maliciously distort known data, but to warn that the periodic fixation on extreme cases necessarily means that responses are less consistent than they could be, and may fail to address the social and conflict dynamics that lie beneath shock figures.
The challenge for policy professionals is identifying when sexual violence is being orchestrated for the purpose terror, and when it is a spontaneous criminal act. On the one hand, they must deal with gaps in data and the considerable complexity of sexual violence across diverse settings, and on the other, they cannot allow ongoing debates over that complexity to stand in the way of concrete action.
This tension between knowledge and action can in part be resolved by seeing reliable research not as a distraction from, but as in fact integral to, effective policy. Organizations — whether governmental, non-governmental, or inter-governmental — need to invest in knowledge.

It's been a big week for blaming victims, with Bob Jones University coming in worst, followed closely by Princeton Mom. Sexual assault isn't something anyone "deserves" in spite of what you may find even in literature (oh, when writers we admire disappoint). So yeah we can train women to be prepared with language, or we can move toward a yes-means-yes paradigm because the onus is not on them, not on 'no.'

Lena Dunham speaks out on speaking out. Patton Oswald on Bill Cosby.

Also--in reference to some of these comments--it's not up to any of us to tell victims how they should feel.

Ironic that we're talking about what is about ethics in journalism; fact-checking isn't optional.

That's also, as we know, an issue in science, and press releases matter.

Toronto man is arrested for banking while black.

In appreciation of Michel Du Cille.

The cromnibus is bad for food. Organic farming really does deliver, but the certification system is broken. Wheat is very sustainable.

A teacher is fired for speaking out about dairy.

Very few chickens are humanely raised.

This is a more interesting discussion than I have time to address right now, but I've written on these pages about how I don't love the labels vegetarian/vegan not because, as suggested in the article, some vegans are jerks (guess what: some omnivores are jerks, too) but because I choose not to define myself by the way I eat. There's a fine line between "I don't eat animal products" and "I'm a vegan," and it's the line between "this is what I do" and "this is what I am."

Also on atheists and vegetarians.

I'm not advocating baking with animal products, but here's some interesting science-of-baking info.

We're coming up on the year of the pulses.

The prof took it too far, but we should hold restaurants and other establishments more accountable for posted prices.

There's even more plastic in the oceans than you thought.

Note that people who suffer from kids on planes complain about the parents, not the kids. Probably these parents (but not the last one, who is awesome).

What do you call the DC-area airport in Virginia that does not suck.

Penguins with iPads (because they improve their sex lives!)

Sunday roundup

Attorneys General shouldn't be colluding with energy companies.

India weakens its environmental regulations, which, mind you, were problematic (i.e., a source of bribery, etc.).

Most people (present company included, unless you're new here, in which case: welcome) have no idea of the environmental impact of meat and dairy.

If you consume dairy, be aware of the antibiotics.

If you eat chicken, be aware of the abuses there.

I'm willing to pay more for my produce so that the farm workers behind it are paid and treated fairly, but it honestly shouldn't be up to me.

Awesome Luvvie on the cycle of racial incidents, complete with racial incident bingo card. See also.


Regardless of Rolling Stone's egregiously bad journalism, campus sexual assault is a huge problem and now is not the time to doubt survivors. The frat's denial letter is bullshit.

"Wild" showcases every woman's least favorite game.

The anniversary of the Montreal Massacre makes showcases how far some will go to harm women who don't conform to the status quo. Which is party why this is so important:

It's almost astonishing that the same gender which relies on the 'UR UGLY' form of intellectual debate has managed to maintain control over society's most privileged institutions.

and

But the kind of feminism I practice seeks to liberate women from the constraints of a patriarchy which relies on our physical and symbolic oppression to maintain male power and privilege. The use of our aesthetic appearance as a means of perpetuating that control is one of the silliest and most asinine successes of male rule - yet until recently, it's always proven so effective, with countless women self censoring out of fear of the verbal abuse that might reign down upon them if they dare to challenge the status quo or the behaviour of particular men.

and

The very act of refusing to prop up male privilege and entitlement renders a woman obsolete in the eyes of those people who enthusiastically embrace and benefit from such disparity; to them, the only purpose women serve is as glorified fuck machines and vehicles to elevate their status among other men. It's little wonder that men who view women like this would imagine that denying us the compliment of their dicks is the best way to disempower and humiliate us - but it sure is funny that they think we would care.

Please don't mommyjack other people's lives (and if you feel strongly about reminding people that pets aren't children, maybe work on your own issues).
 The Red Cross is such a shady organization.

Saturday roundup

Two thoughts on Cosby. Actually, three and four.

This UVA assault and subsequent miscarriage of justice is so horrendous that I wish it were harder to believe.

Kudos to the U.K. for denying entry to a dangerous misogynist. By the way, I'm disgusted rather than flattered by disparaging comments about other women's bodies.

Another thought on the shirt.

Tracie McMillan's excellent piece on the Detroit Whole Foods makes the very key point that "shoppers wanting simple, affordable healthy food, rather than an aspirational product, have better options elsewhere." But... there's more to it than that, and that it shouldn't be up to or otherwise on the shoulders of shoppers: someone bears the cost of food that is "more affordable" to shoppers, and that someone includes grocery store workers, farm workers, and other food workers. Not to mention animals and the environment (and the people who live in that environment). I am not judging people who choose less expensive food, much less for whom it's not a choice; I'm judging the system that only makes food affordable to some at the expense of others.

In fact, I can afford more sustainable food in part because it's easier with plant-based food, but I often fail to make similar choices when it comes to clothes. I like clothes; I like buying clothes; and I like not spending a lot of money on them. Maybe if I thought for a minute that paying more for my clothes meant that the people making them would get paid more, I'd give the sourcing more thought... but more importantly, it shouldn't be my choice to make: I want the clothing available to me for purchase to come from decently paid workers in safe work environments. Of course given the option I'm going to opt to spend less.

Which brings us to the bigger issue: it's hard to "solve" one social justice issue without butting up against another. Tressie MC brought this up on Twitter this week with regard to Uber: Uber may be a shitty company, but it had provided a service to African Americans underserved by traditional taxis. Someone asked her,

@tressiemcphd But when we solve a racism problem by creating a workers' rights problem, how much problem are we solving?
— Presidente de China (@RSGAT) November 19, 2014

to which she replied,

You might be solving the problem of moving your black ass through the city when you need to?
— tressie mc (@tressiemcphd) November 19, 2014

And went on to make the point that we need better solutions overall so we're not pitting these imperatives against each other.

***

Intensive agriculture changes the way the biosphere breathes.

Climate change costs taxpayers.

There are limits to what money can accomplish.

Be a pastafarian, since CFSM is "not “anti-religion” and is instead “anti- crazy nonsense done in the name of religion.”" Rather than an anti-theist, who is, in Reza Aslan's words, "rooted in a naive and, dare I say, unscientific understanding of religion – one thoroughly disconnected from the history of religious thought" and whose writings are characterized by

the same sense of utter certainty, the same claim to a monopoly on truth, the same close-mindedness that views one’s own position as unequivocally good and one’s opponent’s views as not just wrong but irrational and even stupid, the same intolerance for alternative explanations, the same rabid adherents (as anyone who has dared criticize Dawkins or Harris on social media can attest), and, most shockingly, the same proselytizing fervor that one sees in any fundamentalist community.

Milk (from other animals) does not do a body good.