Linky Friday: Food, Guns & Family
Family:
Photo by DaPuglet 
[Fa2] I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that women are required to take their husband’s surname, but I sort of am. Blame anime, where Gendo Ikari took his wife’s name instead of the other way around.
[Fa3] Good dog!
[Fa4] #Heroes
[Fa5] The joke is tired and old and we should move on from it, so much so that the fact it’s a joke is patently obvious, but lordy lordy is this criticism. overwrought.
[Fa6] Teeth aren’t worth what they used to be.
Food:
Photo by flavouz
[Fo2] How the government subtly influences what we eat. As my wife says about delivering babies, intervention begets more intervention. It’s interesting to watch this sort of thing be used to argue in favor of nudgy taxes and the like.
[Fo3] Heh. “Big Pasta“.
[Fo4] Bring it on!
[Fo5] Well, if you’re going to have the government in the business of telling people what they can call things, this seems like an application I can get on board with!
[Fo6] Things are still not looking so good at Subway. What’s your favorite sandwich chain?
Mindspace:
Photo by LZ Creations
[Ms2] Looking at the biological basis of social behaviors.
[Ms3] Healthline Medical Review looks at why men don’t talk about depression. Also, super-serious respect for The Rock here. David Nutt makes the case for LSD as a treatment.
[Ms4] Lionel Shriver explains the virtues of catastophizing. {Me}
[Ms5] A look at the workings and history of the Rorschach Test.
Health:
Photo by The_JIFF
[He2] At the risk of sounding like a broken record, EMR focuses on billing and compliance because it’s customers are hospitals and government rather than the physicians who use it and the patients who it’s supposed to benefit.
[He3] Should we be sleeping twice a day instead of once? Evidently not.
[He4] Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
[He5] An interesting look at the history of the FDA.
Transportation:
Photo by Olivier Pasco
[Tr2] I’m not surprised that people on that Southwest flight that went down were wearing their oxygen masks technically wrong. I am surprised they were wearing it intuitively wrong. That honestly tells me that they might need to design the masks to be more intuitive, if they can. (Also, once you have the mask on, selfie away man. YOLO!)
[Tr3] With Ford’s recent announcement, this feels kind of like Toyota trolling them.
[Tr4] I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a Dutch Reach but it does make sense.
[Tr5] I’m not sure if this qualifies as backfiring. I’ve always assumed that the point was specifically to reduce tarmac time rather than necessarily getting you there quicker. Most people, though not all, will take getting there later if they can avoid three hours stuck on the runway.
Weapons:
Photo by Coutelier à Thiers
[We2] This is such an obvious loophole I’m surprised more people haven’t tried it.
[We3] If you think about it, knife owners in Britain and the US really have themselves to blame for flaunting their knives everywhere and failing to agree to common sense regulation earlier.
[We4] Woah, that’s badass.
[We5] Goodness. I still can’t believe this is actually real. But wait, there’s more!
Fa6: Oh, they can all get off my lawn. I got a QUARTER per tooth when I was a child and was happy for it. I also didn’t get paid for making As in school – which was something that some of my peers did and I felt terribly hard done by that my parents expected me to make As for “nothing.”
He1: I recently started taking Vitamin D in gummi form (I probably need it, and the tablets upset my stomach). I confess if I were not more disciplined I’d eat more than the permitted number of gummis per day. I probably need to buy some Swedish Fish or something…
Ms4: I am a big time catastophizer. On the one hand, it means I am always super-prepared and not prone to melting down when the “unexpected” happens (because I already expected it) and I do things like have a print out of the reservation number for the hotel, and an extra credit card in case the one I used to hold the reservation was declined, and phone numbers of other hotels in the area in case the one I booked at lost my reservation and was full up….but on the other hand, living like that is exhausting and there have been many times I’ve worked myself up into a mild panic about something that turned out to be nothing. On the third hand, I am always grateful when things turn out less-bad than I expected (which is nearly always always). I confess I’ve contemplated CBT or similar to make me catastophize less but I do wonder if my anxiety is a big reason why I get so much stuff done and am so on top of things, and I’d hate to lose some of that….Report
He1: read the article. Oh, thank goodness, it’s one of those parody sites. (Still: fat soluble vitamins like A, in great excess, can cause problems.)Report
Testify! My kids get a buck per tooth. The trick is that I got a roll of those gold-colored dollar coins, all brand new and shiny. My kids are old enough that I expect they have figured out that the tooth fairy and Santa aren’t real, but they aren’t so fool as to spoil a good racket.
Oh, and I too refuse to pay them for good grade, but my mother-in-law slips them cash. My side of the family is far more academically minded. This is not a coincidence. In my family being rewarded for good grades would be like being rewarded for successfully changing underwear.Report
Amen – that was what we did when ours were still young enough to look for the tooth fairy’s services. And I do expect that they’d figured it out long before the last outs, but we’re about to sacrifice easy money by admitting it.Report
@fillyjonk I distinctly remember the upgrade from a dime to a quarter among my peers. (My own family did not participate in this upgrade.) I was all excited once to lose a tooth at my 2nd family’s house, because A WHOLE QUARTER would be the result :D. (And it was.)Report
I believe I got a quarter, too. To be fair, though, that was about enough to buy a candy bar, as I recall. That’s still less, adjusted for inflation, than the article’s going rate of ca. $4 to $5, with which you could probably buy 2 or 3 candy bars, assuming the rate my local supermarket charges for one-off bars, which is between $1.50 and $2.00.
I never got paid for grades, either. I didn’t feel particularly aggrieved, but then most of my classmates didn’t get paid, either.Report
Tr4: Its probably a laughable thing, but to American’s who have never visited the Netherlands or other countries that are densely packed in the urban areas and very bicycle dependent it’s just impossible to visualize this. Most of American construction has been built after roads were laid down, where in cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem (my favorite of the Dutch cities), Rotterdam, ect. roads are being shoe-horned into cities never designed for them. Now add a bike lane and that space is even tighter. In most of Europe cyclist have absolute right of way in all circumstances, and hitting one in any form is criminal.Report
Hell, I do a full check behind just because people driving in my neighborhood get a bit too close when passing. You’ll see a lot of cars missing wing mirrors because of it. I’ve actually taken to folding my street side mirror in when I park in the street.Report
My passenger side mirror cover is broken right now from a guy pulling across it while I wasn’t even in it. My neighborhood is pretty self enclosed, but that also means the kids and also some adults are a bit braver than they should be so you have to be even more vigilant in some ways. And in town is worse. I mindlessly still sometimes do a walkaround of the car before getting in just out of muscle memory sometimes. Habits.Report
Fo2:
Why, yes, intervention does breed intervention.
When you spend decades and billions of dollars using the government as an advertising arm of your industry, it seems a bit silly to hyperventilate about the “government influencing what we eat”.Report
Fo6: Subway fills a niche similar to Denny’s: You know you won’t be disappointed, because your expectations were never high to begin with. There are occasions with both when it makes sense as a source of refueling, but not if you are seeking an aesthetically pleasing experience and not when, as is usually the case, you can do better.
Edit: I have no favorite sandwich chain. Sandwich chains all strive for mediocrity. Some of them achieve it. You have to go to a local indie for a truly superior sandwich. See also: pizza.Report
Similarly, I don’t have a favorite sandwich chain. (Actually, my only “favorite” restaurants are one-off places: favorite bbq place, favorite cheap family Italian place).
Part of it is that I live close to where I work, so if I have time to leave campus for lunch, I have time to go home, and I have better food at home than what almost any restaurant in town can provide, and I can often go home and make a scrambled egg or a big salad or heat up whatever was left over from the night before faster than I can either wait in line or wait for a table.
I think Subway probably overbuilt, and that’s why they’re contracting. My little town (15,000 people when the university is in session) has TWO. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those closed.Report
Ms5: Very interesting article, which matches my priors and which I therefore judge to have keen insight. But seriously, right at the end there is a brief discussion of the MMPI, which concludes with this:
That’s the thing about all these standardized psych tests consisting of a long list of propositions to agree or disagree with. The propositions have, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, no semantic content. They are all about how your answers correlate with other peoples’ answers, regardless of the apparent content of the proposition. Once I realized this they made a lot more sense, and I stopped approaching them as if there were semantic content to be found in them.Report
Fa2: In China, women keep their family name. The fact that women have always kept their original family name in China doesn’t prevent it from being a sexist society. Children usually get their father’s family name but families have been known to give some the mother’s family name and others the father’s. It makes the entire maiden name debate seem really academic.
Fa5: I think the criticism of the joke was predictable in this age. Most young women bristle at these jokes because it presents them as property and in need of protection. Its not going to going to go well in the age where women go after slut-shamming.Report
Fa2: I know it would perhaps be a bureaucratic nightmare (but then again, what isn’t?) but I once opined that the person who has the “better” last name should be the one the couple adopts.
I like my maiden name (I’ve lived with it for nearly 50 years) but if some miracle were to occur and I were to get married, I wouldn’t make a deal about it if he wanted me to change my name. I might suggest gently that I keep mine for professional purposes as I’ve published under it, but socially, I really wouldn’t care. Unless he had a last name that sounded stupid with my first name, or he had some kind of goofy last name.Report
I’m not sure “most women” do. I think it might be most women who are pontificators on such things do. Kind of like the Apu thing in that regard, where the only people I know who are upset are those who were already politically charged.Report
I see it only as people speaking their own fears, and little else.Report
@will-truman There’s a big difference, though, between making a big deal about whose name one takes (or, ESPECIALLY, other married people take, good lord, let it go, people on multiple sides of this “debate”), and being legally required to take one’s husband’s name.
Almost every married woman I know has discussed the last name thing with me at some point (this despite me using Jaybird’s last name, so they really do think about it and bring it up) and regardless of whether they have kept their last name, switched, gone double barreled, or the two parties made up a new shared last name, ALL of them cared about having had the choice. They very much liked that it was up to them, whatever their reasons ended up being for whatever choice they made.Report
Totally. My comment was in reference to Fa5, the gun joke.Report
@will-truman Ohhhh. I thought it was in ref to Fa2, obviously. Nm.Report
I can definitely see this. The Internet also allows the pontificators to have a bigger loudspeaker. Before the Internet, nobody would know about this joke and the few that did could only complain to the people they knew. Now that we have the Internet, the joke and reactions to it are broadcast. Its the same with Apu. Without the Internet, the Indian-American critics of Apu couldn’t really spread the word that easily.
I’m not really sure whether the Internet’s ability to amplify broadcast power is a good thing or not. Marginalized people with important things to say now have an outlet for legitimate criticism. At the same time, it leads to policing and overreactions to every little thing.Report
I’m just wondering why he went with the handgun when the shotgun is the traditional firearm of choice for intimidating suitors, along with a shovel and a declaration of having access to vast tracts of empty land.Report
Is the shovel variant really traditional? I associate it with the movie Clueless, but it could well have been much older.Report
I predate Clueless by quite a bit and I recall it being mentioned.Report
He2: As part of our medical insurance adventure this year, we have gone back to getting our care through Kaiser Permanente of Colorado. Kaiser was an early adopter of EMR when we were with them before. Their system matched us (correctly) with the records from our previous time, but the portion of the software that recommends routine care (eg, tetanus booster, mammograms) assumes that we’ve had zero care during the 10 years we were away. We’re still trying to get copies of the records from various providers transferred to Kaiser.
I’ve heard the various arguments against letting patients keep a copy of all their medical records. But there’s no one as interested as I am in maintaining a complete copy of them across the years.Report
We3: Knife control? What next, stick control? These hyperbolic attitudes opposing anything that could be used as a weapon are seriously tiresome. I have a collapsible walking stick, because of my bad knee. I still shake my head in wonder the day the German airport security folks were going to seize my stick because they thought it was a weapon.Report
I have been told that the Society for Creative Anachronism finally gave up on the idea of having real quarterstaffs because they were simply too dangerous — no way for unarmored people to use a staff of realistic mass at real speeds and not do serious damage.Report
Well obviously not, because it’s a real staff. This is why you have training weapons and padding. I used to do broadsword fencing with my neighbor with shinai. Lots of fun, but we still wore heavy clothes because getting hit with a shinai still hurts like a mother…
PS getting hit with something that hurts like hell is a remarkably effective way to learn how to block and dodgeReport
Yes. As we say at epee, “Bruises are useful. They remind you to work on your defense.”Report
Fa5: Yeah, people went ballistic over the gun, but what stood out for me was the perpetuation of the “my daughter’s vagina is my property” thing.Report
Let’s be generous and say, “My daughters vagina is my responsibility.” We can still respond with:
“Wow, you did such a shit job raising your daughter (and you are aware of just how badly you botched it) that you can’t trust her to say No for herself, nor defend herself.
Way to go, Dad.”
Let’s not sully property rights in this discussion…Report
That is how some people see but I don’t think that is exactly it. Its more like Oscar said, many fathers are very protective of their daughters. This type of joke is a way to present this desire to protect in a somewhat darkly jovial fashion. A friend of mine is as far from anti-sex as you could get but he made the same sorts of comments when he learned he was going to be the father to a daughter.Report
Right, but the protectiveness seems to revolve entirely around female sexuality.
We don’t hear jokes about fathers protecting their sons chastity, or protecting their daughter from drinking with her rowdy girlfriends.Report
Had a girlfriend long ago who had 2 brothers and 3 sisters. Her dad could care less what wild oats his sons sowed, but would publicly disown a daughter who was not pure on her wedding day. He saw no problem with his double standard.Report
They never do.Report
I’ll just make the point that I think the joke was (mildly) amusing. Yes, there’s a double standard, as Lee and Oscar rightly point out. And yes, it’s not technically funny to play with guns (although, if I recall, he wasn’t actually pointing the gun at anyone). And yes, it’s predicated on THE FATHER guarding, for whatever reason, THE FEMALE CHILD. But it still seems kind of amusing (to me). Not so amusing that I think it’s the greatest joke ever. But I don’t share the outrage.Report
Tr2 [SW flyers wearing masks wrong]: One thing I’ve wondered about those masks, which, fortunately, I’ve never had to use: Are the straps actually sturdy enough, or do they break if, in a fit of panic, you stretch them a little too much? Also (and this question came from reading the article and I hadn’t thought of it before), when you “pull down on the mask until the plastic tubing is fully extended,” is there a risk of breaking the plastic tubing?
The article offers a picture of people holding the mask wrong, and another one of holding the mask right. But it didn’t explain why the wrong holds were wrong. I get it that the passengers should have put the strap on, but otherwise, what was wrong about what they were doing?Report
Mask was not covering the nose, only the mouth. Healthy adult can probably pull enough oxygen from the mask to not notice, but kids, the elderly, and people with breathing issues will have trouble.
Straps and hoses are plenty tough.Report
Thanks. I probably should’ve caught that, but didn’t.
It kind of reminds me of a story I read a long time ago in Reader’s Digest, “advice to a young man starting out in life.” One of the pieces of advice was, “learn which finger the wedding ring goes on.” Why didn’t the piece just say which finger it goes on?Report
@gabriel-conroy I’m guessing that one is based on regional cultural differences about which finger the ring goes on. It literally isn’t always the same everywhere. (I KNOW. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?)
When I first got married, I got really confused about all that, and eventually I had to learn to switch the ring around depending on if I were here, or back in PEI…
(I won’t say which is what b/c it’s been…. 10 years since Jay and I wore our rings regularly and I probably will mix it up.)Report
You know, it makes perfect sense that ring-fingers would be different depending on cultural context, now that you mention it. I simply hadn’t thought of that.Report
We5 would be the last thing humanity ever did. Deer are effing Ninjas and would quickly rule the world.Report
Fa5: Semi-related to Fa5 but romance and sex seem to be one area of human life where nearly everybody has difficulty keeping any sort of consistent ideological narrative. My Facebook feed and another blog I read, LGM, is up and arms about incel culture because of the recent attack in Toronto. A few weeks ago, a few of the same people up and arms about incel culture where posting about how touch is a human need and that the lack of touch is killing men. Both can’t be true yet people seem to want both to be true.
The entire situation is maddening. The people who argue against sexual education based on abstaining from it and purity balls because celibacy and chastity are against human nature are calling from a certain class of people who aren’t that romantically successful to be very good at celibacy. The hypocrisy is palatable. The celibacy that they say is unnatural for humans. You can’t even point out the contradiction without getting any army after you. If you express your pain a little than the hammer smash comes.Report
“Both can’t be true yet people seem to want both to be true.”
1) (Some) Men are dying (in part) from a lack of touch.
2) That doesn’t give (some) men the right to be cruel and vicious in that way that incel culture is *built around* being.
I fail to see the contradiction here.
Equating the sort of incel culture that the Toronto terrorist was part of with “men who express loneliness and frustration about their state of celibacy” is the kind of broad generalization I would expect from jerks (or just freaked-out people) who are overreacting to the situation by painting everyone with the same broad brush, not from one of the people who is unhappy about being celibate, but not actually an incel. Don’t identify with the bad guys, man, even if people are being assholes and lumping you in with them. You’re so much better than they are.Report
I fail to see the contradiction here.
Nuance died just after Venn diagrams were murdered by negative partisanship.Report
@stillwater
Bye bye ambiguity (wry),
Left my topheavy complex bevy
out on the clothesline to dry.
And them Venn diagrams were all killed off by
Partisans singing this’ll be the day nuance dies
Ohhh, this’ll be the day nuance dies.
Yes, I realize this is terrible of me. But something about your comment gave me an earworm and I felt the need to halve my suffering.Report
“My Facebook feed and another blog I read, LGM, is up and arms about incel culture because of the recent attack in Toronto. A few weeks ago, a few of the same people up and arms about incel culture where posting about how touch is a human need and that the lack of touch is killing men. Both can’t be true yet people seem to want both to be true.”
Um, what?
Some men respond to a lack of touch by killing others.
Some men respond to a lack of touch by killing themselves…?
Both of those can be… and are… true.
You seem to be aiming for a lane wherein men who lack touch are victims. True or false?Report
First link in we3 is empty. I assume just a typo, not a metaphor.Report