This happened to me at a Thai restaurant once. I ordered something thinking I knew what it was, but when it came, it definitely wasn’t what I thought I ordered. I tried it anyway and really really didn’t like it; there was nothing wrong with it but it just didn’t agree with my tastebuds. I asked the waiter if I could…

Reading this article actually reminded me of the health fads of the 19th century, so there was plenty of shit like this as well. The main difference now is that we have actual real, reliable science that tells us what works and what doesn’t, but the charlatan in charge (GP) is still selling the same old snake oil.

I disagree. The reason the main question and the additional ones are so useless is because parents use them thoughtlessly. I always ask my kid a few specific questions, usually about whether she played with this or that friend and if so, what they played, how they got along, etc. to show that I’m interested. It’s…

I wish I could star this a hundred thousand times.

Very good point. I was limited to breaded chicken, cheese, bread, and pickles for the first trimester of my pregnancy because literally everything else made me puke. I still wanted to be able to eat out, though.

We gave our daughter a stuffed cat to open for Christmas, then told her that we were going to go pick one out after Christmas. Her real gift ended up being the event of going to the shelter and playing with all of the cats while trying to decide which one we wanted. But I agree with other commenters that it should not…

Exactly. My kid is actually great at eating things that most kids probably wouldn’t eat - handfuls of raw spinach, for instance - but the one time we took her to a restaurant with a special kid’s dish and ordered it for her like this author is advocating, she wouldn’t touch it because 1) we weren’t eating it, 2) she’d…

Gender is absolutely not binary. Gender is how you present to others, and there are vast gradations of “masculine”, “feminine”, and even “gender neutral”.

I think you’re thinking of sex though. Sex is also not binary. Learn about intersex people and you may begin to understand why a binary view of sex is an issue.

This is so interesting to me. I’ve been feeling the same kind of calling in the past few years. I’m white, so it’s different, but many of the tenets are the same. People forget that ancestor and nature spirit worship was once universal. Practicing it incompletely as I have been, I feel more in touch with myself than I…

I agree, and I had a very easy pregnancy with a not-terribly-traumatizing labor. But I 1) have the ability to realize that my experience is not every woman’s experience, and 2) know so much about the effect of pregnancy and labor on a woman’s body that I liken forced-childbearing to torture.

Yep. I watched a duck eat the remnants of a shell (including some of the yellow whatever-you-call-it-at-that-point) after some ducklings were born and assumed that it was about keeping the foxes away.

Sometimes I’ll tell my daughter that she can read a book by herself and she’ll respond, “But mommy, I can’t read!” I always tell her that she can figure out what is happening by looking at the pictures. Books have also been a great way for me to have really in-depth conversations about concepts that she normally gets…

My daughter’s birthday is on the opposite end of the year from Christmas. My approach was going to be to only give her gifts for her birthday and for Christmas. My husband and his family have blown that all to bits. And the worst part is that they don’t see how this makes her totally unappreciative of the things that…

I have felt this sentiment since friends starting going in the early-00s. I love wilderness and nature because there AREN’T people in it and it’s better than being high. Also, I burn stupidly easily.

Because the only thing they seem to believe in anymore is power at any cost.

Sadly, medical education these days seems to place far more emphasis on memorizing things (disease symptoms, drug names, etc.) than on thinking critically and scientifically.

My husband’s cousin wanted to treat her father’s cancer with canned asparagus. O_O

I’d give you more stars if I could.

I moved from the Northwest to the Midwest 15 years ago and there is no teriyaki here. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone here even knows what it is. I recently figured out how to make a decently similar dish at home, but it’s just not the same.

Exactly. The entire 19th century is one long story of people being killed because of things that were preventable with just a little bit of knowledge and planning but persisted because of capitalist greed and religious fear. The idea that anyone would want to take us back to that era is mind-boggling.