Nah, she likes or liked cooking. She wrote an essay on Martha Stewart where she talked about imagining that if worse came to worse, she could become a caterer.

Yep. I was fairly young when my mother died after a long illness and my family pretty much exploded—and I think Didion captures deep mourning well and what just surviving can take (since her daughter was gravely ill.) She really was losing everything, but her self (and her work) at that point.

Ooh, she and La Swinton should be cast together in something—not sure what, but something. Or at least some weird fashion editorial.

There are two different genetic adaptations for lactose tolerance in adults—the northern European one and one that developed separately among some African groups. So the lactose tolerance might be African after all.

Yes, the minority of humanity, but not the minority of Americans. Basically, people of northern European descent and a small percentage of Africans have a genetic adaptation that allows them to break down lactose as adults. When you look at the climate in northern Europe, you can see why the ability to drink milk…

Oh, that's a drag. She's at an age where the whole milk's a good idea. It has useful stuff in it that isn't in almond milk.

Apparently, one of the signs of lactose intolerance is starting to dislike milk. I remember I stopped drinking it around 10 for the most part. I'm more of a malabsorber than truly intolerant, but while I pretty much love all forms of dairy where the lactose is broken down or removed (there's relatively little in…

Water dripped through ground almonds—so like coffee.

It's not synthetic, it's actually pretty similar to how you make coffee. Grind up the raw almonds and drip water through them.

I find it kind of bland and sweet myself. I like it in some things, but it lacks the complexity of milk.

Oh, FACT—40 percent of adults have developed a gene that allows them to drink milk—so why shouldn't they drink it?

FACT: the ability to digest lactose by adults has been so useful to some groups of people that the tolerance has developed twice—there's one among Northern Europeans and another one in Africa.

FACT: We…

Yep, I really think there's an over-reaction to the whole-kids-in-car thing. You shouldn't have to worry about losing custody of your child because you run into the store for 10 minutes while the kid's asleep in a car seat on a cloudy day.

Oh, a parent education course and some supervision could help. People make mistakes and at least this one doesn't involve guns.

It's not that these are good parents, it's more that the foster-care/adoption system leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm cool with it as long as Jamie Dornan has a career afterwards. I like looking at him and listening to that deep brogue. Not enough to go anywhere near 50 Shades of Crap, but enough so that he's around as eye candy elsewhere.

Why are you being so defensive? Did Potatoe666 get a little close to the bone here? Getting tired of being a haters-gonna-hate type this morning?

Because as a middle-aged type who enjoys Jezebel, but isn't your key demographic, the sniping does get old and comes off as envy more than anything else. Couldn't you use…

That's actually pretty common—so much so that linguists study it—basically, by the third generation in the United States almost no one speaks the native language of their original immigrant group. This is even the case with Mexicans—where you have a lot of Spanish speakers and huge number of immigrants. So, yes, we…

Yep—it's that disconnect they like to practice. Though, that too, isn't new. There have been other periods of anti-immigrant hostility. But, at the same time, there really is this ongoing assimilation that a certain openness of American culture makes possible.

One of the things that struck me in reading about some…

Yep. We actually believe that nation-of-immigrants thing for the most part (with some noisy dissension from the fringe elements.) We're also a larger country than most of the European countries (Does anyone emigrate *to* Russia?) and we haven't used immigration to simply counter dropping birth rates, which is…

Sure, that's part of it, but so is the low birthrate. Same with a lot of Europe—Greece and Italy, for example. The U.S. birthrate is only a bit below replacement levels,even at current historic lows, but still hasn't hit the levels of Japan and some other countries. It's not a terrible thing in and of itself just…

Yeah, but all this has meant is an imbalance in population growth. Countries like Japan are having a big issue with an aging population, while places like Nigeria have exploded in terms of population.

Yeah, the thought crossed my mind too. Though, the drop in sperm counts has been going on for a while—part of the reason for the dropping birth rates in Scandinavia.

Wonder if we have enough power left over the global oligarchy to actually do something about this?