The alternative establishment kills people by turning them away from effective treatments in favour of things that don’t work. Not all alternative practitioners obviously (not even most). I realise I have strong knee-jerk reactions on the topic because of personal experience.

These con artists are the worst people. There’s the type that make false promises to desperate people with serious or incurable illness, and there’s the type that invent a bullshit “disease” that they can “cure” to suck money out of people (*cough* chronic Lyme disease *cough*).

I would respectfully disagree that the evidence for acupuncture is “solid”. I mean, it’s not going to do you harm so have at it, but the evidence is conflicting and hard to interpret. To be fair, if something works because of the placebo effect, it still works.

Yup. The British attitude to atrocities is that the best way to cope with them is through humour and to mock the perpetrators. This can obviously be upsetting to people affected by said atrocities who do not share this outlook (especially when it veers into diminishing the event itself, rather than the perpetrators),…

Mel Brooks has some very hard lines about what he will and will not joke about. He will not do a holocaust joke, for example. He definitely doesn’t use being Jewish as an excuse to make whatever jokes he wants without thought.

Yeah, we’re a bit weird. Private schools aren’t really a thing (there’s only Rockport and Campbell College is a sort of hybrid) because the best schools in NI are state grammars. And there’s the Catholic/Protestant separate schooling system to take into account. I dunno if any of the English grammars have preps,…

The difference between this and Terry Schiavo is that Jahi is dead. The machinery of her heart and lungs etc. are being kept going artificially. She is in the same state as a beating heart organ donor. It’s not the same as a persistent vegetative state.

Just... what the fuck is wrong with people? Some grieving families make bad decisions, but usually they do so out of love. And who weight shames a dying child?

You are probably correct, doctors are frequently wankers. I should know, I am one (a doctor that is, hopefully not a wanker). However, they have had multiple opinions and sadly Jahi is dead. What has happened (as happens all too frequently) is that a quack (Dr Paul Byrne) has jumped on the case as a way to further…

Yup. The “expert” is Dr Paul Byrne, a fringe figure who does not believe in the concept of brain death and is opposed to organ donation. His beliefs are apparently motivated by his staunch Catholicism. He stands in opposition to the medical community at large and is considered a quack.

That is shit but not surprising.

Did you mean to reply to me? I don’t know where I gave the impression that I don’t think this is wrong. The “justification” they’re giving is “child neglect”, but I presume there are existing processes for dealing with neglect that do not involve prosecuting a mother for her children’s crimes.

So when their mother is in prison, what happens to the children? Is it realistically going to be better?

From a non-US perspective, curfews are fucking weird. That aside, aren’t there already processes in place to prosecute child neglect (or support the family if that’s more appropriate) via schools and social services etc? I don’t know what the situation is with child protection in the USA.

I had the same reaction as Mortal, to someone from the UK this is bizarre and comes off like some police state nonsense. What time is the curfew generally, and for what ages? I grew up in Northern Ireland with a genuine and continual terrorist threat and we didn’t have this.

I’m probably not the person to ask since I generally find reading about sex mildly uncomfortable at best, laughable at worst (thank you, puritanical upbringing!).

Worse than E.L. James? That would be impressive.

Honestly, they just seem so fascinated by penises that they seem to assume women are too. Until recently, most of the books I’ve read were written by men, and the few female authors tended to use tasteful cutaways. I read Uprooted by Naomi Novik, who includes a sex scene which I found strange to read. Eventually I…

So many authors could be great if their editors said “no” more often. It just seemed so counterintuitive and out of character for Bev, especially given earlier scenes with her father. I get the idea of writing yourself into a corner (I’ve done it) but I just find it a really strange idea to even come up with. I’m sure…

That’s probably true. There are authors whose particular quirks just set my teeth on edge.