Interesting Links for 13-11-2021

[andrewducker]

Gut bacteria don't cause autism. Autistic kids' microbiome differences are more likely to be due to eating preferences

(tags:food autism microbiome )

I continue to recommend that you do not eat pig faeces

(tags:faeces pigs food worm brain )

The best 50 PC games of all time (Let the disagreement commence!)

(tags:games lists )

I don’t wear poppies, and this image perfectly encapsulates why

(tags:war history memory )

Don’t buy the $60 Grand Theft Auto Definitive Trilogy

(tags:gta games review fail )

Police will not investigate cash-for-peerages allegations against Tories

(tags:corruption UK police conservatives )

Austria to declare nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people

(tags:Austria Pandemic vaccination )

Comments

[cmcmck]

I haven't worn the poppy since my teens.

Could be because I'm a squaddy's daughter, although being a military historian may also have something to do with it.

Or it could be getting to know Isaac Rosenberg as a teenager:


The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched,
Their shut mouths made no moan.
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and born of woman,
And shells go crying over them
From night till night and now.

(From: 'Dead man's dump')

[calimac]

I had to quote that Wilfred Owen poem at someone who was complaining about the disappearance of the simple patriotism of earlier times. What happened to it? he asked. WW1 happened to it.

Another example of transatlantic cultural difference, by the way: I'd have had no idea what the poppy alluded to if I hadn't read The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, in which the custom figures strongly. Over here it's unknown, and its cultural place is taken by a flag pin on the lapel (Obama was roundly criticized for not wearing one), but not specifically on Veterans' Day (as we call 11/11) just in general. This is also why politicians routinely end speeches with "God bless America," as if America had just sneezed.

[adrian_turtle]

I think the US stopped calling it Armistice Day and started calling it Veterans Day after the second world war. How could you honor the handful of Americans who died in the War to End War, without honoring the much larger number of American heroes standing right there? And then it just kind of metastasized, like the cold war. The flag pin on the lapel seems to be a 21st century custom. Before that you might have one if you were in the military or scouts, but most people didn't. In October 2001, I started seeing them everywhere...the corporation I worked for got thousands of the things and handed them out.

My grandfather was born in 1905 in rural Canada, and moved to Detroit as a young man. He was aware of how Canada was more sentimental about The War than Britain (a Canadian wrote the damn poppy poem!) even though distance meant they were a lot less scarred by it. And his generation, the boys too young to fight, were also hit very hard.

I'm not at all sure the poppies were ever really symbols of simple mourning or desire for peace.
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with those who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders field.

(Let the disagreement commence!)

[jack]

No Monkey Island!! :)

Re: (Let the disagreement commence!)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the only point and click adventure on there is Disco Elysium.

[ckd]

There are certainly games I'd argue should be taken off of that list (or the 51-100 list linked from it) or re-ranked, but I will 100% agree with them on Outer Wilds. It really is that good.

[dewline]

1. I am reminded of how often I resisted chili and stew as a child and how fervent my parents were about compelling dining obedience. I don't know why I connect that to this article. Not for certain.

4. Wilfrid Owen - if his soul exists past his death anywhere - has likely never been able to let go of the rage that made him write those words.

6. Unholy police practice. They should be compelled to investigate this.

[andrewducker]

We are making food available to Sophia. We are encouraging her to try things. We are absolutely not forcing her to eat anything. She'll pick things up in her own time if she fancies and have less issues about it when she does.

[calimac]

I knew a child who for several years would eat absolutely nothing but macaroni and cheese. Her parents felt frustrated but chose not to fight this, figuring she'd grow out of it, which she did.

[andrewducker]

I'm glad they did. Hopefully my kids won't be that limited in their preferences.

autistic mice

[mellowtigger]

"There are also problems in relating mouse studies to humans, because autism does not exist in mice."

Given how much effort has gone into breeding mouse models for the study of autism, I was skeptical of this claim. There does seem to be good reason to doubt.

[azurelunatic]

I recoiled at photo of the kids smiling with the huge poppies, and showed it to my partner, who also recoiled and then hollered "THEY HAVE MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF ARMISTICE DAY!" and wondered whether it was USians having made a spectacular gaffe in a misguided attempt to be multicultural for "the UK equivalent of Veterans' Day".

[andrewducker]

Worse, it was from an event run by the Royal British Legion, who actually run the poppy appeal in the UK!

[azurelunatic]

do not want