Heeeey thread. How ya doin', thread. No debates for me to avoid wading into here, no sir.
Where are all those guys from that old Freddy Mercury was a Parsi thread at Apostropher's? Come on over, guys!
Love it: "You can't win at parenting or homemaking. If you think you're winning then everyone else thinks you're a dick."
Personally, I rather liked my epidural.
It's not a thing. It's just food. Also, they sell this stuff in jars and pouches and it's not too bad.
A friend had just started her kid on solids and was feeding it some sort of fancypants organic baby food, when there was a big recall of that brand for fear of arsenic contamination. The kid's grandfather happens to be a former bigwig public health researcher/administrator, and is newly retired and bored, so he decided to research what baby food would be the best for the kid. He concluded that you should go with the biggest name brand food you can find, because quality controls are way more important in baby food than anything else, and are vastly more robust in larger companies. Gerber it is!
And bicycles!
I thought they were in love with their car.
I did like the advice not to go crazy making baby food, they can eat lots of ordinary food just fine.
8: However! I found a dead fly squished into one of the child's fancy compostable diapers, sent it back to the company in a mailer with a polite handwritten note, and got a bunch of free diapers. It was a particularly lovely tiger-striped fly, presumably native to China and a vector for all sorts of adorable zoonoses.
(Was the arsenic recall just that brown rice syrup business? My impression was that it had less to do with organic food and more to do with brown rice having higher levels of arsenic than white rice in general, plus the preponderance of brown rather than white rice in organic food. But conventionally-farmed brown rice would be no better; nor would organic food using other sweeteners be any more harmful than the Gerber kind. I might be wrong, though. Anyway, the obvious answer is not to feed your baby grains or sweeteners: only meat and vegetables and, if you must, the occasional sip of breast milk from a mother on the most stringently restricted diet.)
It was the rice syrup stuff. I think the grandfather's conclusion, though, was that just that sort of thing is better controlled for by the larger companies' more stringent testing. But of course it's probably all moot; most any food you can buy at the store is going to be okay for the most part.
Wait, so now we're not supposed to feed babies arsenic? Dammit, Science, make up your mind!
No no, I take your point; I did wonder if I'd missed a big recall, though.
The OP article was good. (So there's nothing to discuss!) I would add to her list only that it's OK if you fail to bond with other new parents (besides existing friends); and that it's normal to get very, very bored caring for a baby, no matter how many amusing and inappropriate baby narratives you can invent. We spent about two months pretending the child's hanging toys were bickering, neurotic scientists performing behavioral experiments on her.
Also, maybe, a warning that the aspects of child care that require the most thought and deliberation by the parents seem to be the least interesting for anyone else to hear about. It's a weirdly consistent inverse relationship, and adds to the pervasive boredom.
14: you're probably thinking of mercury. Babies need lots of mercury (and lead, to aid in the uptake of the mercury), but arsenic is definitely toxic.
I'm just being silly. I don't know anything about any of this.
I see I did use the phrase "big recall". Yeah, that was certainly exaggeration.
Babies need lots of mercury (and lead, to aid in the uptake of the mercury)
Shark, king mackerel, and tilefish sushi for moms-to-be!
We spent about two months pretending the child's hanging toys were bickering, neurotic scientists performing behavioral experiments on her breaking her brain.
Dude, a 3-month-old's brain is at maximum entropy.
This seems like a good thread in which to say that I'm pregnant, at very long last.
Congratulations!!! How are you feeling? How far along are you?
Thanks! I'm a couple of weeks into the second trimester, and thank goodness for that, since BLEARGH was pretty much my watchword in July and August. Still one big scary diagnostic ultrasound to go, but everything is looking good so far.
Congratulations! That's great news.
Congratulations! I wish you truly excellent luck.
Or even better, send them to the grocery store together while you stay home alone.
This was one of my biggest contributions, and still is, really. AB & I food shop together so rarely that it's almost like a date. We point and discuss like new immigrants.
And I'm happy for you, Gaby.
Congratulations, Gaby!
I mentioned that it is Freddie Mercury's birthday to a student who needed permission to join my class late, and he replied that he'd been thinking about that all day. WHY YES you can join my class!
Congratulations GB!
3 - that was my favourite too.
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This is fun. In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?
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I don't understand why people think Lincoln would be so good. I also think that they're underrating LBJ. Also, don't underestimate Clinton's white trash upbringing.
I agree with 48 on all points, but I'm having a small punt on Grant.
Dunno if I'd rate Washington as highly. Lincoln I am super suspicious of. Grant has to be very high up.
Also, I dunno about low ranking Obama, he's fit, super competitive, and plays dirty basketball. That's got to earn you points. Also, he's black, and half the other guys would be astonished to find there's a black president.
50.2: ah, but then they'd gang up on him. The point is that it's an iterative process. Grant could probably beat any other president one-on-one, but if Grant is already bleeding freely from hard-fought victories over Washington, Taylor and Eisenhower, he might be easy prey even for McKinley or Madison. And Madison is small. He could run away and/or hide (perhaps behind Taft) while the others fought it out, and then sneak in and knife the victor.
(When this was discussed elsewhere, the question came up of whether there would be two Grover Clevelands, and, if so, whether they would team up. I am guessing probably not; he'd have been instinctively opposed to the formation of a sort of International Brotherhood of Clevelands.)
Do part allegiances count? Because I'd put money on the 20th century Democrats if they can work together --- Obama, Roosevelt, Truman, Clinton, LBJ, Kennedy, Carter that could be a pretty solid group.
Nixon's fucked, nobody liked that motherfucker. Carter's under rated massively, he served in nuclear submarines in the Navy and helped shut down a nuclear reactor. That's hard core.
(The Republicans have a big gap between Hoover and Eisenhower, and then Nixon is pretty problematic for group cohesion.)
whether there would be two Grover Clevelands
Only one Cleveland, I think, but you have to kill him twice.
Obama, Roosevelt, Truman, Clinton, LBJ, Kennedy, Carter that could be a pretty solid group.
Basically that's the X-Men, isn't it? I'm pretty sure LBJ had massive steel talons shooting out of his knuckles. Robert Caro mentions it in "Master of the Senate".
55: pretty much.
I'm thinking that Roosevelt offers some pretty attractive charioteer-esque options here.
This would make an awesome multi-player game, if anybody has the chops to write it.
two Grover Clevelands
Ahem. It's "Grovers Cleveland".
You just put Taft on top of FDR and you have an unstoppable juggernaut. FDR, armoured by his wheelchair aft and three hundred pounds of pure Republican in front, can concentrate on driving. Meanwhile, standing on top of Taft, and thus out of easy stabbing reach for all but the tallest of enemies (Clinton, Lincoln) you have Teddy Roosevelt, hitting people with Ulysses Grant held by the ankles and used as a club. ("Ah, hell, Teddy, put some more swing into it, I can take it.") I call this formation the Manifest Voltron.
You just put Taft on top of FDR.
Ableist.
Will Taft not ride into the fray on a water buffalo? Sad now.
Buffalo buffalo Taft buffalo buffalo buffalo Cleveland buffalo Grovers Cleveland buffalo.
I'll be here all night... tip your waitress... try the buffalo...
Lincoln had reach, prodigious strength, and was an able catch-as-catch-can wrestler. Mano-a-mano he's a match for any of them, but of course the free-for-all aspect makes it harder to predict.
I have to watch the original Voltron force stuff (Netflix + small boy). The pain too recent for me to laugh.
61: Christ, Taft was so huge that he's compressed that poor beast's legs. It's horrible to behold.
