Link Roundup

The Velveteen Rabbit Was Always More Than A Children's Book
An essay about "The Velveteen Rabbit," its author Margery Williams Bianco, and children's literature.

Crows Perform Yet Another Skill Once Thought Distinctively Human
Look. We all just need to agree that corvids are as smart as humans but able to fly and more likely to pull pranks. This article discusses recursion, grammar, and patterns.

Why Prehistoric Herders Didn't Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds
Interesting story about, of all things, watermelons. Specifically the domestication of watermelons and the biodiversity of watermelons. They started out bitter and full of seeds, valuable nutritious fat-rich seeds. This also serves as a reminder, although it's not mentioned here, that "hunters and gatherers" got most of their calories from the gathering part.

Do you know about the ICWA or Indian Child Welfare Act? One arm of genocide includes cultural genocide, suppressing a peoples' language, religion, foodways, customs, etc. It's why Indian Boarding Schools were created, to "kill the Indian to save the man." Native children were regularly removed from their homes and placed with absolute strangers, often people who were in no way vetted, removed from their family and their culture. The ICWA, passed in 1978, was meant to put a stop to that and ensure that Native children were placed with extended family where possible. Even with the ICWA, however, Native children are currently FOUR TIMES more likely to be placed in foster care than white kids are. Some non-Native couples are suing to overturn this law because they believe it's unfair and racist to prevent them from removing marginalized children from their families and communities, their culture and language.

Surprise! It's Latex

If you follow me on twitter (brigidkeely on there) then you may be aware of the fact that:

1) I'm allergic/sensitive to Latex
2) There are N95 masks that have Latex straps and don't say so on the box and I wore one for almost twelve hours

This resulted in raised angry red welts that took about three weeks to fade. They hurt and itched and my whole face was swollen. I'm glad I'm not ALLERGIC allergic, my understanding is that anaphylaxis is no fun.

One of my good friends tried to console me. "It looks like you're dressed up as a cute kitty! You're my Kitty Girl now."

My worst friend started calling me Naruto.

I was worried they would scar but luckily they did not... although I felt weird as they started to really fade. They'd become a part of my face during that time, part of me. And now they were going away. In some way I sort of missed those marks.

I no longer do.

I had a doctor's appointment today and as the first of three people started asking me questions about my medical history she noted that they do not use latex anything. I said that's good and asked if she knew that some N95 masks had latex straps.

She paused what she was doing and looked like she'd run face first into a wall that hadn't been there three seconds ago. Her train of thought was almost completely derailed. She had to take a moment to collect herself, asked me again about the latex, then had to take another moment. The concept of unlabeled latex in a product just absolutely broke her brain.

I have never had that effect on a medical person before, although I've gotten "what? wait, what?" before.

I don't know why this makes me feel like I've scored some points but it does.