Note to self:

[conuly]

Must make new optometrist appointment.

*****************

Warm in blankets, Thai boys smile, joke with rescuer in cave

The crop that put women on top in Zanzibar

How Poker (and Boredom) Can Help Solve Murders

The Idle Poor and the Idle Rich (Just a note - yes, we all know Trump doesn't know people who work multiple jobs and are struggling to get by.)

The Tyranny of Politeness

Land-trust case raises red flags across Indian Country

What to Know About Denmark's Controversial Plan to Eradicate Immigrant "Ghettos"

Sonic doom: how noise pollution kills thousands each year

Honeybees finding it harder to eat at America’s bee hot spot

How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail

Why they fight: US and China brawl over high technology

“I Was Devastated”: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets

'It's nothing like a broken leg': why I'm done with the mental health conversation

Deaths from bacterial disease in Puerto Rico spiked after Maria

Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says

After raid, immigrant families are separated in the American heartland

Thousands deported to Central America after fleeing gangs

Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?

Revealed: how US sex traffickers recruit jailed women for prostitution

Comments

[heron61]

Should Brazil keep its Amazon tribes from taking the lives of their children?

I read that article, and as someone with an ABD in cultural anthro who is very much of a cultural relativist (within limits) my answer is a definitively Hell Yes.

From my PoV, the ideal solution would be to arrange for the people to take the kids to a nearby non-tribal settlement, where they could be raised by others and given medical care (since medical problems is one reason for this).

Trying to force these people to raise kids they think should be dead either involves destroying their culture or a whole lot of wishful thinking that will end badly (likely with a lot of fatal "accidents" or kids "running off into the jungle").

[siderea]

Hear, hear.

I think it's important to note that these kids have parents who want to raise them. Well, except for those two poor kids whose parents committed suicide rather than kill them, their own children.

It's not the child vs. the tribe. It's the family vs. the tribe.

ETA:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

-- General Sir Charles James Napier, as recounted by his brother William, on the Indian custom of Suttee (Sati). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_James_Napier

ETA2: Who else here was mentally going, "Is the message so complex? So difficult? 'You don't have to kill your children anymore.'"?

[conuly]

Yes, there should be support to help those who want their kids to live to be able to do that, which means more than just taking them to be cared for elsewhere (the option for the diehard traditionalists, I guess) but assisting them with their new lives.

[wpadmirer]

The article about the meteorite guy was fascinating. The sovereign people are just fucking nuts.

[conuly]

Is this the first time you've heard about sovereign citizens or are you just saying that as a general rule?

[wpadmirer]

General rule. Every time I read about one of these people I think they need serious psychiatric help.

[greghousesgf]

I've been yelled at by church people and I wasn't even protesting anything. I was delivering supplies to an AIDS patient who wasn't feeling well enough to go out to the store.

[conuly]

Visiting the sick, nobody ever said you had to do that!