![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulythe responsibilities adoptive parents have to maintain some sort of connection to the child's natal culture, however small. We were specifically talking about interracial adoption, so this person made what he thought was a good point, bringing up what if a (white) American couple adopted a child from Russia? The child would look like them and would not "look" Russian, so....
There were two ways to go with this. I chose to respond to his point and stay on-topic, but ever since, for the past three weeks, I've had a nagging desire for a do-over, to try out the other option - namely, to tell him, quite honestly, that my mother has been stopped on multiple occasions by strangers with no other desire than to inform her that she has "a Russian face" (and on one occasion by strangers who wanted to ask her directions in Russian, presumably because of her Russian face.)
She is half Russian. Or half Russian-ish, anyway, we're not sure exactly where her father's family comes from but it's somewhere in or adjacent to Tsarist Russia.
That answer would not have gone anywhere useful, and it would've been unnecessarily rude to somebody who didn't deserve it... but I still kinda wish I'd said it.
And if you're asking what a connection to that side of her heritage would bring her, she might have been able to respond to those tourists if she'd spoken Russian. She likes speaking to French-speaking tourists and immigrants, after all, and she likes to watch French-language TV. Speaking of which, are there any streaming services that focus on TV and movies from Francophone countries? France okay but not preferred over other nations.
*******************
A Mason’s Hidden Portrait Found After 900 Years
Watch an Amazing Time-Lapse of Growing Mushrooms
A Glass Floor in a New Dublin Grocery Opens a Window to Medieval Viking History
Elections in Colonial America Were Huge, Booze-Fueled Parties
End gerrymandering? Here’s a radical solution (Yes, but vertical map or horizontal? Maybe we switch it up after every census just for kicks.)
Why Left-Handed Quarterbacks Are So Rare (Admittedly I don't know much about the sportsball, but it seems to me that while one lefty on a team might be a mild hassle, carefully fielding an entirely left-handed team could be a sneak advantage - or at least a novelty! I'd root for them.)
Knifefish Suck So Hard They Can Make Water 'Boil'
The Hyper-Regional Chippy Traditions of Britain and Ireland
A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail
A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.
The ‘I Voted’ Sticker: An Election Tradition, Even in a Pandemic
Weary from political strife and a pandemic, some Americans are fleeing the country
'Vote and get home,' anxious voters say on Election Day
Is It Better to Plant Trees or Let Forests Regrow Naturally?
To teach my sick husband how to eat again, I turned to 19th-century recipes for bone broths, gruels, and custards
How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System
Inside a Prison Coronavirus Outbreak in ‘Disbeliever Country.’
This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused?
William O’Brien was a well-heeled doctor with a thriving Philadelphia medical practice. He was also at the center of a massive painkiller supply chain run by an outlaw biker gang.
How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower
He waited 512 days behind bars for his day in court. It never came ("Swift and speedy" my ass.)
Kentucky State Police quoted Hitler and Robert E. Lee, and encouraged cadets to be ‘ruthless’ in a training program (Look at the materials. I don't care who they're quoting, these attitudes they're instilling are not useful.)
Four people 'killed in cold blood' in Vienna during night of terror
The boarding school ‘monster’ who always walked free (Content warning: Child abuse and rape)
There were two ways to go with this. I chose to respond to his point and stay on-topic, but ever since, for the past three weeks, I've had a nagging desire for a do-over, to try out the other option - namely, to tell him, quite honestly, that my mother has been stopped on multiple occasions by strangers with no other desire than to inform her that she has "a Russian face" (and on one occasion by strangers who wanted to ask her directions in Russian, presumably because of her Russian face.)
She is half Russian. Or half Russian-ish, anyway, we're not sure exactly where her father's family comes from but it's somewhere in or adjacent to Tsarist Russia.
That answer would not have gone anywhere useful, and it would've been unnecessarily rude to somebody who didn't deserve it... but I still kinda wish I'd said it.
And if you're asking what a connection to that side of her heritage would bring her, she might have been able to respond to those tourists if she'd spoken Russian. She likes speaking to French-speaking tourists and immigrants, after all, and she likes to watch French-language TV. Speaking of which, are there any streaming services that focus on TV and movies from Francophone countries? France okay but not preferred over other nations.
A Mason’s Hidden Portrait Found After 900 Years
Watch an Amazing Time-Lapse of Growing Mushrooms
A Glass Floor in a New Dublin Grocery Opens a Window to Medieval Viking History
Elections in Colonial America Were Huge, Booze-Fueled Parties
End gerrymandering? Here’s a radical solution (Yes, but vertical map or horizontal? Maybe we switch it up after every census just for kicks.)
Why Left-Handed Quarterbacks Are So Rare (Admittedly I don't know much about the sportsball, but it seems to me that while one lefty on a team might be a mild hassle, carefully fielding an entirely left-handed team could be a sneak advantage - or at least a novelty! I'd root for them.)
Knifefish Suck So Hard They Can Make Water 'Boil'
The Hyper-Regional Chippy Traditions of Britain and Ireland
A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail
A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.
The ‘I Voted’ Sticker: An Election Tradition, Even in a Pandemic
Weary from political strife and a pandemic, some Americans are fleeing the country
'Vote and get home,' anxious voters say on Election Day
Is It Better to Plant Trees or Let Forests Regrow Naturally?
To teach my sick husband how to eat again, I turned to 19th-century recipes for bone broths, gruels, and custards
How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System
Inside a Prison Coronavirus Outbreak in ‘Disbeliever Country.’
This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused?
William O’Brien was a well-heeled doctor with a thriving Philadelphia medical practice. He was also at the center of a massive painkiller supply chain run by an outlaw biker gang.
How a C.I.A. Coverup Targeted a Whistle-blower
He waited 512 days behind bars for his day in court. It never came ("Swift and speedy" my ass.)
Kentucky State Police quoted Hitler and Robert E. Lee, and encouraged cadets to be ‘ruthless’ in a training program (Look at the materials. I don't care who they're quoting, these attitudes they're instilling are not useful.)
Four people 'killed in cold blood' in Vienna during night of terror
The boarding school ‘monster’ who always walked free (Content warning: Child abuse and rape)
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 09:27 pm (UTC)...I literally had never heard of this! Thanks so much! My behaviorism professor would have been absolutely delighted.
On one hand, I'm surprised it works as well as it apparently does; on the other hand, that it works fits in with one particular model of addiction and validates it.
ETA: I would also like to observe that this is, when one thinks about it, under the hood, a harm-reduction model that substitutes gambling addiction for stimulant addiction. It's using endogenous dopamine as an agonist therapy, the way one uses methadone for opioid addiction.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 11:33 pm (UTC)If it works, I'm all for it - it certainly seems a fairly inexpensive fix compared to most of the others that don't work very well.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-12 02:51 am (UTC)See, that's why I noped out of the whole idea upon seeing it. It wouldn't work for me (tobacco) and I have my doubts it'd work for others with that and/or other addictions.
Some of my reasons are purely personal, like if/when I quit smoking I want to do it under my own steam and never feel the need dwell upon or gauge my progress again - just one and done. The reward system would serve as a reminder of what I'll already have enough trouble forgetting and maybe just make the whole undertaking feel a bit too chintzy.
The lottery style gets to me, too. I'd actually take the steadier reward of knowing what the next time I light up's going to feel like over not knowing what's in that bowl.