Annoying New York Times articles

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

Good guidelines.

[Max Payne]

Annoying New York Times articles

"And if anyone asks you if you mind them reclining into you, you always say that you don't mind, just to encourage them in being courteous.
"

But they don't do they? The bastards always ran their seat straight back until it's millimetres from your nose and then proceed to ignore you.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

I refuse to accept that salt can be "artisanal." It's just a mineral in the water.

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

Ahahaha. I've been avoiding that link like the plague because I knew it would aggravate me.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

The article isn't too annoying on the surface. It just takes it as a given that artisanal salt is a thing and talks glowingly about how well-run and "sustainable" the company is now that it uses vegetable grease ovens instead of woodfired ones. But it should have probed that a bit more. Did the owners believe (or convince their customers) that water boiled over wood fire leaves a better precipitate than water boiled over, for example, a gas-fire?

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

Haha. I forgot to add this article on the paleo lifestyle from this past Sunday:

Paleo is not without its critics. The science has been endlessly debated: Some nutritionists counter that verboten foods like grains, dairy and beans contain valuable nutrients, such as calcium, vitamins B and D, antioxidants and fiber. Elizabeth Kolbert, in a recent New Yorker road test of the diet, also pointed out that a meat-heavy diet has dire environmental implications. Still, proselytes often find that being Paleo quickly becomes a round-the-clock duty.

That was the experience of Michelle Tam, a former pharmacist in Palo Alto, Calif., who has adopted a primal sleep regimen.

It all started four years ago, when Ms. Tam, now 40, tried the Paleo diet to combat sluggishness and a stubborn muffin-top. But it didn’t end when she shed the extra pounds, as she sought to reorder the rest of her life along those ancestral principles. She quit her hospital job and transformed herself into something of a Martha Stewart of Paleo. Her recipe blog, Nom Nom Paleo, draws more than 100,000 page views daily. And she has a best-selling cookbook, a cooking app and action figure (though, oddly, it’s made of vinyl, not stone).

Ms. Tam also found herself altering her sleep to become more Paleo. As Mark Sisson put it in his seminal 2009 book, “The Primal Blueprint,” “our ancestors’ activity and sleep patterns were shaped by sunrise and sunset.” In the primal mind, the modern sleep ritual, interrupted by iPads and Jimmy Fallon, seems as unhealthy as a dinner of Fiddle Faddle with a Mountain Dew chaser.

That’s why Ms. Tam, a confessed television addict, decided to cut out all electronic devices after 8 p.m. If she has to check her iPhone, she wears amber goggles to block the blue-spectrum light that she believes interferes with her circadian rhythms. Next, she turned her bedroom into the equivalent of a Lascaux cave, removing all clocks (her two young sons serve as her morning alarm, she said) and installing blackout window inserts.

The move paid dividends. “I used to envy how my young two boys would fall asleep almost immediately after their heads hit the pillow,” Ms. Tam said. “At dawn, they’d bound out of bed, eager to tell us about the previous night’s dreams. Now, I sleep like them.”

She is not the only beneficiary. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported last fall, Indow Windows, the Portland, Ore.-based manufacturer of her window inserts, said traffic to its site tripled after Ms. Nam tweeted that she was “the happiest zombie on the planet” thanks to the company’s product.

But the lifestyle does not end when you roll out of bed. For many, the quest to rid one’s daily regimen of “poisonous things,” to use Mr. Sisson’s phrase, includes the morning beauty routine. Vita Pedrazzi, a former fashion manager at Harrods in London who now lives in the Canary Islands, said she used to be the sort of beauty obsessive who would slap on makeup to take out the trash, in part because of her sheepishness over her acne. But when the primal path inspired her to rid her bathroom of any product containing creepy-sounding chemicals, she adopted a zero-tolerance policy to any store-bought beauty product or cleanser — even soap.

As she proudly related on her blog, Vita Lives Free, Ms. Pedrazzi, 30, now makes her own beauty products, including a “no-poo” shampoo method (baking soda and apple cider vinegar, with a few drops of jojoba oil for the tips as a leave-in conditioner), body scrub made from olive oil and brown sugar, and toothpaste made with coconut oil and baking soda, with activated charcoal tablets for whitening. Although houseguests are shocked to find not so much as a canister of Ajax in her house — her horrified father-in-law recently raced out to the drugstore to buy toilet cleaner, instead of her white vinegar solution — she feels transformed.

Here's a photo of the woman wearing her special glasses to block blue spectrum light when checking a screen after dark:



I wonder if the reporter posited the concept of giving up electronics to her, if she really wanted to be paleo.

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

She can't do that.

She makes her living on-line.

I couldn't get past the first paragraph of that article.

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

"Give up my electronics? Are you crazy?"

[San Bernardhinault]

Annoying New York Times articles

Do paleo-nutters also take a feast-and-famine approach to food? Ms Tam appears to be living in a state in the middle of its biggest drought in centuries. I hope she's not eating any food that comes from artificially irrigated land...

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

The resources issue was raised in a New Yorker essay on the paleo diet:

Whether or not agriculture was the “worst mistake in the history of the human race,” the choice, once made, was made for good. With a global population of seven billion people, heading rapidly toward eight billion, there’s certainly no turning back now (even if paleo does, in fact, prevent zits). Pound for pound, beef production demands at least ten times as much water as wheat production, and, calorie for calorie, it demands almost twenty times as much energy. Livestock are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, not just because of the fuel it takes to raise them but also because they do things like belch out methane and produce lots of shit, which in turn produces lots of nitrous oxide. One analysis, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, concluded that, in terms of emissions, eating a pound of beef is the equivalent of driving forty-five miles. (Grass-fed beef—recommended by many primal enthusiasts—may produce lower emissions than corn-fed, but the evidence on this is shaky.) Eating a pound of whole wheat, by contrast, is like driving less than a mile. All of which is to say that, from an environmental standpoint, paleo’s “Let them eat steak” approach is a disaster.

[Renart]

Annoying New York Times articles

Paleo is so decadent. We're clearly truly meant to eat exactly like our chimpanzee cousins, and live on foraged figs, termites, raw leaves, and the occasional bush baby.

[Reed John]

Annoying New York Times articles

I might try that blue-light thing. There is something to that, in that our brains do have a day-night rhythm (maybe created by habit, rather than genetics. Not sure). I have trouble falling asleep and I think the light from all the gadgets may be partly to blame.

[Renart]

Annoying New York Times articles

Don't people who live in gloomy, overcast cities sometimes use a special light to regulate sleep cycles and fight depression?

I probably could have used that when I lived in Portland (assuming it's not snake oil).

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yes, OTT Lights are supposed to be good for that. I have an OTT neck pillow for reading in bed at night without disturbing my mate, thoughtful husband that I am.

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

I don't doubt that, Reed. I just think it's funny for someone to be so invested in a "primal" way of life who still can't give up technology.

I know that there's been a lot more serious talk of people eating insects as an ethical source of protein and one that doesn't have a lot of natural resource issues around its production. I'm wondering if there are any paleo diet adherents that have gone that far yet.

There's a lot of sensible-seeming stuff in the paleo diet, and I don't want it to seem like I think anyone who does it is dumb. It seems that some people feel the need to make drastic lifestyle switches in order to be true to an ethos, and become evangelistic about a lifestyle. I guess it's easier to get attention and readers/followers by coming up with a catchy name instead of saying "hey, don't eat so much shit, and try to work out more."

[ursus arctos]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yes, though that is usually for seasonal affective disorder.

[Renart]

Annoying New York Times articles

I have a friend from high school who's gone Paleo. Some of it is sensible enough, despite the questionable anthropology, but I do get annoyed when he acts like eating oatmeal or a piece of sourdough is the equivalent of injecting poison directly into your stomach.

And then of course there are the people who try to exercise like cavemen, leaping over rocks and such. Is the NYT article about that at the beginning of this thread?

[Sam]

Annoying New York Times articles

Incandenza wrote: Here's a photo of the woman wearing her special glasses to block blue spectrum light when checking a screen after dark:

Reed John wrote: I might try that blue-light thing. There is something to that, in that our brains do have a day-night rhythm (maybe created by habit, rather than genetics. Not sure). I have trouble falling asleep and I think the light from all the gadgets may be partly to blame.

That woman - and presumably Reed - need to give f.lux a go. I installed it a week or so ago and it's helped my brain to shut down a little more quickly after using my computer late at night (which I do practically every night, because I'm a night owl). It just sits in the system tray and fades the blue light out as the sun goes down - you can set it to do so over a period of an hour, as well, and honestly you don't even notice it.

[Sam]

Annoying New York Times articles

Oh, and if you want a good example of how effective it is: install it, use it for an hour or so after dark, and then click the option to temporarily disable it. It's like night and day.

[Incandenza]

Annoying New York Times articles

Interesting.

During the day, computer screens look good—they're designed to look like the sun.

I read that last bit in Alan Partridge's voice.

[ad hoc]

Annoying New York Times articles

The Paleo diet (and Atkins before it) are the culmination of the hyper-individualist creed that says "I can do anything and everything I want if I believe it will marginally improve my life even if it has massive catastrophic effects on many others/the planet/the environment in general" Fucking wankers.

[Renart]

Annoying New York Times articles

Yep, and in my experience there seems to be a significant overlap of Paleo and libertarianism.

[Ginger Yellow]

Annoying New York Times articles

The article isn't too annoying on the surface. It just takes it as a given that artisanal salt is a thing and talks glowingly about how well-run and "sustainable" the company is now that it uses vegetable grease ovens instead of woodfired ones. But it should have probed that a bit more. Did the owners believe (or convince their customers) that water boiled over wood fire leaves a better precipitate than water boiled over, for example, a gas-fire?

I would have thought the vegetable grease boilers were about recycling waste rather than changing the taste of the salt.

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

I knew this was going to degenerate into the usual 'what's the best way to make artisanal salt' ruck.

[WOM]

Annoying New York Times articles

In vegetable grease news, the guy who looks after my car is currently building his fourth 'grease burner'; a modified VW diesel he powers with old restaurant fryer oil. Each one gets a little bit better, and his last one was driven out to New Brunswick and back on $40 worth of second-hand oil.