We're getting stranger by the minute

It wasn’t lost on me why the consumption of anything that’s not beef, pork or poultry is so “taboo” in my country (America clutches pearls at everything, who’s shocked), but this is the same country where there’s a food culture around preserving and eating roadkill— a food culture we share with other countries at that. That can range anywhere from elk and white-tailed deer to raccoons and possums. In a few states, proposals have been considered to legalize the practice: some passed, some didn’t. It depends on where you live. That doesn’t stop the culture from existing, though. Either way, there’s been pushes to recognize this cuisine on a collective level. This is the same country where some coastal communities regularly prepare and eat the meat of alligators. No one down here (the South) bats an eye when deer are hunted for their meat and other parts. All of these things are familiar to me, but it may come off as “strange” to someone who isn’t familiar with these practices or the regions they take place in.

Yet, even in the examples I give, there’s plenty of Americans who shun these practices because they believe it to be appalling. It’s outside of their comfort or sense of “normality”, and that’s enough to dismiss it. If not that, it strikes something in their moral compass. Instead of learning more so they can be informed on which of these practices are ethical and those that aren’t, they assume all aspects of it are unethical without further research.

Like anywhere else, this country is full of different cultural norms and practices based on where you live. Because of this, I can say with confidence that my outlook on the ethics of food and consumption is informed by the regional bias I’ve seen against Southerners, specifically rural Southern communities and their food cultures. Many stereotypes against roadkill preservation in particular are classist, associating practitioners with redneck caricatures, poverty and a general lack of “civility”. My outlook has only grown from there as I opened myself up to learning about cultures outside of my own and studying cultural anthropology. That’s when you get into the greater issue of these perspectives turning towards cultures across the world— especially towards communities within Asia and Africa— as an extension of both USAmerican-centrism and white supremacy alike. A common example being the framing of food cultures as unethical and abusive against specific animals because it involves animals one likes (dogs, cats, rabbits, etc) OR treating a food culture as inherently disgusting because it involves animals one personally dislikes (bugs, most amphibians and reptiles). In my opinion, this has become a covert way of calling any culture that isn’t one’s own “savage” in the classic fashion of the Global North. Sure, this isn’t reflective of all USAmericans nor are all offenders of this USAmerican, but we are all familiar with the Global North’s— especially America’s— behavior of condemning food cultures outside of their own because they find them “morally wrong” or “gross”.

I find it rich as hell coming from the people in my country and other countries in the Global North when factory farming exists. Something that is a genuine issue not only with how our food is cultivated and prepared, but also a major issue within animal welfare. In the case of the United States, I see far too many Americans acting like they care about animals whenever they see news about people using dog meat in their dishes, preparing a rabbit they caught for dinner or eating meat in general when the actual problems have been packaged and branded in our supermarkets for decades.

yeah. maybe that would be fair to say about say, discrete viruses. but about syndromes?

like. the conditions of the human body don't know that they're taxonomically discrete. they don't know that they have different names or lists of symptoms. if a human body has a consistent issue with say, its heart rhythm, or its inflammatory response, or its glandular response, or immune system

the reason that ehlers-danlos syndrome (EDS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS), IBS (irritable bowel), autism, and even shit like coeliac and PMDD or endometriosis overlap is bc like. these are largely inflammatory issues or issues with the fascia

It's not "what the fuck, how can this person have all these different things wrong with them", bc these are largely like. syndromic definitions of how x bodily issue manifests in different systems, structures, or organs of the body

many of these conditions change in definition over time

and that's bc they're studied and understood more over time where people more meaningfully understand underlying causes and issues, such as through hormone or genetic profiles, or largely like. immune response

it's also how "rare" conditions become understood as more common over time

I recall reading the book A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness. It's about a nuclear worker who received a lethal dose of radiation due to a prompt-critical accident while making nuclear fuel. As the title implies, he died over the course of 83 days.

What struck me about the book was, it's pretty clear his DNA was just shredded and nothing was really replacing itself effectively. His organs and systems failed at a rate consistent with their typical cellular lives. At each step of this, they brought in specialists to manage the problem: he wasn't producing erethrocytes, they brought in hematologists. His stomach lining was breaking down, they brought in gastroenterologists, &c. Each one had this faith that if they kept him going past this crisis, his body's natural healing would take over and he would get better. But looking at his body as a whole, it was obvious from very early that was Just Not Happening. Each specialist was looking at it as "Oh no, my one part is failing, I need to get him through this and the rest of his otherwise healthy body can pull him along!" except the whole damned body was going because that's what a lethal neutron flux does. And somewhere around day 30 or so they should have said "I'm sorry, this is not going to work, we are switching to palliative care" and he could have died a week or two later, but that's not how specialists think.

finally i asked my neurologist, whom i had because i'd eventually gotten some weird symptoms in my neck identified as part of a pattern of chronic migraines.

she agreed it was a compressed nerve, possibly not in the knee itself but in the hip or where it runs parallel to the iliotibial band down the outside of the thigh.

regardless her recommendation was. a specific stretching exercise.

which didn't 100% erase the problem, but ameliorated it enough that it's no longer one of my major mobility concerns or sources of pain.

Autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and Tourette's are all neurodevelopmental conditions, and guess what? When the brain decides to develop abnormally, it doesn't look at a checklist for a specific condition and then follow the list! It just develops weird, and people label the results. Sometimes with a LOT of labels.

Generic names that cover all the possible manifestations of an issue often aren't very helpful. Because not everyone whose skin keeps trying to self-destruct ALSO stops breathing if they try to jog. Even if the "manufacturing error: air causes breathing shutdown" and the "manufacturing error: skin breaks down when in contact with necessary skin yeasts" are coming from the same source, the solutions may vary.