Not in quite the same league but I had a similar experience with a man sporting a customer service badge at the entrance to the tube at Waterloo last week. I had replaced a lost Oyster card and wanted to link my National Railcard to it to get the discount which can only be done at a station. I wasn't quite sure how to express this transaction so I waved the cards at him in what I thought was a friendly manner and said something like. Err.um could you errr.um apply my senior rail card to my Oyster? He replied with a single word which I couldn't make out because it was noisy. So I asked him to repeat it. He said it again but I still didn't understand..and asked again. After the third time, he said "You should have said Please!!!" I was left feeling puzzled and slightly concerned that I had inadvertently been rude to him, so felt bad. But I don't think that it's the role of anyone wearing a Customer Service badge to make people feel bad, especially the elderly.
In France if you approach a store employee and say "excusez-moi" followed by a politely phrased request for information they often look at you pointedly and then say "Bonjour" to indicate that you left out the key bit.
I really enjoyed you trying to persuade Andy to watch Clarkson’s Farm! You even almost persuaded me to give in and try it. I don’t know how much you’re interested in farming as a subject but Guy Singh Watson writes a short column every week in the Riverford delivery boxes and it’s always a fascinating insight into farming. https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/opinion/the-madness-of-maize/
Me too! We now have an allotment and a big veg patch at home and I am trying my best to be more self sufficient this year, but I know that if we have to cancel a few veg boxes, I will miss the newsletter more than anything else
I think that Riverford is the only organisation I can think of that is cybernetically perfect - they don't just sell you things, but they give you reminders at just the right time, tell you all about the product, make all the information easy to access, and respond impeccably on the few occasions when deliveries aren't quite right. And they treat suppliers well. I wonder if the instinctive understanding of the way that Nature works provides them with the ability to create a flourishing business that interacts effectively with their customers and suppliers.
I've got an allotment too, so I use the pause deliveries function from time to time, which I quite like as it saves wastage. But yes, we do then not get the newsletter.
Another good thing about Riverford, is that their potato paper bags work really well when opened out in my compost bin at home. Whenever I add the caddy contents to it, I turn it, then lay the opened out bags on top as a covering. Works really well to keep flies away.
I once hired a car from a company that refused to let to clowns or circus performers. Which was a problem, because we were a group of jugglers, on our way to a juggling convention. We reasoned that since most of us (and in particular the driver) were *amateur* jugglers it was probably OK, but I'm glad we didn't have to test that assumption.
Also, a nitpick: the Larkins' eldest daughter was called Mariette (named after Marie Antoinette by Ma Larkin, because she thought it was a lovely name and didn't know the history). Mariette was Catherine Zeta-Jones' breakout role, in the beloved '90s TV adaptation starring David Jason. Time for a re-watch, I think.
I was concerned about a number of elements of the Letby case before reading the New Yorker article. Correlations being made on an incredibly small number of shifts in a busy, struggling hospital unit; the apparent ignoring of the fact that the babies in hospital were premature, complex cases; the framing of what, to me, read as the emotional written outbursts of a young woman who was not only dealing with what was happening at work, but also what appears to be a close relationship that she viewed one way and was viewed differently by the other person, as the evidence proving she was deliberately killing babies; the way nurses are presented as ‘angels’ when they’re not - they’re humans with all the messiness being human beings with it and they do write daft texts to friends, they do struggle with their mental health, possibly having feelings for a colleague that are troubling, they do possibly take paperwork home at the end of a long shift - and then that ‘angel’ persona is used against them; and, finally, the way certain medical staff in positions of power, members of the police force, and certain ‘experts’ appear to have fallen prey to the all too human failing of fitting complex evidence into a simplistic plot that owes more to crime fiction and tv shows than real life. And once stuck in that way of thinking it becomes easier to double down than accept that perhaps they don’t know for certain.
Not helped by the media. After all, especially now news is constantly updating on a rolling 24 hour platform, it is harder and harder for people in the public eye to admit they don’t know something. Or that they might have let themselves become embroiled in a conversation where the excitement of somehow proving a thing definitively takes over from trying to understand something messier, that may not have a single solution.
Another article you mention (The Perils of Moneyballing Everything) points to this very thing. Mistaking a mystery for a puzzle, and not understanding properly how data analytics works or how to apply it. And when not to.
This is great fun! I have been battling my instinctive clarkphobia...but my intolerance to my perceived intolerance of others bugs me..knotty thorn. So this is balm and great quality writing glad i found you
I'm just a dumb American and I've made this kind of comment before, but I love your newsletter SO MUCH. As an aforementioned dumb American, I don't even always know the references you're making, but I just LOVE the way you make them, and the links you share. So thank you again, from a happy subscriber.
Oh gawd! This is the third recommendation (from someone whose taste and judgment I respect) for Clarkson in as many days. I've just been looking the other way and blocking my ears cos I can't stand the man but I'm gonna have to go in, aren't I? My newborn newsletter is all about The Cotswolds sooo...
Films are incredible enterprises - there’s so much organisation involved. The fastest I know of from (unoptioned, published) book to film premiere is four years, which is really three years because shooting finishes the year before. Of course success hinges on the screenplay. Even that involved three rewrites (one totally inappropriate which would have ruined the book). I know, because I had a ringside seat.
John Sarno, a fascinating figure you should write about, thought that whiplash was a hysterical symptom and pointed out that it didn't occur in most countries. He also said similar things about RSI.
Interesting! Like non bio laundry powder which only exists in the UK after an incorrect study about enzyme allergies was widely reported here.
(That said, I tore the ligaments in my neck in a yoga class (cult is a better word) and have suffered with whiplash pain ever since as it wasn’t properly treated. I’d love it if it turned out I was just being hysterical. Also, I suspect more women get whiplash because more women are hypermobile, but that’s pure speculation )
Definitely read The Divided Mind and see how you get on. Obviously injuries do happen but Sarno suggests that the unconscious prefers to focus on physical pain than mental distress.
I should add that my friend, a Clean Language therapist, uses that principle to treat things like IBS (which she cured me of in one session). Maybe I should ask her to cure my neck. (And also, to add yet another PS, people like Louisa Hay have talked about the mind creating injuries forever, but she is disregarded for being woo woo (which she is, but as with a lot of these alternative types, there is good stuff mixed in with the woo))
I’ve just done an episode of David Runciman’s bad ideas podcast on Mesmerism (out Sunday) where I talk about the body/brain connection. I think it’s a developing area of science that’s worth paying attention to (although there is a lot of woo about). Back pain is a good example—the old advice of total rest seems to have locked people into “guarding” the injury in ways that were ultimately counterproductive. Also, with IBS, a consultant told me that many patients report that it goes away at the weekend — which feels like a huge marker that it’s stress/anxiety related rather than purely about food intolerance or a physical issue.
My friend is a hypnotherapist who uses this thing that is SO POORLY named that I’m convinced it’s the reason it’s not more widely known and used. It’s called either David Grove’s Metaphor Work, or Clean Language Therapy. Very basically, she puts you into a relaxed “hypnotic” state and then uses “clean” (ie non suggestive) questions to ask your brain to form a metaphor for how you are feeling and where it is in the body (eg: a cage of butterflies in your stomach). You then allow the brain to imagine what happens next (eg the butterflies escape and fly away). All this is also linked to things like how old you are when you first felt that feeling. It’s pretty astonishing how well it works and I wish more people knew about it. It has made me incredibly cynical about talk therapy. She does not believe you need to discuss everything, you just need to find the first time you felt it, and where that feeling sits in the body, and then your subconscious can let it go. As someone who suffered abuse as a child, it has been invaluable. I can’t believe I only realised today that I should ask her to do a session on my neck pain. 🤦🏻♀️
I’m glad you mention the woo about as, while I think there’s reasonable evidence that for some psychosomatic or culture-bound disorders, there’s also a couple of reasons to be heavily sceptical in this area.
The current fashion for mind/body explanations is often a rebadging of conversion disorder / FII / malingering / Freudian repression / hysteria. If I were being cynical I’d suggest it gets rebadged every time another condition confidently asserted as psychological gets found not to be (off the top of my head: stomach ulcers, autism, MS have all to be.)
The other is to note that the research here is *really* bad. Not sure is if the demise of Buzzfeed means it’s gone, but Tom Chivers did a brilliant piece on a contentious study of a supposed recovery programme for ME and it’s hard not to conclude that the trials would have likely shown effectiveness for any therapy: homeopathy, prayer, rhythmic chanting. The charitable explanation, I suppose, is that if you think a disease is psychosomatic why bother considering how to account for the placebo effect? Less charitably, there’s a huge army of scam artists willing to prey on the desperate (Cf today’s BBC News front page which is what reminded me to post this!)
Guarding is also an issue with people trying to recover from CFS/ME/Long covid. My husband just did a whole recovery course that was almost entirely focused on mindset - getting away from guarding and fear, and instead seeking joyful moments without worrying about the consequences.
It's worth emphasising in this sort of context that placebo effects are psychosomatic effects, thus are 'mind/body stuff', and that they are very real indeed. You think a pill is going to help your condition, and it does, even though it's just a sugar lump dressed up to look right, because it was given to you by a Doctor In A White Coat.
The point of a placebo-controlled drug trial is to demonstrate that the drug is more effective than the placebo, because it's a given that the sugar-pill, which is all that some participants receive, will produce measurable clinical outcomes. If the drug doesn't do better than the placebo, then a multi multi million dollar drug development will come to a crashing halt. Crudely, you can't get much more 'real' than that.
I suspect that medics/physicians are deeply uncomfortable with psychosomatic effects, outside the sanitising embrace of a drug trial, for a range of cultural and educational reasons. But they should be flattered: congratulations, doc – it's you _personally_ that's doing the curing here, not the drugs!
Yes! And this is why things like homeopathy can be so successful - because when else do you get to sit in a room with someone who will listen in detail to your symptoms and then tailor make a ‘drug’ for you? GPs don’t have the time for it - although ironically it would probably cut down on longer term care if they could spend more time up front with each patient.
I have got Cured which I’m guessing is similar (although I haven’t read it yet - my husband got it for his Long Covid/CFS). I will look it up. I’ve had conversations with my Osteo about how much of my chronic pain now just a learned behaviour (and she mentioned there are discussions in her industry about whether it’s ethical to treat chronic pain given it’s not going to solve the problem). Given the neck injury was from what ended up being quite a toxic yoga class (yes I know how ridiculous this sounds but like I say, it was very culty), maybe it’s just my body clinging to physical distress.
That said, hypermobility has been treated terribly by medical professionals (there was a great piece in the Observer on Sunday) and it doesn’t help that it’s a very female syndrome. I suspect my various problems are a combination of physical and mental.
I got a very nasty rash from using Ariel washing powder a long time ago and have used non bio ever since. So I'm interested to hear that the allergy doesn't exist. Is there any debunking evidence you can quote?
The origin of non bio stems from a single study into enzymes (which occur naturally in our own bodies) and was published in error and then picked up by newspapers in the uk years ago. It was debunked immediately but the public clung to it and demand for enzyme free washing have the laundry companies the opportunity to segment the market, something they love doing. It’s far more likely the rash was caused by the perfume or maybe chemical brighteners. There are lots of places to read about it, but here is one article https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/2015/nov/30/nappy-science-gang-versus-the-nhs
One minor point: people in rural areas not connected to the sewage system who use “digesters” (bubbling air through the waste) have to use non-bio because the enzymes otherwise kill the aerobic bacteria in the digester. So there is a solid reason, just not that one!
Not to labour the point, but it’s worth saying that Italians and French people are unlikely to put up with constant itchiness. Non bio just means Vanish can sell you the enzymes separately.
How interesting....and concerning...I like to think I'm a relatively well-informed (Guardian-reading) person but I had somehow missed this. Thanks for the info!
Hmm, it’s just possible that there are differences between countries that would account for whiplash not occurring there, though.
Like not being able to claim compensation for it from an accident lawyer.
I’m not saying people are faking, I’m saying people will probably pop some painkillers and put up with it without making a fuss if there’s no particular reason to.
Mitchell wasn't fitted up. He's a twat who hates poor people and expects everyone to bow, scrape and grovel. Fuck him and Damian Green too who should be in prison.
Really enjoyed the latest Page 94. The irony of Elon Musk's latest BRILLIANT business decision. Regarding the existence of conservative ecology, it's usually manifested by mystic fascists harking back to a mythological past of racial purity.
As someone who gets the print version of the New Yorker, I did wonder whether they’d considered that the Letby piece might break sub judice laws in the UK.
Apparently.. not. Hope Conde Nast’s lawyers have a good plan on this.
yet another BRILLIANT Bluestocking Helen! I roared with laughter at the Rachel Harris clip and Trump as well. And I have sent my 20 year old daughter the section on Clarkson - she adores him!
The part about the passive aggressive guard at No. 10 quite something.
It doesn't sound like there was much "passive" about it!
Not in quite the same league but I had a similar experience with a man sporting a customer service badge at the entrance to the tube at Waterloo last week. I had replaced a lost Oyster card and wanted to link my National Railcard to it to get the discount which can only be done at a station. I wasn't quite sure how to express this transaction so I waved the cards at him in what I thought was a friendly manner and said something like. Err.um could you errr.um apply my senior rail card to my Oyster? He replied with a single word which I couldn't make out because it was noisy. So I asked him to repeat it. He said it again but I still didn't understand..and asked again. After the third time, he said "You should have said Please!!!" I was left feeling puzzled and slightly concerned that I had inadvertently been rude to him, so felt bad. But I don't think that it's the role of anyone wearing a Customer Service badge to make people feel bad, especially the elderly.
In France if you approach a store employee and say "excusez-moi" followed by a politely phrased request for information they often look at you pointedly and then say "Bonjour" to indicate that you left out the key bit.
I really enjoyed you trying to persuade Andy to watch Clarkson’s Farm! You even almost persuaded me to give in and try it. I don’t know how much you’re interested in farming as a subject but Guy Singh Watson writes a short column every week in the Riverford delivery boxes and it’s always a fascinating insight into farming. https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/opinion/the-madness-of-maize/
I always look forward to Guy's communiques. Almost as nourishing as the veg.
Me too! We now have an allotment and a big veg patch at home and I am trying my best to be more self sufficient this year, but I know that if we have to cancel a few veg boxes, I will miss the newsletter more than anything else
I think that Riverford is the only organisation I can think of that is cybernetically perfect - they don't just sell you things, but they give you reminders at just the right time, tell you all about the product, make all the information easy to access, and respond impeccably on the few occasions when deliveries aren't quite right. And they treat suppliers well. I wonder if the instinctive understanding of the way that Nature works provides them with the ability to create a flourishing business that interacts effectively with their customers and suppliers.
I've got an allotment too, so I use the pause deliveries function from time to time, which I quite like as it saves wastage. But yes, we do then not get the newsletter.
Another good thing about Riverford, is that their potato paper bags work really well when opened out in my compost bin at home. Whenever I add the caddy contents to it, I turn it, then lay the opened out bags on top as a covering. Works really well to keep flies away.
I once hired a car from a company that refused to let to clowns or circus performers. Which was a problem, because we were a group of jugglers, on our way to a juggling convention. We reasoned that since most of us (and in particular the driver) were *amateur* jugglers it was probably OK, but I'm glad we didn't have to test that assumption.
Also, a nitpick: the Larkins' eldest daughter was called Mariette (named after Marie Antoinette by Ma Larkin, because she thought it was a lovely name and didn't know the history). Mariette was Catherine Zeta-Jones' breakout role, in the beloved '90s TV adaptation starring David Jason. Time for a re-watch, I think.
The rental company may have been justified - as I heard someone say at BJC recently ‘they’re *jugglers*, they’re going to do what they want!’
😉
Fair point - this is a community where "now do it on fire!" is a cliché 😜
And ‘that’s so cool - how can I make it harder?’ is the mindset.
Thanks so much for highlighting Rachel Parris' epic Hokey Cokey / Creep mash-up - a radio highlight of the week for me
My choir are doing Creep at the moment - so even more exquisite
I was concerned about a number of elements of the Letby case before reading the New Yorker article. Correlations being made on an incredibly small number of shifts in a busy, struggling hospital unit; the apparent ignoring of the fact that the babies in hospital were premature, complex cases; the framing of what, to me, read as the emotional written outbursts of a young woman who was not only dealing with what was happening at work, but also what appears to be a close relationship that she viewed one way and was viewed differently by the other person, as the evidence proving she was deliberately killing babies; the way nurses are presented as ‘angels’ when they’re not - they’re humans with all the messiness being human beings with it and they do write daft texts to friends, they do struggle with their mental health, possibly having feelings for a colleague that are troubling, they do possibly take paperwork home at the end of a long shift - and then that ‘angel’ persona is used against them; and, finally, the way certain medical staff in positions of power, members of the police force, and certain ‘experts’ appear to have fallen prey to the all too human failing of fitting complex evidence into a simplistic plot that owes more to crime fiction and tv shows than real life. And once stuck in that way of thinking it becomes easier to double down than accept that perhaps they don’t know for certain.
Not helped by the media. After all, especially now news is constantly updating on a rolling 24 hour platform, it is harder and harder for people in the public eye to admit they don’t know something. Or that they might have let themselves become embroiled in a conversation where the excitement of somehow proving a thing definitively takes over from trying to understand something messier, that may not have a single solution.
Another article you mention (The Perils of Moneyballing Everything) points to this very thing. Mistaking a mystery for a puzzle, and not understanding properly how data analytics works or how to apply it. And when not to.
This is great fun! I have been battling my instinctive clarkphobia...but my intolerance to my perceived intolerance of others bugs me..knotty thorn. So this is balm and great quality writing glad i found you
I'm just a dumb American and I've made this kind of comment before, but I love your newsletter SO MUCH. As an aforementioned dumb American, I don't even always know the references you're making, but I just LOVE the way you make them, and the links you share. So thank you again, from a happy subscriber.
Same
Oh gawd! This is the third recommendation (from someone whose taste and judgment I respect) for Clarkson in as many days. I've just been looking the other way and blocking my ears cos I can't stand the man but I'm gonna have to go in, aren't I? My newborn newsletter is all about The Cotswolds sooo...
Films are incredible enterprises - there’s so much organisation involved. The fastest I know of from (unoptioned, published) book to film premiere is four years, which is really three years because shooting finishes the year before. Of course success hinges on the screenplay. Even that involved three rewrites (one totally inappropriate which would have ruined the book). I know, because I had a ringside seat.
John Sarno, a fascinating figure you should write about, thought that whiplash was a hysterical symptom and pointed out that it didn't occur in most countries. He also said similar things about RSI.
Interesting! Like non bio laundry powder which only exists in the UK after an incorrect study about enzyme allergies was widely reported here.
(That said, I tore the ligaments in my neck in a yoga class (cult is a better word) and have suffered with whiplash pain ever since as it wasn’t properly treated. I’d love it if it turned out I was just being hysterical. Also, I suspect more women get whiplash because more women are hypermobile, but that’s pure speculation )
Definitely read The Divided Mind and see how you get on. Obviously injuries do happen but Sarno suggests that the unconscious prefers to focus on physical pain than mental distress.
I should add that my friend, a Clean Language therapist, uses that principle to treat things like IBS (which she cured me of in one session). Maybe I should ask her to cure my neck. (And also, to add yet another PS, people like Louisa Hay have talked about the mind creating injuries forever, but she is disregarded for being woo woo (which she is, but as with a lot of these alternative types, there is good stuff mixed in with the woo))
I’ve just done an episode of David Runciman’s bad ideas podcast on Mesmerism (out Sunday) where I talk about the body/brain connection. I think it’s a developing area of science that’s worth paying attention to (although there is a lot of woo about). Back pain is a good example—the old advice of total rest seems to have locked people into “guarding” the injury in ways that were ultimately counterproductive. Also, with IBS, a consultant told me that many patients report that it goes away at the weekend — which feels like a huge marker that it’s stress/anxiety related rather than purely about food intolerance or a physical issue.
My friend is a hypnotherapist who uses this thing that is SO POORLY named that I’m convinced it’s the reason it’s not more widely known and used. It’s called either David Grove’s Metaphor Work, or Clean Language Therapy. Very basically, she puts you into a relaxed “hypnotic” state and then uses “clean” (ie non suggestive) questions to ask your brain to form a metaphor for how you are feeling and where it is in the body (eg: a cage of butterflies in your stomach). You then allow the brain to imagine what happens next (eg the butterflies escape and fly away). All this is also linked to things like how old you are when you first felt that feeling. It’s pretty astonishing how well it works and I wish more people knew about it. It has made me incredibly cynical about talk therapy. She does not believe you need to discuss everything, you just need to find the first time you felt it, and where that feeling sits in the body, and then your subconscious can let it go. As someone who suffered abuse as a child, it has been invaluable. I can’t believe I only realised today that I should ask her to do a session on my neck pain. 🤦🏻♀️
After all my reading on mesmerism, I would be fascinated to try that!
I’m glad you mention the woo about as, while I think there’s reasonable evidence that for some psychosomatic or culture-bound disorders, there’s also a couple of reasons to be heavily sceptical in this area.
The current fashion for mind/body explanations is often a rebadging of conversion disorder / FII / malingering / Freudian repression / hysteria. If I were being cynical I’d suggest it gets rebadged every time another condition confidently asserted as psychological gets found not to be (off the top of my head: stomach ulcers, autism, MS have all to be.)
The other is to note that the research here is *really* bad. Not sure is if the demise of Buzzfeed means it’s gone, but Tom Chivers did a brilliant piece on a contentious study of a supposed recovery programme for ME and it’s hard not to conclude that the trials would have likely shown effectiveness for any therapy: homeopathy, prayer, rhythmic chanting. The charitable explanation, I suppose, is that if you think a disease is psychosomatic why bother considering how to account for the placebo effect? Less charitably, there’s a huge army of scam artists willing to prey on the desperate (Cf today’s BBC News front page which is what reminded me to post this!)
Guarding is also an issue with people trying to recover from CFS/ME/Long covid. My husband just did a whole recovery course that was almost entirely focused on mindset - getting away from guarding and fear, and instead seeking joyful moments without worrying about the consequences.
Re: woo-woo and good stuff:
It's worth emphasising in this sort of context that placebo effects are psychosomatic effects, thus are 'mind/body stuff', and that they are very real indeed. You think a pill is going to help your condition, and it does, even though it's just a sugar lump dressed up to look right, because it was given to you by a Doctor In A White Coat.
The point of a placebo-controlled drug trial is to demonstrate that the drug is more effective than the placebo, because it's a given that the sugar-pill, which is all that some participants receive, will produce measurable clinical outcomes. If the drug doesn't do better than the placebo, then a multi multi million dollar drug development will come to a crashing halt. Crudely, you can't get much more 'real' than that.
I suspect that medics/physicians are deeply uncomfortable with psychosomatic effects, outside the sanitising embrace of a drug trial, for a range of cultural and educational reasons. But they should be flattered: congratulations, doc – it's you _personally_ that's doing the curing here, not the drugs!
Yes! And this is why things like homeopathy can be so successful - because when else do you get to sit in a room with someone who will listen in detail to your symptoms and then tailor make a ‘drug’ for you? GPs don’t have the time for it - although ironically it would probably cut down on longer term care if they could spend more time up front with each patient.
I have got Cured which I’m guessing is similar (although I haven’t read it yet - my husband got it for his Long Covid/CFS). I will look it up. I’ve had conversations with my Osteo about how much of my chronic pain now just a learned behaviour (and she mentioned there are discussions in her industry about whether it’s ethical to treat chronic pain given it’s not going to solve the problem). Given the neck injury was from what ended up being quite a toxic yoga class (yes I know how ridiculous this sounds but like I say, it was very culty), maybe it’s just my body clinging to physical distress.
That said, hypermobility has been treated terribly by medical professionals (there was a great piece in the Observer on Sunday) and it doesn’t help that it’s a very female syndrome. I suspect my various problems are a combination of physical and mental.
Coincidentally, I also got injured during yoga.
https://neilscott.substack.com/p/on-pain
Thanks for sharing this! Will now spend the morning down a Sarno rabbit hole.
I got a very nasty rash from using Ariel washing powder a long time ago and have used non bio ever since. So I'm interested to hear that the allergy doesn't exist. Is there any debunking evidence you can quote?
The origin of non bio stems from a single study into enzymes (which occur naturally in our own bodies) and was published in error and then picked up by newspapers in the uk years ago. It was debunked immediately but the public clung to it and demand for enzyme free washing have the laundry companies the opportunity to segment the market, something they love doing. It’s far more likely the rash was caused by the perfume or maybe chemical brighteners. There are lots of places to read about it, but here is one article https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/2015/nov/30/nappy-science-gang-versus-the-nhs
One minor point: people in rural areas not connected to the sewage system who use “digesters” (bubbling air through the waste) have to use non-bio because the enzymes otherwise kill the aerobic bacteria in the digester. So there is a solid reason, just not that one!
This is a good point, and it’s worth adding that you should never use Bio on wool or silk since the enzymes will start munching away on them.
What do people do in other countries? I thought you could only get non-bio washing powder in the UK and Ireland - was I misinformed?
Not to labour the point, but it’s worth saying that Italians and French people are unlikely to put up with constant itchiness. Non bio just means Vanish can sell you the enzymes separately.
How interesting....and concerning...I like to think I'm a relatively well-informed (Guardian-reading) person but I had somehow missed this. Thanks for the info!
Well-informed and Guardian-reading may be mutually exclusive...
Scott Alexander has written a couple of interesting pieces on this subject:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-crazy-like-us
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-geography-of-madness
[I'd disagree with Sarno about RSI, having had it myself - but presumably victims of witch-related penis theft would feel the same way.]
Hmm, it’s just possible that there are differences between countries that would account for whiplash not occurring there, though.
Like not being able to claim compensation for it from an accident lawyer.
I’m not saying people are faking, I’m saying people will probably pop some painkillers and put up with it without making a fuss if there’s no particular reason to.
Mitchell wasn't fitted up. He's a twat who hates poor people and expects everyone to bow, scrape and grovel. Fuck him and Damian Green too who should be in prison.
Really enjoyed the latest Page 94. The irony of Elon Musk's latest BRILLIANT business decision. Regarding the existence of conservative ecology, it's usually manifested by mystic fascists harking back to a mythological past of racial purity.
As someone who gets the print version of the New Yorker, I did wonder whether they’d considered that the Letby piece might break sub judice laws in the UK.
Apparently.. not. Hope Conde Nast’s lawyers have a good plan on this.
Thanks for the recommendation of the Rachel Aviv article. Devastating.
I read that piece in the New Yorker and I found it very concerning. Suffice it to say that it put me in mind of what happened to Stephen Ward.
yet another BRILLIANT Bluestocking Helen! I roared with laughter at the Rachel Harris clip and Trump as well. And I have sent my 20 year old daughter the section on Clarkson - she adores him!