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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Are food allergies another aspect of the culture war? I was reading Reddit and a person was feeding 100 people and someone mentioned to make sure you have all the allergies/food restrictions covered. Being honest I’ve never met anyone with a food restriction I can think of except a lot of brown friends who won’t eat sausage but also have no problem with alcohol.

Ancient religions had a lot of restrictions, now Im borrowing this from elsewhere that the rise of food restrictions is just the same thing as ancients banning certain foods as holy acts. I’ve long argued that the culture wars are less of a culture war and more of a religious war and dietary restrictions are just a modern form of Jews and Muslims banning pork/shellfish etc and Catholics not eating meat on fridays. All religions seem to have focuses on eating and sexual rituals.

I know mental illness has far higher rates amongst lefties. My guess is dietary restrictions and food allergies are much higher in lefties and if your not in that religion it’s something you never think of.

My cousin is definitely deathly allergic to peanuts. Has been since birth, as far as I’m aware. I watched her arms swell up from the residue of boiled peanut juice on a table. You’d better believe she is careful, even neurotic, about food prep. Plenty red tribe, though, as if that matters.

I’ve got a friend whose sister is moderately-functioning autistic. As part of her genetic challenge run she developed some sort of gluten intolerance. While I can’t prove that the specialists weren’t overdiagnosing, I’m not going to be the one to try and convince this girl that the vomiting and hives are all in her head.

We found out that my brother was allergic to cashews when he was about 6. Full on anaphylaxis. He turned out to have a whole spread of tree-nut allergies, most of which he’s since outgrown. But almost watching your son choke to death changes a person, and Mom was quite careful with checking ingredients for the next ten years.

I’d be willing to believe that the marginal food intolerance is psychological or perhaps, in harder times, would have been kept quiet. Extending that claim to say it’s “religion” is...ridiculous.

There are supposedly people out there who get severe symptoms around wifi routers, but only if they know they're there. Don't underestimate the power of the mind.

The local public school's art teacher almost got wifi banned from the school because of that (and her friends did get it banned from local public housing, using their credentials as licensed reiki energy healers). Sanity only barely prevailed, and I heard rumors it was thanks to a "can you feel the wifi right now? Well... It's off" gambit at a staff meeting.

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The guy probably showed up with his reiki energy ‘healer’(who claimed to have a license) and the manager then claimed to ban Wi-Fi while in reality affecting nothing, because it’s easier to pretend to comply than to argue.