Rachelle > Recent Status Updates

“The world will drive a woman insane, then point at them and laugh.”

(…) “So if you are having another bad day you can say, Well, this feels bad, but there have been worse. And even when you can think of no worse day—when the one you are living is the very worst there has ever been—you at least know the bank exists and that you have made a deposit.”

“When you are very depressed or anxious-unable to leave the house, or the sofa, or to think of anything but the depression-it can be unbearably hard. Bad days come in degrees. They are not all equally bad. And the really bad ones, though horrible to live through, are useful for later. You store them up. A bank of bad days. (…)

“That's the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything. So if it catches you smiling, even fake smiling, then—well, that stuff's just not allowed and you know it, so here comes ten tons of counterbalance.”

“Misery, like yoga, is not a competitive sport.”

“I can't let go of my cynicism. I have to keep it close, tucked under my seat like an inflatable life vest. I'm too afraid of what will happen if I allow myself to become hopeful. What terrible disappointments will attack while I'm stupid happy and unprepared.”

Feel I must make a note, though it pains me as this book is so gorgeous, of a typo in the third sentence of the introduction: “They have became emblems of culture…” instead of “They have become…”

‘If ever there was an event that challenges the concept of intelligent design, it is the act of childbirth. No woman, however devout, has ever in childbirth said, “thank you lord for thinking THIS through for me.”’

Neither her father nor her mother own a cell phone in 2015?!

“Serena walked to the window, gazing at the wide stretch of bay and the sun setting behind the Oakland hills.” Ok, if she’s in her parents’ house on Baker street in San Francisco, how is the sun setting behind the Oakland hills, which are east of her position?

“Suddenly, that worth felt conditional. Like it could be taken or squandered. It was not inherent. It was bestowed. What was of worth was not me, but the veneer of constraints and observances that obscured me.”

“The greatest problem of all is dumbing down. Everything in the media is robbed of any scientific meat in a desperate bid to seduce an imaginary mass that aren’t interested. […] Unmediated access to niche expertise is the future.”

“Big Pharma isn’t frightened for its profits because popular opinion turned against MMR. If they have any sense, these companies are relieved that the public is obsessed with MMR, and thus distracted from the other far more complex and real issues connected with the pharmaceutical business and it’s inadequate regulation.”

“if MMR still scares you, then so should everything in medicine, and indeed many of the everyday lifestyle risk exposures you encounter. Because there are a huge number of things that are far less well researched, with a far lower level of certainty about their safety. The question would still remain of why you were so focused on MMR.”

“When someone presents his scientific findings about GM potatoes causing cancer in rats […] on ITV’s World in Action, rather than in an academic journal, there’s something fishy going on.”

Asperger’s “widespread use has allowed us all to feel that we can participate in the wonder and mystery of autism […] Except […] in most cases genuine autism is a pervasive developmental disorder. And most people with autism don’t write quirky books about their odd take on the world that reveal so much to us about our conventions and social morays in a charmingly plain and unselfconscious narrative style”

“Asperger’s Syndrome, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, is being applied to an increasingly large number of people. And children or adults who might previously have been considered quirky now frequently have their personalities medicalized with suggestions that they have traits of Asperger’s. Its growth as a pseudo diagnostic category has taken on similar proportions to mild dyslexia…”

“Concocting a health scare is attractive, because it gives the appearance of challenging power and authority, but with none of the work, and none of the litigation risk if you’re wrong.”

“You cannot find your hypothesis in your results.”

“Patients are so much more easily misled by drug company advertising than doctors that the budget for direct to consumer advertising in America has risen twice as fast as the budget for addressing doctors directly.”

“There is essentially no difference between the vitamin industry and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.”

“There are few opinions so absurd that you couldn’t find at least one person with a PhD somewhere in the world to endorse them for you.”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Not especially entertaining so far. The stories aren’t really funny or even amusing. They’re pretty bland, to be honest. It doesn’t help that I’m listening to the audiobook as read by the author, and she doesn’t have a strong voice for audio. She’s apparently middle aged, but sounds like a slightly petulant teenager woodenly reading a school assignment. Low energy all around.

“A factor leading us to ignore depression and eating disorders in women is the belief that this is just how women are. We expect women to be moody or sullen, so when they are, we write it off as part of their character.”

“Because the quieter problems of girls and women don’t bother other people nearly as much [as men’s], they are not dealt with.”

“Make our rhetoric kind and accepting, but also bold.”

“This could help activists avoid common pitfalls, such as using PETA’s offensive and trivializing strategies, like Booth Babes, who advertise animal free food. Those tactics garner short term attention at the cost of long term credibility.”

“Moral outrage has also been described as a response to behavior of others, never one’s own. So institutional messaging is more likely to spark the emotion because it puts the blame for the ethical issues of animal farming on the industry, government, or society at large, rather than on the individual. Because of this, institutional messaging could face less of the defensiveness advocates frequently encounter.”

“People are far more willing to support institutional change than they are to change their individual consumption”