Obviously one of us needs his sense of humour tuned up. Maybe it’s me!

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For one thing the author seems to object to the fact that the DSM categorizes mental illnesses. Like, the DSM isn’t supposed to have deep insight into the human soul; it’s supposed to classify typical ways that people are dysfunctional into categories so that doctors know how to treat them and so treatment can be billed on insurance. I dunno, does the author complain when biologists describe the traits of a Botaurus stellaris and contrast it with a Botaurus lentiginosis? When a classicist lists out the different ways that Latin uses the ablative?

I also think that the essay shows a stunning lack of awareness that mental illness is a real actual thing that really actually exists. Mania is different from happiness, unless I’ve been wrong this whole time and happiness is typically characterized by only having to sleep for three hours at a time or racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I have a personality disorder; my occupational and social functioning is not impaired by my Awesome Rebelliousness and Nonconformity, it is impaired by the fact that sometimes my reaction to people mildly criticizing me is to curl in a ball sobbing for twelve hours and then punish myself for being Worse Than Hitler. Like… treating mental illness and “art, literature, love, and humanity” are not opposed to each other. I assure you I would be so much better at art, literature, love, and humanity if I could leave the house on a regular basis.

The thing is that… mental illness definitions sometimes sound like they refer to normal behavior. Like people often think that depression means being sad, and then are like “if the DSM gets its way then people will never be sad anymore!” But depression isn’t the same thing. “Sad” doesn’t leave you unable to leave your bed for days at a time, or losing ten pounds because eating seems like it would take too much energy, or thinking “man, the only reason I’m still alive is that killing myself is too much work.” We can eliminate that feeling and still have LOTS of sad feelings left. Grand passions, even!

This is not to say that the DSM isn’t fucked in some ways (it is) or that mental illness is never used to pathologize deviant-but-functional behavior (it is) or that social factors don’t play a role in the development of mental illness (they do). It is not even to say that we should always cure mental illnesses; I think that cure for disability is a complicated question. But that article is a pile of denialist bullshit.

I am a huge fan of the social model of disability. But the thing I don’t think people get is that impairment is a real thing. It is possible *both* that I am impaired by the fact that my brain doesn’t regulate emotions as well as normal people’s does, and that society constructs this impairment as a mental illness and worsens my situation by not accommodating me. Similarly, a person in a wheelchair is impaired because they can’t walk, but the fact that a ton of sidewalks aren’t wheelchair-compatible plays a pretty key role in the situation. To pretend that it’s all social, that no one has brains that don’t work as well as others, is to throw mentally ill people under the bus for Rebellion Points.

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Aquafina is owned by PepsiCo. Arrowhead, Poland Springs, Ice Mountain, and Purelife are Nestlé. Dasani? Coca-Cola. These are not companies that stand to gain by getting people to replace their soda consumption with a product that can be bought bottled *or* drawn from the tap for (essentially) nothing.

These parent companies are well aware of how much success the food industry has had increasing the overall level of consumption. I would be very surprised if they weren’t very diligent in the way they approached the leverage they have with this sort of campaign.

The key takeaways of the video ad seem to be “drink when you feel slow/tired/blah-ish” and “water is a very good choice.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the campaign caused an increase in consumption of a wide variety of beverages.

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evolutionary role of making the mother avoid toxins dangerous to the developing fetus.

When my wife was pregnant, she could smell a half-rotten potato wrapped in a bag and sitting in the back of a closed kitchen cupboard, from the upper floor! (And vociferously demand that I remove that horrible smell from the house. Naturally I couldn’t smell it, nor find it.) And now I know why.

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