Month: May 2022

As if the past handful of years weren’t challenging enough, the U.S. is currently dealing with a baby formula crisis.

Due to a perfect storm of supply chain issues, product recalls, labor shortages and inflation, manufacturers are struggling to keep up with formula demand and retailers are rationing supplies. As a result, families that rely on formula are scrambling to ensure that their babies get the food they need.

Naturally, people are weighing in on the crisis, with some throwing out simplistic advice like, “Why don’t you just do what people did before baby formula was invented and just breastfeed?”

That might seem logical, unless you understand how breastfeeding works and know a bit about infant mortality throughout human history.

Rutgers University historian Carla Cevasco, Ph.D. shared some of the history of infant feeding in a viral Twitter thread to set the record straight. (Note: Cevasco provided sources for her facts, which can be viewed at the end of her thread on Twitter.)

“You may be hearing the argument that before the rise of modern commercial infant formula, babies all ate breastmilk and everything was great,” she wrote. “As a historian of infant feeding, let me tell you why that’s not true.”

First of all, throughout history, people have at times needed to feed infants using foods other than breastmilk. For many reasons:

— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD)
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Cevasco explained that, throughout history, people have had to feed infants food other than breastmilk for a variety of reasons.

“Sometimes the birthing parent was unable to breastfeed,” she wrote, “Because: death in childbirth, or physical/mental health concerns, or need to return to work outside the home right after childbirth, OR their partner or enslaver forced them not to breastfeed so that they could return to fertility ASAP after giving birth.

“Sometimes baby was unable to breastfeed. Because: poor latch, prematurity, cleft palate, other health or disability reasons, etc.

“Sometimes baby was being cared for by carers other than birthing parent, including adoptive parents.”

So, feeding baby other peopleu2019s breastmilk wasnu2019t necessarily an ideal situation either, given the power dynamics of race, class, and gender in the past.

— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD)
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Cevasco went on to explain what babies ate instead of a parent’s breast milk in those situations.

“Sometimes someone else would breastfeed the child,” she wrote. “This might have been a relative or neighbor doing it for free. Or it might have been a paid or unpaid servant or enslaved person doing it at the expense of their own nursing infant, who might starve to death as a result.”

She also explained that some babies thrived on alternative diets, which are not recommended today due to concerns about safety and nutrition.

“Wabanaki women in the 18th century sometimes fed infants a mixture of boiled walnuts, cornmeal, and water; an English colonist, Elizabeth Hanson, reported that her baby thrived on this diet,” she wrote. “In early modern Europe, babies often ate pap or panada, mixtures of animal milk or water, bread crumbs or flour. Sometimes these were boiled, sometimes they weren’t.”

However, she explained, those milk substitutes weren’t always safe or nutritionally complete.

“So before the advent of modern commercial formula (in the 1950s), a lot of babies died of illness or starvation because they couldn’t breastfeed and the alternative foods were not safe or adequate,” she wrote. “Let me repeat that: in the absence of modern formula, A LOT OF BABIES DIED OF ILLNESS OR STARVATION DUE TO LACK OF SAFE OR ADEQUATE FOOD.”

As Cevasco illustrates, the idea that the pre-formula days were a bastion of infant health due to widespread breastfeeding is simply incorrect. Cevasco explained that better supports such as paid parental leave, free lactation consultation and education, better access to places to pump and so on, would go a long way toward increasing breastfeeding rates. She also pointed out that the greed of the corporate formula industry created the formula shortage crisis.

“But! Let’s not demonize formula because of an imagined past in which everyone breastfed,” she wrote. “In the ACTUAL past, babies fucking starved and died of disease. Babies who would have survived today, because they would have had access to safe, nutritionally complete formula. Access that is now, horrifyingly and unjustly, under threat for many babies and their caregivers.”

There will ALWAYS be people who need formula for a whole hosts of reasons.

— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD)
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Cevasco pointed out that there are multiple safe and nutritionally complete ways to feed a baby, and making sure babies don’t go hungry should be our main goal.

So many misinformed comments could be avoided with a basic understanding of what infant feeding looked like in the past, as well as a basic understanding of how breastfeeding works both physically and logistically. Let’s spend more time informing ourselves and sharing facts from experts rather than continuing to perpetuate unhelpful and harmful myths about both breastfeeding and formula feeding.

Johnny Depp’s defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard returned after a week off, and there were still more wild revelations in a court case that’s already been full of them. Depp himself has already pointed out that he’s lost work over the allegations Heard made about him. But Heard said he’s not the only one.

As per Entertainment Weekly, Heard claimed she has to “fight really hard” to say in the entertainment industry after her split with Depp. After she obtained a domestic violence restraining order against him in 2016, she says he launched a “smear campaign” against her featuring a “sophisticated PR machine” deadest on making her persona non grata.

“I lost opportunities. I got dropped from jobs and campaigns,” she told the jury.”I fought to keep my job and the biggest movie opportunity I had to date [with] Justice League with the option to [star in] Aquaman. I had to fight really hard to stay in Justice League because that was the time of the divorce.”

Heard also discussed news that broke earlier this month: that even though she received double her $1 million Aquaman salary to do the sequel, her role wound up being gutted to a mere 10 minutes. She claimed Warner Bros. “didn’t want to include me” and that the final script featured a “very pared-down version” of her original character arc.

“I was given a script and then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character, without giving any spoiler aways, two characters fighting with one another, and they basically took a bunch out of my role,” testified Heard. “They just removed a bunch out.”

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is due in theaters in March 27 of 2023. The Depp-Heard trial, meanwhile, is still ongoing, which is good news for the newly relaunched Court TV.

(Via EW)

For the most part, ceremonial first pitches are wholly uninteresting in the world of Major League Baseball. Honorees run the gamut from celebrities to local heroes to relatively anonymous people but, every once in a while, true magic occurs. One of those instances happened on Monday in Boston when Steve Aoki strolled to the mound to deliver the opening offering before a matchup between the Red Sox and the Houston Astros.

The video is worth a thousand (or more) words.

This is an immediate hall of fame entry in the worst first pitches of all-time, simply because of where the ball landed. Aoki never seemed particularly comfortable with where his setup began, for some reason starting on the upslope on the back of the mound, but, as soon as he begin his move to the plate, there was an elaborate wind-up which probably was not the best idea.

From there, the angle set Aoki up for a disaster, and the ball’s trajectory got out of control with haste. In the videos above, you can get a glimpse of the horror and/or amazement from the patrons in attendance at Fenway Park, but onlookers probably just cannot get enough of this video. The debate will rage as to whether this was truly the worst of all-time since, well, Aoki at least made it to the plate, but it was a sight to behold.

Liz Cheney, a longtime staunch Republican whose father is no less than Dick Cheney, is up to here with the GOP. First she started standing up to the insurrectionist wing of her party. Then they stripped her of her GOP leadership. Now she’s ripping them for having “enabled” the white supremacist mentality that led to Saturday’s gun massacre in Buffalo, New York.

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism,” Cheney wrote in a scorched-earth tweet. “History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

On Saturday, an 18-year-old assailant killed 10 people and wounded three, the majority of them Black. He had posted an epic manifesto, in which he parroted a conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement,” which claims that immigrants are trying to replace white Americans. Tucker Carlson has been talking about for years on his top-rated Fox News show. Indeed, The New York Times recently noted, he’s mentioned it over 400 times since 2016.

Then again, GOP leaders either don’t exactly show spine when it counts or are active cheerleaders for this racially-tinged conspiracy theory themselves. Till they do something to address both far right extremism and out-of-control gun violence, guess we’ll all have to take Patton Oswalt’s gallows humor advice on how to stay safe.

Michelle Yeoh has been receiving some of the best reviews of her career with Everything Everywhere All at Once, which is saying something considering she was outstanding right from the start. But she wasn’t the filmmakers’ first pick. That would be her sometime co-star Jackie Chan. Yeoh was the one who convinced Chan, who used to have issues about women doing martial arts, that women could do martial arts. How did she do that? By taking after him and almost killing herself to entertain. And when he reached out to congratulate her on the film’s success, she couldn’t help but tease him.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the highly in-demand actress and martial arts god mentioned that Chan recently contacted her. “Jackie actually texted me,” Yeoh said. “And he says: ‘Wow, I hear amazing things about your movie. Did you know that the boys came to see me in China?’ And I said: ‘Yes, your loss, my bro!’”

Filmmakers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (billed simply as “The Daniels”) admitted that their original idea for the action-comedy-drama-fantasy — about a Chinese immigrant who discovers she can access a multitude of versions of herself and her family in different universes — focused on the husband, eventually played by Ke Huy Quan. Chan was their first pick, though, but he was “unavailable.” Then they wondered about making it about the wife instead, which is when “something clicked.” And, well, you know the rest.

(Via The Guardian)

Food alone is reason enough for many of us to travel. How cool is it that every destination has its own local delicacies you can’t quite find anywhere else? For Julie Nguyen, the CEO and co-founder of Methodology, food has not only brought her to many of the world’s lesser-known and remote locations but it’s also been the leading force in her career.

Nguyen founded Methodology, a whole foods-focused food delivery subscription, with the mission to heal bodies and minds using food as medicine. She spent years researching with nutritionists, working with personal trainers, and traveling the globe in search of the best-tasting, most nutritious cuisine. During her world tour, she dined at a plethora of popular restaurants in the most touristed cities, but it’s the under-the-radar gems that stood out most to her. So she’s giving us her guide to the most underrated, off-the-beaten-path restaurants around the world:

“I live out of two suitcases and circle the globe to find the most delicious, nourishing, undiscovered recipes from around the world,” she says. “I use these recipes as inspiration to create innovative new menu items not found anywhere else. To do this well, I have to venture off the beaten path. These are the meals I still dream about eating again and again.”

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Sans Souci — A Comforting Okinawan Cafe in Okinawa, Japan

Few tourists in Japan make it to Okinawa and even fewer venture away from the central area of Okinawa. I came to Okinawa because it’s a blue zone known for having a large population of centenarians. I wanted to learn what Okinawans eat to live so long. I was fortunate enough to spend several weeks in Okinawa, which allowed me to explore restaurants undiscovered by most American tourists, including this hidden gem cafe. Prepare for a truly authentic local experience. The staff does not speak English and the menu is entirely in Japanese, but fortunately, the menu does include photos of everything. You really can’t go wrong here. I’m a rice lover so I ordered a rice bowl with creamy raw egg yolk on top and had one of their foot-tall 10-layer parfaits for dessert. If these parfaits were located anywhere else in the world that’s more accessible, Sans Souci would become an Instagram sensation with two-hour wait times.

But, alas, this cafe is in the middle of nowhere on an island that rarely gets crowded with tourists. The parfaits aren’t just special because of how visually stunning they are; the multiple layers also provide a variety of flavors, temperatures, and textures making it one of the most satisfying desserts I’ve ever had. Plus, it’s sweetened with local Okinawa black sugar that has its own unique mineral flavor. Okinawa is one of the top three favorite eating cities I’ve ever visited. I hope you make it here someday, and if you do, a pit stop at San Souci can’t be missed.

Pho Bo 8 Hang Da — Beef Pho Street Food in Hanoi, Vietnam

What kind of Vietnamese food adventurer would I be if I didn’t share my favorite pho restaurant in the world? Pho Bo 8 Hang Da is frequented entirely by locals. The pho here is made properly in a way you won’t find outside of Vietnam, even in places like Little Saigon in Orange County, where I grew up. The broth is incredibly flavorful yet light, the springy noodles are made freshly by hand each morning, and the beef melts in your mouth like butter. You’ll also want to add extra bone marrow to give the pho even more flavor, similar to what you’d get in Japanese ramen.

I personally never add sriracha or hoisin to my pho because I want to fully appreciate the subtle flavors of the beef and pho spices. I do eat tons of herbs with my pho though. Bring on the cilantro and scallions! This is a must-have meal if you’re ever in Hanoi. They’re also only open until they sell out, so get there early for breakfast.

Frenchie Pigalle — Modern European Cuisine in Paris, France

In 2021 I spent two months eating my way through Paris, and this restaurant stands out as my absolute favorite. I love so many things about this restaurant. First, they don’t take reservations, so it’s perfect if you didn’t make plans because so many of the best spots in Paris are booked months out. Second, the menu is insanely creative with to-die-for flavors. I’m not a fan of stuffy, old-fashioned French food and this place is just the opposite. It’s casual, modern, and innovative. I brought local Parisians here, and they agreed it’s one of the best restaurants in Paris that they’ve tried and were shocked they hadn’t heard of it!

I think the reason why this place doesn’t get a ton of hype is because it opened during the pandemic. Frenchie Pigalle is from chef and restaurateur Gregory Marchand, who operates Frenchie and other fine dining restaurants, so it isn’t a gem created by a little-known chef out of nowhere, but rather a more free-spirited take on French dining. I went to Frenchie Pigalle twice in one week and tried the entire menu. Every dish was memorable and worth eating again. My favorite dish I still dream about is their veal sweetbread nuggets you dip into cream and caviar. It’s like eating the most decadent and adult version of fried chicken nuggets dipped in a creamy ranch dressing. Definitely try their veggie dishes as well. Few restaurants in the world have figured out how to make vegetables taste as comforting as this place has.

Pinku Fish & Wine — Modern European Seafood in Split, Croatia

Croatia has stunning beaches and nature treks, but when talking about traveling to the country most wouldn’t call it a top food destination. That being said, if you ever find yourself in Croatia, I discovered a seafood restaurant that I still dream about in Split called Pinku Fish & Wine. I am very picky about seafood. I can’t stand when seafood is overcooked, and I’m bored with rustic preparations of fish that just have salt, pepper, lemon, and maybe some herbs. Pinku is delivering the seafood I crave, where they pair their dishes with creative produce and sauces that bring out the flavor and textures in the fish with a perfect balance and contrast.

The menu changes regularly, but Pinku uses the freshest seafood caught just that morning. One of my favorite dishes there was cuttlefish “noodles” with pickled egg, onion, and fish consommé. The cuttlefish was sweet and full of umami with a soft yet firm texture. Not chewy at all. The pickled egg brought out the sweetness in the cuttlefish and the fish consommé created a juicy mouthfeel. I loved this restaurant so much that I ate here multiple times while in Croatia. Make sure you book in advance or queue outside right before they open because the restaurant is tiny and fills up.

O Magano — A Traditional Portuguese Restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal

Portugal is one of the best places to eat in the world in terms of value. You get elevated and skilled cookery on par with what you’ll find in Spain, Italy, and France but for half the price. I started this trip by trying all the restaurants recommended by Anthony Bourdain. He’s an idol of mine, and I’m sure at the time he visited his top picks really were the best places to eat in Portugal. However, when I spent time there in 2021, I’d say that my top picks would have zero overlap with those of Bourdain because things have changed a lot. O Magano is one of my top picks for underrated Lisbon restaurants.

Sure, there were a few other spots I loved, but those are packed spots that make it onto most online lists and guides. O Magano floats under the radar and I had to learn about it from local food snobs who laugh at the “tourist trap” places Americans typically go to in Lisbon. When you walk in here you’ll feel like you’ve traveled back in time; it is the kind of place that hasn’t changed in decades and that’s why the locals have been coming back for years. The menu caters to locals with traditional dishes you won’t easily find at places that cater to tourists. I came specifically for the arroz de cabidela, a unique hen and rice dish that also includes hen’s blood and vinegar. For those that might be unsure, the blood didn’t have a very strong flavor, it seemed to mostly make the dish darker and creamier. Chicken and rice is one of my favorite meals that I could eat almost every day, and this Portuguese variation was intensely comforting and hearty.

On Saturday, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and wounding three, most of whom were Black. Authorities called it a “straight-up racially-motivated hate crime,” and no wonder: The assailant had posted an 180-page manifesto, in which he parroted what’s become known as “Great Replacement,” a conspiracy theory claiming immigrants are trying to “replace” white people in America — a belief spread by a number of prominent GOP members.

Among them is, of course, Tucker Carlson. But another is Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking member of the GOP, who has dropped ads leaning hard on the conspiracy theory on Facebook. The New York representative’s name came up a lot after the gun massacre, enough that someone noticed that she’d failed to nab a certain url for her 2022 campaign. So he took it himself.

When Canadian comic Toby Morton snatched up the unused url www.elisestefanik2022.com, he quickly filled it with the kind of satire that’s what she might say if she had no filters. On the parody site, the slogan for Stefanik’s campaign is “Let’s Keep It White.” It also features a damning bio:

“I, Elise Stefanik, am a monster. I am a vile and disgusting politician who is responsible for the Buffalo NY shooting spree. How? What is in his manifesto is what I placed into his head. Why? Because I want power. I want votes. I don’t want to lead. I want to rule. People will lose lives, but that’s not my concern. I’m here for the exposure, the power, the control. I will continue to do everything in my power to raise White Supremacy higher than it’s ever been.”

If you click on the “about section, you get this: “I come from Whites. White people, Mmk?” it reads. “Let’s be clear where I come from because sure, Stefanik doesn’t exactly sound white, but I’m totally white. White White White!”

The Buffalo massacre — which came a mere day before another, also seemingly racially-motivated shooting at a church populated largely by Taiwanese people in Laguna Woods, California — earned a lot of responses…from the left. Everyone from CNN’s Jim Acosta to The View’s Ana Navarro pointed fingers at rightwing figures peddling the controversial conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, Patton Oswalt offered some gallows humor by pointing out that all Americans have to do to stay safe is, well, never go places.

You can see the full parody website here.

(Via Raw Story)

When MultiVersus was first announced it felt like it was following a trend that was established by Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl where, if you have a deep library of licenses, you can attempt to copy the success of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. by taking a bunch of well known properties, putting them in a platform fighter together, and letting it loose. However, where All-Star Brawl failed by feeling like a collection of characters without much else going for it, MultiVersus has a chance to succeed.

Part of what made Super Smash Bros. so fun and what made All-Star Brawl so underwhelming had to do with the soul of the game. In Super Smash Bros. when Mario does his Up B coins appear out of his fist and the iconic jumping sound plays, Pikachu yells his name when he uses thunderbolts, and Link screams out a loud HYAH when he spins. It really does feel like the characters have been pulled out of their games so they could fight one another. All-Star Brawl meanwhile does not have voice acting, the characters don’t really do anything that feels very specific to themselves or the show they’re from, and all of it feels like it’s lacking that level of detail that makes Super Smash Bros. feel so unique.

All of this is a really longwinded way of saying that the cinematic trailer for MultiVersus creates some hope that they see the mistakes of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and are taking the steps to avoid it. For starters, it features actual voice acting from these characters’ actual voice actors such as Kevin Conroy once again reprising his iconic role as Batman. Voices aren’t the only way this trailer helps create excitement around the game’s potential, but in how it’s presented. Obviously, it’s a cinematic trailer so we have to take parts of it with a grain of salt, but Shaggy catching a Bugs Bunny pie out of the air so he could eat it, only for the overly serious Arya Stark to slice it out of the air is too funny. This trailer shows the kind of soul that a licensed platform fighting game needs.

On Monday, PlayStation gave everyone a deeper look into what’s on the horizon for its new revamped PlayStation Plus service coming in June. For those that need a quick catch up, starting in June PlayStation has reorganized its online services PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now under one name. Before this restructuring, PlayStation Plus was how PlayStation owners gained access to basic services such as online multiplayer and free monthly games. PlayStation Now was Sony’s Game Pass like option where, for a monthly fee, PlayStation owners could play from the library of games currently available on Now. In this new format, all of this will be under the PlayStation Plus name and it will feature three tiers with varying levels of access.

In a PlayStation Blog post, we got to see what games are coming to this new PlayStation Plus service at launch. Considering this new service is likely meant to be in direct competition to Xbox Game Pass, a strong start would do a great job in establishing that Sony is serious about this new service. So how did they do? Well, when it comes to recent games it’s hard to argue against them doing anything besides leading with an incredible library. PlayStation Plus Premium and Deluxe subscribers are going to gain access to amazing games such as:

• Red Dead Redemption 2
• God of War
• Marvel’s Spider-Man
• Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Control: Ultimate Edition
• Dead Cells
• Hollow Knight
• Resident Evil

It’s worth noting that a lot of these games are not available on Game Pass and likely never will be with some of them being developed by PlayStation itself. Everyone knows strong third-party support is key to success though and this new service is going to have that with amazing Game of the Year caliber games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Control.

While the library of recent releases is strong, we unfortunately can’t say the same for the starting library of Classic Edition or PlayStation 3 era games. While both definitely feature a few gems, it feels far weaker in comparison to the PS4 and PS5 library. Some of the highlights of the Classic and PS3 game selections can be found below.

Classic

• Ape Escape
• Hot Shots Golf
• Tekken 2
• Jak and Daxter trilogy (all remasters)
• Rogue Galaxy (Remaster)
• Bioshock Remastered
• Borderlands The Handsome Collection

PlayStation 3 (Deluxe Only)

• Ratchet and Clank PS3 trilogy
• Infamous 1
• Infamous 2
• Devil May Cry HD Collection
• Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Again, this isn’t a terrible collection of games and there are some definite classics on there, but the original PlayStation will be turning 28 in December this year. To have a classics collection that doesn’t include Ridge Racer, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Metal Gear Solid feels like a wasted opportunity. The retro library needs some more love and hopefully will get some in the future.

Of the many subplots of the Suns disastrous Game 7 performance against the Mavs on Sunday night, the one that has the most bearing on Phoenix’s future is that of Deandre Ayton’s standing with the team.

Ayton played just 17 minutes and when Monty Williams was asked why Ayton got benched after the game, he sternly replied “it’s internal” and moved on to other topics. On Monday, Williams and Ayton had still not sat down to discuss whatever happened 1-on-1, although Monty had spoken with the team and seemed ready to move on, but given Ayton’s status as a restricted free agent this summer set to command a max contract, that entire situation complicates the Suns’ summer plans.

There were rumblings on Twitter from some fans in the Footprint Center near the Suns bench of an argument in the second half between Ayton and Williams in a tunnel, but no visual confirmation from TV cameras or anything that was noticed by those covering the game live. As such, that hasn’t become the massive topic it would if there were such video evidence and mostly it’s been a lot of shrugging and speculating on Ayton’s future.

However, Skip Bayless had a man on the ground in Phoenix sitting across from the Suns bench, none other than Lil Wayne (who got roasted for his “Luka a ho” tweet from earlier in the series), and was willing to report that Williams and Ayton had a spat that led to them being separated after Williams, allegedly, told Ayton he “quit on us.”

Now, this is a wild game of telephone going from Lil Wayne seated across the court and either hearing this or lip-reading it (Bayless wasn’t sure which) and then relaying it to his close personal friend Skip Bayless who brought this information to a national TV audience. At some point, especially if Ayton departs Phoenix this summer, we will likely get some stronger sourced reporting on what exactly happened that got Ayton benched, but this would certainly explain why Monty was clearly upset about it after the game and not willing to discuss the matter.

If it ends up being the case, then everyone better credit pre-eminent NBA newsbreaker Lil Wayne for having the scoop first.