David Armstrong writes in The New Yorker:

Opposition to vaccination is almost as old as vaccination itself. But Web sites like [Joseph] Mercola’s have helped drive the modern anti-vaccination movement. Most scientists consider vaccination one of the greatest public-health advances of the twentieth century, helping to control or even eradicate diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles in the U.S. Studies have found that vaccines can have side effects, but they are almost always minor, like redness and swelling.

Anti-vaxxers blame vaccines for an increase in the rate of autism diagnoses among American children. From 2000 to 2014, the number of children diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder increased to one in fifty-nine from one in a hundred and fifty. [David] Ayoub and others have argued that vaccines are one reason for this increase, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded that “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD,” and the World Health Organization has issued a similar finding. Prominent anti-vaxxers include celebrities such as the actress Jenny McCarthy and the lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Before becoming President, Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting in 2014 that a “healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes – autism. Many such cases!”

A study published in September found that Russian trolls and sophisticated Twitter bots tried to foment confusion about vaccination and create a false equivalency between pro- and anti-vaccination arguments. The authors of the study, from George Washington University and other research institutions, warned, “Such strategies may undermine the public health: normalizing these debates may lead the public to question long-standing scientific consensus regarding vaccine efficacy.”

Please vaccinate your kids.

A few articles on fonts for your reading pleasure:

• Bethany Heck dives deep into Windsor, “a typeface of British origin that’s found its way into the ‘Ugly American’ vernacular,” designed by Eleisha Pechey. It’s a pleasure and informative read as always.
• Thomas Bohm argues for more existing typefaces with more character and language support than new similar typefaces with only basic support.
• Arun Venkatesan explains “Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?.”
• Rumsey Taylor shows how did Choc, a quirky calligraphic typeface drawn by a French graphic designer in the 1950s, end up on storefronts everywhere in New York City.

Mary Norris explains the classic grammar mixup of who vs. whom:

My test for the correct use of “who” or “whom” in a relative clause—“who I know will use it judiciously”—is to recast the clause as a complete sentence, assigning a temporary personal pronoun to the relative pronoun “who/whom.” “I know she will use it”? Or “I know her will use it”? No native speaker of English who has outgrown baby talk would say “her will use it.” The correct choice is clearly “she”: “I know she will use it judiciously.” If the pronoun that fits is in the nominative case, acting as the subject (“I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” “you,” “they”), then the relative pronoun should also be in the nominative case: “who I know will use it judiciously.” Yay! I got it right.

Suppose I had written that I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague who I have known for years. Recast the relative clause as a complete sentence with a personal pronoun: “I have known she for years”? Or “I have known her for years”? This time the correct choice is “her,” which is in the objective case (“me,” “you,” “him,” “her,” “us,” “you,” “them”); therefore the relative pronoun should be in the objective case (“whom”). I should have written, “I turned over the comma shaker to a colleague whom I have known for years.” Boo! I got it wrong.

Andrea Long Chu writes in The New York Times:

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it.

Selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review, this is an impressive list. Here are books I would like to read:

• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• These Truths by Jill Lepore
• Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• Why Comics? by Hillary L. Chute
• The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
• Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Nguyễn Thanh Việt:

I never said “I love you” when I was growing up because my parents never said “I love you” to me. That does not mean they did not love me. They loved me so much that they worked themselves to exhaustion in their new America. I hardly ever got to see them. When I did, they were too tired to be joyful. Still, no matter how weary they were, they always made dinner, even if dinner was often just boiled organ meat. I grew up on intestine, tongue, tripe, liver, gizzard and heart. But I was never hungry.

The memory of that visceral love, expressed in sacrifice, is in the marrow of my bones. A word or a tone can make me feel the deepness of that love, as happened to me when I overheard a conversation one day in my neighborhood drugstore in Los Angeles. The man next to me was Asian, not handsome, plainly dressed. He spoke southern Vietnamese on his cell phone. “Con ơi, Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” He looked a little rough, perhaps working class. But when he spoke to his child in Vietnamese, his voice was very tender. What he said cannot be translated. It can only be felt.

Literally, he said, “Hello, child. This is your father. Have you eaten rice yet?” That means nothing in English, but in Vietnamese it means everything. “Con ơi, Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” This is how hosts greet guests who come to the home, by asking them if they have eaten. This was how parents, who would never say “I love you,” told their children they loved them. I grew up with these customs, these emotions, these intimacies, and when I heard this man say this to his child, I almost cried. This is how I know that I am still Vietnamese, because my history is in my blood and my culture is my umbilical cord. Even if my Vietnamese is imperfect, which it is, I am still connected to Vietnam and to Vietnamese refugees worldwide.

And yet, when I was growing up, some Vietnamese Americans would tell me I was not really Vietnamese because I did not speak perfect Vietnamese. Such a statement is a cousin of “love it or leave it.” But there should be many ways of being Vietnamese, just as there are many ways of being French, many ways of being American. For me, as long as I feel Vietnamese, as long as Vietnamese things move me, I am still Vietnamese. That is how I feel the love of country for Vietnam, which is one of my countries, and that is how I feel my Vietnamese self.

A thoughtful perspective on being Vietnamese American. My Vietnamese is also not perfect; therefore, I have been relearning it in the past few years. It is such a joy rediscovering my native language. I encourage the young Vietnamese generations, especially those who are born in the States, to learn Vietnamese. It is a very special language.

Terry Gross tells Jolie Kerr:

Say, “I don’t want to answer that,” or, if that’s too blunt, hedge with a statement like, “I’m having a difficult time thinking of a specific answer to that.” Going the martyr route with something like, “I’m afraid by answering that I’m going to hurt somebody’s feelings and I don’t want to do that,” is another option.

The entire article is worth-reading.

Anna Goldfarb on “How to Be a More Patient Person”:

If your impatience trigger is killing time in waiting rooms, designate a game on your phone that you play only when you’re at the doctor’s office. If you detest being in traffic, leave for appointments earlier. If you abhor crowded grocery stores, run your errands at off-hours.

I always carry a book with me wherever I go so that I can read to kill time.

Một ngày đẹp trời, tôi ra sau nhà nhổ chút cỏ dại. Đạo cũng theo phụ. Bỗng nhiên nó báo tôi biết có đôi chim đang bị nhốt trong cái máy lạnh (HVAC outdoor unit). Tôi vội vàng tắt máy quạt khổng lồ và lấy đôi đũa gắp đôi uyên ương ra. Tuy vẫn trong vị trí ngồi bên nhau nguyên vẹn, bọn chúng đã chết khô từ bao giờ. Chỉ còn lại thể xác giòn rụm. Bọn chúng chết một cách thê thảm.

Không hiểu sao bọn chúng có thể chui vào đó được mà lại chui ra không được. Cũng may là bọn chúng chưa bị rơi vào cái quạt. Hậu quả chắc đã bị chém ra nghìn mảnh. Thế là bọn chúng chỉ có thể ngồi yên một chỗ cho đến chết. Làm tình cũng nên chọn chỗ nào ăn toàn. Chơi kiểu này quá mạo hiểm.

Đạo cũng xót xa cho cặp tình nhân dại dột nên đề nghị tôi chôn cất bọn chúng.

I refuse to jump on Mastodon and Micro.blog because the last thing I wanted to do is keeping up with more social media networks. I am tired of them all.

I never joined Instagram, which was a good decision. Google+ shut down and I didn’t even bother to download my content. I lost interest in Pinterest. I could not get into Dribbble. I no longer care about Medium. I still have a presence on LinkedIn, but I don’t do much with it. I still check Twitter every once in a while, but I hardly tweet anymore. Facebook is still hard to let go because I still want to keep up with family and friends. I did quite a bit of cleaning up on Facebook and also turned on privacy.

I still read blogs via RSS. Free blogging platforms are ridiculous. WordPress.com, in particular, is filled with ads. My kids’ dentistry keeps popping up on the blogs I read on WordPress.com. It is irritating that I just want to take my kids elsewhere.

It’s funny how social media comes in full circle again. Not so long ago, social media is a skill that most professions, web design in particular, most have. Now the less noise the better. I don’t even bother to cross-publishing my blog to other platforms. If you want to read it, you’ll just have to come here or subscribe to my RSS. I am not being cocky or anything like that. I just don’t want to creep you out everywhere you go.