Tag: sensory issues

How Restaurants Got So Loud

frankfurtschooldropout:

“Bars and restaurants continued to merge through the 1990s and 2000s, and that’s a big reason restaurants, on the whole, got noticeably louder. Bars are raucous, and they present a different dining atmosphere from typical sit-down restaurants. As the bar and dining area began to occupy the same space, their clientele and atmospheres combined, and the result was a lot louder than either one alone. Open-concept restaurants and warehouse-style gourmet food courts have made dining out more casual and communal, but getting rid of the walls, ceilings, and soft goods that once defined luxury have also made them noisier.

Restaurant critics and journalists have long complained about noisy restaurants (San Francisco Chronicle food reporters have carried around sound-level meters since the late 1990s), but in recent years the clamor against clamor has reached new heights. Like the open office, the loud restaurant seems to have overstayed its welcome.

That’s because loud restaurants are more profitable.

According to Pearlman, the haute-casual dining trend also helps restaurateurs run bigger and more successful businesses. Constructing interiors out of hard surfaces makes them easier (and thus cheaper) to clean. Eschewing ornate decor, linens, table settings, and dishware makes for fewer items to wash or replace. Reducing table service means fewer employees and thus lower overhead. And as many writers have noted, loud restaurants also encourage profitable dining behavior. Noise encourages increased alcohol consumption and produces faster diner turnover. More people drinking more booze produces more revenue. Knowing this, some restaurateurs even make their establishments louder than necessary in an attempt to maximize profits.”

How Restaurants Got So Loud

OH actually sharing a bed with your kids is something we talked about in my anthropology class once and the teacher was saying how in some places in the U.S. the kid has to sleep in even a different bedroom otherwise CPS gets involved. She said she had a ME grad student who just shared the same room (she scrimped and pinched to get another mattress for the kid) and got in trouble and the grad student said she was lucky she didn’t share the bed otherwise CPS might have taken her child away.

bijuive:

nightfanged:

chuchisriyo:

lovewitch2016:

bihet-dragonize:

lovewitch2016:

ilovemybrowngirl:

Oh I’ve heard about CPS getting involved especially with working-class families of color. One of my coworkers this summer is an Indian-Bangladeshi American woman and she grew up in the Bronx with her dad (her parents are divorced) and there was only one bedroom in their apartment and CPS literally came because they thought it was “neglect” even though her dad slept on the couch and let her sleep in the room like…… people are fucking disgusting and awful and this is 100% due to class violence and racism 

also i learned about the practice of co-sleeping and how it differs from country to country in my developmental psychology class and again… i was literally shocked to learn that my experience of co-sleeping with my mom was not something practiced in the US. it’s legit common in most countries though lol 

I was in my cultural anthro class and the professor said how co-sleeping helped children develop their sense of self faster because they were in close quarters with someone that Was Not Them for so long and then of course when I went to my Adolescent Psych class, my (white) prof said that wasn’t true lmao and how co-sleeping hindered a child’s independence and my gf and I had the LONGEST fucking look at each other

oh the “hindering independence” thing is another big reason why american parents dislike co-sleeping… imagine how fucked up individualism is, that it conditions people to think a parent sleeping with their infant is “fostering dependency”

my family in bangladesh are so surprised that I sleep alone in my bedroom since it’s practice to sleep with other people in the same bed. my 9yo cousin still hates sleeping alone and says it scares him.

there was a really publicized case in 2012 when norwegian CPS took away an indian couple’s kids for “feeding them with their hands and sleeping in the same bed” and the indian government had to intervene

My stepmom was a pediatritican in Nigeria before she moved here and suggested I cosleep when I was getting no sleep with my daughter. When I told her that could get her taken away by cas, my stepmom was horrified. She just couldn’t fathom how sleeping with your child could be a sign on neglect. She as a pediatrician coslept with each of her 4 kids.

Bad Halloween Costumes of the 1970s and 80s – Flashbak

Seeing some discussion of sensory-friendly costumes for kids unfortunately reminded me of the standard store-bought Halloween costumes I grew up with.

Which were so…not sensory-friendly. Besides the aesthetics.

(That mask in the preview was apparently supposed to be Morticia Addams, BTW.)

Bonus: LOOK BACK AT HALLOWEENS PAST WITH BEN COOPER COSTUMES

I obviously wouldn’t remember by now if the Wonder Woman and C-3PO costumes I had were the Ben Cooper ones shown there, but they were probably my all-time favorites–in all their sweaty plasticky glory 😅

Bad Halloween Costumes of the 1970s and 80s – Flashbak

Maybe the best thing about the weather change today: It’s been not just cooler, but pretty windy. Enough to get some decent ventilation through the silly little top-opening portion of the bedroom window!

(With no cross-ventilation in there at all. A few times I actually resorted to opening the front door and rigging up a fan to try to force some cooler night air through the sweatbox, but nope. Not much luck.)

The wind has gotten it cooled down enough in there, just today, that sleeping should be so much easier. The bedroom was hovering just over 30C/86F for at least the past week, but right now it’s down to 22C/72F 😃😪

Without the wind, that could have taken a week. From past experience. Even if it heats right up again later into the week, I’m definitely relieved to get some better sleeping conditions at all after weeks.

“But how can you KNOOOOOW you don’t like the food if you’ve never TRIIIIIIIIEEEEEEED it?????”

lysikan:

jayranwritesthings:

  • by looking at it to make texture predictions
  • smelling it to make taste predictions
  • poking at it with a fork to ascertain the flexibility and chewiness
  • considering its similarities to other foods I’ve disliked
  • considering its differences from other foods I’ve liked
  • knowing that there is an ingredient in it that I hate
  • trying to chop it with a knife and feeling the gristliness and hearing that telltale horrible creaking noise of gristle and noping right out of that situation
  • this is how humans naturally decided whether or not to eat unfamiliar foods in the wild thousands of years ago
  • our senses interact with each other to protect us, so your nose alerts you to an incoming bad taste before you put it in your mouth so you don’t end up eating the bad thing and dying
  • this is how we survived as a species
  • it is perfectly rational
  • it makes perfect sense
  • so stop

tl:dr –
If it doesn’t stink like food, doesn’t look like food, doesn’t sound like food – it ain’t food.