Posts tagged “parenthood”

• Research from dozens of clinical trials suggests that improving your sleep quality leads to meaningful reductions in depression, anxiety, and repetitive negative thinking… and the more your sleep improves, the bigger the mental health benefit. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• I was pulling for the New England Patriots, but I have to admit it was cool to learn that Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald and the NBC reporter who interviewed him on stage after the game, Maria Taylor, went to high school together. See also: Sam Darnold and Kenneth Walker III riding the tea cups at Disneyland.
• AI Doesn’t Reduce Work. It Intensifies It. – via mergesort.me
• A new study suggests apes can pretend, an ability once thought unique to humans.
• The night before Super Bowl LX, at a North Carolina men’s basketball game, Jordon Hudson – girlfriend of former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick – wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo for ORCHIDS OF ASIA, the massage parlor where Robert Kraft – owner of the Patriots – was arrested a few years ago for soliciting prostitution. (The charges were later dropped, but still…) – via TMQ

Winter Olympics

• Sarah Schleper and son Lasse skiing for Mexico will make history as they become the first mother and son to compete at the same Winter Games.
• Olympic organizers are investigating with “maximum attention” after a spate of medals have fallen off their ribbons during celebrations on the opening weekend of the Games. – via Rodger Sherman
• German ski jumper Philipp Raimund won gold, which is quite a feat for someone afraid of heights.
• Norwegian biathlete wins bronze medal, then, totally unprompted, reveals he cheated on his girlfriend, she left him, and he wants to apologize publicly hoping she takes him back – via @rodger

A Functioning Democracy Does Not Imprison Children:

• Eric Swalwell: “You said you wanted to see a deportation process that was ‘like Amazon Prime but with human beings.’ How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?” – via @atrupar.com
• RFK Jr. Went Dinosaur Bone Hunting with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – via What A Day
• Ha! Paul Thomas Anderson and Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) Want Melania Doc to Remove Phantom Thread Music
• ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. – via @jamellebouie.net

• Symbol Salad is a great resource for those in need of special keyboard characters, like ¢ and ½.
• Organ Donation & Pascal’s Wager – via mergesort.me
• The current administration does not want to FAFO with an organized gang of wine moms. – via @froggyb
• Speaking of FAFO: I can’t believe this academic admitted to losing all his AI-generated research.
• The Ottawa Senators are selling jerseys with the names of the HBO Heated Rivalry characters for $325/ea (and donating the proceeds to a local queer hockey group) and they can’t keep them in stock because they sell out so quickly. – via The Athletic
• Rhode Island might ditch Mr. Potato Head license plates after Hasbro moves to Boston
• Well, fuck. Swearing Actually Seems to Make Humans Physically Stronger and There Really Is Something Soothing About Saying The ‘F’ Word
• This is absolutely wild: Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows (I mostly quit eating beef about 15 years ago and haven’t missed it at all. But now I’m going to feel even more guilty about the milk in my coffee.)
• It’s “Mental Illness Doesn’t Do That” Season Once Again
• This will be the first time the Patriots have been to the Super Bowl since Bill Belichick‘s girlfriend graduated high school. – via @bgoad85
• And now for the bad news:
  • Since beginning operations seven years ago, Brightline, which runs high-speed trains between Miami and Orlando and is the only private rail service in the country, has killed nearly 200 people. – via longreads.com
  • The South Carolina measles outbreak has surpassed the recorded case count in the 2025 Texas outbreak.
  • Immigration agents operating near Vail, CO placed branded ace of spades playing cards — similar to “death cards” left on corpses by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War — in cars left behind after immigrants’ arrests.
  • “FYI, a masked, anonymous, armed paramilitary force denying due process and breaking into people’s homes to arrest and detain people in camps is exactly what fascism looks like.” – via @darrigomelanie
  • Death of Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Is Ruled a Homicide
  • America’s Would-Be Surgeon General, Casey Means, thinks improving health is a spiritual project?!

• Let’s kickstart 2026 with two brilliant essays from Anil Dash. How the Hell Are You Supposed to Have A Career in Tech in 2026? and How Markdown Took Over the World should both be required reading for every high school sophomore in America.
• In April of 2010 a diver found a nearly seven inch Megalodon tooth.
• I missed this bit of good news from last year: Vatican City Is Now Powered By Solar
• How to Turn Toilet Paper Rolls Into DIY Boxes – via cassidoo
• A massive 535-pound bluefin tuna sold for a record $3.2 million at the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market.
• Spend a few minutes watching these interviews with dads outside Taylor Swift concerts. – via paulscheer.com
• Netflix released the Stranger Things series finale in 600+ theaters over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, generating north of $25M in concession revenue. (That’s more than Avatar: Fire and Ash earned in actual ticket sales over the same stretch ($23.7M).) – via The Dailies
• And finally, a handful of wonderful links from Laura Olin that I keep meaning to share:
  • I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers
  • Frolicking in the snow
  • This is mesmerizing.
  • How to Disable AI on Various Platforms
  • Desire is never about the object itself.

• A limited-edition, Fabergé egg pendant, inspired by the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, was (grossly) recovered after six days of closely watching the man accused of swallowing the jewelry in a New Zealand store.
• Scientists found that taking 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily slowed telomere shortening by the equivalent of about 3 years of biological aging over 4 years. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
• Fifteen Years
• If you need a good gift for anyone over 80 years old, these hard candies are great. My grandmother loved them and I used to send her a tin every year on her birthday and Christmas.
• We didn’t see it in the theater, but the 1986 comedy Ruthless People was on high rotation at our house for a while (from Blockbuster, once it was released on VHS). Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, and Bill Pullman had us in stitches and I still occasionally quote it. (Now you can rent it on Amazon.)
• An Indian boy, just 3 years old, became the youngest rated chess player in history.
• These Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights are awesome. They’re super easy to install and you can control them with an app on your phone and/or via Alexa, HomeKit, etc. (The cost has been fluctuating wildly for months now, by hundreds of dollars, and I wish you the best of luck in finding them listed at the absurdly low price we paid.)
• I can relate to this guy’s 2025 Parenting Wrapped. – via hiro.report
• My Kid’s Insane Christmas Wish List, Annotated – via my friend Lauren
• University of Florida Honors Program class teaches Gainesville‘s punk history – via my little sis
• This holiday season, consider giving the gift of independent journalism. – via @marisakabas
• ‘Tis the Season:
  • The president’s Florida mortgages match his description of mortgage fraud. – via @charlesornstein
  • Pete Hegseth Should Be Charged with Murder – via @elienyc
  • I Left the CDC 100 Days Ago. My Worst Fears About the Agency Are Coming True – via @brandyzadrozny
  • Spotify is garbage on every count: Its treatment of artists, its ICE advertising, the CEO’s investment in military AI, its leading role in the commodification and AI slop-ification of music, its terrible audio quality—you name it. A Guide to Finding the Best Spotify Alternative – via @bcmerchant
  • “If you’re a complete idiot life sure does have a lot of surprises for you.” – via @samthielman.com
  • “All I want for Christmas is for the worst people in the world to experience some consequences.” – via @gracelp
  • The National Park Service will offer free admission to U.S. residents on the president’s birthday next year, but is eliminating the benefit for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

• I’ve been using the free native Apple Reminders app for over a decade now and at this point I’d be lost without it.
• The Best Black Friday Heist: They Told People It Was a Scam. People Paid Anyway. – via @froggyb.bsky.social
• How to read the entire Dog Man universe in order
• “If you’re going to talk shit about Kamala Harris‘ Bluetooth avoidance, please be aware Taylor Swift also follows a similar threat profile. For paparazzi spying on new music files before release.” – via SwiftOnSecurity
• If you didn’t read this the previous time I posted it, here’s a second chance: AI is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. [See also.]
• Did you hear about the cannibal who was expelled from school? He was buttering up his teacher.
• Olympic Gold Medalist Dominates the 100m at Her Kid’s Sports Day Event – via kottke
• Last year, Pakistan installed an incredible 22 gigawatts of solar power – more than Canada has ever built, and more than the UK has added in the past five years combined.
• I’ve (finally) started watching Andor S2 and am riveted. It’s definitely not as kid-friendly as the usual Star Wars fare, but I think it’s fantastic.
• Hand Covers Bruise:
  • POTUS signs (technically non-binding and illegal) executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR.
  • Despite their formal attire, penguins simply aren’t known for conducting commerce with the USA.
  • Migrants held in Texas fearing deportation to notorious El Salvador prison work together to form human SOS.
  • Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum created by Republican Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters.
  • A third of parents with children aged 0 to 13 reported wishing they had more time to read to their children, and the number of parents saying their children have too much schoolwork to read books has risen significantly. – via kottke
  • The official White House account posted an AI-generated picture of the POTUS holding a red lightsaber on Sunday, May 4^th – the unofficial Star Wars day – intentionally mocking the point of the entire franchise. – via my dad

• Your Worst Is Not the Worst, the latest issue of Making It Work from Youngna Park, is powerfully relatable. Trying to explain to young children what’s happening in the world in 2025 is so, so hard.
• Behind the Collapse of Technicolor and Why Its Failure Is Sending Shockwaves Through the VFX Industry
• I quickly fell in love with the Hulu sci-fi series Paradise, starring Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden. Check it out.
• How Pop-Tarts turned an easy-to-forget bowl into one of the college football season’s best moments
• “There is not one Yeezy shoe left,” said Adidas chief financial officer. “It has all been sold and that episode is behind us.”
• And now, the bad news:
  • How “DOGE” Cuts to the IRS Threaten to Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save
  • Marco Rubio is often the last to know when foreign policy decisions are made in the White House.
  • A truly troubling read: “We believe this rush to comply is a sign that universities are willing to become an institutional wing of the new segregationists.”
  • POTUS Signs Executive Order Handing U.S. Public Forests Over to Private Logging Industry
  • The Strategic Crypto Swindle: A bitcoin reserve would be a government-backed grift.
  • A leaked memo calls for VA to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year.

• Signposts on the road to authoritarian rule: “If one were to design a path to authoritarian rule, it would be what we have seen in the first weeks of the Trump administration.”
• Kentuckians can’t afford the high cost of Trump’s tariffs is an op-ed by – of all people – Mitch McConnell.
• For women’s college basketball coaches, motherhood is no longer something to keep quiet.
• “One thing Democratic leadership could do right now is to name an alternate HHS secretary—someone to provide ongoing public updates and health information. And do it for other departments, too. Start showing voters what a Democratic government would look like—press conferences, speeches, all of it.” – via @markharris.bsky.social
• Mark Cuban Says U.S. Healthcare Is ‘Horrific’; Calls for Free Medical School to Fix Doctor Shortages and Soaring Costs
• Pope Francis’ Stunning Rebuke of JD Vance Exposes MAGA’s Dark Soul
• ICE wants to hire contractors to monitor social media for threats. Those who criticize the agency could be pulled into the dragnet.
• Thursday Night Massacre
  • Acting US attorney in Manhattan resigns after directive to drop case against Mayor Eric Adams
  • Dozens of CFPB Workers Fired in After-Hours Blitz
  • The interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District and five officials with the federal public integrity unit quit after the Justice Department ordered charges against Mayor Eric Adams to be dropped.
  • Expert Flags DOJ‘s ‘Cascading Scandal’ — That Won’t Go Away
  • The Thursday Night Massacre(s)
  • Thousands of federal employees fired today and tomorrow.

• What beats rock?
• Pope Francis denounced the current administration’s plan to carry out mass deportations of migrants in a letter to U.S. bishops Tuesday, while appearing to take a direct jab at Vice President JD Vance.
• For decades, casinos scoffed as mathematicians and physicists devised elaborate systems to take down the house. Then an unassuming Croatian’s winning strategy forever changed the game.
• Why is Hawaii the rainbow capital of the world?
• Is gold hidden under a California peak? This treasure map says so.
• These JETech iPhone screen protectors are a great investment.
• Forensics Experts Challenged the FBI. So the FBI Tried to Censor Their Conference. This story includes a timely reminder that — with the exception of DNA matches — most of the highly-regarded techniques used to put people away (fingerprint examinations, ballistics and toolmarks comparisons, blood pattern analysis) “were developed by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement, and not by scientists first subjecting them to standard, rigorous testing processes designed to ensure they stand on a solid scientific foundation.”
• How did a life-saving pediatric drug – discovered and developed using money from American taxpayers, and spurred by the grassroots fundraising of desperate parents – end up costing $2,000,000 per dose?
• In the span of just weeks, the U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history – not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly-defined government role.
• Harrison Ford said the recent California wildfires burned several Shrinking sets.

• Here’s a really lovely resource: Mister Rogers on How to Talk to Kids About Distressing News Events – via kottke
• Of two drivers heading towards each other down a one-way street, surely it is the one driving the wrong way who is most sorely in need of feedback. But it is unfortunately unusual to get a focused note of timely, specific, and usable criticism before things go too badly wrong.
• Scientists are using AI to decipher old scrolls charred by the Vesuvius volcano.
• AI means the end of internet search as we’ve known it is a great article from MIT Technology Review about the history of Google and search engines and the wonders of the (inevitable) artificial intelligence future, but I fear we’re looking at yet another Torment Nexus. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• “He’s the Veruca Salt of presidents.”
• The current administration is staging a coup, trying to illegally eliminate agencies, seize control of the U.S. government’s payment systems, and gain access to sensitive data on all Americans without any oversight. It’s time to fight back like our democracy depends on it. – via Laura Olin
• “DOGE” has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray – programs that serve millions of Americans. ProPublica is is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.
• Billionaire’s blitzkrieg on D.C. has brought into focus his vision for a dramatically smaller and weaker government, as he and a coterie of aides move to control, automate – and substantially diminish – thousands of public functions.
• ICE is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.
• The team at Court Watch is maintaining an ongoing list of Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders.

• On Bill Watterson’s Refusal To License Calvin and Hobbes is a great read. Let’s call this reverse enshittification. – via Links You’ll Love
• “If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”
• Do your shoelaces sit crooked? Do you retie your shoes several times a day? These are both signs of a Granny Knot. Learn the trick for keeping your shoes neatly and securely tied. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• Handy tool if you ever deal with email configurations: Quickly view your DomainKeys, DKIM, and SPF validity, and SpamAssassin score with DKIMValidator. – via @ofaolain.com
• Even the best parents of the best kids have had this thought: “Children are overbearing, supercilious, passionate, envious, inquisitive, egotistical, idle, fickle, timid, intemperate, liars, and dissemblers; they laugh and weep easily, are excessive in their joys and sorrows, and that about the most trifling objects; they bear no pain, but like to inflict it on others.” – Jean de La Bruyère, via Daily Dad
• The International Energy Agency has said the electricity usage of data centers worldwide might double in just four years. US electricity demand alone could jump 20 percent by 2030, driven mostly by AI. – via @longreads.com
• No. I don’t think I’ll ever get over Macho Grande.