jadanzzy

It's been a very, very long time since I last had a Friday Finds update. I hope some of these links I share are worth people's time.

There’s a Better Way to Parent: Less Yelling, Less Praise (The Atlantic)

One of the craziest things we do is praise children constantly. When I was first working on the book, I recorded myself to see how frequently I praised my little girl, Rosy, and I noticed that I would exaggeratedly react to even her smallest accomplishments, like drawing a flower or writing a letter, with a comment like “Good job!” or “Wow! What a beautiful flower!”

It’s hard to cut back on praise, because it’s so baked in, but later on, I decided to try. It’s not that there’s no feedback, but it’s much gentler feedback—parents will smile or nod if a child is doing something they want. I started doing that, and Rosy’s behavior really improved. A lot of the attention-seeking behavior went away.

Not to suggest wholly prescribed inevitability, but I do believe how we were raised by our parents has an outsized influence in who we become as adults. I hope I don't fuck it up.

Some honest reflections on parenting, from the morning quiet (Twitter)

Your kids are not you. You share genes and points of reference and maybe even ancestral belief patterns and trauma, but they are not you. You will never fully know them, but that’s OK. Kids are allowed their own mysteries, just as us parents should have ours.

And yet, here is an equally comforting and nerve-wracking statement from a tweet thread I came across.

Reddit is an interesting place. While some corners of Reddit are disgusting, crude, and downright dangerous to society, most subreddits range from fun, weird, thoughtful, to highly informative and helpful. Except the occasional witch-hunting and brigading that lead random redditors to digitally mob and identify wrong suspects in domestic terror attacks.

I've said before that seeking and receiving wisdom from random strangers on social media is, at best, mildly valuable, and, at worst, extremely dangerous. And yet, I will completely contradict myself here by sharing two subreddits that I frequent all the time and look to for crowd-sourcing information when it comes to expecting and raising an infant.

BabyBumps is a subreddit for expecting parents. I can't tell you how many times Amy and I wondered something, and the first thing I did was search in this subreddit to see if anyone here has discussed it. Some worries or concerns we had were allayed by the fact that we'd see many other posts asking or saying the same thing.

BeyondTheBump is a subreddit for, you guessed it, parents post-partum. While I've not yet frequented this subreddit, you better believe I will when the little one's born and all up in upending our lives.

#fridayfinds

I've been listening to the complete lectures of a freely-available class from Yale called “The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877,” taught by acclaimed Professor David Blight. It's been a very powerful listen, especially as it happily coincided with Black History Month. I wish it were intentional.

I want to share three lessons I've taken away from listening to the lectures of this class. I'm not going to provide a ton of context about the lessons, so I hope this is a fast read. If you feel the impetus to go through the entire class, which I ever so strongly recommend, then these lessons will make far more sense to you. I also think about how and when I want to impart these lessons to my son, when he joins me very soon in meatspace, as he grows from infancy to adulthood. Without further ado...

Time Doesn't Always Heal All Wounds

You hear it said from time to time.

“It happened so long ago. Why can't they just move on?”

But when you hear Professor Blight describe in vivid detail the horrific emotional, mental, and physical trauma that slave families went through—daughter being ripped from mother to be sold, mother being raped by the slaveowner, father being whipped and beaten—not just once, mind you, but repeatedly throughout several generations, the trauma and the dysfunction don't die when the affected generations die. They carry on and on, into today.

Behold, the biblical concept of “generational sin”. It is here on full display. It's the trauma of actions borne within families, and on families. And we are still bearing that bitter, rotten, poisonous fruit through our economic, social, and political policies. All because the people in power benefited from it. Which leads me to...

Money. It's A Gas.

Let's get the facts straight. The Civil War was absolutely about the South's desire to protect slavery, and the North's desire to abolish it. Don't let anyone tell you it was about States' Rights. States' Rights, in fact, is just code for “leave me alone to do grave injustice.” Grave injustice, in this case, being slavery.

And why did the South want to protect slavery? Because it was good fucking money—a lot of it. The South's economy was utterly dependent upon the sale and capture of human beings for forced labor and servitude. This, while the North was developing a more modern, market-based, industrial economy. So, of course the Southern states were willing to secede from the U.S., because there was too much financial stake on the line, and the South had nothing to fall back on if there wasn't slave labor to process those cash crops.

And yet, revisionists and deluded Confederate loyalists like Jefferson Davis argued that their way of life enabled “uneducated, uncivilized, and brutish” peoples from Africa to become docile, civilized, and Christian.

For fuck's sake.

Money isn't the root of all evil. But it is certainly the root of some of humanity's greatest evils.

Gotta Rip The Root Out

One of the most infuriating things listening to the class is how the South was placated in the name of compromise, especially during Reconstruction. And when you hear of the Radical Abolitionists like Thaddeus Stevens, who demanded that the defeated South be treated like conquered peoples, and the Southern states stripped completely of their statehood and rendered territories, you might be inclined to think, “Yeah, that should've happened.” That's what I thought, at least. The white, Southern slavemasters should've been treated like prisoners of war, or Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, or James Hammond, treated like treasonous traitors subject even to death. Instead compromise, appeasement, or corruption led to the South's reprise in their disgusting racism, terrorism, and post-war insurgencies like the Ku Klux Klan. And here we are, still paying the price.

So I think about today: the insurrectionists who stormed the capitol, Donald Trump, and his allies within the White House and in Congress. And I think about the Republicans today who accuse the Democrats of not moving on for the sake of unity. And I read things like this:

And I think back to Reconstruction, when white Southern leaders, at minimum, should've been left to rot in prison, and instead were allowed to regain their power.

And my rage simmers.

Evil must be ripped out from the root, and obliterated.

Statues aren't enough.

This was a brutally difficult year in some obvious ways, and a joyous and hopeful year in others. Here's a tribute to 2020.

...and seeing you, in turn, rebel against me.

  1. Value your material possessions far above interpersonal relationships.

  2. Relatedly, seek short-term profits, especially if you get to pay people way less than minimum wage to do it.

  3. Don't believe the naysayers and the “data-driven” economists. Supply-side economics always works, especially when you're struggling to make ends meet. You need inspiration somewhere!

  4. Vote for the party that puts money in your pocket, especially if it's at the expense of helping the poor. The poor will always have Jesus, after all.

  5. The Koch Brothers are a good model for noble citizenry. They spent decades funding efforts to dismantle stronger government, made tons doing it, and then regretted it later. But they still get to keep the money! Genius!

  6. There's no environmental disaster you can't fix by paying someone a ton of money not to worry about it.

  7. Racial resentment works, and history proves it. You're ethnically Korean, so find ways to pit other minority groups against each other, so you just quietly sneak out the back door with your gains.

  8. Speaking of history, it's written by the winners like Donald Trump. Don't be a fucking loser like everyone he accidentally surrounded himself with. Actually, that was a probably a Deep State orchestration. He's too smart to intentionally choose those “cronies.”

  9. Charities are a great PR tactic to hide all the ways you'll need to hoard your wealth.

  10. If you end up going into politics, use religious and moral values as a cudgel to beat your opponents, while you secretly get to skim dollars through de-regulation and get kickbacks from that Arctic oil drilling company you fought for. Voters are too stupid to see past it. And so are those stupid polar bears lololol.

Is Donald Trump the worst president the United States has ever had? He's surely a strong contender, in my opinion. Some have already started to rank him, expectedly placing him as one of the worst. Something that I've learned over the last few years is that much of the norms, expectations, and values of the Office of the Presidency that we've taken for granted are only 50 years old. Prior to that, there were plenty of egregious examples of corruption, bribery, lying, and sabotage committed by the White House occupant in the many decades prior to Nixon.

But in the age of social media, 24-hour news networks, and the constant flood of information (and increasing disinformation), it's likely the case that no president has so flagrantly engaged in self-serving ways without a care or consideration of the symbolism his office holds. The tweets, the millions of our tax dollars spent enriching the Trump properties, the gross acts of cronyism, the utter display of incompetence at managing the most powerful political office in the world, and the inability of distancing himself from the most nefarious people. How can someone be so incapable of at least pretending to act like a unifying force?

A narcissist, perhaps.

Donald Trump represents the type of person I've always abhorred: a verbally abusive, manipulative, amateurish, extraordinarily selfish bully.

And how do I feel now that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the president and vice-president-elect? You'd think I'd be elated and relieved. And I am. But I also feel like someone who's spent the last 4 years being punched in the stomach every day. And, while the punching is going to stop, the pain from the hits won't go away anytime soon. I feel battered and bruised, and the recovery will be slow-going.

Donald Trump wasn't routed. It wasn't a landslide election. Over 70 million Americans saw how he acted over the last 4 years, and decided they were either fine with it, or were hungry for more. More people voted for him this time than they did in 2016. These are the facts that I can't seem to shake. It confuses me; even terrorizes me. What were they fine with? What were they wanting more of?

  • Foolishly short-term tax cuts that only work to increase the already-unsustainable income inequality that will inevitably lead to societal instability?
  • Placating an increasingly radicalized and (hopefully) irrelevant “evangelical” base that looks nothing like the Jesus I learned of in the Bible?
  • Growing right-wing, white-supremacist activities that have been enabled and empowered by his administration's rhetoric?
  • Wholly absurd and extremely dangerous conspiracy theories peddled by his base, like the main one probably sourced from a disgusting loser that lives in the Phillippines?
  • Unbelievable ineptitute and disregard with respect to leadership in quelling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic?

How do I see a man that cares only about his own ill-gotten wealth (or indebtedness, to be more accurate) and power, and so little about the people who actually put so much of their faith in him? And how do his faithful supporters think he actually cares about them, especially when his speeches are so self-centered and narcissistic?

Enough of this. Time to focus on tomorrow.

Let me turn my attention towards the Democratic Party, the party that I have generally identified with except for the third-party vote I cast in 2012. The party has much to consider. Against expectations, the party did not gain control of state legislatures, did not maintain or gain seats in the house, and may not win power in the Senate. Ezra Klein put it starkly: “The Democrats won the Presidency, and lost Democracy.”

I am sympathetic to the notion that the party has gone too far with the virtual signaling, the “woke” policing, and the damage that has done to lose the swaths of America that has no connection with that type of cultural line-drawing. And no, I don't mean the legitimate, critical, and non-violent Black Lives Matter protests that highlight the real systemic injustices that black Americans have faced for centuries, and continue to face.

I think the Democratic Party's aims should be extremely focused on the following:

  • Aggressively curbing climate change and re-joining the Paris Agreement
  • Dramatically reversing income inequality by progressively taxing the ultra wealthy of their assets, increasing the corporate tax rate, and capital gains
  • Investing trillions in infrastructure to reduce poverty, and re-tool the citizenry for a next-generation manufacturing and farming economy
  • Crushing the abusive power of health insurance companies and increasing easy access to quality healthcare
  • Investing trillions in public education, so America's education system becomes the envy of the world again
  • Expanding voter rights, access to voting, and federally mandating Election Day to be a paid National Holiday.

Let's stop with the tone and culture policing. It's not helping. People care about whether they can comfortably eat well, sleep well with a roof over their heads, and know they can be healed when sick. Let's make that a reality for as many Americans as possible these next four years. Let's want our government to be a force for good again.

#2020election #donaldtrump #joebiden #kamalaharris #democraticparty

Electric cooker an easy, efficient way to sanitize N95 masks, study finds (Illinois News Bureau)

The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign study found that 50 minutes of dry heat in an electric cooker, such as a rice cooker or Instant Pot, decontaminated N95 respirators inside and out while maintaining their filtration and fit.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture supported this work.

Instructions in the link.

Oatly: The New Coke (Divinations)

Putting 12oz of Oatly into your latte and adjusting for the higher GI of maltose means adding almost a tablespoon of table sugar to your drink. Put a tablespoon of sugar next to your coffee next time you have a chance and seriously consider if that’s a decision that’s “made for humans.”

When you drink oat milk, you’re mostly drinking oats, water, sugar, and canola oil. Sugar isn’t healthy for anyone. But what about the canola?

The evidence for the harms of canola oil is still in its early days, but continues to grow. Research has linked it to: Memory impairment, Alzheimer’s risk, Cardiovascular disease, Diabetes, Increased all-cause mortality, Metabolic syndrome, Decreased brain function, and Oxidative stress.

For a period of about 2 months, Amy and I went on an obsessive Oatly binge. It's delicious. But this write-up is depressing.

If you love Oatly, and you don't want to complicate that love, ignore this article haha. Knowledge is the utter absolute of bliss.

‘Christianity Will Have Power’ (NY Times)

“I guess the biggest concern for me is trying to keep our country the way it was. Conservative. The values. For us, I mean, this is as good as it gets. We can do whatever we want,” said Mr. Driesen, 56, sitting at his kitchen table this spring with his wife, Cheryl, 52. Next to them, a family motto was painted on the wall in gold and black lettering: “Home, Where Your Story Begins.”

So what I gather about people who identify with the more rural Christians at the center of this article is that their faith is just an identity and protective barrier for their own way of life—not a directive for how they should engage with the world by “learning to do right, seeking justice, defending the oppressed, taking up the cause of the fatherless, and pleading the widow's case.”

Got it.

Rethinking the Science of Skin (The New Yorker)

With all our soaps and sanitizers and antibiotics, in addition to so much time spent inside, away from dirt and animals and fresh air, we’ve created new problems for our immune systems, which miss out on the chance to encounter benign triggers and instead learn to overreact to perceived threats. Excess hygiene can also be a problem for the skin’s microbiome, which has an ecology that we’re just beginning to understand.

When I was a child, you could very easily find me playing on the dirt, running through overgrowths and rainwater run-offs, and lying down on streets.

Do kids do that today?

#fridayfinds

After carefully reading President Trump's response to this question from the hard-hitting and investigative Sean Hannity...

...reading Hannity's question one more time just so I know what's being asked...

...and then the President's clear and succinct response again...

I've come to the conclusion that our President is truly wise, coherent, and worthy of sitting in that esteemed Oval Office.

I've felt anger, sadness, frustration, and even hopelessness these past few days. I scroll through my Twitter feed and the despair mounts. Peaceful protesters get tear-gassed, rioters loot and destroy, police forces roam neighborhood streets shooting at people in front of their homes, not to mention the current president who so desperately wishes he were a dictator right now and signals his insecurity every day.

President Obama said it well:

There's one very clear way to make this better: Vote.

Know your election dates (June 9 for my fellow Georgians! Get your absentee ballots in!). If we're not voting in all possible local, state, and federal races, whatever emotions we're feeling are meaningless—like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if we're not voting in officials who stand for equality, justice, peace, and progress, we're doomed to repeat these cycles.

I have a bunch of blogging topics written down in Notes.app. And every time I think of a new topic, I get excited about the possibility of the creative energy stemmed from that topic, and the resulting output that will wow my readers and cause them to respond. So I write it down.

And then I go back to my list of blogging topics thinking, “Hmm what should I write about this time?”.

But then I look at the list, frustrated. This is my list? These topics are stupid. (No, I won't share my list.)

Or, I'll start writing about a topic thinking it's going to be good. Halfway, though, I realize it's stupid, not original, and meandering. So I just... stop. Mildly dispirited.

“This is hard. Is it even worth blogging anymore?”

I stumbled upon a blog post titled, “If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs” .

[Blogs are] the thing I miss the most and the most often. They were the most valuable thing on here, besides freer availability of news, free although low quality video content on YouTube, and I guess some kinds of social media. But blogs are something you can sit down and read and get really into to the point you forget where you even are, and think about how you want to try those things maybe in your life, or just enjoy their writing, and you can read deeper into them into past blog posts, and tune back in later and see what they've posted since the last things you read about them.

Here's the thing. Blogging would be easy if it weren't for bite-sized, easily digestible social media posts—the tweets, the stories, the tiktoks, the status updates, etc. But our appetite, tolerance, and resulting brain chemistry now demands entertainment in 30 seconds. Hell, TV is too long now too, apparently.

And by no means am I saying I'm above the fray here, either. I think a large part of the reason why it's even hard for me to blog is because it is much easier tweeting. And It was much easier posting on Instagram and Facebook because the expectations for quality and thoughtfulness are so much lower.

But who's to say that my blog posts have to be long-form thought pieces?

Fuck that, right? The only thing holding me back is my own expectations of the past. Embrace the future, Dan! Your blog posts can be tweet-sized!

But also, don't we miss those Xanga/LiveJournal/Blogger days?

I do.

Dua Lipa – Don't Start Now

She caught my attention when I first heard New Rules and watched the music video, which is extremely well-done. The song's production and beat is incredibly addicting as well. I'm not typically wont to give a mainstream pop star's new album a front-to-back listen, but I'm glad to say it's a solid record.

Don't Start Now is so killer, though. Amazing song. She knows what she's doing.

The Blue Nile – The Downtown Lights

The 80s has so much in the way of absolutely incredible music. When I was young in the 90s, someone older said to me, “I'm a child of the 80s, and the 80s had way better music than what's out now.” I was incredulous. Now, I understand it, with bands from New Order to XTC, and Prince to The Blue Nile. The Downtown Lights is a beautiful, contemplative pop song appropriate for those pensive late nights.

Griselda – DR BIRDS

I had a real drought of rap-listening over the last 2-3 years, and I think I've finally seen some rain to end it. It's all because of Griselda, a rap crew based out of Buffalo, New York. Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, Westside Gunn, and Boldy James have led the sonic revival of the gritty, harsh East Coast rap sound that dominated the mid-to-late 90s and I'm all. for. it.

Thank you 🙏🏻.

Perfume Genius – Describe

If this is any indication for the mood and feel of Mike Hadreas' upcoming new album, I cannot wait. His music has always captivated me, along with his live performances, which I got a chance to see for his first tour. It's weird when you feel like a very gay man is gyrating sensually on stage and appears to be staring straight at you while you stare back at him on stage. I remember that very clearly.

TWICE – Feel Special

In anticipation for their upcoming single in a few weeks, I'm sharing their most recent single to date. I can't wait. I love TWICE so much.

#5songs