HonoriaWinchester
No bio...
User ID: 3468
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Conway "first, pop hits in the '50s" Twitty? I mean sure he later made a country turn but it's ooooooonly maaaaaaaaaake believe! :D (Sorry, it's just too apropos; I know he did actually always want to be country, etc.)
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Hey, sacred values and taboo tradeoffs, it is what it is.
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Problem: It's not good for artists and intellectuals to be worshiped. It's not good for their psychological health, and it's not good for their art or their scholarship either.
(Can't we have a culture that just lets them be ordinary people like everyone else? Just two of many normal variations of humanity who just like and are good at this type of thing instead of that, because different people are different and that's OK?
...the New Left tried to do that--see also Free to Be You and Me--but my experience was that this in the end was derailed by the movement's emotional need for blank slatism...partly due to this worship of intellectuals: "Intellectual is the best thing to be, so it just has to be equally accessible to every individual, it just has to...")
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
...uh...TW: Contains linked and quoted mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths.
I'm reminded of Bob Rivers' "I Can't Ski Babe." Also "Oh God, I'm an Ocean Buoy."
Well it's hard when you're flyin' and you're sluggin' on a bottle
Flyin' in a plane that's an experimental model
Reached for Jim Beam but instead I grabbed the throttle...
Personally I'm a fan of both original songs (I liked oldies as a kid), and John Denver in general...which only makes these funnier IMO.
(Investigation found the latter was spreading misinformation, too! Like yes he did have multiple DUIs and was legally not allowed to fly at the time of the crash, but the autopsy found no sign of alcohol or other drugs. The problem was the difficulty of switching fuel tanks. That said, as an initial reaction, given the context it was a reasonable suspicion.)
(Sonny) I loved you and you dumped me
(Cher) I told you to watch out for trees!
:D
Juice walkin'
Yes indeed
I'm hopin'
He'll never be
Out stalkin'
His ex-wife number 3!Hello, 911? This is Mrs. Simpson.
Oh...yes, Mrs. Simpson, what is it now?
...this was mostly just a nostalgia trip for me, but yeah this was all on radio rather than TV.
I mentioned elsewhere how I was raised that freedom of speech was more important than anything...that was partly due to the times, and that and exposure to the above type of thing on radio have shaped my worldview. In my culture, mockery of celebrity and celeb-adjacent deaths isn't shocking and I probably wouldn't notice it much. (Celeb-adjacent does feel "worse" to me, like the celeb chose to pursue attention but their family mostly didn't...)
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Great point!
This part
When the government denies your entry into a higher paying market, you are being told you aren't worth that.
is kinda what people are responding to with, "But a country is not an economic zone." Like: "It's not that you aren't worth access to that higher paying market. It's just that you are part of a different community, rather than that one."
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
He was in denial about his love for the other servant and hers for him (they could have married and had a happy life, but no); he was in denial about his employer's support for the Nazis. When he finally realized the depth of his sacrifices (see: other servant's love for him), he told himself they were justified because he had given good service to a great man (a stereotypical "blockheaded aristo" who had supported the Nazis along with the abdicator king).
(Looking it up after writing the above: Miss Kenton; Edward VIII.)
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
I'm from a traditionally AUA family. Always think about writing about it, never seem to find the time.
I left in the '90s, so I don't know if what @MayorofOysterville said is true about the UUs, but I can mostly agree with it about other old school liberal orgs:
Basically Boomer liberal organizations were actually liberal and boomer liberals did believe in principles such as free speech. However, they lacked the antibodies to deal with hardcore woke cadre because they could easily be manipulated by being called racist and out of touch with the youth.
My parents are Depression / war babies rather than Boomers. And I think I've said it before on here, but yeah I was raised that freedom of speech was our most important principle as liberals.
But UUs also had a previous problem that I grew up watching, where the uh "old believers" ;) were, basically, swamped by all the ex-other-denoms coming in in the '70s and '80s. It's hard to find the time to try to write about it though....
The strangest conclusion one can draw from these five crucial minutes of that shortest day--though it would have been perfectly clear, had one bothered to read the signs--is the fact that the refugee horde seemed so blithely unaware that this land it was about to make its own could possibly belong to others already....
all those determined to see it through to the end come pouring from the villas, and cottages, and gardens, down to the beach...to welcome the refugees and guide their first steps. They will. They must. For their own self- fulfillment. Life is good. Life is love, and all men are brothers....
Panama Ranger scans the surging mob, almost close enough to touch him, trying to find a smiling face, a glance to grasp the friendship in his eyes. But he looks and looks. No smile meets his. No one even seems to see him.... He's finally seen the light. "They don't need me," he murmurs. "They'll just take what they please. I can’t give them a thing ..."
As for his pals, they disappeared too, absorbed and digested in much the same way... Only a handful were adopted, as it were, yet lots of them did their damnedest to be helpful... But they soon got discouraged. Though the horde often listened and took their good advice...they no sooner gave it than they felt themselves rejected. The brightest among them were quick to understand: the more helpful they were, indispensable in fact, the more hateful they became.... No one wants to have to remember the masters and mentors from the opulent past. They're just in the way.
You could say: they didn't seem to join thinking they were you know joining a church. They seemed to join thinking "Here's what I can call myself while doing whatever the hell I want." From my biased perspective.
And then before that there was the AUA-Universalist merger. (Which arguably opened the door for the problems I saw growing up...but both--the merger and the problems--could just as easily be attributed to the times.)
And then there's the snide attitude most people here take to Unitarians. I would suggest that people apply the "write like everyone is reading (including Unitarians)" rule. And of course it's hard to write about people you don't know. But then that applies to me too these days wrt the UUs.
My parents haven't attended a church since the '90s. They don't like the one where I grew up, they don't like the one where they now live. They have a lot of Congregationalist friends, so they're thinking of joining their local Congregationalist church. (The AUA was formed by Congregationalists who were dissatisfied with Calvinism. Problem: So are my folks...)
The AUA was not "created to be a liberal denomination of [implied by the quotes: fake] 'Christianity.'"
To get a better understanding of what it was for, I suggest reading Harriet Beecher Stowe's roman a clef Oldtown Folks (Ellery Davenport is basically Aaron Burr, except that he dies instead of Hamilton). Guess I could summarize as: It was invented by and for a certain type of person, who (at least in a Christian context) needed it. It does not work well for anyone else.
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Jawboning is 100% fine per Murthy v. Missouri, Jimmy Kimmel will never again face firing over his reaction to specifically Charlie Kirk's death, so he has no standing to complain. :bland smile:
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
For two months everyone had been told the most important thing to do was slow the spread of the virus. People sacrificed immensely in those two months to do so. And then, suddenly, no, the most important thing is for people to protest, and riot, and loot.
As much as I sympathize with literalists getting annoyed with that, I also sympathize with officials who said that, because (I feel) "come on": You could not say anything was more important than fighting racism, anything at all, or else you'd be canceled, "of course." "Nothing is ever more important than fighting racism" just was...part of the "religion" of the time. You just have to say it, so you can continue doing your job rather than being removed (some might assume or even hope "most people" really know that and thus know to ignore it--see also Kolmogorov complicity, I know--like I said, I feel sorry for officials in that position). (I said so on the sub at the time.)
Suddenly gave me a visceral (not just intellectual) understanding of Jared Diamond's point (from Collapse; yeah I know, thinking anything good about him has become uncool; still) about societies that didn't do the obvious thing that would've saved them because it was against their religion or values. Because yeah...you could not say anything was more important than fighting racism, you just could not, "of course." To the point that (I suspect) some wouldn't even bother thinking much about how much good it might do to be able to discourage protests because "we just can't, of course" so no point upsetting ourselves thinking too much about how we should (or to put it another way, their "CrimeStop" would kick in). :facepalm:
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
Yeah, it's now to such an extreme that (unless you interpret it as intended to deceive) it's incoherent. It's not plausibly sincerely mistaken; it's not open to interpretation; it's straight-up constructed to deceive.
It's like, there's such a thing as implicature, folks--and it's part of speech. (IOW: Using implicature to deceive is lying; implicature is speech, you are speaking an untruth.)
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
See also Aesop's fable about the kid on the roof.
HonoriaWinchester
1mo ago
I disagree. Smart people are especially good at making inferences, so they get into the habit. Being selective with which facts you share and arranging them deliberately to mislead--to encourage people to infer an untruth--is actually especially likely to succeed with smart people. They're especially used to their inferences being correct.
HonoriaWinchester
2mo ago
Hi! I also enjoyed The Black Cauldron. :)
Welll my first reaction to your OP, before I even scrolled down to see "AuDHD," was, "Another day, another 'gifted kid is unhappy, must be autistic'" soo... And warning, treating for autism with a kid who isn't actually autistic just makes things worse / the child angrier.
But that said, individuals I've known who were both gifted and actually autistic have been helped by Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough by Winner and Crooke (for adults about the workplace), and The Asperkid's (Secret) Book of Social Rules by Jennifer Cook. Winner and Crooke also wrote Socially Curious and Curiously Social: A Social Thinking Guidebook for Bright Teens and Young Adults, which I haven't seen but hey, same author and for teens.
In particular, Winner and Crooke have a thing about "People have an idea of what counts as a big deal and what doesn't, and if you react super strongly to what they think should be a small deal, they'll see you as unpredictable/crazy and treat you badly."
Which is true. But oversimplified. And doesn't account for like actual differences and justifiable stronger reactions. After all, different people are different and how is it fair that one group gets to just dictate what is and isn't a big deal? (As many of your responses pointed out.) (I'd add that giftedness can be the sole cause of "over"reactions. Or can just be a partial cause with autism and/or ADHD as the other part(s).)
Enter idiosyncrasy credits / "weirdness points".
Idiosyncrasy credits are increased (earned) each time an individual conforms to a group's expectations, and decreased (spent) each time an individual deviates from a group's expectations. Edwin Hollander originally defined idiosyncrasy credit as "an accumulation of positively disposed impressions residing in the perceptions of relevant others; it is… the degree to which an individual may deviate from the common expectancies of the group".
--once established as a generally trustworthy person / good friend, then you can stand up for your interpretation of the situation where it is so a big deal. (Being innately different, even solely due to giftedness, means you just are disadvantaged in this. It forces you to use up more idiosyncrasy credits on basic needs. Unfair but true fact of life.)
Based on your description, he's stuck in the opposite situation: He's already established as "the one who always overreacts." Uphill battle there; from a solely social perspective would be best to switch schools. The new dx will, socially, operate as a "well he's defective so he gets a pass for his constant overreactions." Might or might not make the situation tolerable for him ("You see, the autism means that X thing that doesn't bother most people really bothers him, so be kind to the defective and don't do it"), but that's never gonna be as healthy a situation as a new school where he started off on the right foot (and got established as "the overall good guy who cares weirdly a lot about X, we like him so we'll respect that").
See also Stephanie Tolan's A Time to Fly Free (about a preteen but still). And Grace Llewellyn's The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
(Ran this by one of the diagnosed AuDHD+gifted people I know and he cosigned it.)
HonoriaWinchester
5mo ago
Once when my husband was playing with our toddler in our driveway, a police officer showed up saying someone had called about "an infant by the side of the road" at our address. He had been in physical contact with our kid the whole time...so now we joke that he's invisible. :D
Meanwhile, as a city kid I was allowed to cross the street at 3, walk 1/4 mile to the park at 4, walk generally around the neighborhood within about a half mile radius at 5, and ride the bus home from school as a latchkey kid at 6.
My impression of the past is mostly formed by British and Scottish novels, where lower class children would rove around in packs, causing trouble (a la Oliver Twist), and upper class children would have governesses, tutors, or go to boarding school, where they were supervised a bit less than now, or about the same amount, and the boys would oppress each other a bit.
What first comes to my mind is the Five Children and It series--they had a governess but were allowed out on their own (weren't they?).
Then there's Understood Betsy, which...could be taken as a "city kids are starting to be less free-range, that's bad" novel from 100 years ago. (Though that's really an oversimplification. But for the purposes for this discussion...)
Then for American history, well, see the "Schoolhouse Blizzard" or "Children's Blizzard"--so named because it hit just when school was letting out, so many of the victims were children trying to get home from school. David Laskin's book about it argued that it made Great Plains settlers of the time (1888) conclude they had "trusted the land too much" or allowed children too much free range. (Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables are both set before this, in the 1870s; The Long Winter was 1880-81.)
the age at which a child could feasibly be wandering the countryside or neighborhood (8? 10?) is the same age when they can be quietly reading novels or playing with their siblings or being dropped off at events while their parents drink a coffee or visit a bookstore or something. Unless that's also not a thing anymore?
IDK but I do know there's controversy in Girl Scouts over whether parents should be (a) allowed at or (b) required to be at Daisy meetings (K-1st), because some feel that kindergartners are too young to give a coherent account of what's happened to them so parents should always be there... Meanwhile, a constant source of angst in parenting groups is "What age is old enough to assume a party is drop-off rather than parents-attend?" This freaked me out when I first saw it because I'm old, I didn't know "parents-attend" was even a thing. (Remember in Beezus and Ramona (1955) where preschool Ramona invites neighborhood kids over for a party and they all get dropped off?)
HonoriaWinchester
5mo ago
Thanks!
I had special needs that couldn't be met in a school, and so do my offspring (and honestly from what I've read of their writings on this, same kinda thing applies to Caplan's and Friedman's kids). This both means that school wouldn't be better, and also that homeschooling can be imperfect and still be the best of a bad bunch of options...and still be imperfect. (See here and Ctrl-F "for Jason" for more detail; see also the comment thread started by "Dr. Dad.")
I grew up in a blue bubble; my good private school handled my needs very badly partly because of our blue cultural milieu. Then, starting shortly after Racefail '09, my well-intentioned efforts to lend my analytical skills to the cause led to a couple defenestrations.
So you could say I'm a mirror image of a /r/homeschoolrecovery or self-declared "ex-fundie" type. As they were harmed by their attempted "education," I was harmed by mine; as they were harmed by (an aspect of) red culture, I was harmed by (an aspect of) blue culture. And when I encounter such people, my impression is typically that they're well versed in the flaws of their own experience, but very naive about the flaws of others. So that's why I wonder about the flaws of homeschooling.
Our problem is that the same thing that makes school a bad fit also makes it hard to find social opportunities (which also means school is not a good solution). So far we have the local gym's "kids' get-togethers," which is at least unstructured multi-age social time, but it's not with the same kids every week; we have the occasional gathering with coreligionists, but our weirdo religion is so far-flung that these gatherings are rare; and same for our family. We're on the waiting list for the secular homeschool co-op (but it seems like co-ops around here get founded and fail pretty quickly so IDK). Girl Scouts seems like the best bet so far (well, for girls), but there's no open troops near here, so right now we have a Juliette (hopefully we'll eventually have a troop, in the meantime she enjoys the badge activities and is proud when she's helpful and I remind her she's fulfilling her Girl Scout Promise)...
4-H starts at a comparatively old age; what did you do for social interaction before then, or were you OK at home until 4-H age?
As an autodidact, I had the problem I mentioned of going out into the world and assuming all sorts of things were common knowledge that...weren't. I wonder how avoidable that really is; experts are famous for forgetting that their "jargon" isn't common knowledge, after all. It may be that any good education, no matter where it comes from, will set graduates up for that. Did you have that experience too?
Anyway, thanks again!
HonoriaWinchester
5mo ago
Oh hey, good to see you! We're currently homeschooling our offspring in such a bubble, except not really because we're concerned it may backfire.
(Quickest version is: We don't own a tablet, we do own a TV and a Roku. Also we're teaching them our weird values and old-fashioned academic knowledge that no one cares about anymore and might not even believe if someone tried to tell them, and offspring may end up out there assuming it's common knowledge :wince: ...so yeah, "18th century" [knowledge with] "Boomer" [ish values].)
Uh...any thoughts? Pitfalls we should avoid? Ways to help our offspring end up OK?
HonoriaWinchester
5mo ago
Because self-pity can be a sign of loserdom, but also can be a sign of (as @Wave_Existence said) "a genetically excellent 12 year old...put down by a group of older but genetically deficient guys," it has not always been unattractive to all.
(I always found it attractive, I think because it is a possible sign of "genetically excellent but had bad luck," IOW (to be all markety about it) an undervalued asset; the women in my family have a history of such marriage choices (of marrying men before and often long before their peak in status), so I think I just inherited an attraction pattern that evolved to target undervalued assets in a variety of ways, and this is one.)
From my perspective as someone who does find it attractive, and who watched what to me is the "new" hatred of self-pity come in, the current extreme aversion to self-pity is part of what I might call "the dysfunctional Third Wave feminism / anti-colorblind-racism / etc. cultural suite."
Which had actual reasons for evolving; there were problems with colorblindness, I experienced them too (I just ended up concluding colorblindness is still the better option if we have to choose).
I remember the wave of anti-self-pity sentiment initially coming in as the anti-"nice-guys" movement that Scott then got a name arguing against. "Heartless Bitches International" who wrote the imperfectly-coherent (because new) manifesto, of course named themselves that as reclamation. (It's always been weird to me to encounter young people to whom that isn't immediately obvious. I mean, of course a name like that is reclamation? It exists because at the time they named themselves that, men could say that about them and expect broad sympathy.)
IMO movements like that among women had a similarity to "incel" type movements in that they were reactions to having done "what they were told" and having had it not work out. They "gave the nice guy a chance" because back then they WERE told to and he turned out to be a terrible boyfriend. (Maybe the ratio of "quality but bad luck" to "actual negative traits are what led to his bad experiences" had gone down.)
So I accept that there were real reasons for it...but...overall I do think it has turned out to be dysfunctional.
Partly because IMO it comes from heightened awareness of the (real) problem of the stalker / won't-accept-a-breakup type, but also lower awareness of the problem of the time-waster. (Hey, my generation of blue women were actually told "people will try to warn you of waning fertility, but that's a sexist lie meant to restrict your ability to succeed in your chosen career and find your best match, ignore it." We didn't just have lower awareness, we were actively inoculated against even learning of our own time limit, never mind men who also didn't know or care about it.)
So @faceh I actually agree that one way to begin to tackle the problem would be to begin to punish the time-wasters. No, it's not actually OK to just string a woman along for sex with no intention of ever marrying/giving her children. But I would add that uh also we need to teach our kids to even be aware of this as a phenomenon. Because that's been neglected (that's why so many of them fall for or fall into it). (You might not be sure you want to marry your girlfriend, but did you actually want to ruin her life? If that's what you're actually doing, you deserve to know that so you have the option to, like, not.)
HonoriaWinchester
5mo ago
Take note of that feeling you're feeling.
That feeling is why people (a) push positivity ("don't bring up a problem unless you have a solution in mind," etc.) and (b) shoot the messenger.
Like I'd expect that most people here most of the time are on the other side of this kinda thing, and are the "disagreeable person" or "T" who believes that first you define the problem and then you get to work on it, and keeps getting annoyed, confounded, frustrated, and/or attacked, by others who unaccountably keep wanting to stop them at the "define the problem" stage.
I know I am. (Well, was until I just learned to mostly just not talk.)
(Personally I believe the whole "don't bring up a problem unless you have a solution in mind" attitude is what prevented any effective response to climate change my whole childhood and youth and now it's too late...but w/e)
Anyway. I'm a married mom and what I hear about the current dating situation leaves me feeling like I got the last helicopter out of Saigon...except...what about the kids?
HonoriaWinchester
6mo ago
The situation where a lesson on a medical condition is appropriate is when there's a child with that condition in or about to join the class. That's a known way of preventing shame and bullying.
So yeah, if there's a kid with CAH in the class, teach the class about CAH. Or if there's a wheelchair user, teach about wheelchairs, etc.
But that (ISTM) is why many standard blues support teaching trans stuff--the idea is "We can't know in advance if such a child will be in the class! So we should just assume one might be, and teach everyone!" It makes sense (is also why people put random wheelchair users into stories, for example). The problem is the side effects swamp the benefits. Well, IMO. But you gave a good description of some of the kind of side effects you'd see from any plan to "Just teach every 4-year-old about [some rare condition]!"
(Then when it comes to trans specifically, an additional problem is we don't actually know the truth of the assumptions underlying this plan, that "It's just like a medical condition that is 100% physical! It has a fixed rate of occurrence and you never know who will get it and you can only treat it one way!" And there's even some evidence that those assumptions are false. People often really want those assumptions to be true, I think because it'd make life / "doing the right thing" simpler for them. I sympathize...but I'm inclined to believe they aren't true. So they end up being harmful. And we shouldn't impose curricula based on them.)
HonoriaWinchester
6mo ago
I'm a heathen. :shrug: Happy to ally with whoever necessary on issues of importance to both. Such as, you know, schools transing kids.
(Just so you know, the whole "heathen vs. pagan" thing evolved after "pagan" started to gain a connotation of "woke." The "heathens" are the non-woke ones. As usual, that includes everyone from normies to Nazis.)
"[Christians] killed my [forbears] and stole all our holidays".
I mean they did. Can be good; family members can still celebrate the same holidays! :) (Mostly it's whatever but not going to deny that it happened. Roman pagans tried to suppress Christians, Christians then tried to suppress pagans, religions often try to suppress other religions, etc...like I said above I'm more interested in allying with whoever necessary on matters of importance to both.)
There are more heathens out there than just the "oh paganism is just secular humanism" contingent. (Also: I left UU for this. One day I should write about my experiences growing up UU as part of a heritage-AUA family. The post-merger/Boomer-influx changes broke my mom's heart. Though she'd never say so of course because that would be rude.)
AFAIC Jesus was another holy man and anyone who wants to is fine to worship (or heck just study) him. (See also: "What Pagans can learn from Christianity".) I wouldn't particularly recommend becoming a heathen unless you have some actual (religious or philosophical) reason to.
And uh unlike another commenter in this thread I don't have a CS Lewis quote for everything :D but I do have one for this:
You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia's fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it. By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. At the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen's children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears ...
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.
Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond will break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).
(Sorry I don't have time right now to get into a long discussion; I just thought I should mention that my type exists and at least one of us is on this forum.)
ETA: @LiberalRetvrn
HonoriaWinchester
6mo ago
Based on my life experience I think there's a good chance that if he sends his kids to school (as opposed to homeschooling) that he may again confront issues. (Or maybe not, he seems to have done fine in school despite hating it...)
HonoriaWinchester
8mo ago
For some, doing "the pause" from birth (when newborn wakes, set a timer and excruciatingly force yourself to wait 4-5 actual minutes before responding; we had to use the timer because when we "felt like" we'd waited 5 minutes it would actually be 1-2) results in babies learning to sleep through the night pretty naturally, often by 2-4 months old. As described in the book Bringing Up Bebe (an interesting discussion of the author's experience of cultural parenting differences between France and the USA).
That's what happened for us--and then came the 4 month sleep regression. First time that happened, we'd just recently stopped sleeping in shifts and it didn't occur to us to go back to sleeping in shifts (we should have). We got to the point of waiting up to 15 minutes before going in--so, basically Ferber--and that was enough.
Reading over your comment, I would suggest you start by putting him down awake. At his age he may be having the "Fell asleep in my bedroom, woke up on the lawn" reaction. (By which I mean "Fell asleep in a parent's arms, woke up in the crib" can cause the same kind of reaction in a baby that the foregoing would cause in an adult--"What happened? Where am I? This has got to be bad!")
She wants a 2nd child, but I refuse if it's going to be this circus again.
! does she know that?
HonoriaWinchester
8mo ago
@hooser's aside about being a mathematician who's benefited from "get more women into math" initiatives despite not necessarily believing in them, reminded me I wanted to ask:
What can I do to help out my mathy daughter?
Her dad and I are both everything-but-math types (like Scott); she OTOH is so far shaping up to be your stereotypical math-and-music kid. She's very young, maybe she'll stop being mathy or w/e, but if she stays mathy...I just wonder how to help her in the future. (Right now we homeschool.)
From my own experience and studies I recall reading, seems like affinity groups have been the most effective way to help minorities-in-a-field achieve to their potential. IOW, put people who have an interest in the field and are not in the majority-in-the-field in contact with one another. (As opposed to "try to change the field to be more in line with the targeted identity group's average group preferences" or some such.) I did see an online group for mathy girls 5th grade and up, maybe that'll be good for when she's older...
So, any math-and-music types here, what would you have wanted someone to tell your parents?
If only the party that historically supported those two things would treat their country like a community rather than an economic zone.
There's been a realignment. Trump (a pretty standard '80s New York liberal) reunited the FDR coalition. It started with Bill's (sold as "temporary, for the sake of winning") economic "triangulation," and evolved into this.
It is OK to think a community's culture needs time to adapt to change; it is OK to think this means immigration sometimes needs pauses; it is OK for a country to control immigration; it is OK for a country to decide how much immigration it wants right now; it is OK for that amount to be different at different times. (Runaway "none of that is OK, all of it is racist" is what led to this; but I'm sure you've heard that before.)
People have repeatedly voted to control immigration and had politicians not act on that. Members of the political class will sometimes allow that they are unshakably convinced that the economy needs immigration, needs more and more immigration, or else it will crash, period--and that's why they ignore the will of the people. Thus complaints about treating the community like an economic zone.
Not to mention the repeated "This will economically help more people worldwide than it hurts, and we'll have social programs to help out those it does hurt." Reality: We got the "giant sucking sound," we did not get the social programs. I'm old enough to have seen that happen over and over. I know that's frustrating when the party intended to do both, but there comes a point where intent doesn't matter. Right-wing (libertarian) economics without the left-wing social programs to ameliorate their effect is just...right-wing economics. Thus, again, complaints of treating a community like an economic zone.
We are in a predicament: We have an economic system designed around constant growth, yet actually, constant growth is not physically possible (see, you know, The Limits to Growth?). The political class' attitude has been to accept the former but not the latter. And to hope that immigration can prop up continued growth. Regardless of any negative externalities it...becomes clearer and clearer it does have (Bowling Alone etc.) Because if not, well, then what?
It still has those negative externalities, so.
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