parenting
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On gateway drugs.
Being lied to is a gateway to rebellion.
A Romance, addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, altered consciousness, bars, Bruce Weigl, childhood, children, dangerous drugs, depression, dizziness, dizzy, drug abuse, drug research, drug use, drugs, ecstasy, gateway drugs, incarceration, insomnia, jail, jail poetry, laws, lying, marijuana, mass incarceration, MDMA, parenting, poem, poetry, pot, PTSD, sleep disorder, sleep disturbance, spinning, teaching in jail, veterans, War on Drugs, which drugs are most dangerous, which drugs cause most harm
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On explaining religion to my child, part one.
Humans have told so many stories about sky ghosts, but don’t worry, kiddoe … ghosts are pretend!
Abrahamic faiths, atheism, atheist, Buddha, Buddhism, children, Christ, Christmas, cobra, death, deities, Eden, Enkidu, explaining Christmas to atheist children, explaining Christmas to atheist kids, explaining Christmas to kids, explaining god to kids, explaining holidays to children, explaining religion to kids, expulsion from Eden, fatherhood, forgiving god, Genesis, ghost stories, ghosts, ghosts are pretend, Gilgamesh, good without god, holidays, immortality, In a Dark Dark Room, jealous gods, Jesus, John-Michael Bloomquist, Loki, Magic Penny, Malvina Reynolds, Midgard Serpent, misogyny in world religions, Moana, Mucalinda, mythology, naga, nap, naptime, Old Testament, parenting, penance, Quran, Ragnarok, religion, religions, sacrifice, secular children, secular kids, secular parenting, sharing, Siddhartha, sky ghosts, snake, snake myths, snake stories, snakes in mythology, snakes in religion, spirituality, stories about death, stories about god, stories about snakes, teaching children about religion, teaching kids about religion, telling children about god, telling kids about god, The Prodigal’s Lament, Thor, to live forever, toddlers, trickster gods, world mythology, Yahweh
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On parenting and short-term memory loss.
Caring for young children wrecks havoc on your brain. I’ve heard it’s temporary. And, to make a better world, more men need to do it.
Abdel Haleem, Abrahamic faiths, Anthropology of Childhood, attention span, banishment, banishment of Sita, Beverly Strassmann, childhood, Christian, Christianity, contract law, David Lancy, developing brains, Dogon, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Draupadi, Draupadi in the gambling hall, early development, Emily Wilson, emotional development, family, fatherhood, feminism, feminist, gambling, Garry Wills, gender equality, gender parity, gossip, inequality, Islam, Jewish, Judaism, Mahabharata, Mary Beard, memory, Mermaid and the Minotaur, misogyny, Muslim, parenting, patriarchy, Penelope, philosophy, polygamy, polygyny, preschool development, Quran, shirking responsibility, Sita, Telemachus, The Odyssey, value, what matters in life, What the Qur’an Meant, What the Quran Meant and Why It Matters, who should parent, Women and Power, women’s work
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On genetic inheritance and sexual assault.
Violence flourishes whenever people want control without putting in the work. But humans can stand against injustice.
animal breeding, arranged marriage, CAFO, consent, duck genitalia, duck rape, duck sex, ducks, evolution, factory farming, feminism, feminist, forcible fertilization, freedom, freedom of choice, gender violence, genetic inheritence, injustice, instinct, instinctual behaviors, interspecies sexual assault, lek mating, male feminists, manakin, mate choice, mating strategies, Mean, Myriam Gurba, orangutan, parenting, patriarchy, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, puppy mill, rape, rape culture, rape in nature, sexual assault, sexual autonomy, sexual violence, slut shaming, smooth guardian frogs, the opportunity to consent is sexy, violative assault, violence, what does evolution want, zoo, zoos
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On conspiracy theories and Santa Claus.
We told our kid that Santa is just a regular ol’ dungeon master so that hopefully she never thinks the Earth is flat.
alternative facts, autism, Bible, Biblical prophecy, Christmas, conspiracy, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory, criminal justice, critical thinking, DARE, do vaccines cause autism, drugs, dungeon master Santa, expert opinion, expertise, experts, flat Earth, holidays, humans on the moon, International Space Station, just say no, lying to children, lying to children about Santa Claus, lying to kids about Santa, lying to kids about Santa Claus, magical animal, mall Santa, meat, MMR, moon landing, myths, Nostradamus, parenting, Santa, santa claus, segregation, sex before marriage, sex ed, solitary confinement, teaching in jail, truth, vaccination, vaccines, vegan, vegetarian, ZOG
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On addiction, crime, Buddhism, and exorcism.
If we want people to heal, we shouldn’t keep them inside bleak boxes.
abuse, addiction, agency, Buddhism, child molesters, Demon, demons, drug dealers, exorcism, free will, gang murder, Harvard commencement, hurt people hurt people, I Will Find You, incarceration, J.K. Rowling, jail, Jason Shiga, Joanna Conners, liberation rite, mythology, nurture, parenting, penitence, poverty, prison, prison rape, Rowling, sex offenders, solitary, Tibetan mythology, trauma
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On perception and learning.
We adults can’t fix the world until we learn from children that it’s okay to be wrong.
analytical philosophy, animal cognition, automated image analysis, Brendan Wenzel, Bring me a slab, childhood development, children’s books, chimpanzee learning, computer learning to find cats, computer science, data clustering, David Lancy, falsifiable theories, Google, human development, identification, language acquisition, learning, Liu Cixin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, mental filters, neural networks, New York Times, parenting, perception, personhood, Philosophical Investigations, principal component analysis, Quoc Le, science, scientific method, Slab!, Stanford, teaching, The Anthropology of Childhood, The Three-Body Problem, They All Saw a Cat, unsupervised learning, Upshot, what is a cat, what is red, Youtube cat videos
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On Robert Gordon’s ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth.’
What if technological innovations are a cause of, not a solution to, our post-1970s economic morass?
Amazon, artificial intelligence, automation, CAFO, clean water, concentration of wealth, delivery drones, distribution of wealth, driverless cars, economics, electric appliances, factory farming, feminism, future technologies, GDP, GDP is not an effective measure of quality of life, GDP undercounts the value of caregiving, guaranteed basic income, Impossible Foods, increasing gains to capital, invention, labor versus capital, negative tax, no one’s choices should be curtailed because of gender, parenting, Pat Brown, pessimism, poverty causes stress, productivity, quality of life, reparations, Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon, robotics, slow growth, social breakdown, Steven Rattner, technological progress, the value of a stay-at-home parent, wealth tax, William D. Nordhaus, women’s work has been historically undervalued
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On unilateral reproduction.
We’ve identified some of the genes that allow Cape bees to reproduce without males … if human men don’t help more with the chores, will they be ditched too?
a world without men, birds and the bees, Cape bee, Frankenstein, game theory, golems, investment in children, Jane Ellen Harrison, just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good, Mary Shelley, mythology, parenting, parthenogenesis, reproduction, Wendy Doniger, Women Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts
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On paranoia, virology, conspiracy theories, & lemmings: my experience reading ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.’
In which our hero stumbles across a Disney-promulgated conspiracy of lemming misinformation.
1958 Disney documentary, accidental death mistaken for suicide, Apophenia, are parents trustworthy, are politicians trustworthy, are scientists trustworthy, authority figures, being honest to your kid, being honest with my kid, bibliophile, book hunting, book review, characters trapped within the grand schemes of their creator, climate change, conspiracy, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory, disappointment at rampant misbehavior in classic literature, Disney, Disney documentary, do lemmings commit suicide, do you know how they make pepperoni?, does life have any meaning?, Easter Bunny, evil cabal, fabricated documentary footage, faked documentary footage, fatherhood, Fred Tomaselli, Genesis 41, Gravity’s Rainbow, hidden meanings, honesty, human fallacies, human population, hunting to extinction, influenza, influenza virus is one step ahead of our defenses, is life random?, is the world random?, lemming migration, lemming suicide, lemmings, lemmings don’t commit suicide, library booksales, lying to children, lying to children about Santa Claus, lying to kids about Santa Claus, mental illness, novelist as God, overbreeding, overfishing, overpredation, paranoia, parenting, pattern seeking, pop psychology, population booms and busts, population dynamics, predator prey population dynamics, predator prey relationship, psychology, randomness, randomness is scary, Rob Brotherton, santa claus, Santa Claus conspiracy, schizophrenia, should children believe in Santa Claus, Slothrop, storing food for lean years, Suspicious Minds, Thomas Pynchon, truth, unrealistic expectations, used bookstores, water usage rights, White Wilderness
Frank Brown Cloud 