Success

Success is the freedom to do what you want.

Overheard today

Preschooler 1 [Holds banana up to ear like a phone]: Hi Mommy!
Preschooler 2 [Smiling, runs to kitchen to grab banana, and mimics preschooler 1]: Oh, hi there, mommy. How are you?
Preschooler 1 [Looking incredulously at banana]: MOMMY??

Being Known

You know, I think people look at - I think the base of fame is, everybody wants to be known, honestly. And people look at fame as that's, like, the ultimate being known and whoever's famous, man - man, they've got their crap together. But in actuality, if you're known by people who love you and you're known, that's all the knowing you need. And actually, people who are famous and have - have a lot of people know them, that can actually make you less known, personally, because a lot of factors are involved in that.

So it's that sense of, yeah, I might have confidence professionally. Like, I might be more comfortable in front of the camera. I might - since I've had all these experience, I'm a lot more comfortable in kind of the craft of it. But in terms of personal value and personal growth and personal confidence, that's a whole other game. That's whole other - just, you know, just a journey of healing in my life or whatever and having friends around me who support me and love me, and me seeing the value in that - the most value in that. I think that's a different game.

- Actor Tony Hale on Fresh Air

Daily Rage: How much does it cost to have a baby?

Nobody knows.

Daily Learn: Adorno

Three Significant Ways Capitalism Corrupts and Degrades Us
1. Leisure time becomes toxic - Free time should be an opportunity to develop ourselves and to acquire the tools to change society. But in the modern world, leisure has devolved into the "culture industry," designed to keep us distracted, unable to understand ourselves, and without the will to alter our political reality.

2. Capitalism doesn't sell us the things we really need - Our real wants are carefully shielded from us by capitalist industry so that we end up forgetting what we truly need and settle instead for desires manufactured for us by corporations without any true interest in our welfare. Though we think we live in a world of plenty, what we really require to thrive - tenderness, understanding, calm, community - are disconnected from the present economy.

3. There are proto-fascists everywhere.

The primary obstacles to social progress are cultural and psychological rather than narrowly political or economic.

The May 26 Mark

*Read a news article about a foreign country every day.
*Sign up to volunteer for something.
*Talk to a family member.
*Try to make Jess laugh.

Previously:
* No caffeine and chocolate after 3 pm.
* No screens after 10 pm.
* Spend 30 minutes outside everyday.
* Stop saying "good job" to my daughter. Use more specific praise instead.
* Use smile.amazon.com when ordering off of Amazon.
* Have a conversation with a friend or family member every week.
* Read a book just for pleasure.
* Be more forgiving of myself and others.
* Say "Thank you" more and "I'm sorry" less.
* Laugh more.
* Try to understand other people's thinking, especially if they disagree with my own.
* Create something.
* Fail. Try to laugh it off afterwards.
* Spend an hour everyday being present with my wife and daughter.
* Brush and floss my teeth every night before bed.
* Try something out of my comfort zone.

Nine Ways to Bring Joy

1. Get enough sleep.
2. Schedule stillness.
3. Move your body.
4. Connect with nature.
5. Strengthen your relationships.
6. Get in the zone.
7. Play more.
8. Be of service.
9. Express yourself.

From Psychcentral.

Oakland Warriors

Parenting: The Rules for Making Rules

1. Make rules clear and consistent. If you're inconsistent about applying a rule, your child will be confused whether it's really a rule.

2. Give the reason for the rule. Children who hear reasons for rules are able to make the connection between the rule and the misbehavior" "I shouldn't do that because (whatever reason you gave)." Over time, this thought process allows your child to incorporate the rule into her own set of values, consider other applications for the rule, and eventually comply with the rule even when no one is looking. Children who don't hear reasons for rules tend to draw one conclusion: "I shouldn't do that because I'll get in trouble."

3. Help kids follow your rules. Prompt a child before an event where a rule usually gets broken. "What's our rule about begging for toys at the store? And what will happen if you break our rule?" Notice the absence of bad behavior and praise it. At the first hint of an infraction, repeat the prompt. "What do you need to be doing right now?" If these fail, calmly go to your chosen consequence. "You know the rule. We're leaving the store now. I'm hopeful that next time you'll make a different choice."

4. Set rules together. Set a time to talk, frame the problem, and encourage input on aspects where you can be flexible. Then, state the rule that you've agreed to.

From Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science (and What I"ve Learned So Far) by Tracy Cutchlow

Parenting: be firm and kind

Researcher Diana Baumrind of UC Berkeley found that an "authoritative" parenting style produces kids who are more self-reliant, self-confident, socially competent and less anxious and depressed.

Parenting Styles
1. Authoritarian - Parents are firm but not warm. Children tend to be well behaved but have less developed self regulation and moral reasoning skills because they are guided by external forces (i.e., the threat of punishment) rather than internal principles.
2. Authoritative - Parents are firm and warm, involved and responsive, with high expectations.
3. Permissive - Parents are warm but not firm. Children tend to have high self-esteem but are also more impulsive, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and more likely to get into trouble at school.
4. Uninvolved - Parents are neither firm nor warm. Children are most likely to be delinquent.

Aim to be authoritative. Just remember, being authoritarian takes more time, effort, and patience. And defiant children may need more of an authoritarian style, whereas fearful children may need more of a permissive parenting style.

From Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science (and What I"ve Learned So Far) by Tracy Cutchlow

Things I've Liked This Month

Seeing the baby river otters at the Oakland Zoo
Reading The Day Louis Got Eaten by John Fardell
Making a tin can banjo at the Spring Situation in Berkeley
Playing chicken shit bingo at the Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin
Playing with Adi in a giant cardboard box filled with packing peanuts

Pixar's Storytelling Rules

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

See the full list here.

Civilization and Climate

Three Quotes on Privilege

"Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it is not a problem to you personally." -- Unattributed
"Privilege is least apparent to those who have it." -- Clarence Page
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." -- Unattributed

A Radical View of Power

According to NYU professor Steven Lukes, power is the capacity to bring about consequences. In a social context, there are 3 faces or dimensions of power:

1 Overt Power is the power to make decisions during conflict.

2) Covert Power is the power to control the agenda, by deciding to ignore or deflect existing grievances. It is the power to transform potential challenges about inequitable outcomes into non-decisions. This is maintained by a ‘mobilization of bias” – a dominant set of beliefs, values, and institutional processes and procedures that privilege some groups in relation to others.

3) Ideological power is the power to shape desires and beliefs, making people want things opposed to their own self-interest and thereby averting open conflict and grievances. It is the power to transform inequities into non-issues. It can be at work despite apparent consensus between the powerful and the powerless.

The Alienation of Capitalist Work

Marx is best known for his two unsparing critiques of capitalism: capitalism is essentially alienating and exploitative.

Capitalism is alienating in 3 specific ways:

1. Workers are alienated from other human beings.
Workers must compete with each other for jobs and raises. But competition between workers brings down wages. This is not only materially damaging to workers, it estranges them from each other.

2. Workers are alienated from the products of their labor.
Capitalists need not do any labor themselves – simply by owning the means of production, they control the profit of the firm they own, and are enriched by it. But they can only make profit by selling commodities, which are entirely produced by workers. Thus, the products of the worker’s labor strengthen the capitalists, whose interests are opposed to that of the proletariat. Workers do this as laborers, but also as consumers: Whenever laborers buy commodities from capitalists, that also strengthens the position of the capitalists.

3. Workers are alienated from the act of labor.
Because capitalists own the firms that employ workers, it is they, not the workers, who decide what commodities are made, how they are made, and in what working conditions they are made. As a result, work is often dreary, repetitive, and even dangerous. Enduring this for an extended period of time means that one can only look for fulfillment outside of one’s work; while “the activity of working, which is potentially the source of human self-definition and human freedom, is … degraded to a necessity for staying alive.” As Marx says, "In his work, therefore, he [the laborer] does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside of work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home.

Source: Karl Marx's Concept of Alienation

The role that ideas play in shaping us as human beings

"We design human nature by designing the institutions within which people live and work."

How to practice emotional first aid

"Education is the not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire."

Parenting with Finesse

1. React to "shockers" with semi-interested boredom. When children announce something to which you feel an instant reaction in your gut take a deep breath, smile calmly, and say, "Really? Tell me more."

2. Act as if there is all the time in the world, even when there isn't.

3. Notice the little details and acknowledge them.

4. Show humility. Apologize when you're wrong, say "I don't know" when you don't know.

Source