Fascinating thread by Rob Henderson. The bottom line is that financial stress is one of many reasons families fall apart.
This thread contains many excerpts from the 2011 book by Kathryn Edin, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage.
I spotted a well considered list of advice on Common Sense - Bari Weiss' website. It's a list by Kevin Kelly (Founding Editor of Wired). I'm posting it because it offers lots of good advice that I wish I had known when I was younger. Further, I have not been able to write new chapters on "How to be a Human Animal" lately. My day job and other (mostly good) obligations are keeping me away from this project. I hope get back on track in a couple more weeks . . .
Here are a few excerpts from Kelly's list:
• Three things you need: The ability to not give up something till it works, the ability to give up something that does not work, and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two.• When public speaking, pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way, pause after you have said something you believe is important, and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details.
• There is no such thing as being “on time.” You are either late or you are early. Your choice.
• Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.
• The best way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post an obviously wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you.
• You’ll get 10x better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior, especially in children and animals.
• Making art is not selfish; it’s for the rest of us. If you don’t do your thing, you are cheating us.
• Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read.
• Don’t wait for the storm to pass; dance in the rain.
• When checking references for a job applicant, employers may be reluctant or prohibited from saying anything negative, so leave or send a message that says, “Get back to me if you highly recommend this applicant as super great.” If they don’t reply take that as a negative.
• Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.
After I took grade school civics, I grew up. I now know that one of the main functions of our federal government and its political operators is to tell lies to its citizens. And one of the main jobs of the modern corporate media is to support their favorite politicians. BTW, Nina Jankowicz, the new head of this "Disinformation Board" is a certified purveyor of disinformation who embraces censorship as a political tool.
A few short years ago, Jankowicz stated: "Imagine that, you know, with President Trump right now calling all of these news organizations that have inconvenient for him stories that they — that they're getting out there that he's calling fake news, and now lashing out at platforms," said Jankowicz. "I would never want to see our executive branch have that sort of power," she added.
Citing a new Pew Study, Zaid Jilani concludes: "Gender, race/ethnicity, and legacy are Americans' least valued factors for college admissions and high school grades and standardized test scores are their most valued factors"
Tara Henley's newest article is "Meet the press: Why much of the media looks and sounds much the same." She makes some excellent points that apply to liberal news media as well as conservative media. Reporters appears to lost a sense of curiosity. Whatever happened to the childlike curiosity in these well-trained journalists? Has it been snuffed out? Unlikely, because reporters know how to attack viewpoints that threaten their world views. What they lack is motivation to examine bullshit emanating from their own tribe.
Why is this? Sometimes, editors are refusing to allow reporters to following their instincts to be curious. This is happening in many places, resulting in excellent reporters striking out on their own. This group includes Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss and Tara Henley. There is a second less obvious reason: Many reporters feel internalized pressures to not ask certain questions. Henley offers this list of questions left-leaning reporters refuse to pursue:
Ask yourself how many liberal media pieces you’ve seen over the past two years that, say, interrogate COVID restrictions critically (especially early on, with school closures, lockdowns, and mask mandates). Or evaluate Black Lives Matter as a political movement, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. Or offer opposing viewpoints on transgender athletes in women’s sports; or mass immigration; or diversity, equity, and inclusion philosophies, trainings, or policies. Or acknowledge the excesses of #MeToo, or prejudice against the white working class. Or present critiques of identity politics. Or explore downsides of puberty blockers and gender transition surgery for teens; or delve into the growing censoriousness on social media and in education, Hollywood, the arts, and NGOs. Or probe inner city gun violence. Or reflect the positive sides of masculinity. Or talk about God. Or reference anything that’s currently deemed a conspiracy theory in non-derogatory terms (see: the lab leak theory). Or express genuine curiosity on the reasons behind the rise of independent media, whether that’s Joe Rogan or Substack.
Why are so many reporters afraid to be curious?
Often, it’s not a boss telling you what to cover, or how to cover it, but your colleagues, the mood in your newsroom, your competition, your Twitter feed, and, increasingly, your own anxieties. (And, just as important, what you are not being told. As writer Freddie deBoer has put it: “Everyone who works in the industry lives with a dim but persistent feeling that they have committed some kind of faux pas and are paying for it, but never know where, what, or why.”). Thus, consensus is manufactured in myriad small but insidious ways, and if you want to keep working you figure out the unspoken rules.
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