“So where are you going on vacation?”

“America.”

“Again?”

“Oh, no, not that America. I’m going to America.”

“Wait…the one next to America, or the one inside America?”

“The one just outside Super America.”

“Wow, nice. How are you getting there?”

“I have a flight out of America on Americaday and then I’m going through America by way of America to America, where I’m America-ing a rental America to America.”

“America America America America?”

“America America, America America. America America America America America America America America America America America America America America. America America America America America, America America…America America America America America America.”

“America. America America!”

“America!”

I’m a dad to an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 4-year-old. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I have felt all the ways you’re feeling now and so I do have some thoughts.

First of all, yes, it does get easier. You’re at or near the absolute hardest part of having a young child. For my kids, I won’t sugarcoat it, the hardest part was when they were three (we called it “threenagers”), so you may have another year or two yet to go (though if you look at our age span, you’ll see that we always had another baby right around that time, too, right up until the last one who was the easiest, so take that as you will). But after that phase, I will honestly say that my kids have become four of my best friends. It’s a weird friendship, but it is a very rewarding one.

Second, there are different kinds of hard. You mentioned the rut, the exhaustion, the amplification of existing depression and anxiety, and the feeling like you aren’t strong enough to do a good job; that’s a great summary of the four different ways it gets hard. Not all of them get easier all at once, but they do all get easier. Kids grow up. That’s both a blessing and a curse.

Third, part of the way it gets easier is that you just learn better ways to deal with the stuff that’s hard. I needed a routine so that my days didn’t become a rut, and I needed to journal (my form of journaling is heavy on photography right now) so that I could see all the ways I was actually doing a good job. It sounds like you’re already medicated and in therapy (it took me four times as long in parenting to get to that point, good on you). I will be honest, I still haven’t really found a good way to get enough sleep. But I have it on pretty good authority that teenagers sleep a lot, so I’m hopeful that it’ll sort itself out soon.

Overall…well, I’ll put it like this: Last year, my oldest beat me at chess, 100% legit, for the first time. My 9-year-old is maybe the most thoughtful and empathetic person I’ve ever known. My 6-year-old just learned how to read (a bit late), I think mostly so he can play Pokemon for the first time. My 4-year-old is just so excited about everything and anything. They’re making friends and having a life outside of me, they’re helping out around the house, and they’re coming together as siblings.

Being able to write a paragraph like that is what makes it worth it, and what really makes it easier in the long run. Sometimes the greatest accomplishment is just keeping them alive for twenty-four hours (and I don’t just mean right at the beginning), but eventually you get new and different problems and they start helping with the solutions.

At the end of the day, you obviously care a lot, and that’s the #1 clearest characteristic of a successful parent. So it sounds to me like you’re on the right track.

Oh, I remember this one. I kind of buy it.

Ok, so in the TV show Stargate SG-1, the Stargate program is an Air Force initiative to use an ancient alien device to send teams through a wormhole to planets in distant reaches of the galaxy where they interact with aliens and humans from other worlds.

One of those humans, having become a refugee on Earth after losing a war to aliens, creates a television show which essentially “files off the serial numbers” of the actual Stargate program.

When the Air Force learns about this, they allow the show to remain on the air, because that way if the story of the Stargate program ever leaks, anyone who hears it will dismiss it as the ravings of a fanboy who got too into the show, or of a conspiracy theory who can’t tell fiction from reality.

So the first part is, I think that the US Government could totally be using this to hide something really wild. Maybe there actually is an Upside Down (“oh really? Like in Stranger Things? Suuuure.”) or maybe aliens really do exist (“bro, you’ve been watching too much X-Files.”) and maybe not only do they exist but they’ve formed this whole secret subculture on Earth (“dude, that’s literally just the premise of Men In Black.”).

But see, now we run into a truly Heller-esque bit of circular logic, because with me even saying that, now the government can just say, “come on buddy, that’s just the plot of season 5 episode 12 of a TV show you’re on the record as a fan of.”

This also helps to explain why Trump and his cadre hasn’t blabbed about aliens in the past decade. They were told about the secret government program, but then they were also told exactly which TV shows and movies have been made to discredit the truth, and exactly how the conspiracy would make them look like laughable idiots if they revealed the truth.

tl;dr: superheroes are real, they’re way more like The Avengers than you’d think, they have an airtight plan to discredit anyone who leaks it, and “Wormhole X-treme!” is part of the conspiracy

He’s been here the whole time.

Michelle Obama is smart, thoughtful, and clever. But is she in any way political? Has she shown any desire to be?

I legitimately don’t know. But people keep tossing her name in, and I don’t quite get it.

“If Obama wins, I’m leaving the US!”

“Ok but really this time, if Obama wins again, I’m leaving the US!”

“If Biden wins, I’m leaving the US!”

“If Mamdani wins, I’m leaving New York!”

“If AOC wins, I’m leaving the US!”

Same story we’ve heard a dozen times before. Yawn, I’m bored.

Sure, because that worked out so well last time.

That’s almost literally what the rest of the sentence says.

Ban on pregnant women: Twisted, disgusting, and sadly probably doable for a fascist hellstate like MAGA is trying for.

Forced sterilization of all foreign visitors: So ludicrously stupid as to be laughable. This person (derogatory) has a truly unhinged seven-point plan which is not only completely impossible, it’s in a bonkers order:

1. Nullification (red states stop issuing birth certificates to Undesirables)

2. Pack the court (hilariously showing that the right has no new ideas)

3. Ban on pregnant women entering the US

4. Ban on women entering the US

5. Forced sterilization of tourists (the women you’re not allowing in? You want to sterilize no one?)

6. The union is dissolved (why would you sterilize random people before you just went full Confederacy? Surely you could be even more cruel if you divested yourself of the pesky Constitution and its annoying Bill of Rights first!)

7. This is where it gets really unhinged: then he wants to amend the constitution. For a country that no longer exists, to stop women who are incapable of reproduction from illegally entering the US in case they’re illegally pregnant because the packed court you hand-picked can’t be trusted not to validate the birth certificates that states aren’t issuing.

Even if you take this as a list of options instead of an ordered plan, the fact that a constitutional amendment is considered the last option just boggles the mind. These are an unserious people; toddlers making pouty-faced pronouncements and whining about people touching them.

He’s six months in and like ⅔ of the way through his campaign promises. And that’s with standing against ICE and dealing with both an extreme winter and and extreme summer. He defeated multiple establishment-backed candidates. And he’s managed to do this all without any major scandal.

Plus, if this is a psyop by the right, it’s absolutely backfiring. Mamdani is showing the electorate how a government can work for its people. That’s good for people, but terrible for the establishment.

I realize where the cynicism comes from, but “they just don’t change” is always true right up until it isn’t.

I still remember people telling me the country needed Trump because it needed to be run like one of his businesses. “You mean used as a half-assed vehicle for his own vanity that gets stripped for parts and then driven into bankruptcy the moment he loses interest?”

Seriously, the man failed to sell alcohol, meat, and gambling. Those have been three of the four easiest things to turn a profit on for most of human history (and he doesn’t have the body for the fourth). If you gave me a distillery, a beef farm, and a casino, I would be a millionaire inside a couple of years—and I’m the worst salesman I know. And somehow he also became a millionaire after starting all three of those businesses, which is decidedly less of a flex for someone who started out as a billionaire.

Cute. Obviously he can fool his base, but I’m up for anything that makes them turn on him.

Yeeesss. Eat each other. Dooooo it.

Source on the reversal: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5821591/mifepristone-latest

I haven’t been on Reddit in at least two years, maybe longer. I can’t remember and honestly don’t care enough to check. But that sort of statement sounds exactly what I would tell my staff to have the bots write when accused of being bots, if I worked at an agency aiming to stir up dissent on social media.

So how about this: if you want to prove that you’re not a bot, try being kind and thoughtful about what you say, be introspective about your edgelord views, and actually write something that has respect for the dignity of human life.

I think she’d be great because she would hire very smart people to advise her on her weak areas. “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” She’s smart, and she knows a lot of smart people.

look inside

account created less than a month ago

Yeah, I’m dismissing this as rambling, but of a bot account funded by a right-wing organization.

Yep. And we’re seeing some movement on the outside making inroads into the party itself, which is great. There are more people trying to primary their establishment dems, and a lot of them are winning. But even if every Democrat in office right now were to lose their next primary, it would still take the better part of a decade to turn the entire party over.

If we survive this thing, the democratic party that comes out of it will be stronger for having been infused with younger, more progressive voices; but the road to that future is long.

No argument there. But we can’t even get the man out of office right now; how likely is it that we’re going to change the whole system in light of that?