Half Dad, Half Misfit

Felt like a collection of blog articles, which I think it probably was. Entertaining. 3/5

The final installment, book 9 of what became "The Expanse" Pretty perfect ending to a set of books. The gang gets back together one last time to fight an existential threat to humanity, the same threat that's been looming all along.  I loved the ending - enough finality to get closure, enough vagueness to still wonder how everyone did afterwards. The eiplogue giving a hint of how a few of them got on, and giving hope for the future. I have no hesitation in recommending you read the entire set of books. The pay off was worth it, and an amazingly detailed universe to discover. 5/5 Now I just need to avoid the TV series for the rest of my life to avoid spoiling my fond memories of the crew of the Roci.

In my career, I've discovered that competency is quiet and incompetence is noisy. If you want sund and fury, drama and excitement, then recruit idiots.  

 “OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man. When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or po

Important : Often, when you first set and actually enforce a boundary, the other person’s words and emotional reactions get worse as they try to bluster and bully and manipulate you into compliance, but their  behavior  gets better. It’s often referred to as an “extinction burst” when the boundary-crossing or -disrespecting person senses their control slipping and in panic they throw everything possible at the problem in hopes that you’ll decide it’s just “easier” to do what they want. They’ll often “neg” you – calling you “selfish” or “ungrateful” is pretty common – in order to try to blame you for how they are behaving and trick you into proving you are not that thing (by doing what they want). A succinct explanation of what happens when you first start setting boundaries in an existing relationship. It's kinda fun watching the flailing when it happens, them throwing EVERYTHING at you at once, hoping something, anything, will let them go back to the good old days before there wer

This book was written pre-COVID, with a small reference to the early stages of COVID in the Introduction. It discusses how vaccination works, the history of vaccination and anti-vaccination movements, including things that have gone wrong with vaccination over the years, before discussing the difficulties of persuading the vaccine-reluctant to change their minds.  It doesn't have a silver bullet for turning anti-vaxxers to see the benefit of vaccines - it's a hard mix of sharing positive vaccine stories, supporting them and hoping that they seek out sources that explain things better than the wrong resources that are easy to find on the Internet. It does explain that the "backfire effect" and isolation are ways to drive them further into the arms of anti-vaxxers.

 That's it. That's the post.

I've known this term "Parental Alienation" for a while, and been worrying about it but now looking into it to see if there are any strategies for mitigating it. This was a really interesting read on the topic: https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/102708p26.shtml From the "eight manifestations", I scored 6/8 that were mostly true; the remaining 2/8 were only partially true. I'd been in denial about it really being a thing, I've just writing it off as being a nomal teenager, but now the reality has hit me. As I explore this topic, I'm sure I'll find more links of interest.

 

 

 

Unhappy Meals by Michael Pollan

 Selected purely by what was available on my local libraries' audiobook app (Libby is great!) Starts off as a manifesto for how to improve the "personal trainer" industry, I liked the high level summary of health, and a few good reminders, but I'd worked a lot of this stuff out for myself over the last few years. A good quick introduction to health and healthy mindset though. 4/5