The Three-City Problem of Modern Life — interesting read and social commentary about the lives we live today. We either live in the city of reason, of faith, or of technology. Living in one city isolates us from the rest of the world and that makes us feel incomplete.
^ This is probably only applicable to US readers, as a ROTH IRA is a specific tax-advantaged account offered by the government. But if your country has a similar offering, then some of the info might still be useful.
On Social Media
Social media is like a sandbox where you can observe mimetic theory and mimetic desires in full display.
Tuned in to learn more about the Wisephone, but stayed for the parenting advice and philosophical/theological discussions. Excellent podcast. Well worth the 2 hours run time.
If you are a parent of young kids and you are concerned about how distracted you are around them, then you will find a lot to relate to in this podcast.
Personal Publishing Principles — this is a great read for someone interested in creating/maintaining a personal website or a personal blog.
One good tip that was shared in that post is that a personal website/blog is the perfect place for you to experiment with your own ideas. Not everything will work out of course, but keep trying and some will.
This also tells me that if your personal website won't allow you to do that, then you probably have a professional website as opposed to a personal one.
They gave me a CX-5 as my loaner car for last week. It was a 2020 Grand Touring Reserve model, which means AWD with the turbo! It was hilariously fast, for a family CUV that is. That Mazda SkyActiv 2.5T engine is strong. Love the power in everyday driving.
Got back my Mazdaspeed3 last Saturday. I'm glad to have it back. But I also have to say that I was so spoiled by that CX-5 turbo loaner car. It was a really good car!
Anyway, cost to repair the leak in the Mazdaspeed3 transmission was $1,071. It was actually the transmission shifting mechanism that was leaking, not the transmission itself. Thankfully it was an affordable repair bill. And that's thanks to an emergency fund set up for times like this.
The highlight of last week was a birthday celebration for our little guy. Shout out to the wife for the wonderful decorations and theme. She really outdid herself this time around.
This cake not only looks good, but also taste good. What the Harry Potter design hides, is a delicious Ube flavored cake. Yum yum!
One thing that I thought was a great idea, is to take pictures of your kids as they hit some milestones. Then you can use those pictures as decorations for the birthday party, or just add it to a family photo album. It's a nice way to look back and see how much your child has grown.
After watching the horrible ending on the k-drama Iris, I kinda lost my appetite for watching TV shows. However, I still wanted to watch... something. So, last week I decided to watch some anime instead. I'm watching Kuroko's Basketball on Netflix and I'm enjoying it so far.
The biggest development from last week, was that after weeks of thinking about it and talking about it on this journal, I finally published my digital garden online. You can find it here.
It's a work in progress, so there will be changes. In fact, the nature of it means it will probably be forever under construction. When you go through it, don't think of it as a blog. It is not. There are no published dates. There's no RSS feed. There's no email subscription. The URLs to specific notes will probably change every week. It is really a digital garden/personal knowledge-base.
Matt shared this wonderful website on Mastodon. What an amazing find! It allows you to watch, what looks like dashcam videos, from all over the world. In an age where travel and road trips are put on-hold, this website lets you experience virtually driving in another country. It's a mesmerizing and very interesting way to see what other countries/cities look like.
Power outages and water shut-offs all across Texas. People have died in accidents on the road and at their own homes because of the cold. It's extremely disheartening. We've been extremely lucky to not have lost power or water at all. But that wasn't the case for everyone else. Last week's winter storm really showed how the state of Texas is just not ready for this kind of weather. I'm hoping that the state can learn from this and be better prepared for the next one.
I have been slacking off on sharing bookmark posts lately. It's not that I haven't been reading new articles or posts. I'm still reading, almost everyday. I've just been so busy at work and at home that I run out of time to write bookmark posts. After reading a lengthy article for instance, it's usually time for me to get back to work or help with the kids. I've no time left to write down my reflections on the articles or posts I've read. So, going forward I might eschew that practice in favor of getting more bookmark posts out faster. The goal of my bookmark posts was always to bookmark and share what I think are good reads anyway. Writing down my thoughts on it are just a bonus.
This is a great read on the topic of parenting. Specifically, how to avoid over-parenting your child. I myself think that I could be considered a “helicopter dad,” so this read was a very good wake-up call for me.
For years I've read that there is no direct correlation between playing violent video games and real world aggression. “You know those are just pixels, right?” That is the usual response from gamers who don't believe that video games can somehow make people aggressive in real life. I would like to believe that too. However, here is one study I ran into that might say otherwise.
For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. This moderated mediation model includes some notions of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Catalyst Model (CM), which helps shed light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression.
Now I'm not a psychologist so it's possible that I'm interpreting this incorrectly. If so, feel free to educate me by getting in touch with me. Anyway, from what I'm reading on here, it seems like the combination of playing violent video games and growing up in a poor family environment could lead to aggressive behavior in the future. So, if you allow your kids to play Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed or Grand Theft Auto, you better make sure you're not fighting with your spouse. Actually, don't allow them to play those games until they're older, especially not Grand Theft Auto.
It must be noted that the study is limited to a small number of participants in China. It would be nice if other countries perform the same kind of study on their own. I would be curious to see the results. So, while it might not necessarily apply to me and my family, since we don't live in China, this is still an interesting study to me. Especially as a parent who plays video games around my kids and whose kids will more than likely be playing video games as well in the future. It's already happening now. Davin already knows how turn on the Xbox and play PES 2020 by himself.
Just wanted to point out that me and my wife have been enjoying reading the On Parenting series that Daniel Rose has been sharing on the Read.Write.As feed. As a young parent, I find a lot of the info shared in those posts to be useful and refreshing. Refreshing in the sense that it makes me reconsider what I think I know about parenting. And it also challenges my preconceptions of how I think parenting should be done.
When you choose experience over stuff you are also choosing relationship. Just giving children stuff communicates that you would prefer them to be seen not heard. Experiences are almost always linked to engagement. Leaving town or heading out on a local adventure usually means that there are significant times where the phones are put away and we are doing something together.
– From On Parenting: Experience Over Stuff
My wife texted me that quote after I sent her a number of links for reading. She said she loved it, so do I.
