As a side, Parent Child Interaction Therapy for kids < 10ish with severe behavior problems is all the rage now. It's basically 2 phases with phase 1 entailing a therapist watching you play with your kid behind a 2 way mirror and whispering via bug in your ear how to join your kid in play in a way that's non directive and enjoyable for the kids.

Often, once parent is pairing effectively with kid, behavioral problems dissipate substantially.

To tie it back to politics, it's worrisome that with increased need of longer work hours and both parents being employed that kids will unnecessarily suffer simply because they're robbed of having sufficient parental attention.

http://www.gctelegram.com/news/20180...e-to-marijuana

It's cool though, Alford's no racist:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/polit...193611759.html

“I’m about as far from being a racist as I can get.”

I believe him!

In a shocking twist, it turns out Alford is a Republican!

Jiggs vs. TotallyStupid is pretty epic

lol

I was too harsh on Gladwell's podcast I think. The first ep was terrible, but I'm 4.5 eps in now and the rest have all been fine.

Can only assume Alford's source for that information was Reefer Madness. "Gateway drug" is one of those phrases that should disqualify people from ever being allowed to have an opinion on anything again (he said "entry drug", but whatever).

In dangerous drug related news, it turns out ibuprofen ****s up testicular function.

Game marathon for charity is ongoing and they’ve taken the radical step of requiring people to be twitch subscribers to be able to comment in chat.

https://kotaku.com/1821882319

Some folks are furious that they can no longer create account after account to spam racism and transphobia, hopping accounts once the previous one gets banned.

When will the furious white Internet racist ever catch a break and live a life free of consequence for his actions?

It's impossible to keep up with those chats since they're so full of spam and nonsense. Subscribers-only is a good way to go.

If you wanna kill your channel's revenue submode is ok

One thing I've been thinking about is how the left loves to tear each other apart in ways that the right never does. I think I understand why (and I also recognize this is a simplistic observation), but it definitely puts them at a disadvantage. The most obvious example is the Chapo-types, who really seem to have more fun mocking centrist Dems than they do the villains on the right. But you see it all the time in other places.

The Oprah thing is a good example, maybe. So, a popular entertainer delivers a speech that speaks to some current issues. People are impressed or moved by it, and so the Twitter left starts seeing lots of "<3 Oprah, Prez Oprah" tweets. And immediately there is a backlash, from others on the left, mocking these inspired folks for being naive, silly, etc.

Dems often mock others on the left for getting riled up about Russian collusion and the fantasy of impeachment. Dems are also quicker than Repubs to denigrate their "kooky" fringe. I'm not saying that bad ideas / takes / behavior should be embraced or even ignored. I just feel like politically it's a bit of a leak.

The other day I think Jon Lovett made a comment about how our 2-party system is really a 4-party system, as each party has two wings, and while there's no proportional representation, ideas get hashed out in primaries and different faces of the party succeed in different places. Again, I recognize that's simplistic, and each party has multiple factions, but I do think the factions within the Republican party do a much better job of tolerating each other to their advantage.

Navel-gazing lefty take here, but is that because folks on the left are more moral, or intellectually honest, or community-minded, while the right is more selfish or individual-minded and thus more willing to accept whatever they need to get whatever they want?

That's a long winded way to say tribalism is a far bigger problem for GOPers.

Ongoing space drama:

SpaceX launched an extremely secret classified payload known only as Zuma Sunday night. The publicly covered portion of the launch (basically the stage 1 booster flight and relanding) was apparently successful, with the remainder of the mission not being publicly covered due to secrecy. However, a Dutch pilot took a picture that appears to be the second and final stage of the rocket de-orbiting (after having reached orbit) in a controlled manner.

There were rumors swirling last night that the mission was a failure, and the mainstream press is now reporting government sources saying that the satellite was lost:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy...ils-1515462479
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/08/high...ex-launch.html

Specifically, there are vague indications that the payload reentered the atmosphere, which seems to imply that it didn't disconnect from the second stage of the rocket as planned and came back to earth when the second stage de-orbited itself.

Reports are also indicating that the lost payload was worth billions of dollars, so there is likely to be lots of public fingerpointing. SpaceX in particular is very pointedly blaming everything on Northrop Grumman, who built the satellite, while the press reports do a lot to tie the failure to SpaceX.

And of course, given the classified nature of the mission, there are all kinds of tinfoil theories that the satellite actually is in orbit and replaced or docked to an existing satellite for secrecy, or that it was some kind of military test of hypersonic aircraft or kinetic-strike weaponry.

that seems complicated and technical, but my dumb guy reaction is that anything associated with Elon Musk failing and losing billions of dollars is cause for celebration

I wish people got hyped over the **** NASA is up to the way they do for SpaceX.

Much like the Trump presidency, Oprah 2020 is a harmless joke until it isn't.

I think what's annoying this about is the way the left is completely willing to concede major ideas to the right: Gov't should be run like a business, career civil servants are clowns who can be replaced by unqualified randos, and successful businesspeople are just the best people and we should put them in charge of ****. These are all important things the left should be pushing back against instead of joking-but-not-joking about how maybe Ivanka is on to something.

People do get pretty jazzed up when NASA releases pretty pictures (like Cassini's grand finale or New Horizons). It seems inherently harder for ISS or measuring Jupiter's magnetosphere or whatever to generate as much hype.

Grumman didn't just build the satellite, they also built its mount that should have released it. The rocket did its job perfectly.

I think that's probably the truth, and is close to exactly what SpaceX's COO said in a public statement. That said, NG is probably a lot more handicapped in what they can say publicly, so if, for example, the payload was damaged during launch due to vibrations or something, they may not be able to fight back.

It's also interesting that the launch was originally scheduled for November and was pushed back to January due to a rocket issue.

ISS gets too much hype, tbh. Juno and Cassini and New Horizons just don't get enough love.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft):

Juno 2020!

I'm basically a lock to start my own private practice, done with the house raking 40% of my earnings.

1) IIRC, Trump's tax plan would let 23% of my hypothetical business earnings go tax free as a pass thru or w/e and then since we file jointly my family would get an addl 24% as a std deduction, right?

2) Who'd I want to talk to about possibly forming an LLC and tax stuff, a CPA? Do they do like retainer fees and then manage my quarterly payments, advise PRN, etc for independent contractors and small business owners?