A podcast I listened to
Reading this article in WORLD Magazine, I discovered this peculiar couple named Simone and Malcolm Collins. They are pronatalists – one who aims to increase the birthrate by having more children. I understand it really just to mean having lots of kids. I guess, more than 3? Or maybe you just have to tell people you’re a pronatalist. I’m not really sure…
The Collinses also run a podcast. So I checked that out, starting with the episode, The Data Does Not Say Spanking Is Bad (Why No One Will Tell You). They do not shy away from this topic. Malcolm and Simone have sensible debate – that’s right they don’t just agree with each other throughout the podcast – and they explore data, and stick to facts.
The main takeaway from this episode is that the widely accepted research opposed to spanking is skewed. It selects data that’s too broad (for example, unadjusted correlations that ignored childhood behavior and genetics). How I understood this is that spanking is less useful as a broad means of child correction, but effective when done the right way with a specific type of child. Just like people have different love languages, it seems different people respond to various types of correction differently from one another.
But man, the Collinses are pumping out podcasts! They release nearly one per day on their show, Based Camp.
An encouraging message
I think the disappointment in self or that sense that I’m not where I want to be is directly derived from inhibition and not enjoying my self in the flow state. Modern society pretty much dictates that someone is always going to be telling us what we need to do. A boss, a spouse, the mechanic, the bank, the kids’ teacher, the law.
And we can’t violate those things. That’s how we all coexist here.
But each of us and I’m no exception, have a lot to gain from living dangerously on the edge of our comfort zone and bravely stepping outside it on a regular basis.
Be wild, smile more, give positive vibes. Talk to strangers. Try skiing or a martial art for the first time in your 60’s. Take cold showers. Quit your job and start a business. Take out a loan. Take a trip somewhere you never thought you’d actually go but always wanted to. Send the email, make the call, ask for the sale. Life is good. It’s really good and we all have the same certainty at the end. Might as well squeeze every single drop out of this thing.
A series I’m watching
The Old Man is a classic story of a spy burned by the same organization who had previously employed him: the CIA. And this show does not let down. You can expect suspense, thrills, action, grit, token amount of drama, and deception. Everything you could possibly want in a spy show.
Clickbait: DeepSeek
This is wild. So DeepSeek is all the rage right now and if you really haven’t been following along, DeepSeek is a ChatGPT rival out of China. It’s grown insanely popular in the past week due to its release of a reasoning model. Due to this influx of new users, the system gets overloaded and many users are forced to queue up and wait for a response to their prompts. This guy on LinkedIn figured out how to hack DeepSeek’s overload queue and cut the line and it had me rolling with belly-hurting laughs.
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