It might be tempting to buy marketers’ claims that once children got personalized food, they finally got to eat what they actually liked. But exploding choice fostered comparison and discontent. Within just a few decades, all sorts of foods that kids used to love — from briny shellfish to bitter marmalade — came to be unthinkable as kids’ foods. Preferences were increasingly understood in relation to aversions, and the beating heart of modern children’s food became displeasure.Generalizing away from food, teach your kids that disliking things is not actually a personality. Teach your adults that, too.
Parents today hear grim warnings about the dangers of fighting pickiness. We’ve been told that urging kids to eat any particular dish can cause lasting aversions and dysfunctional relationships with food. At the same time, many parents quietly anguish over children’s highly processed diets, rising obesity rates and the stresses that stalk picky eaters in daily life. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance, and it’s contributing to immense frustration, anxiety and undeserved guilt around mealtimes.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Before the days of Froot Loops and Lunchables, generations of American children learned to relish foods of all textures, flavors and colors, while obesity and eating disorders were both rare. The children of the past show us a happier, healthier and more delicious path forward. Parents can warmly encourage children to eat family foods and avoid offering alternatives. They can also counter corporate marketing with their own enthusiastic messages about the foods they love to eat, whether it’s a crunchy salad or slippery green olives.
Sunday, February 15, 2026
Picky Eaters
I don't have kids, but my observation of the children of Other People (limited by definition, but an outside perspective has value) is that younger children have no problem eating, or at least trying, whatever is offered to them, generally, if the parents raise them on a varied diet and encourage them to be open. But even those kids often hit a picky early teenager phase, which they then grow out of.
Working With The Pedophile To Bring Down The Pope For Tolerating Homosexuality
A perfectly consistent worldview, but it isn't one the people who are paid to write about politics acknowledge.
Also Bannon is a great source.
Also Bannon is a great source.
No One Can Object To Bipartisan Commonsense Reforms
That's just common sense, Jake!
I know some will say that Chuck (and Dems) use this kind of rhetoric knowing that it is bullshit but thinking it is effective. It is not effective! It makes you look like a chump!Schumer on DHS reforms: "I believe Republicans will have no choice but to go along with us because it's so common sense"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 15, 2026 at 2:15 PM
[image or embed]
Believing Their Own Bullshit
One of my stray thoughts that I didn't have a chance to BLOG while I was busy last week was that the whole "El Paso Party Balloon" saga rests on their deep belief in some elaborate DRUG CARTEL DRONE NETWORK which is doing... something... flying around... doing drone stuff...
It probably originated in some right wing conspiracy theory, which an intelligence guy was tasked to "prove" so he wrote some report confirming it. It then gets "leaked" to the newspapers, which never question what the CIACOPTROOPS tell them. From there it goes back to the idiots in charge who decide they must FIND AND DESTROY THESE DRONES. So we close airspace to destroy some party balloons.
I don't know if it happened exactly that way, of course, but the information pipelines being filled with sewage and then blessed by our greatest newspapers is the explanation for a lot of the last 25 years. We've just replaced Colin Powell and his vial of sand with Youtuber HitlerWasRight, twitter OPSEC expert CATTURD2, and Whiskey Pete Hegseth.
Related: whatever happened to the Great New Jersey Drone Invasion of the Winter of 2024?
Saturday, February 14, 2026
DHS Shutdown
I admit I didn't think the Dems would go through with it, though we will see what happens next...
Friday, February 13, 2026
Rugged Great Plainswoman
NYT, 2021:
Nothing the NYT loves doing more than Beat Sweeteners for conservatives. They don't even do it for the access! They just love writing fan fiction about them. "Rugged Great Plainswoman." Leave NYC once challenge.
Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has defied coronavirus restrictions and eagerly projects a rugged Great Plainswoman image.WSJ, yesterday.
Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski frequently berate senior level staff, give polygraph tests to employees they don’t trust and have fired employees—in one incident, Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane, according to people familiar with the incident.The rugged one needs her binkie.
Nothing the NYT loves doing more than Beat Sweeteners for conservatives. They don't even do it for the access! They just love writing fan fiction about them. "Rugged Great Plainswoman." Leave NYC once challenge.
Does Anybody Show Up For Work
An amazing sequence of paragraphs.
HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and General Counsel Mike Stuart are expected to soon leave HHS as part of a broader restructuring at the agency ahead of the midterm elections. Trump administration officials have discussed offering them other positions in the government, two people said.
Within the administration, O’Neill was viewed as a shaky public communicator who had struggled to find his fit within the department, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
Although he doesn’t have any formal medical or public health background, O’Neill was named acting director at the CDC after the ouster of Dr. Susan Monarez in late August. Before coming to HHS, O’Neill was CEO of the Thiel Foundation and an investment manager at Clarium Capital. He previously served at HHS under President George W. Bush.
...
O’Neill seldom visited the CDC, according to former agency leaders who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to comment on the situation. HHS did not immediately comment on his level of engagement at the agency.
No They Aren't And Yes You Do
The original PR push for AI was a lot of fake panic about how they were worried that they had created God. They ran out of ideas and are doing it again. Of course our glorious news outlets are happy to help.
We have already done this! Stop it!
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Only Possible Ruling In A Democracy
A judge ruling the other way - that retired military could have their speech effectively controlled for the rest of their lives - would not be good!
Yes I know we have had some "other way" rulings since Trump arrived.
The Discourse
I think it is probably correct to observe that the Sensible Centrists think Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes are two sides of the same coin .
"Horseshoe theory," I intone wisely, as the direct deposit from The Atlantic hits my account.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)