Trevor Sides

@yunghic1 I feel seen.

I love when websites have someone's name linked, and you click on it thinking it will lead to a bio page, but it was secretly an email link, so your horrible Mail app starts booting up, and you're like "No no no no" but it's too late. You'll have to Force Quit that sucker.

Totally agree.

USA baseball needed the travel ball dad - he knows all the scenarios, has mapped them out extensively and told everyone who will listen (and those that will ignore him). He may be annoying, but he knows the tiebreaker rules, scenarios win or lose and who and when they will play next - in every scenario possible. He would have told DeRosa and every manager. Travel ball dads for the win!

@GShaneMorris oh wait, you're doing Treebeard and I'm doing Bombadil. I am ashamed.

@GShaneMorris Eldest and fatherless.

Jonathan remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside.

Somewhere, Dave Ramsey is pulling an hour of daylight out of an envelope.

We now have evidence that gentle parenting doesn’t work. Here’s an uncomfortable truth about parenting no one wants to say out loud: The data is not kind to gentle parenting. According to teenagers, strict curfews. strict bedtimes, screen limits, device drop off times, dedicated homework blocks, and sleepover restrictions IMPROVE higher relationship quality. And yes, parenting difficulty goes up. Of course it does. Leadership is harder than appeasement. For the past decade we have been sold a watered down, Instagram friendly version of “gentle parenting” that often collapses into boundary avoidance, endless negotiation and emotional processing without enforcement. Parents terrified of saying no because they do not want to rupture connection. But connection without authority is not connection. It is dependency. When parents impose structure, the relationship improves. Teenagers report better parent child relationship quality in homes with curfews and rules. Younger kids report better relationships in homes with screen limits and bedtimes. Even device drop off times correlate positively. Why? Because structure is not cruelty. Structure is love made visible. A bedtime says: your brain matters more than your entertainment. A screen limit says: your dopamine system is not fully developed and I will guard it until it is. A curfew says: your safety matters more than your social standing. That is not authoritarianism. That is caring. Boundaries create friction. Friction creates growth. The parent absorbs the short term discomfort so the child does not pay the long term cost. Children do not experience well calibrated limits as rejection. They experience them as stability. The human brain craves predictability. Predictability reduces anxiety. Reduced anxiety strengthens attachment. That is why relationship quality goes up. Notice something else in the data. The strongest effects are around time structure. Bedtime. Homework. Devices. Outside play. These are environmental constraints. They scaffold executive function. The winning formula is not tyranny. It is high warmth plus high structure. The modern failure mode is high warmth plus low structure. That is just abdication of responsibility wrapped in empathy. Children need leadership, not negotiation. They need adults who can tolerate their anger. They need boundaries that do not move every time emotions spike. They need someone whose prefrontal cortex is fully myelinated. The harder path produces the stronger bond. Because when a child feels that someone is strong enough to hold the line, they relax. And relaxed nervous systems build durable relationships.

This year? Not so much. But I continue to associate snow with Ash Wednesday. Here’s a poem that tries to get at that metaphor. trevorsides.substack.com/p/the-snow-is-…

That was certainly true the first few years our family began attending a church that observes Ash Wednesday, the trailhead to the Lenten season: cold, snowy, penitential. 2/

Along the Front Range of Colorado, you’re more likely to have a white Ash Wednesday than a white Christmas, as the former takes place in either February or March—two of our snowiest months. 1/

Creedmaxxing today

Good band of flurries in Old town Fort Collins. Miracles never cease! #cowx

my takeaway from the super bowl ads is that the entire american economy is being propped up by AI, weight loss drugs, cryptocurrency and gambling

Woke prospector be like: there’s gold in they/them hills

You know what else makes for a good Groundhog Day watch...

Today is Groundhog Day, where we get together, sing carols, and exchange gifts in honor of Bill Murray.

Happy Groundhog's Day! Time to watch the greatest film adaptation ever made of Dante's Divine Comedy and the best pop-culture defense for classical ed.