Its a joke where all Republicans care about is winning the culture wars. Meaning there are boys on the girls sports teams who identify as girls. Its to get the base mad and get them to vote (supposedly).
Sorry if this offends anyone but why must we choose between having a great career and being a great parent. Why is it a zero-sum game? Want to be great at something neglect your children to do so. Want to be a great parent, fine you have a mediocre career. From the article you are ambitious about building things. Well guess what children are, the ultimate piece of clay from which you get a front row seat to mold.
If you are trying to compete with people who are kidless and constantly comparing your output to them, then yes, you are going to feel you are falling behind. But you need to stop and ask yourself, “what am I doing all this work for”? What is your goal? For me, having children changed my perspective on life. I am lucky to make enough money to live a good first world lifestyle and the rest is enjoying the moments life brings. I still have the motivation I had 20 years ago but that motivation has shifted from “building things for the wealthy” to building peace and happiness for myself and my family.
I no longer work a ton of hours, but my day is still full of conversations, walks, work-outs, bike rides ect… These things when done with family and friends bring me level of accomplishment that no product launch ever did. Also, I openly avoid the hustle-grind culture that seems to run rampant these days.
You seem to be on the correct path, just don’t fall into that trap that says you must be grinding 60+ hours a week in-order to be successful or happy. It will find you if you let it.
The article is not talking about having "a great career" (which you can have while also having good balance and focusing on things).
To me, the article is more a lament. There is only so much time in this life, and if you're organized (I read that to mean intentional in your execution and not wasting time) then you apply that time to your highest priority.
Work / building things / personal hobbies / your partner / your family / your kids - these all compete. It's impossible to do everything you'd LOVE to do in your building and hobbies without burning the candle on both ends a bit with the other priorities.
You can do it for short periods, but eventually it catches up and you'll either do it all bad or sacrifice something.
Time is finite. Desire / drive are not. Solve for X. I feel what the author is saying every day, but I'm OK with it because there's no question in my mind that my kids and family are going to be the best use of my time and what I'm thinking about on my death bed.
Do I still sleep too little and occasionally overwork to execute? Yes - but you have to pick your spots.
You just can't do it ALL.
(And mind you - that's for me as an extremely involved, work-from-home, caring for children MAN. This is an entirely different equation if you're a female and you don't have support structure. Nobody can have it all but I've probably got the best shot at having a TON of it - but there are still trade-offs)
Do you mean in the case of divorce? Or in the case that a husband decides to not be a collaborating partner in raising a child? Obviously to be totally secure you need to make sure you have some money, but ideally it's a collaboration and not a competition even if the law doesn't provide an entitlement.
I used to think, wow progressing is so easy, why doesn't everyone just read a technical book, documentation or take a course after work.
I then had a child. The time is just gone. Having children is extremely time consuming. I have my own health issues, but now I am responsible for one more person. Morning routine takes 1 - 1.5 hours by the time my kid is dropped off at school. He hates getting up, so by the time I'm done I would love to crawl back into bed.
After school it is dinner time, we try to cook and eat healthy. After dinner it is bed time. If I have time to watch a show or just talk to my wife for an hour without being interrupted, I'm happy.
Having a child is great, but if you are committed and involved parent, there isn't much time or energy left to do anything but work and child.
Because energy is limited and TBH very few people are really fit for doing two jobs properly at the same time. Honestly, sometimes, or most of the times, a great career do demand more than 40 hours of work.
You also need very good mental for both jobs, too.
Yea we only get so many trips around the sun and it sometimes feels like modern society tries to push you to win or go home. I have one child in college and one who just started high school (today) and I can tell you the pressure they are experiencing to "succeed" is immense. I have no clue how I would have handled that when I was in school. Probably not well.
> why must we choose between having a great career and being a great parent. Why is it a zero-sum game?
I had basically this exact conversation with a close family member, who sees having children as being forced to give up on her dreams of being a writer forever, which I just don't get (she's already written and released 4 novels which have made some decent money, just not enough to do it fulltime, and still has a day job in marketing that makes good money).
For a little while it will likely mean a shift in focus, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on something forever. I've mostly taken a break from designing games the past couple of years (unrelated to children, just not as motivated lately, there's so many great board games out there already I'm trying to just enjoy playing them for a while), but I haven't totally given up on being a game designer (plus I've already released several games in the past, that can't be taken away from me, even if basically no one is still playing those games nowadays).
Plus children could also help enrich your life experience that lead to further inspiration for your creative efforts anyway, especially since it seems like the adult life experience society encourages nowadays seems to be sit in front of a computer all day for a day job, sit in front of a computer all evening for side hustle, get takeout, doomscroll/tv for a bit before going to sleep, repeat.
For women it is much harder as they don't even have an option to put less energy into kids at all, society pressures and berates them if something is off (men might get a comment but largely it is ignored and accepted), so I can totally see why she feels this way, _especially_ for a side thing.
Lately I've been playing a lot of cooperative games with a lot of clever card play, often against some sort of boss or some other win/loss condition, and usually it needs a lot of expansions so I can keep trying new combinations of heros/villains/scenarios. I can set them up and play a game or two solo most evenings.
So the ones I keep coming back to are Lord of the Rings - The Card Game, Legendary (mostly Marvel since it has so many expansions you can mix and match, but I also have and like DC, James Bond, and Alien), Ashes Ascendancy (also Ashes Reborn), Marvel Champions, Aeon's End, Arkham Horror - The Card Game.
Memoir '44 would be in that list too if you could play that solo. I love that game, but I haven't had a buddy to play it with in a long time. BoardGameArena has a great implementation but I don't like playing against random people on there as much. Supposedly there's a new app coming that will let you play solo, so I'm looking forward to that.
I've also tried the following recently and they're pretty high up too, they might eventually join the games above: Primal: The Awakening, Star Trek Captain's Chair, Marvel United, Boss Fighters QR, and Bullet.
Smaller, shorter games I enjoy include Cursed!?, Rove, Hoki, Fliptoons, D-Day Pocket, All is Bomb, Palm Island, and Harmonies
It is always funny to read these threads where all the men are saying how you don't need to compromise when they have a stay at home wife keeping it all together. It's a totally different ballgame for the majority of women.
I stated she had a day job making pretty good money. That's not a stay at home wife.
Also didn't say they don't need to compromise, obviously having children requires compromises to be made in your life, there's no way you can live it entirely the same way as you used to anymore. I said they don't need to totally give up on it forever. Thinking something has to be all or nothing is the opposite of compromise. That's essentially a self-imposed ultimatum.
It's also not backed by history. There's plenty of women authors who have children and continue writing books, and have prolific writing careers. It can slow down or delay getting books out, sure, but so can plenty of other things in life besides children, which I've also seen happen (like multiple 1+ year long writer's blocks): https://slate.com/culture/2022/09/women-writers-motherhood-h...
> why must we choose between having a great career and being a great parent
Because there is a limited number of hours in the day? That doesn't mean that one cannot do both at the same time, at times. It doesn't even mean that having kids can't also make you a better founder in some ways. But I think most people recognize that the large time demands of being a founder take away more from one's ability to build than they contribute (in terms of extra motivation or perspective).
Hear hear. Although being great at something and being a great parent do not have to be mutually exclusive.
You can work yourself to death with or without kids. You can also have a successful career and a great relationship with your family.
This whole premise that one must come at the expense of the other seems like rationalizing, or excuse-making, or maybe just another caustic result of capitalism.
And even if the drive to compete is so real, why stop at competing for either/or? Why not compete at being a whole person according to your own values?
To hell with anyone who says you can’t have the life you want. Win at being yourself.
This was the first time I encountered a fairly stringent "prove your human" process. It goes something like this:
1. Send email from an valid e-mail account.
2. Include your name, occupation, the briefest of explanations of why you want to join this Slack, how you heard about us, and that you have read and accept our Code of Conduct.
3. Include links to your BlueSky, LinkedIn, Github, X, or Mastodon — any site demonstrating you’re a human.
Now before anyone says these can all be automated by an agent. Yes you are correct, but I also had a e-mail conversation with Rand himself before joining his Slack. I know you can't do this at internet scale, but perhaps that era is over.
Years ago I remember talking to someone who purchased a "mouseJiggler" for that very purpose. That was literally what he called it. Problem for him was we turned it into a meme, and he immediately regretted telling us.
A lot of us don't have time for all the long reads, podcasts, or in-depth videos posted in the discussion here. Able to provide a summary for us that expresses your general point? Those interested can then use your link to learn more.
The article’s core argument is that the U.S. dollar isn’t going to lose global dominance in some dramatic, headline-friendly collapse; instead, like every reserve currency before it, it will slowly erode at the margins as users quietly reduce reliance on it. Historical transitions (sterling to dollar) didn’t happen because of declarations or crises, but because the world gradually found alternatives that were good enough for specific needs. What’s changing now isn’t that the dollar has “failed,” but that the global financial system has evolved past some of the assumptions that made dollar dominance frictionless. The freezing of Russia’s reserves in 2022 shattered the idea that reserve assets are politically neutral, prompting central banks to hedge geopolitical risk via gold, bilateral trade arrangements, and non-dollar settlement systems. The result isn’t de-dollarization as revolution, but de-dollarization as creep: a long, largely invisible process that only looks obvious once it’s mostly done.
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