The reason Gen Z spends comfortably on small luxuries like $10 coffee is that long-term milestones like buying a house feel totally out of reach in America. So they prioritise immediate quality of life over distant milestones.
It was a meaningful week in Chicago. Perhaps most so because it was a reminder when a collection of people have that blend of missionary spirit and mercenary skill and for a period are their best selves, doing their best work for the best reasons, there is nothing more powerful.
Tomorrow is Sunday.
Run a tiny experiment - go to church.
Even if you don’t believe. Especially if you don’t believe.
Sing a song or hum along.
Shake someone’s hand and say ‘good morning.’
No one checks if you put anything in the offering.
Listen to the sermon.
You’ll know if it works.
No one will report you for never going back if it doesn’t.
“Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity.
“You are not numbers or case files.
“You are people — with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn.”
— Pope Leo XIV
The Lessons I Learned from My Dad
I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.
Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.
I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.
I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.
I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.
Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.
That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.
MacFarlane: The crudeness with which [Donald Trump] speaks was in sharp contrast to what we heard Thursday when President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the crowds from the podium at the opening of the Obama Center.
It's what you didn't hear from the Obamas that made the contrast clear. They didn't use those Trumpian techniques of name-calling, of cursing, of menacing political rivals, of saying things that belittle people.
We've all become quite accustomed to this name-calling culture that has gotten into our national bloodstream during the era of Trump. And the contrast was noteworthy.
The paper coffee filter was invented in 1908 by a housewife who was frustrated by bitter sediment in her coffee
Melitta Bentz punched holes in a brass pot and used her son's school blotter paper
She founded a company with 73 marks in savings
She sold 1,200 filters at her first trade fair
Her company still exists
🚨BREAKING: President Obama breaks his silence after Trump signed the MOU surrender with Iran.
Obama says that under the JCPOA he negotiated, "Iran had agreed not to develop nuclear weapons," and Trump pulling out of it "caused Iran to develop more nuclear capacity."
Obama questioned Trump's rationale for his war, saying we're likely worse off now:
"We’ve now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, put an enormous strain on our military; a lot of people have died, and it feels like we are back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little worse off."
This MIC DROP from Obama is guaranteed to drive Trump NUTS.
The post i made about the elderly and the internet and trying to do everything from doctors and other important things a lot of people were trying to make it seem like they were just stupid but some of you people forget a lot of people who are in their 80s and 90s never got a chance to a education like we take for granted now my father had to quit school in the third grade to work on the farm my father n law never got a chance to go to school because he had to work in the sawmill maybe it only happened in the mountains but the mountains are all i know i was lucky i got to finish high school the first male child in my family to graduate school so they are not stupid and most can’t afford a tablet or even internet access so please think before you call people stupid for not knowing how to do something