Notices by Human Ghostwriter (hg@beige.party)

As a general rule, I think the kids (young people generally) are alright. They live in different circumstances than I did, but they’re responding more or less rationally to the world they inherited. They’re doing fine.

Even so, the kids are testing me.

I am a firm believer in reading. I may not read 100+ books a year for pleasure like my wife does, but I am constantly reading. I do it for a living. I do it for fun. I am usually pretty good at it. And I spend a lot of my time reading to my kids: our bedtime routine involves reading four books (which feels like a lot some nights). We also read during the day. I get into it, too. I do voices for different characters, I ask a lot of questions, I shoehorn my kids into the stories we read, I editorialize. It’s fun. They look forward to it: my son talks about the books he wants to read for bedtime all day long (which is usually a different slate than the ones he wants to read during the day). My daughter just jams books at me and grunts “DADDY READ ME THE BOOK.” It is a big part of our lives. I'm guessing my kids read 8-10 books on an average day that are mostly suitable for 4 and 2 year olds.

And so indications that Gen Zers are not reading to their kids because they think it is boring make me very sad about the inner worlds that are being lost. Have you seen some of the alternatives to reading lately? I have. Part of me dies whenever I watch or hear clips of Chicky, the most insipid bird ever animated (sorry, I hate it. It’s worse than Blippi. It is so, so very stupid, and my son loves it to shreds). His capacity to find colorful, loud, maximalist pastiche clips on YouTube makes me fear for his safety. It's a cultural hell.

The stats themselves are grotesque. One in five boys age 0 to 2 don't get read to at all. Only 41% of all parents report reading to their kids before the kids turn 5.

I am not blaming Gen Z, even though I kinda want to. I became a parent at 32 when my wife and I both had terminal degrees, no debt, a pretty solid relationship, and some family support. We have demanding jobs but adequate resources. And even then, navigating the demands of modern parenthood fucking sucks. There’s an expectation that at least one adult needs to pay 100% attention to the kids at all times; you can’t just push them out into the yard and look for them at dusk because the culture has decided that this is maybe even criminally negligent. So instead, it’s a grinding, constant interaction with someone you love but still sometimes, hopefully secretly, resent. Whatever social supports for parenting you might, tucked away in the corner of your little caveman brain, think you maybe should have, you probably don’t have. Young parents must have it even worse. I can see why dedicating an hour or more a day to an activity that you don’t already like is a bridge too far.

But goddamn. Please, if there is any possibility that you can do it, read to your kids all the time until they run off to start reading on their own, and even then kinda keep reading to them until they tell you that you’re embarrassing them.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/02/gen-z-parents-reading-kids

I just spoke with my dad. We mostly talked about how he's trying to classically condition the squirrel that lives in his yard to avoid his garden and then keep it healthy and alive so that others squirrels don't move in. He's got an airsoft gun and no nearby chapter of the ASPCA to stop him. I love my dad.

I bought an iced coffee and I think the teenager who made it for me dunked 16 shots onto ice. I instantly developed a migraine. I can see time. 10/10.

I love the part of the Epic of Gilgamesh where the alewife is all "hey big guy, I've got wine and honey and good times galore here on the beach, but I'll tell you how to catch the ferry to the sad immortal weiner if you really want to," and he's all "FUCK YOUR GOOD TIMES I'LL LIVE FOREVER!!!"

Other wild things available to people who don't need the help:

- 529 plan: tax-deferred education investment accounts that almost exclusively benefit people who have more than they need.

- HSAs: health savings accounts. If you can max them out, you're getting wicked awesome tax advantages that, again, aren't available to people who don't have the scratch.

- fractional ownership discounts: the value of 10% of a company that's worth $10MM isn't $1MM; it is probably closer to $70,000. Why? Discounts for lack of marketability and control. I don't want to own 10% of a warehouse that you own 90% of because I can't call the shots and it's pretty illiquid. This means that you can give away fractional ownership interests and use up less federal gift tax exemption than you'd otherwise need to.

- 1014 adjustments in basis. When you buy a capital asset, the money that you spend to buy the asset is your initial income tax basis. If I buy a building for $1MM and overnight it triples in value to $3MM, I still have my $1MM basis in the property. My basis can change if I make improvements to the property or if I depreciate out the basis over time, but for this example none of that is happening. So, if I sell the building I bought for $1MM for $3MM, I don't have $3MM because it would not be fair to tax me on the $1MM that I'm getting back: I already paid all the taxes I owe on that $1MM (or I'm in trouble). I will owe tax on the new $2MM that I never had before; the $2MM is Income to me that is taxable as capital gain. Sounds fair enough, right? But what if I hold the asset until my death? On my death, all assets I own get a new income tax basis equal to their fair market value on my date of death. So if I die when the building I bought for $1MM is worth $3MM, my representative or my heirs can sell the property for $3MM without realizing any capital gains. Instead of paying tax on $2MM of income, they pay tax on $0 of income. It's a colossal giveaway to the wealthy and a very good reason for old or sick people to cling to appreciated assets.

Gonna lie and tell my grandkids that I wore an ICE uniform under my regular clothes on Liberation Day just in case.

Do you have any TV show phrases that have crept into everyday life? I mean, I assume most of us do, but what are your favorites?

Loving those dead little marble eyes:

Related: people who don't use alt text are missing out on a second chance to desperately claw at the approval of others.

Just found my summer vibe:

Cancer is bad. Expanding the carceral state, promoting genocide, and clinging to power until it is too late to stop insurgent fascism are worse. Thoughts and prayers, you wicked old man.

I am watching my wife fully hand wash dishes with soap before putting them in the dishwasher. I don't know what to do.

There's this therapeutic exercise where you imagine that you're being controlled by a committee meeting, and you're supposed to conceptualize your inner dialogue as participants in the meeting. There are some stock ideas for this (managers, firefighters, caretakers, etc.) but I think my company (in my mind, it's a business meeting) is really dysfunctional. My meeting features:

- A visionary CEO who has little patience for details and who would rather be in Aspen.
- A CFO who embezzles lunch money to feel alive.
- Dave from Creative, who has sold out and resents everyone who hasn't.
- Lrrr, also from Creative, who will NEVER sell out and hates this job as much as he hates every human; he has no sense of perspective or proportion and demands unlimited creative license regardless of whether the result is germane to the business. But he's also really talented.
- Jack from Marketing, the only unequivocally talented and competent person in the company. He puts the best face on everything and works whatever he gets from Creative to the max.
- Gareth from Operations. This guy does not care about his job and sometimes spends a whole afternoon just dicking around on his phone instead of solving problems. He is afraid of asking questions because people will find out that he is stupid.
- Billy, a five-year-old boy who, as part of a misguided initiative, attends every meeting to remind the board how far it has strayed from innocence and goodness. He is probably going to be traumatized by all of this one day, but for now he just interjects a sense of ignorant whimsy into proceedings.
- Larry, from Legal. Very anxious, convinced everything is an existential threat.
- Bob from accounting. He is ready to retire and slowly disintegrate on a beach.
- Doug from Fire Suppression. His job is to put out fires, but fire is also awesome. So, he's conflicted.

I am not clear on whether this 37-year-old version of Inside Out is gonna help me yet, but I'm having fun at least.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/02/alaska-pet-reindeer-euthanized

I hope there is a hell so that the person who poisoned Star can belong somewhere.

Hardcore mode but it's just, like, a regular Monday.

If you die on Monday, you die in real life.

OK, I have gotten some sleep and tried to corral my demons back into their pen.

Problematic ideas circulating in my head:
1. Life is supposed to feel good and it doesn't.
2. Creating time or space for myself is selfish.
3. People are mad at me whether they admit it or not.
4. I am not perfect and the absence of perfection is the presence of badness.
5. If I am not being productive, I am going to get in trouble somehow.
6. Maintaining friendships hurts my family.
7. I am unreliable.
8. I am going to pass all this bad stuff on to my kids.
9. I am not good enough to be here.
10. I will never be good enough to be here.

I know better, but I can't escape them all all the time. I understand that these are hallmarks of the children of emotionally immature parents, and I suspect that this is a lot of what is going on. I am terrified that I might have inherited some BPD traits from my mom and am really scared that this means I am irredeemable (although I guess the new research is a lot less fatalistic). Hopefully, I'm just depressed.

Sorry for airing this all out. I hope it's helpful. I want community when this happens, and I don't think I can take it to my meatspace people. And I like creating a real-time record so that I can't feel great when therapy is happening and try to forget that the bad times ever occurred.

@RamenCatholic consent freely granted! 🫂

Good grief, I am having a night. I have been beating myself up all weekend for not being good enough and feeling like everyone I know is mad at me. I am mercilessly kicking my own ass over everything. I did a bad job washing some dishes, and now I don't think my wife can trust me anymore. I fucked up my family's entire weekend by going to a guy's night. I feel sick to my stomach. My mom is coming to visit in two months and I feel like vomiting because I know it is going to be a nightmare. I feel like a bad worker, a bad partner, a bad parent, a bad son, a bad citizen, a bad person. Critically and fundamentally flawed.

If I could choose my own destiny, my closest friend and I would run a seasonal tourism business in a beautiful part of Alaska. He'd handle flightseeing and I'd run the campground. Our big attraction would be the five-story-tall Xtra-tuf boot that our gift shop runs out of. We'd get licensing for it. People would pay $11 for hot dogs. It would be so great.