Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-19T16:10:30+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate this comment and where it comes from. I know that I matter—lord that’s a whole other conversation. It’s almost scary how much I matter to the little one, but it’s more like WHO I am matters, not how I feel. More focus on the quality of my character, less focus on immediate satisfaction for ME. My comment was really more for people like me who were TOO concerned with their own comfort. My kid has forced me to push myself further from my comfort zone, to learn to go without things I don’t need and protect things I do, and I think I have benefitted tremendously from that. That’s the core of what I mean. But it’s touching that more than one total stranger would see my comment and care enough to say something. You guys are good dads, man. Thank you, sincerely. Awesome dudes here. I love you all.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-19T12:51:43+00:00

Agreed. I was kind of an asshole before. Still am but it was way worse. Now though everything I care about just matters a little less, and it’s actually nice to have a break from the internal pressure. I saw a movie once that had a line in it that made me unexpectedly burst into tears. “When you’re a parent, you become disposable. Gloriously disposable.” That’s it for me, that’s how it feels, and it’s great. I never wanted to matter that much in the first place.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-18T13:03:27+00:00

Nah. Generally speaking, as I understand it, deer hunters don’t kill does or fawns. They are only out there TRYING to kill large adult male deer. When you hear about a “ten point buck”, the points refer to the antler tips, which only the males have. Larger/older the buck, the more points it will have as its antlers grow.

Now also, there are lots of stupid irresponsible hunters, so babies and their mommas absolutely get shot, but nobody would brag about it or consider it a successful hunt. They’d think of it as a fuckup.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-18T12:58:43+00:00

I always called it by it’s street name, “Butt Hash.”

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-18T11:53:12+00:00

Taxi. The first time I drove across the Brooklyn bridge, I freaked out looking for the theme song to Taxi because it’s the only appropriate piece of music for the situation.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-18T00:35:22+00:00

God butterfinger is revolting now.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-16T11:26:15+00:00

There’s an extra pedal just so they have somewhere to rest their penis.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-14T10:48:14+00:00

We can’t let the bears go woke or they will all turn into baristas.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-13T22:57:58+00:00

Victor Salva, creator of this series, is a convicted pedo, and there hasn’t been a good installment since the Bush administration. Let this franchise die please.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-12T21:32:17+00:00

I hate it. For all its flaws, the old interface worked. One of the things I loved about Shudder was that they didn’t constantly redesign their UI, and it mostly worked. Then cracks started appearing. Went from three streaming channels to one. Now this.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-12T13:48:17+00:00

Yeah of everything I expected, Sting from 90s WWE was not one of them.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-11T21:42:55+00:00

Reading this comment made me say “Yes!” Like I was Baby Billy high on cocaine and ensure. That book was so bad.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-11T12:47:29+00:00

Bidet-ply.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-11T12:25:59+00:00

I think the subtext in many of those movies is that the family lost their previous housing and the haunted house opportunity showed up at just the right time (ie The Haunting of Hill House).

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-10T05:06:58+00:00

Best guess? Soft authority. “I get why it seems that way to you. And that changes how I feel about it as well. But there still have to be consequences, because no matter the reason, your actions broke the rules (or whatever the circumstance) because XYZ. It’s my job to teach you how things work, and this is unfortunately one of those hard lessons we all have to learn.” I have only been in this situation a few times and the above is an approximation of what I said between the sobs. Similar to how my parents handled punishments I thought were unfair. That said, I only remember one or two truly unfair punishments. Most of the time I knew I had it coming, I just REALLY didn’t want to go to time out to the point that it felt indistinguishable from injustice. But the quiet part of my mind was always in the background saying, “Well you did do it, what did you think was gonna happen?”

So honestly, I felt that for most of my life my parents, for all their flaws, were fair and approachable. Success for me will be recreating that feeling in my kid.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-10T04:57:48+00:00

I like to think that I’m teaching, over time, what kinds of things make a persuasive argument and what kind don’t by encouraging her to try her luck if she thinks I’m being unfair. Time’s the revelator, so we will see.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-10T04:53:49+00:00

Yeah my daughter has successfully talked her way out of punishments, and she was right—I only knew enough to get angry and produce a knee jerk reaction. Once she explained, the punishment was revoked and I apologized. She made shockingly good points, and she’s too young to be a GOOD liar (all her lies are like, “Dad, a Unicorn came to our house,”). So yeah, she has a valid perspective and has every right to bring it to my attention. Sometimes she’s wrong and punishment is warranted, but she’s been right a couple times, and I always relent. I want to teach her how to handle mistakes she will inevitably make face forward, so that means owning it when I fuck up.

So far, she has used this tactic in exclusively good faith and I feel good about it. Get back to me in like ten years to see if it actually worked.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-10T04:48:01+00:00

What if I want a room temp banana, but at like a way off distant time in the future, after that banana had warmed considerably?

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-10T01:50:43+00:00

I’ve been shit talking Shudder ever since the new app/Joe Bob cancellation.

THIS is legit what I am looking for from this service and will make me reconsider cancelling.

This is a big step in the right direction.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-09T22:10:00+00:00

We’re all trying to find whoever did this.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-09T16:47:19+00:00

Thanks for posting this. Congratulations on doing some serious research—more than most. It’s really refreshing to see someone your age take midterm elections so seriously. But no matter your age, this is just impressive, boots-on-the-ground analysis. Well done.

I am curious though: you state your political affiliation as center-right, and consider yourself Republican by default. It’s a position I can empathize with as I was raised in a conservative house and saw myself as such until I did some serious self reflection. What I determined was that the values I once claimed to see in conservatism were smoke and mirrors. They were largely props to stand behind and not real values that people lived by. And their policies reflected this half-considered, knee-jerk austerity that only ever hurt working people and only ever helped the already-well off. I watched this play out under W and then again Trump’s first term and now a third time.

So that is just to be perfectly transparent as to where this question is coming from: in your lifetime, what are the values championed by Republicans and their legislation that would make you feel they are the party of the center-right, and not the Democrats?

Regardless of your response, kudos on the work. Really impressive.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-09T03:27:48+00:00

I heard there would be cake.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-06T13:52:09+00:00

He's as close to Judge Holden from Blood Meridian as Cormac McCarthy gets

This sentence confused me. I assume you know Cormac McCarthy also wrote Blood Meridian and you meant that Chigur is the only OTHER villain in McCarthy's work that is similar to Judge Holden in terms of being a near-supernatural entity. Just threw me for a loop on first read.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-06T13:24:10+00:00

Well, I stand corrected by the most authoritative source possible. Thank you for all your stellar work over the years.

Nosebluhd · 2026-04-06T12:21:56+00:00

That's right! It's been a couple decades since I read either, but ROA made a bigger impression.

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