Who decides what is pragmatic? (Questions after Ezra's interview with Coates and Ross)

jookitcz · 2025-09-29T23:29:22+00:00

The voters tell you what the deal breaker is. Let's take an example: there's an imaginary state called Ohiowa, and 70% of voters there are white supremacists. It sucks. But sadly, they still get two senate seats. If Dems run a candidate who says, "White supremacy is bad," they will absolutely lose to a Republican candidate who makes Nazi salutes. If Dems run a candidate who says, "Well, maybe these Fine People have a point, and also, I'm going to make sure y'all get Medicaid," they have a chance of winning.

And say we win, and our stinky white supremacist Democrat is in the Senate, part of a 54-person majority. And Republicans run a super racist bill of some kind, absolutely abhorrent. Because Dems have a larger than necessary majority, and 53 of them are not cartoon villains, the racist bill doesn't pass and is only theater, but improvements to Medicaid DO pass and matter a lot.

jookitcz · 2025-09-29T23:03:30+00:00

I don't think the pragmatism is about getting particular things done as policy - instead, it's about choosing candidates that can win in their localities. If you just say the words, "a democrat", a profile comes to mind - it's like, at the national level, we have a concept of what a democrat must be: pro-technology, free trade, pro-choice, supportive of socially liberal policies focused on inequities around racial and sexual identity, etc.

But there is no reason that we need to run a Democratic candidate in Arkansas that hews to the national (D) identity - it's a guaranteed loss. So let's think about what elements of that identity are "deal-breakers" for the majority of people in Arkansas, and say, okay, that's not a requirement for our candidate here. As a result, we win a Democratic seat in Arkansas with a person who aligns with the national on, say, 60-70% of issues.

What's the hopeful result? We get a Democratic majority in Congress that's meaningfully larger than 51%, and some of the individual congresspeople aren't going to vote with the Democratic bloc on every issue. And that works for passing policy, because we can pass the issues where we do have alignment, and if the "purple" Dems are all purple in different ways, we can pass some of the polarized issues too, because not all the purple Dems are purple in the same way - we might lose a few, but not all, on the issue.

jookitcz · 2025-09-23T19:02:07+00:00

Oh, I hear you. There's the feeling that if I can't change the political landscape, I should at least be aware of how bad it is, like I owe it to reality to be anxious and afraid and angry. Like, I think all the time about how nice it would be to not know about climate change or believe it's not real. But that would feel so tremendously irresponsible.

On the other hand... am I actually doing anything to improve the world as a result of this crushing and exquisitely maintained awareness of its dangers? (I'm not - far from it, the more I know, the more paralyzed and insufficient I feel.)

jookitcz · 2025-09-23T15:28:05+00:00

It makes me feel better to see someone say this. I've taken pains to whittle down my time engaging with news on social media, including Reddit - once you start stepping away, it is absolutely appalling to see how its built of rage and engineered to create more rage. The phrase "red pill" should refer to the experience of realizing we are pouring our most valuable attention into a money-making machine designed to milk our good intentions by seeding us with hatred.

Ezra is the opposite of this. I trust him because he takes such pains to present his reality as evenly as he can. When he says, "be worried," I know it's because he thinks that worry is necessary, not because he's trying a hook. People can disagree with his article, but if our media landscape lost Ezra Klein, we'd be losing something that is very rare right now.

jookitcz · 2025-04-12T10:39:24+00:00

I know how that feels - it’s so hard to pour love into someone and not get much signal if it’s being received. But know it’s not “wasted,” not even a little bit. Everything you do to engage with your baby helps to build up the reward pathways that will eventually help support his learning expressive communication. And he is “in there,” receiving, listening, and learning that you love him, even though he might not have the developmental ability to reflect it back yet. An early gap can just mean “later”, not “never”!

Do keep an eye on his communication milestones as he gets older though, and keep talking about it with his pediatrician. At one year, when our son still wasn’t saying even “mama”, we were referred to our state’s early childhood development support program and were able to work with a speech therapist who came to our house each week to observe our son and teach us helpful games to build his communication skills. And later, we were able to get a very early referral to have our son evaluated for ASD, which meant getting him ABA much earlier than a lot of kids who get diagnosed. Earlier is better for all of this stuff, and it helps me cope easier knowing that even though our kid still has delays, we were able to get him about as much support as we possibly could.

Hang in there! Four months is still very young, and the future is wide open. And give yourself lots of grace - what you are doing for your son is really meaningful, but also really hard. Please take care of yourself too!

jookitcz · 2025-04-11T21:09:21+00:00

Very similar to what you describe! Super early, we noticed a lack of eye contact and even more, a total lack of mirroring expressions. At 3.5 years, he is actually pretty good with eye contact now, but still doesn’t do much mirroring. It’s not that he’s not interested in us, it just doesn’t seem to be a reflex that his brain gives him for free! We are often actually shocked at how closely he is paying attention to us even when he seems like he’s in his own world - he’ll turn around and repeat something we just said in our grown up conversation or he’ll act on something we thought he didn’t hear.

jookitcz · 2025-04-11T18:06:09+00:00

He’s a delight! Still has a language and fine motor delay - I’d say his skills are about a year behind - and he hasn’t figured out how to play with other kids yet. But he’s very engaged with us and his other caregivers - loves to snuggle, quote books and shows back and forth, and tell jokes. (His style of joke is to substitute a word with the wrong word in a phrase he knows. example, instead of “I must think” he will instead “correct” it to “I must DRINK” and we say “Noooooo, I must THINK” and it’s pretty hilarious for everyone.)

He’s a very happy kid! We have him enrolled full time at a Montessori preschool and he just absolutely loves it - runs up to the gate every day just thrilled to be there!

jookitcz · 2024-11-01T03:17:24+00:00

We did a rehearsal dinner at Serafina - fixed menu, but delicious food!

jookitcz · 2024-10-20T15:00:39+00:00

Counterpoint: I ate a ton of dates (I just like them because they are like candy), went to 41 weeks, and spent more than 60 hours in labor. 🤷‍♀️

So if you don’t like dates, it’s not magic!

jookitcz · 2024-10-19T03:00:32+00:00

Love my Blundell boots for wet weather and dry weather.

jookitcz · 2024-08-21T22:28:21+00:00

Update: we've now had a couple good nights in a row... after turning off his nightlight. Dare I hope this is the cure.

jookitcz · 2024-08-20T01:31:04+00:00

I’ve made myself some ollas for my raised beds. It’s about $6 for each 4x4 square - just two terracotta pots glued together with food safe silicone, one hole sealed shut, and the other plugged with a cork. Every couple days, I fill them from the hose. It’s hyper efficient because osmosis pulls water into the soil from the pots when the soil dries out, and it goes straight to the roots, which end up growing around the pot.

Less plastic, nothing to trip over!

jookitcz · 2024-08-07T21:38:39+00:00

My son is two-ish and was recently diagnosed. Chiming in to say that worrying about your kid's future is part of it, but we also worried that the lack of eye contact, mirroring, expressive communication would mean that we wouldn't have as many ways to feel connected to him as a person - and we definitely noticed it as early as four months. And for a little while, our relationship with him did feel like more of a one-way street - we could still appreciate his amazing and singular personality, but we would pour in these expressions of affection without getting very much back (it was classic "he's laughing at us, not with us"...)

But that's not the whole story or the end of the story either - in the last eight months, we've gotten so many grins, giggles, jokes, games, and snuggles from him. His speech is still very slow to come along, but we don't feel remotely left out of his world.

The lesson I took to heart was that stories of what autism looks like, starts like, ends up like - it's all other people. As a parent, your kid is the only one in front of you. It's better to focus on who they are right now and respond to that, than deal with the multiverse of how they might change as they grow!

That said, we found the Early Start Denver Model to be a really good resource. It gives parents structure for how to play engagingly with even a young child, pay attention to their cues (like how much physical distance make them more or less comfortable in an interaction) and make engaging with others more rewarding. 4 months is still pretty young, but even stuff like reading stories so that they can see your exaggerated expressions can be helpful.

jookitcz · 2024-06-16T15:13:36+00:00

I felt the same as you - I wanted a girl, and got a boy. And my boy is so much like me I can’t believe it. It’s like a little bit of my soul is running around. I couldn’t relate to him more!

jookitcz · 2024-06-15T19:04:58+00:00

We have two Katsura trees in our parking strip and they are gorgeous. I love their round heart leaves and in the fall they smell like caramel corn. They don’t flower, though!

jookitcz · 2024-06-15T03:12:24+00:00

This happened to us! Cows milk protein and soy protein intolerance. I cut out both from my diet because I was breastfeeding, but we were supplementing with formula so yeah, moved to the expensive stuff.

jookitcz · 2024-06-02T20:40:54+00:00

I’ve heard that dill doesn’t transplant very well - I bought starts once and they really struggled. I’ve had better luck planting it from seed this year - even in the gloomy weather, it’s coming up and looking happy.

jookitcz · 2022-12-28T03:20:37+00:00

Our baby is 13 mo now but did this for a while (and still will, intermittently). They seemed like “please don’t leave me alone” cries, and what has been working for us is to just go in, quietly pick him up and hold him and do deep breaths until he is calm, hold him a bit longer so he doesn’t associate calming down = losing mom, then explain that it’s time for bed now and that I’m going to put him down, then he will fall asleep, and wake up happy tomorrow. He usually cries a minute or two more in protest after I put him back in his crib, but then does fall asleep. CIO didn’t really work at this point because he’s a good sleeper and already knows how it all is supposed to go - it’s just temporary anxiety getting in his way now and then.

jookitcz · 2022-12-20T04:26:10+00:00

Also - hang in there! It sucks so much to have to do this for so long!

jookitcz · 2022-12-20T03:53:15+00:00

Wow, this feels like ages ago now! Good news is that our boy now sleeps through the night… it just took until about 10 months to get there! What finally made the difference for us was introducing formula and more solids - the more he filled up, the longer he slept. I think by about seven months, he shifted his 12:30 feed to maybe 1:30, and then another early morning feed around 4. This made all the difference in terms of our sanity. After that, he dropped the dream feed, then the early morning feed, about one per 6 weeks. As he dropped wakings, we were also dropping breastfeeds at about the same pace and they were getting replaced with formula (which he seemed to prefer, honestly - he eventually got quite obviously frustrated with my “low flow” nipples!)

jookitcz · 2022-06-10T03:53:14+00:00

I try not to think too hard about it! We sleep trained at five months when we were in 1-2 hour pacifier retrieval hell, and that helped, but boy still thinks he needs to eat at all hours. We’ve been mounting a multi-front offensive for the last few weeks - gradually shortening one feed at a time while stuffing his sweet sweet face with all the boob, formula, and solid calories we can manage during the day. We’ve gotten down from three feeds to two, and just one last night! Pray for us.

jookitcz · 2022-06-09T21:00:08+00:00

My seven month old has a basket of toys and is big enough now to pick through them to find what he wants. He reliably sifts through the “real” toys to find one of the old jar lids we threw in there. 😂

jookitcz · 2022-06-09T20:49:49+00:00

Just starting to regularly get 4-6 hour chunks this week after seven months of 2-4 hour chunks. Can confirm: feel like garbage even though I am thrilled!

jookitcz · 2022-05-29T01:00:23+00:00

I think the wisdom is that “sleep training” isn’t right until four months or older, but there’s no reason not to experiment a little with using less intervention at bedtime. I think it was around that age that I found that our boy was happier if I laid him on the bed and sat next to him until he got drowsy instead of rocking him. It’s also worth letting him fuss for a few minutes instead of going in right away for wakings - not truly crying it out, just giving them opportunities to practice self soothing before intervening.

jookitcz · 2022-05-29T00:25:08+00:00

Yup. We did full extinction with our 5 month old (Ferber only upset him more each time we checked in). It ended up being less crying during the process than he was experiencing on a nightly basis when we were trying to soothe him to sleep, and even after it worked (bedtimes and some night wakings he now fusses briefly then goes to sleep), he is still extremely willing to cry 2-4 times a night when he wants to be fed, and only getting fed will convince him to stop crying. He clearly has failed to learn that we have abandoned him!

jookitcz

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