It’s not sexy to talk about teeth. It’s kinda personal. But I have some good ideas here. So read on. Your smile might be better for it.

A Bit About My Bite

When I hit my early twenties, I was dealing with a lot of deferred maintenance in my mouth. I spent hours on the phone begging the receptionists at my various dentists/endodontists/oral surgeons to please, please get me in right away.

Something was cracked. A nerve was exposed. A discrete cavity had raged into some hellish infection. Please please please. I remember often being in a five alarm pain situation.

The only thing worse than a dental emergency, is a dental emergency when you are broke. Fact about me: until I got a union job at a newspaper, I could not afford to take proper care of my teeth.

This is a shameful statement. Good teeth are a very public signifier that you grew up and continue to live with a certain margin of financial comfort. For me, personally, it conjures up a financially constrained time that I’d rather not revisit. But I’m not alone. Currently, I have many friends, largely artists, musicians, photographers, designers and the like in their 30s, 40s and beyond— people with thriving businesses and a solid sense of personal finance —who were just not counting on spending thousands (and in some cases tens of thousands) so they could eat corn on the cob maintain their youthful grin.

Reminder: we are the most affluent country in the world and one in ten Americans is missing more than six teeth.

Cause It’s About Money, Honey.

Before you make a snide joke in your head about toothless hillbillies and trailer park trash, check yourself. The primary reason an adult would be missing teeth is poverty. It works like this: you can’t afford to have the crown or the implant so you just have it pulled. Which then sets off a cascade of related health problems. But at least the pain stops.

Getting Your Dental Work Done in Mexico. All The Rage.

These days, as I move easily among the affluent, dental care has grown astonishingly expensive and an all too frequent topic of conversation. Dental insurance, as I’m sure you have discovered, is a total scam. But what to do? I recently heard of a woman whose dad left her a dental trust fund — simply to pay for what that far-sighted man knew would be the consequences of his heritably weak enamel. (When I heard this, I felt a surge of love for a man I didn’t even know.)

Even my wealthy friends are arranging their vacations around having major dental work done out of the United States. They’ve reached an age when 1) they are free to travel a lot and 2) their teeth are getting fragile. And money, even if you have a lot of it, is not endless. And dental care is so damn expensive here.

To that end, there are ex-pat communities in Mexico that are, according to their reports, as high tech as NYU Langone medical center.

There is an entire town right across the border from Yuma, Arizona called Los Algodones (known as Las Molars) that has over 350 dental clinics, 900+ dentists, and dozens of pharmacies packed into a 4-block tourist zone. Prices are typically 50–80% lower than the US,

Here’s a guidebook to getting dental care in Los Algodones, that breaks it all down. You’re welcome.

Another affluent friend of mine is traveling to Turkey for some complicated dental surgery. Portugal is another great option — great food, lovely beaches, English-speakers abound and very accomplished oral surgeons.

Honestly, it makes me sad.

I am 100% supportive of the U.S. transitioning to universal nonprofit health care — just like the rest of the developed world (including Israel, I was surprised to recently learn.) But under this administration, that seems out of reach. Adding it to the basic Medicare package would be nice - although that would not have helped me in my 20s or my younger freelancing friends. Here's a suggestion: send dentists to dental college for five years like every other country in the world instead of making them pay for four years of undergrad and then four years of dental school. They’d have many fewer student loans so they could make their services less expensive.

Living in New York City, our new Mayor is doing his very best to reshape our expectations of government. He is sensing, rightly, that voters feel government works for Big Business. And his brilliant PR campaign has focussed on fixing potholes, making culture more accessible, giving parents a night out, addressing the inflationary price of groceries.

But maybe thinking about how to make affordable dental care accessible for all New Yorkers would be worthy of his consideration.

This is not some observation study. These are not strung together anecdotes. It’s long-term longitudinal research published in prestigious, peer-reviewed Nature Human Behavior.

What does it say? Researchers did a look-back on the school performance of 5000+ Italian 10th and 11th graders. Their findings: students who started social media before 9th grade were six months behind their peers in reading and math.

But, you say, Brittany is a great student! She likes posting her little dance videos! What’s the harm?

Know this: the reading and math scores dropped even for kids who started off at the top of their class.

Let me say this a different way: uh, reread the headline of this piece.

Or stated another way — turn em loose on Tik Tok and say buh-bye to AP anything.

For those of you who have been paying attention, the trial of our favorite villains, Meta, starts today (Wednesday August 18th). AGs from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are seeking $1 TRILLION+ in damages, accusing the social media giant of harming children with technology designed to be addictive, fueled a national youth mental health crisis and deceived users by promoting their apps as “safe.”

The research about social media and cognition, though, is clear — and actionable, if enough parents read about it and think through the implications.

My TL/DR: yes, people learn in different ways and at different rates. But the development and strengthening of cognition — the essential work of childhood — turns out to be very fragile. Way more fragile than parents could have anticipated.

It requires that students build frameworks for thinking— in the classroom, that has traditionally taken the form of syntax and arithmetic. (Reading and math.) There are also thousands of behaviors and experiences, big and small, that reinforce and extend those frameworks — two of the biggest drivers are focus and stamina.

What the big Meta trial will no doubt rehash is that social media companies have hired teams of top level neuroscientists who study cognition to keep you — and your kids— glued to their app. And in doing so, leaching away their cognitive stamina and focus.

We all know that SM is terrible for us. Who among us has not experienced “digital dementia?” (Scrolling through headlines and finding ourselves unable to recall a single detail. ) In a surprise to probably no-one at Meta, it is actually making our kids unable to learn.

My guess on the outcome of the big Meta trial: high-priced lawyers will have their day, and, in fact, many days as the eventual appeal of the anti-Meta verdict will drag on for years. Our aversion to regulatory oversight of the tech industry — and a boatload of cash to our elected officials — will allow this widespread cognitive destruction to continue.

And our children and their children will pay the price.

Solar Panels You Can Hang Off Your Balcony

A lot of you know that I’m all in on the energy transition. Coal plants, still coming on line in China (ugh), are playing back up to renewables. Big Oil is in its death throes.

Rooftop solar panels, especially since this administration got rid of the subsidies are expensive and fiddly. If you calculate energy prices staying the same (hint: they do not. They rise) the payback period is around seven years. It’s a big upfront cost. And you also need permits etc and a crew to come tie it in. And crucially, you need to own a roof to put your solar panels on.

Not any longer. Utah. Colorado and now Virginia are making it legal — and actually extremely attractive— for renters to get some small-ish solar panels and hang them off their balconies or even angle them off the side of the building.

No permits. No electrician. You buy them online and set them up. You need a dedicated outlet, like for an air conditioner. Best, solar panel users don’t have to pay any special fees to those rapacious public/private entities that supply your utilities. (Rooftop solar panel owners in New York get hit with a special tax because utility companies have high-priced lobbyists and solar panel owners do not.) Where I live, in NYC, landlords are increasingly shifting energy costs on to tenants. So renters are paying a shocking amount for rent plus $$$ to heat and cool the place. Turns out, there’s a bill in Albany that has a pretty good chance of passing to allow this in New York. Let’s do it. We need it now.

If you are a “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” kind of person, here’s a company that will sell you balcony solar.

Credit where credit is due: this idea has been around for a while and then some great reporting in the New York Times pointing out that everyone is doing it in Europe and that reactivated bills around the state. Good job NYT!

Regular Folks are Pushing Back Against Flock

Turns out, it’s not just me that hates ‘em. Those AI surveillance machines — cameras attached to solar panels - called Flock - -are EVERYWHERE tracking our comings and goings, reporting patterns of our movements, where you are going and even who might be driving by at the same time. Without a search warrant or probable cause, they record the make and model of your car, license plate info, dents and even bumper stickers and keep a record of it, in perpetuity, that can be searched by law enforcement at any time. Including ICE.

It is a massive erosion of our constitutionally granted right to privacy.

And regular people are waking up to it. There are a lot of videos onine that show you exactly how to disable these things. Not that I’m promoting that….

Meet today’s hero, Carl Gunn, 77.

St Petersburg resident Carl Gunn, armed with a $7.99 camping chair on sale at Walmart, a black umbrella (skin cancer is real) and a pool skimmer, foiled the high-tech AI Flock near his private residence. Said Gunn, ““I have a constitutional right to my privacy. I’m a law-abiding citizen, and I don’t need anyone sticking their nose in my business. And if they do, I’m going to chop it off.”

Funny guy. But it’s a serious issue. Due in no small part to the journalism of upstart media group 404media.co, and one of its co-founders, technology writer Jason Koebler, people are waking up to how bad this really is. Small time cops are running amok with this technology, and stalking old girlfriends, tracking women who cross state lines out of fear they are seeking an (illegal in their state) abortion, tracking cars that cross state lines to a state where weed is decriminalized as probable cause for stopping a car on the way back. Even the burnt out shell that is the Washington Post recently did a piece on it. Oh yeah, did I mention that ICE is using it too?

And it’s hard to get rid of these things. Evanston, Illinois wants them out. So does Dayton, Ohio, so does Verona, Wisconsin but somehow (somehow!) they are still up. Exasperated locals officials are covering them up with garbage bags.

Here’s a photo of a Flock camera by a cannabis dispensary. Not into weed personally but it seems to me that you should be able to purchase your legal gummies without surveillance.

And Finally, Press Pass NYC, the Little Engine that Could, Just Got a Big Grant

As many of you know, I ran a nonprofit incubator in lower Manhattan for fourteen years. In that capacity, I helped launch about 12 nonprofits, helped raise millions and became a founding board member of Press Pass NYC which has now opened about forty student run school news sites in districts that serve poor kids. The nonprofit world is brutal — it’s hard to build a sustainable program when your budget is dependent on grants. But they’re doing it! And recently, they got significant grants from The New York Times and Anita K Hersh Philanthropic Fund to continue their good work. Great recognition for a great organization.

What are you happy about?

For the last fifteen years or so, school administrators have expended countless hours and untold tax-payer dollars on anti-bullying programs and social emotional learning. My reaction was and is mixed. A positive school culture— like a positive work culture — matters. As a parent of a child who was at one time relentlessly bullied, I saw that learning cannot happen unless a child feels safe. And surely, adults using and reinforcing an emotional vocabulary to young people is always a good thing. (Try to use your words. Do you feel angry or frustrated?)

As a journalist and author, I also observed some first class nonsense being foisted on to school children in the name of social-emotional learning. It also made me uneasy to see that these programs sometimes seemed to be providing moral education to public school children without explicitly saying as much. That seems like an overstep and one that raised red flags for me. Parents, not school administrators acting on behalf of the state, should get to decide who imparts a moral education to their children — and how. Some parents do this explicitly by sending their kids to parochial school. Some provide a moral education for their children around the dining room table. Or at Boy Scouts. Or at a No Kings protest. Another criticism: those programs eat up instructional time without any clear goals or evidence that they reach those goals. Teachers have an important job - teaching. They are not trained mental health professionals and should not be expected to act as such.

The reason schools are obsessed with anti-bullying programs is because we are all quite rightly horrified by school shootings. Even listing the high profile ones here is unbearable and brings tears to my eyes. And in the last two decades, prevention became a huge national mandate. So I read with interest the column written by my friend in the Hechinger Report (nonprofit education journalism. Check it out.) She highlights something exceedingly rare: an influential academic who has changed his mind and is happy to talk about it. In this case, Ron Avi Astor, one of the nation’s leading experts on school violence and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has now concluded he was wrong: anti-bullying and social emotion learning programs, while well meaning, did nothing to reduce school shootings.

Here’s an excerpt from Jill’s excellent column:

“For decades, Astor believed that improving school climate and reducing bullying would help prevent school shootings. He advised national policymakers and issued recommendations. Schools responded by investing heavily in social-emotional learning, restorative justice, trauma-informed care, counseling and other efforts to make schools safer and more welcoming. Those initiatives have benefited students in many ways. Fewer students report bringing guns or knives to school, and schools have generally become safer. But school shootings have not declined.”

Here are the graphics Astor showed to a conference of education researchers in the spring.

Instead, Astor is pointing to school shootings as an act of media-centric suicide. And suggests that if we stop making headlines about the shooters, the impulse will fade. (It can be hard to see, but acts of violence follow certain trends. For example: during the 1970s, plane hijackings were a regular thing and garnered massive headlines. Now, not so much.)

Which brings up many questions for me, most are more complicated than you probably want to read about right now. I will conclude by commending this essay about the writing of French sociologist Emile Durkheim in First Things. (First Things is a journal of religion and public life that I dip into. Skews conservative and usually not looney.) The essay on Durkheim is 100% worth your time, if you’ve got it. In brief, it encourages us to see suicide (whose rates are stable within particular societies) as an artifact of our society, not as an act of an individual. It is, he posited, a byproduct of the collective. The essay explicates Durkheim’s three root societal causes. Reduce school shootings by looking at those causes.

And one more note. The downstream effects of the policies that Astor has championed during his career have not been entirely benign. It placed responsibility on schools that more appropriately rests with all of us. (Sounds familiar.) We are also learning that when adults force themselves into the social dynamics of children, which often happens under the guise of “anti-bullying,” something is lost. Young people lose the ability to figure things out for themselves. And that destroys their agency, the very thing they need to thrive in the world.

I’ve been using A.I. a lot lately.

As you might know, I’ve come out of hibernation and launched a consulting practice for nonprofit and social enterprise organizations. Right now I’m using AI to create a blueprint for a client’s new strategic plan. (Outcome: It was fiddly but ultimately gave me a decent boiler plate that needs a great deal of elaboration, personalization and additional thinking. )

I’m also trying to unpack the mysteries of the 2026 tax code to answer one of the nagging questions that fill my brain: who pays the most taxes and why?

The down side of using it to plumb the depth of the tax code: It is, as you know, sloppy. And often wrong. And most crucially, unlike a great teacher, it doesn’t assess my prior knowledge and adapt the instruction to me.

On the plus side: it is an endlessly patient instructor. No exasperated sighs. No eye rolling. Between me and A.I., there are no stupid questions. But because it can’t assess my prior knowledge, I am forced to ask it the same question ten times, breaking down my prompts into small chunks until it spits out an answer I can understand. And then we move on, building into more complex information.

But as I do this, I feel a little haunted. As I come up with the prompts that will make it teach me what I want to know, or practicing, as they say, prompt architecture, I am in turn reinforcing for A.I. the basics of human logic. I have connected to this vast sprawling network and I, along with millions of others, are methodically instructing it, and reinforcing again and again, how humans think.

All of which reminds me of this 1973 film “Soylent Green.” Short version: climate change and rampant economic inequity means the wealthy live in splendor and eat magnificent food and the masses live in cramped, filthy conditions (which I know sounds all too familiar to my NYC friends.) The masses subsist off the titular Soylent Green, a highly processed wafer made of (spoiler alert) reprocessed euthanized poor people.

What does this have to do with learning from AI? Our attention, our focus, our ability to link ideas across silos of information and think critically— it’s something we take for granted. But it’s also the product of six million years of evolution. Not to mention generations of education. And exposure to art and literature. And it has been shaped by the kindness and grace (and yes, anxiety and trauma) generated by other humans we’ve interacted with.

And here I am, letting it be pumped out of me wholesale for for-profit AI companies that seem to be rapidly emerging as defense contractors cloaked in techno-optimism.

Since Ptolemy II established the library in Alexandria, there has been a sort of baseline understanding that learning is a net positive for the world. Learning creates human flourishing.

The more we learn, the higher we rise from our animal state. Learning allows us become more effective adults, better members of our community and more thoughtful citizens. Learning forced us to give our attention, our minds and our senses to each other. And to the world.

For sure, I now know more about the 2026 tax code than I did two weeks ago. Good for me. But this was a different sort of process than the way I’ve learning things in the past. Does it support human flourishing? I guess? What happens when we multiply A.I dependent learning— and extraction — over a generation or two? Smart machines and a depleted society? It’s here to stay, so what can we do to mitigate these downside? For ourselves? For our children?

Post your suggestions in the comments please.

It’s a little overwhelming.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how the public execution of Alex Pretti had shifted their views of a lot of conservative-leaning men in my life. And I was trying to succinctly summarize what they told me.

You can read it here.

I got texts, calls, links — many thoughtful responses. And no small amount of gratitude. It’s touching. And as always, slightly awkward for me.

It’s familiar. I wrote an extremely popular cover story about boys and education for Newsweek (back when that was a big deal), spoke about it on just about every morning talk show, and then wrote a New York Times bestselling book on the same subject. In the two years that followed, I gave talks on it until I couldn’t face the lounge at JFK anymore and my life, happily, moved on.

Which is curious role for me to play since I consider myself a pretty stalwart feminist.

Legitimately.

Here are my feminist bona fides (not that you care..)

I dropped out of college and lived in a communal house of women whose stated intention was to smash the patriarchy. (TL:DR: didn’t happen.) I was part of a first wave feminist publishing collective in Scotland where I was living. When Prince Charles got married (the first time) in what we saw as a massive ratification of repressive gender roles, our motley little group of radicals hitchhiked from Edinburgh to London. While everyone cheered the horse-drawn carriage driving the soon-to-be-wed couple through the streets of Kensington, we held up hand-lettered signs that said “DON’T DO IT, DI!”

This particular memory always makes me smile.

Later, when I reenrolled in college, I founded a short-lived women’s literary magazine.

So why do I even bother to write about masculinity?

In my lifetime, you could attend an art history class at an Ivy League university and have your professor say with a straight face that there were no great women artists. You could date a guy who would say there are no women comedians because women aren’t funny. Back then, it seemed like feminism had allowed women to, finally, finally, write themselves into public life and into history.

But a funny thing happened as the years rolled on. Wealthy and wealthy-adjacent women dominated the dialogue about gender. Women’s grievances, once unspoken, became so well trodden they are cliche. You know, when you are dating men, they are both creepy and also, don’t initiate interactions like they used to. When you’re coupled up with them, they don’t do their share of emotional labor. When you live with them, they eat a lot and leave socks on the floor. When you produce offspring with them, everyone is exhausted and grumpy and they don’t go to as many pediatrician appointments as you do. This recitation has veered into parody, like that hilarious New York Times magazine piece on “heterofatalism” (Pro tip: if all the guys you date suck, the problem might be you.)

Let’s not even talk about the rise of the Girl Boss, Sheryl Sandberg’s damnable Lean In and all those congratulatory attagirl articles about freezing your eggs so you can work longer hours in FinTech or Big Law.

And there has been this willful blindness to who was/is disadvantaged by these changes in society. Feminism is the bedrock of my life. It empowered women economically. It abolished significant and systemic cultural misogyny. But while we all stampeded into the workforce, it also fostered an economy dependent on two wage earning adults while neglecting support for childcare, elder care supports, or access to health care. And the toxic melding of feminism and Neo-liberalism made dating (the apps essentially profit from your loneliness) and mating (Please, please read this horrifying story about surrogacy that recently ran in the New Yorker) a commodity.

And when I think about the heterofatalists, the egg freezers, go-it-alone Girl Bosses, well, I can see that for the most part, they are promoting this ideology because they have the means to do so.

This is patently obvious to so many less economically-advantaged young woman, and that long-denied reality has given rise to substantial backlash and fueled the right-wing, traditionalist discourse promoted by the likes of the Heritage Foundation

In less financially rarified circles, the lives of women and men tend to be more intricately immeshed. These days, I guess I’m part of a feminist cabal that wants to live in that reality.

So what does this have to do with writing about men?

At the very top, men still control the world. And it’s shocking to see our reproductive rights being rolled back. And that’s worth fighting about, no matter what zip code you live in. But what I find fascinating right now is that in less wealthy and wealth-adjacent precincts, there is a massive dislocation between the role society wants men to play and the desires and opportunities they actually have. And it's growing. And there is general shrug, and worse, no small amount of mean-spirited tittering, when men themselves write about this.

In the piece I wrote about Pretti, I named men’s yearning for public valor, their desire for romance, their deep interest in family formation. And so many people responded. It’s interesting to me because these are values that exist outside of a transactional economy. They advantage our economic system in exactly zero ways. And writing about them feels like reading about women’s lives in the 1980s — like it’s part of a history that seems willfully hidden from view.

Before you roll your eyes and say, ugh, exactly how unusual is it for men to be talking about men? Don’t we get enough of this on ESPN? I get it. Men are hardly unseen in society.

But I would argue that a substantial part of masculinity is now considered nearly taboo.

And we are all poorer because of it. Big picture, the traits I named above are components of mentally healthy people who can form and sustain solid relationships and in turn, stable societies. We want this.

No one wants to go back to the 1960s, when women couldn’t get a credit card in their own name or teach while pregnant. Those things changed between my mother’s lifetime and mine. But when men write about their pervasive disappointment at their rapidly shifting and in some cases, shrinking economic opportunities, remember, these messages aren’t being embraced by corporate media because they are uncomfortable realities that speak to a large and rapidly-growing rot in our system. Women and men would do well to listen closely. These issues affect us all.

Did you get to the end of this? Alllll right! Now, let me hear what YOU think!

And if you scroll down, you will find a link to an A.I. tool that may legitimately help teachers help kids develop higher order thinking skills. Share it with teachers you know and have them send me feedback.

But first this: here’s why I’m a skeptic. The idea of AI for the public good seems to exist in direct opposition to the very nature and function of the technology. The people who have created and refined AI are flashing bright red warming lights that their baby is in fact, a monster and needs to be regulated, that its potential for widespread destruction is vast, that we are on the brink of wholesale job loss and other things more awful than that. Watching the AI incursion into higher education (which as a sector has become less about the transmission of human knowledge and more of a fashionable consumer product) is horrifying. (For more on AI in higher ed read this.) Teachers promoting AI for K-12 classrooms seem, at best, like paid influences promoting yet another costly distraction and at worst, like trees cheering for chainsaws. AI in K-12 classrooms seems like a way to rapidly reduce a crucial and sustaining part of our ecosystem to dust.

Why (Specifically) Do I Think That AI And K-12 Education Are A Bad Mix?

Seems like AI does the thinking— or at least summarizes the information - for you, right? And while convenient, it creates some lazy-ass mental habits and reduces your cognitive stamina, which is damaging for adults but deforming for children.

You also become reliant on the reference material’s embedded biases, which are subtle but everywhere if you have enough domain knowledge to spot it. (Unlike say, um, students.)

It writes decent essays and email- yeah. Sure. But my friend, writing is thinking. You let it write for you, it’s putting someone else’s framework on your half-formed thoughts and intentions. You think you are thinking. But you are half-assing it.

Bad, bad and very bad. Critical thinking relies on a mental precision.

And one more thing: the very nature of AI is that the shape and flow of information architecture is controlled by private companies who are in turn controlled by very wealthy people with zero public oversight.

Is this what we want in our classrooms? Oh hell no.

BUT….Here’s What Might Change My Mind

I went to a presentation the other day run by PlayLab.ai, which is a nonprofit “devoted to creating a future where educators and students around the world have the agency to not just use AI, but to shape it” according to their website.

Their founders did not produce their 990, a record of their funding and it was not readily available. But from their website, they appear to be funded by Amazon, Google (see above: private companies run for the benefit of the wealthy with zero public oversight) and private foundations, some of whom are run by people I know and respect.

PlayLab got teachers from NYC Consortium Schools — a network of high schools that champion project-based learning and deep inquiry over grades, International Schools (older kids, lots of languages) and Outward Bound Schools (expeditionary learning), to design their own AI tools. The idea is that the AI tidal wave is coming and teachers/educators should harness this for their own means. And the results— unexpected. And unexpectedly interesting.

These aren’t tools that think for kids. They are tools that help teacher teach better.

Here's one I really liked: Every day, hundreds of thousands of teachers all over the globe fret about how to make their lessons deeper, more thoughtful and able to conjure higher order thinking in kids whose minds are rotted by Reels and Roblox. This is surprisingly hard to do. Walk into nearly any classroom and usually, the teacher is talking and the kids are passively listening or pretending to listen. Some are engaging and learning. Some. Usually three kids.

Below, the A.I Tool I Mentioned

A science teacher came up with H.O.T Bot- Your Higher Ordering Thinking Thought Partner to “ensure that rigorous thinking is accessible to all learners, it moves students from passive compliance to active ownership of their own inquiry and understanding.”

So unlike most AI technology, its purpose is to shift the cognitive lift from the teacher to the student. Instead of standing at the front of the classroom going blah blah blah, it helps you find ways to force kids to engage in thinking. Right now, it’s free and open sourced. You can click on the link above and play with it yourself. I encourage you to try it.

I’ve been writing on and off about education and technology for decades, and was a founding board member of Quill.org (a nonprofit tech unicorn.) I’ve watched the blind enthusiasm for the next new thing paper over the fact that the technology (smart board, laptops, video tutoring, algorithmically selected lessons) actively hurt our most vulnerable learners by becoming a substitute for skilled teaching. Oh, and not incidentally, as a sector, education technology — particularly the for-profit side — is expert at siphoning public money into private coffers for things that look slick but lack impact under real world conditions.

Most of it, frankly, is crap.

I’m aware of the PR benefit for Big Tech in funding PlayLab. I’m aware that they throw a tiny (for them) amount of money at some feel-good public benefit enterprise while going about the business of destroying our world.

Still… H.O.T keeps AI well away from students. It helps teachers teach better.

So yes, still a skeptic. And yes, most education technology is crap. But maybe… not all.

Below is my experiment with H.O.T that yielded some impressive results.

Here's ME, pretending I’m a teacher, asking it to help me get students to think deeply about George Orwell’s Animal Farm. H.O.T is the AI reply.

ME: I want to get my eighth graders to analyze the theme of fascism in Animal Farm. They have read the entire book

H.O.T.: How would you like me to support you with this lesson or project?

1. Give your lesson a candid “thinking-level check-up” — a friendly, honest look at how much higher-order thinking it currently includes.

2. Suggest fast, high-impact improvements (the low-hanging fruit, 80/20).

3. Help redesign part of the task so students — not the teacher — do more of the thinking.

4. Predict where students may struggle and offer supports that keep the rigor high.

Which of these feels most helpful right now, or is there something else you’d like to focus on?

Me: Number 3

Great choice! Let me ask: what does your current task or assignment look like for having students analyze the fascism theme?

Are you planning to have them write an essay, do a project, have a discussion, or something else? I’d love to see what you’re working with so I can suggest ways to shift more of the analytical thinking to the students.

ME: have a discussion

H.O.T: Perfect! Here’s a key shift to get students doing the thinking work:

Instead of: Teacher-led discussion where you ask “How does Animal Farm show fascism?” and students give answers.

Try this: Give students a fascism criteria checklist (characteristics like suppression of opposition, propaganda, cult of personality, etc.) and have them debate which characters/events from the book best demonstrate each characteristic.

The student thinking shift: Students become the analysts and evidence-hunters. They have to:

• Decide which textual evidence is strongest

• Argue for their interpretations

• Challenge each other’s claims with counter-evidence

Quick setup: Put students in small groups, each group gets 2-3 fascism characteristics to “prosecute” with evidence from the book. Then they present their cases to convince the class.

This moves you from being the question-asker to being the facilitator while students do the heavy lifting of analysis and argumentation.

What do you think about this approach?

ME: How do I get my students to effectively debate?

H.O.T: Here are two high-impact moves to get effective debate going:

1. Give them debate sentence stems that force higher-order thinking:

• “The strongest evidence for [fascism trait] is... because...”

• “I disagree with [name] because the text actually shows...”

• “That’s a good point, but what about when [character/event]...”

• “The counterargument would be... but I still think...”

2. Use a simple debate structure like “Point-Evidence-Challenge”:

• One student makes a claim with textual evidence

• Another student must either build on it OR challenge it with different evidence

• Original student gets to respond

The key: Students can’t just state opinions — they must use the book as their ammunition.

Quick scaffold: Give each group 3-4 minutes to find their “best evidence” first, then start the debate. This prevents the “I don’t know what to say” silence.

This structure forces students to engage with the text deeply and respond to each other’s reasoning — not just wait for their turn to talk. Does this feel manageable to try?

Is your electric bill through the roof? Yep. Turns out you are subsidizing tech titans as they rush to build data centers for AI (which will likely put someone you love out of a job.) After I wrote it, I got contacted by folks doing research for some local elected officials (who will remain nameless) who are taking action on this matter at a local level. Honored!

You can read it here:

A few days later, Uncle Bernie called for pause on data centers saying they benefited billionaires not utility payers. Ok- coincidence. But I love it!

Like you, I’m sickened by what I see coming out of Minnesota. I wrote that no one will be able to hire these ICE clowns because they are, obviously, poorly trained and badly managed. Because their identities are cloaked. And they are not disciplined when they break the law (or commit a homicide) -each one will bear responsibility for all. They will be a liability nightmare for any municipality.

You can my ferocious column here

Two weeks later, California Assemblymember Anamarie Avila-Farias (D-Martinez introduced Assembly Bill 1627, also known as the "Misconduct Ends Law-Enforcement Trust Act" or "MELT ICE Act” which proposes to ban ICE agents from ever working in law-enforcement or in public schools. Illinois followed.

Yay!

I received a HUGE amount of feedback on a column I wrote about Alex Pretti and masculinity. Lots of encouragement. Thanks for all the kind words.

You can read it here.

It’s very touching. Also, a little awkward since as a woman, I am aware of my very limited insight into what it means to be a man right now. I am intending to unpack this weird conflict at greater length in a coming post.

I’ll end by saying that in these trying times, I can’t live without prayer. Or beauty. Or community. Or poetry. I encourage you to engage in what gives you strength. Here’s a poem I am loving right now. You can click on the authors name if you want to buy her book.

Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

As always, thanks for reading.

If you work for ICE, you better enjoy your $50,000 signing bonus now. Pay off your Ford F-150. Pay down your child support. Get your dental work done. Because when this is over, no decent law enforcement agency or public or private safety organization or in fact, any one connected with a public payroll or with any oversight at all, will be able to hire you. You won’t be able to direct traffic in Mayberry. Or get a cat out of a tree on Main Street. You won't even be able to be a mall cop.

Here’s why: As a group, you are a disgrace. It is blindingly obvious that you have been unleashed on the public without training or proper supervision. Your chain of command? PHFFT. Sure, right now, you drive big cars and swagger around in body armor, looking menacing in suburban strip malls, breaking car windows and bullying bystanders. But aside from your puffed up “unit leaders” who seem as reactive and outmatched as the men they command, anyone with eyes can see there is no professionalism to what you are doing. You are bounty hunters armed high-powered weapons and Palantir- produced surveillance equipment rousting dishwashers, office cleaners and childcare workers. It takes a dozen of you to apprehend a naked old man. You kidnapped a five year old.

You must be realizing by now that the Administration who hired you set you up. By allowing you to conceal your identity, and failing to keep order in your ranks, they made you seem faceless and formidable. But by concealing your identity, and failing to bring murderers within your ranks to justice, they also made every one who puts ICE on their resume culpable for every excess we see ICE commit on social media.

Every one of you will share the blame.

For the rest of your lives.

So if you imagined that after this was over, you could finally give up landscaping and start a public safety career, or ease into corporate security, well, that isn’t going to happen. Think it through. No-one will be able to hire you or at least not for long. Sure, there will still be some people in red-heavy communities who think what ICE did is AOK (but even your support there is waning.) But true fact: not a single local, region or state municipality —or any corporation who does risk assessment— will be able to afford to hire you or keep you on.

Here’s why: Any fender bender that takes place on your watch, any confrontation with some irate citizen or customer, or if the cat falls out the tree instead of coming down in your arms, your judgement will be questioned. The small town judge in the close-knit community where you work might back you up but the town will not be able to afford the brutal penalties that will follow in the inevitable civil suit. As soon as your work history becomes known, a smart lawyer will wipe the floor with you. Because how do you prove that you weren’t in Minnesota when ICE executed Alex Pretti? That you were one of the "thoughtful” ICE agents when the whole world has watched the masked men in your organization brutalize protestors day after day.

In short, you will just be a huge gaping liability. And all the people who are egging you on now? Pay attion to JD Vance, who offered you all immunity and then walked it. back. When the optics got bad, he changed his tune. That is only going to get worse. And as the tide turns, you will be radioactive in the job market. No one who wants to hold on to their pension is going to take responsibility for hiring someone who might have had a role in the fully televised extra-judicial killings of US citizens.

I get it. It’s a tough job market for guys without advanced degrees. Construction job are hard as hell. And gig job will break you. But after joining ICE you will find that long term, stable employment— the kind that allows you to pay a mortgage and build a family — will never happen for you.

If you think I’m overstating this, go talk to a Vietnam vet. Now imagine the Marines were killing unarmed Viet Cong women in Minnesota. And the images were everywhere.

This is going to be so much worse for you.

That Nazi scum Steve Miller threatened to economically destroy the political opponents of the White House. And that may come to pass for some. But the people who will really suffer economically will be you, the poor dumb bastards who make up the rank and file ICE recruits.

And you know what? You deserve it.

Here’s a photo of the glove compartment of the Renee Good, the“domestic terrorist” from Minnesota.

Here’s a song by the Drop Kick Murphys about ICE. I quote their lyrics: “Too scared to be in the military. Too dumb to be a cop.”

And finally, here is a protest sign that warms my heart. I don’t know this lady but I like her.

I’m surprised that the biggest push back is coming from a certain sector of friends and colleagues— the quiet conservatives and political fence sitters. Many of whom are young men.

I’ve been something of a student of American masculinity since I wrote a New York Times best-selling book called The Trouble With Boys in 2008. In it, I wrote that the growing disconnection between boys and school, and young men and work/higher education was worrying, and worth paying attention to. In the book I pointed out that social unrest quickly follows when a society has large groups of disconnected boys and men without a path to economic stability. And here we are. I don’t want to say I told you so, but, yeah.

Since then, I’ve watched as the Democratic Party, and liberals in general, have almost gleefully and with oh-so-righteous gusto, disenfranchised young American men, year after year. And on a parallel track, we’ve all watched the emergence of the hyper masculine, often degenerate, made-for-YouTube male icons and influencers.

Unexpectedly, though, the life and horrific death of Alex Pretti has activated the conservative leaning young men in my friend group. It turns out, Pretti is the kind of American man that so many young American men quietly aspire to be. I’ll unpack it.

He Did Real Work

He was not some puffed up finance bro, Jordon Belfort wanna be. He didn't spend his days shuffling distressed assets or corn futures, creating value for his betters and posting about bottle service on his IG. Economic self-sufficiency is crucial for adulthood. But outsized paychecks aren’t handed out to many and come with moral trade offs and, over time, alienation from the meaning of labor. Pretti got a BA, had a research job and then went back to school and entered a field known for demanding tough credentials, long hours and medium pay. But here’s the thing that is appealing to guys: he was doing real work and affecting the lives of real people.

He Lived a Life of Service

He worked in a veterans hospital ICU with some of the sickest, poorest and most vulnerable people. You are probably not a patient at a VA hospital if you are one of capitalism’s winners. You are there because you very much need the care they offer. Day after day, Pretti supplied it.

He Was A Patriot

The video of him observing the moment of respect for a passing veteran just about broke me. His tender feelings about our country and the freedoms we enjoy here cut through the fog of BS that emanates from the White House. The young men I know heard his true patriotism loud and clear.

He Loved and Lost

I get why the media focusses on “Incels” and “Groypers”. They are online about as much as reporters and producers. But unlike those sweaty little pockets of confused guys, most young men in my friend group — and according to survey data, most young men in America— aspire to lasting love and family formation. Pretti was a regular-looking guy with a steady job struggling to gain and hold on to the milestones of adulthood as best he could. It didn’t work out for him before his murder. But he was in the arena. Admirable.

He Had The Respect of His Colleagues

Every young man ((and woman) that I know wants, nay, craves the respect of their colleagues. Whatever his deficits, Pretti had it.

Here’s a widely circulated photo of his colleagues at the VA hospital observing a moment of silence following his murder.

Here’s a moving letter one of his mentees wrote about him.

He Laid Down His Life To Protect a Woman

His final act was the largest and grandest public honor a man can achieve in the eyes of another man: he sacrificed himself trying to protect a woman. This, of course, messes with my feminist theories about how things should be. But in the world we live in now— and throughout recorded human history — it has always been thus. It’s why they say “women and children first” when the ship is sinking. As the White House and the billionaire-controlled social media outlets try to wage their disgusting misinformation campaign against Pretti, his death has a resonance in ways that even them, for all their power, they cannot shape or escape. A real man was senselessly slain by an out of control federal army. And now, even conservative guys are saying it.

I

To understand this heartening David v. Goliath story, I need to draw your attention to these little monsters on the side of the road. (Photo below.) I know you’ve seen them. They are called a "Flock” and they are solar-paneled-powered cameras trained on the roadway. What you may not know is that they are recording and transmitting to law enforcement a time-stamped identification of every car that goes by: the make and model of your car, your peeling Fuck Trump bumper sticker, the damage on your vehicle, if you’ve traveled this road before, when, how often and other cars that travel at the same time as you.

That’s right. By driving on a public roadway, in your private vehicle, breaking no laws, this surveillance technology rolled out by Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company valued at $7.5 billion, is tracking your movements, your associates and your routines. And you have no way to opt out.

And to me, that is a huge problem.

Before we go any further, let me tell you I have a very personal perspective on the social cost of crime. I covered homicides for a daily newspaper when 2000 people a year were getting murder in NYC. (The murder rate in NYC is currently 286.) I also covered the first World Trade Center bombing and co-wrote a book that has been called the seminal work on domestic terrorism.

But the needs of law enforcement need to be balanced against the requirements of a free society. And moving about in public should not subject you to constant criminal scrutiny by law enforcement. It’s creepy. It’s also against the law.

That’s not just me, opining. The fourth amendment to the Bill of Rights, part of the U.S. Constitution, explicitly forbids general searches unless authorized by a judge.

Yet there are about 70,000 of these privacy-busting cameras around the country. In NYC, they are everywhere.

You can go to this site to see how often you are getting surveilled in your own neighborhood.

So, now that I have you thinking about scraping that Biden/Harris sticker off your bumper, let me tell you about a community that pushed back. And the wild and oh-so-telling email exchange that ensued. It turns out, the giant company that collects information on everyone, all the time, without any oversight, is under siege. Read on.

In 2024, Flocks were installed in Staunton Virginia (pop. 25,750), a small town in the Shenandoah Valley, and local citizens— regular Americans — raised some privacy concerns. They quite sensibly asked veteran police chief Jim Williams how their data was being shared and with whom.

Here’s a photo of Williams

Williams queried the CEO of Flock Safety, Garrett Langley, pictured below.

Here is Langley’s response.

Let’s call this what it is: Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack. The attacks aren’t new. You’ve been dealing with this for forever, and we’ve been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they’re producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines. They’re also trying to turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us.”

You can read the whole unhinged email here.

Yes, that’s right. The CEO of a company that announced in March that it had secured an additional $275 million funding round from major Silicon Valley investors, who include Andreessen Horowitz and the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund, is under attack from… who exactly? BLM? Antifa? The unwashed pitchfork and torch bearing mob who are amassing around Langley’s gated community? Or regular Americans raising reasonable questions about what they are doing?

Williams was having none of it.

As far as your assertion that we are current[y under attack, I do not believe that this is so. I have dedicated the last 41 years of my life to serving the citizens of the City of Staunton as a police officer, the last 22 as the police chief. What we are seeing here is a group of local citizens who are raising concerns that we could be potentially surveilling private citizens, residents and visitors and using the data for nefarious purposes. These citizens have been exercising their rights to receive answers from me, my staff, and city officials… ln short, it is democracy in action.

Then Williams, with help from the city manager and the city council, cancelled the contract.

And so, Jim Williams, police chief, widowed father of three and community college graduate, public servant extraordinaire, is now in Peg Tyre’s pantheon of heroes.

I will end with this: In 2009, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, famously said this about electronic surveillance. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place".

I would also point out that if you look up the address of a 50+acre property Eric Schmidt owns in Rhinebeck, New York, Google maps will not give you the street view because “it violates Google’s policies.”

Constant scrutiny for the peasants. Privacy for the kings.

I Became The Biggest Fan of a Long-Dead French Movie Star

I discovered the films of French film star Jean Gabin (1904-1976). I stumbled onto La bête humaine (1938) and was hooked. Never have I encountered an actor who could so succinctly depict frustration, fear, and the moment when you look out of a train window and wonder if you could have a different life. And how to get that started.

Quickly devoured The Lower Depths (1936) (hilarious) and They Were Five (1936) and got a full dose of his Gallic working class hero personae. Unlike American films now, which tend to lionize wealth and a certain kind of blank beauty, those French directors found wisdom and pathos among irregular faces and regular people. Mesmerizing.

I had the great pleasure to see Don't Touch The Loot where Gabin plays a world-weary gangster forced out of retirement. The exhausted, I’d-rather-be-flossing way he regards the show girls is so funny, so knowing, and so human.

Some Bio: He was hugely famous in France, churned out films- sometimes three a year-often playing gangsters. He was also a real life badass. He left France, where he was a superstar, when the Nazis came to power, moved to Hollywood and became lovers with Marlene Dietrich. When WW2 broke out, he joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces and became a decorated tank commander fighting with the Allies in North Africa. Following D-Day, he served with a military division that liberated Paris. Download the Criterion Channel app or find TCM and see if you can locate any of his movies.

I Determined That My Mental Health Depends on Connecting With My Body

You may not know this but if you are feeling bad, you probably need a Korean scrub. I cannot recommend this experience enough. Go to one of the elaborate Korean bathhouses springing up in major urban areas and first ring suburbs. Soak, steam, eat pork buns and exfoliate. To be sure, this is not about auras and inner light. The overhead lights are glaring. The table is stainless steel. For an hour, elderly Korean ladies will rub off the outer three layers of your skin with rough gloves, splash you with pails of warm water, and work you over with an invigorating slap-and- pummel sort of massage. Then they pour milk on you. Sometimes they wash your hair. Resist and you will feel abused. Go with it and you will leave there better than when you came in. I can offer you no promotional code and I don’t get a kickback for referring you (sadly) but reach out to me for my top locations. It’s a bit spendy but if you have the money, go.

Nature Will Cure Me of Almost Anything

Our national parks are one of our greatest treasures. As the great Pete Seeger reminded us, they belong to us. So when my pal suggested we visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park I was all in. It did not disappoint. We walked barefoot on burning sand for hours, experienced amazing vistas, left before it started hailing and then looked back and part of the dunes were covered with snow.

I Invite the Mythological Into My Life

I’m a pretty linear, straight-forward person. Not very whoo. In this time of change, though, I find it useful to connect, in a modern way, to what feels ancient and timeless. It calms me to remember that the world did not stop turning on its axis when Athens fell during the Peloponnesian War. (Although, to be fair, democracy took a huge hit.) It helps me to remember that there are near-universal narratives, images and dynamics that will probably exist as long as humans exist.

The work of UK sculptor Beth Carter does this for me. The first time I saw her six foot tall “Minatour” at a gallery on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, I was frozen. In the years that have passed, Carter has gained more fame and rightly so. An art critic had this to say about her work: “She embodies in her menagerie the pain of life, the inevitability of suffering and the agony of the divided self in the face of a shockingly physical destiny ... Carter has created her own world which reaches deep down into Mythology, childhood fantasy and dreams.” Visual pleasure.

So does this podcast.

This is a lunatic premise, and I love it. I’ve been listening to it for a while and recently, it's gotten huge (25 million downloads) and slick (they even have merch now!) and I know why. They start at what seems to me to be a profound disadvantage: they are Jungian analysts and in this age of SSRIs and oh-so-logical CBT, Carl Jung seems sort of nutty. And yet… not. Their conversation is warm, highly literate and engaging. Their pacing is less about information delivery and more about the true back and forth of conversation. And they talk about dreams as true artifacts of our lives. Plus, if you are a patron, you can send in your dream and they will discuss them - on the podcast. Some really interesting writers I know listen to this on the sly.

I Decided to View Getting Old As A Punk Performance

Yes, it’s a startlingly ugly photo. And you know what? Iggy doesn’t care. And that’s what I love about him. Iggy Pop is showing us that getting old is the ultimate countercultural act. In the age of face filters and menacing-looking wellness influencers, his life-battered look is a shock and such a relief. At age 79, this man will not keep his shirt on.

To be fair, this is not a new phase for him. The former vocalist for the Stooges has been at the rough end of the punk scene for most of my adult life. As a young performer, he drew attention by mutilating himself on stage. In the 1970s, decided life was better than death. He checked into rehab and then with his bestie, the late David Bowie. Together, they moved to Berlin to get clean. Now, fifty sober years later, he’s not making the scene, he IS the scene. This year, my dude wrapped up a vibrant punk rock tour in England by having himself wheeled off stage in a coffin. (Please google it. It is hilarious.)

His comment: “How you exit is equally important to how you enter." Which is sort of the perfect sentiment to wrap up 2025.

So I’m exiting this year with some measured optimism for what is ahead.

In spite of everything, because of everything, I am feeling there are real possibilities in 2026 for us to thrive. I hope it will happen for you. And I hope it will happen for me. And if thriving is not what The Fates have in store for us, let’s commit to another year of growing older.

And let’s grow older like Iggy.

Around the country, consumers are paying more for electricity. If you live in NYC, your rates are determined by The New York Public Service Commission (you can look up the members here) whose job it is to modify or approve requests by National Grid, (whose CEO John Pettigrew’s annual salary is $7.5 million), and Con Ed (whose CEO Tim Cawley pulls down $12 million/year)

In New York and around the country, the relationship between regulators and energy company executives is very cosy. So cosy, in fact, that electricity costs in NYC have already gone up 13% in the last five years, and will rise another 10% by 2028. And that’s if you run your AC at the same temperature for the same duration year after year, which is unlikely with our fast warming planet.

The reason: data centers use electricity at a scale that is hard to comprehend. And these private companies need a solid dependable grid to keep their gears turning. To keep that energy flowing, utility companies are raising rates on regular users— you, me, your kids, your great aunt— in order to build a bigger, better grid for these energy guzzlers.

In some urban areas, data center consumption is already pushing that grid to the brink. In Northern Virginia, for example, data centers now consume 20% of that county’s total energy usage. But many of these data centers are being located in rural areas as well. This bipartisan group says 25% of the energy load will soon come from data centers.

As you probably know, there is a big push on a federal level to open more data centers all over the country to insure our AI supremacy. But who is going to make them pay their fair share? Right now, regular people are paying for infrastructure for private companies that BOAST will plan to take our jobs, and the jobs of our children.

OK. Here Comes Peg’s “Moment of History”

It wasn’t always this way. At the turn of the last century, railroads were the AI of their day. Investors threw their money into laying down tracks and building engines. It was exciting! It heralded a new era of connectivity and commerce. In the Hudson Valley, two railroads joined together to form a single rail road to connect the manufacturing towns along the Hudson River to Albany. The railroad companies built their own hydroelectric power plants to run it and sold the excess back to the citizens for a cut rate.

Imagine if we demanded AI companies build their own power plants. Open their own nuclear reactors. Set up new solar farms or hydro electric generators. As it is now, these billion dollar AI companies look at our public utilities — the electrical grid that the “delivery fee” on your monthly electric bill built and maintained— as a resource to be exploited.

What Does This Have to Do with Mamdani?

I’m encouraged to see that right now, Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger is pushing to have data centers billed at a special rate. (Good for her!) But some elected officials are going further. A coalition of young upstate politicos and their vocal supporters are suggesting that we get rid of the toothless regulatory body failing to reign in the for-profit energy companies. Instead, Assembly member Sarahana Shrestha, who was co-chair of the upstate Democratic Socialists Party, and state Senator Michelle Hinchey, want to dispense with energy behemoth Fortis, whose subsidiary controls energy upstate. (And whose shareholders have gleaned 9.5% dividend every year for the last 20 years.) This socialist firebrand proposes replacing Fortis with the Hudson Valley Power Authority, a non-profit that could access cheaper financing and generate its own power. And make sure upstaters aren’t paying for AI data center infrastructure.

Mamdani alarmists take note. Although I’m not a huge fan of Theodore Roosevelt he made an interesting equivalency in this speech. So I’ll end it with this.

His point here is that if you don’t want state sponsored socialism, you need to reign in business interests running roughshod over the interests of regular people.

Listen, or read below.

Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

Your dog barks;
The wild god smiles.
He holds out his hand and
The dog licks his wounds,
Then leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table
And the moon leans in.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

Good, right? Learn more about this poet here. Or buy his book.

But Lara, I said, (in my best, patronizing tone) I’m sure there are student-run news sites in schools.

Womp womp.

I was wrong. Schools that served affluent kids had ‘em. Kids that go to less resourced schools? Nope.

With a bit of a boost from me, Lara launched PressPass NYC and soon after was joined by WNYC super star/public radio doyenne Beth Fertig.

They’ve been working tirelessly to start and sustain school news sites all over the five boroughs with particular emphasis on schools in low income communities. They’ve started 30 new sites and 14 more are coming online this school year. They train advisors, send editors to bootcamp, they provide mentorship and support to keep these news sites thriving.

We want this for the young people in our city. Why? Students who are touched by this work learn:

How to distinguish between types of evidence — What is anecdotal? What is a trend? What is hearsay? What is verifiable and how?

How to compare conflicting results — people see things differently. How do you think about that? How do you represent that?

How to evaluate credibility and motives — where does this information come from and who stands to gain from you reproducing it without a critical lens?

Most importantly, students learn to synthesize information from various sources to form a tentative reasoned judgement.

This is powerful work on a small budget. It is fundamental to sustaining our democracy.

I was so impressed, I joined their board. I want this so much for our city.

Find out more here. Or if you can, donate.

Her adventures are, by today’s standards, shockingly reckless. But she is never thoughtless. She is candid about her lie-awake-at-night anguish when the motor is dead and the boat is about to be splintered into pieces (presumably killing them all.) She writes very well about getting lost in the deep woods, watching your children climb a rock high above the crashing surf and realizing the moss they are on is sliding. Her spare prose made me feel the prickle in the back of your neck feeling when you have the ESP that your child is in danger. (It was grizzly bears.) She writes about the deep thinking you can do when the sun, the water and the sky are your main sources of stimulation. It’s a super fun read.

Although I never want to see any of my nearest and dearest menaced by a grizzly bear, I resonate with her parenting. There is something to be said for having adventures with your children especially if they are outdoors, in nature, open ended, exciting, physically challenging, sometimes exhausting and yes, a little risky. It’s good for your kids to see you preparing, training, assessing your limits, making decisions under duress, coping with the dawning understanding that you are lost and it is getting dark. Also, it’s good to have fun together — especially the kind of Type 2 fun that is really hard when it is happening and deeply hilarious after. Also, epic; the hearty eating that follows.

I’ve had many adventures with my offspring — lots of hiking, kayaking, biking, skiing, and some rock climbing. I look at those experiences (may they continue) as times of deep respect, opportunities for curiosity, wonder and revelation. They are times of profound connection. I treasure them.

It took me a minute to come to this. I tried, and failed, to parent in a different way. Back in the day, I read a column in the Wall Street Journal from a law professor named Amy Chua who posited that it was a sign of good parenting to bully, brow beat, and punish your child into doing what you wanted them to do.

Because you, the parent, had their best interest at heart. And you, the adult, knew what was best. And your job was to make them do well in school, be popular and accomplished.

My friends, I was all in. And for a hot second, I was a Tiger Mom.

The conflagration began almost immediately.

When I look back on it, I was, to my present shame, so righteous. As a Tiger Mom, I was able, nay, empowered, to see their futures with my X-ray eyes. I pushed aside the fundamental and enduring reality that our children will live in a world their parents can never dream of. God as my witness, I vowed, I would place myself between us and the reality of time. This was for their own good!

The whole strategy failed spectacularly.

It turns out, our offspring were individuals, even when they were very small. They had their own ideas about the world, and how they should be in it. They loved things, people and experiences that I could plainly see would not optimize their chances of success in the workplace of the future. (Like I knew!) They cared not one whit for my views on that matter.

And they were 100% right. I know those days caused us all pain. The offspring have, in their kind and generous way, shown me more grace and forgiveness about that disastrous chapter than I probably deserve.

It turns out, even the original Tiger Mom eventually recanted.

I hope she has since had a chance to take her kids hiking. Or skiing. I’m mixed on whether she should be menaced by a bear.

And nothing hammers it home for me like the tax dodge used by private equity executives and hedge fund managers to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. Because of this ridiculous loophole, the uber rich actually get a tax break on a massive chunk of their income. They pay, proportionally, less for profiting from the destruction of the middle class. How can this be? Behemoths like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Carlyle Group, Citadel, Soros Management Fund and Apollo Global Management hire lobbyists that literally buy our presidential candidate and Senate leaders with campaign contributions —in 2020 they spent about $805 million — to make sure this loophole is not closed even though there is bi-partisan consensus that it’s just plain wrong.

‘Cause The Other Guys are Really Corrupt! Eh, No So Fast.

To be clear, this is a Dem problem as well as a GOP problem. Here’s a chart from OpenSecrets.org, an organization I encourage you to support. It shows contributions by private equity and hedge fund managers to our elected officials, broken down by party.

Kamala Harris’s failed campaign got $15 million. Donald Trump’s $5 million. Nikki Haley got $4 million. The last time anyone tried to change this, back in 2022, as part of the negotiation around passing the Inflation Reduction Act, private banking lobbyists poured millions into the coffers of Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Krysten Sinema (then D-Az) who, held up the bill until the amendment was dropped.

What Billionaires Buy When They Buy Our Elected Leaders

They get a lucrative tax loophole called “carried interest.” And it’s not some abstract accounting term dreamed up by Deloitte. In fact, it dates back to the 1100s when the captains of sloops running cargo ships in the Mediterranean pushed back against carrying spices and luxury goods for big merchant companies. The food sucked, the boats were stinky, the weather was unpredictable and… pirates. To incentivize those ship captains, the merchants gave a chunk of the profits from the sales of the spices to the sea captains who had “carried” the stuff. So they had “carried interest.”

Private equity got this baked into the tax-code in the 1950s, when the tax rate on the highest income earners was 91%. (That’s right. Back in the 1950s, the notion that after a certain cut off, your income went for schools, roads, police, health clinics was the American Way. ) Private equity accountants argued their clients were taking risks to back innovative and risky companies — a good move for our economy — and that they deserved a share of the spoils. They prevailed but not that many people cared: private equity, back then, was a tiny part of the US financial system. Not wanting to draw attention to themselves, everyone stayed really really quiet about what a sweet deal carried interest was for like 40 years.

Fast forward: we see the impact of private equity everywhere — in the destruction of our towns, the closing of stores and factories, loss of stable, middle skill level jobs, and rising costs. Instead of investing in innovation, the operative model for these rapacious companies is to use other people’s money to “invest” in any sort of enterprise with a pulse, take on debt (whose payments go to their friends who also happen to be in private equity), squeeze costs, reduce the workforce, and sell off parts of a company bit by bit. Take a look at what happened at Red Lobster (hint: it wasn’t the free shrimp). Wonder why your vet bills are so high? Private equity. Getting expensive to find contractors to fix up your house? Yep.

And as we stand among the smoldering embers of middle class America, know this: these entities are getting preferential rate on their taxes to destroy us.

Let me give you some idea of the magnitude of this hustle: money being managed by private equity has soared to $13 trillion and is expected grow to $20 trillion by 2030 The executives in this business get paid by taking 2% of the funds they manage and also 20% for meeting certain profit goals— (ie firing people, closing stores, jacking up the price for your new roof or your cat’s vaccination) And the 20% is what they get the tax breaks on. Closing this loophole would put $14 billion into the coffers to build roads, improve airports, get some decent public transportation, launch universal childcare, reopen rural hospitals, fund a national health care program for working people like the old codgers on Medicare get.

Both mainstream parties are now rushing to kowtow to working Americans — the majority— who are feeling the pinch.

But when your party leaders are controlled by interests that work against the people you say you want to help, your “affordability” messaging isn’t going to land.

Although billionaires (Bless their hearts) are freaking out about Zohran Mamdani’s popularity, and imagining they are being targeted by a torch and pitchfork wielding mob, they have it wrong. The core of Zohran’s messaging is not “eat the rich” but “pay your fair share.”

It feels so dang wholesome. It feelsAmerican. And, baby, it’s hitting hard.

I’m not a political strategist but to my lights, the first mainstream party to come out against the carried interest loophole wins big.

My read of history is that this country was founded by ruthless capitalists and religious fanatics. So none of us should be surprised to meet our fellow Americans who are flat-earthers, religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists and mumbo-jumbo spouting MAHA mommies.

Which is what caused me to resonate so strongly with some recent writing by public theologian Brian McLaren, a (former Evangelical) pastor and author who wrote a book called Faith After Doubt.

He wrote that the Enlightenment gave us this idea that given the facts, rationality would prevail and members of our community would be able to come to some consensus about a way forward. Reason, logic, critical thinking — those things, Enlightenment philosophers told us, are universal and unchanging in all people.

In his subtle, super-compassionate way, McLaren suggested that maybe we got it wrong. And, my conjecture, maybe the notion of universal rational thought was based on a kind of cultural hegemony- “we” all believe this because “we” are all educated in roughly the same way in roughly the same geographic location with roughly the same history and life experiences. Social media has connected us, I’m thinking, and we’ve learned just how different we really are.

He suggests that if we want to restore reason to public discourse we have to understand that we all view life through our own prisms. And it is our duty to examine our biases and articulate for ourselves how they shape our thoughts and actions.

And then he created this list of biases, which I loved and found really instructive. And I pass them on to you.

His words. His descriptions.

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.

Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I am more likely to respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their own incompetence and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.

Constancy/Baseline Bias: Early in life, our brains set a baseline of normalcy based on what we constantly experience day to day. What our brains determine as normal or constant becomes acceptable to us. Later in our life, our baselines may be reset when a new normal becomes our constant experience. [This is the flipside of Catastrophe Bias.]

Certainty/Closure Bias: Our brains find it difficult to rest when we feel uncertainty, so we would often rather reach for premature closure on an unwarranted certainty than live with appropriate uncertainty. We may even prefer a pessimistic certainty to a potentially optimistic uncertainty.

Cleverness Bias: Our brains are vigilant to protect us against deceptions, and this vigilance against deception can make us so habitually skeptical that we become cynical, rejecting all good or encouraging information as naïve. In protecting ourselves from danger, we can unintentionally insulate ourselves from positive possibilities.

Any others to add?

More Gifted Education, Please. Not Less.

Zohran made conservatives and affluent parents crazy when he said he’d said stop testing kids in kindergarten for the gifted program. Which if you know anything about education is a good idea. Testing kids who can’t button their own jackets is… silly.

That said: if you are against the gifted education programs in NYC and you attended a private school or a public school in an affluent community, you need to check your privilege. You are battling against giving poor kids access to the very thing that you got— an enriched curriculum that matched your ability. The very thing that gave you entrance into your fancy college or your private northeastern university. If you are against gifted education broadly, I will wager a year’s salary that you have no idea what it feels like to have your brain brown out because you are stuck in a class of uninterested or remedial learners, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Parents want a challenging curriculum for their children. They are uniquely attuned to exactly when their kids get bored, and what happens then. And the lack of a challenging curriculum, coupled with the stripping away of interesting extra-curricular activities, has parents opting out of NYC public schools. Pre-covid, 1.1 million kids attended NYC public schools. During COVID, 200,000 of them vanished. The numbers stabilized somewhat with the flood of migrants into NYC but are dropping again — we lost 70,000 students last year. This is not a thriving system.

But there are thriving schools. Take a look at what is happening at the Brooklyn Landmark School in Bed-Stuy. The think tank Future-Ed allowed me to travel around the country and find outstanding programs and this is one. You can read the entire report here. It’s a school that serves low income kids, almost entirely black and Latino. Kids who do well in their academic subjects in second grade are invited to apply for the advanced learning program in third grade. There is no Hunger Games style testing. They enriched learning kids take classes together where the teachers provide a detailed, interesting, project based curriculum and get exposed to tons and tons of knowledge about the world, just like one of my heroes ED Hirsch recommended. They blossom. Their parents love it. At Brooklyn Landmark, other teachers in the school started adapting that enriched curriculum for all the kids instead of the dumbed down test prep crap. This is a model for the city.

Done right, a NYC “gifted” class would be about the equivalent of what private school parents pay $70,000 a year for, or public school kids in Scarsdale (median family income +$600,000) get. Classrooms that promote deep literacy, wide, detailed knowledge about the world, the ability to think clearly and critically and interact with other students will cement parents/taxpayers in NYC.

To be sure, there’s plenty about the NYC gifted programs that need to be fixed. First, let’s drop the term “gifted” with all its creepy associations with eugenics. Don’t start it in kindergarten — that’s unsupportable. And the criticism that gifts programs as they are currently administered promote racial segregation is spot on. Let’s fix that by putting “enriched” classrooms in every grade in every school.

This is not a novel idea. In the 1970s, every elementary, middle and public high school in every neighborhood had a gifted program. Back then, the specialized high school, those jewels in the crown of our system, were not just White and Asian kids because we actively cultivated a pipeline of academically able kids from all communities.

This is the way. Eager to hear your thoughts.

Coming Up: Making NYC Schools Better: Part 2