I had a brief conference with Xuân’s teachers this morning. They described him as energetic, curious, and strong-willed. On the positive side, his strong-willed allows him to focus on a project for long time. On the negative side, he has to have something when he wants it badly. Xuân loves to be physical. He enjoys instruments and often use toys to make noise. He also loves to sing.

They are working with him on using toys and food for their intended purposes. He might be bored with the toys and the food; therefore, he uses his creativity to do something else. Shouldn’t we encourage his imagination? At home, he turned everything into musical instruments.

They are also working on getting him to play gently. With two older brothers, Xuân can be a bit rough, especially when the older brothers don’t physically hit him back. I kept telling them to stop him. He should not be hitting. We have been through these before. Đạo used to get into trouble a lot for scratching other kids.

Now he is very gently. Sometimes he just unintentional plays a bit rough. Like last night, he bit Xuân while they played together. He was meant to bite lightly, but he left his teeth marks on Xuân’s finger. It drives me nuts that he does this repeatedly. The other day, he meant to touch Đan’s face gently, but he slapped him with red finger prints. He’ll learn one day after I yell at him enough.

The whole world knew. He fucked porn stars. He had prostitutes pissed on him. He grabbed women by the pussy. He harassed girls sexually. He cheated on his previous wives. Of course, he cheated on her too. God knew and she knew. Neither of them gives a fuck. A pig will always be a fucking pig, and yet a pig can be the president of the United States too. The bar can’t get any lower than this.

Lúc trước thấy một chị họ bên vợ tắm cho thằng con 13 tuổi tôi hơi ngạc nhiên. Giờ thằng lớn đã gần 9 tuổi mà còn phải có ba phụ tắm cho.

Sáng nay nó muốn ăn cereal và muốn tôi đi làm cho nó. Tôi bảo con tự làm được mà sao phải. Chỉ cần lấy tô, muỗng rồi đổ sữa và cereal vào. Thế mà nó cũng cằn nhằn đợi tôi la mới thôi.

Hôm nọ nó bảo rằng nó chưa có khuynh hướng đi đại học vì nó vẫn còn muốn ngủ chung với ba. Chú tôi từng nói nếu để nó ngủ chung nó sẽ ngủ đến 18 tuổi. Chắc là vậy rồi.

Sam Dolnick writes about “The Man Who Knew Too Little”:

Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan.

He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.

When I lived in Poughkeepsie, New York and worked at Vassar College, I had no internet and no cable in my apartment. I spent most of my nights reading and watching movies. I knew so little about politics. I wish I could go back to those days now.

Ellen Barry:

Limited risks are increasingly cast by experts as an experience essential to childhood development, useful in building resilience and grit.

Outside the Princess Diana Playground in Kensington Gardens in London, which attracts more than a million visitors a year, a placard informs parents that risks have been “intentionally provided, so that your child can develop an appreciation of risk in a controlled play environment rather than taking similar risks in an uncontrolled and unregulated wider world.”

I am guilty as charged for being over-protective. I still watch every move my toddler does when he’s at the playground. My first boy fell down from the top of the slide. Thank goodness the ground was mulch not concrete. My second boy never seemed to learn his lesson and I don’t want to spend hours in the ER room afterward, which we did several times already. Call me a sucker and a typical parent all you want, but I rather be cautious than sorry.

David Remnick:

The next significant chapter in this stress test for liberal values will be the midterm elections of November, 2018. If the Democratic Party fails to win a majority in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, Trump will be further emboldened. His capacity for recklessness will multiply and go unrestrained. The Republican leadership, which has already proved shocking in its cowardice, will be even less inclined to challenge him.

The Republican leaders are beyond coward. They are a bunch of fucking sycophants.

A practical guide on typography that covers everything from classifications to principles. It is well-written with tons of visual examples. The text face in the book is set in Retina, by Tobias Frere-Jones. It’s a good choice. Unfortunately Poulin who designed the book himself ruined it with vertical lines. They are so distracting. In addition, the type designer profiles, which are written in a couple paragraphs, are set in bold font with vertical lines. It is so disappointing to see a book on typography is not so readable.

Pamela Druckerman:

Modern parents spend far more time with their children than parents did in the 1960s. Yes, a mother reading work emails at the playground has briefly stopped interacting with her child. But Kamenetz — a mother of two — says if she couldn’t do that, she’d need to be at the office.

We know it’s crucial to stimulate and speak to young children, and our generation of parents complies to a possibly unprecedented — and exhausting — degree. Kamenetz notes that we need occasional breaks from this. She bemoans “an ideological stance that judges mothers for not being fully available to their children at all times and that scapegoats working-class families in particular.”

What do Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Sean Spicer, Stephen Miller, and Mitt Romney have in common? That’s right. They’re all Sucking Up to Trump. In this short, enlightening book, Deborah Parker and Mark Parker cover the history, art, and science of sycophancy. Other terms for sycophancy includes lickspittle, ass-kisser, bootlicker, and brownnoser. It’s an engaging and informing read; however, I wish the leading in the typesetting is a bit more generous. It feels tight.

As I was browsing the Google Fonts directory, the name Vernon Adams popped all the time. He has designed 51 font families for Google. Out of curiosity, I wanted to find out more about him. Unfortunately, Adams died two years ago after a motor scooter accident. His father-in-law has written a short blog post about him and his work as a type designer. His legacy lives on as his unfinished fonts are continued to be worked on from other designers. Thank you and rest in peace, Adams.