It’s a slightly more grown-up version of the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question — but asked just as often. It’s not uncommon to be asked about career goals in job interviews, by curious parents, by mentors, or even just friends. An article published in Inc by Brian de Haaff is pretty common of the career goal genre. Quote:

Successful people take a methodical approach to setting career goals. It starts with defining what “success” means to them, then building a career roadmap to achieve that vision. It takes patience and perseverance, but it pays off. When it comes to career goals the equation is simple: Planning + Persistence = Success. The equation is simple, but it requires hard work.

There’s a certain simplicity to this kind of belief — that if you set yourself a goal and dedicate yourself to it, then your goals will be completed in some form or fashion over a long period of time. But — having a career goal isn’t necessarily a requirement. In fact, some argue that it’s not even realistic any longer.

In the July 2018 Harvard Business Review, Tania Luna and Jordan Cohen argue that, quote:

This vision of career growth no longer matches reality. We no longer need to be good at predicting the future; we now have to succeed when the future is unpredictable. We have to abandon the career myth and create a new framework for personal and professional growth. First, we tell employees that it is fine and even preferable not to have a concrete career path in mind. Being overly attached to a specific path can turn into a career trap — blinding us to nonlinear opportunities for growth.

And, as some people have made it a point to highlight in their own lives, having a single path you tie yourself to doesn’t work for everyone. As Chritine Drummond wrote in her blog, the Wallet Diet, quote:

I enjoy what I do and though I’m certainly not close to making bucket loads of money, my salary is enough to live comfortably. There are good days and bad at work but it’s not soul draining like many other office jobs can be. I have a good job but it’s not what I want to do forever. I don’t actually know what I want to do forever because I’m fine taking on any job that will give me the time, energy, and resources to focus on the things that matter the most to me.

Perhaps, of course, that’s the important thing. It’s not so much about what exactly your job or title is, but it may be more about the experiences you have. For some, career goals may be more the focus — and for others, it may be experiential goals.

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Humans rather enjoy fads, and while we may, as Joel Best points out in his paper The Illusion of Diffusion, point to kids toys as examples of fads, there are plenty of fads that appear in more adult, permanent, or institutional areas as much as it does kids toys.

That can be seen, as much as anything else, in the fads that appear in interior design. While technically a fashion and a fad are two different things, they are closely related enough to be considered together for this conversation.

Our homes are the spaces and places that we often spend large percentages of our income and a huge portion of our time — and often are places that the money comes into play when it comes to updating the interior design choices in those spaces.

But just because the fads are slower moving doesn’t mean that fads don’t exist.

A survey by Samsung completed with the intent of proving that people would want TVs to disappear into their design also revealed what interior design choices were considered the worst of the last 50 years. The winners included:

Toilet rugs and furry toilet seat covers

Taxidermy

Avocado colored bathroom fixtures

Waterbeds

Carpeted bathrooms

Textured ceilings and walls

Then again, type “interior design fads” into Google and you’ll see everything from nautical themes to shabby chic. It’s a matter of taste, which is something that individuals have, only influenced by society around them.

Looking for something to listen to this weekend?

May I suggest Tides? This is an audio drama that is not just sci-fi, its science-first fiction that is very much in the vein of The Martian or Arrival — it’s got story and science in equal parts, and characters that I seriously would love to have a drink with. Seriously, you should give this great sci-fi drama a listen, today.

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Kirsten McEwan a Research Associate at Cardiff University in 2014 wrote in The Conversation, quote:

It seems intuitive that many of us would fear and avoid emotions such as anger and anxiety. But some people fear positive emotions such as happiness and contentment, and of accepting the compassion, kindness and support of others. If you grow up in an environment characterized by threat, for example, allowing yourself to experience or trust these feelings means letting your guard down and being caught out. In this context, positive emotions become a risky business.

Setbacks, failures and other life stresses can also narrow our focus on the negatives in our lives and research has repeatedly shown that when individuals are in the midst of depression or anxiety, they focus on the threatening stimuli in their environment and fail to recognize, process and pay attention to the positive

There’s plenty of research on how useful and positive random acts of kindness can be for the person doing the kind act. There is decidedly less research about the act of receiving that kindness. What little bit I could find talks fairly extensively about how receiving kindness can be very difficult for some. There’s even a rather profane and violent sketch (that’s a little bit too accurate) from Amy Schumer about how difficult it is to accept praise or compliments – something that’s true across the gender spectrum, according to the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

That reticence is something that can have much deeper impacts, too. As Louise Hung wrote in XO Jane, quote

For most of my adult life, demonstrations of genuine kindness towards me have made me feel like my brain is short circuiting. I don’t know what to do, I immediately feel undeserving. I’m still that person who often fights back tears when someone is kind to me. I still struggle with accepting kindness from people in my daily life. Sometimes when I’m caught off guard a forgiving or understanding word from someone can reduce me to a bawling mess. But instead of shutting down and avoiding these situations, I try to embrace them. As I’ve learned […], there is no sense in protecting myself from kindness.

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We’ve talked a lot about food and cooking in previous episodes — Episodes 107, 297, 331, and more. I could opine for years about the importance and value of and philosophical awesomeness of food. But sometimes, after a long day and when we’re just tired and hungry, food that is fast, easy, and nourishing (perhaps to body, perhaps to soul) is usually the order of the day.

In Bee Wilson’s book Consider the Fork, which overs how the tools that we use for food are impacted by and create the way we eat, the author explores how what’s considered quick and nourishing is often determined, in part, by the tools we have around.

A smoothie or milkshake might be your favorite dinner, but to someone without a blender, it represents a lot of hand work that may or may not be worth it. Cereal with milk could be what you eat without thinking about it, but hand-making cereal is a whole different story.

In Bon Appetit’s Original Gourmet series, it took pastry chef Claire a week or more to figure out how to get anywhere close to dry cereal… and it still fell apart in milk.

This is something that I first started thinking about in the years right after college, when trying to make my favorite fast dinner of poached eggs and toast became a chore — due to the lack of a toaster.

In other words, the kind of foods that we cook and enjoy is heavily influenced by the ingredients that we have readily available, the tools that we are comfortable using and have, and what we have the emotional energy to eat – or not.

And that’s before we even get in to nutrition. Then again, there was a point in my life that I figured out that a soy mocha has the right combination of carbs, protein, and fat to sustain life, especially with multivitamins.

So after a very long day, what’s your go-to meal? Is it something you cook, or does it just involve tapping a few buttons to have something delivered?

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In the last few months, the question of what basis a person or business can refuse to serve a particular group has been in the news a lot in the United States. A recent Supreme Court case ruled 7-2 in favor of a Colorado baker who refused service to a gay couple.

It highly depends on what kind of news you’re reading to find different opinions on what that court case means. It was a 7-2 ruling, but is still considered a “narrow” ruling. Why? Because the ruling didn’t actually consider or look at the actual question of discrimination. Instead, the case was decided based on the fact that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted and made hostile statements towards the religion of the baker.

In other words, the decision didn’t say anything about the right to refuse service and everything to say about how the Colorado Civil Rights Commission handled the decision.

In other words, no change in specific law yet — but a lot more ambiguity has arisen. And that’s added on to the patchwork of laws about who can refuse service to whom and why.

The basic structure of existing law, as explained by LegalZoom, is, quote:

a system of anti-discrimination laws enacted by federal, state and local governments. The entire United States is covered by the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Places of “public accommodation” include hotels, restaurants, theaters, banks, health clubs and stores. Nonprofit organizations such as churches are generally exempt from the law. The right of public accommodation is also guaranteed to disabled citizens under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination by private businesses based on disability.

You’ll notice that sexual orientation is not on that list, which is a large part of why the question in Colorado came up — even though state and local law does not permit sexual orientation discrimination. But there are other types of discrimination that come into question as well. As the Washington Post outlined after an SEO service company refused to serve or employ Trump supporters, quote:

The First Amendment doesn’t apply to such private businesses, and federal law generally doesn’t ban political affiliation discrimination, so it ends up being a matter of state and local law. In New Mexico, for instance, discriminating against clients on this basis is legal — but firing employees, or threatening to fire them, based on their politics is a felony. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on “the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.” Seattle bans such discrimina

According to the Pew Research Center, in January of 2018, 25 percent of American adults are on LinkedIn. In 2013, that number was at just 17%. Current usage is just a few percentage points away from Snapchat, as well as Twitter, Pinterest, and WhatsApp.

In other words, it’s not a wildly runaway popular network, but it certainly has a fairly dedicated usage base.

That same Pew report had a few other interesting takeaways — that unlike many social networks, there is an equal split between men and women on the network, and 50% of users have a college degree or more.

What I find particularly interesting is what Google search suggestions reveal about what people tend to think about LinkedIn. Those search suggestions include things such as:

Why would I want to use LinkedIn?

Is LinkedIn a dating site?

How many countries are on LinkedIn?

When I’m giving presentations about social media in my professional life as a social media manager, LinkedIn is often the network that I suggest people who quote-unquote “hate social media” maintain as a way of keeping some kind of online presence with a more professional bent. There is, of course, the constant debate of what a network “should” be versus what users create on and with the network.

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According to the 2016 Beepi Consumer Automotive Index (which, to be fair, came from a company selling online car sales), 87% of Americans dislike something about car shopping at dealerships and 61% feel they’re taken advantage of while there. 52% of car shoppers feel anxious or uncomfortable at dealerships.

In other words, Americans generally HATE car dealerships — partially because it’s one of those areas that has a very defined power dynamic where it’s easy to feel taken advantage of. Add on to that fact that vehicles are generally large purchases that are complex and complicated, and often not well understood… and, well… it’s a difficult mix.

Which probably makes it not entirely surprising that private party sales — not at dealerships — have been on the rise. In 2013, CNW Research reported that, quote:

casual, private party sales will be running 22% higher than a year ago and are selling a higher volume of used vehicle sales units than independent dealers.

Beyond both of these options, though, most of the research says something entirely different — that most people are shopping online and preferencing “no haggling” prices — though the jury is still out on if that benefits the buyer or the dealership more.

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Kids LOVE asking questions. Depending on the research that you look at, it could be anything from 43 to 60 questions a day, and those questions run the gamut from easy to mind-bendingly difficult. My nephew, a few weeks ago, asked why time moves forward instead of in circles.

I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that one, but at the same time, the kinds of questions that kids ask are a special kind of magic. It helps create the basis of their understanding of the world — an understanding that can be adjusted through later questioning, but creates a basis.

A study published in 2008 in the Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development outlined this importance in saying, quote:

[…] the role of children’s questions in their cognitive development has been largely overlooked. If questions are a force in cognitive development, the following must be true:

(1) children must actually ask questions that gather information;

(2) children must receive informative answers to their questions if they are able to be of use to cognitive development;

(3) children must be motivated to get the information they request, rather than asking questions for other purposes such as attention;

(4) the questions children ask must be relevant and of potential use to their cognitive development;

(5) we must see evidence that children’s questions help them in some way-that is, that they can ask questions for a purpose, and use the information they receive purposefully to successfully achieve some change of knowledge state.

Knowing this, it’s still not surprising that parents often struggle with kids questions. A survey of 2,000 parents in 2012 revealed that two-thirds of parents said they struggled with the questions their kids ask, and one-fifth of the parents admitted that if they don’t know an answer, they sometimes make up an explanation or pretend that no one knows.

While there are the tough questions that everyone expects — why is the sky blue, how do planes stay up, where do babies come from… it’s usually the ones you don’t expect that are the most confusing.

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In January of 2018, Grand View Research reported that the beer and cider market in the United States was growing, with a compounded annual growth rate over 11%. That same report found that, quote:

The beer and cider market in the U.S. contributed around 67.8 billion to the country’s economy and has provided over 456,000 full-time jobs

That growth, however, isn’t equal, and is growing at very different rates.

According to the Brewers Association, Overall U.S. beer volume sales were down 1% in 2017, whereas craft brewer sales continued to grow at a rate of 5% by volume, reaching 12.7% of the U.S. beer market by volume.

Cider, alternatively, is growing at practically a breakneck speed. According to The Cyder Market, who collates statistics on the cider industry:

As of January 2018, the Cyder Market survey includes 820 makers of cider/cyder and perry located in 48 USA States and the District of Columbia. This total is an over 250% increase in cider makers and 36% increase in cider producing States since their initial 2014 Survey.

As Forbes reported in 2018, quote:

Four percent of legal drinkers cite cider as their boozy beverage of choice, compared to 1% a decade ago. Cider controls .4% of the alcoholic beverage category – a small but mighty number when you consider that it started at .06% a decade-and-a-half ago.

So why is cider growing so quickly, even faster than craft beer by some standards? One of the things that multiple sources pointed out, and that Five Thirty Eight highlighted, was:

Although exact figures aren’t easy to come by, industry watchers estimate that cider drinking runs about 50-50 between men and women, compared to something closer to a 70-30 ratio for beer.

Of course, maybe it’s neither beer nor cider. Flavored malt beverages — things like alcoholic lemonade or pre-mixed drinks that can be purchased in the same aisle as beer and cider.

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If you ever want to throw a bomb into a PTA meeting, try discussing sex education. It’s a topic that’s almost always assured to bring up high emotion, because it combines a discussion of relationships, values, religion, parenting, uncomfortable discussions, and about a dozen other things.

There’s at least two major sides to this debate… at least how it is normally framed. But that doesn’t really even begin to cover it. As with most major debates, it all depends on the criteria you’re using to judge the question — and what end goal you’re aiming for.

Between abstinence-only and what’s usually called “comprehensive” sex education, the only goal that seems to be agreed-upon is reducing sexual activity of teens and young adults. Body knowledge, contraceptive knowledge, relationship skills, understanding of shared cultural values… various types of programs all aim for different goals on all of these items. So if you stick with just the pure reduction of sexual activity as the goal, then what criteria are you looking at?

In August of 2002, Mónica Silva published a meta-analysis of sexual education studies in Health Education Research. Among other things, that study reported:

Programs that promote abstinence have become particularly popular with school systems in the US, according to Gilbert and Sawyer, 1994, and even with the federal government — Sexual abstinence program has a $250 million price tag [according to one 1997 study.]

No significant effect was associated to the type of intervention: whether the program was abstinence-oriented or comprehensive—the source of a major controversy in sex education—was not found to be associated to abstinent behavior. Only two moderators—parental participation and percentage of females—appeared to be significant in both univariate tests and the multivariable model.

But – you can find studies of various quantity and quality that quote-unquote prove just about any point you want to make about any type of sex education. There’s studies saying that abstinence-only education is heavily correlated with higher rates of STIs and teen pregnancy. On the other hand, there’s studies saying that any sex education at all delays the age of first sexual activity — and studies saying that comprehensive sex education increases discussion of (if not the amount of) sex that teens engage in.

In other words, this is one of those cases where determining what you value, and how you want to judge success, is a better place to start than research alone. In all likelihood, you already have an opinion. So I’d like to challenge you to ask yourself — and ask others — what values and what judges of success they are looking at, in order to attempt to speak a language similar enough to actually communicate.

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