POLITICO: 'Republicans POUNCE' on Pro-Hamas Protesters Burning US Flags

The U.S. military said on Wednesday that it had intercepted two Russian and two Chinese military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, although they stayed in international airspace.

Ahead of President Biden’s first address in the Oval Office since announcing he was dropping out of the presidential race, the North American Aerospace Defense Command Public Affairs (NORAD) says it sent out fighter jets to intercept two Russian Tu-95 "Bear" bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers off the coast of Alaska. In a press release from NORAD, the agency confirmed that they detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC H-6 military aircraft operating in the...

President Joe Biden, speaking to the nation from the Oval Office Wednesday evening, framed his decision to step aside from the 2024 presidential race as a matter of saving democracy. “I revere this office. But I love my country more,” Biden said in a rare speech that marked the beginning of the closing chapter of his presidency and half-century in public service. “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president. But in defense of democracy, which is at stake – and is more...

When my uncle was elected President, I recognized what a highly privileged position I would be in. I would have some access to the White House. And as long as that was true, I wanted to make sure I used that access for something positive. I was eager to champion something my wife, Lisa, and I were deeply passionate about, something we lived every day: the challenges for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.

When taking on a daunting task, such as buying a house, starting a new career, or making a significant personal change, the most important thing is to establish one’s priorities to get the job done.It makes sense to tackle the hard part first, but often, we get hung up on the smaller, easier tasks that prevent us from taking on the issue that could make or break the project. That’s when great thinkers use the “monkey and pedestal” analogy to decide where to place their time and energy.The analogy is simple: If you’re going to create a show in which a monkey stands on a pedestal and recites Shakespeare, it’s best to first focus on teaching the monkey to memorize “Romeo and Juliet” rather than work on building the perfect pedestal.If the monkey can’t do Shakespeare, then there’s no point in building the pedestal. "Tackle the monkey first. Don't use up all your resources on the easy stuff,” Astro Teller, captain of Alphabet X, Google’s special project division, said, according to Inc. So, if you are looking to buy a house, it’s best first to arrange a down payment because, without that, it doesn’t matter if you’ve found the best neighborhood or have chosen a real estate agent. If you are starting a new career, ensuring you are qualified for the next step and have proper credentials and experience is more important than searching for your dream company.In other words, don’t waste your resources on the low-hanging fruit.“Low-hanging fruit is, by definition, pedestal building, offering the illusion of progress rather than any real ground gained toward reaching an ultimate goal,” side hustle guru Steven Imke writes on his blog. “What makes them low hanging is the fact they are easy, and you already know how to do it. Building pedestals means spending time, money, and other resources on things that don’t bring you closer to the question of whether you can achieve what you are striving for.”On his blog, Teller explains that Alphabet spent a lot of time working on a project to turn seawater into carbon-neutral fuel. The team got to work on the monkey, determining whether they could make their fuel cost competitive. Unfortunately, the team couldn’t do it, so the project was abandoned. But, if the team had started working on distributing the fuel for the first few years and then turned its focus on how to make it cost-effective, they would have wasted tons of resources to get little in return.The California high-speed rail project is an example of failure to focus on the monkey. Annie Duke, author of "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away," shared the California high-speed rail project story on The Brainy Business podcast as an example of what can happen when we pay too much attention to the pedestal and not the monkey. The project, which began in 2008, is to create a high-speed rail from San Francisco in the north of the state to San Diego in the south. The problem? They started working on track in the state's interior instead of focusing on the real problem, figuring out how to build track through two mountain ranges south of Silicon Valley and north of Los Angeles."Around 2015, they're like, 'Oops, wait. There are these big mountain ranges that seems like a really big problem for completing the line.' They now estimate the budget to be somewhere around $80 billion," nearly four times the original estimate, she says. In the meantime, California is still building the track in the state's interior while it figures out whether it's even possible to build through the mountain ranges. Or, in terms of this conversation, focusing on the low-hanging fruit.The monkey and the pedestal analogy may seem like a warning against attempting anything too complicated. But at its core, it’s all about getting the hard part done first, and then once that’s achieved, all you have to worry about is the low-hanging fruit or the things you probably know how to do already. Do the hard part first, and then it’s smooth sailing until you achieve your goal.

When you have kids, summers are a flurry of activities. Going to amusement parks and zoos, playing outside, eating ice cream—lots and lots of ice cream. And then, the preteen years hit and all that changes. Suddenly a kid’s interest shifts. They spend less time hanging with the fam and more hanging with friends, or alone. Though this transition is natural, it can still be painful for parents and make them feel like they’re not doing enough to evoke that same kind of magic the season once held. As Cyndy Gatewood’s three children have all entered teen and preteen chapters, she began to feel this particular kind of pain, which she called “summer guilt.” In a now-viral TikTok, Gatewood described summer guilt as "the guilt that comes when you have teens and preteens during the summer, and you're home with them, but they're too old to go to a playground everyday … and now they just want to be in their rooms. And it's like, should I be doing something? Should I be taking them somewhere everyday? But when I ask them … they don't want to." “I still have that constant guilt that I’m not doing enough. That their summer’s being wasted,” she says, and these feelings only get exacerbated when she sees other families with younger kids enjoying themselves on social media. Though she knows that this shame is something she’s putting on herself, Gatewood still asked if there were other parents out there who would relate. And boy, could they. @cyndygdub My kids are 14 and under and the transition from little kids to big kids can be hard on us parents #fyp #motherhood #teens #parenthood #summer #momguilt #preteens #kids ♬ Backsound Puisi - Audiolist Productions “The teen transition is so hard. It’s hard to bring them joy now, used to be so easy,” one parent lamented. Another wrote, “My heart broke when my son stopped wanting to go explore the new parks.” A few folks chimed in to reassure that just because teens preferred to be in their room, it didn’t have to mean that summer was wasted. In fact, that solitude could also contain some pretty wonderful memories. “I still remember so clearly being a teenager and my favorite thing in the world was being in my room on my own doing my own thing. Don’t feel guilty, it’s healthy to spend time on your own. They don’t need to be busy, to be doing something every moment of every day,” one person wrote. Another added, “...then I remember my own teenage years, and I know how peaceful I was in my room. I had my first Walkman, listened to music, translated the lyrics, read books. It didn’t feel like a waste of summer.” Many reflected that perhaps the root emotion Gatewood was feeling wasn’t guilt, but grief. As one person put it, “It’s more like grieving a life that you no longer have which you recall was the best time of your life. And it’s nothing you did wrong and nothing you can do to preserve it.” By opening up about her feelings, Gatewood told Good Morning America that countless people have commented to thank her for putting this very relatable situation into tangible words. "It makes me emotional, because it really is such a beautiful thing when we can open up about our struggles, especially as parents, and find out that we're not alone in these feelings,” she shared. And since sharing her video, Gatewood has seemed to take on a more nuanced perspective on this new parenting chapter. "It's a beautiful thing to watch your kids grow up. But we have to evolve with that. And that's what I'm learning right now.”

Studying a language other than your own native tongue is always a trip. Wrapping your head around completely different grammar and syntax rules, trying to create sounds your mouth isn't used to, sometimes learning entirely new alphabets (or characters when there is no alphabet)—all just to be able to communicate with more of your fellow human beings. (Seriously, when are we going to decide on an actual universal language?) Linguistics is wild, as evidenced by Japanese teacher Hikari's video demonstrating what Japanese introductions would sound like if they were translated literally into English. One of the first greetings you learn in Japanese is "hajimemashite," which is generally interpreted as "Nice to meet you," or "How do you do"—something you say when you meet someone. But the literal meaning of the phrase is "at the beginning" or "first time," which of course sounds odd in English. (Similarly to if you were to literally translate "How's it going?" from English to another language, the understood meaning of "How are you feeling right now?" wouldn't come through, since the words "it' and "going" have nothing to do with how you're feeling.)Then there are name introductions, which seem like they should just be straight up names, but aren't because of what they mean. "I'm Under the Forest." "I'm Inside the Field." Huh? And wait til you see how they share their ages. Watch: If Americans spoke like Japanese #japanese #japanesebelike #japaneselanguage #japaneseculture www.youtube.com To make things a little clearer, the name "Under the Forest" is almost certainly Morishita, a common last name in Japan. (Japanese people generally introduce themselves by last name.) The translation "under the forest" comes from Chinese characters used in Japanese, Kanji, that most Japanese last names are written in. Morishita is 森下 in Kanji, with 森 (mori) meaning "forest" and 下 (shita) meaning "below" or "under." "Inside the Field" would be the name Tanaka, with a similar explanation, but with different characters. As far as ages go, that's a whole other cultural quirk. In Japan, time is separated into imperial eras based on whoever the emperor is, and each era has a name. "Shining harmony 63" means she was born in 1998, or the 63rd year of the Shōwa ("shining harmony") era. Moons are months, and days are, well, days. Japan is the only country where Japanese is an official language, but thanks to the tech boom there in the 80s and 90s and the rise of the popularity of anime worldwide, the Japanese language has seen continually growing interest outside the archipelago nation. According to University of Pittsburgh, there are around 125 million Japanese speakers worldwide, with some concentrated pockets outside of Japan in Hawaii and Brazil. (Side note: Having studied Japanese myself, I can attest that it's a very fun language to learn. The alphabets and Kanji are the hardest parts—the phonetics are consistent and the grammar is quite logical, with far fewer exceptions to the rules than English.) In addition to videos like this one, Hikari offers Japanese lessons on her YouTube channel. You can follow her here.

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