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Books Parent Power Versus Big Tech Social media and smartphones have changed everything about being a kid. The Tech Exit explains how to reverse course. The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, By Clare Morell, Forum Books,pp. 256, $27.00 At this point in history, screen time for children can be considered “Lindy”—it has been done for a long time and seems to have staying power. The baby boomers tuned into Captain Kangaroo on weekday mornings. Gen Xers munched on cereal while watching The Electric Company. Millennials even learned a little bit of Spanish from Dora the Explorer. But somewhere along the way, screens—and our relationships with them—changed. It’s this change that inspired Clare Morell to write her debut book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. Morell, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, hasn’t always been a denizen of the ivory tower. Before joining EPPC, she worked at the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. Before that, she worked in Guatemala, trying to improve the justice system for children who were victims of the worst crimes imaginable. She’s seen the dark side of the internet, and she doesn’t want her fellow parents to be fooled by ineffective online pornography blockers or Instagram’s supposedly safe teen accounts. But The Tech Exit goes beyond the moral panic that pedophiles lurk around every digital corner. Through countless interviews with families from across the United States, Morell shows that smartphones and social media don’t just put kids in physical danger. They’ve changed everything about how children learn and socialize, and the negative effects on tweens’ and teens’ mental health have been enormous. When every school desk comes with a laptop and every friend group comes with a group chat, families can’t opt out of screens—or can they? “Phones have reoriented kids’ greatest aspirations from a higher purpose to a cul-de-sac of self-involvement. Technology is habituating our children to lives of endless consumption,” Morell writes. “As parents, our job is to consider what is forming our children and to manage what they are being formed into. Every time we hand our children a screen, technology answers that question for us.” Fortunately, per Morell, parents have more power than they think. She educates parents about online dangers they may not be aware of, from sextortion to cyberbullying, but she doesn’t just leave them with a list of “thou shalt nots.” Using the acronym FEAST, Morell shares a positive plan for families to exit tech (FEAST stands for Find Other Families; Explain, Educate, and Exemplify; Adopt Alternatives; Set Up Digital Accountability and Family Screen Rules; Trade Screens for Real-Life Responsibilities and Pursuits). It turns out that The Benedict Option for childhood technology use is the only option—Morell compares giving kids limited social media access to the harm reduction model of drug use. Even 15 minutes a day is too much, according to her research. Morell is aware that her plan will strike many parents as impossible—after all, she takes an even stricter stance than author of The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt, to whose work she responds. That’s why she humbly and non-judgmentally lays out the stakes. Today’s children are more likely than ever before to be exposed to disturbing, violent, and/or sexual material. Haidt’s thesis, which has attracted much criticism, is that smartphones are making children more depressed, anxious, and lonely. Morell largely assumes that her reader has already bought into this thesis (she is much less concerned with showing graphs of kids’ porn use and sleep deprivation than Haidt). Knowing that a parent who has picked up The Tech Exit is a parent who is already concerned about these issues, she doesn’t waste time trying to convince the reader that the kids are not all right. She details the deaths of Nylah Anderson, a 10-year-old who accidentally killed herself after watching a TikTok video about the dangerous “blackout challenge,” and Walker Montgomery, a 16-year-old who committed suicide after being sextorted by an account posing as a teenage girl. The accounts are hard to read. Also hard to read are the firsthand accounts from parents of feeling like they “lost” their child to social media and video game addictions. But the families Morell talks to always get a happy ending—parents push through the tantrums from their children as they put them through screen detoxes. The children eventually get used to the new normal and are able to thrive. Morell isn’t numb to the concerns of children and teens who will be “different” if they don’t have access to the same technology as their peers. “Your kid can’t be the only one,” Morell writes. “Children need friends who also aren’t on screens. And parents need to help their kids find those friends. When parents start coordinating with other parents to resist phones, the kids without phones naturally gravitate toward one another because they talk about in-person things.” Not having a smartphone is probably hardest for high-schoolers, who are often expected to log in to apps for homework and sports practice updates, but this isn’t a reason to cave, according to the parents whom Morell interviews. “If a ‘friend’ is so shallow that because you are not on the group text or social media chat, then you are dead to them and they won’t reach out separately to make sure you know about the social event, then that’s not a true friend,” one father says in the book. It’s the kind of lesson we all have to learn sooner or later. The high-schoolers in the families Morell interviews aren’t totally tech-free. They shop for clothes online. They text with friends using so-called dumbphones. (Morell shares a list of non-smartphone alternatives in the appendix.) They watch movies with family and friends. Most importantly, they do buy into their parents’ ideas about protecting them from the internet (the “E” in FEAST). Sometimes the kids bellyache about the various hardships that come with being low-tech. But some of them even eschew smartphones as college students when they’re no longer bound by their families’ rules. It’s almost incomprehensible how much of an advantage these Tech Exit kids will have in college and beyond. Their attention spans haven’t been ruined by TikTok. They’re entrepreneurial and well read. They have social skills and are comfortable interacting with adults. It’s a huge contrast from the innumerable headlines about the sorry state of college students today (many of whom can’t read entire books or complete a homework assignment without the help of artificial intelligence). It’s almost as if these Tech Exit kids will have bigger, better brains just by virtue of the fact they lived like the kids of the 1970s, not the 2010s. Is the issue really that simple? Could Morell’s thesis be the missing piece to raising happy, healthy kids? Tech Exit families will still face hardships. Teen angst will arrive, whether a child has access to Snapchat or not. Children disobey, lie, and whine. Parents get things wrong. But eliminating tech eliminates such a web of horrors from a child’s life that it’s clearly worth it. Saying no to smartphones is saying yes to creativity, self-control, real-world experience—to “human flourishing,” as Morell writes. The alternative is grim. In the hit television series The White Lotus, one of season one’s main characters is a screen-addicted, friendless teen named Quinn. He’s staying at a gorgeous luxury resort in Hawaii—but when his iPhone and tablet are ruined by the ocean, so is his stay. He skulks around and convinces his dad to give him his phone so he’s not disconnected from his digital dopamine delivery system. Despite the beauty of the nature around him and the amazing activities available at the resort, Quinn is laser-focused on his devices. His character is presented as a weirdo in the show, but that’s the thing—Quinn doesn’t represent an outlier among American kids. Yet it’s never too late for any kid, even Quinn. Eventually, he realizes he’s ready to leave the screens behind and join the real world. The so-called real world, that is. Internet reporters like writer Katherine Dee are right to point out that the lines between digital and corporeal are blurring, and that for whatever we’re losing, we’re gaining something too. The internet has enabled parents to earn a living without leaving their living rooms. It’s created marriages, friendships, and mom groups. Even so, some adults, including parents, are choosing to deactivate their social media accounts and get rid of their smartphones. (“How quitting social media saved my motherhood” and “This Brick Gave Me My Life Back (From My Phone)” are both posts written by parents in the burgeoning I-quit-tech-for-good-but-still-write-email-newsletters genre of Substack.) Using a dumbphone is not something Morell says Tech Exit parents have to do, but it’s the path she’s chosen for herself. She encourages as little screen use as possible for parents as well as children, giving examples of moms and dads who always opt for analog options (calculators, notepads, alarm clocks) and don’t have social media on their phones. But for the many parents who need to stay constantly connected for work via Slack, Teams, and a plethora of other apps, Morell does have a hopeful message:  Far and above everything else a parent does when it comes to their own tech use, though, is simply putting their phone down and giving their children time and attention. Remember, they are watching us all the time. We are their models for everything, including tech use. Our children will value what we value. Let’s show them we value people more than phones. Parents are only one piece of the puzzle—lawmakers need to step up and protect children too, Morell writes. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 has failed, so she advocates for raising the age of “internet adulthood” (right now it’s 13) and giving age restriction policies real teeth, including for adult websites. Morell wants every state to have laws like Utah’s 2024 legislation requiring all devices belonging to minors automatically turn on adult content filters (“a phone user already has to enter their birth date to create an Apple or Google Account,” she explains). She wants to amend Section 230 so that social media companies actually take the removal of child sexual abuse material seriously. Of course, Big Tech has an army of lobbyists who will fight to block all of these measures. None of these reforms will happen without parents pushing for them. Morell highlights moms like Julie Scelfo of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), Melanie Hempe of ScreenStrong, and the UK politico Miriam Cates. “Parents, we have to make noise for policymakers to hear us. Don’t take no for an answer. Don’t be afraid to open your mouth. It doesn’t need to be polished, and honestly, it’s best when it’s not,” Morell writes in a section titled “Just Be the Awkward Mom.” Mothers are banding together to make our nation’s food supply healthier and safer. Why not the internet? The dangers of the infinite scroll are harder to trace than those of glyphosate and Red 40, yet they’re just as real and much, much more contagious.  “Social media use by even a few children in a school or organization creates a ‘network effect,’ so even those who do not use social media are affected by how it changes the entire social environment,” Morell wrote in The American Conservative in 2023. Some school boards have recognized this network effect and banned phones altogether—students can’t use their phones in classrooms, at their lockers, or in the lunchroom. If students break the rules, teachers confiscate their devices until the end of the school day. “Marc Wasko, the principal of Timber Creek High School in Orange County, which has 3,600 students, finds the policy has made a night-and-day difference. They saw a lot of bullying before… [S]tudents now look him in the eye and respond when he greets them. Teachers have remarked how students are more engaged during class time,” Morell writes.  But public schools with such policies are rare. If there’s any way that The Tech Exit falls short, it’s by understating just how countercultural it is to give your kids a low-tech childhood. Unless a family has access to a rare public school system that bans phones, their best options are homeschooling or private school, both of which are costly. Morell points out in that same 2023 article that there is a “screen-time disparity” between lower income families and high-income families. Children from lower-income families spend about two hours more a day on screens than children from high-income families, according to one survey. This divide is only going to grow as more people learn more about the negative effects of screen time not only for children but for everyone. As X user @coldhealing put it, “In [less than] 10 years we’ll see screen time the same way we do food now. It will be a status symbol of the elite to consume less, and of a higher quality, while the poor gorge themselves on cheetos and AI-generated short-form vertical video.”  Parents and policymakers who read The Tech Exit can consider themselves warned. It’s for good reason that Morell compares taming tech to battling a hydra. But she always brings her point back to the goal of exiting tech: creating a happy, healthy family life. The importance of that goal will never change, no matter how much our technology does. The post Parent Power Versus Big Tech appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Randy Fine Should Resign The Florida congressman advocated Gaza’s nuclear annihilation.  Florida Republican Randy Fine, a sitting congressman, called last week for nuclear bombs to be dropped on the people of Gaza. Fine made the comment on national television after two employees of the Israeli embassy in DC were murdered by a left-wing lunatic, who shouted “free Palestine!” as he was apprehended. “We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender,” Fine said during a Fox News interview. “That needs to be the same here.” After calling for a nuclear assault on a densely-populated territory smaller than Seattle, Fine added, “There is something deeply, deeply wrong with this culture, and it needs to be defeated.” You’d almost think Fine was breaking the fourth wall and telling us there is something “deeply wrong” with his own culture of American ideologues who dehumanize the Palestinians. But no, he was instead referring to the culture of the Palestinians themselves. As the founder and president of the Catholic apostolate the Vulnerable People Project, I have had the privilege of getting to know first-hand the various cultures of the Holy Land, including the Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the West Bank, and Gaza, as well as their non-Christian neighbors. In my discussions with these people, I have not encountered the view that entire cultures must be annihilated to make more room for themselves.  No, that disgraceful sentiment belongs to Fine, who describes himself as a “Zionist” and calls pro-Palestinians “demons” who “must be put down by any means necessary.” That statement came in response to the grotesque act of political violence in DC, but Fine was painting with a broad brush. Before I go on, I first and foremost want to give my own response to the Florida congressman’s recent comments: Rep. Randy Fine is a disgrace, and I am calling on him to resign. What’s more, if he will not resign, then I call on his colleagues in Congress to force him out. What Fine proposed last week is a betrayal of what voters turned out in record numbers for last year. The Trump movement, though it shored up Fine’s own vote count considerably, is a movement of peace. A movement of holding the pro-war establishment accountable and wrestling away their power after decades of them cynically using foreign peoples—especially in the Middle East –as their own private chess pieces and as means to their own bizarre military ends rather than as human beings, who ought only ever to be treated as ends in themselves. The Trump movement drew record numbers of Middle-Eastern voters in particular, including from Palestine. I personally know Palestinian Christian ex-pats who voted for Trump, moved by his advocacy for a ceasefire in Gaza. After taking office, Trump has reassured those supporters by speaking compassionately about the “suffering” people of Gaza, by telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his face “you got to be good to Gaza,” and by pressuring Israel to open up corridors for humanitarian aid. The Trump movement, in fact, has much more in common with the best representatives of the “free Palestine movement” that Fine wants “put down” than with his own mass-murderous brand of “Zionism.” MAGA is based, to an extent, on a basic degree of human solidarity with the vulnerable. At the very outset of Trump’s career in national politics, he spoke often of the “forgotten men and women of America,” showing compassion for those whom the old ruling class had ignored for decades. So, it was no surprise that Trump—and his movement more broadly—would later show the same compassion for the victims of the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s many cynical wars. Increasingly, that includes compassion for the victims in Gaza—half of them under the age of eighteen—who are starving and wasting away behind an Israel-imposed blockade on lifesaving medicine and food. And what about their culture? My friend Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian Christian, represents it well, and he resists the temptation to demonize and dehumanize members of other tribes. “The attack on the Jewish museum yesterday in Washington is a despicable act of violence,” he stated after the murder of those two Israeli embassy employees. Sayegh continued: It brings shame to the “Free Palestine movement” if someone associated with it commits a random murder while shouting its slogans. There must be self-reflection, and a clear condemnation.  My deepest sympathy to our Jewish neighbors in DC. We love you, support you, and stand with you. We will never accept the name of our cause being used to attack your spaces or harm your people. That is a Palestinian Christian’s response to the same event that occasioned Fine’s deranged rant. American Christians should take note: The culture Fine referred to as having something “deeply” wrong with it is the culture of the people of the Holy Land, including Christians directly descended from the Jews who first accepted Jesus and received the Holy Spirit. That’s the culture that gave birth to much of what sets the West, and the United States, apart. It’s the culture of the Gospel, which proclaims the inviolable dignity of every human being as made in the Image and Likeness of God. Or, as our Declaration of Independence put it: “all men are created equal” before “Nature’s God” with “certain unalienable rights.” And it’s the same culture that eventually gave rise to the Trump movement, with its respect for the common man and for the victims of U.S. aggression abroad. If Fine finds something “deeply wrong” with it, then, again, he should show himself the door. And again, if he won’t, Trump and his supporters should show him out ourselves. The post Randy Fine Should Resign appeared first on The American Conservative.

Are we on the brink of a major escalation? ??‍♂️????? As per the plan.... ? Trump: "I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people. I don't know what the hell happened to Putin."

In the 1983 miniseries V, enormous alien motherships suddenly appear over major cities worldwide, revealing humanoid extraterrestrials called the Visitors who claim to come in peace, seeking Earth’s resources in exchange for advanced technology. Initially welcomed, their true intentions unravel as a group of humans, including journalist Mike Donovan and scientist Julie Parrish, discover the Visitors are reptilian beings planning to harvest humans for food and enslave the planet. The humans form a resistance movement, uncovering the Visitors’ fascist-like control and experimenting with a red dust toxin to combat them, while internal Visitor dissent, led by figures like Martin, aids the human fight. The conflict escalates as the resistance battles to expose the Visitors and protect humanity from their sinister agenda. V (1983) Review No one’s claiming that the original V is a masterpiece, but it is a pretty astounding accomplishment as far as sci-fi made specifically for 80s television goes. Although the effects are obviously not up to today’s standards, many of them, especially the “big” ones like the face reveals and the motherships, are just as impactful now as they were in 83. That’s as much thanks to the performances as to the innovative special effects crew. Sure, it has its fair share of overly dramatic and smoky mugging. Still, for what it is, The Beastmaster‘s Marc Singer and crew do a more than respectable job of carrying the emotional through line through even the hammier bits. If you’re looking for some 80s nostalgia or easily digestible popcorn fun, the 1984 V mini-series might just be Worth it to watch. WOKE ELEMENTS Town House A black character calls his buddy a “honky.” However, it’s just guys busting each other’s chops. Run To The Border A Mexican character of dubious citizenship smuggles some white people across the border, and he jokes about the practice that he’s had doing it. However, it seemed more done as a joke than sociopolitical commentary. The post V (1983) first appeared on Worth it or Woke.

In 2020, a farmer outside of Liverpool, England, served up one of the most beautiful helpings of karma the world has ever seen, and people are still talking about it to this day. It all began when Stuard Baldwin, then 56, visited his 2,500-acre farm and found that someone had dumped tires on his property. Stuart and his family own SED Services Ltd, a recycling company that turns green waste into usable materials like compost.Start was no stranger to illegal dumpers, or fly-tippers, as they call them in the UK, but this was unheard of, and he had to do something about it. So, he set up a security camera on his property to see if he could catch the guy."I was getting so angry with people fly-tipping on my land, it was time to do something about it, to take matters in our own hands. We put a camera up in the bushes and we caught the man who did it on the camera,” Stuart told the Manchester Evening News. “My daughter put a picture on Facebook and we found out who it was he actually came forward,” he continued. Tires dumped in a field.via Canva/PhotosBeing a gentleman, Stuart found out where the man lived and gave him days to come to his farm and pick up the tires. “He came down and he said he was going to move them, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and a couple of days breathing – but he never moved them. I thought he must have forgot, so I took them back to remind him,” he told The Daily Mail.In a video that later went viral, Tsuart and his team loaded up all 421 tires onto a truck and then dumped them in front of the man’s house. Footage shows the tires rolling all over the front of the man’s house and bouncing into the street. “We have come to my land at Haydock, and somebody has put these tires here overnight. Luckily, we found out who has forgotten them, so we are going to take them back to the person who put them here, thank you,” Start says in the video. - YouTube youtu.be “We wish no harm to him or any property hence why we will placed them in his garden without causing any damage, we just want to prove a point that you can't just go around fly-tipping wherever you want as it isn’t fair,” Stuart said. "I was so angry when I saw the tyres and I'm a big believer in karma - karma has got him here."The act of perfect retribution done in the most fair way possible is a great message, and that’s probably why the story is still popular after five years. The moral of the story is simple: take care of your own garbage; don’t make a teenager have to do it for you. If so, you may not like how he handles business."Nobody likes a fly-tipper. We've been inundated with congratulations since the video went online,” Stuart told the Manchester Evening News. "The response has been amazing, it's gone the right way for us."

So much about allyship is helping to make those who are excluded feel welcome again. And there are numerous ways to accomplish that. For John Piermatteo, allyship came in the form of simply playing catch. Over the past five years, Piermatteo, a straight dad, has been showing up to Pride events offering to toss a ball around with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Inspired by the “mom hugs” and “grandmother hugs” he’d seen offered at Pride events, the straight dad thought that a game of catch was a unique and personal way to offer a meaningful father figure experience to those who might have been rejected by their own families. Piermatteo first brought his idea to life in 2019 at York Unity Fest in York, Pennsylvania, where he sat under a tree, football at the ready, next to a hand painted sign that read “Play Catch With a Dad.” It took several trips past my sign before anyone engaged,” he recalls on his website. “I watched people go by looking at the sign out of the side of their eye, then, on the next pass, they might make eye contact with me.” Eventually, people began walking up to Piermatteo directly to ask “Can I play catch with you?” The exchanges easily turned emotional. “ I lost count of the number of times we both cried. It was powerful.” Play Catch With A Dad | Facebook Play Catch With A Dad | Facebook www.facebook.com Despite taking a setback during COVID, “Play Catch With a Dad” has turned into a full on movement, with Piermeeto and friend traveling nationwide to toss the ol’ pigskin with folks with upward of hundreds of people per day. So far, they’ve visited not only York, Lancaster, Lititz and Chambersburg in Pennsylvania, but San Diego Pride and Phoenix Pride as well. In 2025, they plan to add Maryland and Chicago to the list. Playing catch is just one of those activities that instantly evokes the image of a safe, healthy, loving father-child relationship. And considering that at least one study has shown that upwards of 70% of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth experience some degree of parental rejection of their sexual identity, it’s easy to see how this innocent offering likely fills a yearning for so many. Piermatteo’s contribution, and the massively positive response to it, shows that where allyship does take action, it’s often the simplest acts of compassion that make the most meaningful impact. Yes, we need to fight for policies that protect LGBTQ individuals from discrimination, but sometimes…playing catch really is enough to say “you are welcome, just as you are.” If you’d like to donate to Play Catch With Dad, or even set up a Play Catch With a Dad event in your area, you can find more information here.

When it comes to billionaire parenting, one thinks of pouting children, upset that their pony’s coat isn’t the right color. Or jam-packed schedules and elite boarding schools, where there are fancy plaid uniforms and everyone speaks three-to-four languages, minimum. But sometimes, the best advice comes in the simplest form, wisdom that Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and former Shark Tank investor seems understand well.During a recent appearance on the Your Mom’s House podcast, Cuban opened up about how he and his wife, Tiffany Stewart, tried to raise their children somewhat “normally,” despite the glaring fame, fortune, and pressure that comes with being a person like Mark. With an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion, it’d be more than easy for him to outsource parenting duties to hired professionals, or to prescribe his children a 65-year plan drawn up before they were even born. However, he explains that he and his wife decided to foster one essential trait: “Everything’s changing so rapidly, from a technological perspective, just the world in general. So, you know, just be curious,” he says. “That’s what I try to get them to do, right? Be curious so that you always want to learn something, and figure things out.”Curiosity is overlooked as a trait to cultivate in children, yet research has shown that curiosity is an incredibly powerful trait, one that impacts learning, creativity, and success. A study conducted in 2011 found that curiosity, or a “hungry mind” is just as useful for predicting academic performance in children as intelligence and effort, writing, “Our results highlight that a “hungry mind” is a core determinant of individual differences in academic achievement.”“And everything’s changing so rapidly—from a technology perspective, just the world in general. So just, you know, be curious. That’s what I try to get them to do, right? Be curious so that you always want to learn something, and figure things out. The more knowledge you have, the more—not power, but the more capabilities you have, and the more options are available to you.”It even makes us feel good: our brains release dopamine and other feel-good chemicals when we encounter new experiences, places, ideas, and people. Science also shows that curiosity is associated with higher levels of positive emotions, a higher satisfaction with life, lower levels of anxiety, and greater psychological well-being.via GIPHYHow to raise curious kids in four key principlesHowever, for children, embracing uncertainty and stepping out of their comfort zones might feel scary. Which is why Cuban and his wife made curiosity a high priority when raising their kids. Here are four strategies for nurturing this trait in children—and with some luck, successful adults will appear on the other end. "Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back." Credit: Justin Peterson on Unsplash Don’t pressure them to choose careers too early. Despite society’s love of asking children “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Cuban strongly believes that expecting children to know their life’s calling at 18 or even 22 is outdated and unrealistic. “I was talking to one of my kids about college the other day, and it’s like, you don’t have to know what you’re going to be when you grow up,” he shared. “I don’t think any kid should be under the pressure at 18 or 22, when they graduate from college, to know exactly what they’re going to do.”Knowledge is power. One of the most common adages in the book, but for Cuban, it was essential that his children learned that curiosity leads to real-life skills, abilities, and talents, unlike control. “The more knowledge you have, the more—not power, but the more capabilities you have, and the more options are available to you,” he explained.Change is the only constant. Get used to it. As someone whose made billions from multiple side projects, investments, and major sports team ownership, Cuban understands better than most that life doesn’t always follow a straight and narrow path. Rather than clinging to the ways things were, Cuban encourages parents to embrace the rapidly changing world we live in. Children who are taught to adapt, pivot, and evolve will be better suited in a world where entirely new fields of work emerge constantly–and will be better equipped than their peers to handle the job market’s volatility.Let them decide their own path. Ensuring their children had the freedom to explore and discover their own interests was of the utmost importance to Cuban. Other parents might want to project an agenda onto their children, reflecting their own insecurities or need for reassurance that they’ve raised a “successful kid.” And while letting go of the reins may be scary for parents, it will be well worth it: “I want them to go on their own path,” Cuban says. “Whatever it might be, I want them to be themselves. I don’t want them to be Mark Cuban’s kid for their entire lives.”via GIPHYIt’s clear from the interview that Cuban and his wife recognized the uniqueness and the scale of their position. At one point, when talking about his kids' future inheritances, he says, “I’ve watched Succession. I don’t want it to be like that.” And while he, like any other parent, wants their child to do well and to succeed in life, when it’s all said and done, he really just loves being a father. “My favorite word in the world is 'Dad,’” he says, smiling.

We take the wins where we can get them. And sometimes that win is showing off your amateur painting to a "paint and sip" group, only to have the audience erupt in cheers. - YouTube www.youtube.com That's what happened when a woman and a man stood before a group and were prompted to reveal their renditions of a red and black "model" painting. "Three, two, one!" we hear on the short clip posted on Australian YouTube user @pintoandpicasso's channel. They reveal their work simultaneously, and the crowd goes wild.They both light up with smiles, but she's especially excited that her art is so appreciated. She first shakes her hips back and forth and then begins a victory lap, reminiscent of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." The man turns his painting toward her, perhaps thinking she'll see it then or that the crowd's supportive outburst might make her look. But she's deep in her "moment," even when she circles back to him. Beyonce struts in concert. Giphy Finally, she looks and sees what the crowd has seen all along. On his canvas, he has painted the words, "Will You Marry Me?" When she spots it, she seems in shock at first. We hear an outcry of "Oh my God" from the crowd. And it's that moment that he gently puts the sign down and gets on bended knee, popping out a ring. She covers her mouth and crouches down with him as she tries to regain her composure.Eventually, they both stand up, as she seems to nod a yes over and over — overwhelmed with joyous tears. A man proposes with a ring. Giphy Broad City Season 5 On the subreddit r/MadeMeSmile, a commenter posted the video with the caption "Men in Love." There are over 77 thousand upvotes and counting, with nearly 600 comments. One writes, "The best part is when she THINKS they are shouting for her painting skills and models it out~ and then '... Oh.'" To which someone replies, "What a good day for her TBH. First she wins. Then she gets proposed."Another jokes that perhaps he only chose to propose because he was impressed by her art skills. "Probably proposed because she won."Others compare it to other similar, public proposals. "It's almost like that proposal at a game on the kiss cam, where the lady just vibed and danced. And when people pointed at the screen, she just kept dancing like 'yeah yeah I know,' then she finally realized." A man kisses a woman at the Carolina Hurricanes hockey game. Giphy A few dared to ask a more cynical question: what was her answer? "Did she say yes or is this a plot-twist: too embarrassed to say no?" A few offer answers. "Could be nodding or hyperventilating… let's see how this develops."The crux of the comments, however, remains their love of her unabashed confidence. "The fact she thought everyone just loved the s--t out of her painting haha. I want the confidence." With another exclaiming, "That cracked me up. No hesitation, just 'wow, they must really love my painting.'"And best of all, Redditors took note of just how patient he was with her oblivion. "And the fact he was just laughing at her and waiting for her to notice tells you a lot about how he understands her."