Category archive: work

August 4, 2016

The Kunstler Legacy Is Complete.

On That Day, meaning yesterday, August 3rd, in 1967, William Kunstler and others founded the Law Center for Constitutional Rights. [via @JMitchellNews] On This Day, meaning today, August 4th, in 1977, Kunstler founded Bring Your Daughter To Work Day....
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October 31, 2015

Hairy Banana

Heather Armstrong gave a really thoughtful and classically unsettling talk at this year's XOXO Festival in Portland where she explained her experience stepping away from pro mommyblogging at Dooce. You should really watch it or, if you're in a...
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October 29, 2015

The Birth Of The Phonecam And Vice Versa

This is apparently the first picture taken and sent by a cell phone. It is Philippe Kahn's daughter, born June 11, 1997. Kahn is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Borland, and then in 1994, he founded Starfish, a...
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September 28, 2015

A Modest Parental Proposal

We're all Trumans now This has been weighing on me for a while now, the last several posts, and the meaning and relevance and viability of it all. And this, The Atlantic's thought piece on the economics of mommyblogging,...
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August 18, 2015

Speaking of Amazon

Oh right, how could I forget to mention in that previous post that Amazon is one of the main sources of revenue for Daddy Types via its affiliate link/kickback program. Also that it's apparently a family-hostile quant-obsessed corporate hellcult? Perhaps...
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August 3, 2015

Don't Trust Anyone Over 8

The first generation of kids to watch Teletubbies are now in college, and they are paralyzed with anxiety and inadequacy. And their OG helicopter parents have already called all their professors to discuss it. Kids these days aren't getting enough...
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July 13, 2015

The Bouncy Desk

Why hasn't someone made this? It's the perfect VR motion rig! 😂 via @SuB8u pic.twitter.com/CYHDpLkBIs— Darshan Shankar (@DShankar) July 14, 2015 Meanwhile, if anyone does invent this, I'll just scootch mine over to the stairs and end it all....
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May 20, 2015

Bring Your Daughter To Work Night

A picture truly is worth a thousand words pic.twitter.com/6tVYoWG85I— Golden St. Warriors (@warriors) May 20, 2015 Golden State Warrior/MVP Steph Curry brought his daughter to the post-playoff game press conference last night, We finally found Steph Curry's flaw: parenting. Did...
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May 15, 2015

I See Dad People

The New Yorker reports from the playground:SARA: Hey, look who just walked in. ANNA: Where? SARA: Over there, by Nanny Alley. ANNA: Oh boy. SARA: Stay-at-home Hottie McBjörn. ANNA: Daddy's home. SARA: Daddy's home, all right.Playground Purgatory [newyorker]...
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May 11, 2015

Elon Musk Wants You To Birth HIS Baby, Dammit

A quote from Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,:"That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We're changing the world and changing history, and you either...
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May 10, 2015

Build Any Mobile Lactation Suite And The World Better Beat A Path To Your Door

The idea for Mamava portable breastpumping cabins came from a 2006 New York Times story about how hard it is for non-white-collar moms to find time to pump breast milk at work.Years of design, testing, and bootstrapping startup ups...
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March 31, 2015

The Son Of The Woman In The Family Of Man

1953 photo by Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos via NYT Magnum photographer Misha Erwitt has a very nice remembrance of his mother Lucienne Matthews, who was photographed by her husband Elliott Erwitt a few days after the birth of their daughter...
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March 24, 2015

Kid Meets Heroes

2yo Quincy got to meet his heroes Friday, the guys who collect garbage on his Cincinnati street on Fridays. And it was a little overwhelming, reported his dad. To the local news station, because I guess nothing more awesome...
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February 24, 2015

The First Production Baby, Screengrabbed

A couple of years ago Cabel Sasser wrote about Pixar's production babies, the kids born during the years-long creation of animated films, who get shoutouts in the credits. And he found evidence of what still stands as the earliest production...
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January 23, 2015

Where Did The Bad Formula Commercial Touch You?

Bwahaha, at first I was like LOL, then LMAO, then ROTFLMAO, and then I was like, FULL STOP, AS YET UNIDENTIFIED ADVERTISER. Advertiser who was making me laugh at parenting stereotypes one second, but who the next compels me...
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January 17, 2015

'Handcrafted With Lots of Fun In Thailand' Until They Folded

I love thinking about the Thai workers who had so much fun handcrafting this toy for my kid pic.twitter.com/UvL6sxT0FH— Gabriel Roth (@gabrielroth) January 17, 2015 @gregorg @gabrielroth @daddytypes A doll so magical as to relieve bourgeois guilt. Worth tracking...
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January 10, 2015

Xmas Xplory

Matter's Kati Krause has a great talk with writer and new dad Ben Hammersley about work, money, kids, money, marriage and divorce, and money. But there is absolutely no discussion of the Christmas lights Hammersley has apparently wrapped and...
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November 20, 2014

The Home Office

"Oh, you got a new kitchen sponge." Said K2 with an offhand and chatty tone that sounded, not at all like a child, but like a work colleague, making banal and slightly awkward conversation with the recently promoted admin of...
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September 15, 2014

'Papa's Gotta Write His Song'

Having a kid can complicate even the simplest of tasks, like writing and recording a song every day since 2009. Papa's Got To Write His Song | Song A Day #2079 [youtube/therockcookiebottom] Here is a song 'Song A Day'...
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August 31, 2014

Area High-End Woodsman Wears Kid On Back

One of the 1,200 high-end culture experiences on the globally curious digital storytelling platform Nowness is a short film about visceral artist Elias Hansen, who is not one of the Hanson Hansens, obviously, but who does chop down saplings...
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July 21, 2014

Videos Of Toys Popular Among Ignored Children

OK what, this Buzzfeed article about the anonymous, disembodied hands behind DisneyCollectorBR, a YouTube toy unboxing and play demo channel is utterly bonkers. Apparently the 55 million views/week translates into between $1 and $13 million per year in ad...
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July 18, 2014

Action Movie Kid, Dad To Rule The Viral Marketing Galaxy As Father And Son

In case you were worried about the fate of ActionMovieKid and his dad as their 2015 Toyota Sienna #SwaggerWagon gets caught in the space station's powerful tractor beam, let the "Fictitious scene with stationary vehicle" disclaimer put your mind...
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July 17, 2014

That's No Lactation Room

I've had these lactation room stories sitting here in my tabs for weeks now, hoping they'll all get better. But I don't think they do! Abe Sauer wrote about the difficulties facing working moms in Minnesota, where companies like...
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June 30, 2014

You'll Never Guess The Corporation That's Shamelessly Melting Your Heart

So we took the kids to the movies the other night, a non-trivial event for them, because srsly, what would they ever go see: 1) some too-loud, dumb, animated fart-fest full of Gen Y culture references they know nothing...
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March 25, 2014

Buddhist Publicist Dad Ready To Renounce 95% Of Nothing

The BBC reports that the "Boss of £1m firm will give it away to be a full-time dad." He was a publicist for the Dalai Lama and TED and the Prince of Wales. For just £10,000, he will "hand over"...
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March 17, 2014

There Is Still No Better Breast Pump

Speaking of It Doesn't Get Better, the Times asks, "Shouldn't the Breast Pump Be as Elegant as an iPhone and as Quiet as a Prius by Now?" Yeah, no. Considering how recent the iPhone is, and how rare design talent...
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March 4, 2014

Kevin Young Reads Poem About Miscarriage In His Poetry Voice

Writer Kevin Young was on NPR Fresh Air today talking about his new book of poetry, Book of Hours. It sounds like it's largely associated with the unexpected death of his father, and then becoming a father himself. Young also...
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Hey, I Just Met You, And This Is Crazy

This was on Facebook and had a zillion Likes but it's actually very sad for multiple reasons: pic.twitter.com/1BdsEH3pPd— Gabriel Roth (@gabrielroth) March 5, 2014 I guess I should specify that the dad of Baby Harper is a US military...
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February 9, 2014

This AOL Distressed Babies BS Really Pisses Me Off.

I've had several friends and colleagues I admire deeply who have worked for AOL over the years, but I passed on at least three opportunities to work there myself. When AOL people kicked around Daddy Types early in the blogging...
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January 29, 2014

Daddy Writes

Shane Jones has a very thoughtful essay in The Paris Review about writing and fatherhood. It makes me wish he'd write another that picks up where he leaves off, and that thus deals a decisive blow to his troubled premise,...
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December 27, 2013

War-Ravaged England Builds Giant Dollhouse For Queen

Sometimes England is so weird. Like the time the whole place was devastated and dejected and injured and dead in the wake of World War I, and Princess Marie-Louise thought building a huge dollhouse for Queen Mary filled with...
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December 10, 2013

Vladimir Nabokov, At-Home-Dad

I knew he was an uprooted aristocrat, a refugee, and a serious amateur lepidopterist. But nothing prepared me for the shocking revelations about the home life of one of my favorite writers. From Jason Edward Harrington's review of Andrea Pitzer's...
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December 3, 2013

'Supermax Creche'

Life under capitalism is a supermax creche in which 'neither growing up nor working hard will do you any good'. Madame Tlank and Clinical Wasteman anatomise the dialectic of childhood and adulthood as one in which wise children of...
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November 13, 2013

This. Is. CNN's Ridiculous Paternity Leave Policy.

This case has been brewing for a couple of weeks now, but it's never too late to point out how Time Warner has bumbled its way into an unnecessarily unfair, even discriminatory parental leave policy, and the obvious, right thing...
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October 30, 2013

'Ohh You're Crying, Monkey. OK, Mommy's Done.'

This video starts out, "Mommy's gonna sing you a song. You want Mommy to sing a song, honey? Let me know how you feel about the song." Mommy is holding a video camera. Someone else is sitting silently next...
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October 8, 2013

Capitalism Works For Elmo

Elmo contemplates capitalism #CAPITALISMWFM pic.twitter.com/65XizXLbXg— Handel (@handelsaurus) October 8, 2013 Speaking of Kickstarter, I backed Steve Lambert's project to build this giant sign, CAPITALISM WORKS FOR ME! True/False a couple of years ago now, and it has been a blast...
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September 27, 2013

Mormon Prune Crate Play Furniture Was A Communist Plot

We're making progress on the vintage Mormon Sunday School Nursery play furniture plans I posted a little while ago. I recently found an earlier edition of the teachers' manual, called Sunday Morning in the Nursery, that dated from 1949,...
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August 30, 2013

1978 Child Laborers, Where Are They Now?

I totally remember this Benetton ad showing tiny kids in Bogota working in a brickyard. But I did not know that the photographer, Jean-Pierre Laffont, had not shot it for Benetton. It was a few years earlier, for the...
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August 29, 2013

An At-Home Cartoonist's Advice

If you need a boost to your day/week/year, head over to Gavin Aung Than's new web comic at Zen Pencils. The latest is based on a quote from Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson's 1990 commencement speech at Kenyon...
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July 24, 2013

Creative Vocational Educational Playthings

Learning how to tie shoelaces is just one way you can give your kid an edge over his Velcro-dependent playmates. It's important to help your kid prepare for a career, ideally through fun, inspiring, roleplaying toys. And given the way...
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May 28, 2013

Hedge Fund Manager Mansplains Breastfeeding

Have you heard the one about the hedge fund manager who mansplained how those trader gals are totally useless after they have a kid? As soon as that baby's lips touch that girl's bosom, forget it. Every single investment idea,...
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May 15, 2013

'Head In Mini-Bar'

Come for the photo that accompanies this caption: "Pictured, clockwise: Whit Honea (head in mini-bar), Andy Hinds, Charlie Capen and Doug French." Stay for Betadad's very mature takedown of the Wall Street Journal's nonsensically sexist story about "Mommy Business Trips"...
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April 17, 2013

America's Day Care Hellscape Is A Political Choice

From The New Republic:First, Mire tried KinderCare again, but they wouldn't take Kendyll until Mire paid her debt; when she did, there were no openings. She called about a dozen centers, all of which were either too expensive or had...
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February 27, 2013

Hey FB Dads, What Did You Do With Your 'Baby Cash'?

In the most cursory of roundups of parental leave policies at various [three large] technology firms, the NY Times mentions that Facebook not only provides 16 weeks paid leave for all full-time employees who become parents. The company also gives...
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January 15, 2013

The First Production Baby

It's been a tradition at Pixar since Toy Story to list the "production babies" born to crew, in each film's credits. Other animation houses do it, too, and lately video game designers picked up on the trend. [They're called "development...
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January 6, 2013

The Ford Treasury Of New Jersey Station Wagon Living

The NY Times has discovered a New Jersey dad whose kids helped him discover the joys of Ford Station Wagon Living. Reading lines like this:"Until the kids, I wasn't into wagons," he said. "Now, it's an adventure every time...
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September 10, 2012

How Can Paul Ryan Be Vice President AND A Dad?

So a couple of ball-bustin' reporters from the Chicago Sun-Times cornered a local politician at the Democratic National Convention and started firin' off the tough questions:[Illinois Attorney General Lisa] Madigan and her husband, Pat Byrnes, have two young children, ages...
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August 16, 2012

The Gamification Of Hugs

"Choremonster says rewards can be anything from 'hugs to money to a camping trip.'" "Parents around the web have reviewed the app, and most say it's a fun way to force kids to help out around the house." You know,...
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July 16, 2012

Yahoo!

Another piece of good news today - @zackbogue and I are expecting a new baby boy!postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/16/may...— marissamayer (@marissamayer) July 17, 2012 When I heard on NPR this afternoon that Marissa Meyer was the next CEO of Yahoo, I was like,...
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July 13, 2012

It's My Desk In A Box, Or CBS-Era Creative Playthings' Most Depressing Toy

At what point in the development of the Creative Playthings L'il Boss Desk In A Case do you think it occurred to folks that this would be the toy most likely to destroy the sweet, little dreams of their...
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