James' World 2

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Here in New York City, we humans crown ourselves rulers of the five boroughs—but the kingdom is split. We cohabit with a parallel society that commutes along subway rails, picnics in parks, and patronizes trash cans like they’re Restaurant Row. A new field study watched them the way New Yorkers often watch each other: from a respectful distance and with digital tech. The findings shed light on how rats have adapted to city life—and how chatty they are. “There’s this kind of secret language that rats are communicating in with each other that we don’t hear,” says Emily Mackevicius, a neuroscientist and a co-author of the study. “They’re very social,” adds Ralph Peterson, another study co-author. “They’re rugged, and they’re New Yorkers themselves: persistent and resilient and able to thrive in a very extreme environment.”

At three Manhattan locations—a park, a subway platform, and a sidewalk—the team used a specialized wireless recorder to eavesdrop on the rats’ ultrasonic conversations, which humans can’t hear. They placed thermal cameras on tripods or held them by hand to record the warm bodies moving like glowing, otherworldly specters along the cooler ground. Dmitry Batenkov, a team member who works with machine learning and computational modeling, then converted the two-dimensional videos into three dimensions because 2D recordings distort the size and movement of animals, making rats closer to the camera appear larger.

New York City is home to an estimated three million rats—approximately one for every three humans. Virtually all of these are Rattus norvegicus—the brown rat, aka the Norway rat—a larger and more robust species than the black rat (Rattus rattus), which arrived first on ships in the 1600s but was displaced by the brown rat in the 1700s. Since then, about 500 generations of brown rats have lived here and have developed unique genetic adaptations related to metabolism, diet, nervous system, and locomotion. Even the shape of their heads has changed. And to survive, they need a single daily ounce of water and food, the latter of which we provide in abundance, often processed.

Over this past summer in New York City, the research team—Mackevicius, Peterson, Batenkov, and Ahmed El Hady, a neuroscientist who has studied rats and collective behavior—came together with a simple yet powerful idea: take what is known about rats from lab research and see how it holds up in the places we share with them. They wanted to do so not just to understand the animals’ behavior and cognition in the urban wild but also so that city planners, building managers, and public‑health teams could craft decisions with real data to make city life a little less—squeaky. If scientists can more precisely measure rats’ complex habits and predilections, they can apply those data to trash pickup timing, building design, disease risk near burrows, and even the question of which blocks attract big, bold rats versus skittish juveniles. Peterson, a computational neuroscientist, sums the concept up succinctly. “It’s like Sun Tzu says in The Art of War: to defeat your enemy, you have to understand your enemy.”

“To defeat your enemy, you have to understand your enemy.”In 1944 Joseph Mitchell, the legendary New Yorker writer who chronicled the city’s overlooked characters, wrote about the metropolis’s shadow mascot: “Anyone who has been confronted by a rat in the bleakness of a Manhattan dawn and has seen it whirl and slink away, its claws rasping against the pavement, thereafter understands fully why this beast has been for centuries a symbol of the Judas and the stool pigeon, of soullessness in general.”

But maybe Mitchell was wrong about the soulless part. Rats are the dolphins of the sewage system; they chatter constantly as they run along the sidewalk in packs, peeking from holes, scavenging beneath grates, or slipping into human-audible squeaks during scuffles by the dumpsters. One of the rats that the team recorded even soliloquized alone inside a garbage bag—perhaps offering a Yelp review for passing comrades.

Rats are the dolphins of the sewage system.

The study, which was released as a preprint paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed, also revealed that the rats modulated their ultrasonic squeaking based on ambient sound. In the subway system, which was louder than parks and sidewalks, rats communicated more loudly. But the moment that truly surprised Mackevicius was in the street. “There was an ambulance going by, and you could look at that in the spectrogram, and the rat vocalizations were louder than the ambulance,” she says. “They’re just kind of screaming to each other, but we just don’t hear it.” Peterson, who has studied rodent vocalizations in the lab, was struck by how talkative the vermin were. “Why would you vocalize if not to some end?” he asks. “The fact that we don’t understand that yet—this is one of the questions that really keeps me up.”

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People across the U.S. are facing disciplinary consequences for expressing views deemed offensive after the killing of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk, who has been described by supporters as a model proponent of free speech.

Several people have been fired, including MSNBC’s Matthew Dowd, and others suspended from their work over comments or social media posts relating to Kirk, who was fatally shot on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration’s State Department warned that it will vet visa-seekers’ and visa-holders’ social media for posts “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of Kirk’s death.

Democratic and Republican officials have condemned the shooting as the latest episode of a troubling rise in political violence in the U.S. But Kirk’s assassination has also appeared to exacerbate divisions across America. Some fear that the fraught tensions could quickly spiral into more unrest and violence. Several historically Black colleges and universities suspended classes and placed their campuses under lockdown on Thursday, citing potential threats, while lawmakers have called for increased security.

A number of far-right influencers and politicians, including President Donald Trump, have blamed the shooting on leftists’ criticisms of Kirk and of the conservative movement more broadly and have called for a crackdown on the left. A particular point of concern many have highlighted is the apparent celebration of Kirk’s death by political opponents.

Workplace sanctions

MSNBC issued an apology after Dowd, a political analyst and media pundit, “made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable,” the company’s president, Rebecca Kutler, said in a statement. Dowd also issued his own apology prior to the company statement. A source at the network told TIME that Dowd is no longer with MSNBC.

Dowd had appeared to blame Kirk for creating the conditions of his own killing, saying in response to a question about the political environment in which the shooting took place that Kirk has “been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in.”

Dowd’s not the only one to face consequences for his speech. 

An anonymously registered website aiming to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” asked for tips on people who were “supporting political violence online,” the Associated Press reported. The site had published a list on Thursday of social media posts with the names, locations, and employers of the posters. Some posts included inflammatory language, but others did not seem to be celebrating the shooting or glorifying violence, according to the AP.

Several right-wing activists have also begun compiling their own lists.

“I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death,” far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer posted on X.

Scott Presler, a conservative activist and former organizer for the Republican Party of Virginia before the 2016 elections, asked his over two million followers to provide tips on teachers celebrating Kirk’s death, and he shared posts and social media profiles of alleged wrongdoers and, for some, their workplaces.

Florida’s education commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas also warned teachers about making “despicable” comments related to Kirk’s death in a memo to school district superintendents that he posted on X on Thursday. “I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” he said in the memo. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”

Some across the country have already faced sanctions. The University of Mississippi said it fired a staff member who had shared “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, while the Middle Tennessee State University said it fired a staff member who made “inappropriate and callous comments on social media.”

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn had called for the removal of MTSU’s assistant dean of students, who had posted that they had “ZERO sympathy” after the shooting, although it is not clear if the assistant dean was the person who was fired. Blackburn also penned a letter calling for the termination of a Secret Service agent who posted, “If you are Mourning this guy, delete me. He spewed hate and racism on his show.”

In Florida, a reporter for Floridapolitics.com was suspended after asking Republican Rep. Randy Fine a question about gun control immediately after the shooting, according to the AP. Fine had posted a screenshot of the text exchange on X with the caption, “You don’t hate the media enough.” A sports journalist for Arizona media company PHNX Sports was also fired after conservative activists denounced posts he had made criticizing Kirk’s positions on gun violence and “hateful rhetoric.”

And DC Comics fired one of its comic writers and cancelled their series after the writer had posted comments about the shooting. “Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” DC Comics said in a statement to CNN.

Immigration crackdown

The State Department also said it would crack down on non-citizens who have made posts making light of the shooting.

“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country. I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau posted on Thursday. “Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people.”

Landau said he “will direct consular officials to monitor the comments to this post” for people denouncing examples they have seen.

A State Department spokesperson told ABC News that the Administration “does not believe that the United States should grant visas to persons whose presence in our country does not align with U.S. national security interests.”

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Charlie Kirk

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Archaeologists have discovered a massive 5,000-year-old fortress hidden beneath thick forest in Neamț County, Romania. The site dates back to the transition period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, revealing a complex settlement that challenges previous ideas about early societies in the region. This discovery sheds new light on the sophistication of ancient civilizations long forgotten beneath centuries of vegetation.

LiDAR Technology Reveals Hidden Fortress in Detail

The breakthrough came from the use ofLiDAR (light detection and ranging) drones, a technology that emits rapid laser pulses to map landscapes covered by dense vegetation. “Thanks to current technology and using LiDAR scans, I was able to obtain a faithful image of an almost 5000-year-old fortification,” said Vasile Diaconu, the lead archaeologist from the Neamț County Museum Complex. LiDAR’s ability to detect subtle human-made structures beneath forest canopies allowed researchers to visualize details impossible to see during traditional fieldwork.

The fortification is built on elevated terrain, with large defensive ditches and earthen mounds designed to enhance protection. According to Diaconu, the ditches “had impressive dimensions with lengths of several hundred meters, which required considerable human effort in the construction.” The placement of the fortress provided excellent visibility over the surrounding landscape, highlighting its strategic importance. The scale and complexity of the site indicate a highly organized society capable of coordinated large-scale construction projects.

Collaboration Between Archaeologist and Technology Expert

This discovery was made possible through a partnership between multiple organizations, including Geocad Services, Geo Edu Lab, and the National Institute for Research and Development for Earth Physics. The project was led by Vasile Diaconu, with key technical support from Vlad Dulgheriu, owner of Geocad Services and former student of Diaconu. The collaboration between teacher and student enabled the deployment of advanced LiDAR technology, marking a milestone in archaeological research methods.

Diaconu emphasized the importance of integrating modern technologies into archaeological investigations. “Only by using modern technologies will we be able to better understand the complexities of archaeological sites,” he said. The discovery of this well-planned fortress illustrates how sophisticated ancient communities were, beyond what traditional excavation alone could reveal. As LiDAR and similar techniques become more common, the archaeological record will continue to expand with new findings hidden beneath earth and foliage.

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Recent headlines warning of concerns such as heart risks or danger to teenagers have put a new spotlight on a diet trend that has long been the popular epitome of a healthy lifestyle: intermittent fasting. “Intermittent fasting’s image has been deeply tarnished—and quite rightly so,” says Stefan Kabisch, a physician at the endocrinology and metabolic medicine department at Charité–University Medicine Berlin. “The hype was never really backed up by good data in humans.”

Advocates have claimed that temporarily abstaining from food for long stretches of the day can improve health and longevity. In the most common fasting schedule, people don’t eat for 16 hours—often skipping breakfast or dinner—and make up for it in the remaining eight hours (the so-called 16:8 method). Some people may severely limit food intake every other day (alternate-day fasting) or take a fasting day twice a week (the 5:2 method).

The effects of such practices can be difficult to study. “The main problem with randomized controlled trials on intermittent fasting is that there are so many variations,” Kabisch explains. “The data is therefore very heterogeneous, which makes it difficult to assess effects.”

Why Take Long Breaks from Eating?

Modern society has given way to lifestyles that encourage overeating, says Tinh-Hai Collet, a diabetologist and a professor at the Geneva University Hospitals. “This promotes obesity and diabetes.” Experts have called diabetes a global epidemic. Approximately 590 million people worldwide have diabetes, according to the latest 2025 reports from the International Diabetes Federation, and more than 90 percent of them have type 2, often called adult-onset diabetes.

One of the main issues in type 2 diabetes is that those who are affected absorb more energy than they use. A hallmark of the disease is insulin resistance, in which cells no longer effectively respond to the hormone insulin. This means cells take in less sugar from the blood, and blood sugar levels rise. “Intermittent fasting almost always improves the cells’ response to insulin,” says Stephan Herzig, a professor at the Technical University of Munich and head of the Helmholtz Diabetes Center at Helmholtz Munich. “As a result, the concentrations of sugar, fats, and cholesterol in the blood also fall.” A 2023 study, led by Mark Ezpeleta of the University of Illinois Chicago, suggests that alternate-day fasting—especially when combined with exercise—also mitigates fatty liver disease, in which fat builds up on in the liver, unrelated to alcohol consumption.

A closer look at the research, however, shows such statements may not be as clear-cut as they are often presented to be. For example, the researchers on the 2023 liver fat study compared volunteer groups that underwent different eating and exercise schedules: alternating days between a reduced calorie intake and an unrestricted diet; only completing an exercise program; combining the fasting schedule with exercising; or not undergoing any intervention. The group that fasted and exercised at the same time saw the best results. Yet there was no comparison group in which people didn’t alternate days but still had the same calorie intake as the fasting participants. “This is an unfair comparison,” Kabisch says. And similar gaps in study design “run through the entire literature on the subject.”

Two meta-analyses of people with diabetes or obesity concluded that intermittent fasting had a positive effect on weight, blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood lipids (triglycerides). “In most of the underlying primary studies, however, the fasting subjects were compared with people who did not change their diet,” Kabisch says. As a result, the subjects in the intervention groups lost weight—but, logically, the control groups did not, because the researchers didn’t apply any calorie restrictions. “You only see strong effects of intermittent fasting compared to people who were not given any diet or exercise guidelines,” Kabisch explains. “But as soon as you compare it with equivalent calorie reduction, the benefits of intermittent fasting disappear.”

And the supposed improvement in insulin resistance is also not always demonstrable. In another meta-analysis, no effects were found in this regard. In other studies, the improvements were small.

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“You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife, the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry,” said Erika Kirk, the wife of slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, in her first public message since his killing.

Just days after a gunman shot and killed Kirk at a Utah university, Erika Kirk addressed her husband’s supporters and the nation as a whole, saying she would continue Charlie Kirk’s political activism through his Turning Point USA organization.

“To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die. It won’t, I refuse to let that happen … All of us will refuse to let that happen,” Erika Kirk said. “No one will ever forget my husband’s name, and I will make sure of it.”

She thanked first responders and investigators, as well as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, for their support in the wake of the fatal shooting on Wednesday.

“Mr. President, my husband loved you, and he knew that you loved him, too,” Erika Kirk said, fighting back tears. “He did. Your friendship was amazing. You supported him so well, as did he for you.”

Charlie Kirk was husband to Erika and the father of two young kids at the time of his death on Wednesday, a 1-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter.
“When I got home last night, our daughter just ran into my arms … and she said, ‘Mommy, I missed you.’ I said, ‘I missed you too, baby.’ She goes, ‘Where’s daddy?’ What do you tell a 3-year-old? She’s three. I said, ‘Baby, daddy loves you so much. Don’t you worry. He’s on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget,” Erika said.

The founder of the conservative youth activist organization was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University, the first stop this fall for Turning Point USA’s “The American Comeback Tour,” which was traveling to multiple college campuses across the country.

In what has been described as a “political assassination,” Kirk was struck by a single shot while he was speaking at the event on Wednesday. He was rushed to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Trump announced Kirk’s death on social media, writing, “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead.”

“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us,” the president wrote. “Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”

When Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced at a Friday press conference the arrest of a suspect in the shooting, he spoke of Charlie Kirk’s family.

“I especially want to thank the family of Charlie Kirk — Erika, Charlie’s parents, his children,” Cox said. “I want us to be thinking of them as we bring justice in this case. They will be involved in that justice. We will be working very closely with them as we move through this process as well.”

Erika Kirk is a former Miss Arizona USA and collegiate basketball player who is currently studying for a doctorate in Biblical studies at Liberty University, according to a biography on her website.

She is the founder of Proclaim, a faith-based clothing line, the host of the “Midweek Rise Up” podcast, and the founder of two nonprofit organizations, according to her website.

Erika Kirk has also been a frequent presence by her husband’s side at speaking engagements and public appearances.

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A year earlier, hard-charging right-wing Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Their wide margins gave them far more running room than the G.O.P. has now. A battered Mr. Clinton later pleaded with reporters that he was still “relevant,” which sounds a lot like today’s congressional Democrats.

Yet when the shutdown ended in early 1996, Mr. Clinton had won big. How? Mr. Clinton, who had struggled to communicate a message, boiled down his dozens of wordy policy positions to what his aides called “M.M.E.E.” — Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. Intense focus on those four popular Democratic positions powered Mr. Clinton’s shutdown comeback and his re-election that fall.

The Clinton analogy is imperfect; Mr. Clinton had the megaphone of the presidency, while Democrats today control no branch of government. The politics of a shutdown favor them nonetheless.

Democrats have a big edge on what’s seen as the No. 1 problem in America: affordability. According to a new CBS News poll, a paltry 36 percent of Americans approve of the way Mr. Trump is handling inflation, a blaring sign of the president’s vulnerability on the main issue that brought him back to the White House.

In a world of short attention spans, Democrats should go to the ramparts on just three instead of four issues, with a tightly focused popular solution for each.

Today’s version of M.M.E.E. should be H.T.T. — health, tariffs and troops in the streets. The first two are directly related to affordability, with health-care premiums and drug costs surging and tariffs causing steep price increases, not to mention resentment from parents who don’t want the president telling them, as he did in April, that it’s OK if they can now afford only two dolls for Christmas.

On health, Democrats should demand an extension of the popular tax credits that make Obamacare more affordable for millions of Americans, which are scheduled to expire next year. They should insist on restoring funding for popular National Institutes of Health grants, particularly for cancer research. And in the glare of a shutdown, it would be tough for Republicans to resist a Democratic push to reverse at least some of the unpopular Medicaid cuts. Finally, Democrats should insist on a provision guaranteeing the availability of vaccines, a position supported by 78 percent of adults in a recent NBC News poll, including overwhelming majorities of independents and Republicans.

On tariffs, Democrats should demand that almost all tariffs be approved by Congress, a view that might soon also have the backing of the Supreme Court. This would peel off some Republican senators who like neither tariffs nor Mr. Trump trampling on the legislative branch’s longstanding authority over trade.

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Soon after psychiatrist Leo Kanner first identified autism in the 1940s, he and his colleagues proposed a simple explanation for its cause: mothers’ “lack of genuine warmth” toward their children. Being raised by “refrigerator mothers,” the researchers explained, was what caused autistic people’s difficulties with social communication and sensory processing and their repetitive behaviors and interests.

But in the 1970s, studies of twins revealed that autism is highly heritable, not something that develops after birth. Thus began the search for the genes responsible. “We had rather simple views about what it might be” that caused autism, says Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita at Boston University. The idea in the 1990s, she recalls, was that “we’re talking about six to 10 genes.” Instead, researchers found hundreds.

No simple theory of autism has ever panned out, and the scientific community has moved on from the search for a simple answer. Researchers now know that autism develops from a staggeringly complex interplay between genes and factors that can influence development in utero. But attempts to pin the condition on one root cause abound, most famously in the disproven idea that vaccines cause autism. And earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that he will reveal the “interventions” that are “almost certainly causing autism” in September.

While scientists rarely proclaim absolutes, autism researchers say that they are as sure as they can be that there’s no one cause of the condition. “It’s never going to be true,” says Tager-Flusberg; decades of data reveal that a complex (and highly variable) origin is the only logical conclusion.

The Genetic Picture

In the past 50 years, researchers have identified hundreds of genes linked to autism spectrum disorder. But which genes are involved varies greatly from person to person and can be much harder to pin down. About 10 to 15 percent of cases (some estimates are as high as 39 percent) involve genetic mutations that are new to a child—not inherited from their parents—explains Shafali Jeste, an autism researcher and pediatrician, who leads the neurology division at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In another approximately 50 percent of cases, autism is linked to the combination of many common variants of genes that were inherited from parents. In the remaining cases, the causes are murky

But even for new genetic mutations that are known to cause autism, the story is far from simple. The same mutations can be present in nonautistic people, too. “If you have this mutation, it doesn’t guarantee that you will have autism per se, but it increases the risk substantially,” says Jed Elison, who studies brain development and autism at the University of Minnesota. There are still other factors involved that researchers haven’t fully characterized—some that are likely genetic and some that are likely not.

Untangling genetic factors from nongenetic ones (which scientists call “environmental factors”) can be tricky. For example, studies have consistently shown that parental age at conception can play a role, with older parents being more likely to have autistic children. But that could be because of the effect of age on genes: people accumulate mutations with age and can pass these on to their kids. Other factors that have been linked to autism include people being born prematurely or through cesarean section, as well as pregnant people having obesity, using certain medications (such as the antiseizure drug valproate and the pain reliever acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol), and being exposed to air pollution. The strength of the evidence for these links varies, though, and the increases in risk tend to be small. The evidence is also only correlational, meaning it can’t establish what caused what.

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With a provocative title and over 175 comments at the time of writing, a thread in the r/Parenting subreddit is getting a lot of attention because a parent has admitted to loving their kids equally—but not liking them all the same.

In the post titled, “The dirty secret my parents never told me,” the Redditor says they believed growing up in a “somewhat large family” that their parents loved all the kids equally. “Now that I’ve been a parent, I think that actually was true,” they add.

Then, the poster goes on to drop the bombshell confession: “But what I didn’t understand, until I had my own kids, is that I wouldn’t like them all equally.”

Loving Your Children vs. Liking Them

The Redditor says one of their kids is a lot like them in all the good ways, while the other reminds them of themselves “in all the cringe-worthy ways.” For instance, this child is “emotionally needy” and “high maintenance.” A third child “is always lying and getting into trouble, and fighting with the rest of their siblings.”

Again, the poster stresses that all the kids are loved equally. “But do I like being around them all equally? Hell no.” They then go on to share that although this realization used to cause a lot of guilt, having the same feelings about your children is “just not the way it works out.”

Finally, the Redditor says that being your kids’ friend is not the primary job of a parent. “It’s to love them and get them ready to function on their own in the world. And I don’t need to like being around them in order to do that,” the poster says.

The Post Was a Conversation Starter For Sure!

Not surprisingly, the hot-button post has divided commenters. 

Many can relate hard to what the poster said, with one sharing, “I have four kids. I love and enjoy them all for different reasons. They also all uniquely irritate me in their own ways.”

Many comments were in a similar vein to this one: “I love all my kids the same, and quite honestly, they all take turns stressing me out or melting my heart completely. I literally couldn’t tell you which ones I like better on a consistent basis because it’s always changing!”

Dozens of commenters agreed that which of their kids they like the most varies by the day, hour, or even minute, and often it’s age and stage-related. For instance, teenagers and toddlers understandably make liking your kids all the time a challenge for so many parents who responded to this thread.

But many Reddit users reacted differently to the share, with one cautioning the original poster, “I hope you do a good job not letting it show though.” Meanwhile, another noted that kids can sense how their parents feel about them versus their siblings.

“It’s not nice growing up in a house where you know you’re liked a lot less than your siblings,” someone else acknowledged, while another poster agreed, “My entire life, I felt this from my mom. I’ve always said that she loves me because she’s my mom and has to, but doesn’t actually like me. We can always tell.”

Yet another Reddit user had an even more pointed message for the poster, writing, “You have a favorite, and just by how you describe your other child, it’s probably pretty obvious to everyone around you, including that child… which is probably why they’re acting out.”

To be fair, the post was commended by several Redditors, like one who said, “This is really insightful. It makes so much sense that love and liking can be different emotions. It’s tough to balance those feelings as a parent. I admire your honesty in sharing this struggle.”

And someone else defended the poster against critics by saying, in part, “I know you’re a great parent. S****y parents aren’t making posts on Reddit, guessing themselves on how they’re doing as parents.”

My Two Cents (From a Mom of Many)

As a mom of five, I’ll jump in and say that in my view, it’s not so much that I don’t like my kids equally, but that I may not like what they are doing, or the stage they are in.

It’s like I tell my 3-year-old after he throws a truck at my head out of frustration and I make him go to time out: “I will always love you, but I do not like what you’re doing.” 

As far as loving all of my kids equally, I’d say, well, yes, I do, but maybe I’d state it in another way, as I love them all the same, but differently. They are different people! Meanwhile, I can relate to the original poster in that learning how to parent each of your kids according to their individual personalities and stages in life can be a huge challenge—and leads to conflicts with each for varying reasons. 

Ultimately, parenting is the toughest job there is, and I have to agree with the commenter who essentially said that as long as you are constantly evaluating your own performance as a mom or dad, you’re probably pretty engaged and doing the best you can.

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The grandmother of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson — who has been arrested for allegedly murdering far-right activist Charlie Kirk — is now saying her entire family is strongly in the Republican camp.

According to a Friday report in the Daily Beast, Robinson’s grandmother, Debbie Robinson, told the Daily Mail that the alleged shooter was raised around a family of people who fully supported President Donald Trump. The 69-year-old said that her son, Matt — who is the suspect’s father — is a “Republican for Trump.”

“Most of my family members are Republican,” she said. “I don’t know any single one who’s a Democrat.”

Robinson insisted she was completely caught off-guard by the news of her grandson’s arrest, saying that the 22-year-old “has never, ever gotten in trouble in his life. And she added that despite her family’s political leanings, she never personally had political conversations with her grandson, who was registered as non-party affiliated in previous elections.

“I’m just so confused,” Debbie said of her grandson’s arrest. “[Tyler] is the shyest person,” she said. “He has never, ever spoke politics to me at all.”

The alleged assassin’s mother, Amber, is also a registered Republican, according to public records. Both Amber and Matt Robinson live in the Republican stronghold of Washington, Utah, and are employed full-time as a licensed social worker and a home furnishings entrepreneur, respectively. One 2021 Facebook post shows Amber Robinson praising one of Tyler’s brothers as a “gun-toting, cowboy-loving, brilliant kid” with a photo of him holding a scoped rifle.

According to a Friday report in the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Robinson graduated high school with a nearly perfect grade point average, scored a 34 out a possible 36 on his A.C.T. test, and earned a $32,000 scholarship to Utah State University. However, he dropped out of school after one semester and appeared to be deeply steeped in far-right online meme culture. Ammunition recovered by police were covered in obscure references to video games and niche memes

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They first met in middle school – when they were wide-eyed and 10, 11, or 12: before Americans could so easily separate themselves based on what they believed.

“Even then, he was political,” Christina Lorey wrote in a social media post after his death. “A Republican – but not an extremist. He was funny, friendly, and always the first to debate anything and everything.”

Lorey, a left-leaning journalist with a Substack following, who now lives in Wisconsin, and conservative influencer Charlie Kirk grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. On Sept. 10, a shooter is believed to have fired a single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, on the campus of Utah Valley University.

Now, Lorey is paying tribute to her childhood friend, years after their paths diverged. She declined to speak further out of respect for his family.

In her post, Lorey wrote that Kirk “talked a lot.” She did, too. They “became friends,” she said. They weren’t “best friends,” but “the kind of people who’d work well together on a school project and have fun doing it.”

Then, at the end of 6th grade, both Lorey and Kirk were voted “Most Likely to Become President.”

“He was much more excited about that than I: it always seemed like he might actually run for president someday,” Lorey wrote. “In high school, we were on different tracks, but had one memorable class together senior year: AP Government. It was an election year, too; Charlie’s Super Bowl.” Former President Barack Obama and former Arizona Sen. John McCain were on the ballot.

“I got to know Charlie very well during that year,” Lorey said. “One of my favorite memories was the schoolwide campaign he launched to get the cafeteria to lower the price of its chocolate chip cookies. I don’t remember what they’d hiked the price to or if his campaign was even successful, but he was extraordinarily passionate about it.”

She continued: ‘That trait stayed with him until the end – When Charlie believed in something, he REALLY believed in it.” Then, just before they both graduated from Wheeling, senior superlatives were released. They were both voted “Most Likely to Become President” – again.

Graduation came and went. The Wheeling Wildcats from the class of 2012 walked their own paths. Lorey said Kirk started Turning Point USA that summer. The organization advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. His high school friend Lorey went to college. Kirk dropped out.

“We didn’t talk much besides the occasional check-in, and even though I didn’t at all agree with or admire what his organization turned into, I was amazed that the middle school boy that always wanted to debate built THAT,” Lorey said on social media. “It was impressive.”

But she built something impressive, too: Lorey now boasts 125,000 Facebook followers while sharing good news across Wisconsin.

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