Nannies Abound — Cheat code for affluent parents, or just cheating at parenting?

Did you have a nanny growing up? Not just a sporadic babysitter, I mean. Personally, I've never considered myself as someone who would hire a nanny. The concept has always struck me as so... inequitable. My best guess is that there's a heavily proletarian side of me that has never gotten comfortable with the thought of subservience in certain social dynamics. I *think* the reasoning goes something like: If I'm capable of doing something myself, then I should always aim to do it myself. I almost never identify with the natural counterargument: that if my time is more valuable than the cost to hire help, that I should engage that help instead. Maybe it's because I never really think of my own time being inherently more valuable than someone else's. And the irony is that I use the word "proletarian", which might lead you to assume this is was ingrained in me from my years in China, but the DIY attitude is more probably from the Fresno years, when my family were truly working class. Anyways, some examples of my anti-domestic servitude mindset that come to mind:

Where the Wonders Never Cease

Reuters via Guardian

I woke up a couple days ago to this wonderful headline, and frankly an even more interesting photo. The graphic design seems pretty well done so a part of me wants to blame laziness and AI for this, among the most egregious errors I've ever seen from the US State Department, which was held in high esteem once upon a time. The various comments about Marco Rubio acting or looking "r*tarded", back from the 2016 election cycle, I never really paid much heed. Well, as a former Geography Bee nerd, it's got my attention now. The oldest federal government department, responsible for a fledgling United States' foreign affairs, either has no sense of geography, or has the quality control standards of a Stellantis factory floor manager. I weep for the women and men (and no other sexes!) who work at State. The ones remaining and still give a flying flip can likely be identified by their palms permanently attached to their face.

 

Besides Your Personality...?

 

Living the Dream...

Just saw this article while browsing the news, and I do have to say:

It's the feel-good story of the day.

There is a God.

Good things really do happen.

A few years ago, HR was one of the many hats I was wearing at the company, along with most functions other than product/engineering. For a growing company, was just too much. I asked our CEO to consider hiring someone who had a dedicated background in those respective functions to take over. Which, to his credit, he did. Biggest single mistake I ever made, assuming that a dedicated, experienced HR lead (and the clown car team that ended up being hired) would solve any problems. Nope. Instead, the dysfunction, chaos. And gross overspending from this team that ensued haunted the company for years.

To be fair, quality HR people do exist. Many people mean well, and certainly don't intend to do harm to an organization. Ownership and responsibility are so key. I fear that we've trained our professional HR teams to do the exact opposite: reduce risk, censor points of potential liability, and bury each other in mandatory trainings and legalese. On paper, everything can appear legit, and still deal a death blow to the company. I now realize why so few people trust their HR orgs --- and by extension, their employers.

It's probably one of the key hard lessons about work life that I've had to learn. I'd say that's what makes reading this news headline so oddly cathartic.

Help me AI: What the heck is up with the geediting blog??

[UPDATE Aug/2026] - since I first wrote about this, the blog has seemingly disappeared from existence. Note the missing graphic below, as well as the total absence of any trace of the previously written articles. My Google News feed thanks you, kind publisher who developed a conscience.

Do you use LLM/AI tools? I'm a horribly late bloomer. I didn't really start using any of the chat agents until around a few months ago. But whoa, I'm pretty impressed, when it saves loads of Googling, sifting, parsing, and compilation of facts here and there. It's just so helpful, especially with random stuff that I wouldn't have cared to spend any time investigating otherwise. But when a term paper-quality answer is readily available, I find myself asking some pretty random stuff. Here's one such prompt, from when I was first really interested, then really frustrated and annoyed by the endless articles like this seemingly popping out of nowhere onto Google News, one after another, about super sad middle aged people coming to a reckoning with some depressing aspect of their lives (don't get me started with the stock photos, either):

[Me] >> What's up with all the articles from geediting.com? Why are they so sad and popping up everywhere?

The Actual Thanksgiving Post + Menu for Today

On this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my health, and that of my family. Married life is hard. Kids are hard. Parents getting older is hard. Life is hard. But there is so much that is going well, to be thankful for, and commonly skipped over as not even an afterthought. It's a good time to reflect on that, if even once a year.

I just got word not 24 hours ago that my uncle passed away a couple days ago. What a year. In May, I took my family to meet my aunt. She was in poor health already. Within weeks of our return to the US, I got word that she had passed. Combine that with my dad's emergency open heart surgery last Black Friday, and that means that within the past year, my father and his entire set of siblings had life-threatening conditions, and my dad was the only one who survived. For that alone, I am thankful beyond words.

I also recently got to spend a week back in the Bay Area, where I caught up with old friends pretty much every single day I was there. It was a great visit; refreshing for the soul. Some friends you lose, and some friends you lose touch with, and it's really hard to say which is worse. But I think as time goes on, you get to cherish every conversation that much more. For that, I am thankful.

Not cooking a full turkey this year, as nobody will eat the whole thing. So this year, I opted for some a smaller serving that will hopefully be tastier. Almost everything else will be "traditional". After all, I have to convince my kids later on that they had a somewhat "normal" childhood, and convince ICE that I'm American enough to not deport.

• Garlic butter roasted turkey thighs
• Chinese-style green beans
• Mashed potoatoes + gravy
• Roast brussels sprouts
• Mushroom soup
• Stuffing w/ jujube (because I didn't want to buy a giant bag of cranberries!)
• Roast Japanese sweet potato
• Blackberry pie

and as I'm typing this I realized I forgot to get cornbread. I have bread, but sourdough.

last minute grocery run? Wish me luck.

Not a Thanksgiving Post: Thoughts After Visiting Japan for the First Time in 6 Years

It's just before 7am on Thanksgiving Day. I've got a big [cooking] day ahead of me. Woke up early, scrolled through Instagram, and this popped up:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jewel Poudyal (@jewel_0620)

 And now here I am, tapping away.