Tag Archives: cooking

• Babies’ brains are wired to learn multiple languages at once
  I think most people know that learning multiple languages is beneficial for kids, but I was surprised how early it needs to be done.

  Between six and 12 months, infants who grow up in monolingual households become more specialized in the subset of sounds in their native language. In other words, they become “native language specialists.” And, by their first birthdays, monolingual infants begin to lose their ability to hear the differences between foreign language sounds.

• Can Attachment Theory Explain All Our Relationships?
  To add upon the IQ/EQ discussion, this article posits that attachment theory can show and affect a person’s social skills. And these are mostly set by the parents when the child is very young.

  If the baby was upset during separation but sits still as a stone when her mother returns, it’s likely a sign of an insecure attachment. If the baby was relaxed when left alone and is nonplussed by reunion, that’s less significant. If the baby hightails it to her mother, then screeches mid-approach, indicating a change of heart, that’s a worrisome sign too.

  But the most important moment is Reunion No. 2, after the mother leaves again and returns again. If a baby who was upset during separation still does nothing to acknowledge her mother’s return, it’s a sign that the baby, at only a year old, has already come to expect her advances to be rebuffed. If the baby reaches out for love but isn’t able to settle down enough to receive it (or it’s not offered), that may reflect a relationship filled with mixed messages. And if the baby is wild with sadness then jumps like a monkey into the mother’s arms and immediately stops crying, the baby is categorized as secure, coming from a relationship in which she expects her needs to be met.

• Marie Kondo and the Ruthless War on Stuff
  I’m very confused about this article. It almost seems satirical and from The Onion but it is also disconcertingly serious. Who knew that tidying up was such a big industry and that there were some many subscribers to this way of life.

  At Conference, I met women who organize basements. I met women who organize digital clutter. I met women who organize photos. I met women who categorized themselves as “solopreneurs,” which, what’s that now? I met a woman who organizes thoughts, and please don’t move onto the next sentence until you’ve truly absorbed that: I met a woman who charges $100 per hour for the organization of thoughts. I heard the word “detritus” pronounced three different ways. I met a woman in camouflage (though the invitation begged us to confine ourselves to our native business-casual), who carried a clipboard and called herself Major Mom, and instead of an organizer she calls herself a liberator, like in Falluja.

• David Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness
  I don’t understand cooking & food but this is an article I can relate to since it takes a scientific approach – David Chang of Momofuku fame talks about how tastes are ingrained in your memory and are reawakened by similar tasting foods

  But here’s the thing. When I taste that dish, I don’t taste Bolognese—I taste mapo tofu, a spicy, flavorful Chinese dish made with soft tofu, Szechuan peppers, and ground pork. I’ve had way more mapo tofu than I’ve had Bolognese, so that resonates more for me. I’d never seen a connection between Bolognese and mapo tofu before, but Joshua had inadvertently discovered this overlap between them. We hit the middle of a Venn diagram, creating something that incorporated enough elements of both mapo tofu and Bolognese that it could evoke both of them, while being neither one precisely.

• The Top F2P Monetization Tricks and Chasing The Whale
  This one is a two-parter which I might have blogged before (I do remember reading about it before) on monetizing and the freemium model of mobile gaming. It’s already a few years out of date but the basic principles are still in use.

  Another novel way to use a progress gate is to make it look transparent, but to use it as the partition between the skill game and the money game. Candy Crush Saga employs this technique artfully. In that game there is a “river” that costs a very small amount of money to cross. The skill game comes before the river. A player may spend to cross the river, believing that the previous skill game was enjoyable (it was for me) and looking to pay to extend the skill game. No such guarantee is given of course, King just presents a river and does not tell you what is on the other side. The money game is on the other side, and as the first payment is always the hardest, those that cross the river are already prequalified as spenders.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: cooking, parenting, pocket