Friday roundup

UCLA has an anti-semitism problem.

This reminds me so much of my mom and how I used to dread any events (graduations. etc.) that would have to involve her.

Here are some great things to keep in mind when parenting adult children.

Carolyn (why yes, I did use the snow day and delay to catch up on Carolyn) on the importance of "meticulous self-care":

Get fresh air, eat reasonably, sleep well and bring or queue up reliable sources of comfort (music and video, say, to supplement your books). For dealing with the turmoil, have a mantra to keep yourself steady. You want to listen more than you talk, stay calm more than you react, give affection more than you show anything negative — so try condensing these goals into a few words you can repeat in your mind.

Everyone's weird in their own way:

We’re all weird. Some people wear it for all to see, and some people tuck it away at home in horror that anyone will discover it, and most are somewhere in between. Please make up your mind just to accept yourself and your weird.

Men are generally more narcissistic.

Holy mommyjacking! The last example is the absolute worst.

One of the great things about reading STFU parents is how foreign most of that stuff is to me because most of my friends don't pull that $hit (it probably also helps that I'm not on Facebook). My friends aren't jerks--we're getting back to Carolyn here--parent-jerks are just the same jerks they once were, with a new focus:

People with jerk tendencies keep those when they have kids, and people with non-jerk tendencies tend to keep those when they have kids. (As do their friends, not coincidentally.)

And it's just about coming to terms with reality: your kids are not as charming to everyone else as they are to you:

The practical application being, someone with a me-centric world view will find it difficult to impossible to hear that you aren’t as charmed by their precious offspring as they are, and they will make you pay for your honesty. Someone less self-absorbed will have no trouble remembering that being around other people’s snot-encrusted, impulse-control-challenged need factories is not everything you had hoped your Saturday night would be.

Animals have consciousness.