I think there are a million things to be discouraged about in the world, but I do think that the progress being made on "what it means to be a man" is moving in the right direction. It's clear men can be terrible, and the last decade in particular has had several movements root out some of the worst offenders, but I truly think all of us no matter our gender are more alike than we've historically thought, and the more we recognize that the better off we'll be.

Where does the line fall between the parental responsibility for loving and caring for a child that you've forced into existence, and your own personal responsibility for growing as a person? I wish I knew.

In dozens of interviews with families I heard about doctors shaming low-income moms for buying dollar store ramen noodles instead of pricier fresh vegetables. I talked to teenagers who were gaining weight while dealing with depression or anxiety and whose doctors told them to cut carbs. Families described doctors who rushed conversations, grabbed bellies or made jokes about kids’ bodies.

What should the obesity guidelines say instead? Stop classifying kids and their health by body size altogether. This would involve a paradigm shift to weight-inclusive approaches, which see weight change as a possible symptom of, or a contributing factor toward, a larger health concern or struggle. These approaches focus providers on addressing that issue rather than managing weight loss. This means looking less at the number on the scale and talking more to families about their health priorities and challenges. Can they add healthy foods rather than restrict calories?

We cannot solve anti-fat bias by making fat kids thin. Our current approach only teaches them that trusted adults believe the bullies are right — that a fat body is just a problem to solve. That’s not where the conversation about anyone’s health should begin.

those most likely to become entrepreneurs are well-rounded. A 2005 study from Edward Lazear suggests that the self-employed tend to be generalists, not specialists.

Autism has been gentrified. This is a dynamic I now cannot stop seeing: once a human attribute like autism or mental illness becomes seen as an identity marker that is useful for social positioning among the chattering class, the conversation about that attribute inevitably becomes fixated on those among that chattering class. It becomes impossible to escape their immense social gravity. The culture of that attribute becomes distorted and bent towards the interests and biases of those who enjoy the privilege of holding society’s microphone.

Today we have the usual demand to have it both ways, to be seen as one’s disorder when convenient for differentiating ourselves from the pack and then setting aside that definition when uncomfortable. Again, the truly disabled can’t do this. They do not deftly craft facades from their disorders, lacking the self-control and capacity for social scheming required to do so. They aren’t afforded the possibility of ignoring their condition when convenient. Yet the voice of the ambitious and shameless patient seeking validation and coin for being sick is becoming the voice of mental illness, those unprincipled enough to treat it all as marketing. Mental illness should not be fodder for building your personal brand.

there is something disordered, and untoward, about a society in which legions of successful people have suddenly discovered their diagnoses and, despite those conditions never having impeded their relentless marches up the ladder of American meritocracy, making the mental illness conversation all about them.

how do you proceed with your quest to turn mental illness into a positive thing, an honored thing, a “valid” thing, without inevitably privileging the narratives and interests of those whose mental illness is least malign? How do you tell generations of young strivers that having a mental illness is cool and unique, without alienating those who feel neither cool nor unique, but only afflicted?

How do you keep the schizophrenic and the schizoaffective and the bipolar and the borderline and the violent and the self-harming and the catatonic and the permanently deluded at the forefront of the culture? Because the way things are going, contemporary mental illness discourse threatens to do to the truly incapacitated the very thing it claims to oppose - leaving them voiceless, ignored, unheard, alone.

the police are at wits’ end. It all speaks to the desperate need for a statewide mental health system, funded with help from the feds. The problem is just too big for San Francisco to solve on its own.