United Nations Global Goals

UNglobalgoals

These are the seventeen goals the United Nations has for the world over the next fifteen years.

They fall under three umbrellas:

Ending extreme poverty.
Fighting inequality and injustice.
Fixing climate change.

The first obstacle is to promote the goals until everyone knows they exist, so it will be embarrassing for world leaders to fail to meet them. I am pro this, so I’m telling all of you. The world has goals! Comforting.

You can find more info GlobalGoals.org, and if you want to tell people too, #GlobalGoals is the tag. The organization and efforts already underway are inspiring. Go have a look.

Missed Connections

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Me: Frazzled Mom, carrying a jumble of bags, a kid and baby in tow, buckling the carseat, folding the stroller into the trunk, passing out snacks. You: Eager Brunette, honking ardently as encouragement to leave my parking space at a pace better suited to your schedule.

We made long, meaningful eye contact while I climbed in my seat and loaded a map, again as I queued up a podcast, and several times as I answered some personal email, then drummed my fingers absentmindedly on the steering wheel. Then, so suddenly, you were gone.

Let’s grab drinks, restless stranger. I’d love to hear how the rest of your day went.

Parking lot dandelions street art by Roadsworth.

Self Determination

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Hank dressed himself today. If I know my kid, he chose the most available item of clothing from each drawer — a tank top and shorts, soccer socks, skater sneakers, and a blazer when I told him he needed a jacket.

hankjumperstairs

So off we go to the beach for some pickup soccer, then a few Ollies at the skate park, topped off with dessert at the yacht club. Lifestyle goals.

Gender Neutral Diaper Bag

topo_designs_mini_mountain_bag_navy_leather_grande

Brad wanted a cool diaper bag when Ozzy was born, but I wasn’t willing to give up the ease of a bag that hooks onto the stroller handle. We were using Hank’s old Skip Hop Diaper Duo bag, until we came across Topo Design’s Mini Mountain Bag.

It’s not built as a diaper bag, obviously, but we’ve been using it for a few months and it’s perfect. The strap has a clasp near the bag that makes it adjustable, so we’re able to tighten it most of the way and hang it across the stroller handles. It looks small, but it accommodates everything we need, even when we’re traveling.

Vita Nova Taxidermy, Do Your Thing

Do you guys listen to the Reply All podcast? It’s great. But this one called Flower Child made me sad about injustice.

Marissa Hernandez is a 20 year old girl who makes taxidermy out of her bedroom. Her site is Vita Nova Taxidermy.

Her business disappeared overnight after an anonymous competitor posted a fraudulent report about her on a site called Rip Off Report, saying her stuff arrived with holes, she was stuffing kangaroos, etc. The reporter on the podcast checked into it, and none of it was true. In fact, when the reporter called, the person who posted the fraudulent review also tried to have it taken down to no avail.

Marissa can’t afford to have the review removed, and she thought she found her thing that she loves to do for a living, but now feels like she may need to do something else to make money. Frowny faces, and bad feelings.

Anyway, this post is me attempting to drive up another search engine result for her business and knock the Rip Off post off the front page at least. If you feel like linking to it, that would help. As far as I know? I should know more about how these things work.

Good luck, Marissa! Girl, do your thing.

Ask Brad About His Kids Onstage!

How does he balance work and family life? Are all his kids by the same mother?

Brad is speaking at AdobeMAX, and I’ll be there too. Are you going? If so, hooray! We’ll see you there.

Brad has two labs, if you’d like to sign up. One is Monday at 5 p.m. If that’s full, the other is Weds at 1:30 p.m. He also made the Target Mobile app, so he’s doing a case study on that Tues at 8 a.m. I’ll arrange for donuts, because ooof. There should be around ten of us. I mean, come on.

Anyway, if you’re going, please come say hi. And remember to ask Brad how he finds time for it all.

Bradley. How do you do it?

I Can Bring Home the Bacon, Why Are You So Interested in the Pan?

Margaret Stewart — who some of you many remember from the Mighty Closet feature I did with her one million years ago — has some solid suggestions for speakers, organizers, and interviewers about how to ease onstage sexism at conferences: What My Uterus Can Teach You About Being a Tech Leader. It’s a good read, have a look.

I’d also add, if you’re balancing genders in a speaker lineup, avoid having more than one woman at your conference speak to the issue of harassment (unless that’s the topic of your gathering of course). That interests me to a point, but taken too far, especially at tech conferences, it can be exhausting and disheartening. It puts women in the spotlight not for their accomplishments, but as the object of threats from a mostly male chorus.