The holiday baking, part II

I've been needing some good cold-weather running gear for years, so I was excited yesterday when my new merino wool socks and quarter-zip base layer arrived. I especially like the base layer, which is soft, breathable, and odor-resistant. It's also black and fits pretty sleekly. In my own mind, it gives me a smoky George Harrison Quiet Beatle loved-him-a-black-turtleneck kinda look. I checked in with Mom seeking some words of affirmation, more specifically, how hot I looked in the new shirt. Mom's response: "Black is a good color on you." Which is not exactly a rejection of my bid but is certainly no better than neutral. Mom subsequently confirmed, as I suspected, that she didn't want to tell me I'm hot in front of our boys, who were quite amused by our exchange.

  

The holiday baking, part I

Sorry for our absence, but it's been a busy one around here! There have been so many baking projects during Dylan's visit. My favorite was the night Dylan and I tried out a new all-day pizza dough project based on a focaccia recipe from Puglia (Bari more specifically). The pizza turned out pretty well but was probably not worth the effort so I won't post the recipe. Still, I did have my joy for the day (and many more) seeing Dylan sitting in front of the oven literally watching the pizza bake with childlike anticipation (and wearing Mom's fuzzy pink heart slippers while doing it). I raised a foodie!

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Die Hard is most definitely a Christmas movie, episode II

Five years ago, UaKS definitively established that "Die Hard" is, in fact, a Christmas movie. No further proof is required, but we have some more anyway, once again thanks to my buddy Ed:

 

This is a Hans Gruber/Nakatomi Plaza advent calendar. Every day, you move Hans down another floor until he finally goes splat on Christmas Eve.

What better way to usher in and enjoy the true meaning of the Christmas season? Be of good cheer.

   

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Family stories

I recently heard an interview with Robin Fivush, who is a professor of developmental psychology and the director of the Family Narratives Lab at Emory University. She has done some fascinating work studying how children’s and adolescents’ knowledge of their family histories can serve as a "clinically useful index of psychological well-being and prognosis."* Fivush and her colleagues reported that such "knowledge of family history is significantly correlated with internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, better family functioning, greater family cohesiveness, lower levels of anxiety, and lower incidence of behavior problems." This is about as correlational (as opposed to causative) as findings get, but I still like the idea that knowing your family's stories somehow makes for healthier families and family members.

Driving lessons

If you want to be thoroughly entertained for eight minutes, watch this short film: "Shanti Rides Shotgun." This is one of the most New York things ever, in a good way. [I tried to embed the Vimeo video here, but Google's crappy blogger platform was having none of it.]

 

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Everything is better together

I just read one of my all-time favorite psychology papers, Everything Is Better Together,* by Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, who are both at the University of British Columbia. The study method was ingenious. The authors mined the data from four years of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which measures how people divide their time among life’s various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. The ATUS method is to select households to try to reflect America’s diverse range of demographic characteristics. One person aged 15 or older in each household is then asked to describe their previous day in episodic fashion, similar to Daniel Kahneman’s Day Reconstruction Method.

 

In the years studied by Folk and Dunn (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2021), the ATUS included questions about (1) how happy the interviewee felt during three of the episodes they described, and (2) whether they were interacting with anyone while engaged in those episodes. ATUS coders then placed each episode into one of over 400 pre-specified activity categories, such as eating and drinking, doing laundry, playing games, walking, attending movies, etc. Folk and Dunn then mined that data to “examine[] the relationship between socializing and happiness across more than 80 daily activities by analyzing 105,766 activity episodes from 41,094 participants.” Incredibly, Folk and Dunn found that “participants consistently rated every common daily activity as more enjoyable when interacting with someone else.” They concluded that “whether we are eating, reading, or even cleaning up around the house, happiness thrives in the company of others.” And, while literally “everything is better together,” we here at UaKS are especially happy to note that the largest effect, by far, was for eating and drinking together.

 

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* Folk, D., & Dunn, E. (2025). Everything Is Better Together: Analyzing the Relationship Between Socializing and Happiness in the American Time Use Survey. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251364333

 

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Return of the porch pirates: all hail the king

It's been almost five years since the last porch pirate episode (#326). Fortunately, my buddy Ed, who made his first appearance in episode #2, continues to deliver the highest quality piratical news. And here, dear readers, is the crowning achievement in porch piracy. You have to see this one for yourself: "'Porch pirate' steals package from delivery man." Crown that man king of the porch pirates!

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