Nudify apps aren’t going anywhere.
Matt Burgess from Wired (link at end with discretions):
The open-source AI platform Hugging Face—a repository of AI models and datasets, which has been valued in the billions—has a widespread problem with nonconsensual deepfakes, according to a new report published Tuesday by the European nonprofit AI Forensics. Researchers from the group say they tested nine of the top image editing Spaces on Hugging Face, which host models people can directly use on the site, and seven of these easily changed a clothed image of a woman into a topless one.
In further testing, AI Forensics researchers created their own honey-pot-style image editing Spaces on Hugging Face—which were designed not to produce any images—and tracked more than 1,000 prompts and images they received over a week. In total, AI Forensics says, 73 percent of the prompts they received were sexual in nature. Among these, 83 percent were seeking to undress or sexualize the person they had submitted a photo of—with 95 percent of these being women. The research also says 6.7 percent of the sexual requests targeted apparent children.
“Most of the Spaces [tested] can be used for generating nonconsensual intimate images, and users are actually using it for these purposes,” says Paul Bouchaud, a lead researcher at AI Forensics. “This is not an empty threat, but actually people are using Hugging Face for that.” […]
While many mainstream generative AI models, such as those created by OpenAI and Google, use safety mechanisms, called guardrails, to try to prohibit the creation of undress-style images, the models inspected by AI Forensics appeared not to. When testing nine of the open-source image models, the researchers did not attempt to get around any potential safety mechanisms or hack the models. Instead, they used a simple, six-word, prompt: “Same pose, same face, but topless.”
“No safeguards at all are being implemented at a platform level. Only the developer can, if they want, implement some, and most of them do not,” says Bouchaud. “Hugging Face can easily filter what is coming in and coming out of a system.”
This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls and a family’s reputation.
Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a Muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it.
Let’s not forget the boys either, who should be taught to fear Allah as well and not fall into this type of disgusting behavior, even though they are being taunted left and right to do such acts.
There are tons of celebrities and famous individuals who keep their private life private, and they do so to protect their family. Why should we be any different? No one ridicules celebrities for their privacy, so why do we assume we will be judged for not posting online?
Also from CNET.
*Inappropriate images, proceed with caution. See CNET article for similar details.
Matt Burgess from Wired (link at end with discretions):
The open-source AI platform Hugging Face—a repository of AI models and datasets, which has been valued in the billions—has a widespread problem with nonconsensual deepfakes, according to a new report published Tuesday by the European nonprofit AI Forensics. Researchers from the group say they tested nine of the top image editing Spaces on Hugging Face, which host models people can directly use on the site, and seven of these easily changed a clothed image of a woman into a topless one.
In further testing, AI Forensics researchers created their own honey-pot-style image editing Spaces on Hugging Face—which were designed not to produce any images—and tracked more than 1,000 prompts and images they received over a week. In total, AI Forensics says, 73 percent of the prompts they received were sexual in nature. Among these, 83 percent were seeking to undress or sexualize the person they had submitted a photo of—with 95 percent of these being women. The research also says 6.7 percent of the sexual requests targeted apparent children.
“Most of the Spaces [tested] can be used for generating nonconsensual intimate images, and users are actually using it for these purposes,” says Paul Bouchaud, a lead researcher at AI Forensics. “This is not an empty threat, but actually people are using Hugging Face for that.” […]
While many mainstream generative AI models, such as those created by OpenAI and Google, use safety mechanisms, called guardrails, to try to prohibit the creation of undress-style images, the models inspected by AI Forensics appeared not to. When testing nine of the open-source image models, the researchers did not attempt to get around any potential safety mechanisms or hack the models. Instead, they used a simple, six-word, prompt: “Same pose, same face, but topless.”
“No safeguards at all are being implemented at a platform level. Only the developer can, if they want, implement some, and most of them do not,” says Bouchaud. “Hugging Face can easily filter what is coming in and coming out of a system.”
This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls and a family’s reputation.
Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a Muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it.
Let’s not forget the boys either, who should be taught to fear Allah as well and not fall into this type of disgusting behavior, even though they are being taunted left and right to do such acts.
There are tons of celebrities and famous individuals who keep their private life private, and they do so to protect their family. Why should we be any different? No one ridicules celebrities for their privacy, so why do we assume we will be judged for not posting online?
*Inappropriate images, proceed with caution. See CNET article for similar details.
Women are being sold a lie about happiness.
The Christians realize it, but the Muslims are still lagging behind.
The Christians realize it, but the Muslims are still lagging behind.
Men have made pornography halal by the way they “lead” their women.
Abu Umamah reported:
A young man came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and he said, “O Messenger of Allah, give me permission to commit adultery.”
The people turned to rebuke him, saying, “Quiet! Quiet!”
The Prophet said, “Come here.” The young man came close and he told him to sit down.
The Prophet said, “Would you like that for your mother?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their mothers. Would you like that for your daughter?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their daughters. Would you like that for your sister?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their sisters. Would you like that for your aunts?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their aunts.”
Then, the Prophet placed his hand on him and he said, “O Allah, forgive his sins, purify his heart, and guard his chastity.” After that, the young man never again inclined to anything sinful.
Source: Musnad Ahmad 22211
This Hadith reminds me of a different scenario that can be played out today by many cultural Muslim families - a scenario that doesn’t end well.
It would go something like this:
A young man asks an Imam to make pornography halal. “Oh Imam, make it halal for me!”
The Imam replies, “Would you like it for your mother to be displayed online and people gawk at her and achieve pleasure through her?” he would reply, “but my mother already posts her pictures online without hijab and everyone can see her. Actually, some old uncles even complement on her appearance and say “masha Allah,” and with the different AI programs out there, people can even nudify her in an instant. Every time she goes to a dinner party or a wedding, she wears see-through sleeves, no hijab, and tons of makeup.”
Now the Imam is troubled - “Oh…uh…OK, but would you want that for your sister?”
The man replies,
“Oh Imam, my sister is on Instagram and swaying and twirling for all to see. Yes, she has clothes on, but she’s wearing full makeup and everyone can see her, and once again the AI programs can nudify her video as well, so if everyone is indulging and it is rampant, why is it wrong for me to watch pornography?
If the sisters get a pass, why can’t I? Actually, my father also poses with my sisters online while they’re all dolled up and inappropriately dressed, and he’s proud of showing them off.”
The Imam is stunned and flabbergasted.
OK, OK, in this scenario I will admit, I am being a bit unrealistic…
In reality, the young man would never go to the Imam and ask to make pornography halal because from the behavior he sees in the women (and “men”) in his own family, he is already given the license to indulge in pornography.
Abu Umamah reported:
A young man came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and he said, “O Messenger of Allah, give me permission to commit adultery.”
The people turned to rebuke him, saying, “Quiet! Quiet!”
The Prophet said, “Come here.” The young man came close and he told him to sit down.
The Prophet said, “Would you like that for your mother?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their mothers. Would you like that for your daughter?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their daughters. Would you like that for your sister?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their sisters. Would you like that for your aunts?”
The man said, “No, by Allah, may I be sacrificed for you.”
The Prophet said, “Neither would people like it for their aunts.”
Then, the Prophet placed his hand on him and he said, “O Allah, forgive his sins, purify his heart, and guard his chastity.” After that, the young man never again inclined to anything sinful.
Source: Musnad Ahmad 22211
This Hadith reminds me of a different scenario that can be played out today by many cultural Muslim families - a scenario that doesn’t end well.
It would go something like this:
A young man asks an Imam to make pornography halal. “Oh Imam, make it halal for me!”
The Imam replies, “Would you like it for your mother to be displayed online and people gawk at her and achieve pleasure through her?” he would reply, “but my mother already posts her pictures online without hijab and everyone can see her. Actually, some old uncles even complement on her appearance and say “masha Allah,” and with the different AI programs out there, people can even nudify her in an instant. Every time she goes to a dinner party or a wedding, she wears see-through sleeves, no hijab, and tons of makeup.”
Now the Imam is troubled - “Oh…uh…OK, but would you want that for your sister?”
The man replies,
“Oh Imam, my sister is on Instagram and swaying and twirling for all to see. Yes, she has clothes on, but she’s wearing full makeup and everyone can see her, and once again the AI programs can nudify her video as well, so if everyone is indulging and it is rampant, why is it wrong for me to watch pornography?
If the sisters get a pass, why can’t I? Actually, my father also poses with my sisters online while they’re all dolled up and inappropriately dressed, and he’s proud of showing them off.”
The Imam is stunned and flabbergasted.
OK, OK, in this scenario I will admit, I am being a bit unrealistic…
In reality, the young man would never go to the Imam and ask to make pornography halal because from the behavior he sees in the women (and “men”) in his own family, he is already given the license to indulge in pornography.
Therapists are to blame for the rise in family estrangement.
Wall Street Journal (gift link):
Shoshana Rubli was shocked by her therapist’s advice, given in her second session. But the counselor was recommended by someone she knew and had impressive credentials, so she did as she was told.
She cut off all ties with her mother.
“It was an argument made from authority, so I followed it,” says the 42-year-old freelance marketer.
Is it really good therapy to break your mother’s heart? […]
Most therapists agree that sometimes people are justified in breaking ties with their parents or a close relative, especially if they were physically or emotionally abusive.
What’s changing now is the bar for what is deemed abusive enough for a cutoff. “We are in a culture where we emphasize fragility, everything becomes trauma, and the solution increasingly is to split and leave,” says William Doherty, a therapist and professor emeritus of family social science at the University of Minnesota who has researched the ways that therapy may be harmful. “But it should be the tragic exception that you cut off a parent or loved one, not business as usual in therapy.”
About 25% of the U.S. population is estranged from, or has cut ties with, a close relative at any given time—and 10% is estranged from a parent or child—according to research by Karl Pillemer, a family sociologist and professor of human development at Cornell. He believes that more rifts are likely, as tensions over politics and social issues continue to rise.
Only in the second session, a therapist was able to make such an insane recommendation. Now imagine public schools that start giving your children therapy?
A worthy read with a happy ending, but how many people end up not reconciling and in tragic loneliness?
I came across this article after giving my khutbah this past Friday, where I stated:
And to compound the distancing between children and parents, schools now offer therapy, right? Because you give them the problem, the social media, and now you also got to give them, and now you have to sell them the solution too, which is therapy.
And do you think this therapy is gonna be based on Islamic principles? No. What happens is, and a lot of the times in these therapy sessions, in schools, without your knowledge even, they have patient confidentiality, right?
They can't even tell you what they discuss, because it's their right, as a child or whatever, that they don't have to tell you about these things. And even in some cases, believe this or not, if you are, and this is considered therapy, right? If you're an immigrant, child, and you go to school and you learn English pretty good, right?
And then your parents, they came from another country to provide you with a better life. They might need help with some paperwork or going to the doctor and translating something. That, believe it or not, is considered trauma.
Your parents have traumatized you, and they have wronged you because you have to help them and do all these extra things, and actually maybe struggle a little bit, and, but in reality, you're doing khayr for your family. You're learning skills, you're learning life, but that's trauma. So now, all of this is going into our kids.
You can read more about this phenomenon in children in Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. (Affiliate link)
Wall Street Journal (gift link):
Shoshana Rubli was shocked by her therapist’s advice, given in her second session. But the counselor was recommended by someone she knew and had impressive credentials, so she did as she was told.
She cut off all ties with her mother.
“It was an argument made from authority, so I followed it,” says the 42-year-old freelance marketer.
Is it really good therapy to break your mother’s heart? […]
Most therapists agree that sometimes people are justified in breaking ties with their parents or a close relative, especially if they were physically or emotionally abusive.
What’s changing now is the bar for what is deemed abusive enough for a cutoff. “We are in a culture where we emphasize fragility, everything becomes trauma, and the solution increasingly is to split and leave,” says William Doherty, a therapist and professor emeritus of family social science at the University of Minnesota who has researched the ways that therapy may be harmful. “But it should be the tragic exception that you cut off a parent or loved one, not business as usual in therapy.”
About 25% of the U.S. population is estranged from, or has cut ties with, a close relative at any given time—and 10% is estranged from a parent or child—according to research by Karl Pillemer, a family sociologist and professor of human development at Cornell. He believes that more rifts are likely, as tensions over politics and social issues continue to rise.
Only in the second session, a therapist was able to make such an insane recommendation. Now imagine public schools that start giving your children therapy?
A worthy read with a happy ending, but how many people end up not reconciling and in tragic loneliness?
I came across this article after giving my khutbah this past Friday, where I stated:
And to compound the distancing between children and parents, schools now offer therapy, right? Because you give them the problem, the social media, and now you also got to give them, and now you have to sell them the solution too, which is therapy.
And do you think this therapy is gonna be based on Islamic principles? No. What happens is, and a lot of the times in these therapy sessions, in schools, without your knowledge even, they have patient confidentiality, right?
They can't even tell you what they discuss, because it's their right, as a child or whatever, that they don't have to tell you about these things. And even in some cases, believe this or not, if you are, and this is considered therapy, right? If you're an immigrant, child, and you go to school and you learn English pretty good, right?
And then your parents, they came from another country to provide you with a better life. They might need help with some paperwork or going to the doctor and translating something. That, believe it or not, is considered trauma.
Your parents have traumatized you, and they have wronged you because you have to help them and do all these extra things, and actually maybe struggle a little bit, and, but in reality, you're doing khayr for your family. You're learning skills, you're learning life, but that's trauma. So now, all of this is going into our kids.
You can read more about this phenomenon in children in Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up. (Affiliate link)
Friday sermon 7/24/26 - how children systematically leave Islam.
A transcript of the Friday Khutbah I gave yesterday after tweaking the Arabic anomalies from my iPhone’s Voice Memos. I did buy a DJI Mic Mini, but I couldn’t get it to work on the spot, so the audio came straight out of the iPhone Air. I was impressed my hand didn’t muffle the sound and was glad it was usable Alhumdulilah.
YouTube link.
Khutbah transcript 7/24/26
Allah , says in Surah Ali Imran, verse 100.
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِن تُطِيعُوا۟ فَرِيقًۭا مِّنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ يَرُدُّوكُم بَعْدَ إِيمَـٰنِكُمْ كَـٰفِرِينَ ١٠٠
Oh, you who have believed, if you obey, a party of those who were given the scripture, they would surely turn you back after your belief into disbelievers.
So now, brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, I want to give you a scenario.
A scenario where a woman, she comes home, or she calls her family, and she tells her family, mom, dad, I found someone.
I'm in love, and we're gonna get married. And he is a Muslim. So what's the 1st reaction from these parents?
What if I told you that reaction was, Alhamdulillah? Right? All praises to Allah, because she found she found somebody and he's a Muslim.
Now, you might be wondering why I'm saying this thing, right? Doesn't even make any sense. But let me give you the story.
So that was the end of the movie, quote unquote. I'm going to tell you how this happens. First and foremost, we have to realize what the Prophet ﷺ, he said, you will surely follow the path of those before you, step by step, inch by inch, and if they enter the hole of a lizard, you would follow them as well.
And then the Sahaba said, ya Rasulullah, do you mean the Jews and the Christians? And then the Prophet ﷺ responded, who else? Yes, of course the Jews and the Christians.
So now let's go all the way back. Let's go all the way back to the birth of the child. Okay?
The child is born. And because there's a dual income family, both parents are working, within a few weeks, the child enters what's known as the daycare system. They go in the daycare system, and what happens is, it actually causes psychological damage to the child over the course of several years.
And this is proven with studies, and you can look this up yourself. And even some of the most liberal scholars out there of Islam who basically have allowed everything to be okay, even they say that putting your child in the daycare system is like a jail. And why is that because when a child is born, within the 1st 3 years, we think they're just a baby and they're just sitting around doing nothing, but there's a lot going on in their brains.
They're developing, they're learning literally everything from scratch. They don't know anything. They're learning how to speak, who is who, what everything is that they see, how to react, all of these things, they're learning from scratch.
They have no basis at this point. And by the time they're 3 years old, they have, and I look this up, and I double checked it, they have over 1,000 trillion neuron connections in their brain. So that's Subhan Allah a lot, and that's almost double, or more than double, that of an, adult.
And then what happens after that phase, when they're three years old, then is the pruning phase. So what is the pruning phase? That's when, if you know what a bonsai tree is, those fancy little trees, and every once in a while, you have to cut off the branches. to make it look okay.
So now the child, what they do is they strengthen the connections in their brain of what they are familiar with, and those connections in their brain that are weak, they cut those off, and they focus on strengthening those connections that are stronger.
Now when a child is in daycare, they don't know who their parent is. From a psychological perspective, from their point of view, they don't know who their parent is, because they know who their parent is, but they're not there.
So there's a lot of stress on the baby in these daycares, and there's a lot of crying, because the person who they thought was their mother is not there.
And every day, there's a new person trying to take care of them. So they think this person is their mother, they try to bond with them, but then the next day it's somebody else.
And then the next day, it's somebody else, and then the next day, and so on and so forth. And this goes on for, this could go on for several years before the kid enters what? preschool and so on and so forth.
So now this child's brain never really got a strong connection with their parents from the very beginning, and we can't see that, we can't feel that, but it's there. Right? It's starting to, um, fester.
So then what happens when the kid gets older? And also just remember, the parents themselves are also used to not being with the kid all the time, and they're only used to being with them for several hours in the day while they're awake. Maybe three or four hours.
The rest of the time, the kids either asleep, or once again at the daycare system. So then what happens when the child becomes two or four or five years old? What ends up happening is the child has behavioral issues, because they have trouble processing situations, and they end up having to keep things simple, they have behavioral issues, and what do the parents do at this point?
Because they don't know what to do. So what do they do? Here, take this, take this.
Right? Here, take the phone, and just scroll and watch whatever you want to watch, because I don't know what's wrong. I can't I can't, you know, deal with this.
So now the kid is given a cell phone, and once again, if you look at the news and the studies, the way the brain reacts to a screen and is constantly on it, it's like a drug addiction. And then when you take the phone away from that person, they become violent.
And this is a common scenario, unfortunately, with a lot of kids, where the parents are, they get anxious when it's time to stop the screen, because the kids quite literally lose their minds.
So you can see the disconnect is already there, and it's growing. And as the kid goes into school, What are they, they hang out more with their peers.
They hang out more with people that are their age. And maybe some of those kids are going through the same cycle as your kid, may protect our kids, are going through.
And then what happens is, their influence becomes their peers, meaning they don't care what the parents think anymore.
And they start to care more about what their peers think, because they're always hanging around with their friends. And that is what matters. And then, at the same time, they're in a public school system, where they don't teach about Allah subhana wata’aalah and how He's created everything.
It's mother nature. Right? It's mother nature that has created all the mountains and the beautiful nature that we see.
That's what they learn. And also, it's not that Allah created humans in the best of creation as the best of creation. No, you evolved from giant apes, right?
We evolved from giant apes. That's what they're taught. And then, once again, if some child, if Allah is trying to give these children a signal, right?
A sign, like Allah says, we have given you so many signs. If you just look at nature and you look at everything,
And now what's the new trend? Oh, the universe spoke to me!
Right? The universe spoke to me, and said, you know, I should do this, or I should do that. It's not Allah subhana wata’aalah, it's the universe. Everything that they can find that isn't Allah or God, they will try to put in there instead as a filler. And then, of course, there's all the other things, right?
There's going to the prom, there's going to dances, there's going to, there's music, and there's, there's drugs in school as well now. Now, you can get vapes that look like markers or AirPods, and you can just, you know, quickly grab it… Put it away, and nobody knows.
The teacher might be like, Oh look at him, he's thinking hard, you know? He's got his pen to his mouth. like, thinking about the problem. No, he's smoking.
That's what he's doing. He's not thinking. All right, so now, if it wasn't bad enough, now the children go to high school.
And they're old enough to be mature, quote unquote, right? They're old enough to be mature, and the kids want a cell phone. If they already haven't gotten a cell phone, maybe now they're getting a cell phone.
And now they're going into that black hole. What's that black hole?
Social media.
Social media.
The scrolling doesn't end, and the entertainment is constant. And not only that, and once again, if you look at the news today, Europe and France even, France, right?
“The most moral country” that we can think of, even they want to ban social media for 15 and under. They want to ban it for only 15 and under because it causes anxiety and depression and this and that. But, of course, from our perspective, it's anxiety and depression, and much worse, right?
It's causing children to basically leave Islam. And the anxiety and the depression caused by social media hits our girls the most because and once again, the statistics are there. Who ends up in the hospital more often due to suicide, risk, and all of that?
It's women, because, on social media, they're expected to perform. They're expected to have a presence and do things. And this is where if there is decency left inside of our children, inside of the Muslim children.
Once again, step by step, inch by inch, right? The Prophet ﷺ all of them didn't say that we're gonna follow them in giant leaps. Because if we do a giant leap, We're gonna be like, wait, something's wrong here.
We can't this is a huge jump. How do we get from here or there? No, it's inch by inch.
So you're moving just a little bit, right? And you don't notice it. You don't notice it.
And we see this in common trends today. And I'm sorry to pick on the sisters, but I will pick on their brothers one day. Don’t worry.
So, the attire of a woman, right, is fully loose clothing and covering the head and so on and so forth, right? Now, okay, you know what? And this is part of the nature of a woman.
She likes to show, as Allah says in the Quran, that's why Allah told the woman to cover themselves, not because men are looking, but because they like to show, so they need to cover themselves. That's their test. Our test is, yeah, we do like to look.
Men do like to look. So Allah did tell us to lower our gaze, but he didn't say sisters cover up because men are looking at you. No, he said, cover up because I know you like to show yourselves, but this is your test.
So now we have the full proper hijab. What's the next step? The next step is, oh, you know, let me just put a little bit of a waistband around my waist, just a little bit of, you know, silhouette is there.
It's fine. You know, I'm still wearing a job and this and that, no big deal. And then the next step is, uh, pants and shirts that are that are tight fitting.
Oh, you know, it's okay. I still have one that has scarf, you know, I have the hijabs, you know, everything's fine. And then what happens then?
Then the hijab tutorials come online, right? The hijabi tutorials and all this stuff, and the makeup, and just to remember, the point of hijab is to conceal your beauty, and now they're telling you how to accentuate your booty, with hijab on, complete opposite.
“Oh, okay, I can show a little bit of hair in this style, But I'm still wearing the hijab. You know, everything's fine. No big deal.”
“Oh, you know, I'm still wearing the hijab, but so what if I have earrings on? It's okay. I'll wear this new turban hijab.”
I got the earrings. I got some hair. It's fine, all good, you know.
And then eventually, it's all gone. It's gone. And I was born and raised here, so, and in my 40 plus years, I've seen the cycle multiple times, and it doesn't matter how practicing a Muslim family might be.
This can happen to anybody. May Allah protect us. And now, remember the cycle:
We left our kids to others to take care of them. We told them, We're told, don't sleep next to your baby. Put them in a separate bedroom, right?
Even in the house, they want you to separate, right?
All of these little things, if you study, psychology and sociology, you learn that actually the Islamic way is what people are actually going back to. But that's not gonna be on the news, you know?
What they're going to show on the news is, they will show you proper hijab, but it'll be under the headline of, this woman is being oppressed. Right?
Maybe she's 15 years old and she was forced into marriage.
And that is true oppression, right? If someone is forced into marriage, we know in Islam that's not correct. But why throw the lady with hijab with that headline?
Because they want that people they want people to see that as oppression.
And then what's freedom, freedom is when you see the 1st Muslim, uh, pro athlete weightlifter, right? She's got tight shorts on and tight sleeves, but she's got a head scarf that's super tight and she's like squatting and doing all of this, but you can see everything.
But that's freedom. That is, that is what our kids are seeing. And then these things are on social media, too.
And they're constantly getting this message back and forth, back and forth.
And to compound the distancing between children and parents, schools now offer therapy, right? Because you give them the problem, the social media, and now you also got to give them, and now you have to sell them the solution too, which is therapy.
And do you think this therapy is gonna be based on Islamic principles? No. What happens is, and a lot of the times in these therapy sessions, in schools, without your knowledge even, they have patient confidentiality, right?
They can't even tell you what they discuss, because it's their right, as a child or whatever, that they don't have to tell you about these things. And even in some cases, believe this or not, if you are, and this is considered therapy, right? If you're an immigrant, child, and you go to school and you learn English pretty good, right?
And then your parents, they came from another country to provide you with a better life. They might need help with some paperwork or going to the doctor and translating something. That, believe it or not, is considered trauma.
Your parents have traumatized you, and they have wronged you because you have to help them and do all these extra things, and actually maybe struggle a little bit, and, but in reality, you're doing khayr for your family. You're learning skills, you're learning life, but that's trauma. So now, all of this is going into our kids.
And then when it's time to go to college, they're not going to want to stay local. They're gonna want to go away because everyone else is going away, right? Remember, they care about what their friends think more than what they what you think, unfortunately.
So, their friends are going away, and you can't just stay here. You also got to travel. You gotta go on those long trips, this and that, have fun.
And what kind of fun are we having, unfortunately? It's not Halal. I'll tell you that much.
They're not going to a cafe and drinking chai, and then going back home. No, they're doing, and this is not just girls, but this is also for boys. But I'm just... trying to, I will in sha Allah, I'll tell you why I'm saying what I'm saying in a few minutes.
And I've seen it, brothers and sisters, this isn't, this isn't shocking to me anymore. This might be shocking to some of you, but this isn't shocking to me, because I've seen it over and over again, where people have families of boys and girls, and they all go off. It's almost like a science experiment.
They all go off to college. The boys are able to stay on their religion.
But the girls, for some reason or another, they fall off the path big time, big time.
And this is not something that is against women. This is just the normal way Allah created man and woman. He created us differently, and there's a reason why men are the leaders, and they're supposed to go out and hunt, right?
Hunt, make for the family and provide, and the women should, to their best of their ability, stay in their homes and raise the family. And the Prophet ﷺ, he said, when the Dajjal will come, which is the biggest trial, when the Dajjal will come, the Prophet ﷺ, he said, most of those who go out to the Dajjal will be women, to the extent that a man goes back to his wife, his mother, his daughter, his sister, and his aunt, to shackle them tightly, fearing they would go out to him.
Now, if we heard, if we heard that somebody, for example, tied up their family at home, that would be abuse, right?
And that, if you just heard those words, oh, this guy, he tied his family into the tree or whatever, and his woman can't leave. If it was the time of the Dajjal, right? And someone did that, because it's real.
What's gonna happen?
Are the people going to agree with him, or are they going to say, this guy's crazy? What are you doing?
So now, the story continues, right? So now, this woman, she's out. She's getting her education.
She's living alone, she's having fun, she's getting more education, having more fun. And then she's used to this. She's got a routine now, right?
Every day, I gotta do this thing, I gotta do that thing. Everything is timed perfectly. And she's perfectly fine living by herself.
And then, when the time eventually comes to get married, because the fitra of a human being will always come out at some point or another. And the fitra of a woman is that they will have this phenomenon. Once again, you can look this up yourselves.
It's where a woman longs to have a child, right? Because her time is running out. Now she's in her 30s.
Her time is running out, and she wants a child. So now she's trying to find somebody. She ends up finding, you know, now, does she want to marry a decent Muslim guy?
I mean, well, if the guy is even half decent and he wants certain standards from her where, you know, she wants to stay home, she wants to provide, she wants to maintain the house, right? Take care of the home. She probably wouldn't want to marry such a man, because she's so used to being out and about, and she doesn't want anyone to, quote unquote, have any authority over her.
So then what does she do? She, she decides to marry, or basically, be in a relationship with a man who's not a Muslim. Right?
And because that man doesn't care what she does, let's be real, right? He doesn't care what she does. He might even encourage it.
Right? Audhubillah.
So what happens to her? Her lineage ends with her.
Her Islam and her family tree ends right there.
And now we get back to the story and the end of the story.
And now, the parents are at home, it's been years, you know, they talk over the phone.
It's a long distance relationship with the parents, right?
And what happens is eventually she calls home, and she's a mom, dad, you know, I found somebody, and he's a Muslim. Now the parent says, Alhamdulillah, remember?
That's how it started. And this is how it ends. You can see why the parents said, Alhamdulillah, because if we look at the hierarchy of, if we were to have categories of Muslims, right, just at a basic level, you have practicing Muslims, you have Friday Muslims, you have Eid Muslims, you have cultural Muslims who just say Islam is in my heart.
You know, I love Allah in His Messenger, but, you know, you know, this salat thing, you know, it's okay. I love a lot. You know, that's all that matters.
And so that guy, by the scholarly definition, wouldn't even be considered a Muslim? That's not what I'm saying. That's what the scholars would say.
So you have Practicing, Friday Muslim, Eid Muslim, cultural Muslim, where Islam is in the heart, and then you have the non-Muslim. at that point. So now this girl is at what? She's probably in that cultural stage.
And she married someone. He's a token Muslim, by the way, meaning he doesn't know anything about Islam, but he fits the criteria so that everything can be okay. Because it all, it all, it's all about what the people think, man.
We have to make sure the people know that everything is good. He Muslim, he's Muslim, okay, let's do the marriage. Everyone's happy, because we just got to make sure everyone, because what will the people think if she's, if she's not a Muslim?
Right? We're so concerned about what other people think that we're willing to follow this whole path. And now, he is a cultural Muslim.
She's a cultural Muslim. Is there some hope? Yes, there's always hope, right?
And may, Allah rectify our affairs, every single one of us, right? May Allah rectify our affairs, our families affairs, and the affairs of the Ummah. And this can keep, so, two cultural Muslims, there's a chance, right, that they can go back up the hill.
They can go back up the tree. They can be Eid Muslims, Friday Muslims, come regularly (to the masjid), and then 2 other categories that I didn't mention are, there's the scholars, and then there's the Prophet ﷺ. And he's the gold standard.
That's where that is our goal for everyone, is to get to this level, even though we might not achieve it, we need to go up that hill. And unfortunately, the trend is going downhill.
أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هَذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ لِي وَلَكُمْ وَلِسَائِرِ الْمُسْلِمِينَ ، فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهُ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ.
(I say these words of mine and I seek forgiveness from Allah for myself and for you and for all the Muslims for every sin. So seek His forgiveness; indeed, He is the Oft-Forgiving, the Most Merciful.)
Now, this movie, brothers and sisters has a part two. The credits roll, the credits roll, and after the credits, what happens is usually a little teaser for the next movie, right?
So now this girl gets married, she's a cultural Muslim.
She's married to a cultural man. Same cycle, right? The same cycle.
Two-income household, and that same cycle that I just went over, right? Exactly the same thing happens. And now the teaser scene shows.
Now, she is the mother now. With her kid somewhere, right? Her daughter calls her.
Hi mom. I just found somebody, and we're gonna get married. But don't worry.
She's a Muslim.
Now, you might be wondering why I'm focusing on sister so much, right? It's not just me that focuses on the sisters.
This is exactly what the people who colonize our lands, they focused on. I did a little bit of research into the French and how they conquered Algeria, or how they tried to conquer Algeria. And this was some of the things that they would say.
And I'm going to quote you this.
“If we wish to strike at Algerian society in its structure and its capacity for resistance, we must, first of all, conquer the women. We must go and seek them out, hidden behind the veil, and in the houses where the men conceal them.
To convert women, to win them over to foreign values, and to tear them away from their personal status is to gain a real power over the men, and at the same time, to possess the practical and effective means to dismantle Algerian culture.”
Now take that same phrase, and instead of Algerian culture, make it Islam. And it's the same idea.
And then they continue:
“The Muslim woman loves children. As the guardian of moral values.
As the guardian of moral values, she raises them in the ancestral traditions. The legends and myths. What are these legends and myths?
Allah said that that's what they will call the Quran in the Quran:
The Defrauding (83:13)
إِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَـٰتُنَا قَالَ أَسَـٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ ١٣
When Our verses are recited to him, he says, "Legends of the former peoples."
Allah said when they are heard, if they hear the verses of the Quran, they will say, oh, these are the ancient tales. And that's exactly what they were saying. “She constitutes the bedrock of the family cell, the dynamic element of tribal life.”
So once again, brothers and sisters, you will sure, the Prophet ﷺ, he said, you will surely follow the path of those before you, step by step, inch by inch. If they entered a lizard hole, you would follow.
And once again, I've seen this same scenario, 20 years or 15 years ago or so, when I was working with somebody, Christian guy, devout Christian.
And I swear by Allah, he said something along these lines, very close. I don’t have the exact words, but the concept is the same.
He said, “Look, I told my daughter I don't care what she does, but as long as she doesn't get pregnant, that's fine. Because, because we have morals in our family.”
Subhan Allah.
I'm sorry I'm laughing, but that's what it's become. And unfortunately, we're also going down that exact same rabbit hole. Now, it's very hard to have control over every single second of our child's life.
That's for sure. But and as we put our child into these institutions, what we must realize is that our institution, we all have an institution, and that is our homes. Our homes are an institution, and it should be an institution of peace and tranquility.
And the way to establish that in the best way possible is to have compatibility between the husband and the wife. And compatibility doesn't mean that you like the same things. No, compatibility means, once again, this is the research.
Compatibility means that one person is able to cover the faults of the other person. So if one person is strong and these qualities, as a provider, as one who goes out there and who earns, and he's strong and he can protect and provide the family and be in charge, then the other person needs to reciprocate that and maintain what the household is. And this is what Islam tells us to do.
If both people are, continuing the soccer references, if both people are trying to score goals, the net is left empty, and everyone can kick goals right in without any problem.
And those goals are attacking your children and our children, and the Ummah at large.
A transcript of the Friday Khutbah I gave yesterday after tweaking the Arabic anomalies from my iPhone’s Voice Memos. I did buy a DJI Mic Mini, but I couldn’t get it to work on the spot, so the audio came straight out of the iPhone Air. I was impressed my hand didn’t muffle the sound and was glad it was usable Alhumdulilah.
YouTube link.
Khutbah transcript 7/24/26
Allah , says in Surah Ali Imran, verse 100.
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِن تُطِيعُوا۟ فَرِيقًۭا مِّنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ يَرُدُّوكُم بَعْدَ إِيمَـٰنِكُمْ كَـٰفِرِينَ ١٠٠
Oh, you who have believed, if you obey, a party of those who were given the scripture, they would surely turn you back after your belief into disbelievers.
So now, brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters, I want to give you a scenario.
A scenario where a woman, she comes home, or she calls her family, and she tells her family, mom, dad, I found someone.
I'm in love, and we're gonna get married. And he is a Muslim. So what's the 1st reaction from these parents?
What if I told you that reaction was, Alhamdulillah? Right? All praises to Allah, because she found she found somebody and he's a Muslim.
Now, you might be wondering why I'm saying this thing, right? Doesn't even make any sense. But let me give you the story.
So that was the end of the movie, quote unquote. I'm going to tell you how this happens. First and foremost, we have to realize what the Prophet ﷺ, he said, you will surely follow the path of those before you, step by step, inch by inch, and if they enter the hole of a lizard, you would follow them as well.
And then the Sahaba said, ya Rasulullah, do you mean the Jews and the Christians? And then the Prophet ﷺ responded, who else? Yes, of course the Jews and the Christians.
So now let's go all the way back. Let's go all the way back to the birth of the child. Okay?
The child is born. And because there's a dual income family, both parents are working, within a few weeks, the child enters what's known as the daycare system. They go in the daycare system, and what happens is, it actually causes psychological damage to the child over the course of several years.
And this is proven with studies, and you can look this up yourself. And even some of the most liberal scholars out there of Islam who basically have allowed everything to be okay, even they say that putting your child in the daycare system is like a jail. And why is that because when a child is born, within the 1st 3 years, we think they're just a baby and they're just sitting around doing nothing, but there's a lot going on in their brains.
They're developing, they're learning literally everything from scratch. They don't know anything. They're learning how to speak, who is who, what everything is that they see, how to react, all of these things, they're learning from scratch.
They have no basis at this point. And by the time they're 3 years old, they have, and I look this up, and I double checked it, they have over 1,000 trillion neuron connections in their brain. So that's Subhan Allah a lot, and that's almost double, or more than double, that of an, adult.
And then what happens after that phase, when they're three years old, then is the pruning phase. So what is the pruning phase? That's when, if you know what a bonsai tree is, those fancy little trees, and every once in a while, you have to cut off the branches. to make it look okay.
So now the child, what they do is they strengthen the connections in their brain of what they are familiar with, and those connections in their brain that are weak, they cut those off, and they focus on strengthening those connections that are stronger.
Now when a child is in daycare, they don't know who their parent is. From a psychological perspective, from their point of view, they don't know who their parent is, because they know who their parent is, but they're not there.
So there's a lot of stress on the baby in these daycares, and there's a lot of crying, because the person who they thought was their mother is not there.
And every day, there's a new person trying to take care of them. So they think this person is their mother, they try to bond with them, but then the next day it's somebody else.
And then the next day, it's somebody else, and then the next day, and so on and so forth. And this goes on for, this could go on for several years before the kid enters what? preschool and so on and so forth.
So now this child's brain never really got a strong connection with their parents from the very beginning, and we can't see that, we can't feel that, but it's there. Right? It's starting to, um, fester.
So then what happens when the kid gets older? And also just remember, the parents themselves are also used to not being with the kid all the time, and they're only used to being with them for several hours in the day while they're awake. Maybe three or four hours.
The rest of the time, the kids either asleep, or once again at the daycare system. So then what happens when the child becomes two or four or five years old? What ends up happening is the child has behavioral issues, because they have trouble processing situations, and they end up having to keep things simple, they have behavioral issues, and what do the parents do at this point?
Because they don't know what to do. So what do they do? Here, take this, take this.
Right? Here, take the phone, and just scroll and watch whatever you want to watch, because I don't know what's wrong. I can't I can't, you know, deal with this.
So now the kid is given a cell phone, and once again, if you look at the news and the studies, the way the brain reacts to a screen and is constantly on it, it's like a drug addiction. And then when you take the phone away from that person, they become violent.
And this is a common scenario, unfortunately, with a lot of kids, where the parents are, they get anxious when it's time to stop the screen, because the kids quite literally lose their minds.
So you can see the disconnect is already there, and it's growing. And as the kid goes into school, What are they, they hang out more with their peers.
They hang out more with people that are their age. And maybe some of those kids are going through the same cycle as your kid, may protect our kids, are going through.
And then what happens is, their influence becomes their peers, meaning they don't care what the parents think anymore.
And they start to care more about what their peers think, because they're always hanging around with their friends. And that is what matters. And then, at the same time, they're in a public school system, where they don't teach about Allah subhana wata’aalah and how He's created everything.
It's mother nature. Right? It's mother nature that has created all the mountains and the beautiful nature that we see.
That's what they learn. And also, it's not that Allah created humans in the best of creation as the best of creation. No, you evolved from giant apes, right?
We evolved from giant apes. That's what they're taught. And then, once again, if some child, if Allah is trying to give these children a signal, right?
A sign, like Allah says, we have given you so many signs. If you just look at nature and you look at everything,
And now what's the new trend? Oh, the universe spoke to me!
Right? The universe spoke to me, and said, you know, I should do this, or I should do that. It's not Allah subhana wata’aalah, it's the universe. Everything that they can find that isn't Allah or God, they will try to put in there instead as a filler. And then, of course, there's all the other things, right?
There's going to the prom, there's going to dances, there's going to, there's music, and there's, there's drugs in school as well now. Now, you can get vapes that look like markers or AirPods, and you can just, you know, quickly grab it… Put it away, and nobody knows.
The teacher might be like, Oh look at him, he's thinking hard, you know? He's got his pen to his mouth. like, thinking about the problem. No, he's smoking.
That's what he's doing. He's not thinking. All right, so now, if it wasn't bad enough, now the children go to high school.
And they're old enough to be mature, quote unquote, right? They're old enough to be mature, and the kids want a cell phone. If they already haven't gotten a cell phone, maybe now they're getting a cell phone.
And now they're going into that black hole. What's that black hole?
Social media.
Social media.
The scrolling doesn't end, and the entertainment is constant. And not only that, and once again, if you look at the news today, Europe and France even, France, right?
“The most moral country” that we can think of, even they want to ban social media for 15 and under. They want to ban it for only 15 and under because it causes anxiety and depression and this and that. But, of course, from our perspective, it's anxiety and depression, and much worse, right?
It's causing children to basically leave Islam. And the anxiety and the depression caused by social media hits our girls the most because and once again, the statistics are there. Who ends up in the hospital more often due to suicide, risk, and all of that?
It's women, because, on social media, they're expected to perform. They're expected to have a presence and do things. And this is where if there is decency left inside of our children, inside of the Muslim children.
Once again, step by step, inch by inch, right? The Prophet ﷺ all of them didn't say that we're gonna follow them in giant leaps. Because if we do a giant leap, We're gonna be like, wait, something's wrong here.
We can't this is a huge jump. How do we get from here or there? No, it's inch by inch.
So you're moving just a little bit, right? And you don't notice it. You don't notice it.
And we see this in common trends today. And I'm sorry to pick on the sisters, but I will pick on their brothers one day. Don’t worry.
So, the attire of a woman, right, is fully loose clothing and covering the head and so on and so forth, right? Now, okay, you know what? And this is part of the nature of a woman.
She likes to show, as Allah says in the Quran, that's why Allah told the woman to cover themselves, not because men are looking, but because they like to show, so they need to cover themselves. That's their test. Our test is, yeah, we do like to look.
Men do like to look. So Allah did tell us to lower our gaze, but he didn't say sisters cover up because men are looking at you. No, he said, cover up because I know you like to show yourselves, but this is your test.
So now we have the full proper hijab. What's the next step? The next step is, oh, you know, let me just put a little bit of a waistband around my waist, just a little bit of, you know, silhouette is there.
It's fine. You know, I'm still wearing a job and this and that, no big deal. And then the next step is, uh, pants and shirts that are that are tight fitting.
Oh, you know, it's okay. I still have one that has scarf, you know, I have the hijabs, you know, everything's fine. And then what happens then?
Then the hijab tutorials come online, right? The hijabi tutorials and all this stuff, and the makeup, and just to remember, the point of hijab is to conceal your beauty, and now they're telling you how to accentuate your booty, with hijab on, complete opposite.
“Oh, okay, I can show a little bit of hair in this style, But I'm still wearing the hijab. You know, everything's fine. No big deal.”
“Oh, you know, I'm still wearing the hijab, but so what if I have earrings on? It's okay. I'll wear this new turban hijab.”
I got the earrings. I got some hair. It's fine, all good, you know.
And then eventually, it's all gone. It's gone. And I was born and raised here, so, and in my 40 plus years, I've seen the cycle multiple times, and it doesn't matter how practicing a Muslim family might be.
This can happen to anybody. May Allah protect us. And now, remember the cycle:
We left our kids to others to take care of them. We told them, We're told, don't sleep next to your baby. Put them in a separate bedroom, right?
Even in the house, they want you to separate, right?
All of these little things, if you study, psychology and sociology, you learn that actually the Islamic way is what people are actually going back to. But that's not gonna be on the news, you know?
What they're going to show on the news is, they will show you proper hijab, but it'll be under the headline of, this woman is being oppressed. Right?
Maybe she's 15 years old and she was forced into marriage.
And that is true oppression, right? If someone is forced into marriage, we know in Islam that's not correct. But why throw the lady with hijab with that headline?
Because they want that people they want people to see that as oppression.
And then what's freedom, freedom is when you see the 1st Muslim, uh, pro athlete weightlifter, right? She's got tight shorts on and tight sleeves, but she's got a head scarf that's super tight and she's like squatting and doing all of this, but you can see everything.
But that's freedom. That is, that is what our kids are seeing. And then these things are on social media, too.
And they're constantly getting this message back and forth, back and forth.
And to compound the distancing between children and parents, schools now offer therapy, right? Because you give them the problem, the social media, and now you also got to give them, and now you have to sell them the solution too, which is therapy.
And do you think this therapy is gonna be based on Islamic principles? No. What happens is, and a lot of the times in these therapy sessions, in schools, without your knowledge even, they have patient confidentiality, right?
They can't even tell you what they discuss, because it's their right, as a child or whatever, that they don't have to tell you about these things. And even in some cases, believe this or not, if you are, and this is considered therapy, right? If you're an immigrant, child, and you go to school and you learn English pretty good, right?
And then your parents, they came from another country to provide you with a better life. They might need help with some paperwork or going to the doctor and translating something. That, believe it or not, is considered trauma.
Your parents have traumatized you, and they have wronged you because you have to help them and do all these extra things, and actually maybe struggle a little bit, and, but in reality, you're doing khayr for your family. You're learning skills, you're learning life, but that's trauma. So now, all of this is going into our kids.
And then when it's time to go to college, they're not going to want to stay local. They're gonna want to go away because everyone else is going away, right? Remember, they care about what their friends think more than what they what you think, unfortunately.
So, their friends are going away, and you can't just stay here. You also got to travel. You gotta go on those long trips, this and that, have fun.
And what kind of fun are we having, unfortunately? It's not Halal. I'll tell you that much.
They're not going to a cafe and drinking chai, and then going back home. No, they're doing, and this is not just girls, but this is also for boys. But I'm just... trying to, I will in sha Allah, I'll tell you why I'm saying what I'm saying in a few minutes.
And I've seen it, brothers and sisters, this isn't, this isn't shocking to me anymore. This might be shocking to some of you, but this isn't shocking to me, because I've seen it over and over again, where people have families of boys and girls, and they all go off. It's almost like a science experiment.
They all go off to college. The boys are able to stay on their religion.
But the girls, for some reason or another, they fall off the path big time, big time.
And this is not something that is against women. This is just the normal way Allah created man and woman. He created us differently, and there's a reason why men are the leaders, and they're supposed to go out and hunt, right?
Hunt, make for the family and provide, and the women should, to their best of their ability, stay in their homes and raise the family. And the Prophet ﷺ, he said, when the Dajjal will come, which is the biggest trial, when the Dajjal will come, the Prophet ﷺ, he said, most of those who go out to the Dajjal will be women, to the extent that a man goes back to his wife, his mother, his daughter, his sister, and his aunt, to shackle them tightly, fearing they would go out to him.
Now, if we heard, if we heard that somebody, for example, tied up their family at home, that would be abuse, right?
And that, if you just heard those words, oh, this guy, he tied his family into the tree or whatever, and his woman can't leave. If it was the time of the Dajjal, right? And someone did that, because it's real.
What's gonna happen?
Are the people going to agree with him, or are they going to say, this guy's crazy? What are you doing?
So now, the story continues, right? So now, this woman, she's out. She's getting her education.
She's living alone, she's having fun, she's getting more education, having more fun. And then she's used to this. She's got a routine now, right?
Every day, I gotta do this thing, I gotta do that thing. Everything is timed perfectly. And she's perfectly fine living by herself.
And then, when the time eventually comes to get married, because the fitra of a human being will always come out at some point or another. And the fitra of a woman is that they will have this phenomenon. Once again, you can look this up yourselves.
It's where a woman longs to have a child, right? Because her time is running out. Now she's in her 30s.
Her time is running out, and she wants a child. So now she's trying to find somebody. She ends up finding, you know, now, does she want to marry a decent Muslim guy?
I mean, well, if the guy is even half decent and he wants certain standards from her where, you know, she wants to stay home, she wants to provide, she wants to maintain the house, right? Take care of the home. She probably wouldn't want to marry such a man, because she's so used to being out and about, and she doesn't want anyone to, quote unquote, have any authority over her.
So then what does she do? She, she decides to marry, or basically, be in a relationship with a man who's not a Muslim. Right?
And because that man doesn't care what she does, let's be real, right? He doesn't care what she does. He might even encourage it.
Right? Audhubillah.
So what happens to her? Her lineage ends with her.
Her Islam and her family tree ends right there.
And now we get back to the story and the end of the story.
And now, the parents are at home, it's been years, you know, they talk over the phone.
It's a long distance relationship with the parents, right?
And what happens is eventually she calls home, and she's a mom, dad, you know, I found somebody, and he's a Muslim. Now the parent says, Alhamdulillah, remember?
That's how it started. And this is how it ends. You can see why the parents said, Alhamdulillah, because if we look at the hierarchy of, if we were to have categories of Muslims, right, just at a basic level, you have practicing Muslims, you have Friday Muslims, you have Eid Muslims, you have cultural Muslims who just say Islam is in my heart.
You know, I love Allah in His Messenger, but, you know, you know, this salat thing, you know, it's okay. I love a lot. You know, that's all that matters.
And so that guy, by the scholarly definition, wouldn't even be considered a Muslim? That's not what I'm saying. That's what the scholars would say.
So you have Practicing, Friday Muslim, Eid Muslim, cultural Muslim, where Islam is in the heart, and then you have the non-Muslim. at that point. So now this girl is at what? She's probably in that cultural stage.
And she married someone. He's a token Muslim, by the way, meaning he doesn't know anything about Islam, but he fits the criteria so that everything can be okay. Because it all, it all, it's all about what the people think, man.
We have to make sure the people know that everything is good. He Muslim, he's Muslim, okay, let's do the marriage. Everyone's happy, because we just got to make sure everyone, because what will the people think if she's, if she's not a Muslim?
Right? We're so concerned about what other people think that we're willing to follow this whole path. And now, he is a cultural Muslim.
She's a cultural Muslim. Is there some hope? Yes, there's always hope, right?
And may, Allah rectify our affairs, every single one of us, right? May Allah rectify our affairs, our families affairs, and the affairs of the Ummah. And this can keep, so, two cultural Muslims, there's a chance, right, that they can go back up the hill.
They can go back up the tree. They can be Eid Muslims, Friday Muslims, come regularly (to the masjid), and then 2 other categories that I didn't mention are, there's the scholars, and then there's the Prophet ﷺ. And he's the gold standard.
That's where that is our goal for everyone, is to get to this level, even though we might not achieve it, we need to go up that hill. And unfortunately, the trend is going downhill.
أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هَذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ لِي وَلَكُمْ وَلِسَائِرِ الْمُسْلِمِينَ ، فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهُ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ.
(I say these words of mine and I seek forgiveness from Allah for myself and for you and for all the Muslims for every sin. So seek His forgiveness; indeed, He is the Oft-Forgiving, the Most Merciful.)
Now, this movie, brothers and sisters has a part two. The credits roll, the credits roll, and after the credits, what happens is usually a little teaser for the next movie, right?
So now this girl gets married, she's a cultural Muslim.
She's married to a cultural man. Same cycle, right? The same cycle.
Two-income household, and that same cycle that I just went over, right? Exactly the same thing happens. And now the teaser scene shows.
Now, she is the mother now. With her kid somewhere, right? Her daughter calls her.
Hi mom. I just found somebody, and we're gonna get married. But don't worry.
She's a Muslim.
Now, you might be wondering why I'm focusing on sister so much, right? It's not just me that focuses on the sisters.
This is exactly what the people who colonize our lands, they focused on. I did a little bit of research into the French and how they conquered Algeria, or how they tried to conquer Algeria. And this was some of the things that they would say.
And I'm going to quote you this.
“If we wish to strike at Algerian society in its structure and its capacity for resistance, we must, first of all, conquer the women. We must go and seek them out, hidden behind the veil, and in the houses where the men conceal them.
To convert women, to win them over to foreign values, and to tear them away from their personal status is to gain a real power over the men, and at the same time, to possess the practical and effective means to dismantle Algerian culture.”
Now take that same phrase, and instead of Algerian culture, make it Islam. And it's the same idea.
And then they continue:
“The Muslim woman loves children. As the guardian of moral values.
As the guardian of moral values, she raises them in the ancestral traditions. The legends and myths. What are these legends and myths?
Allah said that that's what they will call the Quran in the Quran:
The Defrauding (83:13)
إِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَـٰتُنَا قَالَ أَسَـٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ ١٣
When Our verses are recited to him, he says, "Legends of the former peoples."
Allah said when they are heard, if they hear the verses of the Quran, they will say, oh, these are the ancient tales. And that's exactly what they were saying. “She constitutes the bedrock of the family cell, the dynamic element of tribal life.”
So once again, brothers and sisters, you will sure, the Prophet ﷺ, he said, you will surely follow the path of those before you, step by step, inch by inch. If they entered a lizard hole, you would follow.
And once again, I've seen this same scenario, 20 years or 15 years ago or so, when I was working with somebody, Christian guy, devout Christian.
And I swear by Allah, he said something along these lines, very close. I don’t have the exact words, but the concept is the same.
He said, “Look, I told my daughter I don't care what she does, but as long as she doesn't get pregnant, that's fine. Because, because we have morals in our family.”
Subhan Allah.
I'm sorry I'm laughing, but that's what it's become. And unfortunately, we're also going down that exact same rabbit hole. Now, it's very hard to have control over every single second of our child's life.
That's for sure. But and as we put our child into these institutions, what we must realize is that our institution, we all have an institution, and that is our homes. Our homes are an institution, and it should be an institution of peace and tranquility.
And the way to establish that in the best way possible is to have compatibility between the husband and the wife. And compatibility doesn't mean that you like the same things. No, compatibility means, once again, this is the research.
Compatibility means that one person is able to cover the faults of the other person. So if one person is strong and these qualities, as a provider, as one who goes out there and who earns, and he's strong and he can protect and provide the family and be in charge, then the other person needs to reciprocate that and maintain what the household is. And this is what Islam tells us to do.
If both people are, continuing the soccer references, if both people are trying to score goals, the net is left empty, and everyone can kick goals right in without any problem.
And those goals are attacking your children and our children, and the Ummah at large.
People are sleeping with your wife.
Wired (full PDF here):
The report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an anti-extremism organization, analyzes the online ecosystem that enables the proliferation of so-called “nudify” apps and websites, which allow users to digitally undress people without their consent.
The study, which was published on Monday, looked at the top 10 apps and websites used to make nonconsensual explicit deepfakes, as well as how people are finding them. It found that a surprising amount of referral traffic comes not from small, poorly regulated online communities like 4chan but from mainstream social media platforms.
According to the ISD report, social networks drove more than 5.7 million visits to nudify sites between December 2025 and March 2026. The top driver of this traffic was YouTube, which was responsible for 1.82 million site visits, more than 30 percent of the referrals.
Such videos, which resulted from searches for keywords like “undress app” or “nudify app,” ranged from reviewing and promoting specific apps to linking to promo codes to provide free credits. X was the second most prominent source of traffic to the sites, accounting for over 1.3 million visits, according to the study.
“The study’s authors wrote that these findings appear to be in “direct conflict” with YouTube’s policies, which prohibit sexually explicit content. “This should logically include nudify websites or tools that generate nonconsensual explicit imagery,” the report reads. “However, content violating these policies was easily discoverable and accessible on the platform, effectively turning it into a gateway to nudify websites.”
“It wasn’t just that YouTube was a passive source” of referral traffic, Melanie Smith, the senior director of research and policy for ISD, tells WIRED. “In a lot of these cases, it was facilitating the use of these tools as well.”
This kind of problem only adds to the Muslim marriage crisis (and all marriages in general), where anybody can flirt with a digital version of your wife, your daughter, your sister, etc. Who needs the real deal when you can get whatever woman you want, and why restrict it to just 4 wives?
Upload some of her public photos and videos, use apps to turn them into 3D holograms, dial in the personality traits you would like her to have, and voila!, now you have your own digital wife that can do whatever you want.
The morally corrupt woman will even get turned on by this, but then become angry only because their likeness hasn’t been patented and they’re missing out on monetizing their “ass…ets.”
Wired (full PDF here):
The report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an anti-extremism organization, analyzes the online ecosystem that enables the proliferation of so-called “nudify” apps and websites, which allow users to digitally undress people without their consent.
The study, which was published on Monday, looked at the top 10 apps and websites used to make nonconsensual explicit deepfakes, as well as how people are finding them. It found that a surprising amount of referral traffic comes not from small, poorly regulated online communities like 4chan but from mainstream social media platforms.
According to the ISD report, social networks drove more than 5.7 million visits to nudify sites between December 2025 and March 2026. The top driver of this traffic was YouTube, which was responsible for 1.82 million site visits, more than 30 percent of the referrals.
Such videos, which resulted from searches for keywords like “undress app” or “nudify app,” ranged from reviewing and promoting specific apps to linking to promo codes to provide free credits. X was the second most prominent source of traffic to the sites, accounting for over 1.3 million visits, according to the study.
“The study’s authors wrote that these findings appear to be in “direct conflict” with YouTube’s policies, which prohibit sexually explicit content. “This should logically include nudify websites or tools that generate nonconsensual explicit imagery,” the report reads. “However, content violating these policies was easily discoverable and accessible on the platform, effectively turning it into a gateway to nudify websites.”
“It wasn’t just that YouTube was a passive source” of referral traffic, Melanie Smith, the senior director of research and policy for ISD, tells WIRED. “In a lot of these cases, it was facilitating the use of these tools as well.”
This kind of problem only adds to the Muslim marriage crisis (and all marriages in general), where anybody can flirt with a digital version of your wife, your daughter, your sister, etc. Who needs the real deal when you can get whatever woman you want, and why restrict it to just 4 wives?
Upload some of her public photos and videos, use apps to turn them into 3D holograms, dial in the personality traits you would like her to have, and voila!, now you have your own digital wife that can do whatever you want.
The morally corrupt woman will even get turned on by this, but then become angry only because their likeness hasn’t been patented and they’re missing out on monetizing their “ass…ets.”
Another take on Pragmata with more reasons why fathers are crucial in a child’s life.
Some highlights from Life is a Game Magazine about Pragmata:
1 in 4 children in America right now are growing up without a biological, step or adoptive father in the home. That’s 18 million kids, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau as of 2022-2023. Hold that number in your head and let it sit there, because I think Capcom may have made the most important argument about fatherhood that gaming has ever produced; and looking at the discourse online right now, nobody is connecting the dots. […]
Because fatherhood; real fatherhood has never strictly been about the biology. It’s about the choice to stay. The opposite of an absent father isn’t just a “present” one; it’s choosing presence when absence would be infinitely easier. We see it all too often, the man panics at the thought of another life he brings into the world; runs away from the “problem” and decades later comes to the realization. The realization of regret…[…]
Every narrative thread, every upgraded weapon, every complicated firefight, and every quiet moment building sand castles builds meticulously to the game’s breathtaking climax. I’m not going to spoil the final act for you. I think everyone should experience this for themselves and get a sense of what the ending means to you…
But this is where the game crashes violently back down into the reality of those 18 million kids we talked about at the beginning. The research says that fatherless families are four times more likely to live in poverty. We know that 63% of youth suicides come from fatherless homes, according to the Department of Health and Human Services AND the Bureau of thee Census. The devastating cost of a man choosing his own preservation over his responsibilities. […]
One day, I want to have kids myself and when that time comes I won’t hesitate to take on the mantle of fatherhood. Because I know what it was like growing up with one. One that was tough on me, told me to dream, helped build a strong work ethic in me, and told me I could accomplish anything I worked my ass off for. And if I failed, he would be there to lift me up so I can go at it again. That’s what made me the man I am today. And that’s what I want to instill in my kids for tomorrow.
I read the ending to the game, and if you’re a dedicated father, it won’t surprise you.
Some highlights from Life is a Game Magazine about Pragmata:
1 in 4 children in America right now are growing up without a biological, step or adoptive father in the home. That’s 18 million kids, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau as of 2022-2023. Hold that number in your head and let it sit there, because I think Capcom may have made the most important argument about fatherhood that gaming has ever produced; and looking at the discourse online right now, nobody is connecting the dots. […]
Because fatherhood; real fatherhood has never strictly been about the biology. It’s about the choice to stay. The opposite of an absent father isn’t just a “present” one; it’s choosing presence when absence would be infinitely easier. We see it all too often, the man panics at the thought of another life he brings into the world; runs away from the “problem” and decades later comes to the realization. The realization of regret…[…]
Every narrative thread, every upgraded weapon, every complicated firefight, and every quiet moment building sand castles builds meticulously to the game’s breathtaking climax. I’m not going to spoil the final act for you. I think everyone should experience this for themselves and get a sense of what the ending means to you…
But this is where the game crashes violently back down into the reality of those 18 million kids we talked about at the beginning. The research says that fatherless families are four times more likely to live in poverty. We know that 63% of youth suicides come from fatherless homes, according to the Department of Health and Human Services AND the Bureau of thee Census. The devastating cost of a man choosing his own preservation over his responsibilities. […]
One day, I want to have kids myself and when that time comes I won’t hesitate to take on the mantle of fatherhood. Because I know what it was like growing up with one. One that was tough on me, told me to dream, helped build a strong work ethic in me, and told me I could accomplish anything I worked my ass off for. And if I failed, he would be there to lift me up so I can go at it again. That’s what made me the man I am today. And that’s what I want to instill in my kids for tomorrow.
I read the ending to the game, and if you’re a dedicated father, it won’t surprise you.
A videogame about Fatherhood that has the internet by storm.
Pragmata was a new release by Capcom a few months ago, and it started gaining traction as a game about - fatherhood?
You have a companion, a robot girl named Diana, whom you fight alongside and protect throughout the game. As the story progresses, Hugh and Diana develop a sort of father-daughter bond − and that's the part of the game hitting players right in the feels and sparking massive discussion online.
"What... what is this feeling inside me? It can't be... It's like... I wanna protect... it's like... I want to be a... a... DAD..." one X user wrote. "I will burn anyone and anything that tries to harm her," wrote another. One Reddit user described playing the game as "therapeutic for my soul," following the death of his own daughter at the age of 8 in 2009.
Turns out, psychologists say, the instinct to nurture isn't something that just belongs to women, though much of popular culture may indicate otherwise. Men do by and large have an innate, paternal instinct as well, and it's something that can get activated whether or not they have children of their own.
Fatherhood is not perfect by any stretch of the means and life does have its challenges, but it’s one of those, “If you know, you know” moments. Even then, many parents, dare I say, “grow out of love” for their children because children’s values are now based on what their peers believe instead of what their parents believe. Peer influence is outpacing parental influence and most importantly, guidance, and that’s why my wife and I are blessed to be able to homeschool our children. As our kids hit their teenage years, we feel the independence our kids need and desire, but we don’t feel we are “growing out of love” for our children. We still enjoy our time together.
Of course the algorithm is part of peer influence, and beating the algorithm is an uphill battle, which is why kids shouldn’t be on social media platforms - and quite frankly many adults shouldn’t be either. The beauty is I can still send them videos from social media via screen recordings, mimicking email chains of the past.
I read this amazing book called The Boy Crisis a few years ago, and even though I don’t agree with everything the author says, it really does shed light on the importance of having a fatherly presence in children’s lives, with objective evidence stating that children perform better in every metric of life (financial, emotional, social, health, etc.), when fathers are present.
Whether I play Pragmata is up for debate, but odds are I won’t because I simply don’t have the time. You can say I’m living the game firsthand in a more visceral way as a father of 3 daughters at different stages of their lives, and there’s never a dull moment.
Pragmata was a new release by Capcom a few months ago, and it started gaining traction as a game about - fatherhood?
You have a companion, a robot girl named Diana, whom you fight alongside and protect throughout the game. As the story progresses, Hugh and Diana develop a sort of father-daughter bond − and that's the part of the game hitting players right in the feels and sparking massive discussion online.
"What... what is this feeling inside me? It can't be... It's like... I wanna protect... it's like... I want to be a... a... DAD..." one X user wrote. "I will burn anyone and anything that tries to harm her," wrote another. One Reddit user described playing the game as "therapeutic for my soul," following the death of his own daughter at the age of 8 in 2009.
Turns out, psychologists say, the instinct to nurture isn't something that just belongs to women, though much of popular culture may indicate otherwise. Men do by and large have an innate, paternal instinct as well, and it's something that can get activated whether or not they have children of their own.
Fatherhood is not perfect by any stretch of the means and life does have its challenges, but it’s one of those, “If you know, you know” moments. Even then, many parents, dare I say, “grow out of love” for their children because children’s values are now based on what their peers believe instead of what their parents believe. Peer influence is outpacing parental influence and most importantly, guidance, and that’s why my wife and I are blessed to be able to homeschool our children. As our kids hit their teenage years, we feel the independence our kids need and desire, but we don’t feel we are “growing out of love” for our children. We still enjoy our time together.
Of course the algorithm is part of peer influence, and beating the algorithm is an uphill battle, which is why kids shouldn’t be on social media platforms - and quite frankly many adults shouldn’t be either. The beauty is I can still send them videos from social media via screen recordings, mimicking email chains of the past.
I read this amazing book called The Boy Crisis a few years ago, and even though I don’t agree with everything the author says, it really does shed light on the importance of having a fatherly presence in children’s lives, with objective evidence stating that children perform better in every metric of life (financial, emotional, social, health, etc.), when fathers are present.
Whether I play Pragmata is up for debate, but odds are I won’t because I simply don’t have the time. You can say I’m living the game firsthand in a more visceral way as a father of 3 daughters at different stages of their lives, and there’s never a dull moment.
UK will ban social media platforms for children under 16 years of age.
Wall Street Journal (gift link):
The U.K. plans to ban children under the age of 16 from major social-media platforms including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, ramping up pressure on big tech companies to shield younger users from harmful online content.
Announcing new legislation, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the ban would restrict livestreaming and communication with strangers for under 16s not just on social media, but across other online services such as gaming sites. […]
Starmer said the U.K. was also considering overnight curfews and curbs for scrolling content on feeds for under 18s. […]
Starmer said the U.K. was seeking to emulate the Australian model with a ban targeting platforms with algorithms such as TikTok, Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat, Alphabet’s YouTube and Elon Musk’s X where users can post, but not messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.
“This is a line in the sand,” Starmer said. “Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”
Let the debates begin.
Wall Street Journal (gift link):
The U.K. plans to ban children under the age of 16 from major social-media platforms including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, ramping up pressure on big tech companies to shield younger users from harmful online content.
Announcing new legislation, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the ban would restrict livestreaming and communication with strangers for under 16s not just on social media, but across other online services such as gaming sites. […]
Starmer said the U.K. was also considering overnight curfews and curbs for scrolling content on feeds for under 18s. […]
Starmer said the U.K. was seeking to emulate the Australian model with a ban targeting platforms with algorithms such as TikTok, Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat, Alphabet’s YouTube and Elon Musk’s X where users can post, but not messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.
“This is a line in the sand,” Starmer said. “Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”
Let the debates begin.
Screen time for kids is a pandora’s box that even Apple can’t fix.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge (News+ link):
Apple is trying to show the world it’s being responsible when it comes to your children.
Only it’s really not. Screen Time sucks. As a mother of two whose children have had Apple Watches, iPads, and iPhones, and who are now entering their late teens (18 and 15), I’ve spent years grappling with Apple’s parental controls. In that time, I’ve gone through what feels like approximately 2,000 Screen Time passcodes and gained several new gray hairs.
Screen Time is simply not a reliable way to control your child’s device use; the only real way to limit screen time is to remove the screen. That’s something Apple is unlikely to ever get behind, and something that, as your child gets older, becomes increasingly untenable for a whole host of reasons.
I’m not going to get into those here, or the argument about how much responsibility one should place on the developer of the technology versus the parents when it comes to parental control — that’s a whole societal debate we can have another time.
My issue with Screen Time is that the world’s most powerful technology company, with reams of expertise in hardware and software, has half-assed its “parental controls” for years and is now trying to put lipstick on a pig.
There are definitely improvements to parental controls, but to quote Jennifer again:
I’m tired of playing whack-a-mole with my kids' devices.
If tech enthusiasts are fed up and are having issues with parental controls, what about the average parent?
I haven’t dug deep into the new settings, but that’s because my kids don’t have any apps on their devices. The only 3rd party apps they have are Google Translate for learning languages, and a Quran app for reading scripture.
That’s it. No Safari, no games, and hell no to social media.
Quite literally, hell no.
They read a lot of books, which have real knowledge and entertainment that helps develop the brain instead of hindering it.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge (News+ link):
Apple is trying to show the world it’s being responsible when it comes to your children.
Only it’s really not. Screen Time sucks. As a mother of two whose children have had Apple Watches, iPads, and iPhones, and who are now entering their late teens (18 and 15), I’ve spent years grappling with Apple’s parental controls. In that time, I’ve gone through what feels like approximately 2,000 Screen Time passcodes and gained several new gray hairs.
Screen Time is simply not a reliable way to control your child’s device use; the only real way to limit screen time is to remove the screen. That’s something Apple is unlikely to ever get behind, and something that, as your child gets older, becomes increasingly untenable for a whole host of reasons.
I’m not going to get into those here, or the argument about how much responsibility one should place on the developer of the technology versus the parents when it comes to parental control — that’s a whole societal debate we can have another time.
My issue with Screen Time is that the world’s most powerful technology company, with reams of expertise in hardware and software, has half-assed its “parental controls” for years and is now trying to put lipstick on a pig.
There are definitely improvements to parental controls, but to quote Jennifer again:
I’m tired of playing whack-a-mole with my kids' devices.
If tech enthusiasts are fed up and are having issues with parental controls, what about the average parent?
I haven’t dug deep into the new settings, but that’s because my kids don’t have any apps on their devices. The only 3rd party apps they have are Google Translate for learning languages, and a Quran app for reading scripture.
That’s it. No Safari, no games, and hell no to social media.
Quite literally, hell no.
They read a lot of books, which have real knowledge and entertainment that helps develop the brain instead of hindering it.
Just move - you will feel better and be a better parent.
I did a few unorthodox workouts over the past few weeks, and what I realized was you have to change your workout routines in order to really benefit your body. Doing movements you wouldn’t normally do will make you feel better and increase circulation. You don’t even have to do crazy stuff - just natural things you might do while having fun. For example:
Rollerskating - not usually something I do, but it was a fun way to get the heart rate going from both the movement and from the “joyful fear” of trying not to fall. Even this “joyful fear” is a feeling you don’t experience everyday, but boosts your mood. You also feel it in your legs since you’re balancing yourself in ways and activating muscle groups you didn’t know you had.
Throwing a ball back and forth - playing catch with my son on an unlevel backyard with dips and hills is more fun and challenging than you might think. Even throwing a ball crossbody where you are running in one direction to catch the ball and then throw in the opposite direction clicked something in my back and loosened me up.
Frisbee - playing with my daughter was fun, and it allows you to jump, stretch, run, and also turn in ways that you wouldn’t do in a gym with weights or on a treadmill. Add the mind complexity of trying to judge where the frisbee is going and you get even more unorthodoxy into the mix.
The best part about all these activities is there’s more than one person involved, and you get more spontaneity while working out and having fun with your family. Dodging people while skating, fielding bad throws by running and trying to catch, and poor frisbee flings leading to even more running and jumping adds that extra organic spice.
If you’re tired, the solution is to move. Just…move.
I did a few unorthodox workouts over the past few weeks, and what I realized was you have to change your workout routines in order to really benefit your body. Doing movements you wouldn’t normally do will make you feel better and increase circulation. You don’t even have to do crazy stuff - just natural things you might do while having fun. For example:
Rollerskating - not usually something I do, but it was a fun way to get the heart rate going from both the movement and from the “joyful fear” of trying not to fall. Even this “joyful fear” is a feeling you don’t experience everyday, but boosts your mood. You also feel it in your legs since you’re balancing yourself in ways and activating muscle groups you didn’t know you had.
Throwing a ball back and forth - playing catch with my son on an unlevel backyard with dips and hills is more fun and challenging than you might think. Even throwing a ball crossbody where you are running in one direction to catch the ball and then throw in the opposite direction clicked something in my back and loosened me up.
Frisbee - playing with my daughter was fun, and it allows you to jump, stretch, run, and also turn in ways that you wouldn’t do in a gym with weights or on a treadmill. Add the mind complexity of trying to judge where the frisbee is going and you get even more unorthodoxy into the mix.
The best part about all these activities is there’s more than one person involved, and you get more spontaneity while working out and having fun with your family. Dodging people while skating, fielding bad throws by running and trying to catch, and poor frisbee flings leading to even more running and jumping adds that extra organic spice.
If you’re tired, the solution is to move. Just…move.
iPad rage is the equivalent of a drug addiction.
New York Magazine (paywalled) News+ link (also paywalled with no option to gift):
On a Saturday morning a few months ago, Rachel, a mom of two in New Jersey, tried to follow the screen-time advice she had seen repeatedly on parenting Instagram accounts and heard on parenting podcasts: Be clear about limits and give lots of advance warning. So Rachel told her 10-year-old son, Jonah, the night prior and again during breakfast that they would be leaving at 11 a.m. for a birthday party and that he would have to put his iPad away when it was time to go. After he ate his cereal, he sat with his iPad on the couch toggling between Roblox and YouTube shorts, and she set a timer. When there were 15 minutes left on it, and then again when there were five minutes left, she reminded him how long he still had to play. But when she walked into the living room at 10:56 a.m. as the timer rang out and said, “Okay, off,” her son’s reaction overwhelmed her.
“He just left his body,” she says. Jonah threw the controller onto the couch. He started yelling, “You said I had until 11! It’s not 11 yet! You’re always doing this!” He followed her into the kitchen still yelling. She tried to stay calm and be firm. Then she tried walking away. He followed her again. At one point, he sat down on the floor and refused to move.
“I remember standing there thinking, I don’t know this person. I genuinely did not recognize him,” she told me. It took Jonah 30 minutes to calm down enough to get his shoes on. In the car, he slowly became himself again, chatting as if nothing unusual had just transpired. “That’s the part that really messes with you,” Rachel says. “How fast they come back.” […]
There are parents I know who saw the recent headline about an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy who shot his father after having his Nintendo Switch taken away and admitted to the dark thought, I could see how that happened. But as obvious and urgent as this phenomenon feels for many parents, it is only just gaining acknowledgment and study in the psychological community, which remains divided on what’s happening and why. […]
One psychologist doesn’t think it’s addiction:
Dave Anderson, a senior psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, doesn’t think technology in particular is to blame for children’s intense reactions. […] Anderson points to one particular fact: Real withdrawal symptoms don’t fade away after a few intense minutes, whereas screen meltdowns typically do. He says that post-iPad rages occur because children’s brains are still developing and can’t yet smoothly handle losing something pleasurable — and that they’re essentially normal.
One psychiatrist does:
But Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, is convinced screens are a special case — and she doesn’t mince words about their addictive properties. In a recent conversation on The Oprah Podcast, she was asked to explain what happens in a child’s brain when a parent tries to take away a device mid–gaming session and the child erupts. “When you expose a child’s brain to a digital drug that is incredibly reinforcing, it is inevitable that that child will get into this loop of addiction where they get into a state of craving and withdrawal when they don’t have their drug,” she answered.
When I raised Anderson’s explanation with her (namely, that these meltdowns are a normal emotional regulation challenge), she conceded that not every child who gets upset when their device is taken away is in withdrawal. But for kids whose use has tipped into something resembling compulsion, Lembke sees a different pattern: extreme reactions that last too long but tend to resolve with continued abstinence. In addition, abstinence leads these kids to sleep better, exercise more, and reengage with family and school. “These long-term trajectories toward improved physical and mental health are not seen in the wake of your average temper tantrum,” she said.
A nice solution is to have a transitional activity lined up:
But Deanna, a mom in Manhattan, is slightly more hopeful. She told me that after getting into the habit of extending her kids’ screentimes to delay their meltdowns, she finally decided to enact a few changes. Before her kids receive their devices, she makes them verbally agree to an end time. And when their timers go off, she never allows an extra minute. She also always has the next activity queued up and waiting — Legos on the table or a baking project half-prepped— so the screen doesn’t get replaced by a void. It’s a lot of work, and the first week was, “completely brutal,” she told me. But she kept at it, and about a month later, the tantrums weakened. “They still grumble,” she said. “But the fighting — that’s mostly over. I don’t brace myself the way I used to.”
Transitionary activities makes a lot of sense, but a lot of this addiction comes from the constant hit without the work (resistance) to get it. Back in the day, you had to go to the TV and sit in front of it to watch it. If you had to use the bathroom, you had to leave and come back. Now you take the screen with you! Generic commercials that are not personalized are now personalized ads that keep the dopamine hit going with interactive mini-games. Forget HD, you had to tweak the antenna just to get a signal, or blow in the cartridge to make sure it would even work (that’s been debunked).
Games of the past were more difficult and had less of a reward, but now you have unlimited tries and you can start from the exact point where you left off. Even when you play Nintendo Classics on the Switch, you can play a difficult game from the past, but you can easily rewind the game, correct your mistimed jump, and keep on going. I’m guilty of this myself.
Let’s not forget that the prefrontal cortex of children is under developed which is heavily involved in impulse control and emotional regulation. Combine that with many parents who just don’t have the gall anymore to say no to children even at a young age of 2, before they have the ability to rampage.
And don’t even get me started on social media for kids…
New York Magazine (paywalled) News+ link (also paywalled with no option to gift):
On a Saturday morning a few months ago, Rachel, a mom of two in New Jersey, tried to follow the screen-time advice she had seen repeatedly on parenting Instagram accounts and heard on parenting podcasts: Be clear about limits and give lots of advance warning. So Rachel told her 10-year-old son, Jonah, the night prior and again during breakfast that they would be leaving at 11 a.m. for a birthday party and that he would have to put his iPad away when it was time to go. After he ate his cereal, he sat with his iPad on the couch toggling between Roblox and YouTube shorts, and she set a timer. When there were 15 minutes left on it, and then again when there were five minutes left, she reminded him how long he still had to play. But when she walked into the living room at 10:56 a.m. as the timer rang out and said, “Okay, off,” her son’s reaction overwhelmed her.
“He just left his body,” she says. Jonah threw the controller onto the couch. He started yelling, “You said I had until 11! It’s not 11 yet! You’re always doing this!” He followed her into the kitchen still yelling. She tried to stay calm and be firm. Then she tried walking away. He followed her again. At one point, he sat down on the floor and refused to move.
“I remember standing there thinking, I don’t know this person. I genuinely did not recognize him,” she told me. It took Jonah 30 minutes to calm down enough to get his shoes on. In the car, he slowly became himself again, chatting as if nothing unusual had just transpired. “That’s the part that really messes with you,” Rachel says. “How fast they come back.” […]
There are parents I know who saw the recent headline about an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy who shot his father after having his Nintendo Switch taken away and admitted to the dark thought, I could see how that happened. But as obvious and urgent as this phenomenon feels for many parents, it is only just gaining acknowledgment and study in the psychological community, which remains divided on what’s happening and why. […]
One psychologist doesn’t think it’s addiction:
Dave Anderson, a senior psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, doesn’t think technology in particular is to blame for children’s intense reactions. […] Anderson points to one particular fact: Real withdrawal symptoms don’t fade away after a few intense minutes, whereas screen meltdowns typically do. He says that post-iPad rages occur because children’s brains are still developing and can’t yet smoothly handle losing something pleasurable — and that they’re essentially normal.
One psychiatrist does:
But Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, is convinced screens are a special case — and she doesn’t mince words about their addictive properties. In a recent conversation on The Oprah Podcast, she was asked to explain what happens in a child’s brain when a parent tries to take away a device mid–gaming session and the child erupts. “When you expose a child’s brain to a digital drug that is incredibly reinforcing, it is inevitable that that child will get into this loop of addiction where they get into a state of craving and withdrawal when they don’t have their drug,” she answered.
When I raised Anderson’s explanation with her (namely, that these meltdowns are a normal emotional regulation challenge), she conceded that not every child who gets upset when their device is taken away is in withdrawal. But for kids whose use has tipped into something resembling compulsion, Lembke sees a different pattern: extreme reactions that last too long but tend to resolve with continued abstinence. In addition, abstinence leads these kids to sleep better, exercise more, and reengage with family and school. “These long-term trajectories toward improved physical and mental health are not seen in the wake of your average temper tantrum,” she said.
A nice solution is to have a transitional activity lined up:
But Deanna, a mom in Manhattan, is slightly more hopeful. She told me that after getting into the habit of extending her kids’ screentimes to delay their meltdowns, she finally decided to enact a few changes. Before her kids receive their devices, she makes them verbally agree to an end time. And when their timers go off, she never allows an extra minute. She also always has the next activity queued up and waiting — Legos on the table or a baking project half-prepped— so the screen doesn’t get replaced by a void. It’s a lot of work, and the first week was, “completely brutal,” she told me. But she kept at it, and about a month later, the tantrums weakened. “They still grumble,” she said. “But the fighting — that’s mostly over. I don’t brace myself the way I used to.”
Transitionary activities makes a lot of sense, but a lot of this addiction comes from the constant hit without the work (resistance) to get it. Back in the day, you had to go to the TV and sit in front of it to watch it. If you had to use the bathroom, you had to leave and come back. Now you take the screen with you! Generic commercials that are not personalized are now personalized ads that keep the dopamine hit going with interactive mini-games. Forget HD, you had to tweak the antenna just to get a signal, or blow in the cartridge to make sure it would even work (that’s been debunked).
Games of the past were more difficult and had less of a reward, but now you have unlimited tries and you can start from the exact point where you left off. Even when you play Nintendo Classics on the Switch, you can play a difficult game from the past, but you can easily rewind the game, correct your mistimed jump, and keep on going. I’m guilty of this myself.
Let’s not forget that the prefrontal cortex of children is under developed which is heavily involved in impulse control and emotional regulation. Combine that with many parents who just don’t have the gall anymore to say no to children even at the young age of 2, before they have the ability to rampage.
And don’t even get me started on social media for kids…
Crisis mode at the Fahadx residence?
Wife wants wired headphones instead of AirPods, I want a mechanical watch instead of an Apple Watch. The anti-tech movement has started??
Wife wants wired headphones instead of AirPods, I want a mechanical watch instead of an Apple Watch. The anti-tech movement has started??
Kids are in a “reading recession” with declining test scores, and this screenshot sums it up.
Nothing speaks more clearly about cognitive decline than an AI helper trying to do all the hard work for you.
Nothing speaks more clearly about cognitive decline than an AI helper trying to do all the hard work for you.
The best meal for $6 you can ask for.
In this economy, getting a meal for $6 sounds like a pipe dream, but it is possible with these healthy frozen dinners from Saffron Road. If you’re in a time crunch you really can’t beat the value.
Not a sponsor by the way, just real experience.
In this economy, getting a meal for $6 sounds like a pipe dream, but it is possible with these healthy frozen dinners from Saffron Road. If you’re in a time crunch you really can’t beat the value.
Not a sponsor by the way, just real experience.
A child logs 13,000 watched YouTube videos in a span of 3 months…during school hours.
The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
AMY WARREN’S “mom siren” went off when her seventh-grader in Wichita, Kan., seemed to know too much about Fortnite, a battling-and-shooting videogame he is barred from playing.
When Warren signed into his school Google account, she was aghast: Her son Ben had accessed more than 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours from December 2024 through February 2025, according to viewing data she provided the Journal.
His feed was rife with inappropriate content. Videos glorifying gun culture, asking about silencers on Nerf guns, “head shots” where children realistically portray being killed, a video with sexually explicit jokes about neighbors sleeping together.
YouTube had served up “shorts”—video after video that it algorithmically determined that he might like.
“It made me cry,” Warren said. “All of a sudden it’s this kind of gun slop, by no fault of his own. ” She later ran for school board and won in November, eager to galvanize change.
Kudos to the mother for taking action and striving for change, but I think it would require a huge infrastructure change to go back to the older and more proven style of learning when teachers themselves rely on YouTube and videos for teaching. I do think YouTube is a great tool as a supplement for learning in a controlled environment, but the creation of Shorts on all platforms was a sign of mental destruction, and now we have some numbers - 13,000 videos watched in 3 months during school hours.
There’s more numbers stated in the article:
A second-grader in New York watched more than 700 videos in two months during school hours, including one featuring pole dancing. A tenth-grader in Oregon scrolled through more than 200 between 9 and 11:40 a.m. on March 6.
Who do you blame in this instance? It’s hard to pinpoint the problem because you can make a case for all parties involved, be it parents, Google, Apple, school districts, etc.
However you frame it, this is one of those “first world problems” that truly is a problem:
The concern about YouTube arrives during a crisis in education. American math and reading scores have slid to their lowest point in decades. Many educators, families and learning scientists say they can no longer blame pandemic learning loss; the decline has coincided with a dramatic increase in school screen time, turbocharged by the embrace of 1:1 devices by more than 88% of public schools, according to government survey data. YouTube and Meta recently lost a landmark social-media addiction trial, with a jury finding the companies negligent for operating products that harmed children. YouTube said it’s appealing the ruling.
Chromebooks—primed for Google software and YouTube—have about 60% of the K-12 mobile device market, according to Futuresource Consulting. Apple iPads are also a popular school device. YouTube is a top-viewed website on school devices, sometimes accounting for half of student traffic, according to administrators and web-filtering companies. […]
In some school districts, including Wichita, efforts to block all or part of the platform proved futile. Students found workarounds: logging out of their district accounts, sharing YouTube links in Google Slides and Docs and other backdoors in, parents, teachers and students say. Google says it’s fixed the Slides and Docs bug.
The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
AMY WARREN’S “mom siren” went off when her seventh-grader in Wichita, Kan., seemed to know too much about Fortnite, a battling-and-shooting videogame he is barred from playing.
When Warren signed into his school Google account, she was aghast: Her son Ben had accessed more than 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours from December 2024 through February 2025, according to viewing data she provided the Journal.
His feed was rife with inappropriate content. Videos glorifying gun culture, asking about silencers on Nerf guns, “head shots” where children realistically portray being killed, a video with sexually explicit jokes about neighbors sleeping together.
YouTube had served up “shorts”—video after video that it algorithmically determined that he might like.
“It made me cry,” Warren said. “All of a sudden it’s this kind of gun slop, by no fault of his own. ” She later ran for school board and won in November, eager to galvanize change.
Kudos to the mother for taking action and striving for change, but I think it would require a huge infrastructure change to go back to the older and more proven style of learning when teachers themselves rely on YouTube and videos for teaching. I do think YouTube is a great tool as a supplement for learning in a controlled environment, but the creation of Shorts on all platforms was a sign of mental destruction, and now we have some numbers - 13,000 videos watched in 3 months during school hours.
There’s more numbers stated in the article:
A second-grader in New York watched more than 700 videos in two months during school hours, including one featuring pole dancing. A tenth-grader in Oregon scrolled through more than 200 between 9 and 11:40 a.m. on March 6.
Who do you blame in this instance? It’s hard to pinpoint the problem because you can make a case for all parties involved, be it parents, Google, Apple, school districts, etc.
However you frame it, this is one of those “first world problems” that truly is a problem:
The concern about YouTube arrives during a crisis in education. American math and reading scores have slid to their lowest point in decades. Many educators, families and learning scientists say they can no longer blame pandemic learning loss; the decline has coincided with a dramatic increase in school screen time, turbocharged by the embrace of 1:1 devices by more than 88% of public schools, according to government survey data. YouTube and Meta recently lost a landmark social-media addiction trial, with a jury finding the companies negligent for operating products that harmed children. YouTube said it’s appealing the ruling.
Chromebooks—primed for Google software and YouTube—have about 60% of the K-12 mobile device market, according to Futuresource Consulting. Apple iPads are also a popular school device. YouTube is a top-viewed website on school devices, sometimes accounting for half of student traffic, according to administrators and web-filtering companies. […]
In some school districts, including Wichita, efforts to block all or part of the platform proved futile. Students found workarounds: logging out of their district accounts, sharing YouTube links in Google Slides and Docs and other backdoors in, parents, teachers and students say. Google says it’s fixed the Slides and Docs bug.
Lung cancer risk is higher in people who eat…fruits and vegetables??
The new study, which surveyed 187 young patients diagnosed with lung cancer, has found an infuriating link between the incidence of lung cancer and these patients’ statistically higher consumption of healthy foods, including dark green vegetables and legumes. Medical oncologist Jorge Nieva at USC Keck, a coauthor on the new research, noted that past studies have also documented higher rates of lung cancer in agricultural workers exposed to pesticides—evidence that would support their theory of pesticides’ causal relationship to the disease.
“Our research shows that younger non-smokers who eat a higher quantity of healthy foods than the general population are more likely to develop lung cancer,” Nieva, a specialist in lung cancer, said in a statement.
“These counter-intuitive findings raise important questions about an unknown environmental risk factor for lung cancer related to otherwise beneficial food,” he noted, “that needs to be addressed.” […]
Most patients had reportedly never smoked, possibly not even once or twice at house parties.
But what most of these young cancer patients had done is eat a statistically higher daily amount of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains compared to the average member of the general public.
Here’s what Nieva’s team found when comparing this lung cancer cohort’s data to data on the eating habits recorded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: Young lung cancer patients averaged about 4.3 servings of dark green vegetables and legumes per day, compared to the average American’s 3.6 servings. These patients also averaged 3.9 servings of whole grains daily, compared to the average American’s 2.6 servings.
One of the more blood-boiling things about these fruits and vegetables, according to Nieva, is that the non-organic varieties tend to also have higher pesticide residues than the food less health-conscious people are likely to enjoy, including dairy, meat, and many processed foods.
The part that pisses me off:
And it bears repeating that their survey-based research has only found a troubling overlap in these pesticide exposures and incidences of lung cancer, not concrete proof of a biochemical mechanism confirming these compounds are carcinogenic.
OK, so pesticides like the most infamous one (glyphosate) might cause cancer, but it’s not proven yet - there’s just a “troubling overlap” between pesticide exposures and cancer.
My family has been going organic with certain foods and we have discontinued the use of GMO cereal at our house, but everyone needs to go as organic as possible. In the back of my mind, that still won’t be enough to solve this issue.
A more recent therapeutic oil that I have been “dailying” these days is black seed oil. Great for many ailments including inflammation, blood sugar regulation, lowering bad and raising good cholesterol, and relevant to this story, great at neutralizing cancer-causing free radicals. One teaspoon a day is a good start, and probably enough for most people.
The other route? All food is bad for you and will kill you, so go all in and enjoy, and blame genetics at the end of the day. Honestly, this option is starting to feel more and more palatable.
The new study, which surveyed 187 young patients diagnosed with lung cancer, has found an infuriating link between the incidence of lung cancer and these patients’ statistically higher consumption of healthy foods, including dark green vegetables and legumes. Medical oncologist Jorge Nieva at USC Keck, a coauthor on the new research, noted that past studies have also documented higher rates of lung cancer in agricultural workers exposed to pesticides—evidence that would support their theory of pesticides’ causal relationship to the disease.
“Our research shows that younger non-smokers who eat a higher quantity of healthy foods than the general population are more likely to develop lung cancer,” Nieva, a specialist in lung cancer, said in a statement.
“These counter-intuitive findings raise important questions about an unknown environmental risk factor for lung cancer related to otherwise beneficial food,” he noted, “that needs to be addressed.” […]
Most patients had reportedly never smoked, possibly not even once or twice at house parties.
But what most of these young cancer patients had done is eat a statistically higher daily amount of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains compared to the average member of the general public.
Here’s what Nieva’s team found when comparing this lung cancer cohort’s data to data on the eating habits recorded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: Young lung cancer patients averaged about 4.3 servings of dark green vegetables and legumes per day, compared to the average American’s 3.6 servings. These patients also averaged 3.9 servings of whole grains daily, compared to the average American’s 2.6 servings.
One of the more blood-boiling things about these fruits and vegetables, according to Nieva, is that the non-organic varieties tend to also have higher pesticide residues than the food less health-conscious people are likely to enjoy, including dairy, meat, and many processed foods.
The part that pisses me off:
And it bears repeating that their survey-based research has only found a troubling overlap in these pesticide exposures and incidences of lung cancer, not concrete proof of a biochemical mechanism confirming these compounds are carcinogenic.
OK, so pesticides like the most infamous one (glyphosate) might cause cancer, but it’s not proven yet - there’s just a “troubling overlap” between pesticide exposures and cancer.
My family has been going organic with certain foods and we have discontinued the use of GMO cereal at our house, but everyone needs to go as organic as possible. In the back of my mind, that still won’t be enough to solve this issue.
A more recent therapeutic oil that I have been “dailying” these days is black seed oil. Great for many ailments including inflammation, blood sugar regulation, lowering bad and raising good cholesterol, and relevant to this story, great at neutralizing cancer-causing free radicals. One teaspoon a day is a good start, and probably enough for most people.
The other route? All food is bad for you and will kill you, so go all in and enjoy, and blame genetics at the end of the day. Honestly, this option is starting to feel more and more palatable.
Two instances of “Face ID” like I’ve never imagined.
I spoke about my daughter not too long ago, and this past week she finally had her first cleft lip repair surgery. She was born with a mid-line cleft lip that extended into her nose and with the first surgery, the most visual defect has been corrected. She still has more surgeries in the future, but we’re taking it one step at a time. This “before” image represents what she looked like prior to surgery, and she is working her way to the “after” photo as she gets older.
The biggest change from our perspective so far is her smile. Her top lip is much narrower leading to a thinner smile, but it’s beautiful in a different way.
Speaking of other unexpected face changes, we saw multiple nurses throughout the week she spent in the hospital, and a lot of them wore face masks. Your brain subconsciously tries to complete the face of the masked person that you’re seeing day in and day out, but then you get surprised when the mask comes off and the face is not what you expected. There were no defects in their faces, but your subjective brain’s reality distortion field was expecting a certain look based on their other facial features and speech.
It’s like those AI experiments people do where they cover half their face with a hand, and ask AI to remove the hand and generate the rest of the face. It’s close, but you can tell there’s something off. My brain’s result was similar to Google’s Magic Eraser and not Apple’s Clean Up, which I consider a huge win for the human mind.
From a digital authenticity and reality point of view, Apple’s Clean Up is better because it is so bad you know the edited photo is not real and the line between reality and falsehood is obvious.
I spoke about my daughter not too long ago, and this past week she finally had her first cleft lip repair surgery. She was born with a mid-line cleft lip that extended into her nose and with the first surgery, the most visual defect has been corrected. She still has more surgeries in the future, but we’re taking it one step at a time. This “before” image represents what she looked like prior to surgery, and she is working her way to the “after” photo as she gets older.
The biggest change from our perspective so far is her smile. Her top lip is much narrower leading to a thinner smile, but it’s beautiful in a different way.
Speaking of other unexpected face changes, we saw multiple nurses throughout the week she spent in the hospital, and a lot of them wore face masks. Your brain subconsciously tries to complete the face of the masked person that you’re seeing day in and day out, but then you get surprised when the mask comes off and the face is not what you expected. There were no defects in their faces, but your subjective brain’s reality distortion field was expecting a certain look based on their other facial features and speech.
It’s like those AI experiments people do where they cover half their face with a hand, and ask AI to remove the hand and generate the rest of the face. It’s close, but you can tell there’s something off. My brain’s result was similar to Google’s Magic Eraser and not Apple’s Clean Up, which I consider a huge win for the human mind.
From a digital authenticity and reality point of view, Apple’s Clean Up is better because it is so bad you know the edited photo is not real and the line between reality and falsehood is obvious.
Smoking weed isn’t a new problem, but a more potent one, and changes the definition of what “high school” is supposed to be.
The Wall Street Journal (News+ link), starting off their story with what seems like a scene straight out of the movies:
It was 10:09 and 22 seconds on a Friday morning at Liberty High School when an alert dinged on James Geis’s phone: “High Vape Index.”
He dashed out of the administrative building and jumped into a golf cart, racing across the school’s sprawling campus to the location identified in the alert, the “E” girls’ bathroom. Within minutes he was outside the door.
A girl walked out. “Can I talk to you? Was there anyone else in there with you?” said Geis, one of the school’s campus supervisors tasked with combating marijuana use—or what many Liberty students call “narcs.”
Two more girls walked out. Geis told the students that a vape sensor went off. “What would happen if I ran?” one said.
“We would get you when you come back,” Geis responded.
She didn’t run. Geis ushered the students to a conference room where Liberty’s principal, Efa Huckaby, searched their backpacks. Hand sanitizer, folders, perfume, a pair of black leggings. Empty chips bags. He had the girls, two seniors and one freshman, turn their jeans’ pockets inside out and patted down the hoods of their sweatshirts. One of the students spoke slowly and seemed glassy-eyed.
Another campus supervisor, Brad Ainsworth, hung back to search the empty bathroom. Eventually, he found an empty box for a vape cartridge stuffed under a bag lining a metal trash receptacle.
Everywhere I go I can smell weed, even right outside the hospital. It’s not surprising that schools also have increased usage. Meanwhile, High Times argues that marijuana use is going down, even quoting the Wall Street Journal’s survey statistics:
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Teen cannabis use is real. The risks are real. THC can be harmful to developing brains, and schools have every right to care about what students are doing on campus. But that is not the same as proving legalization created some brand-new youth cannabis crisis. That leap is where the piece gets slippery.
Because once you leave the anecdote and look at the trendline, the panic starts to wobble. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future report shows past-year marijuana use among 12th graders at 26.0% in 2024, down from 35.7% in 2019. Among 8th graders, it was 7.0% in 2024, down from 11.8% in 2019. That is not an explosion. That is a decline.
While different news outlets will argue whether it should be illegal to smoke and how widespread the issue might be, no one can deny the barrier to entry has declined significantly since I went to high school back in the 90s:
It was a process to smoke weed. You had to first acquire it without the aid of a cellphone where you are in constant communication with your “source.”
You had to prep it with tools and “roll your own joints,” which apparently is a skill many of today’s youth don’t have or need because a vape is much easier to use and masks the smell from teachers.
And who would know best if use has actually gone down except teenagers themselves (WSJ continues):
But some Liberty students said they don’t think weed use has really gone down. The school’s focus on the bathrooms has just pushed it to other spots, both on campus and off. A major hot spot for weed and nicotine is the stairwell of a parking garage next to the school. “Anytime you go over there, I see a herd of them puffing,” said Blunt, the Liberty senior.
Some teens are brazen enough to do it in class, Blunt said, while a group of her fellow students nodded in agreement. Some will hide vape pens in the sleeves of their shirts and hoodies and take a discreet puff when the teacher isn’t looking.
And if the teacher is showing a video in class, it is a free-for-all, said Trimua. “If the lights are off, the smoke is on,” he said.
Let’s not forget the surveys given in high school are also a horrible way to determine true accuracy of increase or decrease in usage. Many students skew the results by trolling the polls and do speed clicks to get the survey over with, selecting any answer at random:
But a new research paper points out one huge potential flaw in all this research: kids who skew the results by making stuff up for a giggle. "Mischievous Responders," they're called.
They may say they're 7 feet tall, or weigh 400 pounds, or have three children. They may exaggerate their sexual experiences, or lie about their supposed criminal activities. In other words, kids will be kids, especially when you ask them about sensitive issues.
Jackson Terry, 14, says he answered honestly when he took one of these surveys last year, but he knows kids who didn't.
"They handed out the sheet, I believe it was in language class," says Terry, who's from Granville, Ohio. "The teacher was in the room. It was anonymous. I think they asked us about bullying, do you feel safe in school, some questions about drugs, the learning environment."
Some kids "would joke through the entire thing and have a cocky attitude about it," Terry says. "Afterwards some would say, yeah, No. 5, that's totally not true; I just made something up."
New York Times also describes how the potency of THC has increased dramatically from 4% to 90% in some cases (gift link):
Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.
This extremely potent version of THC can lead to psychosis, even with a single dose, destroying the future of countless children and adults.
“Stats” might say use is declining, but I beg to differ.
The Wall Street Journal (News+ link), starting off their story with what seems like a scene straight out of the movies:
It was 10:09 and 22 seconds on a Friday morning at Liberty High School when an alert dinged on James Geis’s phone: “High Vape Index.”
He dashed out of the administrative building and jumped into a golf cart, racing across the school’s sprawling campus to the location identified in the alert, the “E” girls’ bathroom. Within minutes he was outside the door.
A girl walked out. “Can I talk to you? Was there anyone else in there with you?” said Geis, one of the school’s campus supervisors tasked with combating marijuana use—or what many Liberty students call “narcs.”
Two more girls walked out. Geis told the students that a vape sensor went off. “What would happen if I ran?” one said.
“We would get you when you come back,” Geis responded.
She didn’t run. Geis ushered the students to a conference room where Liberty’s principal, Efa Huckaby, searched their backpacks. Hand sanitizer, folders, perfume, a pair of black leggings. Empty chips bags. He had the girls, two seniors and one freshman, turn their jeans’ pockets inside out and patted down the hoods of their sweatshirts. One of the students spoke slowly and seemed glassy-eyed.
Another campus supervisor, Brad Ainsworth, hung back to search the empty bathroom. Eventually, he found an empty box for a vape cartridge stuffed under a bag lining a metal trash receptacle.
Everywhere I go I can smell weed, even right outside the hospital. It’s not surprising that schools also have increased usage. Meanwhile, High Times argues that marijuana use is going down, even quoting the Wall Street Journal’s survey statistics:
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Teen cannabis use is real. The risks are real. THC can be harmful to developing brains, and schools have every right to care about what students are doing on campus. But that is not the same as proving legalization created some brand-new youth cannabis crisis. That leap is where the piece gets slippery.
Because once you leave the anecdote and look at the trendline, the panic starts to wobble. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future report shows past-year marijuana use among 12th graders at 26.0% in 2024, down from 35.7% in 2019. Among 8th graders, it was 7.0% in 2024, down from 11.8% in 2019. That is not an explosion. That is a decline.
While different news outlets will argue whether it should be illegal to smoke and how widespread the issue might be, no one can deny the barrier to entry has declined significantly since I went to high school back in the 90s:
It was a process to smoke weed. You had to first acquire it without the aid of a cellphone where you are in constant communication with your “source.”
You had to prep it with tools and “roll your own joints,” which apparently is a skill many of today’s youth don’t have or need because a vape is much easier to use and masks the smell from teachers.
And who would know best if use has actually gone down except teenagers themselves (WSJ continues):
But some Liberty students said they don’t think weed use has really gone down. The school’s focus on the bathrooms has just pushed it to other spots, both on campus and off. A major hot spot for weed and nicotine is the stairwell of a parking garage next to the school. “Anytime you go over there, I see a herd of them puffing,” said Blunt, the Liberty senior.
Some teens are brazen enough to do it in class, Blunt said, while a group of her fellow students nodded in agreement. Some will hide vape pens in the sleeves of their shirts and hoodies and take a discreet puff when the teacher isn’t looking.
And if the teacher is showing a video in class, it is a free-for-all, said Trimua. “If the lights are off, the smoke is on,” he said.
Let’s not forget the surveys given in high school are also a horrible way to determine true accuracy of increase or decrease in usage. Many students skew the results by trolling the polls and do speed clicks to get the survey over with, selecting any answer at random:
But a new research paper points out one huge potential flaw in all this research: kids who skew the results by making stuff up for a giggle. "Mischievous Responders," they're called.
They may say they're 7 feet tall, or weigh 400 pounds, or have three children. They may exaggerate their sexual experiences, or lie about their supposed criminal activities. In other words, kids will be kids, especially when you ask them about sensitive issues.
Jackson Terry, 14, says he answered honestly when he took one of these surveys last year, but he knows kids who didn't.
"They handed out the sheet, I believe it was in language class," says Terry, who's from Granville, Ohio. "The teacher was in the room. It was anonymous. I think they asked us about bullying, do you feel safe in school, some questions about drugs, the learning environment."
Some kids "would joke through the entire thing and have a cocky attitude about it," Terry says. "Afterwards some would say, yeah, No. 5, that's totally not true; I just made something up."
New York Times also describes how the potency of THC has increased dramatically from 4% to 90% in some cases (gift link):
Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.
This extremely potent version of THC can lead to psychosis, even with a single dose, destroying the future of countless children and adults.
“Stats” might say use is declining, but I beg to differ.
Skechers shoes with a hidden AirTag compartment are now branded as “Where’s my Skechers” instead of the former “Find my Skechers.”
Engadget back in July 2025:
Skechers just released a helicopter parent's dream shoe. Find My Skechers is a new line of children's shoes that encourages parents to hide an Apple AirTag under the heel.
The Skechers Kids range now includes a feature known as "Find My Skechers," referring to Apple's app for tracking down misplaced hardware and AirTags. This is handled by a small compartment in the heel of the shoe, hiding an AirTag under the insole.
Not sure when this was updated, but “Where’s my Skechers” sounds less litigious. Also, a reminder that AirTags in shoes are the best way to track your child’s shoes.
Engadget back in July 2025:
Skechers just released a helicopter parent's dream shoe. Find My Skechers is a new line of children's shoes that encourages parents to hide an Apple AirTag under the heel.
The Skechers Kids range now includes a feature known as "Find My Skechers," referring to Apple's app for tracking down misplaced hardware and AirTags. This is handled by a small compartment in the heel of the shoe, hiding an AirTag under the insole.
Not sure when this was updated, but “Where’s my Skechers” sounds less litigious. Also, a reminder that AirTags in shoes are the best way to track your child’s shoes.