• Elon Musk may be souring on San Francisco with a move to sublease X’s headquarters

    Illustration of X's logo with a photo of Elon Musk on a phone in front of it
    Elon Musk previously said that he tried to turn one of the company's offices in San Francisco into a homeless shelter.

    • Elon Musk's X plans to sublease its headquarters, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 
    • Its entire office, nearly 460,000 square feet of space, will reportedly be sublet. 
    • Musk has openly criticized San Francisco in the past and slammed it as a "disaster."

    Elon Musk's X could have plans to relocate its headquarters on its cards for this year.

    The company is set to sublease its San Francisco headquarters, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

    JLL, the real estate firm tasked with marketing X's office, told the Chronicle it aims to sublease nearly 460,000 square feet of office space as a "large headquarters opportunity" but suggested X might decide to occupy some of it.

    Musk has been vocal in the past about his thoughts on San Francisco and slammed it as a "disaster."

    Last year, the X owner described it as a "once beautiful and thriving" city, but likened the downtown area to becoming like a "derelict zombie apocalypse" as a result of the drugs and homelessness crisis.

    The billionaire told the BBC last year that he tried to turn one of the company's offices in San Francisco into a homeless shelter, but the building's owners would not let him.

    Due to changes made to its headquarters, Musk has had his fair share of issues and run-ins with local officials.

    After he took over Twitter and rebranded it to X in a $44 billion deal, the company erected a giant light-up X sign on the roof of the high-rise building.

    San Francisco's Department of Building Inspection (DBI) got at least 24 complaints about the sign, which said the sign looked "poorly constructed," could distract drivers, and disturb residents. Three days later, it was removed.

    Musk also converted some conference rooms into bedrooms for workers at the headquarters. X was later told to correctly label the bedrooms as sleeping areas, according to a correction notice from San Francisco's DBI previously reviewed by Business Insider.

    X didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ explores the ultimate space race conspiracy theory. Here’s what’s fact and fiction in the movie.

    A still of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum standing next to each other on the edge of a bridge
    Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum are the leading stars in the new film "Fly Me to the Moon."

    • "Fly Me to the Moon" is a romance about a publicist and the NASA director during the space race.
    • The pair film a fake moon landing in case NASA's mission fails.
    • The movie is fictional, but it draws on some historical facts.

    "Fly Me to the Moon," Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum's new romantic comedy-drama about faking the moon landing, is fictional but draws on some true historical events.

    The film is set in the 1960s and follows marketing expert Kelly Jones (Johansson) as she tries to garner support from the American public for NASA's moon mission.

    The White House eventually tasks Kelly with filming a fake moon landing in case the real one fails. Apollo 11 spaceship launch director Cole Davis (Tatum) opposes Kelly's plan, believing it will discredit NASA's efforts.

    This storyline leans into the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the US moon landing in 1969.

    The theory began to spread in 1976 when Bill Kaysing, a writer who briefly worked at a rocket engine company, published a book called "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle," which claimed that the government faked the moon landing to compete with the USSR.

    Though NASA has denied this claim, it has become embedded in pop culture.

    Greg Berlanti, the director of the new film, told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday that the movie is really about the importance of the truth.

    "When you see the movie, without giving away the ending, you realize that so much of it is about why the truth is important," Berlanti said. "And so I think I was fine to take on an OG conspiracy theory, knowing that in the end, what we were really trying to say why the truth matters."

    Berlanti told Entertainment Weekly in May that NASA gave the production team their blessing and allowed them to film at Cape Kennedy in Florida, where Apollo 11 launched in 1969.

    Here are the accurate moments in "Fly Me To The Moon."

    Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins are the few characters in the movie based on real-life figures

    Channing Tatum standing in front of a memorial for three NASA astronauts.
    Tatum plays a hardened NASA employee in "Fly Me to the Moon."

    The lead characters in "Fly Me To The Moon," Kelly and Cole, appear to be fictional. However, the movie does feature some real-life figures.

    Nick Dillenburg, Christian Zuber, and Colin Woodell play Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin: the first humans to land on the moon.

    The movie also features NASA astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom. In real life and in the movie, they died in a cabin fire in 1967 during a launch rehearsal test for the Apollo 1 spaceship.

    The final two real-life figures in the movie are former USSR president Nikita Khrushchev and Yuri Gargarin, the first man to travel to space in 1961.

    NASA used a public relations campaign promote the space program

    Channing Tatum and Ray Romano stand next to each other with headsets in a crowded room that represents NASA mission control.
    Cole Davis (Tatum) and Henry Smalls (Ray Romano) are part of the NASA launch team in "Fly Me to the Moon."

    Kelly didn't exist, but NASA had an extensive public relations campaign to promote the space program in the 1960s.

    At the time, the US was fighting the Vietnam War, dealing with racial tensions during the civil rights movement, and worrying about a potential nuclear war with the USSR.

    So officials had to persuade the public that the space program was worth the money.

    According to David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek's book, "Marketing the Moon," NASA decided to promote facts about space travel through methods including press releases and educational programs to get the public interested. NASA thought being transparent would win the public over.

    Television networks did simulate part of the space flight, but the landing was not faked

    Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum stand in front of a big television camera.
    Kelly Jones (Johansson) and Cole Davis (Tatum) are not based on real-life people.

    NASA's PR team helped television stations broadcast live footage of part of Apollo 11's flight.

    Television networks used models to simulate the rest of the space flight when live footage was unavailable. But there's no evidence to suggests NASA or any network tried to fake the moon landing.

    A television camera was mounted on the side of Apollo 11 to capture Armstrong's first steps on the moon, and the rest is history.

    "Fly Me to the Moon" is out now in theaters.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Why meteorologists avoid afternoon and evening flights in the summer

    a plane flies toward a bright sun in an orange sky
    • Meteorologists have an open secret about booking flights: avoid summer afternoons and evenings.
    • Because of thunderstorms, late flights in summer are prone to delays or cancellations.
    • Meteorologist Chris Bianchi broke his mornings-only rule for summer flights and quickly regretted it.

    Chris Bianchi loves flying.

    "The fact that you can go from being a 737 sitting on the ground to hurtling through the air at 500 miles an hour in five minutes, is just fascinating to me," he told Business Insider. "I'm never not awestruck when I'm taking off, and on a plane. It's just so cool."

    But on the evening of June 26, he didn't get to fly. Instead, he got stuck at LaGuardia Airport overnight waiting for an hours-delayed plane.

    He only had himself to blame. As a meteorologist, he should've known better than to book a flight on a summer evening.

    With his extra airport time, he made a TikTok about it.

    "I broke the one rule you should never ever break," the 9News Denver meteorologist told his followers. "Never book a flight in the afternoon, or especially at night, during the summertime months in the United States."

    chris bianchi man wearing blue suit and earpiece talking for tv with a screen showing him in front of a weather map in the background
    Chris Bianchi giving a meteorological report for TV news.

    Soon flight attendants were posting in the comments about how they always book the first morning flight of the day. Bianchi's meteorologist friends started texting him, asking why on Earth he was flying at night.

    It's an open secret among those in the know: Summer afternoons and evenings are the most weather-delay-prone time of year for flights.

    "It was a fun trip, and I did not have to work the next day," Bianchi told BI. "That's why I was like, I'll roll the dice a little bit on this — full well knowing that I could get screwed, which is what happened to me."

    Ultimately, Bianchi didn't get on a plane home to Denver until 7 p.m. the following day.

    Summer afternoons are peak thunderstorm time

    Lightning thunderstorm las vegas
    Lightning flashes behind an air traffic control tower at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada.

    Three ingredients make a thunderstorm: moisture, unstable air, and some way for that air to get moving.

    In summer, the heat of the sun helps get things moving if the atmosphere is unstable enough — either due to differences of temperature or moisture in different layers of the atmosphere. Hot air rises, so the warm summer air near Earth's surface starts to rise to higher, cooler altitudes.

    Water vapor (completing the ingredient triad) in the air cools as it rises, condensing into clouds. Eventually, you have a thunderstorm.

    "The morning tends to be calmer in most areas. It might take a little bit for that energy to build up for storms to spark," AccuWeather meteorologist Alyssa Glenny told BI. "You might have a calmer flight in the morning."

    Bad weather doesn't need to be in your flight path to cause a delay. It could be in a city where your plane stopped earlier that day. A storm in Chicago might delay the plane that's supposed to take you from LaGuardia to Miami.

    "Weather in other cities can really disrupt your travel plans," Bianchi said.

    April and May are particularly bad-weather months across the central plains of the US and through Tornado Alley, according to Glenny. Then, in the later summer from June onward, hurricane season picks up.

    Even if your plane isn't coming from a coastal city in a hurricane's path, those systems often move inland after they make landfall, causing tornados and thunderstorms across the US.

    Remnants of Hurricane Beryl, for example, pummeled the Great Lakes and New England regions with rain and heavy winds Wednesday and Thursday, just days after the storm made landfall in Texas. Even before landfall, Beryl led to over 1,000 flight cancellations and thousands of delays, according to Reuters.

    Morning flights can help you avoid cascading delays

    Booking morning flights doesn't just help you avoid nasty weather — it also cushions you against delays that build up throughout the day.

    Even if skies are clear across the country on the afternoon or evening you fly, any planes that were delayed earlier in the day could still be running behind schedule.

    "That'll have a cascading effect," Glenny said.

    Knowing all that science and flight logistics, Bianchi's takeaway is simple: "Book a flight in the morning in summer," he said.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • AT&T says hackers stole the call and text records of almost all of its wireless customers

    AT&T logo on phone screen
    AT&T says that call and text records from almost all of its wireless customers were stolen in a hack earlier this year.

    • AT&T says hackers stole call and text records from "nearly all" of its wireless customers.
    • The data includes the phone numbers that customers interacted with.
    • It doesn't include the contents of the calls and texts, or Social Security numbers, AT&T said.

    AT&T says that call and text records from almost all of its wireless customers were stolen in a hack earlier this year.

    The carrier said on Friday that it learned in April that customer data had been "illegally downloaded" from its workspace on a third-party cloud platform.

    The compromised data includes files containing AT&T records of calls and texts of "nearly all of AT&T's cellular customers, customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) using AT&T's wireless network, as well as AT&T's landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers between May 1, 2022 – October 31, 2022."

    For a "very small" group of customers, the compromised data also includes records from January 2, 2023, AT&T said.

    AT&T said that the compromised records show the telephone numbers an AT&T or MVNO cellular number interacted with. In some cases, the records also include cell site identification numbers.

    The data doesn't contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth, or time stamps of calls or texts, AT&T said.

    "While the data does not include customer names, there are often ways, using publicly available online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number," AT&T said.

    "At this time, we do not believe that the data is publicly available," AT&T said.

    It added that it had recruited leading cybersecurity experts and had taken steps to close off the illegal access point.

    "We are working with law enforcement in its efforts to arrest those involved in the incident," AT&T said. "We understand that at least one person has been apprehended."

    The carrier said that it would inform affected current and former customers about the hack. "We sincerely regret this incident occurred and remain committed to protecting the information in our care," it said.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Elon Musk braces for another fight after X gets named and shamed

    Elon Musk
    X owner Elon Musk is facing new accusations from the European Commission.

    • European regulators said Elon Musk's X deceives users and breaches EU rules.
    • The European Commission cited issues with data access, advertising transparency, and "dark patterns."
    • If the Commission's views are confirmed, X could be fined up to 6% of its global turnover.

    Elon Musk's X deceives its users and breaches online content rules, the European Commission said on Friday.

    In a preliminary view, the Commission said the platform had broken rules regarding data access for researchers, advertising transparency, and "dark patterns."

    The body said X's blue checkmark system for "verified accounts" deceives users as anyone can pay to obtain verified status. The Commission said the system did not correspond to industry practice and negatively affected users' ability to make informed decisions about the authenticity of accounts.

    "X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines & require significant changes," industry commissioner Thierry Breton posted on X.

    X could be fined up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the provider if the Commission's views are confirmed.

    Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

    This is a developing story, please check for further updates.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Democrats could suffer a ‘landslide’ defeat, sweeping them out of office everywhere, former Obama advisor says

    David Axelrod, former advisor to President Barack Obama, moving his hands at an event at the University of Chicago in 2019
    David Axelrod, former advisor to President Barack Obama, says Democrats could suffer a 'landslide' defeat.

    • Democrats could suffer a "landslide defeat," a former Obama advisor told The Atlantic.
    • David Axelrod said struggles in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota could cost them everywhere.
    • It would "sweep Democrats out of office everywhere — House, Senate, governor, you name it," he said.

    Democrats could suffer a "landslide defeat," sweeping them out of office everywhere, a former Obama advisor told The Atlantic.

    David Axelrod, a key strategist behind former President Barack Obama's victories in the 2008 and 2012 elections, discussed the worst-case scenario in which Democrats would struggle to retain Virginia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota.

    He made the assessment after President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance last month and as calls grow for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.

    "If we get to the point of fighting to hold on to Virginia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota, meaning the main six or seven battlegrounds are gone — then yeah, we're talking about a landslide, both in the Electoral College and in the popular vote," Axelrod told The Atlantic.

    "The magnitude of that defeat, I think, would be devastating to the party," he said, adding: "Those margins at the top of the ticket would sweep Democrats out of office everywhere — House, Senate, governor, you name it."

    Since his disastrous debate performance last month, Biden has fallen further behind former President Donald Trump — even in states key to Biden's reelection.

    While a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll showed Biden closing the gap with Trump in key swing states earlier this month, other post-debate polls show Trump with wider leads than before the debate.

    Last week, Sabato's Crystal Ball moved Michigan from "Lean Democratic" to "Toss Up" and Minnesota from "Likely Democratic" to "Lean Democratic."

    And on Tuesday, Cook Political Report, a widely respected political prediction group, moved six swing states toward the Republicans, and shifted New Hampshire and Minnesota from "likely" to "lean" Democratic in the presidential race, per Politico.

    Meanwhile, Democratic Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told the outlet: "I truly believe we're a battleground state now."

    New Mexico, Virginia and Maine could also be in play if Biden continues to decline.

    If accurate, the latest poll numbers would narrow Biden's path to victory, as he is already fighting in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

    Axelrod told The Atlantic that: "The numbers were daunting before the debate, and now there's a real danger that they're going to get worse."

    He made a similar assessment on Sunday, telling CNN that Biden is more likely to "lose by a landslide than win narrowly this race."

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Rashida Jones followed her dad’s advice not to ‘wait in line’ for a job. Career coaches say using family connections in the workplace is fine sometimes.

    Rashida Jones
    Rashida Jones acknowledges her nepo baby privilege.

    • Rashida Jones isn't afraid to admit the privilege she had due to her parents' success in Hollywood.
    • Jones is the daughter of music producer Quincy Jones and the late actor Peggy Lipton.
    • Experts say there's a fine line between using your network and taking advantage of your privilege to get ahead.

    Rashida Jones isn't afraid to admit she's benefited from being a nepo baby.

    In an interview with InStyle published on Wednesday, the actor weighed in on the "nepotism baby" discourse and acknowledged the privilege she had due to her parents' success in the entertainment industry.

    "People like the story of a legacy family and it's fun to write about and it's fun to think about you know, the 'mini me' and the person who looks like their mom or their dad. And then there's the resentment there too," Jones told InStyle. "But I think about it as, historically, people go into the family business more than they don't."

    Jones's father is music producer Quincy Jones, and her mother is the late actor Peggy Lipton.

    "My dad said to me, when I graduated from college: 'You're gonna go wait in line with 70,000 other people for a job? That doesn't seem really that practical,'" Jones said. "And he was right, you know."

    Jones attended Harvard, where she graduated with a degree in the comparative study of religion in 1997, per The Hollywood Reporter.

    According to her IMDb page, she made her acting debut in the mini TV series "The Last Don" that same year. However, Jones was only cast in her breakout role on "The Office" in 2006, when she was 30.

    A balancing act

    Experts say there's a fine line between utilizing your network and taking advantage of your privilege.

    "Using your network and personal connection to learn information and gain introductions is generally seen as acceptable, even sensible. However, using your network to get unfairly hired into a role you may not be deserving of is generally seen as unacceptable," Hannah Salton, a UK-based career coach and author, told Business Insider.

    Indeed, Salton said, most reputable companies should have rigorous and fair recruitment processes that don't allow nepotism.

    However, in practice, it's often hard to ensure impartial hiring always happens.

    "Tools such as 'blind CVs' — where an applicant's personal details are removed from their job application — exist, or a ban on hiring senior management's immediate family exists to try to reduce nepotism, particularly in certain industries that have historically been prone to it, such as law," Salton said.

    At the same time, leveraging connections isn't all that different from relying on other talents or qualities that one has, Allison Ching, a Singapore-based life and career coach, told BI.

    "We possess different types of arrows in our quiver: some of us are blessed with high IQ, some with specific talents, and some with rich and well-connected parents. It is acceptable to use what we have," Ching said.

    "However, parental connections, or any other arrows in our quiver, should be used as a tool at best, but never as a crutch," she added.

    Pulling your weight at work

    Should people be open about their family connections at work, then?

    It's a tricky question to answer, Salton said.

    On one hand, being honest and upfront about any connections you have may be the right thing to do in certain circumstances, she said.

    "However, if you are involved in an objective recruitment process and keep talking about your family connections, it could be preserved that you are hoping for special treatment," she said.

    Ultimately, people should use their judgment and be transparent about their connections when appropriate but avoid using these to intimidate others or imply that they want to be treated favorably, Salton said.

    And if people do leverage their parental connections to kick-start or further their career, it must be approached with professionalism and humility, Ching said.

    "Acknowledging the advantage and showing gratitude is crucial, as well as pulling your weight and demonstrating competence to earn respect on your merit," Ching said. "Expand opportunities and strengthen relationships based on mutual respect and genuine interactions, rather than feeling entitled to things and relying solely on familial ties."

    After all, family connections can only go so far.

    "Stay humble, and be willing to offer support and guidance to others who may not have the same advantage to foster a more equitable workplace culture," Ching said.

    Hollywood aside, the business world also has its share of nepo babies.

    All five of LVMH chairman and billionaire Bernard Arnault's children work at the company and its brands.

    Mukesh Ambani, the owner and chairman of Reliance Industries, also has three children holding different roles across his empire.

    A representative for Jones did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Boeing just scored a big win for the 737 Max, but its order delay problem seems to be getting worse

    A Boeing 737 Max is displayed during the Farnborough Airshow, in Farnborough, on July 18, 2022
    A Boeing 737 Max.

    • Boeing secured an order for 35 of its 737 Max jets from Aviation Capital Group.
    • It's a boost for the firm's troubled jet that faces delays in production and certification.
    • However, customers have been warned of further delays to Max deliveries, Bloomberg reported.

    Boeing secured a notable 737 Max order, but delays to the flagship narrowbody jet appear to be getting worse.

    Aviation Capital Group, the aircraft leasing unit of Japanese leasing firm Tokyo Century Corp, has ordered 35 Boeing 737 Max jets, it announced Friday.

    The order includes 16 of the Max 8 and 19 of the Max 10, which is yet to be certified.

    It's encouraging news for Boeing, particularly given recent problems involving the Max. On Sunday, the Justice Department said Boeing had agreed to plead guilty to a charge of fraud conspiracy in relation to two Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people.

    The aircraft's reputation was further hampered by January's Alaska Airlines blowout when a Max 9's door plug came off in midair. Boeing's share price has since fallen more than 25%.

    The 737 Max 10 — the largest version of the jet — has also faced controversy of its own due to certification delays.

    In the wake of January's blowout, the CEO of United Airlines — Boeing's biggest customer — said he would build an "alternative plan" without the Max 10 due to its frustrations with the delay. The carrier's chief financial officer later said its order for 277 such planes would be replaced by Max 9 and Airbus A321neo jets.

    In Friday's statement, Tokyo Century Corp said it expected its Max jets to be delivered in 2031.

    As a result of the Alaska Airlines incident, the Federal Aviation Administration is preventing Boeing from expanding production of the Max until it's satisfied with its quality-control processes. Capped at 38 a month, customers have voiced frustrations with the slow pace of deliveries.

    In recent weeks, Boeing has told customers with deliveries scheduled for 2025 and 2026 that they face additional delays, Bloomberg reported. The report added that delays could be between three and six months.

    The low-cost carrier Norwegian Air also said Friday that it expected reduced capacity growth this year, "due to aircraft delivery delays from Boeing."

    Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider.

    The news comes just 10 days before the start of the Farnborough Airshow, the sector's biggest event of the year. Several substantial plane orders are expected to be announced at the show, and Boeing previously confirmed that it wouldn't exhibit any of its airliners.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Elon Musk denies he volunteered his sperm to help start a Martian colony

    Elon Musk
    SpaceX founder Elon Musk has had a longtime fascination with Mars.

    • Elon Musk posted on X that he has not "volunteered his sperm" to help start a Martian colony. 
    • He also denied SpaceX was working on plans for a Martian city, after the NYT reported it had drawn up designs. 
    • Musk has long been fascinated with colonizing Mars, and started SpaceX to help humanity reach the red planet.

    Elon Musk has denied that he offered up his sperm to help start a colony on Mars.

    The SpaceX founder, who has previously warned that humanity must colonize Mars if it is to survive, said he had not made a personal contribution to that effort after The New York Times reported he had volunteered his sperm as part of SpaceX's plans to build a city on the red planet.

    "I have not, for what it's worth, 'volunteered my sperm'" wrote Musk in a post on X.

    "No one at SpaceX has been directed to work on a Mars city. When people have asked to do so, I've said we need to focus on getting there first," the billionaire added.

    According to the NYT report, which is based on interviews with more than 20 people close to Musk and SpaceX and on internal SpaceX documents, Musk has directed SpaceX employees to investigate the details of how a Mars colony would work, with one team drawing up plans for a series of dome-shaped habitats on the red planet. A SpaceX medical team is also reportedly looking into whether it is possible for humans to have children on Mars, the Times wrote.

    Two people with knowledge of Musk's comments also told the NYT the Tesla CEO had volunteered his sperm to help grow the colony.

    Musk has long been fascinated with Mars. The billionaire founded SpaceX in 2002 with the express goal of reaching Mars, and has spoken extensively about using SpaceX's powerful Starship rocket to travel to Mars.

    Experts told Business Insider that it is unclear how practical it would be for Musk to send sperm to Mars.

    Adam Watkins, an associate professor of reproductive biology at the University of Nottingham, said that the sperm could be effectively freeze-dried to transport it through space, but other experts have cast doubt over whether it would be possible to become pregnant on Mars thanks to the reduced gravity and high levels of radiation.

    Elon Musk and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

    Do you work at SpaceX or have a tip? Get in touch with this reporter via email at tcarter@businessinsider.com.

    Read the original article on Business Insider
  • Gentle parenting was sucking out the joy of being a mom. Now I have a trial and error approach.

    A mom and their child play under a blanket fort with dinosaurs lighted by flashlights only.
    • I wanted to use gentle parenting every time my first child threw a tantrum. 
    • Gentle parenting was not only not working for us, but it was sucking the joy out of having kids.
    • I want my two kids to see me as a whole person, so I do a trial and error approach now instead. 

    The first time my toddler threw a tantrum, it caught me off guard. She swiped her bowl of pasta to the ground (something she usually likes) and demanded a "peanut butter sammich" instead.

    I froze, wracking my brain for parenting scripts and advice on how to handle this situation. She had eaten a peanut butter sandwich earlier that day, and I wanted to maintain this boundary.

    After validating her emotions (twice) and offering two different preferred foods that she swatted from my hands, I felt defeated and perplexed. By this point, my toddler had hummed her sippy cup at the wall and managed to wriggle out of her high chair straps.

    "What now?" my husband asked over her anguished shrieks.

    "I don't know," I conceded.

    I thought about what I had learned about gentle parenting

    The voices of gentle parenting experts — more accurately, the Instagram posts by certain accounts such as Big Little Feelings and Responsive Parenting — ran on loops in my mind.

    But what happens when gentle parenting doesn't work? Is it really so bad to offer a bribe or just say no? How will our children learn that pitching a fit won't get them what they want? And, more importantly, what about my experience as a parent? Does it really need to be this hard?

    As we waded deeper into toddlerhood, it became clear that gentle parenting — on top of being impractical — was sucking all of the joy out of parenthood. Daily transitions made me anxious. Day care dropoffs, trips to the park, and even walks in the stroller became potential hotbeds.

    I gave up on gentle parenting

    I officially gave up on gentle parenting when my second daughter was born, leaving me with two kids under two. I simply couldn't afford to spend precious time and energy obsessing over my toddler's emotional wellbeing at my own expense.

    Gentle parenting is gentle on kids but hard on parents. It centers the child's emotional experience, mandating that the parent shrink in order to make space for the child's "big emotions." Saying things like "that made mommy sad" is forbidden. And, to make things worse, there's a mob of gentle parenting cult followers on social media just waiting to take you down if (when) you mess up.

    In hindsight, I've always been a gentle parenting skeptic. As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, the notion that kids shouldn't know how their behavior affects others (including adults) seems counterintuitive. Recognizing social cues and predicting another's emotional state is something we target in therapy as kids grow older.

    I want to enjoy my kids

    I want my daughters to see me as a whole person, and I don't want to resent them for allowing myself to become their emotional (or physical) punching bag. Moreover, I want to enjoy parenthood and offer myself the same compassion that I extend to my kids.

    So, I've exchanged gentle parenting for a more lighthearted, trial-and-error approach. I've gotten off social media and stopped obsessing over every parenting interaction. Now, I can bring my daughter to the park or the beach without worrying about how I'll get her back into the car. I no longer dread dinnertime for fear of a high-stakes negotiation.

    My new parenting motto is: life is too short to take myself or my kids too seriously. I only have one shot at being a mom, and I don't want to waste it trying to be perfect. Instead, I want to soak in all the joy that I possibly can.

    Read the original article on Business Insider