Craft MD

A post going around says 10 hours of video games can push brain aging back 7 years. I just bought a Nintendo Switch "for my six-year-old," so I had a professional obligation to check.

Short version: the study is real, the number is the ceiling, and the game they used was a brain-training drill, not Mario. But the boring truth is better than the headline. Challenging games genuinely exercise aging brains, a related trial linked that training to 29% lower dementia risk over 10 years, and in one study adults 55 to 75 who played Super Mario 64 for six months grew the memory center of their brain.

The catch: the game has to make you think. Strategy, speed, spatial navigation, puzzles. And playing with actual people adds the protective factor no cartridge ships with.

So yes, when a six-year-old laps me in Mario Kart, that's medicine. For one of us.

Sources:
Wolinsky FD et al., PLOS ONE, 2013 (IHAMS trial, 681 adults 50+)
Edwards JD et al., Alzheimer's & Dementia: TRCI, 2017 (ACTIVE trial, 10-year follow-up)
West GL et al., PLOS ONE, 2017 (Super Mario 64 and hippocampal grey matter)

A post going around says LGBTQIA+ couples divorce more amicably than straight couples, but with a lot more anxiety. I read the source so you don't have to.

The numbers come from a 2026 survey by Amicable, a UK separation service. 2,000 people, not peer-reviewed. The amicability gap is 4 points, which could be noise. The anxiety gap is 11 points, which is not.

I have some standing here. I'm a surgeon, a dad, and a divorced gay man. The paperwork was not built for my marriage. Neither were the waiting rooms. And where the system is supposed to protect you, it mostly recognizes one kind of victim.

Swipe for the fact-check, the actual research, and the part nobody says out loud.

If you're gay and mid-divorce: the anxiety is not a personal failure. It's a design flaw. Get the support anyway.

Sources:
Baskerville K, "The Hidden Cost of Q***r Divorce," Gay Times, 2026
Amicable separation survey, 2026 (n=2,000, England and Wales)
Meyer IH, Psychological Bulletin, 2003 (minority stress)
CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, findings by sexual orientation

He picks the character the night before. I draw it while the coffee brews. It goes in the lunchbox next to the crackers, and by noon it's wiped ketchup off his face and gone into the trash.

He used to say thank you. He doesn't anymore, and I mean this sincerely: that's the win. The drawing became like the roof. Like breakfast. Like me. Just there, every day, without question.

Five minutes a morning. Hundreds of napkins. The one day I forgot, he asked why. That's the whole parenting job in one sentence: be the thing they never have to wonder about.

What's the small daily thing you do that your kids think is just how the world works? Those are the ones that matter. I'll read every answer.

Hashtags:

Nobody gave Gen X gay men a template. We were too late for the closet to be survivable and too early for the wedding registry. So we built commitment out of what was available: loyalty, chosen family, showing up.

Then marriage arrived, mid-life. Some of us used it. Both of us have the divorce decrees to show for it. And here's the thing neither of us expected at fifty: starting over without a template isn't the tragedy. It's the freedom.

What we have now wasn't issued by a courthouse. It was designed, deliberately. We each parent our own kids from our first marriages, no forced step-family script, and all of us have been spending time together for years. Two households of kids who just know the other guy is always there. Nobody wrote that structure down anywhere. We drew it.

If you're rebuilding after a divorce at our age, gay or straight: the structure is yours to draw. What does your version of family look like? I read every comment on these.