More Terrifying Than Drag Queen Story Hour?

I’ve never managed to get too worked up about Drag Queen Story Hour. Not that I’d take my kids to one, but I live in Los Angeles, where libraries have long been handed over to vagrants watching porn on their phones and the untreated mentally ill in conversation with themselves. Grooming? There is precious little on display in the Santa Monica Main Library reading room.

The cinema is one of the few public spaces our unhoused guests seem to disdain. I don’t blame them; tickets are expensive, with an ROI somewhere below a middle seat on Southwest Airlines. On rare occasions, however, I am lured back to the multiplex. On ever rarer occasions, I don’t regret it.

The glassy-eyed, translucent-skinned sensation known as M3GAN is not an up-and-coming K-Pop star or newly-minted genderqueer influencer, although you’d be forgiven for thinking so considering the outsized impact she’s had on TikTok. She is instead the “monster” of a modestly-budgeted, wildly successful horror movie that bears her name.

Many of us have gotten a little nervous about AI these days. M3GAN takes those fears and combines them with parental guilt at how easy it is to “outsource” child raising to screens. We all know how hard it can be to separate a kid from an iPad. Now imagine an iPad that won’t let go of your kid. M3GAN is a fun, funny movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously; it’s also a cautionary tale that’s looking more plausible by the day.

Provisions

M3GAN is also the embodiment of the growing “expert” class that seeks to usurp the natural autonomy of the family. Keeping these busybodies at bay means reducing our dependence on the kind of government and corporate institutions where such meddlers thrive. One way to do this is homesteading. Another way is to start a family business.

In 2013, Brett and Olivia Steffen moved their growing family to Thailand with the vague idea of somehow using entrepreneurship as a means of Christian ministry. Eight years later, the Steffens have five children and a booming business. Liv Thai works with local Thai artisans (husband-and-wife leather crafting team Dtii and Aom pictured below) to bring beautiful, high-quality wallets, jewelry, bags and more to the American market. And this week, Align users get 20% off their purchase with the code ALIGN20.

Training

Be wary of the business that describes itself as a “family;” too often this means they’ll feel free to impose demands that have nothing to do with your job or how well you perform it. Our parent company New Founding wants to help you bring your skills and experience to employers that value competence, hard work, and vision above trendy ideological concerns. If you’re looking to help build a better future for your family and your country, or know someone who is, check out New Founding Talent.

Culture

It makes sense that the most famous movie about a “family business” is The Godfather. It’s hard to imagine a legitimate enterprise inspiring anything nearly as thrilling. And yet J.C. Chandor’s 2014 film A Most Violent Year pulls it off. Its well-crafted depiction of a couple (Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain) navigating the corrupt and dangerous heating-oil business in 1981 New York is both a compelling entrepreneurial underdog story and a tense examination of what happens when ethical principles get tested by on-the-ground realities.

Exemplar

It’s notable enough that the Avedis Zildjian Company has been producing cymbals and other percussion instruments in its Norwell, MA factory since 1929. What’s truly impressive is that this family-run business is currently celebrating 400 years since its founding.

“Zildjian” is Armenian for “cymbal smith,” a title Sultan Osman II of the Ottoman Empire granted to a young metalsmith named Avedis. Attempting alchemy, Avedis instead stumbled upon an alloy ideal for making cymbals, which quickly proved much in demand for religious, military, and ceremonial occasions. Zildjian’s cymbal-making secrets survived from generation to generation, finally ending up in the hands of Avedis Zildjian III, who had emigrated from Turkey to the Boston area in the 1920s.

Urged by their uncle to continue the family business, Avedis and his brother Puzant could not have chosen a more fortuitous time to set up shop. Jazz was just beginning to explode in popularity, and Zildjian cymbals were much better suited to the new music than those used by marching bands of the time. Since then, the Zildjian family name has been associated with countless drummers, and become an integral part of pop music history.