The Brain Dump: Stoop coffee, impact maps, and LGBTQ sandwiches
Welcome to this week's Brain Dump, all you Dad kings. Perfect reading for your, well, throne time.
Welcome back to The Brain Dump — some content that’s quick hitting for when you’re just s&@$%ing. Let us know what you’re liking / not liking in the comments! As always, thought-provoking, conversation-starting content is just a quick wipe, erm, swipe away.
Found something you’d like to share in a future Brain Dump? Email us: newsletter@dadsforall.com
Now, here’s this week’s edition:
1. Stoop to our level
Judging by the 350+ people ahead of me on the library wait list, Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has been on many minds lately. One of his key insights, apart from startling figures about the impact of screens on our kids’ development? Raising kids isn't just on us as individual parents, but it's a community effort.
I had Haidt on the brain when Patty Smith's brilliant Substack post about "Stoop Coffee" came into my life, recounting a simple experiment she and her husband Tyler started in San Francisco. They simply took their weekend morning coffee routine outside to the street (they didn't even have an actual stoop!), bringing folding chairs and greeting neighbors as they passed by. The creative in me loved that Tyler wore a dumb hat so he’d leave a more memorable impression to passers-by.
What I love about their approach is how wonderfully low-effort it was. As Patty writes, "some of our best events require the smallest amount of effort." The results were remarkable: Starting with just two people, then one neighbor (Luke) joining regularly, they eventually built a thriving neighborhood community with WhatsApp groups, pancake parties, and a network of people who "rely on each other for emotional support, last-minute childcare, home-cooked meals, general comradery [sic], and much more."
Stoop Coffee is a perfect, powerful example of a small, consistent action, the kind we’re talking about fostering at Dads for All. No grand strategy or massive resources were required other than showing up regularly to create a foundation for deeper community connections.
When our neighborhoods are filled with adults who know each other, we're building the spaces that Haidt argues are essential for raising resilient kids. In our increasingly isolated society, these informal bonds are precisely what children need to thrive.
Plop Question: What small, regular gathering could you initiate in your neighborhood?
2. Tracking the fallout of federal policy with The Impact Project
When we talk about giving our children a better future, we need to understand how current policy changes are affecting families right now.
The Impact Project provides objective, transparent data to help explain how federal policies and decisions affect our communities, and their simply staggering first tool, the Impact Map, shows the local impact of federal workforce, funding, and policy decisions – information that's essential for dads who want to understand how national changes affect their families at the local level.
What makes this resource invaluable is its commitment to transparency. They pull information from government sources, local and national news reports, and crowdsourced testimonials from people directly affected. This creates a clear picture of how policy decisions translate into real-world impacts in our communities, like how many layoffs are happening in your area, what local programs are suffering from reduced or withdrawn federal funding, or even what infrastructure projects are being frozen. The sorting possibilities are, sadly, endless.
Plop Question: Check out The Impact Map and tell us what policy changes might be affecting your family that you're not fully aware of. Taking time to explore this data could help you become a more effective advocate in your community.
Fatherly Follow: The Dad Briefs
If you need dad wisdom delivered with a side of laughs, Slade Wentworth aka "The Dad Briefs" is your guy. (Instagram / YouTube)
Slade's brilliance is in his ridiculous analogies, like comparing fixing a salty dish to good leadership, or creating an "LGBTQ sandwich" (lettuce, guacamole, bacon, tomato, queso) to talk about Pride Month. Even on divisive topics, he keeps it light and oddly appetizing.
I particularly appreciated his thoughtful take on empathy: "What do we owe our children? Beyond food, shelter and safety... love because it teaches them that they are worthy, curiosity because it keeps their minds open, kindness to remind them that their actions matter, and empathy so they can connect with and appreciate the experiences of others."
His signature sign-off: "Be kind and wash your behind." If that’s not tailor-made for The Brain Dump, well, I don’t know what is.
That's it for this week's Brain Dump. What are you thinking about lately? Drop it in the comments.