Advice to Parents

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Parents, You Are Responsible for the Souls of Your Children

Jesus tells us in the Gospel that a good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree doesn’t produce good fruit (Matt. 7:17-18). In the same way, a good father raises good children. But if the parents are immoral, how can the children grow up to be virtuous? Can you expect to harvest grapes from thorns? Of course not.

So let’s be honest: it’s rare to find holy and upright children who were raised by careless or sinful parents.

Parents, pay attention. Your children’s eternal salvation, and your own, depends on whether or not you take this responsibility seriously. And you young men and women who are discerning marriage: if you want to become a parent one day, you must understand that God will hold you accountable for how you raise your children. Fail in this duty, and you may very well drag not only your children to Hell, but yourself as well.

Part One: The Eternal Importance of Raising Children in Virtue

Every father and mother has two key duties to their children:

  1. To provide for their material needs.

  2. To raise them in the habits of Christian virtue.

The first doesn’t need much explanation. A parent who squanders money on selfish pleasures while his children go hungry is acting more like a wild beast than a human being. But let’s focus on the second duty: education in virtue.

Your children’s eternal future, whether they grow up to be … Read the rest

How to Get Into Homeownership Sooner: 14 Practical Strategies That Actually Work in an Inflationary Economy

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Many people feel like homeownership is drifting out of reach.  This was a topic of a recent article by my friend Mike Parrot and a follow up by yours truly.  I was also on Joe McClane’s show recently with Michael Hichborn talking about this.  I promised to write a follow up article with practical ideas, and this is it.

To review: Prices keep rising. Rents keep rising. Groceries and gas keep rising. Meanwhile, your savings account earns close to nothing while the money supply expands and the purchasing power of the dollar shrinks.

In other words: we are likely living in an inflationary environment for the foreseeable future.

That has two big consequences:

  • Waiting has a real cost. While you “take your time,” home prices, rents, and construction costs often march upward.

  • Assets beat cash. In inflationary periods, people who own real assets (like real estate) are generally better protected than people who sit in cash and hope.

In an inflationary world, your rent will go up.
Your grocery bill will go up.
Your insurance will go up.

The one thing that doesn’t go up once it’s locked in?
A fixed-rate mortgage payment.

So this article isn’t about waiting for the perfect rate or the perfect market. It’s about finding a realistic, ethical, legal way to get into a “you close, you own” position sooner rather than later.

Everything below is a true ownership strategy—no rent-to-own gimmicks, no vague promises. For each option, we’ll walk through:… Read the rest

Meta’s Andromeda Update Just Made Creativity King

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

Over on LinkedIn, my son Michael asked a great question:

Here’s a detailed answer from ChatGPT for advertising geeks:

✅ What is Andromeda (in plain English)

  • Meta describes Andromeda as a next-gen ad retrieval engine — essentially the system that selects which ad (out of many) gets shown to which user. The MTM Agency+3Engineering at Meta+3Foxwell Digital+3

  • It’s built on large-scale ML and high-throughput hardware (e.g., NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips) enabling Meta to process vast volumes of creative/ad candidates, make decisions in real-time, and serve more personalized ads. Engineering at Meta+2Foxwell Digital+2

  • The upshot: rather than manually finely segmenting audiences + creating a few ad variations, the system now thrives on lots of creative assets + broad targeting + algorithmic optimization. For example: “Andromeda can now scan thousands or even tens of thousands of ads in milliseconds.” Smart Marketer+2The MTM Agency+2

🔍 What’s changed / What the media-buyers are seeing

Yes — you’re correct on many of the bullets. Here’s a more structured list of what’s changed, and some extra ones you might not have seen.

Major shifts

  1. Audience targeting (narrow interest sets) is de-emphasized

    • The old playbook: build many granular audiences, niche interests, multiple ad sets, test who responds.

    • Now: the update prioritizes broad targeting (or even “everyone” within a country), letting Meta’s algorithm find the pockets of responsiveness. The MTM Agency+1

    • Hard truth: If your agency/funnel is still heavily using ultra-segmented interest sets +

… Read the rest

The Ashes of Olaf

Posted on by Jeff Cassman

The Ashes of Olaf

A tale of kings and crosses, set in the blood-soaked North

The Seer’s Fire

The old man’s eyes were milk-white, the color of a dead man’s skin, though he swore he had seen too much to ever be truly blind. He squatted in a seal-hide tent on the Scilly Isles, beside a fire that smelled of fish oil and ash. When Olaf came ashore—tall and broad and cruel-eyed—the fire danced. The blind man did not rise. He only spoke.

“You were born in blood,” he rasped. “You’ll die in it.”

Olaf snorted. His sword still dripped from a raid on the mainland. “So do most men.”

“But you will rise again,” the seer said, “as fire rises from ash. A king. A Christian. A death worthy of songs.”

The Viking prince laughed then, but quietly. The wind carried that laugh into the sea, where it sank like so many ships.

Olaf Tryggvason, Son of the Sea

The boy was born of a murdered king and a fleeing queen, and both his name and his fate were forged in exile. Pirates took him on the Baltic and sold him like cattle. A whore’s child, some whispered. A wraith. But others said the gods marked him, that Odin had placed a raven’s feather beneath his tongue.

In Novgorod, he killed his foster father’s murderer with an axe in the marketplace. The blood splashed across the bread of a merchant’s stall, and the crowd parted like sea foam. His … Read the rest