PicoBlog

I love reading the published diaries and journals of famous writers and artists. My interest in how they think and create borders on the obsessive. I want to know how they did it so I can do it that way, too. But here’s the thing about journals: Unless it’s from Virginia Woolf or Joan Didion or John Steinbeck or Dave Barry, a real-world journal is nothing more than a workbook. Don’t kid yourself: Those writers above knew full well their journals would be published some day.

Welcome to a special Monday edition of Deal Secrets! I have a trip coming up and it’s going to involve a lot of walking. Over the weekend I asked Twitter followers for comfy-shoe recommendations, and, boy, did they come through. (Thanks to all who chimed in!) So here’s a quick recap of how I saved 20% that I absolutely wouldn’t have saved otherwise. I found the shoes I wanted at Amazon, and they were on sale to boot.

If you’ve never had a French Taco before, you are seriously missing out. I lived in France for 4 years and I assume because we lived in the middle of the French countryside, we were never introduced to the mouth-watering deliciousness that is the French Taco. Fast forward 15 years, I visited my friend in Lyon and I’ll never forget the day we walked into a French Taco joint and tried one for the first time.

Over the holidays, we spent a week at our friends’ house before the memorial service for my in-laws, who recently passed away. Our friends live in an immaculate house. Everything has its place, and every place has its purpose… except for the small things, which baffled me. It wasn't just one thing that didn’t make sense, but a dozen little things. Because everything else was so pristine, that just made them stick out more.

Oh mmm I know a place The Last Waltz was the farewell concert by The Band, played on Thanksgiving 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. A turkey dinner was served. Promoter Bill Graham rented the San Francisco Opera’s La Traviata set for a backdrop. Director Martin Scorsese filmed the star-studded event on big, stationary 35mm movie cameras whose motors repeatedly burned out through a concert that started at 9 pm and ended with “Baby Don’t You Do It” at 2:15 am.

A newsletter from The Branch about how we bring about the education revolution. Most of our posts will focus on the future of K-12 and higher ed, but we’ll also cover the imbroglio itself — the politics, misdirection, the excuse-making, the mediocrity. Launched a year ago No thanksncG1vNJzZmihnZe%2FsLPLoqZnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZA%3D%3D

Ann Coulter, AUTHOR OF 13 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERS, chats about politics, religion, war, crime, history, sex, race, soccer (even real sports!) – all the things we’re told it’s impolite to raise in polite company. Coulter’s UNSAFE podcast is the Rapid Response Team to the Democratic Party and its subsidiaries, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, et al — as well as 90 percent of the Republican Party.

By Olga Ivshina, Olga Prosvirova. As many as 20,000 Wagner fighters were killed during the Russian assault on Bakhmut. More than 17,000 were convicts sent to the front from prison camps and pre-trial detention centres. Working with the Mediazona news outlet, BBC Russian has gained access to the personal data of these men and can reveal that the late Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s statements about losses in the capture of the city, which were met at the time with disapproval even by pro-war bloggers, were heavily whitewashed.

If you’re looking for something to inspire your next D&D campaign or character backstory, I strongly recommend Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End - a fantasy, slice-of-life manga series written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe. This series has a lot of the genre tropes you would expect: dramatic magic, dragons, demons, and even your classic party structure. You’ve got Himmel the Hero, Heiter the Priest, and Eisen the dwarven warrior.