PicoBlog

Anna Karenina has one of the most famous opening lines in all of English literature.  “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I think the same is true of honesty and relationships. All honest relationships are alike. But every dishonest relationship is dishonest in its own way.  We are dishonest about all kinds of things with our partner. We lie about how we feel, who we text (sext?

America Explained is a newsletter about American politics, foreign policy and history - and how they will tie together. Consider subscribing in order to support our work. There’s a strange theory doing the rounds in conservative media which states that Barack Obama is secretly running the Biden administration. The thrust of the theory is that Joe Biden is completely senile, so Obama made sure that the Biden White House was stacked with his own people in 2021 and has been the brains of the operation ever since.

Tap here for Back Row’s full archive of And Just Like Thatrecaps. This episode wanted to be about balancing the pressures of middle age, both personal and professional, with children. However, the episode was really about how Carrie can be a huge jerk. We see Charlotte, LTW, Aidan, and Miranda all try to figure out how to come to a new normal with their families. Meanwhile, Carrie is mostly left to eat zucchini chips, decorate her apartment, and ignore her everyone’s problems but her own.

Last week, The New York Times said ChatGPT is a “code red” for Google. A zillion people on Twitter have echoed the same sentiment, like George Hotz, the one-time Elon Musk adversary who was hired by Twitter to fix search, only to quit 5 weeks later: And sure enough, companies like perplexity.ai, neeva.com and you.com are already test-piloting systems that merge traditional search with large language models (a la ChatGPT). Even good friends of mine are trying it.

I’ve spent the last couple of years hosting the YouTube Channel Mind Chat with Keith Frankish, who is an illusionist about consciousness. An illusionist is someone who thinks that the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is rooted in a radically incorrect conception of consciousness, and that once we reject that incorrect conception of consciousness, the problem goes away. Whether this amount to denying the existence of ‘consciousness’ will depend on what exactly one means by ‘consciousness.

Consider the 2001 saga of 42-year-old Armin Meiwes. He placed an ad on the very, very niche Cannibal Café forum seeking a “young, well-built man” for “slaughter and consumption.” A notable 200 people responded with interest. Perhaps surprising to you but not to psychologists who study Vorarephilia - a subgroup of people who find gratification in being e… ncG1vNJzZmisn5mxrK3SoZuapl6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6iqmabn6PAprrSrpilZZOWu6%2B1wZqjoqudYq5uvMCtnw%3D%3D

It’s no secret that the left tackle position is the biggest question mark for the Washington Commanders heading into the 2024 season. Last year’s starter Charles Leno was released in part due to injury and in part due to salary cap savings. The Commanders didn’t land a big name free agent, instead opting to re-sign Cornelius Lucas, who has been the team's back up swing tackle for a number of years now.

Of all the hypotheses this newsletter is meant to test, one of the main ones is, are people willing to pay for criticism if it’s actually good? Early signs have been encouraging, but for now you won’t have to answer because this review is still free. But this experiment wouldn’t be possible without the paid subscribers, who are giving me the time and energy to try. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you all.

It’s tough out there for a self-published author. According to a cross-section of reports…. The average self-published book sells 250 copies. The average self-published author makes $1,000 per year from their books. 33% of self-published authors make less than $500 per year. 90% of self-published books sell less than 100 copies. 20% of self-published authors report making no income from their books. It seems that many books sell less than 100 copies in the first year, with some selling only 5 or 10 in the first month of publication.