PicoBlog

Three months ago, I decided I’d become an art critic. I was reading Dean Kissick’s Spikecolumn and What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics; I was chugging my former colleague Nate Freeman’s “Wet Paint” gossip column and checking out what Schjeldahl and Hilton Als had to say in my girlfriend’s barely touched New Yorker back issues. I went to a show and promised to write about it.

The K-pop idol and actress IU released her latest single “Love Wins All” earlier today. Beautifully poetic and distinctly sad, the song has a searing chorus that tells the kind of love story that you know will end in despair: “Run away from the world / Go to the end with me.” The accompanying music video plays more like a short film than the usual K-pop accompaniment. At just 5-minutes 23-seconds, the tone is set early on.

I don't like IXL. However, this post isn't meant to attack teachers who use IXL, or convince anyone that using IXL is always evil. I know teachers who use IXL thoughtfully, as one of several tools to help students practice in math class. Any good tool can be used poorly, any bad tool can be used well. I'm also aware that IXL saves teachers time and is often required by administrators.

(Almost) daily reflections from novelist and essayist J.F. Riordan, author of the North of the Tension Line series, and of two books of essays on life, "Reflections on a Life in Exile" and "But Still They Sing". Frequent gratuitous dog photos. No thanksncG1vNJzZmiilqe2sL7DmqVnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZA%3D%3D

After spending their first few years writing abstract psychedelic tunes, the Grateful Dead took a hard turn into Americana. They wrote a bunch of songs inspired by blues, country and folk, and in doing so, they massively expanded their listener base. Several of these songs involve outlaws and drifters in the Wild West. I think the best of the Dead's cowboy songs, both lyrically and musically, is "Jack Straw". When I was a kid, my older stepbrother had a bunch of Dead albums stored in our apartment.

Friends, Between 1981, when Jack Welch took the helm at GE, and 2001, when he retired, GE’s stock value soared from $14 billion to $400 billion. Welch accomplished this largely by slashing American jobs. I want to focus on Jack Welch today because Welch represents a stunning change that occurred in American capitalism in the 1980s, whose repercussions lead all the way to Donald Trump. If we really want to understand the decline of the common good over the last four or five decades, we need to understand this change — and no one better illustrates it than Welch.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedGenesis 46’s presentation of Jacob’s family tree is a remarkable composition. One of its lists of names is accompanied by an unusual person count, which is typically dismissed as an artefact of inconsistent sources/traditions. In the context of the book’s narrative, however, it serves an important purpose: it invites us to engage with the text’s numerical details in a careful and sustained manner and, in the process, to ponder its numerically-conveyed messages.

Supermoms Activated By Jacqueline Toboroff Everything happens in NYC first, then the rest of the country catches up. It’s not the mainstream media that is breaking news - it’s the moms feeding it to the outlets. I’m going to feed it to you, directly, so that it can’t be sanitized. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjautwqqsnqSZo7K1u8Goqaielmd%2Bcw%3D%3D

I have been a fan of Femi Adebayo for a long time and every time comparison comes up between who’s the better thespian between him and - you can guess - Odunlade Adekola, I never think twice before making my choice. It’s always the Law graduate. This gap becomes more obvious in the two films released by the two Nollywood giants in the space of 3 weeks. Adekola released Orisa to the cinemas on July 21st while Adebayo’s Netflix-powered Jagun Jagun became available for streaming on August 10th.