PicoBlog

A commenter on my previous post wrote: Wow, this is terrible. For one, everyone's vote should count equally. Duh. This was wrong twice over. For one thing, it isn’t possible for everyone’s vote to count equally. My vote for president has no effect, since any election where California is a swing state will be one where the Republicans can win without it. That could be solved, for the presidential election, by abolishing the electoral college system, but any majority vote system will give more weight to the votes of voters with strong preferences on swing issues, issues where votes for the two sides are about even.

Before we sow our seeds, in a manner of speaking, here’s what’s been happening on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts, or at our home page, GardenBasics.net: Episode 306: Q&A Mason Bee Basics On the Tuesday Q&A episode of Feb. 6, Joshua of Southwest Missouri asks: “Do you have any episodes about native mason bees for pollination instead of honey bees? I'd like to learn more from a standpoint on how to take care of them, especially on taking care of the mason bee homes themselves.

eXp World Holdings (NASDAQ: EXPI — $1.50 billion) describes itself as “one of the world’s fastest-growing real estate brokerages.” In reality, eXp lost about ~1,500 of its nearly 90,000 agents last quarter and faces robust competition from aggressive low-cost brokerages. In short, The Bear Cave believes that eXp’s earnings results later today will reveal a devastating truth: eXp is losing its highest-producing agents to fast-growing competitor Real Brokerage (NASDAQ: REAX — $723 million).

Larry David attacked Elmo. It sounds like a plot from Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it really happened, live on morning TV, and it was one of the great media moments of the 2020s. It was perfect on so many levels, ranging from the fact that Larry was acting so completely in character through the slightly cathartic aspect of a puppet that was lecturing about mental health being taken down a peg.

I was contemplating, as I usually do, time and history. People, places, events, thoughts of the past, and things yet to come. I was thinking about these things as I was cleaning out a room and found my grad school notebooks. I pulled out my notes and reading assignments from the first class I took on historical research methods. In there, I found an article I had read called "Why Study History?

For those who don’t know or who have forgotten, here is a quick recap of the FC Barcelona-Negreira scandal:  Barcelona had made payments totaling €7 million to José María Enríquez Negreira between 2001 and 2018 while Negreira was the Vice President of the Referee’s Committee. Barcelona stopped paying Negreira in 2018 after he left his position as Vice Pre… ncG1vNJzZmiala68r7DToZxyaF6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6mpqudXanEqr%2FTrGSipl2ptaZ5xZxkm5mimLKtu82aZKedl6eyqr7A

A recap for those of you who have not been following the situation (this recap has been updated since its original publication): Over the last several months, some had asked why Word on Fire had removed all mention of it’s highest-paid employee, executive producer Joseph Gloor, from its website and social media pages. On April 30, I shared an explanation. In August of 2021, according to one of the victims, Word on Fire received complaints from four women alleging sexual assault or abusive sexual behavior perpetrated by Gloor.

Hey all, Jason here. Somehow, we’re closing in on the end of February already! Just two weeks from now, I’ll be kicking off the spring conference season, attending Fintech Meetup in Las Vegas. I’ll be moderating two session there on — you guessed it! — banking-as-a-service: one Monday at 1:00pm and the other Tuesday at 9:15am (full agenda here.) I’ve already put together outlines for the sessions, so hopefully not too much in BaaS world changes between now and then…!

I know you’re looking for fun appetizers during this season, so let me tell you all about my take on Moroccan meat cigars (Moroccan briouat or briwat). A perfect finger food, this dish is essentially a flaky, crunchy pastry (warka) stuffed with a flavor-packed spiced meat filling. My recipe is loaded with golden raisins for some extra sweetness, turmeric, cumin and other warm spices. Since warka is pretty tricky to find, I’m using phyllo pastry in the recipe, which will lead to a similar result.