PicoBlog

I wrote a blog post earlier this week about how Tiger Woods was spotted wearing FootJoy Packard golf shoes at Augusta National, news which naturally caused panic among golf fans across the world who hang on Woods’s every move. (Me included, clearly.) The reasoning boils down to some version of Nike doesn’t make shoes that fit Tiger’s needs these days, as he requires more stability in his surgically repaired leg(s). I like many others found it bizarre that Nike wouldn’t have developed a shoe in time that Woods felt he could wear, considering he is literally the sole reason anyone has ever cared about wearing Nike Golf anything.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is running for president. For many Americans, the defining moment of her time as governor was her support of removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the State Capitol, following the murder of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston by Dylann Roof in 2015. Haley has a complex relationship with the controversy surrounding the flag—one that she likely would rather put behind her given former president Trump’s embrace of white nationalists and praise of Confederate leaders like Robert E.

Thank you, as always, for being here. Paid subscriptions allow me to dedicate more time to this newsletter. It’s not just the time I spend writing, but the time I spend planning, researching, and reporting that is supported by upgrading. If you want to pay for a subscription but don’t want to give money to Substack, feel free to use my Venmo or PayPal. J… ncG1vNJzZmismJqzs63NpKCenJyYe7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZqehm6C2brTIpauzZZGjsW6xzKaYZp%2BVmnqivsRmmqitoKGyqLvApao%3D

This instalment of Unfiltered is free for everyone. I send this email weekly. If you would also like to receive it, join the 91,000+ other smart people who absolutely love it today. 👉 If you enjoy reading this post, feel free to share it with friends! Or feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏 Share In 1000 years Keanu Reeves will be known as the equivalent of Marcus Aurelius or Seneca.

“Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.” If reading worked like marriage — one book only, ’til death do us part — I would forgo the titanic pleasures of Tolstoy; I’d cast aside the cozy solace of Conan Doyle; I would even give up the deep, reliable companionship of Alice Munro. Instead, when it came time to settle down, I would pledge my devotion to an eccentric yellow book that reads in places as if it were written by a random-phrase generator and that looks, production-wise, like the sort of thing that shaven-headed young men would thrust at passersby outside a temple.

It’s not a good thing when the bad guy underestimates the good guy. A natural idea that doesn’t require a ton of inception, they think the more noble soul won’t go to the end of the line and back to clear scum from justice’s path. When it comes to Raylan Givens (the forever excellent Timothy Olyphant), a righteous kill comes almost too easy. Justified: City Primeval wrapped up its season this past week, so let’s get into the takeaways and review while the pan is still hot.

“Hell is other people” declares Garcin, the womanizing egotisical coward in Sartre’s No Exit. He says this to Estelle, who is selfish and straight, and Inez, who is spiteful and gay. They are three flawed humans left together in a stuffy room to eternally torment one another with their very existence. This is Hell. Before the others arrive, Garcin believes his torment is himself, himself with no rest, no sleep.

At the last City Council meeting it was decided that Fullerton won’t be celebrating the Fourth of July because, well, Staff doesn’t know how calendars or phones work and the buck never stops with anybody. Here’s the relevant part of a slide from the presentation given to the City Council: “Due to a late planning request, all fireworks companies were booke… ncG1vNJzZmiepaG5pr7TqKWcoaSue7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZqenXZvCrbjEq6uopl2btrOx1qippKtdm7K0wMivmKVllqS%2F

General anesthesia sucks. Obviously I’m glad it exists, but as an experience there’s not much to recommend it: you’re out, and then in an instant then you’re back. Your whole body gets thrown off for days as you readjust from having been in a controlled near-death state for a couple of hours. All the comedown, none of the high. Of course, anesthesia — and the medical practice of painkilling in general — isn’t supposed to be about pleasure.