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Dale Earnhardt hated restrictor-plate racing. Ever since 1988, when NASCAR introduced a safety mechanism to limit engines’ air intake (and therefore reduce top speeds) at big superspeedways, the seven-time Cup Series champion had always complained whenever the devices were employed. He despised how they artificially created close packs of cars running next to each other on the track, where the slightest mistake by any of them would inevitably lead to a huge wreck known as “the Big One”.

The most common introduction people have to the French apéritif is the kir. Every café in France offers one, and they’re usually inexpensive, and always welcome. Share David Lebovitz Newsletter Americans like our cocktails before dinner, but the French lean more towards lower-in-alcohol apéritifs, and when I brought up the cultural difference while researching Drinking French, spirits maven Tristan Simon (who is opening his first bar in Dijon) explained to me that the French start drinking earlier than their American counterparts—and drink later, too.

I stumbled across these disturbing photos while researching mug shots of John Hinckley Jr. in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library archives. Having never seen them before, I was startled, surprised. John Hinckley was a Nazi? ncG1vNJzZmiokam%2Fqq%2FKsKCtrKljwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oq6GdXaC7sMPNZqyno56kxK95zZqxog%3D%3D

Hi, everyone! Just a heads up, Davida and I are taking a week-long vacation next week with my family down to Florida, so no newsletter next Monday. This is going to be interesting, because I’ve never been on a proper Florida trip; we’ll be staying near Orlando. And yes, a few days at Walt Disney World are on the agenda, since we’ll be traveling with my niece, and no, at 42 years of age, I have never been.

Well friends, we made it. It’s the season finale. This episode is called “Looking Ahead“ and since the show hasn’t been renewed yet, it’s quite possibly the last ever episode of Gen Q. I’m sorry for getting this out a day late. I had so much to say about this episode (this recap is over 4000 words long) and Showtime didn’t send me the screener until Thursday afternoon and my anniversary with my girlfriend was on Saturday, so I was doing such things as going on an aquarium date and procuring a romantic dinner of gyros and fries from the really good spot in our neighborhood.

I met Allison Davis-Blake when she was the dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. This was her first role as the top leader of an academic institution, after many years as a distinguished professor. I’m going to share parts of a story that she related in another setting, though my interpretation and application of her story are entirely my own. Just a few days into her role as dean, IT security dramatically stormed into her office.

Since I recently watched — and was disappointed by — the film Drive-Away Dolls, which was the first film directed by Ethan Coen outside of a collaboration with his brother Joel, I figure it might be worth looking back at the first — and only — Coen brothers collaboration that didn’t inspire a rave review from me. The following review of The Ladykillers was originally published at Christianity Todayon March 26, 2004. This is the original text of that review with only a few slight copyedits and — I’m excited about this opportunity — the addition of new footnotes in which I reflect with new perspective on various points of this 20-year-old review.

Each year, we get industry reports from music organizations like the RIAA, the IFPI, and Luminate. The top line numbers for 2023 are worth celebrating. According to the IFPI, total recorded music revenues crossed $28.6 billion in 2023, up 10.5% from 2022 and 58.7% from 2019. Of course, much of this was driven by the global proliferation of streaming, but there was also growth in physical sales. Anytime you read about the physical format revival, it is almost always focused on vinyl.

Afghanistan, like almost every country in the world, has many languages. Two of them are especially important: Persian, the language most Afghans speak (many of them as a second language) and Pashto, a language spoken in the area nearest to Pakistan (where it is also spoken). These two languages seem very distant to us, but they have the same origin as English: Proto-Indo-European, a language spoken some 6000 years ago, which also gave rise, among others, to Sanskrit, Greek, Russian, Latin — and English.