PicoBlog

The famous Mitford family, including Muv and Farve and brother Tom / Getty The first Mitford book I read was perhaps the most iconic: the fanciful memoir Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford of growing up in the Cotswalds, England countryside, in an isolated manor full of children ( all girls but for one brother ) where the totality of life took place: school was at home with a teacher, playtime was at home with siblings, socializing was in the home on the terms of the parents.

(Kyrsten Sinema presiding over the Senate, October 2021) Over this past month, the New York Times has run a series of columns on the inscrutable fashion choices of Arizona’s senior senator, Kyrsten Sinema. In a yet-to-be-concluded series (three so far), Tressie McMillan Cottom (a professor at the University of North Carolina) has been offering one observation after another about how Sinema presents herself. To the contemporary American left Sinema is anathema.

Share Steve Jobs committed suicide. And most people don’t know that fact about the Apple Co-Founder (I certainly didn’t). Before he died Steve told Walter Isaacson he had regrets about not starting chemo sooner. What held him back is he had a fear of surgery. Getting cut open felt worse than losing a billion dollars. Dr. Barrie Cassileth says Steve’s faith in alternative medicine to cure his cancer “likely cost him his life.

When it comes to professional golf’s best major championship, many people automatically default to The Masters tournament. I mean, I get it. The fully-bloomed azaleas and no-phone policy alone will make you fall in love with Augusta National Golf Club. However, if the Masters is 1a on your list, then the U.S. Open is 1b on mine. The U.S. Open is golf’s toughest test, intentionally designed for the winning score to hover around par.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Heinz Dilemma. The Heinz Dilemma is about health, death and robbery. And morality. Well, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, University of Chicago psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, and his protege, Carol Gilligan - whose work has influenced me deeply - made it about morality. This is the Heinz Dilemma: Heinz's wife is dying because of a special type of cancer. There's only one drug that the doctors think might save her.

Hi Readers, I’m coming to you from a place of extremes this week. My morale and mood have been all over the place the last two weeks. I feel like personally, I’m going through this cycle of feeling incredibly mediocre, then feeling intense fear that my goals are absolutely delusional and I’m on a path to ruin my life, and back to “ok I think I’m doing fine, things take time, you’re doing your best”.

Hey friends, Hope your weeks are off to a great start. Want to take a second to say thanks to everyone who has subscribed (and reads twice a week!), as our little community has just passed the 400 subscriber milestone. If you know of someone who would like seeing this content, please consider sharing this week. Thank you again! In the meantime, these are my weekly “conversation starters,” the best, most interesting and most entertaining content on the internet.

The first question I always get when it comes to reading old Russian literature is which translation to go with. Let’s take a look at the few of the most common ones, as well as my go-to recommendation. Published in 1904, this edition was the standard in the early 20th century, but it’s not the easiest to read for us modern folks. As a general note, I also don’t love the paper/fonts of physical Dover Thrift editions.

When Billy Collins Jr stepped into the ring in the middle of a sold-out Madison Square Garden in June 1983, he was a promising welterweight boxer — undefeated in 14 straight fights, winning eleven of those by knockout. Many people saw him as a serious title contender.  One year later, Collins died after crashing his car into a ditch near his hometown in Antioch, Tennessee.  Now, before you fill in the blanks, this isn’t another story of some promising young athlete who let fame get to his head and lost his way.