PicoBlog

The most successful political movements pretend they are not political movements at all. They want the public to believe their goals are not ideological but common sense and common decency, and who could possibly object to that? Nowhere is the denial of the political more strenuously proclaimed than on the “woke left” – or, if you do not like the term, “the social justice left”. The confusion about names is symptomatic.

In Rank Your Records, I talk to artists who have amassed substantial discographies over the years and ask them to rate their releases in order of personal preference. Frank Portman always had the idea in the back of his mind that he’d one day release a comprehensive career-spanning reissue for his long-running pop punk band The Mr. T Experience. But when he finally started gathering up original recordings of his songs, some of which date back over 30 years, the process proved a lot more challenging than he’d ever imagined.

There is only one perfect Twitter book and it’s Becoming Duchess Goldblatt.  This literary genre began with straight-up tweet collections on paper, like 2009’s Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less and 2012’s The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten: The Tweets of Steve Martin. They’re clever in parts and certainly amusing to browse at this late date in human history — how gentle life was!

Welcome to the Brown History Newsletter. If you’re enjoying this labour of love, please do consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your contribution would help pay the writers and illustrators and support this weekly publication. If you like to submit a writing piece, please send me a pitch by email at brownhistory1947@gmail.com. Don’t forget to check out our SHOP and our Podcast. In July 2004, Trevor and Hilary Foster traveled to India for 10 days.

Thank you for reading Noheartland. This post is public so feel free to share it. Share Jeremy Goodale will be sentenced this week for the murder of Mrs. Nohema Graber in Fairfield, Iowa just over two years ago. Goodale and his friend Chaiden Miller both plead guilty, Miller was sentenced earlier this year to life with… ncG1vNJzZmiZnpnGrLvPrJhnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wwMeeZKatopmys3nOn2SmqqNiu7C0xKaYZp%2Bilq%2Bmvg%3D%3D

Some museums, such as the International Phallological Museum, plant themselves in a tourist mecca to lure visitors; others are built in remote villages and rely on their own strangeness to get you to drive several hours to see their secrets. This is one of the latter, in the shrimping town of Hólmavík, three hours drive from Reykjavik on twisty mountain roads along the Westfjord coast. They’ll greet you with a bowl of hot necromancer’s stew and a beer in their cafe, if you make the long trek.

This column is “The music of,” in which I’ll go into detail on the soundtrack or a piece of music from a video game. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link. If you mention “the Hyrule Field theme” to someone, it’s likely they’ll be thinking of a different version than whichever is in your own head. It’s a song that has so many iterations and permutations, that’s arranged again and again whenever there’s a Hyrule Field to cross and even sometimes when there isn’t, as is the case in games like Majora’s Mask.

In 2018, journalist and podcaster Natalie Robehmed authored the Forbescover story about Kylie Jenner with the infamous headline about her being set to become “the youngest-ever self-made billionaire.” Robehmed didn’t come up with that headline, but understood the criticism that followed: how could Kylie possibly be “self-made” with the incalculable privilege that comes with being part of such a wealthy and famous family? Earlier in Back Row: Why the Vibe Shift Might Finally Leave the Kardashians Behind

There’s a place near my hometown of Scranton, PA whose name I know but, having had no occasion to go there, I don’t know much about. On the way to my brother Jonathan’s wedding last month, it struck me as we drove through it at night. I can’t say exactly what it was — the zigzag of its few-block downtown? The two little bars lit with the energy of a Friday night in a small town?