PicoBlog

A newsletter exploring what's next, in health, startups and society. By Justin Mares · Over 12,000 subscribersNo thanks“An exploration of health and company building that is both personal and profound. ” “always 6-18 months ahead of the curve” ncG1vNJzZmiipajBqrrMmqmeq16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpw

As you may have noticed, the Ramen Beast team has been a bit quiet lately... We've been busy! Abram was in California, rebooting his cross-border ramen restaurant biz, Patrick was in the Japanese mountains building a sauna structure, and Cody started selling ramen equipment and ingredients online to aspiring chefs around the world. Meanwhile, Hiroshi found out that he's going to be a father and got married (again!). Everyone's been pulled in different directions.

Welcome to the Nicholberry Dispatch!  BOOK NEWS Big news today! But a little background first. When we first started looking at potential events, my publisher suggested that I consider “conversation partners.” Like so many things on this publishing journey, this was an unfamiliar concept to me. But now that you’ve read it here, you’ll see it everywhere. And you’ll see it when we announce the May 2nd event at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica: “Kerry Nichols in conversation with W.

“Have you seen that funny Christmas movie?” My mom asked one night, after dinner, during some holiday week a few years ago. She pulls up The Night Before (2015) on the TV and gestures, “Have you?” I had never even heard of it, but agreed to watch it. Generally speaking, I trust her taste. My mom is a movie lover and is, without a doubt, the person I inherited my love for movies from.

We are in the final countdown towards Christmas. It’s busy, it’s buzzy and for many folks it’s about leaning into traditions. So today I wanted to share the article that I recently wrote for the Kyiv Independent about traditional dishes at the Ukrainian table. I’ve also included some photos to help give those new to Ukrainian cuisine a taste of what some of these items are. Enjoy! Read Celebrating the Ukrainian Way: The 12 Dishes of Christmas at the Kyiv Independent

I’d promised myself Sam’s Good Stuff would remain fun. I said it would never muddy itself with the turmoils of our times. I believed I’d never get political. But perhaps it’s the fury of the culture wars, or the din of howling factions, or the raging pleas for emergent causes, that I can’t help but feel that I too must be heard. There is this paradigm that shapes our world and we barely notice it for it is like water to a fish.

Note: As Elon Musk’s transformation of my primary social media platform into a barely functional far-right cesspool continues, I’m planning to migrate some valuable content off, and this seems like a decent enough landing place for now. This is from a thread published on October 6, 2018, the day a man of no qualities beyond his unwavering commitment to his own supremacy—a man who had been credibly accused of sexual assault—had been elevated to the Supreme Court as part of an openly planned supremacist plot to strip women of their bodily autonomy.

At the beginning of the year, I got an email from one of the features editors at T: The New York Times Style Magazine to ask me to be part of a panel in February about the essential pasta dishes in Italy, part of a series that they’ve been running, for example25 Essential Dishes to Eat In Mexico City and The 25 Essential Dishes to Eat in Paris.  I knew even at this point that there would be “but what about…?

I love social media. We get to hear stories and commentary from people who otherwise wouldn’t have a voice because of the gatekeeping chosen ones in traditional media and publishing. (And politicians, who are now trying to ban TikTok again because they cannot control our voices. Or maybe it’s “China”. Or election season.) I reluctantly joined Threads (the Meta version of Twitter, erm X, which isn’t a complete dumpster fire). Instagram is boring me to death, so I thought Threads would be the same, but no!