PicoBlog

There's a button at the top of the Reddit homepage called "Random." When pressed, the algorithm will serve you up one of the 138,000 subreddits bobbing around the website's depths. We've all found our own languid methods to pass the time during the mounting months of quarantine, and this has been mine. Days and nights, passively logged on, pressing that button over and over again, greeting a new subcommittee of brilliant obsessives and weirdos.

You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C. We have free and paid subscription plans. Sign up now: Today’s Charlotte Ledger is sponsored by Count on Me CLT. To help save lives, jobs and businesses, please wear a mask, wait 6 feet apart and wash your hands often. Visit CountOnMeCLT.com for more information. Since DaBaby moved to Troutman nearly a year ago, some neighbors have complained about construction and noise at his estate, and police have become familiar with the musician.

Trigger Warning: Assault & ethical minefields. NSFW gallery for paid subscribers.  Henry Cavill on all fours in the center of the Roman Colosseum. He’s flanked by a gang of gladiators, leering as they tear off his underwear, groping and spreading his legs. He’s sweaty, dirty and bruised. His eyes plead to the camera as the gang carries him away. We don’t see the finale but we know what’s next: a sexual crucifixion.

My column this week is a kind of postscript to the 40th Anniversary of Ninoy’s Assassination. Some readings I found useful were How Marcos suppressed the truth behind Ninoy Aquino’s assassination; Agrava report on Ninoy Aquino slay: Groundbreaking search for truth; I saw the tarmac murder that haunts the Philippines 40 years later; SCAPEGOAT: Memories of August 21, 1983: The Assassination of Sen. Ninoy Aquino; and The Unbelievable Irwin Ver.

Happy Mother’s Day! And when we look at the history of Mother’s Day, we see there’s more there than happiness… The original Mother’s Day Proclamation was written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870. It was a statement of mothers who had lost sons in the North joined with mothers who had lost sons in the South during the Civil War, proclaiming a day once a year for a “general congress of women” to declare the end to war and the creation of peace.

I’m sure many of you know about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003), the book, the movie, the millions of dollars it made, the court case, the conspiracy theories, the hype, the Louvre, and the crazy people who think it tells the real story of the secret origins of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Priory of Zion, Opus Dei, and the evils of the Catholic Church. As I look back on it now, The Da Vinci Code was basically QAnon-level atheism for people who liked Dawkins, Dateline, and Vatican conspiracy theories.

This article has been edited post-publication to reflect new information obtained by the author. Hello I’m Benjamin Mock and this is Sports Untold. Today’s story is something I’ve been working on for a couple months now. We’re looking at the real story of Vaevictis eSports, an all-women League of Legends team who gained infamy and meme status thanks to their winless 2019 season. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to ensure you get every issue of Sports Untold as soon as it goes live.

You probably know Jack and Rose in The Titanic were a fictional love story woven into the true story of the sinking of the Titanic. Even James Cameron said so, and he ought to know. He wrote the script. After writing the script for Titanic, he met with 20th Century Fox executives and pitched the movie as “Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic.” Here’s what he didn’t tell anyone.

Yesterday, several dozen leaders of progressive organizations descended on Capitol Hill to demonstrate against the Biden Administration’s planned $14 billion package of military aid to Israel. There was strategic thinking behind this move. As the organizers put it in their sign-on planning document, “The vote on military aid is probably our best chance to make our voices effective. While it would be close to impossible to block additional aid indefinitely, the package has already been delayed, and serious discussion is underway about adding conditions to the aid.