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I was never much of a UB40 fan back in the ‘80s. “Red Red Wine” was as ubiquitous as Seagram’s Wine Coolers back when I was in high school. You couldn’t avoid it. It played on new-wave radio station KROQ, it played on soul and R&B stations, it played on classic rock stations. It was the gateway reggae song for white people who would soon purchase their first and only reggae album a year later, with the release of Bob Marley’s greatest hits collection, Legend.

Certain buzzword-centric and wholly subjective conversations around sports make me cringe: Topics like Who’s The GOAT and most anything that uses the word “legacy.” I acknowledge this up front because the label “blue blood” applied to college basketball programs can absolutely encroach on that Embrace Debate territory. But what can I say? It’s a conversation that, as a self-fashioned hoops history junkie, I love. Not worry though, dear Press Break reader: Your humble author is not about to devolve into full-fledged Hot Take gimmickery.

We’ve all been wowed by the stellar bout sheet for UFC 296. It’s kind of hard not to. Even the curtain-jerker is a killer match-up. Who wouldn’t want to watch Randy Brown put to the test by Muslim Salikhov? And as you move up from there, the great fights just keep showing up. And when is the last time we didn’t complain about the heavyweights? The weakest of the men’s divisions doesn’t produce enough talent outside the top 10 to really make us sit up and take notice, but pairing 11-0 Gaziev up with 13-1 Buday is genius booking for 265.

The undercard of UFC 298 is kind of a mixed bag. As Connor Ruebusch put it, “There are a couple gems sprinkled in there but the rest are typical prelims.” We have come to expect “typical prelims” to equate to low-tier, regional level fights, and that is certainly what we’ve got with this event. Fortunately, the matchmaking brass did the rare excellent job stacking the main card with really good fights, so we can sort of excuse the haphazard way they threw together these contests.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Stacks & Spoons, a weekly substack for bookish girls, gays and theys, written by author Jen Wilde. If you enjoy it, you can subscribe here. Bottoms is like if Heathers f*cked Superbad and had a queer, feral baby. It doesn’t care about positive representation. It’s not here to preach an aspirational message about being queer, it just wants to make us laugh and gasp and feel seen.

Well To Do is nearing 14,000 subscribers! This newsletter started back in 2017, back when I covered the wellness industry for Fast Company, and I’d love to keep it going. If you enjoy this newsletter, do consider a full subscription! “I would say it's very much for the average person,” Ronan Levy, CEO of psychedelic wellness startup Field Trip, told me of ketamine-assisted therapy during an interview earlier this year. Psychedelics could help the quarter of Americans dealing with a mental health challenge, he explained.

Good morning everyone. We’ve had many requests to put out a piece on our take on dating, relationships, getting laid, etc. Initially we steered away from it given our focus is markets and global news but with Valentine’s Day tomorrow we thought we’d offer a perspective up for everyone. One trend that I have picked up on recently is that people are struggling to date or find relationships. Whether it’s family, friends, colleagues, etc.

This is part of the Culture War Encyclopedia. Last update: Aug 31, 2023.The Ultra Pride Flag, created by @Vox_Oculi (AKA 𝓓𝖗. 𝓥𝖔𝐱 𝓞𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖎), is a satirical take on the Pride Flag. Behold this post from the creator. Here’s the flag itself. You can enlarge this bigly. Below is a gallery of enlarged sections. Ponder also this post… The full text of the post above is as follows, Wokemoji #15 - Ultra Pride Flag Rejoice, LGBTQQIAP2SAAJNBPFQ5GCOMGBBQAGNCD7SHRRDRRSGP++ community!

Ultralearning… I hadn’t heard this term until recently when I started an audiobook with the title. I’ve been on a productivity audiobook kick recently (Atomic Habits, So Good They Can’t Ignore You) and Ultralearning popped up in my recommendations. As I started reading the book I realized that this is exactly how I learned how to code. About 5 years ago I went from not knowing how to code to working at a startup in about 7 months.