PicoBlog

Dear Friend & Subscriber - A friend of mine hit me up today to ask for help setting up a grow at his house. He wants to put a 4x4’ tent in his bedroom, and he wanted my insight because he knew I had run a 4x4’ setup before. I’ve mentioned previously that I would share my layout with subscribers, and his ask was the final kick I needed to finish today’s newsletter.

As I write this just past 8 p.m. on Sunday night, I am still riding the adrenaline from the Selection Show. This was my 20th Selection Show on CBS (it would have been 21 if the 2020 tournament hadn’t been canceled), and it never gets old. Neither does watching the Greatest Show in Sports. So let’s get to my analysis of the bracket. I know many of you will spend the next three days thinking, marinating, praying and studying in order to make your picks.

I just installed VS Code and subscribed to Github Copilot. If you aren’t familiar, Github Copilot is basically ChatGPT, but directly in-line when coding or writing (e.g. right in the editor). There is no easier way to get excited about the advent of large language models than setting this up with the ability to write in: Latex R Stata Python And others! Some of this is also about moving to a really good IDE (integrated development environment) – VS Code is quite powerful and I’ve really enjoyed my experience so far.

South Africans have been turning up in new - and sometimes unexpected - places since the opening days of 2024. And they are doing it with enough frequency to allow myself the thought that we might be in the long-awaited phase two of the rainbow nation - at the time, the loveliest of terms originally coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to help South Africans visualise our specialness and connectedness as we transitioned from apartheid to a democracy.

The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty wide and twenty high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar. - 1 Kings 6:20 When studying religion, mystery schools, and the occult, there is an interesting convergence of symbolism that manifests. An overlap of three thematic elements stands out. This substack will cover that convergence, namely: the number seven, the black cube, and Saturn.

Today, I woke up in my husband’s bed. We were snuggled up together in the early morning light, suffused with satisfied exhaustion from a lovely night before. I extricated myself and padded down the hall. Through an open door, I saw a pair of cute horizontal feet. I leapt through the door, onto the bed, and attacked our girlfriend with kisses as she smiled up at me. Then, the both of us snuck quietly back down the hall, to hug and kiss and wrestle our other beloved into the day.

The god Min, open air museum, Karnak Temple I grew up above a gay bar in Bangor, Maine, in the late 1980s+1990s, and next door to the Bangor Public Library.  My entire childhood was Drag Queen Story Hour. Future of Our Past with Sarah Parcak is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subsc… ncG1vNJzZmirkaeuqbzAq5qao16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6snLFlkaOxbr%2FEsayapJmpxm61zWaYp5uZmru1ecSgsKms

What I love about this show is the different types of people I get to interview, which keeps it interesting for me and hopefully for you. This week on The Conversation, and fresh off the Tom Brady roast on Netflix, I'm super excited to welcome stand-up comedian Nikki Glaser for a chat that is, as we say in England…very rude. Meaning it’s balls to the wall and is my favorite combo of blunt honesty and humor.

Supervisor Gordon Mar stammered when asked last month why he endorsed the San Francisco School Board’s Alison Collins. Collins is best known for two things: using a racist slur against Asian Americans, and helping end the merit-based admissions system at Lowell High School in order to lower the number of Asian students enrolled. During a candidate forum, Mar quickly changed the subject, then drew quiet as he was challenged again by opponent Joel Engardio, a public safety advocate, on the subject.