PicoBlog

Hi friends. Today’s Tuesday essay is something a little different, and a lot more personal than what I usually write, which is why the paywall shows up much earlier than usual. I am committed to keeping Burnt Toast content as accessible as possible, but I’ve also realized that there are stories I want to tell the entire Internet, and then there are stories I want to tell, but to a slightly less crowded room.

I mentioned in last weekend’s prompt that my mom has a regular practice of making Valentine’s Day cards for her friends. After teaching a papercutting workshop last weekend, I was in the creative flow of silly puns, so I went ahead and made a bunch of papercuts with love and friendship in mind. I have been in a bit of a funk with papercutting lately. Like a “do I even enjoy doing this anymore?

I haven’t followed the debates that swirl around “integralism” closely. So this will be an amateur take by a curious bystander. For those new to the term: integralism is an idea that has been revived in certain precincts of the Catholic right, one that is hard to state without eliciting guffaws of incredulity. Namely, that the state should be turned to t… ncG1vNJzZmilk6euuLLOq5tnq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZL1wv86mnGappZrAtbXOp6pmnp%2BnerW0xGagp6yVnL%2BiuMisq6w%3D

Most people think of Gary Marcus and Yann LeCun as matter and anti-matter (or perhaps the other way around). But that wasn’t always the case. One upon a time Gary Marcus and Yann LeCun were friends; they did a number of public events together, and even appeared side-by-side in a famous photo together, which LeCun posted on Facebook, at the time describing Gary Marcus as his favorite critic. (Later, immediately after LeCun won the Turing Award along with Hinton and Bengio, the photo circulated again, with Marcus cropped out).

I’ve been driving for nearly half of my life, but I can only describe driving in Italy as a rather, um... humbling experience. Luckily, I’ve never been in an accident or anything like that (knock on wood), but there are moments when it dawns on me that I’m taking my life in my hands here.  I’ve also made some stupid mistakes, like the time I unwittingly drove through Villa Borghese (the famous park in the heart of Rome) because I was so concentrated on following Google Maps that I didn’t notice the sign indicating that the street was restricted to taxis and buses.

conversations with friends completes my rooney trifecta. i didn’t read them in order of publication, but it doesn’t matter as she’s not writing a series. i feel like my thoughts on conversations could apply to any of her works, so let’s unpack those. the books are all best sellers. there are two shows based off normal people and conversations with friends. the characters are young and feel young. they make choices and behave in ways that will make an older reader sigh sometimes.

According to Mike Elko some 37 seniors will be recognized on Senior Day, Saturday against Pitt. He then added that he didn’t know what that means anymore. “That is a really interesting world nowadays with COVID and those years still going on, but there's a lot of really special kids that are going to be out on that field getting recognized for senior day and a lot of kids who have meant an awful lot to Duke football and certainly have meant an awful lot to this two-year resurgence of Duke football.

Is Manny Diaz the one? The one who will not only have a few good years as Duke football coach. But the one who can and will sustain that success, the one who can make Duke nationally competitive in football year after year. That one. It seems like every time I talk about Duke’s football history I say something along the lines of “since Bill Murray retired.” Murray retired after the 1965 season.

If someone could be so kind as to educate Lincoln Bible that would be super swell and much appreciated. Queen of disinformation and misinformation and pretending she knows everything about everything all while enabling the QANON-for-the-Left garbage. Because the fact you “WANT ANSWERS NOW GODDAMNIT” that’s super swell and rich considering you’ve trafficked in disinformation and misinformation for years The fact you don’t understand how criminal investigations actually work or the process which are governed the Federal criminal rules of Procedure