PicoBlog

Sometimes national security policy is a chessboard of great power competition or an epic battle of human freedom versus totalitarian repression. And sometimes it’s about an arcane accounting rule. Here’s a little tale of the latter that’s especially frustrating – and now urgent.  Private investment can be a weapon of US foreign policy. Promoting market capitalism, providing a credible alternative to China, and helping deliver rapid development progress are the reasons why Congress passed the BUILD Act in 2018 and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) was launched in 2020.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, I remember incessantly scrolling through Instagram. As many people were doing, I was trying to distract myself from existential dread, using the internet as an escape. At some point, I was, like, 18 clicks deep and peering into the account of the fourth cousin once removed of some woman I met at a party many moons ago when my finger slipped onto the “Discover” tab and a truly gorgeous plant appeared.

In the fascinating world of anime, it's the mesmerizing, artistically complex scenes that captivate viewers the most, stealing our breaths away and imprinting themselves in our memory long after the episode ends. I’m talking about the times where it seems like the animators have all of a sudden gone from only animating characters’ mouths to orchestrating the flow of each strand of hair, or making a fight scene look like something out of a Bruce Lee film.

“Why do soccer players flop and fake injury?” As an avid soccer watcher, I get asked this question all the time whenever I’m watching a match with friends or family. It is a common question and, truthfully, it is a fair question. Because sometimes soccer players are just ridiculous in the way they react to physical contact. Of course the best aspect of flopping is that the act itself isn’t exclusive to soccer.

Johnny is getting a lot of romantic attention on Love Island Games, and in this post we’re going to have a look at his astrology dynamic with Jessica, Liberty, Georgia, and of course Cely, to get an idea of who his best match is, as well as the reoccurring themes that show up with the women he connects with. Firstly a little bit on Johnny - his Sun and Mars are in Gemini, and these are masculine planets that show how someone presents themselves on the outside.

Kemi Badenoch says we have almost an ‘epidemic’ of children being convinced by teachers that they can change sex at the drop of a hat. She’s right. I have spoken to countless parents who can confirm this, as well as to young women who began transitioning to become “trans men” while still at school, then lived to regret it. Badenoch, the Minister for Women and Equalities, made these comments on Wednesday during a statement in Parliament in which she warned MPs of a “new form of conversion therapy”.

I was a tomboyish teenager who grew up wearing cargo pants and sneakers, listening to Nirvana, and priding myself on my love of edgy indie films like Eraserhead and El Topo. So imagine my surprise when, in my late teens, I happened across a mainstream romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts that changed my life forever. My Best Friend’s Wedding opened an unlikely door to what would become my sincere (and somewhat secret) appreciation for romcoms, especially when watched in the fall.

The automaker BMW caught some flak earlier in the year when it began charging owners in the UK, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and other countries $18 monthly subscriptions to use seat warmers. That prompted outrage - and for good reason. For one thing, the cost of the installed seat warmer hardware figured into the purchase price of the new car, meaning that BMW owners are being charged just to turn on a piece of hardware they’ve already paid for.

Happy Sunday! We’re back with more from the Animation Obsessive newsletter. This is the plan for today: Just finding us? It’s free to sign up for our Sunday issues. Get them in your inbox, weekly: Sign Up With that, we’re off! Last year, a reader from Serbia sent us a message. He had something odd for us. It was a group of sketches and storyboard fragments drawn by Slavko Vorkapich (1894–1976), an experimental film artist.