PicoBlog

Monday, November 7, 2022 Good morning! Smitten Kitchen Keepers, my new cookbook, will be out in just eight days and I’ve been so busy signing bookplates and special orders and doing some last-minute filming and demos that last week’s newsletter escaped my to-do list. Please accept this IOU — good for early January — for the freezer meals newsletter I had intended for us. Should that be too long to wait, take a gaze at the summer-themed one; so much of this produce is still great now.

If I had told you a year ago that the biggest problem with a Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon was its star, Leonardo DiCaprio, you would have called me nuts, maybe even forced me to watch Aquaman 2 again as punishment. But that’s the biggest issue with Scorsese’s latest, which is getting loads of awards praise and will surely lead the 2023 pack in Oscar nominees. While it’s not a bad movie by any means, the coffee is a little too sweet when it comes to all the sweet talk about the movie.

Good morning, I'm signing in again. Yes. Poor performance, I know. Sorry for my absence. But today I managed to get back, stocked up on enough filter coffee I decided to sit down and chat with you all. The last few weeks have been different: I'm back in internship fever. Or just about to — the last week I spent desperately at home in a tracksuit writing applications. So, If you happen to have an internship available — slide into my DM's and if not, just read on.

I saw the billboards during a research trip to Los Angeles. “Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy,” read one website advertisement. “Do you have strong oral skills? We’ve got a job for you!” cooed another. A message on another billboard directed at the “daddies” was more blunt: “The alternative to escorts. Desperate women will do anything.” “Sugaring” is an enormously profitable and growing trade. Women are being encouraged to sell sex through so-called sugar baby/sugar daddy arrangements.

Welcome to my freemium newsletter by me, King Williams. A documentary filmmaker, journalist, podcast host, and author based in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a newsletter covering the hidden connections of Atlanta to everything else. I recently collaborated with The Atlanta Voice, the oldest continually operating Black-owned newspaper in Atlanta, for a look at the plethora of Black-owned coffee shops in the metro area. This included going on a local tour of Black-owned coffee shops.

There are two named individuals known to live at the North Pole. The first is Baxbakwalanuxsiwae, He-Who-First-Ate-Man-At-The-North-End-Of-The-World. In the mythology of the Kwakiutl people of what’s now British Colombia, Baxbakwalanuxsiwae is a primordial cannibal. His skin is grey, and every inch of it is covered in ravenous, gnashing, blood-stained mouths with razor-sharp yellow teeth. When those mouths aren’t crushing human bones or tearing human flesh, they cry hāp! hāp! hāp! which means eat!

This post originally appeared on my friend Parker Molloy’s newsletter, The Present Age. Like and subscribe! I also spoke about this case on Cancel Me Daddy and On the Media if podcasts are more your thing. Yesterday afternoon, a Virginia jury found Amber Heard liable for defaming her ex-husband, Johnny Depp.  Officially, it was the conclusion of a six-week defamation trial between two B-list celebrities. In reality, it was the culmination of the largest explosion of online misogyny since Gamergate — and a chilling vision of the future of the internet.

The question of “where do I buy trees for bonsai” is harder to answer than you’d think. Most of the “bonsai trees” online and in retailers are mass produced and lacking in character, more of a fast-fashion trinket than a tree to develop a years-long relationship with. I’ve written before about bonsai-hunting at garden centers; today we’re talking about online auctions. Ebay has been useful to me of course. I search for “tree” once a day and have caught some nice deals, such as a Japanese maple that’s growing like a weed.

This is a fascinating read. Before I read the explanation, I identified the curvy shape as Buoba and the more sharp shape as Kiki. My reasoning was that bouba reminded me of “blob” or “blubber” and the sound was more round. And Kiki had harder and sharper consonants, then it was repetition i-i, straighter and more direct in its sound. So, I associated it with the other shape. I think about this topic all the time.