PicoBlog

In March 2020, when COVID-19 shut everything down for a spell, I started watching pandemic films. There was the very shout-y 1995 Dustin Hoffman film Outbreak. There was the underrated cast of 2009’s Carriers. And there was Stephen Soderbergh’s impeccable Contagion. Why watch these films as a pandemic was breaking out? Because as scary as COVID-19 might have seemed in early 2020, these films highlighted all the ways in which things could have been so much worse.

Note to subscribers: An earlier version of this interview audio was posted in July. The new YouTube video embedded below has superior sound. I’ve also added a lightly edited transcription. To outsiders, Eddie Van Halen seemed to be sitting on top of the world in December 1979. The first two Van Halen albums had gone platinum, the band had just wrapped up a massive world tour, and he’d been widely proclaimed one of the best – if not the best – guitarist in rock and roll.

Amid the trenches of COVID-19-induced lockdown, I, and millions around the world, flocked to media as a form of comfort. Media consumption was such a prominent part of my lockdown experience that my sisters and I could easily divide up stages of the pandemic based on what our latest TV show, movie, or music fixation was. Of all our movie marathons in 2021, one series left us hungry for more and with a longing for the 2000s and 2010s: The Twilight Saga.

”You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” Ayn Rand It bothers me when people lie to us with a straight face, with no conscience, with no remorse. When our politicians and their compliant media on both sides of the political spectrum look us in the eye and with a straight face tell us: there is no border crisis while we watch millions of people illegally crossing our border; or that it’s a peaceful protest while we watch mobs burn down our cities; or that we must go to war because an evil despot has weapons of mass destruction, only to find out they have none; or, the most disingenuous lie of late, when a female nominee for the Supreme Court claimed that she cannot define a “woman” because she’s not a biologist, when all she had to do was stand up and say, “I am a woman.

I assumed I would enjoy Robert Eggers’ sophomore film The Lighthouse. And guess what? I was right! I continue to delight in weird movies about increasingly deranged white people. In this movie I was like “what is UP with this seagull?” and then Robert Pattinson beat it to death with his bare hands. So clearly, that made two of us. Admittedly it was a little overdramatic, but I’m sure we have all wanted to give seagulls a taste of their own medicine.

Yesterday work crews moved into position to begin the process of removing the Confederate monument in Arlington National Cemetery, located in Section 16. Make no mistake. The removal of this particular monument is the most significant Confederate removal to date. It is certainly one of the largest monuments, but more importantly, it is the boldest expression of the Lost Cause in a public space. Though there are moments of reconciliation that can and should be acknowledged, from the reinterment of Confederate remains to the cemetery to the dedication of the monument itself in 1914, the United Daughters of the Confederacy did not commission a reconciliationist monument.

Today’s essay is a bit of a cheat, in the sense that the Big Dipper is not actually a recognized constellation—at least according to the IAU. Instead, it is recognized as a smaller part of Ursa Major, the Big Bear. But the brightness of its stars makes it fairly recognizable. It’s probably the earliest constellation that many of us were able to pick out of that inky black velvet night sky.

American photographer Sally Mann – pictured above – was born on May 1, 1951. Her work has been said to be evocative and controversial mainly because she often documented her children without clothing. Hailing from Lexington, Virginia, Mann's photographic journey began in the 1970s when she started documenting, via photographs, her three children and the… ncG1vNJzZmiZnqm1sLrYpqarn5Gjwap60q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlnpJ2ybq%2FOp6urp6aav7S1wKVkqaCfqbyovsCpn7Jln5s%3D

You may have heard that there’s a lot of speculation online as to whether Kate Middleton’s cancer reveal video is truly her or an AI generated version of her. This is an interesting conundrum, and given the ability of AI to mimic people these days, it is not unfair to ask this question. This is especially true because the royal family did admit that the photograph that was shared on Kate Middleton’s social media account recently was in fact, at least photoshopped, if not in part manipulated by artificial intelligence.