The Symbolism of Palm Branches
2024-12-03
Entering my office yesterday morning, I slipped into my usual Monday rhythm of sermon preparation. Prayer infused each step of my journey, guiding me as I settled into my desk and fired up my trusted Logos Bible Software. With each click and scroll, I delved deeper into the text, immersing myself in its original languages with a profound sense of reverence.
With Palm Sunday on the horizon, the onset of Holy Week loomed large in my thoughts.
The Taste of Things & pot-au-feu
2024-12-03
The phrase “food movie” has always felt a bit trivial to me. They’re always about something more. Foo-ood, moo-vee. Toddler vowels. It’s not so often that one of these comes along though. I would know; you can’t exactly build an entire newsletter around traditional food movies, at least the ones explicitly situated in the realm of cuisine and cooking: Ratatouille (2007). Big Night (1996), Babette’s Feast (1987). Tampopo (1985). More recent flicks have focused on restaurant culture and chefs—The Bear.
The Tech Buffet #11: Ruff
2024-12-03
Hello again 👋 it’s Ahmed. I write The Tech Buffet to share practical tips and tutorials helping you build industrial-grade ML applications.
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If you use Python, you probably use a linter or a code formatter that checks the quality of your codebase. This enforces industry standards and normalizes the code quality across the developers of the same team.
I’ve personally always used Black, isort, and Flake8 in large codebases.
I admit, I wasn’t entirely sold on this week’s episode of Ted Lasso when it started. The jokes felt a little off and I wasn’t vibing with the whole “string theory” idea. It was the first one where I was thinking that maybe it was just a miss. But by the end, I was right there with Trent Crimm - a big dork who thinks this is going to work. This was, of course, due to us finally having the opportunity to meet Ola (!
One of the characters in Ted Lasso that I haven’t written about is Trent Crimm. While I’m not sure that he was used as effectively as he could have been in the final season or the finale (I was really wanting a voiceover of some text from Trent’s book in the final scene that showed where everyone was in the time after Ted left), he was a character who had a pretty profound impact on Ted’s time at AFC Richmond, and he needs to be discussed.
I didn’t see Tommy Cooper the night he died on Live At Her Majesty’s. In fact,
I didn’t see the footage until perhaps 40 years on from the tragedy, and then only by complete surprise. For there, in a documentary about the American too-much comedian/magician The Amazing Johnathan was Wales’ greatest funny man falling backwards mid-act, sat in a heap with nothing but the curtain to hold him upright.
The Texas Dog Lawyer - by Jane Wells
2024-12-03
“We are looking for the dogs now,” Zandra Anderson frantically emails me. “We have video and receipts that she’s hiding dogs.”
“She” is Elaine Kmiec, a former Houston optometrist who’d been forced to give up over 100 dogs and cats over the years, pets Kmiec housed in deplorable conditions. She’d even spent time in custody for lying to a federal bankruptcy judge about how many animals she possessed.
But right now, Zandra is desperately searching for dogs because I notified her that Kmiec is dead.
The three languages of Gibraltar
2024-12-03
As the British Empire ebbed away, it left a few droplets — a handful of islands here, a smattering of oddities there (such as Jamaica having a king who bears a striking resemblance to the former Prince Charles) or military bases in Cyprus. Close by, we find one of these remnants: Gibraltar, a British city basking in the Andalusian sun, a colony in Europe, a slice of territory that Spain covets and that the English (I suspect) wouldn't mind handing over if it weren't for the inhabitants' desire to retain the same king as the Jamaicans.
The Three Streaks Of Joe, Ted and Bob
2024-12-03
Installment 7: From May 15, 1941 to July 16, 1941, Ted Williams outhit Joe DiMaggio, .412 to .408.
0.
Did you know Ted Williams nearly homered in the final at-bat of his career three times?
In 1952, he had been called to active duty during the war in Korea. He was still probably the best hitter in baseball, but he’d shown some decline, he’d had some injuries, he was known to be a perfectionist, and several times in his career he’d spoken favorably about retirement.