PicoBlog

Meet The Weekender, a weekend digest that highlights just three reads from the week and why they’re worth your time. This weekend we have reads on news, education, and…love? If you’re looking for 2024 election updates, then this is not the newsletter for you. Every outlet, Substack, and media channel in the U.S. is covering the election this year. Hopefully this newsletter provides a bit of a reprieve, a chance to step back and think critically about other topics…like the growing number of U.

During a quieter shift in the children’s emergency department, I took the opportunity to teach some of our GP trainees. They had quite a lot of anxiety around knowing what is normal or not normal for little babies. This is appropriate anxiety, because they will see a lot (and I mean, a lot!) of little babies in general practice. What’s more, it is not always completely obvious what exactly is or is not normal about some of the stuff they do!

Writing about Whiteness. Writing about organizing and social change. Writing (occasionally) about the shirt Ronnie Van Zant wore on the Street Survivors album cover. By Garrett Bucks · Over 10,000 subscribersNo thanks!“If you're a white person trying to dismantle white supremacist culture where it starts (with us!!) this is for you” “Garrett's work and writing is a lesson in thinking smarter and creating community more compassionately. ” “When I read Garrett Bucks, I feel moved to become a better person.

Updates about the Whole Cloth Reading Series, an experiment in deep listening where a poet reads an entire book of poems from start to finish. Hosted by Green College at UBC in Vancouver and organized by Bronwen Tate and Elee Kraljii Gardiner. By Bronwen Tate · Launched 9 months agoNo thanks“A poetry reading series in Vancouver, BC where a writer reads a whole book cover-to-cover. (Hosted by Bronwen (me!) and Elee)”

Seventeen years ago this week, Julian Assange created WikiLeaks. I didn’t know what to make of WikiLeaks when it was first created in 2006. The United States was still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, and Assange—an odd looking fellow who seemed like a bit of a snob—seemed to be doing things that aided the enemy. But I was having emerging doubts about the War on Terror. Having served briefly in the Bush Administration, I had seen there was a disconnect in what the White House said about these conflicts versus what was actually happening.

What I read: “17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian” by Maria Popova. Because friends and acquaintances know I read a lot, I’m often asked for my favorite blog site. Without hesitation I immediately answer The Marginalian by Maria Popova. If I were to be allowed to only follow one blog, this would be it. I’ve been reading Popova’s blog since its early years. Few writers continue to maintain both a remarkable dexterity of language and wonderful depth of analysis and insight.

Titania McGrath describes herself as an activist, a poet and a healer. But above all, she is an educator. Over the years, she has used Twitter as a forum to argue with bigots who fail to appreciate the importance of social justice. Here are some screenshots of her most memorable attempts to spread the holy creed of wokeness… ncG1vNJzZmiZnpm%2FpsPDqLClnV6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn55lp57ApbvMZqafZaSewaK6yJpkppuXp661tIypmKus

So, down here on our little sinking ship where our government is just shuffling the deck chairs around, bigger cultural trajectories sometimes feel very far away, like, The World out there is heading for the moon while we’re on a road trip to the Northern Cape and about to run out of petrol. Trans identity politics is one of those things for me. Let me say if you are reading this and you are affected by, going through your own transition, or knowledgeable of the Trans Agenda, this post will probably annoy you.

The history of the street gangs in the US has been marked by spikes of atrocious violence, but one murder stands out for our purposes: the killing of Brenda Paz in 2003. Originally from Honduras, Brenda was only thirteen when she was “jumped” or initiated into MS-13 in Dallas. Her actions and subsequent murder would change the history of women in the gang forever, observers told me. Brenda, who was known in the gang as Smiley “was different from the other girls,” wrote reporter Jamie Stockwell, who covered her murder trial for the Washington Post.