PicoBlog

Kia ora friends. As requested, here is my best attempt at providing ways to help stop the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. I give my most sincere thanks to those who helped me with this guide, especially those Palestinian and Jewish folks who are grieving and afraid right now. Humanitarian aid is desperately needed in Gaza. While aid is being blocked by the Israeli Government right now - we must be ready.

Welcome to Natural Wonders! I hope, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, that you’ve been able to enjoy the fall season and all the beautiful colors, blue skies, and campfire weather that usually comes with it. The leaves are crunching underfoot and I feel guilty any time I’m stuck inside instead of wandering around the woods before they go to sleep for the winter… In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, this issue is the second in the Creepy Critters edition: last week I shared shovel-headed worms and their resemblance to Dracula, and today I’ll talk about… Zombie Bugs!

I went deep into sweats in 2020. Duh. And its hard to undo the habit of changing into them the second I walk through my apartment door. Actually, I don’t even want to undo it! It’s heaven! But my Entireworld sweatsuits, that have become a second skin, are sad now. The cotton-poly blend has not held up to three years of slathering my kid with Vaseline, meals on the sofa and general loung-i-ness.

I’ve been writing about heavy subjects of late, so I decided to have a little fun this week. Fun as in a “creative type” test. Essentially a Meyers-Briggs test to tell you what your creative essence is. The 15-question Creative Type Test, developed by Adobe Create, assesses your habits and tendencies—how you think, how you act, how you see the world—to help you better understand who you are as a creator.

Christmas came early for Western Kentucky fans Friday night, when it was announced that wide receiver Dalvin Smith Jr. and cornerback Upton Stout would be returning to the Hill for the 2024 season. Stout’s announcement came after he had previously entered the transfer portal, while Smith was widely rumored to do so, even if to test the waters. The announcements were a major win not only for Tyson Helton, to continue the good mojo in a week that opened with a miraculous comeback win in the Famous Toastery Bowl, but for WKU’s NIL collective, the Red Towel Trust, who for a second-straight year has been able to ward off a top transfer candidate from a power program.

Jesus told His followers, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). The Lord’s statement emphasizes, “You - and you alone - are the light of the world.” It is one of those statements which should always have the effect upon us of making us lift up our heads, causing us to realize once more what a remarkable and glorious thing it is to be a Christian. - Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

I’m grateful to Lex Fridman for kicking off an extended round of discourse about whether you should read books, and the precise situations in which it is cringe or based to do so. Book discourse returning to the zeitgeist is good for two reasons: for one, us readers momentarily become a little more high-status, receiving opportunities to flaunt good taste. It’s also good because, somehow, Regress Studies posts blow up when they’re about people arguing about reading books (for ex, Is It Okay To Finish Books?

ADVANCE If you’re handed an amount of money after signing a deal, the investor/label keeps royalties from your music until it makes up the given amount. For instance, if you’re given N100k, the signer is entitled to the first N100k of royalties (other revenue sources) from your music. The process of keeping this money until it has been fully recovered is what’s known as Recoupment. For context, an advance used to be recouped from just royalties, now, its mostly from every possible revenue stream of the artist [this varies per deal though, as advance from say distribution/licensing deals can be recouped solely via royalties].

In the final chapter of Blood Meridian, the Kid is a forty-five-year-old drifter who encounters Judge Holden for a final time in a saloon in Fort Griffin, Texas. The two haven’t seen each other in twenty-seven years and though the Kid has transformed into a world-weary adult, Judge Holden “seems little changed or none in all these years” (338). The Judge hasn’t presented himself to the novel’s protagonist one last time to reveal the secrets of his beauty routine.