PicoBlog

*Spoilers Alert — Major reveals ahead* It’s done. I braced myself for the impact of the last 7 episodes with some vague sense that tragedy was afoot and finding the final act not as objectionable as I was led to believe. Not perfect of course but acceptable. Oh believe me, I shed tears. Sobbed like a baby in parts but apart from the last couple of episodes, most of the main cast got a decent send-off consistent with who they are.

What do you do? When what you’re looking at looks like fake news, smells like fake news, but actually isn’t fake news? Or when what you’re looking at seems like hate speech but actually isn’t? Or it feels like it should be illegal but isn’t? This is normal, everyday stuff in our information ecosystem. Where some of the most dangerous words are suggestive and coded in what seems like normal speech.

This week’s What’s Alan Watching? newsletter coming up just as soon as I hire Pasek and Paul to write a song explaining how to pronounce my name… The best thing I did for myself over the past week was to binge all three seasons of Welcome to Wrexham, the wonderful FX docu-series about Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ purchase of a down-trodden Welsh football club. But it was also the worst thing I did to myself, because I spent a good chunk of the binge wondering why in the hell it took me this long to watch something so clearly micro-targeted to me.

When I was thirteen or so, a box arrived at our home from the south of France with my name on it. There was nothing surprising in this— my brother was attending the University of Montpellier at the time and boxes from Doug arrived every couple of weeks. Inside were all the usual things I had come to expect from him: the small blue containers of photo slides depicting nondescript close ups of Romanesque architecture; the beach-foraged scallop shells individually and obsessively wrapped in paper towels and celotape; the Princess Grace death memorabilia*.

Essential updates on the law from Joshua Rozenberg KC (hon), the UK's most experienced full-time legal commentator. Enemies of the People? is his most recent book. See also: joshuarozenberg.com By Joshua Rozenberg · Over 16,000 subscribersNo thanksncG1vNJzZmiqn6%2Byr67Eq55nq6WXwLWtwqRlnKedZA%3D%3D

One of the personal finance podcasts I began listening to at the start of my financial transformation last year is one many of you probably know. It was the Money Guy Show, with hosts Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. They taught me my greatest lesson on compounding. They caught my attention with a prop. As seen on their YouTube stream, their wittily worded koozie worked like a charm on me.

Hey y’all, It felt like I spent the weekend in another century: Riding my bicycle, chopping wood, and obsessively reading Roget’s Thesaurus. Let me explain that last item. I have always assumed — and maybe you have, too — that a thesaurus is just a synonym dictionary, the words arranged alphabetically with a list of synonyms and antonyms below. Somehow, every thesaurus I’d ever come across — even ones with “Roget” in the title!

Let me acknowledge right off that Yonas Biru and I have not seen eye-to-eye in the past. He once put forward a scheme for sanctions, and having lived briefly in a country where I witnessed first-hand how sanctions did nothing to stop a brutal regime, I had a few criticisms. He didn’t like that. He fired back in a tweet, “Tell him #NoMore crap didn’t sto… ncG1vNJzZmiilZuzsb7Oqaylq5mku2%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ixn6OutHnBoqmuZZFiuarA06WcZqSVqMBur86nm56rk5q7tLXOpw%3D%3D

On Good Friday 59 years ago Walter Pahnke, a Protestant minister, MD, and Harvard Divinity School graduate student, gave twenty divinity students capsules to consume before attending a Good Friday service. Half of those students were plunged into their first psilocybin trip, while the other half remained sober on a placebo. Between 24 and 27 years later, Rick Doblin, Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) found the original participants and conducted a follow-up study to understand the long-term effects of these student’s 1962 Good Friday experience.