PicoBlog

I was recently asked by a close friend to taste and test a variety of non-alcoholic wines. At first, it wasn’t a full hell yeah. It was more of my intent curiosity on the product. I know many wine professionals who won’t call these products wine, and that’s fine. I do understand why, but I don’t want to get into those nuances. I believe non-alcoholic wines can exist alongside traditional vitis vinifera wine.

Spot on, Gary. To wit, in 1979 I write a chatbot that was very revealing to my teenage mind: it was a take on ELIZA called DR. CHALLENGER (since I didn't have access to the source code of Weizenbaum's program; btw the source code of DR. CHALLENGER is available online now). It was a non-directive psychotherapist like ELIZA. It totally fooled my dad, who was amazed, and projected intelligence and awareness into it.

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head. “I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think that God made you for me.” This quote, spoken by Connell, has become one of the most well-known quotes in contemporary literature. Normal People is centered around Marianne and Connell as they navigate their lives from adolescence to adulthood. Their relationship, which is a large part of their young adult lives, is wrought with misunderstanding after misunderstanding.

Hello and welcome to REPLY ALT, the only/greatest newsletter about music in the world. Welp, SELLOUT has been out for a week and the response has been so overwhelming. Every morning I wake up to dozens and dozens and dozens of nice messages from you all. Apologies if I haven’t gotten to all of them but I really appreciate the support! I’ve done approximately 9,000 interviews about the book recently if you want to read/listen to any of em.

One year ago, I attended a pre-football game tailgate party on the Saturday of my 40th reunion weekend in Evanston. Students at the party later complained about my words, and NU cancelled me without talking to me. I escalated to the President, the General Counsel, and the Chair and the Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees. Despite my 7,000+ volunteer hours and $7M+ in donations — NU has not apologized, has not rescinded my cancellation, and (I presume) continues to trample the free speech and due process rights of other Wildcats.

It is a miracle that planes fly at all but it’s an even bigger miracle that a plane can recover from a nosedive. It is a miracle that markets can nosedive and recover as well. Recoveries from nosedives, whether planes or markets, usually end up with better performance than anyone could have imagined. Markets typically go on to exceed all previous known performance records, at least for the last 100 years or so.

The other day I sent my brother a message asking him if he had any photographs of the house or neighborhood we had been growing up in. Shortly after, he sent me this photo above and a few other snapshots. I don’t know whether one of my brothers, my mother or I had taken that photograph, but just by looking at it, I was instantly transported forty years in time back onto the balcony of our apartment where that photo had been made.

Indefinite pronouns are words like anyone, everything, someday, etc. and they are a pain in the butt to teach. (If you're interested in the grammar and why it's hard to teach, take a look at the bottom of this section.) I often take a shortcut and try to use popular songs to show real-world examples: Billy Preston's Nothing from Nothing: Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something, if you wanna be with me.

What makes three women choose to do a year of unpaid work to bring a book to life? I talked to the editors of ‘OTHERHOOD - a soon-to-be-published book of essays about not having children by choice or through circumstance. It’s an important day for Lil O’Brien, Kathryn van Beek and Alie Benge. The three women are successful authors, respected writers, and share another common thread - for various reasons, they don’t have children.