PicoBlog

Welcome to Flashlight & A Biscuit, my Saturday-morning Southern culture offshoot of my work at Yahoo Sports. If you’re just arriving for the first time, why not subscribe? It’s free and all. Today in issue #68: Delving into State Fair of Texas foods/crimes against nature Passing out in a food coma Grooving to some Dallas soul Let’s get to it … Does Texas count as part of the South? For the purposes of today, I’m saying yes.

A newsletter about visions, transformation, and writing. Currently, I'm focused on writing a serialized memoir about my former life as an Evangelical. By Constance Ford · Launched 8 months agoNo thanks“@Constance Ford’s serialized memoir of a soul-stifling marriage is much more than a newsletter! You’ll be rooting for her and eager to read the next installment, as I am. ” ncG1vNJzZmibn6PAta3NnJyfp6KZe7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY4%3D

So I’ve gone ahead and removed this apology, for the simple reason that it’s pretty much exclusively shared in bad faith by anonymous accounts looking to dunk or whatever. I made a sincere and unqualified apology in this space out of a feeling of intense personal moral necessity, and doing so was important to me if not to anyone else. I have a certain amount of “work” to do regarding my behavior towards Malcolm Harris, and apologizing in a no-bullshit and unqualified way was an important part of that.

I do my best to stay positive. Despair isn’t an option when you’ve settled into a long-haul fight like the one we have in front of us for abortion rights. But I must admit, there are times when keeping my head up is harder than others.  This week, I did back-to-back events in Michigan and Florida—going from speaking to a roomful of college students in Grand Rapids to an audience of women in their 60s, 70s and 80s at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in Palm Beach.

My morning ritual begins by checking my text messages, followed by pruning my inbox from companies trying to sell me things and then setting my daily agenda. Today was no different but as I checked off empty white boxes next to eComms that would soon be directed to the trash, I received a scheduled email to myself, from myself to watch Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story which was released today on Netflix.

Stealth Startup Spy is a data-driven newsletter for investors, journalists and tech enthusiasts interested in uncovering the next big move for key talent, real-time stealth company launches and technology advancements not in plain sight. We leverage the technology built at Gravity to track billions of data points to help you identify tomorrow's opportunities that are currently hiding in the shadows. These signals include tracking the inflows and outflows of talent who work at “Stealth Startups”, bios and profile changes to “building something new” and monitoring press releases to shine a light on the hidden world of stealth startups.

If you are familiar with certain corners of the political newsletter/podcast ecosystem, you have probably encountered the term “steel-manning.”  Steel-manning is a term and practice that came about in reaction to the sense that a lot of folks in the political pundit business were framing their arguments in response to the weakest — and perhaps even distorted or outright fake — of their opponents’ arguments. In doing so, they were tearing down strawmen.

The Daily Mail called him the “Sith Lord” of the art world, the New York Times annointed him as the art world’s Patron Satan”, while the Wall Street Journal described him as the dealer the art world “loves to hate”. Californian voters aren’t too keen on him either, with only 0.24% voting for him in January as the Republican candidate for Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat. Yes, we’re talking about Stefan Simchowitz, the notoriously disruptive Los Angeles based entrepreneur who has built an enormously controversial art empire.

Stephen Bruton deserved to live forever, like the Billy Joe Shaver tune sang a capella by Robert Duvall during the credits of Crazy Heart. "Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Bruton” were the words on the screen, both cruel and comforting. Yes, he’ll live on in his music, his spirit, but Bruton was much more than that. The beloved Austin musician and mentor was taken away 15 years ago today at age 60 while at a career peak, bravely battling throat cancer as he co-wrote and co-supervised the music for the acclaimed Crazy Heart.