PicoBlog

Hi. Welcome to Sports Stories, an illustrated newsletter at the intersection of sports and history.  If you’re not already a subscriber, please consider joining up here — we have both free and paid options. If you enjoy Sports Stories, please share it with your friends. Word of mouth is our best (and only) means of publicity.  You can also buy some merch, including shirts, hats, zines, and postcards, at our very cool web store.

Dear friends and supporters: One of the most interesting, intriguing Christian thinkers today is the reclusive British author Stephen C. Perks, Founder and Director of the Kuyper Foundation. His latest book, Disciple the Nations (hardcopy for sale as well as free downloadable PDF here), characteristically blunt, bold, and iconoclastic, argues that Christians throughout history have seriously undervalued the kingdom of God, severely misdefined the church, and fatally sabotaged biblical truth. Within the space of 80 pages, Stephen manages to summarize most of the themes addressed in his previous 11 books.

This week, I'm bringing you a concept from the eastern part of the world. It’s a Korean word. Nunchi. Nunchi is not a distant concept. Even a book, The Power of Nunchi: The Korean Secret to Happiness and Success, has been written about it. I'm surprised that I just recently discovered it. In any case, let me express my late epiphany using a Turkish proverb: Let it be late but not difficult.

So, in Sunday’s New York Times there was a very long, detailed article about a seemingly very strange Trump White House pardon to a young man, Jonathan Braun, who had ties to the Kushner family. According to The Times, Braun was serving a 10-year sentence for trafficking marijuana and cooperating with a federal investigation, when the pardon came down the pike. As a result the government lost a key witness and a major investigation into predatory lending was stalled.

A collection of gonzo musings, opinions, and light exploration on culture, both high and low, popular and niche, the individuals that create it, and the beasts that haunt it, among other things. By Yakubian Ape · Launched a year agoNo thanksncG1vNJzZmixkaDCo7XAp5ipnV6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpw

Okay, people. Maybe this isn’t one you had on your 2024 travel plans, but I’m telling you right now: if you want the natural beauty of both mountains and oceans—oh yeah, and great food—you need to plan a vacation to a tiny corner of Spain. It’s called Asturias. And of course I have a place in my heart for it, because it was where I was born. It was in a small town called Mieres del Camín, just south of the town of Oviedo, about 20 miles from the coastal city of Gijón.

I’ve been on the Suffolk coast, in an attempt to get some book written. (It worked! Ish.) East Anglia, as anyone who’s been there or indeed ever looked at a map of it will know, is vast and empty, perhaps 1.5 million people in an area bigger than New Jersey. When your second biggest settlement is Ipswich, you know you’re not dealing with a heavily urbanised area.  It wasn’t always that way, though.

Come here often? If you do and you’re glad, please tap that ❤️ button above. It makes the festive fairy lights flash on and off in my living room. Ask Val answers your urgent questions, Vol. 32 Yes, you with a handful of—are those mascara wands? Q: I have short, sparse lashes and yearn for thicker, longer ones. A lot of lash serums claim to help with that,… ncG1vNJzZmiukaGys7XEpqanqp%2Bae7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZq2glWK5or%2FHrWSwp6KZerC6jKWYrKBdqLKzwcys

Subscriber, I must interrupt the post-Christmas, pre-New Years holiday interregnum to let you know that yesterday between 2:00 and 3:30am, I had one of the most moving, transformative, catharsis-as-the-Greeks-intended-it reading experiences of my adult life. The kind of experience that reawakens one to fiction’s potential to change lives and move needles both political and metaphysical, that reminds me why exactly I’ve chosen do the work I do. In the intervening time I have slept (a little) and gotten a tattoo of a bully breed as a Ghibli river spirit, but have not been able to stop thinking about the strange and powerful alchemy between myself and this book, particularly its last 43 pages.