PicoBlog

I’m sounding the alarm. I’m shouting it from the rooftops. I’m telling anyone who will listen. It can happen here. The “it” in this case is fascism. In the United States, founded as a democratic republic, we now face the urgent threat of an authoritarian regime taking over our political mechanism and depriving us of our voice through the vote. The United States has never fully extended democracy to all people, but the tenuous thread of democratic freedoms we have might be severed as soon as the November 2024 presidential election.

Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre might be my favorite cinematic version of the Dracula story (followed very closely by Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish, erotic and blood-soaked Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though the two are very different.) I think it takes the top spot mainly because of how it doubles down on the idea of the wicked Count as a metaphor for disease and pestilence. Dracula, as a character, has always had to balance his twin needs for affection and apocalypse, and it’s cool to see Herzog play with the former as almost a victim of the latter.

There I was on Monday, catching up on my RSS feed when, all of a sudden, to my pleasant surprise, I scrolled upon a New York Times review of BABYLON BERLIN season four, which has taken eons (four years) to be released in the United States. “Dancing While the World Begins to Burn,” proclaimed the Times headline. Subhead: “The long-awaited fourth season of the cult-favorite German thriller takes place in 1931, with the Nazis not quite in power.

Sassy love advice, unadulterated rants, and cautionary tales for hopeful romantics and recovering love cynics, with a behind-the-scenes look into the life and heart of love coach Shaun Galanos. By Shaun Galanos · Over 8,000 subscribersNah. Let me in. ncG1vNJzZmirmJbCr7PApZinp6NjwLau0q2YnKNemLyuew%3D%3D

Aryana Rose told a story at The Moth’s Houston StorySLAM in 2015, but I just came across it when a friend shared The Moth’s Instagram Reel of her performance last week. My world stopped. By the end of it I found myself just lying in my bed, crying. I watched it two more times, and cried two more times. This is one of the most beautiful love stories I have ever heard.

My ambition to read at least one Irish writer per month is getting off to a grand start. A friend (Hi John!) sent me a copy of Tana French’s The Searcher and said it was one of his favorite books of 2020. Now French isn’t Irish; she was born in Vermont, but she has lived in Ireland for 30 years. She has written an immensely popular crime series about Dublin cops that I have no interest in reading.

The Mac’s Newsletter By The Mac’s Our Goal and Mission is to share with Subscribers our thoughts and perspective on serious issues that we may not can share on our other platforms. We want to share our heart with you and hoping you find guidance and wisdom for you and your family. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kvbO7xaKjnmdhZ4Rzgo9rbmxlpJ2ybrnAnKo%3D

Almost a year ago, I read a book that truly blew my mind and has stayed with me ever since. Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving, by Caitlyn Collins, is a cross-cultural examination of working motherhood in four Western societies: Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Though a series of in-depth interviews, it becomes clear that American mothers are not only more stressed than our European peers—but we also much more likely to blame ourselves for our perpetual overwhelm.

Among the tens of millions of Americans who find Donald Trump abhorrent, a grave threat to our nation’s future, and a purveyor of divisiveness and deceit, the question looms: what to make of the other millions who support him, often with something akin to religious fervor? The steadfast devotion of Trump’s base has sparked widespread analysis of it as a cult-like movement. It has led to soul-searching about whether a broad swath of America really believes in a pluralistic constitutional republic based on freedom and democracy.