PicoBlog

Ælfgif-who? provides short biographies of early medieval English women. Click on the podcast player if you’d like to hear this newsletter read aloud in my appealing Yorkshire accent. Sometime in the late seventh century, a teenage girl died. She had been in chronic ill health for some time before she passed away, perhaps since early childhood. A high-status member of the community, she was laid to rest in an ornate bed at the bottom of a grave.

The internet has an amazing way of re-packaging super old concepts and making them seem like these brand new discoveries. Manosphere influencers acting like dating scientists, super impressed at their epiphanies, they’re the protein shake versions of Rousseu giving them flashy new names like ‘Alpha Widows’ which then haunts the psyches of men. But let’s talk about it, let’s not gaslight, let’s actually go down into the depth of the pill and crush it up and see what’s inside.

The truth about everything* is different every week! This week, it’s the turn of THE MADONNA DIARIES, a series of personal essays about Madonna’s back catalogue. Madonna has been catching pelters for most of her career – she’s the most inviting of all the tallest poppies. Whether exposing your sexual hangups in coffee table books or fellating water bottles, she’s always had an innate knack for getting polite society to wrinkle its nose in horror.

The truth about everything* is different every week! This week, it’s the turn of THE MADONNA DIARIES, a series of personal essays about Madonna’s back catalogue. Nineteen eighty-five.  A year beyond even George Orwell’s imagination. Whether it was escaping the spectre of the daddy of dystopian novels, or Annie Lennox going blonde, I couldn’t say, but 198… ncG1vNJzZmismJq0tsXLoqWeql6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn55lpKfCtbSMmpmoraRisbOx0qxksqelYsKx

The Madonna diaries is a series of personal essays about Madonna’s back catalogue (hence the name I guess). It’s part of The truth about everything*, a newsletter with a different feature every week – not always Madonna. This edition: ‘Material Girl’ and the music video that made the world sit up and beg. For paid subscribers, there’s bonus content – ana… ncG1vNJzZmismJq0tsXLoqWeql6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn55lpKfCtbSMmpmoraRiuqLAxKugmqRdnLazuA%3D%3D

The Madonna diaries is a series of personal essays about Madonna’s back catalogue (hence the name I guess). It’s part of The truth about everything*, a newsletter with a different feature every week – not always Madonna. I talk about TV shows, current affairs, columnists, and share my own thoughts on… well, everything really. You can sign up for free to receive some of the regular updates, or become a paid subscriber to get everything.

On the evening of June 1, 2001, a royal blood case that shocked the world took place in Nepal. Nine members of the royal family including King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, Prince Nirajan, Princess Shruti were brutally murdered. The murderer was the king's eldest son, Crown Prince Dipendra! This incident "rewrote" the history of the kingdom of Nepal, leading to the rapid collapse of the Nepal Shah dynasty and monarchy with a history of more than 200 years.

This week’s The truth about everything* is a FLASHBULB. According to the dictionary, a flashbulb memory is ‘an unusually vivid, richly detailed, and long-lasting memory for the circumstances surrounding a dramatic event’. Like a JFK/Princess Diana moment, I guess, but my Flashbulbs are pop cu… ncG1vNJzZmismJq0tsXLoqWeql6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6tn55lpKfCtbSMmpmoraRiwbCwww%3D%3D

Happy Saturday everyone! The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and I’m writing about far-right subcultures on the weekend. Do I need to get a life? Potentially… This morning I was reading The Times and came across a feature titled I swapped my career for life as a traditional wife (for a week) by the journalist Harriet Walker. The article shows her living trad for a week, cooking and cleaning, get her hair done, while her husband takes a break from school pick-up.