PicoBlog

Someone asked me recently whether I want to revisit this post from last November: There is no social media alternative. So, you want to pack your bags and leave Twitter? Be my guest. I will meet you in the airport boarding area, where the destinations are all … obscure. Seriously, Twitter has managed over the years to become an indispensable part of the global information ecosystem even as it failed to become a profitable business.

There are snipers on the roof of the school where I got my MA. There are police beating students at the school where I got my PhD. At each school, I studied authoritarian regimes and how they brainwash people into believing that state brutality is not only expected, but deserved. *          *          * At Indiana University, I wrote my master’s thesis on how the government of Uzbekistan invented a terrorist group, “Akromiya,” in order to justify their killing of over seven hundred protesters in the city of Andijon in May 2005.

Theresa Reed (aka “The Tarot Lady”) is a Tarot expert, astrologer, teacher and author who has been reading Tarot for over thirty years. She is the author of Twist Your Fate: Manifest Success with Astrology and Tarot and about a dozen other books. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjbW0xK2Yq6ekoa6lxQ%3D%3D

Have you ever asked a sports fanatic why they root for the team they do? I love hearing those origin stories. We all have them. For example, I’m a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan because I was born and bred to be, per my father’s influence. He used to take me to the Cowboys/Giants game at Metlife Stadium and teach me about the game. Eventually, I went off to college and started following the season in my dorm, solidifying myself as a true, dedicated fan.

2023 is in the books, and with it another year of D3 NIL deals. At the moment, it appears there are two models D3 schools are pursuing: Setting up an NIL marketplace for athletes using a service like Opendorse Supporting the establishment of a school-related collective that sponsors NIL deals (Note: Collectives are a separate le… ncG1vNJzZmicY5m2s7HCrWWsrZKowaKvymeaqKVfpXy1tMSsnGacY6h6or7EZpihnZGZerC6jKegpQ%3D%3D

N.B. There’s a cryptic crossword puzzle at the end of this article! If you’re new to cryptics or want to brush up, my quick cryptic crosswords crash course begins here. I don’t want to sound too alarmist, but they walk among us. We thought they were dead, but they clung to life through a loophole, travelers from a distant past living tourist lives in the host homes they have somehow carved out of our alien present.

Thanks for asking, Tim. I would say the think in decades as that is what I have been doing for several. Now that I am where I am in my life, I feel the best quote would be: “Some people are just meant to win. Life will delay them. Life will confuse them. But they simply never stop. Eventually, exponential opportunities will collide with their experience.  Then, when they do succeed, it’s like it happened overnight.

As part of my pre-March Madness college basketball research, I like to look at data points that could be leading indicators for success in the NCAA tournament. There are a number of these to choose from, including the coaching research I did the other day as well as a few factors we used to include in our Giant Killers model at ESPN. But today, let’s look a couple of my absolute favorite tried-and-true methods of identifying teams that could be better than expected in the tourney.

Thessaly La ForceFreelance writer and lapsed magazine editor. I'm a mother of two, a frequent contributor to The New York Times. I'm working on a novel. Here, an attempt to think on the page about ideas, culture, life, motherhood, and whatever else, honestly. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjbW0xKyqmqSp