PicoBlog

In this newsletter: Preliminary thoughts on a pressing question. Plus, a podcast update on the pandemic and, as always, some words of advice. The scariest animal is a mouse-sized cockroach flying at you from seven feet up your bedroom wall. The scariest animal is a polar bear. The scariest animal is a very large rat inside of your apartment. The scariest animal is a very large rat inside of your toilet bowl.

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.We are nearing the release of two big summer films: Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. July 21, 2023 is being referred to as “Barbenheimer.” As a film lover, there’s a lot about these movies that has me curious. What will the films look like? How will they tell these stories? And what kind of music will they feature? Years ago I came across an interview with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan (whose other films include The Dark Knight, Inception, and Dunkirk) where he spoke about the role music plays in his films.

The 'disadvantage gap' in the South West is worse than the national average at all stages. This means that a child experiencing disadvantage will start at primary school around five months behind their peers. When they leave secondary school twelve years later, this gap will have widened, with the most vulnerable children in our communities finishing school almost two years behind their friends [🔗]. While shocking, these aren’t extreme examples; these are average figures, typical experiences and expected outcomes.

Greetings, You can listen to the Lowdown on Apple podcasts (below) We are also on Spotify, Android, Amazon and every other podcast host I hope this newsletter, like my journalism for the Observer, has never consisted solely of knee-jerk left-wing reactions. Anyone with any knowledge of 20th century history knows that the left can inflict misery just as easily and viciously as the right. For this reason, I was delighted to welcome Yascha Mounk to the Lowdon podcast.

I was reading an interview with author Michael Cunningham (The Hours, Day) in Vanity Fairrecently when the columnist asked the most interesting question: What is your most prized possession? Cunningham’s answer was envious. “A handwritten note by Virginia Woolf. It’s like a hybrid of object and living thing.” The interviewer didn’t ask what the note said, which I believed was a missed opportunity since that’s all I wanted to know.

:(){ :|:& };:That simple line has been crashing systems in the Linux world for years — It is known as the (infamous) “BASH Fork Bomb”. When run in a GNU/BASH shell, this BASH variant of the Fork Bomb will bring your average Linux system to its knees, lickety-split. A mere handful of characters that can cause a computer to cry “Uncle.” But what, exactly, is a “Fork Bomb”? How do they work?

Once or twice a year, the St. Patrick’s Youth Center on Mulberry Street turns into a massive fitting room for the Rachel Comey sample sale. It is my Super Bowl, and one of the few things I wait in line for. It’s common for people to start queueing up outside early in the morning before the doors even open. I am one of those sickos, usually within the first 10 people in line (I’m bragging but also owning myself).

Justin Matthews was 17 years old when he was first recruited to be a model for SeanCody.com, a gay pornography website founded in the fall of 2001. The money seemed good enough ($2,500 for a solo video), but mostly he was excited for the opportunity to escape Alabama. He waited a few months until his 18th birthday, and then, under the name Taylor, went on to shoot a number of scenes for them between 2011 and 2014.

Reminder: Uni Watch’s time on Substack will be coming to a close in late May. After that, I’ll be taking a break for at least a month, and then my Substack will return in the summer with a new name and a new subject focus. To learn more about all of this, including what it will mean for those of you with paid subscriptions, look here. — Paul A few weeks ago I published an interview with former Nike art director Tom Andrich — the man who created the NFL’s Color Rush program.