PicoBlog

Before we get into it, I want to thank all of you for your support after reading the last story here about what happened last month. I feel the love and cannot even begin to express how much it means. The sweet and motivating words, donations, and orders from my shop have truly helped bring light into a dark time. Thank you, thank you. Alright, let’s do it. As many know, one of the fastest ways to consume powdery sugar all at once is with Pixy Stix.

WHEN I FIRST MET UP with Fen Grass-of-Parnassus, about 25 years ago, the attraction was, I freely admit, all physical and not the least bit intellectual or even carnal. My fondness for this plant came by way of its long, elegant stems bearing a single symmetrical flower of white petals marked with pert, green striping. And even though it had me at those petals, Fen Grass-of-Parnassus also flashed reproductive parts surrounded by an unusual array of 15 glassy, yellow orbs.

I lost a sister, a true sibling this last weekend. Over the last few days, I’ve struggled to encapsulate all there is to say about her role in the community, the gall, the gumption, the glamour, and the grit. I didn’t intend on this journal becoming so much about queer death and memorializing, but then again earlier this year, after intuitive Asher Hartmann told me I had a debt to my dead community, my cousin Peter extended that concept to “all our loved ones living in the margins, on the edges, the ghosts to be”.

Last week, San Francisco startup Fable Studio announced an ‘AI Showrunner’ capable of generating a full-length, fake South Park episode written, animated, directed, and voiced based on a single prompt. It sparked the necessary controversy. It sparked controversy because we’re currently in the midst of one of the biggest strikes in showbiz history. A strike partly ignited by the fear of AI. The last thing you want to hear is that there’s this company claiming it has managed to outsource every meaningful part of creating a TV-show to a computer program.

Did you know that "leftism" causes mental illness, and fossil fuels are the greenest form of energy? Are you aware that voter suppression is a myth, America is on the path to leftist totalitarianism, and teachers and professors are training students to become radical activists? I encountered these claims on the website of PragerU, an unaccredited right-wing propaganda company whose products have been approved for use in Florida classrooms. PragerU delivers a steady flow of conspiracy theories, racism, homophobia, anti-feminism, and neoliberalism.

Carolyn Bessette Kennedy never wanted to be famous. Yet she has endured as one of the most significant fashion icons of the last century. More than 20 years after she died at age 33 in the summer of 1999 in a plane crash with her husband John F. Kennedy Jr. and sister Lauren off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, she remains a nineties legend, locked in a social media exposure loop the way she once was in print tabloids.

{Note: Nothing below is intended as legal advice to any party. If you need legal representation for any reason, including but not limited to any of the matters discussed in this article, seek an attorney in your area. The author of this article is a bar-admitted attorney in inactive/retired status who occasionally writes about the law as a journalist, not a currently practicing lawyer.} As some of you may recall, in the summer of 2021 RETRO published a series of articles about WATA Games, by far the highest-profile video game grading outfit in the fast-growing graded-game collecting arena (see also here and here).

Each summer, we spend some time in the Rocky Mountains. This year, after the wet winter, the Colorado hills are blooming with all kinds of beautiful things—larkspur, penstemon, yarrow. Batches of aster. Even the sage feels freshly scrubbed and bright. But I’m always on the lookout for mariposa lilies. This genus arose seven million years ago in what is now California, and dozens of species are now spread throughout the west from BC to Guatemala.

This is Life is a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.🌱 As always, a reminder that subscriptions get you more goodies for your bang (and those goodies will get even goodier in the ye… ncG1vNJzZmikmZuyqr%2FArJicqpWZwabE02eqrpqjqa6kt42cpqZnoGSubrLEsGSnp6SawG67zWaYq6xdlruledOhnGasopa7tK%2FEp5uepqQ%3D