PicoBlog

Welcome to Reading Under the Radar, where every Tuesday you’ll receive a book recommendation right to your inbox that hasn’t hit any major lists or book clubs but definitely deserves to be read. The best way to support this newsletter is to become a paid subscriber, but if that isn’t your thing and buying books is, consider sending me a book from my wishlist to review for an upcoming weekly recommendation.

Ted Kaye is the secretary of the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) and author of “Good” Flag, “Bad” Flag, which outlines five basic principles of exceptional flag design. Ahead of the 2023 LA Kit release by the LA Galaxy, Ted stopped by to talk about the symbolism and uniqueness of the flag of Los Angeles, the process of improving it, and the power of flags as representative of the tribes to which we belong.

I love a one pot meal not only for its ease + coziness, but especially because cleanup is so streamlined. The one I make most often is some sort-of meat-vegetable-rice situation and I never make it exactly the same way because it’s always made with a mix of whatever I’ve got on hand. And it’s always great. So instead of sharing a recipe with you today, I thought it’d be more helpful to share a formula that you can riff on.

Si quiere leer la versión en español, pulse aquí. One thing is consistent after the peak of every wave: A highly charged debate on how we move forward as individuals, as a community, as a nation, and as a globe. For example, right now we have one side suggesting to drop masks from here on out and another side that says keep mask mandates. I find both sides problematic, because reality is not binary and the future is unknown.

Everybody has to have a dream. In my case, I have several science related dreams, and one of them is to see one of our lab’s saprobic fungi in actual three dimensions (3-D). I mean one fungus from our set of about 30 isolates with which we have worked during the past 10 years or so. We know a lot about these fungi, but ironically not what they really look like.

Does the world really need another gift guide? I’m not sure, to be honest, but I hope that this one might give you some ideas for things you wouldn’t otherwise have thought of. What you’ll find here are items that either I already have and wholeheartedly recommend because I actually use and love them or things that I covet. What you won’t find is a list of stupidly expensive gifts by designer brands that you already know.

This past week (July 17th, 2023) ViewRay, the maker of MRI linacs declared bankruptcy. And, I’ve kind of been down that path, well, from the side of, “let’s try to put this thing back together.” Following the announcement, I flashed back just a few years to the acquisition of the proton center in OKC via federal bankruptcy. And so today, we’ll take a peek beyond the curtain. I want to be clear, I’m no attorney - this is a bankruptcy of a publicly traded company - a process which I have never been involved in, but today we’ll just cover some basics of the process and where to find credible (hehe) information.

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.I recently had a startling conversation with an incarcerated man named Marvin. You can listen to an excerpt by hitting play on the link above. Marvin told me about something I thought I knew about, but to hear him describe his direct experience on an Alabama prison chain gang shocked me awake. This ugly chapter in our recent history suddenly became less abstract, Marvin’s words painting my plain understanding into vivid color.

Nine years after Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (Thakazhi) published his novel Chemmeen in 1956, the eponymous film went on to win critical acclaim in India and accolades in the film festival at Cannes and Chicago. Chemmeen is a story centered around a tiny fishing community in Alappuzha, Kerala, yet it spoke to the lay person as well as the art critic both in India and abroad. The novel has been translated into many Indian languages as well as Arabic, Russian, German, Italian and French.