PicoBlog

Giwiizhaamin By Alexandera Houchin An Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe woman) writes about her adventures and examines existential life quandaries that emerge. Currently raising money and saving to build a training and fitness facility in and for my Tribal Community. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjaK4xLGYp5yVp66pu9Scn6Km

The death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison camp Feb. 16 prompted a wave of eulogies from Western politicians and media, Canada summoning the Russian ambassador in protest, and the immediate accusation that Russian President Vladimir Putin had had the Western-backed opposition leader killed. Such accusations may or may not be true; the authoritarian Putin has long been credibly linked to the assassination of his political rivals. But the campaign to portray Navalny as some liberal hero of democracy and human rights—perhaps reaching its height with the 2022 film Navalny, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature—is pure fiction, a Western propaganda invention.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci. I Feel Bad About My Neck, the redux. —Kate Maybe it’s because I’m currently reading my advance copy of Sara Petersen’s Momfluenced—in which she gives Embedded a shoutout!—but I’ve been thinking a lot about how motherhood is portrayed in this new era of performance media. You’ll have to pre-order Petersen’s book to read her (much more coherent) thoughts on that.

Farley Granger, Dick Hogan, John Dall, Rope, Warner Bros. NOTE: This essay was originally meant to appear as a part of Slashfilm’s “Movies Are Gay” Pride month series, which was canceled one week into what was planned as a month-long run, though you can read a new list version of the series here. The version that appears here has been edited slightly since there is no longer a word count constraint.

Taking notes, I’ve come to realize, is a form of collecting. I’ve never been interested in collecting physical things, but when it comes to beautiful literary quotes, I have thousands of notebook entries. Over the past twenty years, I’ve seen nearly a thousand individual notebooks in archives across the US and UK. So, when I saw Kinsey’s notes, I recogn… ncG1vNJzZmiimaG5qq3NoZysq16owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6ao5%2BqlZl6rLXNrJyyq12jvLWx0mamp2WRorKztcKapaw%3D

Hopefully you haven’t noticed, but for the past two months, I’ve been knee-deep in a project that has me spinny busy. Cooking, cleaning, and grocery-shopping starts before 6 AM and stops at [redacted]. Rinse, wash, repeat. This pace doesn’t leave time for idea marination, endless tinkering, and “what if…?”, so every time I start on an idea for this newsletter, it gets abandoned prematurely. It might have potential, but my patience and attention can’t bring it to life right now.

This week’s publication of Understated focuses on the life of Alice Clement, the first woman detective in the history of the Chicago PD, possibly even the United States. You’ll notice a theme in this week’s issue, and to be frank, we do not know very much about Alice Clement beyond the following: She was known as the “female Sherlock Holmes” and is most famous for how she solved The Dulcimer Murder.

The Vanderbilts were one of the most prominent families of the so-called “Gilded Age.” At one point they were the wealthiest family in America. But this picture tells a very different story. Painted by John Singer Sargent when he visited the United States in 1888 it depicts the highly gifted 13 year old Alice Shepard. As a young girl she had fallen out of a tree and sustained injuries to her spine that would cause her severe discomfort and curtail her ability to leave the house.

"Aliens" holds a special place in my heart. It was around its release in 1986 that my love of movies escalated from a childhood fascination into a lifelong passion. Not coincidentally, that was also the summer I got my first official job -- at a movie theater, not surprisingly. This was in the day when popular movies would hang around in cinemas longer than two weekends, and I remember we were still selling plenty of tickets for "