PicoBlog

This story originally appeared in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji in 2014. TOKYO — Have you ever chewed tobacco? Did you ever stick a wad of tobacco in your cheek or a piece of snuff under your lip, spit out the juice and then get a feel-good buzz from the nicotine left over? If you have then you are probably not Japanese, because most people in this country think that chewing tobacco or dipping snuff is a truly disgustingly filthy habit.

In my last post, WhenWhite Lies are Pink Flags, I covered a self-promoting tactic in which leaders advertise their own successes or accomplishments. I believe it is important to raise awareness about self-promoting tactics because time and time again I come across situations in which abuse survivors and concerned bystanders can point to narcissistic and self-promoting words and actions displayed by the more powerful destructive person. I’m not concerned with appropriate explanations of one’s success or connections (like in a job interview) but with the repeated and habitual use of one’s success or connections for personal gain at the expense of another’s well-being.

Share Hegseth, Pete, and David Goodwin. Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. Broadside Books, 2022. (paid link) Battle for the American Mind is, as the title suggests, a polemic. It is not a scholarly work, and it is not the work of academics. As a sort of academic myself, I know that academics often get the details right through painstaking efforts of erudition, but fail to tell a true or honest story about the whole.

Panipat, famous for its battles, is a nondescript textile town 80 kilometers north of Delhi which you can pass through on NH1 (Mughal Shah Rah) without noticing anything remarkable.   But this is a place replete with history, where 3 medieval battles which altered the fate of India, were fought. In fact, there were 3 recent movies involving some of the dramatis personae who figured in these 3 battles: - “Jodha Akbar”, “Bajirao Mastani “and “Panipat”.

It's so hard to be a fan today. This morning I was reading "The Darkside of Fandom," the latest post by musician/writer/statistics wizard Chris Dalla Riva on his Substack, . It's an interview with a woman who was "exiled" from the One Direction "stan," or super-fan community, for some act or acts of apostasy. It made me sad, these internecine wars that so often characterize K-Pop, Swiftdom, boy bands, hip-hop, and other fan communities in the rotting world of social media.

Upon its November 2008 release in US movie theaters, Baz Lurhmann’s big budget historical epic romance Australia became a critical and commercial flop. 15 years to the day later, Faraway Downs - an extended 6-episode television revision of the film - is set to premiere as an original series for the Hulu streaming service.* *Only in the US though. Internationally, it will be known as a Star+ Original in Latin America and a Disney+ original in Europe, Asia, and other territories.

In Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, the highest grossing Shakespeare film ever, the lovers get married in a big, beautiful church. Where do they actually marry, according to Shakespeare’s text? In Friar Laurence’s small, windowless “cell.” Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedEverything we did in [Romeo + Juliet] was about being inspired by Shakespeare… Everything is text based. —Baz LuhrmannThis November 1st is a significant date in the world of Shakespeare studies: the 25th anniversary of the release of Baz Luhrmann’s MTV-style version of Romeo and Juliet starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes.

Dear Classical Wisdom Reader, Well, if you thought it was going to be a clear and cut case... then think again!  Last week I asked if we should use the BC/AD system... or the BCE/CE, with a (very short) history lesson explaining that the more ‘modern’ abbreviations were introduced by Kepler in the 1600s.  Not only were the responses massively divided, the respondents were hugely diverse themselves... as well as highly qualified to weigh in on the topic.

What a horrible loss. What an unspeakable tragedy. The worst part of these things—what made Prince and Weatherall and Huck, and now this, all hit like a frying pan to the head—is knowing they weren’t done yet, that they’d been cut off mid-sentence. I’ve written here before—in my third post, no less—about the amazing performance I saw Silent Servant give in Minneapolis pre-pandemic, at the Loring Bar on August 17, 2018.