PicoBlog

I've lived in Seoul the past four years, and the commentary that Bella's mother allowed/encouraged modifications at such a young age is completely normal here, and a sign of status and wealth and educational accomplishment (a combination of Western-influenced beauty standards and a Confucian-infused caste system). Students (girls and boys) are gifted plastic surgery--nose, eyes, jaws, teeth, ears--for good grades, middle school/high school/university graduation, job promotions, before weddings, etc. Photos are required for job applications, and children look nothing like their mothers.

Yeah, I actually like Winona's performance for the most part, but Keanu struggled. Coppola tried to convince him not to do the accent, or just relax and not try so hard with it, and apparently Keanu was so hardcore about nailing the accent it just came across and horribly stiff and weird. It also didn't help that the character of Jonathan Harker IS kind of a non-entity bore. Expand full comment

This was the most profoundly disappointing meal we had in our three week stay in Paris. The waitstaff were pleasant and enthusiastic, but their enthusiasm was more focused on moving us swiftly and efficiently through our meal and out than on attending to our comfort or anticipating our wishes. The back dining room was cramped in a way that these days only the ones catering mainly to tourists seem to be … just a bit tighter than some of our favorite places but there’s a line between feeling that one is building a ship in a bottle when being seated and having more sense of what one’s neighbor is saying than of one’s partner across the table.

Thank you for sharing this with us Jessica. Your vulnerability and openness is so welcome and valued here. ❤️ This quote particularly resonated with me - ‘To trust another takes even more strength, more vulnerability, emotional risk and uncertainty. When this isn’t matched it’s devastating but I’ve found there are those who simply, even though they might care, cannot handle it, who cannot sit with us in our pain. I often wonder how these people would deal with such an event happening to them’.

Very good article! Sadly, there is a lot of bullshit said and done in the name of religion. (One very positive point about the northern German lutheran church I grew up in is that there is relatively little bullshit.) The story in the last paragraph is nice and really heartwarming, and indeed a great miracle. Expand full comment ncG1vNJzZmiglaO%2FurbEn52rnamoe7TBwayrmpubY7CwuY6pZp2hlGK3pr%2FUrGSdqpmjuG7DyKecaJuforqmutOs

This week’s newsletter and recipe is dedicated to my friend Tim Snow who passed away on Sunday. Tim and I originally connected through my newsletter. He was always the first to comment with something supportive and funny. I was able to meet him in San Francisco in person on my book tour in 2022, where he brought a crew of his good friends who were equally as lovely. Tim always made me feel special and as though we'd been friends forever.

The ancient intuition, corroborated only in our more profound states of attention and intentionality, of identity — not as a fixed or nameable commodity but more like a meeting, a call-and-answer song, a continual surprise. This surprise identity is one with equally surprising allies in the world, like the colour blue or a sudden doorway, or even a soap dish or a window latch — an identity that is enriched and deepened the more we pay attention to what is other than ourselves.

I know it seemed as if he gloried in it, and at times he certainly did, especially when it put him in the limelight, and during his rallies (which mirrored those of Hitler at Nuremberg), but I’m inclined to think that he came to rue his decision to take on the presidency because he never would have faced the legal challenges he does now if he’d stayed just a corrupt real estate mogul and TV celebrity in New York.

Yeah, I get where you’re coming from and I’m very skeptical of how entitled game consumers can be, too. We don’t get the games without the devs, after all, and I try to be mindful of that. But to argue my/justin’s/the consumer’s side here, there’s kind of nothing more broken than just not being able to play the thing. I’m between 9 or 10 hours on Steam and I’ve played 4 or 5 missions, honestly less than 2 hours game time.