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To quote Berryman’s elegy for Faulkner, “The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who’s there?” It took me about 15 years to appreciate Cormac McCarthy, from my teenaged recoil when (under orders from Harold Bloom) I first tried and failed at Blood Meridian to an admiration in my mid-30s cultivated by teaching All the Pretty Horses several times and coming to grasp its beauty and depth; admittedly the sentimentalist’s choice, it may still be my favorite of his novels, all of which I have read by now.

Cornballs are both a comfort food and a nutritionally dense powerhouse. Traditionally made from buffalo tallow, ground corn, and wild-harvested berries, they have long been a staple for our tribal nations—a traveling food that keeps you satiated during long trips, and lasts a long while. These days, they are something of a delicacy, and people make them for fundraisers or as gifts. Most cooks modify the traditional recipe to incorporate different types of tallow or berries, but the end product is quite similar to the original.

Welcome back to After School Weekend Edition, a weekly trend debrief for paid subscribers.💫 Today we’re talking about: Sydney Sweeney, professional shiller. The rebranding of Kylie Jenner (and a throwback to the time I interviewed her). Cowboycore. Big PromTok drama. Sofia Richie Grainge’s 10 (10!!!) concurrent brand deals. Hot tankini summer. Micro shorts. The new “it” Ugg. Matilda Djerf’s Soho beauty salon. Elf’s collab with Liquid Death is good, actually. The Street Fighter TikTok trend.

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! You can also gift a subscription to a friend, family member, even a healthcare practitioner! Correlation never ever, never ever, never ever implies causation. This is burned into my brain because my first research methods professor made us say it out loud, repeatedly, every single class for the entire semester. It is at the very root of how research is conducted, and what conclusions can (and can’t) be drawn.

Hey, There, So, here in Month 7 of the Weirdest, Worst Time, I’ve gotten really into Neil Young. If you know me, you’ve probably seen this sort of thing before. This just seems to be one of the ways I interface with music; I go deep on some artist, for whatever reason. Neil Young, holding a guitar so valuable that attaching a numerical value to it is probably impossible, and which he has decided to stick a Santa Cruz sticker onto

Corvids are a family of birds that are bold and brainy.  Some even consider them beautiful.  They seem to be more and more ubiquitous (though this may have something to do with aging). I have been intrigued by those black creatures since I was 10 and found a crow hopping about in a mangled field where a vast orange grove once stood.  Its left wing had been all but shot off.  I captured it in my jacket and took it home where we had an old pigeon cage.

In a follow-up on the dengue outbreak in Costa Rica, the Ministry of Health reports 4,787 total dengue cases through February 10 this year, a 1,260 percent increase compared to the 352 cases reported during the same period in 2023. The Central North region reports the highest accumulated notification of dengue cases so far this year with 1,228 cases, followed by the Central Pacific with 832 and the Central South with 762 cases.

Quick bit of good news before we get started! We’re excited to share that Sports Stories was among the recipients of an Independent Writer Grant from our publishing platform, Substack. If you are a new subscriber who found us that way -- welcome. And if you are a longtime subscriber, thank you for reading, and for spreading the word about Sports Stories. Also: next week we’ll be doing our follow-up to Sports Stories Jr.

Greg Gnys and Joe Sartor are from areas roughly 25 minutes apart. But because the universe works in weird ways and often has a goofy sense of humor, the pair didn’t meet until they were more than 2,600 miles (or 4,200 kilometers, since we’re talking about Canada) away from home. While living in British Columbia, Canada, Gnys and Sartor realized they shared a vision of bringing the community together through beer and food.