PicoBlog

Our Struggle returns[episode link], and this time with highly prestigious guest Christian Lorentzen! In addition to being our new token Gen X friend, Christian is a famous literary critic whose work appears regularly in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and other high falutin venues. He has not only reviewed book 6 of My Struggle for TLS but SMOKED CIGARETTES WITH THE MAN HIMSELF during an interview for New York magazine.

     The laughter of Rece Davis is funneling through the San Gabriel Mountains. He can’t stop chuckling in dead time before the College Football Playoff, dumbstruck at what must be the God-Forsaken Conclusion Of The Bowl Season Forevermore. These dozens of games are performed for some telecast-warped reason, 17 alone owned by ESPN Events, and must go away while never returning.      There is no point in furthering such meaninglessness when the action doesn’t involve the national championship.

As a kid, I enjoyed sneaking off to quiet places. I would drag a blanket and flashlight under the basement staircase to create a hideout and had a knack for finding the perfect clearing in the woods or tree to climb up. Certain hidden places held magic for me then and still do.  Turning to our childhood instincts for the truth of who we are can be powerful. Before we’ve had the chance to question ourselves or feel self-conscious, what brought us joy and connection?

Ko Lipe changed radically over the past 15 years, perhaps more than any other Thai island. In 2006, this four-square-km island had a total of 23 lodgings overlooking the marvelous beaches and sandy trails. By 2019 that number had jumped to over 100, including several large-scale resorts and inland hotels. Sidecar motorbike taxis clogged newly paved lanes as crowds piled on to Walking Street. By my first visit in 2011, residents and devoted long-stay travelers seemed to know what was is in store for the boomerang-shaped island they loved.

In my friend Ignacio Medina’s column, La Memoria del Sabor, on the Spanish culinary website 7 Canibales, he recently responded to a reader’s Twitter question about Noma closing and the future of fine dining: “A quick response to your headline comes to mind: haute cuisine will never die. Ours is a world of inequalities, of rich and poor distributed in their own ghettos (you can read that as dining rooms), in which there are also not so rich and not so poor who act as a hinge, and haute cuisine has always been, is and will be on the minority side of the wall that separates these two realities.

The world of Financial Independence is flooded with acronyms. New ones seems to get created each and every day.  While I am in the middle of a few longer pieces I thought I would quickly share what I think are the top FIRE acronyms specifically for the FAANG FIRE crowd as well as those I want to become a thing. Financial Independence and Retire Early Having enough assets invested to fully cover your anticipated spending needs for the rest of your life.

Learn from San Diego's top entrepreneurs and companies. Every week, I write a newsletter breaking down the business and money in San Diego. Join hundreds of tech professionals, entrepreneurs, and investors by subscribing below. On Aug 16, around 400 of San Diego’s most influential leaders and community members across life science, government, sports, real estate, and technology convened on a summer evening in La Jolla, California. The annual event called, “Summer Bash” was hosted by San Diego Regional EDC in conjunction with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, featuring San Diego-based Kombucha startup Nova Kombucha and Vuori Clothing.

We’re so pleased to announce the next Book Post virtual reading group, for which we had a wonderful initiation with Mona Simpson and Middlemarch last spring. To help us while away the dark and lonely months, Chris Benfey will join us in February to read Willa Cather’s My Ántonia! As previously we can offer the book at a discount with our bookselling partner, Square Books, on the occasion of our reading group.

No one will ever truly know what happened between Mike Shildt and the St. Louis Cardinals a few years ago. A relationship that went from a pair of 90-win playoff seasons to a sudden divorce leaves a bruise that shines especially bright red after an abysmal season. Shildt’s 2021 Cardinals team went 90-72, but were booted in a winner take all wildcard game against the Dodgers. Who wins 90 games and gets fired?