PicoBlog

**Language warning. This song contains some explicit language.** When I was in college, I went to Chicago around Christmas time with my girlfriend and her family for a weekend. We did all the things visitors do in Chicago during the holiday season: we shopped along the Magnificent Mile, ate good food, and enjoyed the decorations and lights as we explored the city. On the second day, everyone went back to the hotel to rest.

Who was the highest-paid female athlete in 2023? The answer to that question isn’t as straightforward as it seems. In their annual rankings, outlets such as Sportico and Forbes publish lists of the best compensated athletes in women’s sports using a methodology that combines both their on-field salary and prize money with their off-field earnings through endorsements.  By Sportico’s accounting, American tennis superstar Coco Gauff topped the charts by earning $22.

What’s new:  Even after the Bank of Japan's recent policy shift to tightening credit, albeit only slightly, the value of the Japanese yen remains relatively weak against the U.S. dollar, euro, British pound and other major currencies. Why it matters:  For decades, Japan - and Tokyo in particular - had a reputation as one of the world's most expensive places to live, but since the recent rapid depreciation of the yen, the tables have turned.

I was going to write about laundry this week, but then New York magazine ignited the internet with its Dream Life Calculator, and I changed gears. (If you haven’t seen it yet, New York asked nine young New Yorkers without kids to share their “dream life” and then the magazine calculated what they estimate you’d need to have saved and earn going forward … ncG1vNJzZmikkaq%2ForLEp6uopl6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpwvI6hprBlnaqwqXnIrGStoJGpeq21xZ6qrbGcmnqquoytn54%3D

Protecting open space has been a driving goal of a subset of Cape Codders since at least the 1960s, not coincidentally the same moment when large-scale development mushroomed. People have referred to this as a geographic arm’s race, acres “saved” vying with acres built. There’s merit to this view, though my argument in a previous Voice (Buying open, pushing big-lot zoning) is that zoning policies, not this “race,” explain why we are in an existential affordable housing crisis.

“How much can I make writing on Medium?” This is the most popular question. The second most popular question: “Is Medium dead? I heard you can't earn any money on Medium anymore.” It's hard to trust what you read and watch online, especially if it involves earning money and those who tell you: “Write one article (with AI) and earn $2,000.” Since I help writers and authors start writing on Medium, build an audience and market and monetize their work, I see a lot of backends.

While Riot Games has been present in India since 2017, the Tencent-owned company only started making its presence felt with Valorant in 2022. The first-person tactical hero shooter has gained a steady fan following since its launch in India in 2020. Prior to this, the company was satisfied with low-key partnerships for League of Legends streams while its executives tried to finesse unsuspecting one-time journalists like myself to do their job for free.

"For instance, when Roe vs. Wade was overturned NPR reporting referred standardly to the side that would call themselves pro-life as “anti-abortion rights activists.” I get how hard finding appropriate nomenclature for all this is. Yet in the immediate days before that decision NPR had been covering efforts at gun control legislation. Never once did they refer to its proponents as “anti-gun rights activists.” I don't think these are the best examples of NPR's ideological thumbs on the scales.

Sometimes addressing a problem head on can create an opportunity. For New Balance and Coco Gauff who came together in 2019, there were two problems to address. The 15 year-old had already commanded the attention of the tennis world by becoming the youngest ever player to qualify for Wimbledon. But that was just the start… The baby-faced Gauff then proceeded to defeat seven-times Grand Slam winner and one of her childhood idols, Venus Williams in front of a packed No.