PicoBlog

Recently while hiking with Mary and our friend Julianne, we spotted this nesting sandhill crane. Julianne, a Yellowstone naturalist, had seen sandhills nesting at this pond in previous years but then they were absent. Nevertheless, her desire to check this pond just in case they had returned paid off. I took this photo from a distance with a telephoto lens so as to not disturb this bird as it incubated eggs.

Margaret Hamilton loved kids and animals more than anything. She’d been a kindergarten teacher for ten years before the stage called her name.  She spent her life working with animal charities and urging pet owners to spay and neuter their pets, which was pretty radical in the mid 1900s. She was on the local school board and became a significant sponsor of PBS public broadcasting for children for most of her life.

I was recently asked by Temas de Hoy the Spanish publisher, to write an introduction to their new (Jan 2024) edition of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. The Latin American edition, Piensa como un emperador romano, was released in June 2020 by Planeta Publishing. It has been reviewed over 220 times on Amazon. The audiobook of this translation, narrat… ncG1vNJzZmicn6OurbDRqJmeqqSovK960q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlnmKTEbr%2FPmqWiq5hitrR50q2mopuZqLo%3D

You can also find this episode on Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Akiva Goldsman is an Oscar, Golden Globe, and WGA-Award winning screenwriter whose credits include A Beautiful Mind, The Client, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill, Practical Magic, Cinderella Man, I Am Legend, The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Insurgent, and I, Robot. He’s… ncG1vNJzZmidnJ7AprjOnp%2BnnZ5jwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89on6ivXajBsL7YZpqapl2dsqK4jJqioq6RYrSwuMOspJqm

This is the fourth issue of Fan Service: a newsletter about video game fandom, history, and preservation. The year is 1991. The NY Giants have just won the Super Bowl. Joe Montana is the best player in the NFL. And Tecmo Super Bowl for the Nintendo Entertainment System — a hotly anticipated sequel to the acclaimed Tecmo Bowl — has just revolutionized the sports video game.  “We were all blown away by the giant leap the sequel was from the original,” says fan developer SBlueman.

Here are just a few names picked above Wyatt Johnston in the 2021 Draft. Tyler Boucher (OTT) Cole Sillinger (CBJ) Matthew Coronato (CGY) Zachery Bolduc (STL) Isak Rosen (BUF) Fedor Svechkov (NSH) Xavier Bourgault (EDM) Some of these players are quite good. In fact, except for Tyler Boucher (my god Ottawa, what the hell were you thinking besides potentially listening to Pierre McGuire mindlessly drone on and on about size?), they’re bound to be everyday NHLers, with some of them already getting in their reps.

The High Republic Phase 2 — and the era overall, really — is like an album with no skips. Every single story is a banger, no matter if it directly connects to another book, comic, or phase or if it’s a thrilling enough adventure to stand on its own. In last week’s newsletter, I shared my guide to preparing for The High Republic Phase 3, which began last month with Shadows of Starlight #1 and kicks into high gear with The Eye of Darkness novel next week.

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science, curiosity and wonder. Today’s edition is about the boundless mysteries of our planet’s undiscovered islands and some startling new discoveries off the coast of Australia… But it starts with me falling into Yorkshire’s biggest freshwater lake, annoying a couple of dozen swans and at least one powerful bigot. (I promise this’ll turn into some actual science in a bit, but for artistic reasons I have to humiliate myself first.

When I was in elementary school, I used to get a coupon wheel with every good report card. Inside were freebies and discounts sure to appeal to any ’90s kid: tokens for Chuck E. Cheese. Fries from McDonald’s. Entry to the Miami-Dade County Regional Fair and Exposition. (We called it The Fair, and it had a dangerously catchy jingle.) Most coupons changed seasonally, but one was always in regular rotation: a free, medium-sized pizza from Pizza Hut.