PicoBlog

Hey there, creator! This week’s post was inspired by Abbey of What I’d Rather be Talking About (check it out here) and by this week’s Substack Office Hours where a lot of writers were asking about using Notes for growth. Gotta be honest, I am by no means a Notes power user. But I have listened carefully to other creators who use Notes regularly, and who have grown their publications with Notes.

On move 9 of game 8 in the world championship match, Ding Liren ventured a highly unusual rook maneuver, nudging the rook up one square. It soon became clear that his idea was to involve the rook in the game by shuttling across the second rank, perhaps to the d-file, but developing the rook in this way is highly unorthodox, especially with most of the minor pieces undeveloped and the king still in the center.

The first time I was exposed to video analysis in hockey was in 2004. That season, our high school varsity coach had the idea of renting a video camera (one of those big old things that recorded into a small cassette), filming our games and then reviewing our performance on tape one lunchtime per a week. ncG1vNJzZmiimJa7qbfYZ6qumqOprqS3jZympmegZLWww4ytpmavkamwqXnGmqSeZZaeua4%3D

In an unofficial sequel to his previously featured How to Write a Reverse Poem our man is back with another entertaining and educational look at the art of poetry.As always this combines wit, practical knowledge and inspiring examples and fills you with the urge to actually pick up the pen and create something which in and of itself is an extremely valuable contribution. I’m sure you’ll get something from this one.

I read a lot about happiness. I’ve read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and done my own (it’s fun), I follow and read Arthur Brooks, and I’ve taken Dr. Laurie Santos’ class “The Science of Well Being” (or: this is how to be happy) which is the most popular undergrad class at Yale. Everyone wants to feel happiness. Recently my father asked me what the best thing in the world was.

Thank you to full subscribers for keeping much of his newsletter free. Take care, Matt A weekly newsletter can be an effective way to keep your school informed and engaged around your literacy initiatives.  The key word is “effective”. A newsletter written doesn’t mean people will read it. It’s the proverbial “if a tree falls in the woods and no one was around to hear it, did it make any sound?

Because I have an odd career path, because I’ve written four books, because I used to be a professor, because I worked for BuzzFeed, because I now write a newsletter and that newsletter is in its third year, because of any or all of those reasons, I get a lot of requests to participate in projects, interviews, podcasts, etc. If you’re a journalist, a writer, a community leader, a local celebrity, a podcaster, a CEO, a person who’s spoken at a large or small event, a religious leader, a professor, or anyone with any sort of visibility and/or expertise, you have also been on the receiving end of these emails.

This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic is by Yi Ning Chiu. Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers theology, capital punishment, and American violence. She was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the experiences of inmates on Alabama’s death row. Her collected writings about the humanitarian and ethical implications of the death penalty will be available in October 2023 as a book titled On Human Slaughter: Evil, Justice, Mercy.

Somewhere in the world right now, there’s an aspiring DJ, Producer, or Vocalist uploading music to the internet. They’ve been making music for a few years now and they’re favorite genre of music is… Since hitting the scene, Trap has been one of the most dominant genres of music, and it’s also become a worldwide phenomenon inspiring other sub-genres of Hip-Hop like Drill - a genre that has roots in Chicago, but is also big in the UK, and Italy.