PicoBlog

Very much not in the spirit of “just asking questions,” which is so pervasive among creationists, climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, 9/11 Truthers, Obama Birthers, QAnoners and many others that it has its own skeptical descriptor—JAQing off—I present here some challenging questions for Christians and other religious believers. I realize that faith doesn’t always open itself to rational inquiry and empirical testing, otherwise it wouldn’t be faith, or “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Great article, simplifying a very complex topic. (Almost as good as my husband’s Blockchain 101) For the non-grokers, here is my take: I and my myriad business peers and friends, post on X. (Caveat that I have not posted in recent years) We all have nuanced opinions on subjects. Generally, we are not authors and have minimal or no footprint on the internet outside of social. As such, X does provide the data for deeper learning.

#QuidProQuo trended on Monday. When I saw the Twitter hashtag, I knew Trump was at it again. (10/20/20 10:58AM update: Exxon insists that Trump’s story was a “hypothetical” quid pro quo; the journalist, Aaron Rupar from Vox, made the “hypothetical” implication clearer in a follow-up tweet) Quid pro quo, a Latin term, literally means, “this for that,” a trade or transaction regarding gifts and favors. “I’ll give you X, if you give me Y.

Whilst scrolling through online content, sometimes certain colors, sounds, or imagery just stop me in my gay-little-tracks. This week, it was a video of a cookie. Not just any cookie. A cookie meant to look like a blanket. In a plucky instagram reel, some hands place a piece of pink play-do looking cookie dough into its place as the final square of a cookie quilt. Piecemeal together raw, once put in the oven (poof, goes the Instagram reel), it all weaves together when baked.

Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! Today I witnessed a popular beauty podcast issue a trigger warning for mentions of diet culture and I just… I… I almost have no words. Beauty culture (which the podcast promotes) and diet culture (which the podcast trigger-warns against) are ideologically indistinguishable! BEAUTY CULTURE IS DIET CULTURE’S FACE-FOCUSED FRATERNAL TWIN!! SKINCARE CULTURE IS DEWY DIET CULTURE!

It took King Henry VII twenty-seven hours to die. But he had been unwell for much longer. His eyesight had been failing for nearly a decade, and for the last two years of his life he was suffering from ailments variously described as ‘a quinsy’ (a type of abscess behind the tonsils) and consumption (tuberculosis). He stopped eating, perhaps around March 1509, and on April 20th took to his bed in Richmond Palace.

I’ll keep this short and sweet, because honestly I could go on forever about how much this company meant to me for over the last decade. For those of you who don’t know, Rooster Teeth is an Internet company dedicated to gaming and content, and is responsible for creating web shows such as Red vs Blue and RWBY. I recently attempted to review each volume of RWBY and have gotten bogged down by a lot of other stuff going on in life (as well as other distractions) so I haven’t been consistent with that, but this latest news about the company is definitely going to light that fire under my butt to continue.

Watch on YouTube Rabbi Bogot is my lifelong friend. We met when I was eight. Rabbi Bogot is nominally in his 80s, but going on 40. He has an extraordinary career, which includes serving as Director of Education for the Union of Reform Judaism. Reform Judaism is, by far, the dominant affiliation of American Jews. Hence, Rabbi Bogot is responsible for having guided the Jewish education of tens of millions of children, past and present.

My guest today is Munira Mirza. Munira Mirza is a British public policy analyst and cultural commentator. She served as the Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture of London under Boris Johnson when he was mayor, and later served as director of The Number 10 Policy Unit under Johnson when he was prime minister. In this episode, we talk about Munira's early days as a Marxist, her interest in art and museums, her views on Brexit, her views on multiculturalism in the UK, the Israel-Hamas war and Jihadism in general, and much more.