PicoBlog

Happy Friday! And welcome to Planet Days, a green newsletter for a greenwashed Planet. If you’re new to Planet Days, every other Friday (or so) we deliver a three minute read on what it means to actually go green, in topics ranging from recycling to electric vehicles. If this was forwarded to you, smash that subscribe button: Now, the story. We’re in the middle of the U.S. travel season. But as Americans make up for lost time during the pandemic, a summer getaway comes at a price: long lines, traffic jams, and canceled flights.

Disclaimer: Content for entertainment purposes only. Not medical or health advice. In the last few years, thanks to Instagram and other social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the work of Dr. Ray Peat has exploded in popularity. Some would even say that it has gone mainstream. The carrot salad recipe that Dr. Peat often spoke of became a viral TikTok trend and media news outlets started putting out think pieces about the “pro-metabolic diet.

The first time I was visually exposed to an eating disorder was when I started watching the famous British TV series - Skins. One of the main characters, Cassie Ainsworth, was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Her friends referred to her as ''the girl who never eats''. She was extremely thin and pretty.  Around the same time, I started watching Gossip Girl and my favorite character was Blair Waldorf. In the first season, it was briefly mentioned that she was struggling with bulimia nervosa.

Welcome to the monthly wrap up of missteps that may hit someone’s pocketbook (often yours). I’m going to skip politics, because you already know how awful it is. One guy can’t remember who’s alive or dead or when his son passed away. Another guy loses “bigly” in court every time he opens his mouth, and a third guy claims he had nothing to do with a Super Bowl ad promoting his campaign by repurposing a commercial reminiscent of his assassinated uncle — “I’m so sorry!

This question of what constitutes a natural monopoly is more important today than you may realize. It affects you if you are involved with consumption or production of electricity or of technology platforms, and that's all of us! I'd like to pick up the thread of natural monopoly theory that I started to spin a couple of weeks ago, motivated by Manuela Mosca's excellent article on the intellectual history of natural monopoly theory, apply this question to electricity, and drop some hints about natural monopoly theory and technology platforms but leave that topic for another day.

John Coltrane’s birthday was this past Saturday, September 23rd. There’s no end to John Coltrane’s music, no limit to its importance, or to our still-growing understanding of his music. What a message, what an achievement— John Coltrane’s music only makes things better! When I think about Coltrane and his continuing centrality to jazz, my thoughts go to his community. As Coltrane always stated, he owed much to his mentors— first Dizzy Gillespie, then Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and probably a dozen or more other names, folks known only to those truly in the circle.

When the Brazilian singer-songwriter Ed Motta appears on the video conference screen from his home in Rio de Janeiro, he’s wearing a Gaucho T-shirt. It’s the same one he sports in a photo in which he’s standing among the towering shelves that contain his massive record collection, holding two copies of Steely Dan’s 1980 masterwork. It so happens that Motta has done a series of these shots, posing in shirts matching the covers of Can’t Buy a Thrill and Countdown to Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic—and other beloved non-Dan albums, too.

This is a bonus instalment of Brian Finn’s series looking at New Zealand’s, but particularly Auckland’s, troubled stadium history. Part 1: Fixing our troubled stadium fleet Part 2: A pot-holed history of NZ's stadium woes Part 3: How to save Auckland’s stadium shemozzle Finn is a communications expert and a stadium adviser. He wholeheartedly believes when it comes to sporting venues, New Zealand’s biggest city can do better - a LOT better.

Minutes before opening his doors for the first time, pitmaster and Edge Craft Barbeque owner Zack Craft thanked the dozens who were already in line and pleaded for patience. After all, it was the first day for a new restaurant and growing pains are almost a given.  Almost immediately staff dealt with a malfunctioning register that held up the line, which might also need some adjustments on how it snakes through the restaurant.