PicoBlog

Paris now has a lot of restaurants serving modernist tasting menus. Géosmine, in the old Botanique space, is the newest entry in this category. Chef Maxime Bouttier spent two years at Mensae before opening Géosmine, a name that refers to the chemical compound secreted by soil bacteria when they produce spores. With a name like that, you know you’re in for something weird. The strangest thing on the menu is Bouttier’s signature dish: mamelle.

Marvin Gaye’s music has played a role in two recent high-profile copyright lawsuits, though with opposite results – in 2015, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of plagiarizing Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” for their hit “Blurred Lines,” and ordered to pay millions of their royalties in damages. But last month, Ed Sheeran was found innocent of similarly plagiarizing Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” and will continue to hoard all profits from his pale-as-milk imitation “Thinking Out Loud.

I do not spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. I specifically tend not to like Roman History podcasts because they are mostly quite bro-y. But the T&J podcast is a rarity in the landscape of Roman history podcasts: the limited series is an independent passion project of Berlin-based journalist Christine Laskowski, and it is centered around the radical romance and partnership of Empress Theodora and her husband, the Emperor Justinian.

Core Updates: We just launched GPTZero Scaffold AI Detection, our partnership with K16 Solutions creating the first institution level AI analytics dashboard across LMS platforms to supports universities in crafting AI policy. If you’re an institution interested in scheduling a demo let us know here. The 7 minute climax on the Future of Integrity between GPTZero and the CEO of Turnitin is featured above. Aside from GPTZero performing better on mitigating false positives, the exchange highlights core differences between our companies.

For Christmas, I have offered paid subscribers the chance to have some work marked by me. Thank you B, for volunteering. B has got a low grade 9, and wants to write a perfect essay. I love this. Grade 9 is not just for geniuses. It is for students who think like a student of literature, rather than a reader of books. A reader of books tries to understand what the writer wants us to think about the characters and their actions.

The NHL free agency period was a little bit different this time around than in summer’s past due to league-wide salary cap issues and a less-than-stellar 2023 free agent class, but that didn’t stop brisk business from happening at the start of July. It just amounted to a lot more modest one-year deals for veteran players rather than the big term, big money contracts that have been routinely tossed around in offseason’s past.

Grand Theft World's Substack By Grand Theft World The Grand Theft World with Richard Grove explores and dissects current events from the past week through a compilation of video, audio, and written resources that help to explain how we got here, where things are headed, and how we can adjust accordingly. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjai%2BwKebraCVm8G4u9Glmw%3D%3D

When my mother-in-law passed away and my wife, Karen, closed up the house, she came across a couple of manuscripts written by her great-grandfather, William Slaughter Hamilton. The manuscripts were autobiographical. One detailed his family history, the other, his professional life as a prominent Oklahoma attorney. In the closing paragraphs of his thoughts on the law, Hamilton mentioned, in passing, his role in a criminal case that made national headlines and led to his only appearance before the U.

Grape Honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata) has been here “forever.” It’s native to the Midwest. It’s a gangling vine, climbing taller than I am. Grape Honeysuckle leaves grow in twos. At the lower end of a stem, a pair of leaves has space between them. At the top end of the stem, a pair of leaves grows together like an old married couple. Only the notches in the edge suggest that they are really two conjoined leaves.