PicoBlog

On Wednesday I joined Amir Said (Said) and his son Amir Ali Said (Amir) as an official collaborator for the 3rd Edition of Said’s seminal book The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music & Copyright Law. I’m republishing some of Said’s articles and interviews from the Beattips and The Art of Sampling archives as part of the Kickstarter campaign. This interview with John King was first written and published by Said in 2012 before Chung King Studios eventually closed in 2015.

My guest this week is the distinguished political scientist and international relations expert John Mearsheimer. If you’re skeptical about US involvement in the Ukraine War, this episode has good news and bad news for you. The good news is that John’s clear, rational analysis will confirm that you are not crazy to question the wisdom of our ever-deepening investment in the war. The bad news is that it may be too late to be right.

Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter. This week saw my attention split between the coloring process of the two covers I briefly showed last week and the grey tones for the pages I’ve been working on in the past couple of months. But the real news were that this Monday we lost legendary comic artist John Romita Sr. The news of Romita’s death came from the equally legendary son, John Romita Jr.

John RosemondNationally known best-selling author, syndicated columnist, podcast host, and licensed family psychologist, John Rosemond is one of America’s most popular public speakers on parenting and is the leading expert on traditional, biblical parenting. ncG1vNJzZmirpZfAta3CpGWcp51kjau7x6epqKuVoryvsA%3D%3D

Hello and Happy Tuesday. The Jack Adams Award (coach of the year) is easily my least favorite award in the NHL. Not because I do not believe in the significance of good (or bad) coaching, but because I think we do an absolutely horrific job of identifying what good (and bad) coaching actually looks like. More than a quarter of the way through the season I will say that I think we have at least some idea of what it might look like this year, and it is John Tortorella with the Philadelphia Flyers.

While reading Coach Wooden and Me (affiliate link), by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, I ran across the story of Swen Nater, who was a first round NBA/ABA draft pick even though he never started, and only play 2 minutes on average per game while at UCLA. Deliberate Practice. Apparently, Swen tried out for the high school team, but didn’t make the cut. Ouch – not a promising start.  Met a great coach in community college.

Quick Note: Last week, I put out a call for a potential “reader mailbag” series. The response has been... Muted. Shout to the handful of heads who wrote in. I’ll put out one more call: Send your question, if you have one, to jchiaverina@gmail.com and put READER MAILBAG in the subject. It was the fall of 1998 and I was in my room. It was the middle of the night; maybe a lava lamp was on.

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“I'm a fairly long time follower of Lisa over on IG so obviously I'd follower her here. I'm always impressed at her lets just do it attitude to DIY and changing things around in her house, so hopefully one day I'll follow her lead and paint something a different colour. In the meantime, I'll follow her for tips and tricks and snack ideas. ” ncG1vNJzZmikmaiupa3WrKanZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonw%3D