PicoBlog

If you would have told me that the discourse around Catherine, the Princess of Wales, would go from bad to much worse, I’m not sure I would have believed you. It was already abysmal, with absurd conspiracy theories about her health and whereabouts making their way from corners of the internet to the mainstream media. But then Kensington Palace made it immeasurably worse, releasing a photograph of the princess and her three children.

[To those who wonder why I take my valuable time to call out these evil people, it is because all that is required for Evil to triumph is for good people to stay silent. For decades, I have watched the insidious rot of Marxism and Jew Hatred metastasize on American university campuses, in the media and in broader society. It has now erupted in public. These evil scum are now confident they can attack Jews in public and call for Jewish genocide not even 78 years after the Allies documented the Nazi death camps.

Your series of interviews (with KC and Erin) is really helping shift my paradigm in a healthy direction. I never thought that my writing, which feels like such a solitary, uncharted endeavor, could be in active partnership with others. I never thought of an editor as someone who could be with me in the most solitary spaces. And now that you’ve framed it that way (and sorry, i know I may be mis-paraphrasing in a way that suits me) I feel like that’s exactly what I need.

Hey, it’s Alexandra. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share my latest reflections on professional development and well-being. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed recently: Subscribe to get future posts emailed to you: This week, I share what I’ve learned from:  ☕️ Read time: 5 mins (best with tea or coffee) “One day, the mountain that was in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance.

As one of our nation’s greatest and most prolific food writers, Ruth Reichl’s name is probably one you know. You should, as I’ve quoted her in all four editions of Will Write for Food! But this is the first time she’s consented to an interview with me, and I’m absolutely thrilled to bring our talk to paid subscribers. Over Ruth’s long writing career, she has been a feature writer, a restaurant critic, a national magazine editor, a cookbook author and editor, a memoir writer, a novelist, and now a Substack newsletter writer.

As the mom to a newborn, I am not getting a lot of sleep these days. I try not to double down on the problem by scrolling on my phone, but this morning I did. I opened my Instagram to endless suggestions for improving my mental health, my home, and my parenting. By the time I had enough, I wondered - how is social media impacting how we view when enough is enough?

Forget the legend of “Peg” and its legion of rejected guitar soloists. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen always came down hardest on their drummers. “They would often burden the drummer, detail by detail: ‘Add this on the hi-hat. Do two snare hits on the chorus in the second bar,’” longtime Steely Dan session guitarist Dean Parks once told me. “The drummers were carrying a heavy psychic load.” Over the last half century, Becker and Fagen recorded albums and performed live with some of the world’s most adored stickmen: Jim Gordon, Jeff Porcaro, Bernard Purdie, Steve Gadd, Rick Marotta, Ed Greene, Jim Keltner, Peter Erskine, Dennis Chambers, Ricky Lawson, among others.

When I was a kid, Keith Giffen was my favourite comic book creator. It was his work on Legion and Superheroes and Justice League that first caught my attention and then it was his ever evolving art style that showed a kid like me that you could have a “weird” drawing style and still make good comics. I used to copy Keith's drawings, trying to learn how he did what he did.

Watch full video on YouTube.View most updated version of this post on Substack.Share The great singer Keith Wilder was a co-founding member of the international funk group Heatwave and one of the group’s lead singers alongside his brother Johnnie. He sang lead on some of their biggest hits including “Boogie Nights” and “The Groove Line.” Keith Edward Wilder was born in Dayton, Ohio. After his brother Johnnie put Heatwave together in London in 1975, he joined the group as its co-lead singer.