PicoBlog

The District Commission is slated to vote on the final district plan on August 21. To be adopted, the proposal needs the support of at least nine of the thirteen district commissioners. Here’s the breakdown of what’s on the table: The final district blueprint is based on a draft map labeled “Alder,” which was floated to Portlanders earlier this summer. Using the Willamette River as a natural boundary, the map groups neighborhoods east of the river into three districts: District 1 (East), District 2 (North/Northeast), and District 3 (Central/Southeast).

We started a podcast! Please enjoy the first episode of The Review of Mess: an audio collaboration between The Review of Beauty (by me, Jessica DeFino) and (a fashion newsletter from ). Once a month, Emily and I will be sweeping up the messiest moments in celebrity beauty and fashion. Today we’re talking about Mariah Carey riding a rollercoaster with her hairdresser (for instant touch-ups), Brooke Shields launching a haircare line (named COMMENCE), Taylor Swift’s rumored fragrance (intel via

The summer movie season is just around the corner and, like summer movie seasons before, it’s set to be filled with sequels and series extensions. Like it or not, we remain in a blockbuster era dominated by franchises. Some seem vibrant. Others are animated only by the faintest spark of life. In a 2018 article about Men in Black: International, Tim Grierson coined the term “zombie franchise” to describe series that keep existing because they seemingly don’t know how to die and it’s stuck with me ever since.

You may have heard about this “non-duality” thing, or “non-dual meditation”. Perhaps you have heard rave reviews of a meditative state sometimes referred to as “non-dual awareness,” or “big mind” or “the natural state.” Maybe in connection with exciting-sounding phrases like “spiritual awakening” or “enlightenment.” Sometimes, people hype it up in a way that can seem far-fetched. For example, nearly a full half of people who learned how to achieve non-dual awareness through a Sam Harris meditation course said it was the most important skill they’d ever learned in their lives.

Hello Everyone, Welcome to Issue #71 of CAFÉ ANNE! HUGE NEWS: New York City has kicked off an election to designate an official city wildflower. The candidates, nominated by a different park board in each borough, include Butterfly Milkweed (Manhattan), Pinxter Azalea (Staten Island), Giant Sunflower (Queens), Wild Columbine (Brooklyn) and Spicebush (Bronx). It’s important that we get this right—wildflowers are scary and out of control, and we need to designate a solid, reliable floral leader who won’t go rogue.

In this interview I talk with Chris McDowall, the creator of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, among other recent indie RPG classics. His latest game is Mythic Bastionland, where you play as a knight rising in power in a dreamlike medieval European world. NOTE: Mythic Bastionland is live on Kickstarter. Hiya Chris! Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you’ve done in the world of RPGs? Hi! I'm Chris McDowall, and I've designed the RPGs Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland as well as the wargame The Doomed.

When a classic American-style drugstore—complete with a soda fountain and lunch counter—first opened in Paris in 1958, it was quite immediately declared the hippest place in town. Located on the corner of the Champs-Élysées and Rue de Presbourg, a block from the Arc de Triomphe, Le Drugstore (also called Drugstore Publicis) was an immense tribute to American consumerism and cuisine. Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, French advertising maestro and founder of the Publicis agency, had recently returned to Paris after a period working on Madison Avenue.

Share On January 6, The Hill published an op-ed that still needles me. “Of course, Washington was a unifying figure,” opined Jonathon Turley, the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School, proving he understands very little about his employer’s namesake. And for his part, President Joe Biden, the subject of Turley’s agenda-driven, historically illiterate rant, opted for Jon Meacham-level nostalgia when a poignant lesson about our past was there for the taking.

As compared to other European capitals like London or Rome, Paris is actually relatively well-contained and pretty walkable. And while the streets definitely don't run in straight lines (much to the horror of this native New Yorker), it’s relatively easy to see where you're going thanks to the system of arrondissements or districts, numbered 1 to 20, which spiral out in a snail shell shape from the first in the center to the 20th in the northeast.