PicoBlog

Hi friends, Over the last few months, I’ve added a new garment to my wardrobe that I wear proudly on a near daily basis. It’s the keffiyeh. For those unfamiliar, the keffiyeh is a traditional headscarf worn in the Middle East. It was originally (and still is) used as a practical and protective covering against sunburn, dust, and sand in the extreme and arid desert climate of the region. It was historically worn by the peasantry, while the fez or tarboush, a red felt hat, was worn by urban, middle- and upper-class Palestinians.

Welcome to the Friday mailout! Friday’s simple living essays and recommendations are free for everyone but Simple and Straightforward is actually a thrice-weekly publication. Paid subscribers get access to 8-week simple living courses (one module sent out every Monday) and waste-reducing recipes sent out every Wednesday. Join the fun for $5 a month or save 20% with a yearly subscription and help support an independent, ad-free publication. When I set out on my indefinite travels some 23 months ago, I thought that food was going to be my window into the counties I visited.

A few years ago I was talking to a publisher about possibly writing a book that would look at the history of film through the lens of Bible movies: each chapter would look at a particular film—roughly one per decade—and at how each film reflected the era in which it was made. I wrote a sample chapter to give some idea as to what the book would be like, and the film I focused on was 1998’s The Prince of Egypt, which I figured was old enough that we could have some sort of perspective on it now, but recent enough that I could make use of what I had learned about the film while covering it as a journalist.

A few too many people have been looking to read this article, to the point where they’re crashing the website of Sci-Phi Journal, where it was originally published. Since that journal stopped publishing immediately after my article appeared, I don’t think anyone will mind my reproducing it here:             Many years ago, a friend of mine who knows about these sorts of things handed me a book and said “Here, you have to read this.

I don’t believe much in God, but I love movies about the afterlife. The depiction of heaven and hell, neither of which I ever believed in, comforts me somehow. Whether it’s the splendid afterworld in What Dreams May Come or the documentary of Satanism, Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, it’s one of my favorite fantasy genres. I include movies like Death Takes a Holiday where Death walks among us; angel films like Wings of Desire; the excellent primetime TV series The Good Place, which put so much thought into what an afterlife would be, and yet also managed to be blisteringly funny and heartwarming.

Reason panel with Jim Pethokoukis, moderated by Peter Suderman, and the Midjourney art produced by the Reason staff to accompany it..Progress in the sense of the cumulative growth of knowledge and power over nature is a term that says little about whether the new state will give us more satisfaction than the old. The pleasure may be solely in achieving what we have been striving for, and the assured possession may give us little satisfaction.

The model Gigi Hadid and the actor-director-ex Jackson Maine Bradley Cooper have been dining together in New York this month, which means the sun has set on my favorite non-relationship. Someone, somewhere, has finally given up on trying to convince us that Hadid and Leonardo DiCaprio are anything more than a floating speech bubble with flashing ellipses on one another’s iPhone screen. And by that I mean: “dating.”I loved this relationship; I am sorry to see it go.

In the same way that the sun rises daily, Houston’s defense is once again elite. Nothing new here. The Cougars have posted a tremendous run over the last six seasons, posting a low finish of 21st and three consecutive top-10 finishes. For seven straight seasons, they’ve finished 6th or better in eFG% allowed and are coming off three consecutive finishes of #2. Every single season, you know what you’re going to get with these guys: elite defense, unbelievable rebounding abilities, and a lot of wins.

There was something that I had forgotten about Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s work: it is never the story that works.  Hear me out. This isn’t a black or white, reel friendly opinion. Nor is it me trying to troll Sharmeen Segal’s acting prowess or lack thereof. It is an attempt at actual criticism on the internet.  Heeramandi follows the story of the tawaifs of Heera Mandi, a real-life bazaar of entertainment located in Lahore.