Average Joe

I finally get it

While not my favorite band, the strays Coldplay fans are catching over this whole fiasco is rude! Let us enjoy music made for the masses. It’s ok! Let people enjoy things!

Thanks, man. Appreciate.

Newest piece is out today on the Shakespeare festival.

Now in its seventh season, the Frederick Shakespeare Festival is hitting its stride By Joseph Peterson

My latest feature is about our local Shakespeare festival, but don’t be fooled, it’s a great read for anyone interested in knowing what goes into a successful Shakespeare festival and all the reasons why they’re great for a community’s cultural milieu. www.fredericknewspost.com/news/arts_an...

As a feature writer in your hometown publication, I tell myself AI can’t find the heart of a story like this one I wrote recently about a green burial cemetery in Frederick. That took blood, sweat & tears, and lots of contemplation to find the through line.

www.fredericknewspost.com/news/environ...

Important thread on AI in journalism. I think it can be an incredibly useful tool much like a recorder or a pen and notepad are for the gum shoe. But it can’t, and shouldn’t, replace the writer.

Washington, D.C., has a population roughly equivalent to Alaska's.

And it has zero senators. If D.C. had senators, the GOP megablil bill would have failed today.

Instead, Murkowski got carve-outs and money for Alaska, and then voted to subject DC to the bill

This @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social video is absolutely INCREDIBLE. The numbers he cites, the strategy and results they produced — it’s the future. When have you heard *any* campaign talk about this, ever? (Video split in 2 to fit in Bluesky’s limits)

a baby in a blue shirt is laying on a couch and making a funny face . Alt: a baby in a blue shirt is laying on a couch and crying but it’s cute not sad.

When the food I’m eating isn’t spicy.

This is your reminder to send story tips to your local newspaper. I sent an email saying how all the outdoor summer camps adjusting to this heat wave with more indoor activities would make a timely story. I guess they agreed. It made the lead story on the front page.

Mike Lee tweeting

I just finished The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Honestly, I don’t think calling it a literary masterpiece oversells it. This book is transformative, and Jones is a brilliant inventor, an alchemist this side of crazy, furiously (and furious) at work. #amreading

Fuckin’ ouch! 😅

Scotch in hand and about to watch George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck, on Broadway, but from the comfort of my couch.

It’s one of my favorite movies, so to say I’m exited is an understatement. #goodnightandgoodluck

Had this same thought

The One Drink You’re Not Ordering at Starbucks…But Should Be. It’s the perfect espresso + milk combo but Starbucks doesn’t call it what other coffee shops call it. In fact, it’s not even on the menu at…

I won’t say that my article about how I used to order an oat milk “cortado” at @starbucks when it wasnt on their menu is the reason they launched their oat milk cortado, but given the timing of my article ahead of the launch, I won’t deny it either. 😉😜

planetjoseph.medium.com/the-one-drin...

Thank you, my good fellow!

How a quiet nut orchard in Frederick became Maryland’s newest natural burial site This is a story about death. It’s also about a cemetery and an orchard, which in this story are the same thing. In it, there’s a boy and his father

My latest feature is about a green burial cemetery in Maryland and what a more natural burial can mean not just for the environment but for the grieving process.

www.fredericknewspost.com/news/environ...

I’d buy it again, but it’s not a coffee replacement, and I don’t think I’d put it in my cup of freshly brewed God juice in the morning. Mushroom whatever is good for my brain but it needs to be a separate drink.

It’s ok. Anything that’s not just coffee coffee isn’t really coffee. I don’t know how that beloved beverage became the catch all for all the supplements that just make it gross but I like the way it makes me feel. :)

And state governments make it so that only the cities have those services, only to vilify them. It’s disgusting. Utah does this to an extreme degree with Salt Lake City. The biggest economic engine with all the transit and social services, and the supermajority GOP just shits on it.

The killers, but that’s because they’re heavily influenced by the boss.

I’m calling for self-imposed social media sanctions on all insane bullshit the president shares in all caps. It’s all a distraction anyway. Let’s stifle the oxygen of it by just…not reacting. Save the reactions for legislation and executive orders, but let’s skip the showboat. Would be nice, eh?

In line with my tendency to invest time and effort into crafts and industries that are all but extinct, I have the best idea for a new version of the classic Reporter’s Notebook, where do I go to say “make it so” and then someone else brings it into existence?

Stick close to your desks.

I loved this, even though it made me mad. And sad.

I worked at the copy desk at my college paper. Didn’t realize I was a dinosaur now, too.

Miso sesame cream cheese on fresh-baked sourdough toast with a low-sugar berry jam, fresh cherries, almonds and mushroom “coffee.” A fascinating book, a clean slab of paper ready for ideas, and a rainy day outside round out this perfect late-breakfast moment.

Required a lot from me to write. I put in the work, and it was a lot of work, but I also put in extra work, the kind of work creatives don’t do enough of I don’t think: studying the craft of what it is you want to do and improve at doing. And by god it helped, dammit. Devastating news, I know.

Y’all, no qualifiers, I’m just really really really proud of the feature story I turned in. My editor loved it too, which I know is like saying “my mom thinks I’m cool” but it gave me some much needed validation. Because I turned in something different, experimental for me, and something that …

Haha!! I know that reference.