If all you saw were the headshots, you’d swear a photographer somehow traveled 150 years back in time to take photos of the 16th president of the United States of America. It looks that real.

From each angle, the expression seems to change. It’s the magic of silicone, theatrical makeup, human hair, and the astounding skill of a self-taught artist named Kazu Hiro, who build the sculpture layer by layer, from the inside out.

Writers struggle. Not everyday. Some days the words flow like honey on a hot summer day. But we all struggle sometimes. Frustration. Lack of ideas. Lack of esteem. Lack of response. Hell, lack of interest, sometimes.

Know what else?

One person brainstorming and 27 people brainstorming are not the same. Not even close. One person can give you a whole bunch of inspiration, but add a couple dozen writers and the ideas are bound to be amazing.

One person can’t come up with what 27 people can.

My Substack group is made of writers. News journalists, authors, content creators, bloggers, people who write for a living, and people who are just getting started. …

History paints King Henry VIII as a tyrant and understandably so, because that’s what he became in his later years. But he didn’t start that way.

Young Henry was a tall, slender, and happy young prince when he stepped into the role fate handed him at age 18. By all accounts, he was enchanted by the woman who was his first queen. Catherine was a tiny, gentle woman with a ready smile and long red hair that flowed to her hips.

They wed in June 1509 and by November of the same year, Henry happily wrote to her parents to proudly announce that she was ripe with his child. …

If you wanted to fly an airplane, you’d have to learn from someone that already knows how, right? Duh. We all know that.

Problem is, the internet doesn’t remotely work that way. There’s no shortage of people telling you how to do stuff because they think what worked for them will work for everyone. It’s not so much lack of experience as lack of breadth.

For example, the marketing that works to sell course on how to make money doesn’t work to sell high end fashion, or $50/lb coffee. It’s not that the person selling the “money” course doesn’t have experience. Often, they just lack breadth of experience. …

Most of what we know about Cleopatra is wrong…

She was a queen at 18, the richest woman in the world, lover of Julius Caesar, and Marc Antony, the most famous woman of the Greco-Roman era — and yet almost everything we know about her is wrong. How sad is that?

She was not a promiscuous seductress. She had sex with two men and bore children to both. She didn’t kill herself by the bite of an asp hidden in a basket of figs. That’s a dramatization. She poisoned herself to avoid being taken prisoner of war and paraded through the streets in chains.

She was the queen of Egypt, but she wasn’t Egyptian — she was Greek. …

Can I be blunt? I have struggled my ass off on this platform. Mom used to tell me stubborn is my middle name and that’s probably the reason I’m still here.

First hurdle, I don’t write personal expose. Not my thing. In the past, I’ve been stalked and doxed as too many women have, and I’m not interested in sharing anything personal unless it’s by phone or email.

Some people say you have to get deeply personal. They’re wrong. Seth Godin doesn’t write about those things either and no one seems to mind.

Second. I am a woman in a world that prefers the male voice. In case you didn’t know, the top writers here are mostly men. Y’all know men aren’t just better writers, right? Again, no offense to men. It’s just how the world is. …

It’s been a rough year. Many have lost jobs or had hours cut drastically. Millions of Americans can’t pay their bills. So when the company you work for emails about a holiday bonus — and it comes from a legit email at the company domain, what do you do?

If you’re a GoDaddy employee, you follow the instructions and click to get your bonus. At least, that’s what 500 GoDaddy employees did.

Here’s the email they got

Three separate employees who received the email and tried to claim their holiday bonus forwarded the email to the local news.

What do you know about Van Gogh, I wonder? A painting or two? Starry Nights or Sunflowers. Art students might say he cut his ear off and gave it to a prostitute. Or that he killed himself. Cold facts, perhaps wrong.

My history teacher used to put us to sleep

History can be dry and boring. But it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to the internet, artists are breathing new life and new interest into old stories. Like illustrator Alireza Karimi Moghaddam, who creates an ongoing series of comics to explore the story of Van Gogh’s short and tragic life.