Sometimes the 35-point favorite covers easily: [image or embed] — Malaclypse the Middle (@malaclypse.bsky.social) Oct 12, 2025 at 6:25 PM I recommend clicking through to the alt-text of the Stoller/Menswear guy colloquy if you have access to that kind of thing.

Elon is nominally gone, but the DOGE-inspired shitshow is ongoing: Hundreds of staff fired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday have been reinstated, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. After a new round of layoff notices sent late Friday night to around 1,300 workers at the CDC, approximately […]

One of my pet peeves — part of my larger annoyance with people consumingly obsessed with tanking for marginal improvements in draft position — is draftniks who start talking about the “generational” prospects that teams might want to stretegize about being in a position to draft that are far from even being established as the […]

We’re in a surreal, not to say Kafkaesque, situation, in which the entire system has gradually and largely unconsciously adapted itself to the increasingly evident fact that the president of the United States is suffering from some form or forms of cognitive deterioration. Newsom’s — or “Newsom’s,” I assume these things are ghostwritten in proper […]

Checking in on the new frigates Japan is exporting to Australia: The export of an advanced warship from one U.S. ally to another would not seem to signal a crisis for the United States. Indeed, the U.S. alliance network is intended to become more flexible and self-sustaining, with the United States providing an environment in […]

On October 12, 1962, a powerful storm, a former typhoon that was now a post-tropical storm, came ashore in western Washington and Vancouver Island in Canada. Its size and power was felt well into Oregon as well. This storm blew over millions of board feet of timber from trees on their way to being logged. […]

Turns out an impulsive NewsMax uncle firing off microblogs on a social media site nobody else uses is not a great way to make policy: US President Donald Trump threatened a “massive increase” of tariffs on China on Friday, arguing it was necessary to “financially counter” new rare earth export controls that China has imposed […]

I’ve seen two shows recently. I’m going to talk about one this week and one next week. I saw The Tubs play at Deep Cuts in Medford, Massachusetts on September 28. This was a lot of fun. The Tubs, as I have stated when describing their albums, sound exactly like Richard Thompson in a post-punk […]

Unquestionably one of the biggest figures of late 20th century American acting and she’s what made most of those Woody Allen films work. Not to mention being a fashion icon for her signature look of slightly androgynous wearing of suits. Well deserving of a thread. RIP.

Trump is escalating his authoritarian violence porn fantasies about Portland to an incredibly lurid degree: Please keep making podcasts about how democrats need to stop being so condescending about red states [image or embed] — Michael Hobbes (@michaelhobbes.bsky.social) Oct 10, 2025 at 8:38 PM At this point, the role of any remotely responsible media would […]

People is reporting that Diane Keaton has passed. Diane Keaton has died. She was 79. PEOPLE can confirm the legendary actress died in California. Further details are not available at this time, and her loved ones have asked for privacy, according to a family spokesperson. Keaton rose to fame in the 1970s thanks to her role […]

They are continuing to accelerate the destruction. Portland provided a bright spot with inflatable frog and furry costumes. It’s hard to look serious when a large frog is twerking at you. (Thanks to Balloon Juice’s Sister Golden Bear for that insight!) Last night they began to disassemble more of the government. The justification Republicans in […]

First of all, Penn State losing to UCLA is hilarious. Oregon crushed their will to exist. It’s great. Texas also sucks–Arch Manning continues to be the first NCAA player with more ads than completions in a game. Meanwhile, maybe I finally believe in a Mario Cristobal coached team since Miami looks pretty damn good. This […]

Interesting stuff on how the Army has solved a substantial portion of its recruiting shortfall: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has credited the military’s strong recruiting numbers this year to a nationwide surge in patriotism and a love for President Trump. “What changed is a commander in chief that America’s young people believe in,” Mr. Hegseth […]

This is insane destruction even by the standards of the Trump administration [gift link]: Dozens of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including “disease detectives,” high-ranking scientists and the entire Washington office — were notified late Friday that they were losing their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s latest round […]

Current federal judges are for obvious reasons extremely hesitant to criticize the Supreme Court, so this NYT survey (gift link) of more than 400 of them has some remarkable results. The survey asked them to answer the following question: The Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket since President Trump returned to […]

This is the grave of Big Bill Thompson. Born in 1869 in Boston, William Hale Thompson grew up in Chicago. In fact, his parents moved there when their baby boy was a mere 9 days old, which seems pretty early to move a baby! The family had roots in Chicago from its very beginning; his […]

Elimination day in a rare playoff appearance for my baseball team, so I will likely be a wreck for the next 3ish hours. The Tigers are actually favored on the road although the Mariners have a better offense. This is partly because the Tigers are starting the AL’s best pitcher. But part of it is […]

This is an ominous development indeed: A majority of the Supreme Court appeared sympathetic on Wednesday to arguments by an Illinois congressman that political candidates should be able to challenge their states’ election laws. During the approximately two-hour argument, the justices grappled with what political candidates, particularly those with nearly guaranteed success in an election, […]

This article is about 34 tons of plutonium that the US government doesn’t know what to do with. The current suggestion is to use it to power nuclear reactors to run all that AI nobody wants. The article lacks historical grounding and thus gets a lot wrong. There’s a story about that plutonium, but it’s […]

Great news for California, bad news for people who want higher housing prices, better electoral maps for Republicans, and fewer people living in states that protect reproductive rights: Today California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 79, a bill that will make it legal to build more homes near the highest capacity transit […]

Approximately every human being on the planet has been texting me about the Qatar air base story: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon has agreed to host a new Qatari Emiri Air Force facility in Idaho, saying that the nation has played a “core part” in securing the Gaza peace deal. […]

Most any discussion of Israel-Palestine in the United States these days boils down to intra-coalitional warfare. Unsurprisingly, the ceasefire that began yesterday is being weaponized for conflict with the Democratic coalition: There are a great many people who are deeply invested in the argument that Biden could have ended the war by applying even the […]

Tom Friedman is writing Tom Friedman things this morning, about how if Donald Trump stays all focused and committed and immersed in the crucial details and the difficult diplomacy, and sees the current Gaza “peace plan” all the way through he should be given the Nobel Peace Prize, “or maybe even two.” Besides the screamingly […]

I’ve been looking quite closely at the literature on various types of dementia, and it’s scary as hell. Basically if you’re diagnosed with say Alzheimer’s at age 79, top pick a number totally at random, the disease was already progressing in a subclinical way when you were 70 and quite possibly when you were 65. […]