Post game drive through the holiday lights.

PROTIP: if you don’t want to stay up till midnight, choose a different country to celebrate New Year’s. It was just New Year’s in Greece, in an hour and a half it will be New Year’s in London. Watch the fireworks on YouTube, do a toast from bed an go to sleep early!

2025 was... a lot. Sticking to sports, my favorites games I attended were the Cubs home opener, Cubs wild card clinch game and the Sky game where they retired CP's jersey. I'm kicking off 2026 by watching ISU football play for the national championship Monday night in Nashville. #fearthebird.

Happy New Year! Let's go, Hogs!

Smith straight out of the gate making it explicitly clear that in BOTH of Trump’s federal criminal cases, there was “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” and that Smith’s team would have prevailed at trial.

I was thinking the same thing about Clooney.

Wow. Terrible news.

Why do guys like him get such a huge platform? He is harassing local businesses and should be treated like someone harassing local businesses.

I'm at 53 books read for the year 2025. These are my December reads. The Michelle Obama book was beautiful. The stories with each dress/occasion were super interesting. I loved the Churchill book. The other two books were just okay. My hope for everyone is we continue to read freely in 2026.

This was a great program. Highly recommend.

The TRiiBE does *amazing* on the ground work in Chicago. If you have the means to support them, you should.

Did Trump get a fee for sending his young female workers to Jeffrey Epstein's house to have sex with him? Was Trump a pimp for other rich friends? Corporate media will NEVER ask these questions but we must!

[CW: prison rape, coercive rape] 1. Geo Group operates private prisons 2. Government is appalled at the "stunning indifference" to constant sexual abuse by guards of children as *young as 13* 3. Governors start trying to end private prisons 4. Geo tries to keep its prisons and grow ICE facilities 🤷🏿‍♂️

“She asked for only $1 and a public apology. And in an online video posted this November, one of the plaintiffs admitted that statements he made about Jones were false.”

Stopping the glass cliff: 5 weeks after being hired, Katherine Maher at NPR was under pressure to quit. Board chair Jennifer Ferro determined to keep her. She was the right leader & getting rid of an exec bc of political pressure would only weaken the organization. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/b...

Funding. To. The. Whole. State. Over. Lies. Created. By. White. Men. Seeking. To. Look. At. Minors. At. A. Day. Care. Center. And. Spreading. A. Whole. Manufactured. Lie. This is the Satanic Panic, 2025 edition, led and coordinated by pedophiles.

Calling Emerging Writers! The 2026 Emerging Voices Fellowship application opens January 1 and closes January 31, 2026. Join a vibrant community of writers, mentors, and readers committed to bold storytelling and creative growth. Apply this January. https://pen.org/emerging-voices-fellowship/

normalize instead of “would this candidate have a beer with me” asking “would this candidate be folding laundry on a Monday night, and planning out the grocery list for Tuesday while doing so”

CTA bus and train rides will once again be free overnight on New Year’s Eve. blockclubchi.co/4rUtzEa

Holiday commute!

They’re getting better at it. Must have brought in a proper mortician.

Cori Close is right to be disappointed in the lack of media coverage yesterday. Everyone watches women’s sports, but no one wants to pay a beat writer to cover them. How many stories are being left on the table?

“Police beats where peacekeepers are active saw a decrease in homicides of more than 63%, more than double the citywide average.” We know what works, and Shotspotter isn’t it.

Looks super interesting.

Pioneer! @melissaludtke73.bsky.social

The President of the United States appears to be getting regular IV infusions, the public doesn’t know anything about it, & the DC media evidently doesn’t care. We are months into the mystery of Trump’s hands, the White House is lying, & I’ve seen a grand total of one serious news story about it.

A leader who is easily swayed by fatuous flattery assumes that other leaders are just as easily swayed by fatuous flattery.

Members of neither the legislative nor the executive branch had a financial stake in the prevalence of heavy metal music.

Trump's DOJ was monitoring all the movements of the Miami Herald reporter who was covering the Epstein case.

Super interesting thread.

You’ve got a few days left to get your annual National Parks pass without Trump’s face on it.

will also add - yes, this is my personal crusade - that turning podcasts into videos implicitly asks women to once again make more effort than men, as the bar for "camera-ready" for one gender is obviously higher than for the other

All of the money that changed hands in the Teapot Dome scandal totaled less than $10 million after adjusting for inflation, and it was considered so corrupt we still teach it in high school government classes a century later.

It’s pretty wild that the most rabidly anti-immigrant administration in recent memory is comprised of a President married to an immigrant, a VP married to the daughter of immigrants, an assistant AG in charge of Civil Rights who’s an immigrant (Dhillon), & it was all funded by an immigrant (Musk).

I’ll believe it when I see it. (When Massachusetts passed this tax, no one left there like they said they would, and the tax is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, and the wealthy are still wealthy and still enjoying the benefits of living in MA.)

Is somebody actually feeling some heat??

When will the administration do something about these White gangs roaming inner cities and causing havoc

The incredibly corrupt, lawless, & unconstitutional nature of the entire DOGE enterprise requires Elon Musk and lots of other people to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. trib.al/LUCScTR

Worth repeating this with every new Epstein document drop. The party of Denny Hastert is the party of Jim Jordan is the party of Matt Gaetz is the party of Donald Trump. Looking the other way and protecting child predators from the law is their brand.

Such great info in this story. I love that they say the interest in women's sports has always been there. The money had to catch up. If you're not paying attention to women's sports, especially if you're a men's sports fan, you're falling behind.

God help us, we let this pedophile ring up random children on Christmas Eve

🏴 ‘The Epstein Files Should Not Have Been Released This Way’ By @mollyjongfast.bsky.social But nothing short of this was ever expected from this deranged, unhinged, lawless criminal club of thugs, with #ConvictedFelon47 and the helm, spiraling us into the abyss. Bypass 🔗 archive.md/2025.12.24-2...

Noting in the final section that Kavanaugh went out of his way to disclaim "Kavanaugh stops." In other words, the repeated, pointed and personalized criticism has gotten to him

Merry Christmas!

👇🎯 Once again, you may recall how the media acted like spoiled children for the first two months of Biden’s presidency, while he was busy governing & cleaning up Trump’s first mess, & then they soiled themselves immediately before doing exactly what Jake said: bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Thread.

No ivy in Beloit but it's always unbelievably cool to be on the field at a ballpark. More details in the alt text. @beloitskycarp.bsky.social @sabrchicago.bsky.social

So on Christmas Eve there is no women's college basketball no NBA no NHL no NFL Doesn't this violate one of the Constitutional amendments? Like most Americans, I have never read that document. But surely national sports are required on Christmas Eve! What are we supposed to do today? 🤣