For @today.yougov.com, we asked Americans whether candidates facing sex scandals should drop out or stay in the race. In general Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they should drop out — but interesting things happened when I crosstabbed by Platner favorability:

Lmao here's the goal from Freese's perspective, courtesy of the BBC's 3D World Cup thing

troubling ........ not content to simply get Folarin Balogun back from his red card suspension, the FOX desk is talking about how the USA playing in Seattle will provide them a "12th man" in tonight's game tonight. this of course would be a massive breach of FIFA rules and regulations

My 16-month-old daughter has to account for at least a couple percentage points of the national banana boom.

I think the Tilly Norwood story is a good example of how broken media is. No one actually believes it’s popular—but it is rage bait, and if you’re a social person whose performance is based on all-in engagement numbers…why not push it. It’s more cynical than credulous.

My theory on this is that the shift of political centre of engagement from parties to pressure groups means a shift from orgs who want to loudly tell a story of success to those who want to loudly tell a story of failure, and so the messages the public receive are more negative.

In case you missed it, my conversation about France and the early American Republic from last week:

OK sure, great, but I don't that helps much. He's 80 years old, woefully out of shape, and probably doesn't even know the rules.

Children’s Games (detail), by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1560, 📸 by @kgmadeit1

Blessings to the person who referred to Haaland as “Norwegian megafauna”.

This is NOT what the FIFA World Cup is about. The FIFA World Cup is about *opens history book* uh oh *Frantically starts flipping though pages* uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh

It occurs to me that America might actually be doing a better job of wrestling with its past than it gets credit for, we just don’t notice because the truly bonkers shit in other countries is in languages we can’t read

let’s fucking go

Aesop: I TOLD YOU

Pete Crow-Armstrong is a National League All-Star for the 2nd consecutive season. After starting in last year’s ASG, he makes this one as a reserve after falling short in fan vote. His 5.2 fWAR leads all MLB hitters. Barring injury/roster replacement, Crow-Armstrong will be Cubs’ lone All-Star.

Things are always changing in this chaotic world of ours, but one constant is that Amtrak will always somehow have the worst possible boarding methods.

doubling down: I owe the pausa de hidratación an apology. I was not familiar with the sun's game

No background needed for the latest episode of my history podcast, which actually falls into the “three guys shooting the breeze on camera” definition that people now mean when they say “podcast.”

not really fourth of july content but i found thus explanation of affordable housing financing in DC very informative.

"Not ALL the single ladies" - Nuancé

This is the moment for me Goal of his life, pure disbelief He can’t believe he just did that

Some teams finish .500 because they're average all year long The Cubs may do it because they're the worst team that ever lived when they're not also the best team that ever lived

Tag yourself in this board of the names of all the animals at the petting zoo we’re at this afternoon. I’m Sawyer.

the "how dare you root for the USMNT" scold made think of a totally pointless but sort of funny intellectual exercise in finding the Least Problematic Team. rooting for Cape Verde, but also shaking my head solemnly periodically to let people know I do NOT approve of their period of one party rule.

So I said “Bobby Lee, it sounds like you’re just feeding brigades to emplaced artillery” and then Longstreet started crying.

I've noticed this on @askhistorians.bsky.social. There's a certain ineffable quality between a medicore answer and a good one that often comes down to "having context beyond the direct subject of the question."

Literally laughed out loud at the comparative Cubs and Cardinals injury reports.

I find it really interesting that baseball fans are almost universally positive about this season’s automated balls and strikes system (and if anything want it to go further) but soccer fans seem to *hate* the World Cup’s VAR.

One of the best parts of this is that at Appomattox, Henry Hunt (US artillery commander at Gettysburg) rides up to Porter Alexander (CS artillery Cdr) and berates him for his artillery bombardment on July 3 - Hunt had taught Porter artillery at West Point and was all “clearly you learned nothing”

The great Vale of the Mississippi between St Paul and Minneapolis. On the right is the original United States as defined by the Treaty of Paris, 1783. On the left is the Louisiana Purchase, 1804.

Happy BAYONETS!! Day to all who celebrate.

Oh shit.

Lots of replies from Bluesky elders about how, DUH, Orange Man is bad. That is a factor! But any Washingtonian will tell you that tourists will show up no matter what. They are a natural occurrence here, like broods of cicada. And Freedom 250 has made it very difficult for them to go to the fair.

Your reminder that Joshua Chamberlain thought it was a moral imperative to fight the Confederacy but he didn't have any background as an Army officer, so he was like, "Hmm, I should study Casey's Infantry Tactics and Duparcq's Elements of Military Art and History", and that's how he beat Longstreet.

“Attendance at the Great American State Fair reflects a truism about public space: You can design it to reflect government authority and the power of state projects, or you can make it work for people and the wear and tear they inevitably bring, but you can rarely have both.”

America isn’t even that old; if you’re 50 you’ve been alive for one-fifth of it. The country has existed for a span covering only four presidents’ lives.

Always hard to quantify these sorts of things, but I think it's generally very interesting how people online try and measure cultural impact and what they do and don't consider to count as having staying power

Oh, wow, if you saw that story making the rounds about how a single corporation had killed 47 small Alabama newspapers, it’s worth reading this piece about how it — and multiple similar stories — are entirely fake.

I've now asked Americans identically phrased questions about how much they know about a range of different historical periods now. Here's how they compare:

Reposting this video essay about Battlestar Galactica mostly because I'm excited to finally see someone else properly raving about the superb four-minute tracking shot at the beginning of the miniseries:

TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE, WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS

People here like to rag on Threads, but this is CONTENT

Fascinating that, with the notable exception of the guy with the visibly foreign name, liberals had more negative views than conservatives of literally everyone involved in the American Revolution, on all sides.

sole thing uniting this country at this point is that Ben Franklin would be a good hang

I've written for @today.yougov.com about what Americans think about the Roman Empire, about the Middle Ages, and now about the American Revolution: yougovamerica.substack.com/p/how-americ...

Tennis is the sport that dares to ask the question: what if the Quiet Car also had a competition?