I’ll be using “toxic positivity” constantly now.

Why don’t they make the whole team out of Caleb Durbin?

Sometimes I get to stare at the Alps.

The Balkans may not be a land of opportunity, but they are a land of possibility. They are like Africa in that there is a sense that anything can happen there. Often this is for good. More often it is for ill.

#Split is at the same time an industrial town and a magical beach side vacation destination. I like to think of it as a duality between its two patrons, Diocletian and Dino Radja.

Somehow I missed this when I visited Croatia in 2003

I’d really like to hoop there #dubrovnik

Doesn’t get much more beautiful than Korcula.

Thank God someone wrote this.

Annual Wade Boggs text to the 1984/85 Red Sox text chain: “Happy Easler!” Teammates collectively roll their eyes and mutter, “for the 42nd year in a row, Wade. Give it a rest.”

A Dalmatian in Dalmatia

Everyone except Wilyer sucks.

NYC Mayor Zorhan Mamdani’s dad, anthropologist Mahmoud Mamdani, wrote a fascinating book that tries to rehabilitate Idi Amin. I like the mayor, though he's somewhat left of me. His father, however, I think is way, way left of me. From my review of his book available at the link:

Superb short read. I found it really soothing.

Getting fired up for Opening Day by listening to all my favorite ballpark anthems: Centerfield, Sweet Caroline, Dirty Water, Take on Me... The Liza Minelli version of New York, New York.

Getting in tune for opening day... 2008

Getting fired up for Opening Day by listening to all my favorite ballpark anthems: Centerfield, Sweet Caroline, Dirty Water, Take on Me... The Liza Minelli version of New York, New York.

This is the brand new award that Speaker Johnson will be presenting the President.

Happy Major League #Baseball opening day to everyone who has a soul. To those who do not know it is opening day, I pray for you. In related news, The #Red#Sox opening in #Cincinnati is a venal sin.

Emperor Bokassa, is that you?

Yeah, my folks arrived at ATL at 5:35 for a 9:30 flight and spend 2:45 minutes in the security line watching ICE agents drink coffee.

If you're wondering why Thune is desperate to get Trump to cut a funding deal it's because thanks to Trump's genius political intellect captive audiences of thousands of angry swing state voters are now watching ICE get paid to to this literally in front of the TSA agents who aren't getting paid

When you live in a beautiful, peaceful, prosperous paradise, you need to paraglide, or ski off-piste, or eat enough cheese to block an elephant’s arteries just to stay alive, man.

I would be happy if Tom Caron replaced Dave O'Brien doing Red Sox play-by-play. I know it will never happen, Tom is 62 and he doesn't have O'Brien's voice, but I like how he has a soul.

The headline should really be "House Republicans want to make it easier for motorists to run down DC children"

Chatgpt informed me that it was "very likely incorrect" that Peter Mutharika is President of Malawi and that there was an election in 2025. I feel much better about my prospects of continued employment as an Africa specialist than I did, an hour ago.

They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.

Ever wonder what my origin story is? This was the very first expatriarch post. I sent it to one email, which I can only assume is my own, and it got 200 views on the strength of me manually sending it to my entire personal list. Have I gotten better? Worse? Or just older?

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

I just got a sponsored ad in my Gmail inviting e to apply for the US border patrol. Notice anything about the people in the picture they used?

Ah yes. The late Craig Kimbrel experience in a nutshell

I worked on opposing this crap 25 years ago. She's absolutely right.

I really, really don’t care for the Kobe cult.

The yips are when a baseball player loses the ability to throw the ball. Can you get that for other things—like parenting, writing, or working? Find out below and tell us what you think.

He's not wrong.

My substack just got its 700th subscriber. It's both a lot and not a lot of readers, but for someone who is utterly not famous, I think it's a pretty good number. If you'd like to support me for free--or even better--support me for money, I hope you'll consider subscribing.

Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now

It’s so, so sad that #Crete ’s beautiful minotaurs are all extinct. Still, there’s some nice Minoan history to see…. Read what the #Greek s built and the Brits mucked up here. And that's a real 3000 plus year old piece of art. expatriarch.substack.com/p/minotaur-h...

Honestly, I’ve been thinking this constantly for the last few weeks. Laugh to keep from crying, I suppose.

I am beyond proud to be a part of the team that drafted this amicus for the Korematsu Ctr & other nonprofits/race & law ctrs in the birthright citizenship case. In it, we tell the stories of the concrete harms when the government has stripped citizenship in the past and the retroactive risks now.

It turns out I’m terrible at rigging a kite. Thankfully, a kindly, old #Greek sailor came to my rescue. Read about my shame below expatriarch.substack.com/p/lets-go-fl...

1) Look I wrote the Democratic response “The President just lied to you for an hour and a half, and he thinks he can get away with it because he thinks the American people are stupid.

At carnival in Rethymno Crete. The cheerleaders and baseball players combo suggests that Greeks sort of get Americans but not completely

Nice to wake up to #chania #crete

Have you taught your kids to ski? #Skiing is such a good metaphor for #parenting that I wonder how people from warm, flat places can possibly raise children. (Not really, but it is a really good metaphor)

I had no idea. Go Malawi!

#Estonia was so charming, but it did make my reconsider my slap dash approach to travel. Read at the link, and subscriptions are down to $5/month if you've ever considered supporting my work. expatriarch.substack.com/p/too-little...

Just got off the phone with the President of Antifa. They said they have a cell in Florida that set up a fake tailoring shop, where they created this custom garment to humiliate Michael Flynn.

They’re concentration camps where our government is thundering children for fun.