Emily Oster is another victim of pundit brain and has never recovered

I know this is corny to say but this is the real America, man. This is what it’s all about. This is what those freaks are trying to destroy & we won’t let them

lol this project is dead. Again. What a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars planning this thing. Same mistakes as the CRC. Just gobsmacking hubris and incompetent leadership.

Some personal news! This week I started a new role as deputy editor of Election Analytics. The quote Sam Sifton gave for the announcement summed up my career well: “Ben is at the very top of the short list of Times journalists who could move seamlessly from Sports to Styles to Election Analytics.”

Oh man, it must suck to have your contributions to a project ignored on such a massive stage. Reminds me that time when some guy made a movie about the ingenious plan a bunch of Canadian officials made to smuggle US embassy personnel out of Iran, but the movie credited the CIA for the plan instead.

This was the last pretty solid template for new post offices. The current template is abominable, imho.

Update: Finished TASK. It's really good, and the best show ever about a serious birder. But man, the plot holes just kept getting bigger in the last two episodes. I'm guessing a bunch of exposition got cut for time? Kinda frustrating, as so many things about the show were so great.

Been (re)watching a lot of COLUMBO lately (thanks, Roku). Great show, but nearly every episode has some gaping plot hole you sorta have to ignore. Oh, those silly old-time shows! (and lately I'm watching TASK, which is fantastic and has a gaping plot hole every episode or so)

I may never recover from this inequity:

This probably wasn’t the best thing I wrote this season. But it was almost certainly my favorite thing I wrote this season.

This is the feeling that Eric Adams was trying to capture when he said that New York is the only city where you might see a plane fly into the World Trade Center

You should subscribe to The Long Game because Molly is a great writer, a friend, and the community she has created is fantastic.

The final Newsletter of 2025 looks back at the biggest lesson I learned this year, and is posted free for all. Read, love, subscribe. To all, have a happy, healthy, and successful new year! www.joesheehan.com

Really amazing the extent to which even the biggest and most politically favored industries in the United States are oafish 19th-century style scams being run by blowhard hucksters and ideologues with no coherent ideology. The One Weird Trick economy. powering-the-planet.ghost.io/less/

COURT QUEENS is out March 17, women's hoops in pictures and words, 1890s to 2020s. It was a blast to pull together such a love letter of a coffee table book—pre-orders open everywhere you buy your books 🧡 (But 25% off for Barnes and Noble members right now! www.barnesandnoble.com/w/court-quee...)

The U.S. is blessed with one of the most scientifically and technologically advanced health care systems in the world. And yet, when it comes to health outcomes among the world’s wealthiest countries, the U.S. ranks last.

We have a special series where we critique movies/shows with podcasting in them. Most of the movies/shows are VERY bad. Please join @maximumfun.org and enjoy our suffering. maximumfun.org/join/

Awarding the coveted David Roth "What A Picture" status to The Secret Agent (2025). Another really humane, inventive, and nicely nasty movie about trying to remain human in very bad times that is also a blast to watch pretty much from start to finish.

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society https://theonion.com/historians-quibbling-over-exact-definition-of-concentration-camp-sign-of-healthy-society/

Jeez. Talk about recency bias. I forgot SINNERS. Definitely in here somewhere.

Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” is constantly on banned book lists - including the recent case in Llano County, Texas. I just want to say that it is the greatest picture book I’ve ever read, and would not be the same without the butts and weenises.

Boss: Did you get that promotional photo of Spielberg and ET??? Photographer: I sure did boss... Real sexy just like you asked!

"Mary sees the big man in George from the first, because she is a big woman." TLDR: She's a spinster without George, because George is the only man she wants.

They "discovered" that when mice are rewilded they become less anxious.And this surprises scientists? Being trapped, tormented by experiments makes them more anxious than being free in nature. They had to learn this? People experimenting on caged animals lose empathy, weakening basic understanding.

🚨 RECENCY BIAS ALERT 🚨 Four favorite movies this year: 1. Marty Supreme 2. Train Dreams 3. Frankenstein 4. OBAA

America, there's something you should know. The top three kinds of books that young people (under 25) offer to sell me on Dec. 26 are: - "Chicken Soup for the _____" - "Oh, the Places You'll Go" - Books of New Yorker cartoons I'm just saying. Keep it in mind for graduations and birthdays, too.

Green building McClusky, ND

The aura of a man who pinch-ran 120 times in the major leagues

Grateful for this. Thank you O's fans for reading/buying/supporting the book! www.ronkaplansbaseballbookshelf.com/2025/12/26/t...

A nice profile today at Ball Nine on Leslie Heaphy, one of the foremost scholars of Negro Leagues baseball (and one of my favorite people on the planet): ballnine.com/2025/12/26/d...

One of my favorite presents ever—my dad found and framed this pic of my mother @sunminkimes.bsky.social at a Seattle courthouse after she passed her US citizenship test in 1981. Like so many of the people who come here to start a new life, she is the best of us—the bravest, strongest person I know.

RFK: “Where did all this autism come from? It never existed when I was a kid!” “A Christmas Story”, a 1983 movie based on a 1971 memoir about a childhood in the 1930s: “This is my brother Ralphie. He has a ton of sensory issues and behaviors we don’t understand. Every family has a child like him.”

I struck up a conversation with a woman working at the post office today. I told her I was mailing copies of a book about the Dodgers. "I grew up with Fernando Valenzuela," she said, "He was from my hometown in Mexico." She then demonstrated his windup. Needless to say, we are now friends.

I saw Jay Kelly and it was fine to pretty good. I hope it doesn’t win a lot of Oscar’s but I fear it might because it’s about show business. There should be a special category called People In The Industry Are Really Quite Wonderful and all movies about that are ineligible in any other category.

Merry Christmas to one and all See you at Sicks' Stadium in 1970!

Looking for a last-minute gift for the baseball lover in your life? Save $10 on a gift subscription to JoeBlogs!

Imagine being this much of a gentleman

This is an almost shockingly wise essay. I'm glad I've finally read it.

If I decided it was too much bother to clean my house so I moved into an igloo in Antarctica for the rest of my life, you'd think I was awful stupid. Tech bros deciding they'd lose too much profit if they stopped destroying the Earth because they can move to Mars someday is even stupider.

If you're in the market for a different kind of holiday fare, may I recommend COMING OUT POLYAMOROUS FOR THANKSGIVING, which I star in and also co-wrote/adapted from Alex Alberto’s book ENTWINED. The film won a number of awards on the festival circuit, and is now on YouTube! youtu.be/IIpSC2efS-Q?...

Trying out some new ways to reach (hopefully) readers, so playing around with that other insane app. Find me here if you want: www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8yUvrx1/

This week on Baseball By Design, we head to British Columbia for the Victoria HarbourCats! Guests include team owner Jim Swanson and wildlife correspondent @rangeramy.bsky.social! Listen wherever you get podcasts

Thrilled to be a part of this phenomenal thriller! THE HOUSEMAID is in theaters now -- based on the book by brilliant best-selling author Frieda McFadden with a script from my TOTAL HERO Rebecca Sonnenshine, this movie was directed by the delightful genius and also TOTAL HERO Paul Feig.

Just wrapped a great two-hour conversation with @benlindbergh.bsky.social and @cdgoldstein.baseballprospectus.com for @ewpod.bsky.social. Forgo the Yule Log this year and listen to us debate the ABS challenge system.

Study of over twenty five million people over almost four years finds that COVID vaccines reduced COVID deaths by 74% and increased all-cause deaths by zero. I don’t know how much clearer it can get than that. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Just thought I'd mention that I've started a substack to vent my baseball related spleen onto the world. Feel free to stop by and read and comment: vorosmccracken.substack.com/p/i-bet-your...

All of these bootlegged copies of the 60 Minutes segment flooding my feed (saying, ‘Watch it quick! Before it disappears!’) makes me feel like I’m in the Soviet Union and just got some black market foreign newspaper I need to hide under a floorboard in my house. This is where America is now

The Cracker Barrel thing was THIS YEAR. We have three more years of this shit. Anybody who makes it to 2028 without looking like Nosferatu will be required by the state to start a skincare brand.