On World AIDS Day, I remember my best friend Tyrone. The Will to my Grace, the poet to my reporter, the one with the beautiful laugh that I can still hear and will forever.

I wrote this a couple weeks ago after Audi Crooks scored a "mere" 43 points. She topped that with 47 over the weekend. She's so fun to watch, for a variety of reasons. janeburns.substack.com/p/crooks-nav...

Audi Crooks is good at the basketball

Well, on the bright side, we’ve reached the time of the year when you realize that you forgot your leftovers in the car but it’s no big deal and you can just go get them whenever.

I recently told a coach friend that being a journalist is almost worse than being a coach in terms of job security. Then I corrected myself and said no, it was worse because we lose our jobs even when we’re good at them. This is a loss for Iowa readers, but Mike has a fine Plan B.

Interview with a 94-year-old woman is cool because not only does she want me to text some follow-up information, she ends the call with “OK, dear, bye-bye.”

The Badgers should be wearing the other official state colors: blaze orange or camouflage.

I live on a busy street but it is absolutely silent right now

This isn’t new but a lovely story. A couple years ago, the owner of my regular coffee shop put up some photos of regulars he took at a local festival. A high school friend I haven’t seen since the ‘80s stopped there, saw my photo and figured I must hang out there so she left me a note on a napkin.

X The Pretenders Patti Smith Bonnie Raitt Jason Isbell

A reminder for those who are not aware: "remigration" is the process of deporting all non-white people from a country. It includes citizens and is, by definition, ethnic cleansing. And to be clear: this is not fake. I just screenshot it myself.

HBO’s movie categories could use some tweaking

Straight-up sociopath. Asked about a Guard member who’s dead because of his bullshit and it takes him 30 seconds to make it all about how great he is.

I never named this photo, but I should just call it "Wisconsin." You've got a tavern with a toddler at the bar and an old guy in a Packers jacket. Puempel’s in New Glarus.

And because you can get to the recipe without the 1000-word personal essay that precedes it

The draft dodging idiot posted a pic of this West Point plaque. It contains these words: “Our American Code of Military Obedience requires that, should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law.” That is precisely what Senator Mark Kelly told officers to do. #NoSedition

New band name: Airport Pajamas

Some academic needs to do a study of why people are afraid to ring a bell when a sign says “Please ring the bell.” Yet they are completely unafraid of walking right in and wandering aimlessly around an office scaring the hell out of the people who work there

If the Boy Scouts are too woke then I’m a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model

The women abused by Justin Tucker and Art Briles have to carry those scars for the rest of their lives. It’s not to much to ask that Tucker and Briles should, too, rather than being given chances at redemption.

Lots of universities have wealthy backers who get buildings named after them and such. But Dan Finney writes about a man who lifted a school by investing in its neighborhood and was there to help on its darkest day. Just an outstanding tribute. open.substack.com/pub/paragrap...

What says Thanksgiving more than me (and Ken) on your TV? Surprise! I'm going to be on #Jeopardy on Thursday, November 27.

Art Briles has been hired as the head football coach at a D2 school and so is back in the news. If you want to understand why this hire is upsetting for many, here's the long piece @dansolomon.com and I wrote back in 2019 about How Baylor Happened: web.archive.org/web/20190208...

And destroyed so many lives. It certainly upended mine, as I was DOGEd in March. So much damage done, to people and institutions

How you know old people live in my building: Three newspapers outside. Yes, one of them is mine.

If I should stay I would only be in your way So I'll go, but I know I'll think of you every step of the way

hey, did we ever get an update on how this turned out

The baby that Madonna kept in “Papa Don’t Preach“ will be 40 next year.

for everyone’s who’s asked; I now have signed copies available for pre-order, via @strandbookstore.bsky.social! hit the link 🔗: www.strandbooks.com/art-but-make-it-sports-epic-matchups-where-art-and-sports-collide-9781797236834.html

Hlas column: The journey really does matter more than the destination, and the people are more important than the scoreboard. A personal story as the final football game I cover at Kinnick Stadium for the Gazette nears. www.thegazette.com/sports/my-fi...

The biggest beneficiary of transgender athletes collectively and Lia Thomas specifically is Riley Gaines. Had Thomas not been in that race, Gaines would’ve finished an irrelevant fourth instead of an irrelevant fifth, and probably would be working in a Walmart right now. Instead she’s cashing in.

It’s like they were hoping no one would notice the change but shifted back when they were caught. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Today in uninformed know-it-all basketball fans: A top recruit chooses Texas over Iowa and someone in the comments can’t believe she’d pick a school with no women’s basketball tradition.

Can we tell the pro women’s sports people that it would be absolutely ok if the players are fulfilling their own dreams and not just “doing it for the next generation?” I wrote about this once lol

This is an accidentally honest answer. What she's saying in code is: "The President is a misogynist, petulant bully. You've all seen him be a misogynist, petulant bully. And lots of voters out there are also misogynist or petulant or bullies and that's why they like him."

My sister died a couple of weeks ago. This isn’t a post for sympathy but to share some advice. She had been sick for years and it’s crazy, and infuriating, how many people tell me “I should have gone to see her.” It’s all I can do to not scream “YES YOU F***ING SHOULD HAVE.”

Not a new photo but a favorite: Some pissed off turkeys on the east side of Madison, presumably headed just down the street to the Jenifer Street Market to rescue some friends.

Trump’s performance at the White House Tuesday was weak, crass and of no strategic benefit to America, the Editorial Board writes.

Yoko knows. (This isn’t new today, just something I saved. But it’s pretty timeless)

Jesus Christ. This is monstrous. Absolutely sickening. The journalists in that room should walk out en masse.

The Gazette staff learned this morning that they will soon become employees of an out-of-state company, along with folks at 11 other local Iowa newspapers purchased by AMM.

Thanksgiving should be awesome. Turkey, stuffing, pie, friends… and @nicolehaase.bsky.social on Jeopardy! www.jsonline.com/story/entert...

Imagine escaping the literal Nazis, making it to America, living three quarters of a century there making your life, and then this:

The Trump regime has blown up 21 boats and murdered 83 people without providing any evidence that they were doing anything wrong. If this keeps up, their next step will be to blow up Americans too. You watch. And they won't provide any evidence that the Americans were doing anything wrong either.

I have a friend, an Iowa alum, who until 2 years ago had never seen a women’s basketball game in her life. This year she and her husband, who live in Des Moines, bought season tickets for Northern Iowa to make sure they’d be able to get a ticket for today’s Iowa-Northern Iowa game.

A year ago, Drake celebrated its 50th anniversary of women’s basketball and all its greatest stars were there. There was none greater than 1986 all-American Wanda Ford. I had the privilege of covering her as a student journalist. Absolutely incredible, led the nation and scoring and rebounding. …

Conservatives claim that structural racism does not exist while simultaneously creating innovative new forms of structural racism like banning discussions of the concept.

Sometimes in November it is calm 🌊🌊

I got a little fed up this week after hearing, yet again, that Audi Crooks isn't all that. Because of her size, of course. So I wrote a thing. open.substack.com/pub/janeburn...