The Onion: Weeks (months?) after the last time it trended on social media, I am ready to share not only the headlines of my 10 favorite articles from The Onion but also 8 honorable mentions. (It seems I am nothing if not thorough.)

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-08 1. "The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket" -Pedro Sánchez (Spanish PM)

Iran War et al, 2026-04-07 (part 2) 1. Our president did not destroy Persian civilization (yet), aside from whether he already destroyed our own. Rather, we will negotiate w/the Islamic Republic during a two-week ceasefire. They claim the U.S. has accepted their (favorable to them) framework:

Don't be the white asshole who writes shit like this. (I'm white too, but I know better than to be the "this Black person needs to say more things" police)

Looking, again, for a steelman view of this. Is there ANY plausible argument that we didn’t just kill a bunch of people to no purpose and hand a giant geopolitical victory to an extremist regime after making it more entrenched and more extreme?

Dad things: my bumper car MO is the most times around on the least contact. In my headspace I'm just making my way through traffic, thinking mean thoughts about the dipshits who don't seem to know what "no head-on collisions" means. Yeah, sure, rear-end me. More momentum for me!

Georgia Voter: It's giving war crime. You can't do that. We don't just annihilate people because we can and, you know, make a grab for the money and the oil. And that's what we've done in Venezuela. And that's what we're doing in Iran.

Me: 8M's older sister's name is [name she chose, also legally correct now, just not the name we chose in 2008] Also me: that Tilt a Whirl can call itself "Riptide" all it wants but that's a Tilt a Whirl

in persian culture, telling someone "we're going to kill you all" is considered deeply offensive

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-07 That idiot really wrote "A whole civilization will die tonight." That asshole really wrote "A whole civilization will die tonight." We put him back in office, after he tried to seize power, after everything that shows who he really is. And some people like that.

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-06 (part 2) 1. Our president made a rambling, incoherent claim that he killed Osama bin Laden. As a reminder, members of Seal Team 6 killed OBL on 2011-05-02, with Barack Obama in office & members of Obama's administration monitoring from the Situation Room.

Remember when DHS agents had no choice but to shoot two Venezuelan men because the men had attacked them with a snow shovel and a broomstick? New video shows they were lying about that one, too. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/u...

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-06 1. Over the weekend our president excreted a threat onto his bespoke social media. That threat was to target Iranian infrastructure (a war crime in itself). We will see "Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern" whether this was the same bluff as usual.

Chess of the day (I'm Black): 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cd 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. Qf3 Qb6?! (book until my 7th) 8. Bxf6 gf 9. Qxf6 Qxb2 10. Nb3! Rg8 11. g3?? Bg7 12. Rb1 Bxf6 13. Rxb2 Bxc3 0-1 [White is winning if 11. Nd5! Qxc2 (...Qxf6 12. Nxf6 fork) 12. Rc1]

8M req'd silence as his walk-up "music," though his Little League teammates all have walkup songs. (Reds outfielder TJ Friedl seems to be the only regular MLB hitter w/o walkup music.) Today he was a mid-inning relief pitcher; as he warmed up the PA mom chose Darude - "Sandstorm." Sure, why not?

A very, very angry chicken.

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-03 (part 3)(!?) 1. "No, not at all. No, it's war. We're in war, Garrett.” -our president's response to NBC White House correspondent Garrett Haake, who asked whether the plane crashes would affect ongoing negotiations with the Islamic Republic (Iranian regime)

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-03 (part 2) 1. A second U.S. plane was shot down today, this one near Hormuz, though its pilot has been rescued. One of the troops in the first plane has also been rescued (by special forces) but Iranian police have put a bounty on the other.

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-03 1. An F-15 crashed in Iran. The Islamic Republic (Iranian regime) showed photos of the wreckage. At least one soldier is alive & on the ground. Hope & pray for their safe return.

I strongly suspect I'm quoting a bot, but good opportunity to pass along my Facebook friend Steve's dry wit that "Pam Bondi was let go due to COVID over-hiring and AI efficiencies."

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-02 (part 2) "We're fighting wars. We can't take care of day care." --our president

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-02 "We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future"

unless your book about converting to Catholicism is better than St. Augustine's, and I'm pretty sure yours isn't, nobody needs to know about your experience converting to Catholicism and we definitely don't need to read about it

What if Luis Alicea hadn't been picked off second in T9 of 2002-09-04 KC-Oak? He was the go-ahead run of an 11-11 game that had been 11-0. If he scored, inning continued, maybe no Hatteberg walkoff. How does that affect Michael Lewis? Or Chris Pratt? (Hatteberg after Andy Dwyer, before Star-Lord)

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-01 (parrt 2) Still no April Fools in this thread, unless you count our president's doddering speech.

Iran War (et al), 2026-04-01 No April Fools in this thread, unless you count U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer

Good morning to everyone except most of the California governor's race candidates. If you're running as a Dem and you're anyone other than Swalwell / Porter, GET OUT NOW. (This includes Tom Steyer, whose billions would go much further for a candidate with more charisma than himself.)

Shoutout to all fellow Game Changer parents out there who see plays like that second pitch all the time. No matter how sure we are... "Blue, what's the count?" (Optionally "that's a 'no he did not?'") "Thank you!" www.reddit.com/r/baseball/c...

On this Transgender Day of Visibility, a word of gratitude for Christina Kahrl (Baseball Prospectus), who ~20 years ago made the first transition that I knew of when it happened. She's in a world so regressive that there's still yet to be even an openly gay active MLB player. Thank you, Christina!

Iran War et al, 2026-03-31 "Imagine if spending billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, __ had spent that money helping the people of __. They would have a much different country." --Marco Rubio, not describing the country w/$1T/yr military budget that launched an unprovoked attack

8M's (formerly 7M - recent birthday) favorite baseball team is the Oakland Ballers, as well it should be! Our first Ballers game featured a pregame concert by Lyrics Born. (Yes, of course he did "Callin' Out.") Then they played video of this song from 4 days earlier www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T3d...

Is "remember some songs" (like "remember some guys" is for sports) a thing? Today's Daily Bandle (1322) is one of those. An easy (part 1), & I did get it in 1, but for a song that was everywhere at the time I hadn't thought about it in years, not even as a "that used to be everywhere" memory.

Iran War (et al), 2026-03-30 1. FT reports that the U.S. Secretary of Defense has a broker who tried to buy up stock in major U.S. arms manufacturers in February, just prior to the big attack on Iran.

another banner day for "if you didn't know sports were real, ESPN headlines would be crazy"

High-level gaming strategy: 17F won a board game[1] against 7M, 76M, and me (51M), despite 7M's big middle game advantage. 7M was chastising himself for decisions that didn't work out, when 17F shared some lore about different gameplay styles.

Iran War et al, 2026-03-27 1. Iranian hackers published 300+ emails & photos purportedly from the personal account of FBI director Kash Patel, who was previously best known for crashing the locker rooms of U.S. national teams and demanding celebrity/star treatment at conferences.

STORY! (Real answer Gwynn, retroactively Junior) Bip Roberts (by then A's TV studio) made a personal appearance at, of all places, a planetarium that 45F took 17F to ~15 years ago. "You don't know who I am but your husband does." I got to tell her about the "10 cents if it's Mint condition" TV ad.

OK, so the cursive in schools conversation is actually a symptom of a much larger problem in K-12 education today: A student's plate is only so large, and from every angle, people keep adding new things to it. Which means either you carefully remove things, or (1/

Fire Rob Manfred into the sun, but do also note that the "Manfred man" (while abysmal in its own right) is not one of the 100 worst things about him as commish.

Baseball: since we've had our first regular-season ABS challenge, here's my favorite (for meta reasons) trivia... Who was MLB's first automatic runner placed at 2B in extra innings? It happened in Oakland, but you already knew I wasn't at that game if you remember exactly what year it was

For the first time in the years I've been doing Connections, today (2026-03-25) has 2 words that, I vehemently argue, could switch places while still keeping the category descriptions from the answer key. In other words, (spoiler but the day is almost over) 2 words are both magazines & obfuscation

So there's Ben Rice, Jay Fiedler... who are the other notable Big Green athletes?

Fox Sports made Alex Rodriguez a baseball studio mainstay. Netflix is saying "hold my [garlic fries]" with Barry.

Iran War (et al), 2026-03-25 1. We sent a 15-pt proposal to Iran. Islamic Republic officials deny that negotiations are under way at all, & won't entertain cease-fire with the nation that broke promises by attacking to start this mess. One Iran spox claims the U.S. is "negotiating with itself."

Iran War et al, 2026-03-23 1. Our president backed down from his self-imposed deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He claimed to have had "productive discussions" with unnamed Islamic Republic officials; the Iranian regime scoffs at this claim.

Iran War (et al), 2026-03-22 1. Our president threatened to destroy Iranian power plants if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hrs. The Islamic Republic responded that if energy infra is attacked then Iran will strike all allied energy infra in the region.

Daily Bandle (1313): Always cool when there exists a mashup of my first guess with the correct answer. (But an even better mashup involving the correct answer, that doesn't seem to exist yet, would bring in Hadestown.)

Iran War (et al), 2026-03-21 1. Our president threatened to use ICE-holes for airport security. The GOP has repeatedly voted against paying actual TSA workers rather than accepting guardrails against the ICE-holes functioning as secret police (apparently also acting at the president's whim).

At least 6x on Chess(.)com I have played this exact game as white (maybe w/black transposition) 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Bc4 Bg7 4. Nc3 O-O 5. Qd2 d6 6. Bh6 Nbd7 7. h4 c6 8. h5 Nxh5?? 9. Rxh5!! gxh5? 10. Qg5! 1-0 The brilliant ("!!") seems undeserved but the question marks are merited.

Iran War (et al), 2026-03-20 1. A federal judge struck down the Pentagon policy requiring journalists covering the Department of Defense to sign a loyalty oath. Only three weeks into a war of choice/aggression.