The baseball was fun.

So, the LA Times announced it would not make an endorsement for President because the billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong refused to allow it, leading the editor to resign.

Now, the Washington Post announced it will not endorse a candiate either, reportedly because the billionaire owner Jeff Bezos refused to allow it.

Newspapers making an endorsement are meaningless. Soon-Shiong and Bezos have never heard of the Streisand Effect.

Meanwhile, the Onion’s new owners just made a timely endorsement of Joe Biden.

Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, has an interesting take on this year’s World Series matchup.

For all the story lines surrounding the Yankees-Dodgers World Series that begins on Friday night — the fact that the former NYC rivals are playing in their 11th World Series against each other, more than any other pairing; the fact that they have two of the largest payrolls in baseball and are home to the largest media markets; the fact that fans across America love to hate both teams — I wonder if the most important one for baseball is the concentration of boldface superstars the series contains. Chances are that if you asked someone who doesn’t pay close attention to baseball to name all the active players they know, every name they’d list is playing in this series. You want charismatic breakout stars? The World Series has just about all of them.

It starts, of course, with the two men who are going to win the MVP in their respective leagues this year. Ohtani signed his massive — and still, I’d argue, kinda risky? — $700 million contract with the Dodgers in the offseason despite being unable to pitch this year, and he responded with the best offensive season of his career, becoming the first person to put together a 50-50 season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. He is by far the most popular athlete in baseball and, increasingly, one of the most popular in the world: He’s the 13th-highest-paid athlete on the planet, one of only two baseball players in the top 50, with the vast majority of that income coming from global endorsements. (There are estimates that the Dodgers could end up earning $1 billion from Ohtani’s presence.)

And Ohtani didn’t even have the best season among players in this series. You can make a very strong argument that the Yankees’ Aaron Judge just had the best one for a right-handed hitter in MLB history, smashing 58 homers and driving in a career-high 144 RBIs despite the dearth of other good sluggers in the Yankees’ lineup beyond Juan Soto. Both Ohtani and Judge are titans of the sport, the sort of larger-than-life characters baseball hasn’t had since, really, Griffey. Ohtani is so skilled he almost seems supernatural, and Judge, at six-foot-seven, is one of the tallest players in MLB history and certainly the best tall player. They both tower over every other player in the sport, literally and figuratively, and they are both going for their first-ever World Series title. That they are doing so for the two most well-known franchises only further expands their reach. They’d be famous anywhere. But in New York and Los Angeles, they span to the infinite.

And they’re hardly the only stars in this series. In fact, of the players with the sport’s top-selling jerseys this season, four of the top seven are in this World Series: Ohtani (No. 1), Judge (No. 3), Mookie Betts (No. 4), and Soto (No. 7). (Two other Dodgers, Freddie Freeman at No. 18 and Clayton Kershaw at No. 19, made the top 20.) That is unprecedented and a stark contrast with recent history: Last year’s buzzkill of a Fall Classic featured zero players among the top-ten jersey sellers; there was just one in 2022 and one in 2021. You couldn’t get more stars here if you tried.

I kinda hate that he’s right.

Laura Helmuth, writing for Scientific American, explains that Apple experts divide time into “before Honeycrisp” and “after Honeycrisp.”

Honeycrisp inspired consumer demand for excellent tasting apples, and that changed the apple market. “It wasn’t that consumers wanted Red Delicious” back in the day, Bedford says. “They just didn’t have any choice.”

I have not had a Red Delicious in years. I pretty much only eat Honeycrisp now.

This is the full six-minute version of "Unfinished,” the final song that Edward and Alex wrote together. It is featured in the audiobook version of Alex’s new memoir, _Brothers_.

He didn't release it through any music distributors. It’s not on Spotify or Apple Music. He didn’t save it for some future release. Alex made it free for everyone.

I really never thought I’d hear new Van Halen music. I know there’s so much more. I hope we get to hear it.

These videos so far are really well done. I can't wait to see each new one.

Nicholas Bate –

(1) Life is messy. (2) Life is unpredictable. (3) Life can make you cry, (4) pull your hair out, (5) throw your hat in the air and even (6) sit down and weep. (7) Life is exciting, (8) scary and at times (9) daunting. (10) Life is funny and often makes you (11) giggle. At other times it is so (12) awe-inspiring, even (13) electrifying it makes you want to (14) hug somebody. Nobody said (15) Life is nor should be easy. Certainly not a (16) bowl of cherries. Life can (17) can pass you by unless you (18) wake up, (19) switch on and (20) fully engage. Life (21) isn’t DNA: that’s a stack of bonded atoms. No, Life (22) is what you make of it. (23) Examine it fully to notice all the (24) moving parts, its (25) potential smooth running and ability to (26) accelerate into action, given (27) regular maintenance, of course. Life (28) meanders on a fine summers day, (29) shivers in NYC snow and (30) loves hot chocolate by outside braziers in Stockholm. (31) Life knows few boundaries, is (32) ever curious and sometimes (33) day-dreams and an (34) amazing imagination conjures up lyrics to pop songs or new improved digital cameras or cool recipes. (35) Life is great long, even better (36) wide and kinda gorgeous (37) deep. (38) Life needs regular massage, (39) good books, quality (40) sleep and regular glimpses of the sea, mountains, the desert and needs also to hear the CRACK of a good (41) thunderstorm. (42) Life loves drama because (43) Life is drama. Life is (44) Planet Earth’s greatest story in which for once we get the major role. (45) Every day an audience turns up and notices our performance. (46) In Life we may or may not connect with that audience; (47) we may or may not have an impact. But whatever, Life is (48) cool, (49) Life is staggeringly rich; Life is (50) pretty damn Good.

In a world where far too many shows face an early cancellation or never see the light of day, Cobra Kai is in the middle of its sixth and final season. Part 1 came out back in July, and now, in anticipation of the show’s final episodes, we are getting a Cobra Kai Part 2 trailer.

The Sekai Taikai looks intense. It looks like someone might get killed or hurt real bad…

“Things look a little different around Lumon.”

The official teaser trailer for season two of Severance reveals a bit more about the upcoming season, but not much.

January 17, 2025, can’t come soon enough!

Barack Obama raps the first verse of "Lose Yourself" by Eminem while campaigning for Kamala Harris in Detroit. pic.twitter.com/flWfopIvLT

— The Recount (@therecount) October 23, 2024

Barack Obama only got one shot to follow up Eminem — and he didn’t blow that opportunity.

Patrick Rhone –

I know we keep saying this is the most important election of our lifetime. I know it gets old. I long for going the other way. To make each less important than the last.

But the stakes keep getting raised. So it keeps being that way and therefore keeps being true.

Andy McCullough, reporting for The Athletic:

Fernando Valenzuela, the Mexican southpaw who became an icon in Los Angeles during his rookie season with the Los Angeles Dodgers and remained a vibrant part of the franchise’s fabric for the next four decades, died Tuesday, the Dodgers confirmed. He was 63. […]

In 2023, the Dodgers recognized Valenzuela’s indelible place within franchise lore by altering a club policy in his honor: Valenzuela became the first Dodger to see his number retired without reaching the Hall of Fame. Before the ceremony in August 2023, as his No. 34 took its place at Dodger Stadium in between Sandy Koufax’s No. 32 and Roy Campanella’s No. 39, Valenzuela pronounced himself shocked.

“It never crossed my mind that this would ever happen,” Valenzuela said. “Like being in the World Series my rookie year, I never thought that would happen.”

I remember Fernandomania.

Amazing.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in an incredible piece for The Atlantic:

In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Trump asked John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump, at various points, had grown frustrated with military officials he deemed disloyal and disobedient. (Throughout the course of his presidency, Trump referred to flag officers as “my generals.”) According to Baker and Glasser, Kelly explained to Trump that German generals “tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off.” This correction did not move Trump to reconsider his view: “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the president responded.

This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel. […]

As president, Trump evinced extreme sensitivity to criticism from retired flag officers; at one point, he proposed calling back to active duty Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal, two highly regarded Special Operations leaders who had become critical of Trump, so that they could be court-martialed. Esper, who was the defense secretary at the time, wrote in his memoir that he and Milley talked Trump out of the plan. […] Trump has responded incredulously when told that American military personnel swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president.

Trump doesn’t understand the US armed forces swear an oath to their country, not to him. If he becomes President again, there won’t be anyone to stand in his way of becoming an absolute tyrant. Please don’t vote for Donald Trump.

Will Leitch, writing at his Medium site, politely asks us all to not vote for Donald Trump.

I look at Trump and see the worst of humanity, and the worst of America, a man with no redeeming qualities, who cares about nothing other than his own aggrandizement and personal wealth, who has so many aggrievements, so much rage, that his core is simply an empty maw that can never be filled. But 46 percent of the voters of this country, this country I love, many of them my neighbors, some of them beloved family members, have looked at that very same man, and the way he acts, the vindictiveness, the threats, the cruelty, the ridiculousness, the fundamental unseriousness, the way he treats people, the example he sets for my children and their children and all children … after all that they have seen, or all that they have chosen not to, and they have said, “Yes, this is what I want. Give me more of this.”

This is not an easy circle for me to square.

Originally, I had planned for this newsletter to be a plain-spoken, earnest, good-faith attempt to address arguments that people, including many people I know, make for voting for Trump. I was going to attempt to rebut them. If you think Trump is going to make your taxes lower, well, unless you are among the top 0.1 percent of richest Americans, he won’t. If you think he’s going to keep bad people out of the country, well, immigrants actually commit crimes at a far lower rate than the rest of the population (also, not for nothing, but thinking they don’t is, uh, the textbook definition of what racism is?) and, more to the point, Trump early this year himself blocked a tougher border bill that was the sort of bipartisan tough immigration agreement that everyone claims they want. If you think he will bring inflation down (which is already happening), his plan on massive tariffs on imports (Thursday, he called “tariff” a “more beautiful word than love”) is universally expected by economists to “lead to higher costs, stock market volatility and feuds with the rest of the world.” If you think Trump will promote Christian values … I’m sorry, I couldn’t actually finish that one with a straight face.

I could sit here all day and try and throw a bunch of facts at people. I could try to appeal to their emotions, to a sense of decency, to look at sort of world they want for children that I know they love deeply. I could talk about Trump’s threats to democracy, about how much he could, and even desires to, dismantle the sorts of foundational tenets that both my grandfathers fought for, that millions of American soldiers died for. (Soldiers Trump himself has no respect for.) I could make the argument that even a dedicated Republican who isn’t all-in on Trump but voted for Reagan and Bush and McCain and Romney and wants the party to return shouldn’t vote for Trump, that if you consider yourself a Nikki Haley Republican, the best thing that could happen for Nikki Haley and the rest of the party (and the rest of the country) would be for Trump to lose. I could direct you to this terrific Jonathan V. Last piece, which, in ways smarter than I can muster, digs into every rationale for voting for Trump and why each one is either irrational or based on presumptions that are simply not true. (Damon Linker has a great piece making the case for “normie” Republicans to vote for Harris so they can go back to being normal Republicans again as well.) I could go on and on. I suppose I sort of already have.

I’ll link his next one too, “Please vote for Kamala Harris.”

Warren Ellis –

The first ever time someone takes your hand, and the first thought you have is “this is everything” and the second is “what happens when it’s gone?” The space of time between those thoughts defines the shape of your life.

Nicholas Bate –

1. Write every day, rain or shine.
2. Write every day whatever your mood.
3. Write more and more. Write on boats and planes and trains and in a queue and while waiting for the storm-cloud to pass.
4. Write for quantity. Then edit for quality.
5. Write fingers on keyboard, pencil on paper, chalk on board, stick on sand. Texture changes aspect.
6. Write without needing praise, without needing publication and with knowledge that you are on a quest to find you not replicate the famous author.
7. Write today.

Kevin Drum has a few choice words and tweets to say about Donald Trump’s stint working at McDonald’s today.

It’s heartwarming to see Trump serving the little people, sort of like Jesus did. But you will be unsurprised to learn that it was all staged. The store itself was shut down for the day. The cars coming up to the drive-thru window were full of handpicked Trump supporters.

It was just so stupid. I can’t believe corporate McDonald’s didn’t shut this silly scenario down straightaway. Now, McDonald’s worldwide looks complicit.

Michael Lopp –

Less than 1% of your writing will be life-changing.
3% will be trivial to write.
4% will strongly resonate with others in a way you didn’t expect.
5% will be quite good.
15% probably should’ve never been published.
26% will elicit a reaction you did not expect. Positive or negative.
28% will become vastly better because you chose to edit.
30% will start as one piece but finish as another.
40% will be good solid writing.
45% will do much worse than you expect when published.
60% of your writing will never be finished. Be ok with that.
100% of your writing is worth your time.

Nicholas Bate –

1. All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt. Charles M Schulz.
2. Choose quality over quantity every time.
3. Explore the incredible range of new producers dedicating their kitchens to the art.
4. Eat with mindfulness. Instant meditation.
5. Perfect at a break on a hike with a brew of coffee.
6. Add a few chunks to your trail mix.
7. Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world’s perfect food. Michael Levine.