Will Leitch, writing for mlb.com, outlines a fear I think most Cubs fans have-the 2016 Cubs are basically the 1985 Bears.

It is possible that the most famous NFL team of the last 40 years and the most famous baseball team of the last 40 years both are from Chicago. The 1985 Bears … well, the 1985 Bears are so famous that just typing their name right there got you humming the “Super Bowl Shuffle,” or thinking about your old G.I. Joe Refrigerator Perry figurine, or both. They were recently selected as the greatest NFL team of all time. They’re as large a part of Chicago as the skyline. They’re Da Bears.But the 2016 Cubs may live on just as long. No franchise and its fanbase in American sports had suffered for as long or for as brutally as the Cubs had, from the Billy Goat to the ball through Leon Durham’s legs to poor Steve Bartman to Sammy Sosa’s bat to all of it. The Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in 108 years felt like an impossible cosmic event, like a wormhole opening in time, or someone inventing cold fusion. And yet it happened, and it happened in the most dramatic way imaginable, in the rain, in Cleveland, in extra innings, after Jason Heyward’s big speech, giving generations of Cubs fans a joyous release they never thought would come. Even this lifelong Cardinals fan cannot deny how moving it was to see Cubs fans writing the names on the Waveland Avenue wall of loved ones who never lived to see the day. It was the biggest story in sports this whole decade. It’s still amazing that it happened.

But if there’s another thing that both those teams’ championships had in common, it’s that each was supposed to only be the beginning. The Bears were heavy favorites to win again in 1986, and the Cubs, famously, were thought to be building a dynasty. The 1985 and 2016 seasons were the launching pads, not the culminations. But those 1985 Bears never did win (or reach) another Super Bowl, something Bears players at the time still argue about. (Dan Hampton says the Bears would have won multiple titles with Jay Cutler as quarterback, which seems unlikely considering he was three years old at the time), and it has always felt like a disappointment: That team was too good not to have won more.

And if they’re not careful: Those 2016 Cubs might just suffer the same fate.

I would argue it’s already happened. Sure, the next three weeks will show where the Cubs go this post-season. However, I don’t think anyone has any flights of fancy that the Cubs are World Series bound again nor favorites to win.

At the risk of karma bitch slapping me in the face, I think the Cubs will fade and maybe not even make the playoffs this year. If that happens, the northside is going to explode.

Peter Wehner, writing in The Atlantic, states the obvious. Trump is not well.

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny, predatory sexual behavior, and sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)

The most recent example is the president’s bizarre fixation on falsely insisting that he was correct to warn that Alabama faced a major risk from Hurricane Dorian, to the point that he doctored a hurricane map with a black Sharpie to include the state as being in the path of the storm.

Wehner goes on to talk about the incredulity he faces whenever Trump says something ridiculous.

Even now, almost a thousand days into his presidency, the latest Trump outrage elicits shock and disbelief in people. The reaction is, “Can you believe he said that and did this?”

To which my response is, “Why are you surprised?” It’s a shock only if the assumption is that we’re dealing with a psychologically normal human being. We’re not. Trump is profoundly compromised, acting just as you would imagine a person with a disordered personality would. Many Americans haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that we elected as president a man who is deeply damaged, an emotional misfit. But it would be helpful if they did.

Among other things, it would keep us feeling less startled and disoriented, less in a state of constant agitation, less susceptible to provocations. Donald Trump thrives on creating chaos, on gaslighting us, on creating antipathy among Americans, on keeping people on edge and off balance. He wants to dominate our every waking hour. We ought not grant him that power over us.

It might also take some of the edge off the hatred many people feel for Trump. Seeing him for what he is—a terribly damaged soul, a broken man, a person with a disordered mind—should not lessen our revulsion at how Trump mistreats others, at his cruelty and dehumanizing actions.

Nor should it weaken our resolve to stand up to it. It does complicate the picture just a bit, though, eliciting some pity and sorrow for Trump.

But above all, accepting the truth about Trump’s mental state will cause us to take more seriously than we have our democratic duty, which is to prevent a psychologically and morally unfit person from becoming president.

That’s the thing that most people who are educated already knew: he’s not a psychological normal human being. He’s an “emotional misfit.” It’s the non-educated who think he’s doing great things. They are clueless. They are so ignorant they have no idea how woefully ignorant they are. A few are willfully ignorant not wanting to see or hear about how unpopular, inhumane and corrupt he is. I feel anger and pity for these people.

Heather Digby Parton, writing for Salon, has a story beginning to outline the full extent of the lies and corruption at the heart of the Trump administration.

It’s a tired thousands words that everyone who’s paying even the slightest attention already knows. They either find this corruption endearing or horrifying. Nothing is going to change until Democrats have control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress. I’m not even sure that’s going to happen in 2020.

Natalie Beach, writing The Cut, has an extraordinary story to tell.

When I was a sophomore in college, I took a creative-nonfiction workshop and met a girl who was everything I wasn’t. The point of the class was to learn to write your own story, but from the moment we met, I focused instead on helping her tell her own, first in notes after workshop, then later editing her Instagram captions and co-writing a book proposal she sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems obvious now, the way the story would end, but when I first met Caroline Calloway, all I saw was the beginning of something extraordinary.

It’s a fascinating read about two people I’m not sure I’d ever want to be friends with. The whole story is a bit of a train wreck of using one another, riding coattails and poor me.

It will probably make a great movie.

2020 candidates agree: We must do more to protect our kids from gun violence. Watch the first video in our new #GunSafetyPresident series with @JoeBiden, @CoryBooker, @PeteButtigieg, @KamalaHarris, @AmyKlobuchar, @BetoORourke, @BernieSanders, and @EWarren. https://t.co/frfrgwCFNj pic.twitter.com/eBuATyYI30

— Giffords (@GiffordsCourage) September 9, 2019

Representative Gabby Giffords set up this video.

We deserve a president who listens to the American people, not the NRA. We deserve a president who takes bold action to make us safer, not one who tweets thoughts and prayers then does nothing. We deserve a president who fights for stronger gun laws, not gun lobby profits. 2020 Democratic candidates are vying to be that leader.

Pretty powerful stuff.

Nicholas Bate has a cheatsheet to be more intelligent. How many of these have you done or currently do?

Warren Ellis is sick.

I am sick. But I won’t be sick forever. This too will pass, and I’ll be left with just the usual medical issues and hitches and scars and aches and pains that come from having survived on this weird little rock for half a century. But, not only is it better than the alternative, but in between all the bad points and the agonies and horrors, there has been more than enough joy to make a footnote out of all the pain, and there will continue to be joy. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and, no matter what today and tomorrow look like, one day you will feel the same way. Hold on tight. Joy is always on the way back.

I’m also sick. Been sick for about ten days now with a viral sore throat that won’t go away.

M. G. Siegler, writing at his site 500ish, takes us through his experience with iPad OS and in particular Safari.

Now that this Safari is just like the desktop Safari — like real Safari — we’re all good.

No, I don’t know what took Apple so long to make this change either.

While all of this may seem like a relatively small thing, it’s massive to me. Because it means I can further cut the laptop out of my life. And, of course, I have aspirations, as always, to write more. And while the small hurdles I mention above shouldn’t really have slowed me down much, even just the cognitive load always did. Knowing that I would have to save to publish later, when I got back to my desk, as it were.

I’ve long hoped to get back to a more casual form of blogging. And I do think this will help. Again, it’s silly, but even just typing on this iPad and knowing I can hit publish, makes it feel more informal to me.

The iPad can be my typewriter and my publisher.

This makes me want to bite the bullet and just get an iPad Pro and a keyboard and make it my main machine. I’d still have to keep the old MacBook Pro tethered as a desktop machine when I need it, but that’s okay.

Andrew Freedman, writing in The Washington Post, outlines a story that should make everyone mad.

“This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” the meteorologist said. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring — ultimately what the Alabama office did is provide a forecast with their tweet, that is what they get paid to do.”

His fragile ego can’t stand someone telling him he’s wrong. I can’t wait until someone tells him he’s wrong to his face and he can’t do a damn thing about it.

Ronan Farrow, writing in The New Yorker, has a damning expose on Jeffrey Epstein, Joi Ito of M.I.T., and Bill Gates.

Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”

Probably not something J. K. Rowling wants her creation to be associated with in the least.

Nahila Bonfiglio, writing for The Daily Dot, needed a story to file so she remembered there’s one of them Star Wars movies coming out in December, so I’ll just write up a thing that ranks the rest of the movies using Metacritic, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes.

It is boring.

John McWhorter, writing in The Atlantic, argues slurs are the real profanity and using “fuck” to describe a mass shooting sounds about right.

In an America in which a hit children’s book can have the F-word in its title, as can a hit pop song by CeeLo Green, when WTF is emblazoned on T-shirts and countless people utter the relevant phrase as virtual punctuation even in formal settings, and when someone like me can openly attest that I use it freely in circumstances where my grandfather would have said damn or hell, it becomes clear that the F-word today is spicy, but hardly evil or taboo.

Yup.

Will Leitch, writing in New York Magazine, explains the complicated relationship between fan and athlete. His focus is on the recently retired Andrew Luck and the bevy of boos and downright ugliness of his retirement.

Even using the callous calculus of the fan-athlete relationship, this seemed to break a contract. Being upset that your team has lost its franchise quarterback is perfectly reasonable; being angry at him, to instantaneously forget all the joy he provided you, all the joy you experienced with him, for taking care of his physical well-being felt boorish … flat-out mean. Athletes often treat fans (and media, really) as a single-faced mass, a public-opinion meter that is either lovers boosting their ego too high or haters trying to take them down. It had mostly balanced out what had mostly been considered harmless and ultimately, I’d argue, a positive: Fans cheer when you are up, they jeer when you are down, but no matter what they care, and that’s what makes this whole world go ‘round. But to see, so starkly, the response to the end of nine years of dedication and hero worship be a pounding of the table and a demand for More! More! felt not just a betrayal, but even brutish, gladiatorial bloodsport. It felt legitimately ugly in a way fandom is never supposed to be ugly.

It sure makes being a fan feel toxic.

Seth Godin on making things happen.

The best way to be in the room where it happens is to be the person who called the meeting.

Things rarely happen on their own. Everyone is waiting for you to organize the next thing.

Bryan Curtis, writing for The Ringer, looks back at the beginnings of ESPN’s SportsCenter. The interviews with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann are awesome.

Want to get me pissed off? Tell me a book of fiction for young readers that extols the virtues of friends, family, and love is evil.

A Catholic school in Nashville has banned all the Harry Potter books because they contain real spells. What the actual hell?

The Reverend Dan Reehil explained is “reasoning.”

These books present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.

Holly Meyer, writing for Nashville Tennessean, has the whole story.

I hate this. If a school administrator had done this when my kid was in school I’d be in that person’s office immediately telling him off and telling the media what an idiot they were and demand they resign.

Kevin Drum, writing at Mother Jones, calls Boris Johnson and the British Parliament out.

If Boris Johnson weren’t such a blithering jackass I’d almost feel sorry for him. I mean, what does Parliament want? They refused to accept Theresa May’s Brexit deal. They refuse to exit without a deal. They refuse to call a snap election. They refuse to hold a second referendum. They’ve basically refused to do anything.

Personally, I think a majority of MPs understand by now that Brexit is just a bad deal, but too many of them are afraid to say so publicly. They’re cowed by the Murdoch-indoctrinated old guy in Manchester who’s by God tired of Poles coming over and not speaking the Queen’s English very well. You’d think a few more of them could bravely stand up against the massive 52 percent Brexit vote and just call for a new referendum, but I guess not.

Melissa Leon, writing for The Daily Beast, has a tremendous profile of comic book writer Tom King. I had no idea of his past and this article really dives right in.

Love it.

Ramin Setoodeh, writing in Variety, has a great interview with Robert Pattinson about his latest film, The Lighthouse, and, of course, becoming the new Batman.

If you are still stuck on Twilight or Harry Potter, Pattinson is more than that. I think it’s a really great casting choice.

Kyle Buchanan, writing in The New York Times, has an incredible profile of Linda Hamilton.

This bit was super telling:

No romantic sparks had been struck between Cameron and his leading lady during the first “Terminator,” but not long after making “Terminator 2,” they moved in together and had a daughter, Josephine. “That relationship was a mystery to all of us — even Jim and myself — because we are terribly mismatched,” she said. “I used to say we fit together like a puzzle: Everywhere he’s convex, I’m concave.”

So what eventually drew the two of them closer? Hamilton pondered the question. “I think what happened there is that he really fell in love with Sarah Connor,” she said, “and I did, too.”

So did millions of other people too.