- A Masters win for Rory McIlroy gives him, at last, a seat at the table.
- The Last of Us S2 on
HBOMax premiered this weekend, so it’s a great time to read some perspectives from an epidemiologist and a plant scientist. - What can we learn from the books being read by the characters in White Lotus S3?
- Lorne Michaels is going to produce a British version of Saturday Night Live starting in 2026.
- Great quote from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.” – via Austin Kleon
Dreaming of a song, but something went wrong:
- A federal judge sided with the [current] administration in allowing immigration agents to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship for now.
- Death is the point.
- Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard signed a sworn declaration stating that she was a resident of the State of Texas, and then voted in Hawaii. – via mehdirhasan.bsky.social
- Vice President JD Vance fumbles trophy during Ohio State football’s White House visit
- I can think of a few thousand better ways the AP could have worded this headline to more accurately convey just how corrupt this weirdo is: DeSantis Defends $10M Donation from State Agency Settlement to Charity Linked to His Wife
- The American Dream Is Over: He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement, and a plurality of American voters.
Posts in the category “sports”
- Super Bowl LIX for Dummies
- A Super Bowl Preview, Minus the Football: A look at the musical acts, the famous fans, the commercials and all of the other things surrounding the NFL’s signature event
- 5 Classic Super Bowl Commercials That Still Warm Our Hearts
- The Tunnel Runway: How Sports Became Fashion’s Newest Catwalk
- Kendrick Lamar aims to infuse his Los Angeles hip-hop flavor into New Orleans while staying true to his storytelling roots during Super Bowl halftime performance.
- Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid loves food as much as football.
- Will there be an interception thrown in the Super Bowl? Patrick Mahomes has not thrown an interception in eight straight games. Jalen Hurts has not thrown an interception in nine straight games. – via Tuesday Morning Quarterback
- Why is Tom Brady worth $375 million to Fox?
- Football’s Hidden Fanbase: How the NFL is Winning Over Women
- Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie reveals how Andy Reid’s legacy led to Nick Sirianni hiring.
- “To listen to a Toni Braxton song about a beautiful man is to realize that she is singing about Jalen Hurts. You can’t be mad about it because it’s never been fair: You are not Jalen Hurts, and he always has been.”
- Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi took on the role of a coach as he trained Parsnip, a 4-month-old puppy, to make his debut at Puppy Bowl XXI.
- If Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, the debate is over. Mahomes would become the greatest playoff quarterback of all time.
- Bonus: The NCAA has a good breakdown of where Super Bowl LIX players attended college.
- Shrinking (Apple TV+) is probably the best show on TV right now. Jason Segal and Jessica Williams are phenomenal in it and — as impossible as it is to believe — it might be the best work Harrison Ford has ever done on screen. The show was co-created by Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) and the theme song is Frightening Fishes by Tom Howe & Benjamin Gibbard.
- Engineers found a bottle with a 132-year-old message deep inside the walls of a lighthouse in the south of Scotland. – via The Curious About Everything Newsletter from Jodi Ettenberg (threads / bluesky)
- Is there anything better than college football bowl season?
- ProPublica has an online tool that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial, which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases. – via @broingerm (threads / bluesky)
Rare baseball stats are my jam. When I was an early teen I watched Roger Clemens mow down sixteen Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park and was bored out of my mind. I wish I’d appreciated the feat as much as I did the mini batting helmet ice cream. (I still have the helmet.) It’s wild that there have been fewer 20-K games than perfect games.- On Sunday, December 8, 2024 — in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams — Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills had the best fantasy football performance ever by a QB. – via The Athletic (threads / bluesky)
- Over 21 months, Taylor Swift‘s culture-dominating Eras Tour brought in $2B, more than double the gross of its closest competitor, according to ticket sales figures confirmed for the first time. – via Crooked Media (threads / bluesky)
- Staffers at roughly 600 booksellers are receiving $500 holiday bonuses from James Patterson, the bestselling novelist who has been awarding independent store employees since 2015. – via @abcnews
- You can find something for everyone in The 2024 Kottke Holiday Gift Guide.
Sportico published a great article this month that should really drive home just how much American football dominates television broadcasting right now. NFL Swallows TV Whole, With 93 of Year’s Top 100 Broadcasts details the stranglehold the NFL has on the country’s advertisers. And three of the remaining top 100 were college games! So really 96 out of 100 broadcasts last year were football.
It’s literally the end of an era. After seven national titles, eleven SEC championships and one hundred and twenty-three players drafted into the NFL, Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban is retiring. College football is not going to see another legend like him for a while. I admire what he did at LSU and Alabama almost as much as I hated when Florida played against him.
The last regular season NFL game was a banger. After spending the day logging and wrapping and putting away all the decorations, my son and I spent a few lovely hours watching the Bills beat the Dolphins before I shushed him off to brush his teeth and get in bed. Goodbye, Christmas 2023.