2026-03-31 21:17:08
Among a certain class of politics reporters and pundits, the single most legitimizing thing a Democratic politician can be is "loathed by everyone younger than, browner than, or to the ideological left of James Carville." Safer by far than engaging with a politician's policies, ideology, or track record is to simply take an index of how liberal and progressive types feel about him. Do they hate his guts? Then he is serious. Look out, bleeding hearts and socialist teens! This guy does not have time for any namby-pamby "believing in stuff" crap; he recognizes The Stakes. He gets that some things are just too important to approach in principled or intellectually serious ways.
This reflects at least two tidal forces in America's legacy politics press. One is that it is largely peopled by weenie meritocrat twerps whose families have done quite well in the system as it exists; they would never dream of anything as gauche or tacky as being Republicans, but they also do not want the alternative to entail any commitment to actually changing the basic arrangement of power and privilege in American society. Better to set the leftmost edge of the Overton Window at "means-tested private-school tuition-refund vouchers for the minor children of any U.S. citizen who starts a woman- or minority-owned small business and runs it for at least 18 months in a neighborhood with population density higher than that of Jackson Hole, Wyo., and with a median per-capita household income less than 66.6 percent of that of the wealthiest census tract within 12.5 miles, provided the children commit to founding a woman- or minority-owned company within 18 months of college graduation," and then police that boundary vigorously.
The other deranging impulse, closely related, is the legacy press's addiction to horserace-style political analysis. The Detested Center-Right Ghoul is both a fellow adherent to and the physical embodiment of the idea that all that matters, in an election, is detecting which candidate everybody else—imagined uniformly as rubes and ignoramuses with doctrinaire Reaganite values, a wary and incoherent pink mass oscillating at all times between credulity and cynicism—will fall for, and then scolding anybody who attempts to complicate that candidate's path to victory by starting a conversation about what they'd like government to actually do beyond rewarding election winners with jobs. You can cover Gavin Newsom, for example, without the tricky business of interrogating beliefs and policy ideas: He has none, and regards the entire concept of having any as self-evidently foolish.
2026-03-31 04:54:29
Rayan Cherki is not the best soccer player in the world. In fact, he's not even a locked-in, sure-fire starter for either of the two teams he currently plays for, Manchester City and France. But though there are certainly several other players who make a bigger, more consistent impact on their teams' performances, I don't think anyone in the sport today can match the volume of spine-tingling, head-smacking, astonishment-inducing plays Cherki so effortlessly produces when he is on his game.
Because I decided to spend my Sunday afternoon watching Barcelona Femení dropkick the remaining teeth out of Real Madrid's skull, I had to miss the France vs. Colombia friendly that started at the same time. While I do not regret my choice, it was a shame that my viewing of the latest gruesome Clásico beatdown meant I couldn't also get to see the much more elegant display in Maryland. Aside from the cackling Blaugrana fans, almost every tweet I scrolled past during that aforementioned time slot on Sunday featured messages of almost coital bliss inspired by how France was playing, and specifically what Cherki was doing. Though I was bummed not to see the Cherki show live, in a match that ended in a comprehensive 3-1 France win, I knew I'd have a individual compilation to sink my teeth in later, and neither the comp makers nor Cherki himself disappointed.
2026-03-31 04:32:19
The phrase "31-0 run" in basketball might trigger visions of rhapsodic, jogo bonito ball movement, virtuosic shooting, and impregnable defense. The actual 31-0 run achieved by the Toronto Raptors on Sunday looked a little more ordinary than that. If there was anything spectacular on display, it was the incompetence of the team on the receiving end: the Orlando Magic, who have now lost seven of their last eight games as they slip into play-in territory. In truth, it requires both the goodness of one team and badness of another to produce such a historic event. The Raptors' 31-0 run was the largest of the NBA's play-by-play era, which began with the 1997-98 season. They would only build on that run to win 139-87, delivering the worst loss in Magic franchise history.
Give Toronto precisely as much credit as they deserve. They are ranked fifth in the league by defensive rating, and they're a strong team on that side of the floor even when missing one of their best defenders, the faintly Draymondian rookie Collin Murray-Boyles, as they were last night. Scottie Barnes is a rare gem who, during this game, accumulated 100 blocks and 100 steals in a season, the first to do so since Andre Drummond in 2018-19. The Raptors employ one of the more aggressive schemes in the league, and they applied brutal ball pressure on Orlando, mixing in sudden traps, too. But this defense is not so special that it should ever look quite this difficult for an NBA team to advance the ball past halfcourt in a late-March game.
2026-03-31 04:02:59
Formula 1 has a qualifying problem. This, the FIA acknowledges—that the new power unit regulations have resulted in unfortunate and confusing qualifying laps in which the cars physically cannot go, by some definitions, "as fast as possible." The actual racing, however, is more in dispute. At the Chinese Grand Prix two weeks ago, the new engine specifications and overtake mode were a considerable success for racing; by the fickle nature of F1, the Japanese Grand Prix this Sunday proved that they are a disaster. One crash is all it takes.
The issues in racing, too, stem from the new power unit regulations. While power units under previous rule sets were also hybridized, this year's have shifted from a roughly 85-15 percentage split in provided power between the internal combustion engine (ICE) and electric motor (MGU-K, which alternately charges or deploys battery energy) to a 50-50 split. To get into the nitty gritty numbers, cars can regenerate roughly 8.5 MJ of energy over the course of a lap—that is, roughly 8.5 MJ of energy, as the precise amount varies depending on track, session, and race state—but can only store up to 4 MJ of energy at any given time. F1 cars, then, have to deploy and recharge battery at optimal points over the course of a lap, whether on the straights or in the corners. (As always, Chain Bear has a helpful video visualization of the phenomenon.)
Combined, this battery cycle and power split has resulted in some funky and fresh issues: superclipping, energy starvation, and software-dependent energy deployment. Ordinarily, hybrid engines recharge their batteries in braking zones, where the MGU-K converts the kinetic energy of the car into electric energy. The MGU-K can also be programmed to steal power from the ICE to charge the battery while the car is still at full throttle on a straight, resulting in a massive drop in straight-line speed—the dreaded superclipping phenomenon.
2026-03-31 01:20:33
In the supermarket or at the taco truck, whether it's government subsidies for agriculture or the working conditions of food workers, food and politics are never far apart. Under the second Trump administration, the government has used food stamps as a political football, showing a willingness to expose poorer Americans to malnutrition to score political points. ICE agents have kidnapped street vendors in Los Angeles, leaving hot dogs sizzling on unattended griddles. As of this writing, American attacks on Iran make fertilizer much more expensive for American farmers, since not just oil but also fertilizer ingredients must transit the Strait of Hormuz. And, of course, food prices in American supermarkets continue to climb, in part due to tariffs whose legality and constitutionality seems dubious. Between January 2025 and January 2026, the average cost of ground beef went up from $5.54 per pound to $6.75, even as Donald Trump, in his State of the Union address, insisted that the price of beef is going down. This is the most Americans have ever paid for their hamburgers, and yet Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is urging all Americans to eat more meat.
The Trump administration seems to break new things every week. The things Kennedy has helped to break so far include our collective herd immunity by vaccination, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention itself, firing thousands of employees there. He has now moved on to breaking our understanding of the relationship between food, personal health, and collective health. Kennedy's interest in meat—he has stated that he eats a "carnivore" diet consisting of meat and fermented foods like sauerkraut, fasts intermittently, and touches no processed foods—is so larded with symbolism and minimally marbled with facts that it deserves special attention.
Insisting on meat, to the point of recommending offal if we cannot buy steak, RFK Jr. has also unearthed that well-known diagram, the food pyramid, which was abandoned under the Obama administration in 2011 and replaced with a plate subdivided into types of foods. But this new pyramid is flipped: Grains are at the pyramid’s tiny pointed bottom, and meat, along with vegetables, is at the broad top. If Kennedy's offal advice is a comic turn, the inverted food pyramid attempts to institutionalize the MAHA dietary agenda with potentially serious consequences.
2026-03-31 00:36:38
Here's one mark of a legendary highlight: You can show it to someone who hasn't seen a minute of the sport in years, with no explanatory context, and get a reaction that's something like, "Wow!" Such is the case with UConn's Braylon Mullins and his shot to beat Duke in the Elite Eight. Everything about the play itself and the production around it felt practically scripted for maximum excitement, all in the span of half a minute.
To start, even the uninformed knows that Duke are the bad guys, so that's helpful. But if you're stepping into this highlight with no prior context—as fans will be doing for years to come as they cue up "March Madness shots but they get increasingly more insane" YouTube videos—Ian Eagle tells you the situation immediately after the made free throw, without forcing you to study the scoreboard. "72-70, Duke. Ten seconds to go."
