Ben Lerner’s Big Feelings The acclaimed writer of cerebral autofiction returns with his strangest and most moving novel yet.

I profiled Ben Lerner for @nymag.com

www.vulture.com/article/ben-...

LIVE NOW: World Cup Fever: Live with Alex Shephard and Simon Kuper Alex Shephard on Substack

I'm talking to Simon Kuper about the World Cup and his latest book World Cup Fever now open.substack.com/live-stream/...

Let's remember some guys... except it's like Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner lol

What Was Gianni Infantino Doing at the World Baseball Classic? The FIFA boss's attendance offers a window into his relationship to power and the priorities that really shape the World Cup and global soccer.

For the @goldengoalmag.bsky.social newsletter, I wrote about the rise of Gianni Infantino and examined how his priorities are shaping FIFA, the World Cup, and global soccer. I also made fun of him for looking like a dumbass at the World Baseball Classic
goldengoalmag.substack.com/p/what-was-g...

There’s More to Messi’s White House Visit Than Meets the Eye To really understand Inter Miami's awkward trip to Washington D.C. you have to look at the team's owner, Jorge Mas.

In this week's newsletter @salazar.bsky.social examines Inter Miami's White House visit, which wasn't really about Messi or Trump. Instead, it was about the team's billionaire owner Jorge Mas—and his family's decadeslong push for regime change in Cuba goldengoalmag.substack.com/p/theres-mor...

There’s More to Messi’s White House Visit Than Meets the Eye To really understand Inter Miami's awkward trip to Washington D.C. you have to look at the team's owner, Jorge Mas.

Why was Messi really at the White House? For this week's @goldengoalmag.bsky.social newsletter, I wrote about Trump, Cuba, Inter Miami president Jorge Mas and the legacy of his father, Jorge Mas Canosa, the godfather of Cuban American politicians. goldengoalmag.substack.com/p/theres-mor...

Episode 8: Creators of Golden Goal Magazine join The Away End, Daniel talks Japan, and Storytime with John

Went on @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social and Daniel Alarcón's indispensable and fun new World Cup podcast with @salazar.bsky.social to talk about @goldengoalmag.bsky.social and why we're still excited about the 2026 World Cup in spite of, you know, everything open.spotify.com/episode/0kaB...

'The Mother of All Games:' Iran, the U.S. and the World Cup Revisiting one of the most politically charged games in World Cup history as Iran's 2026 tournament hangs in the balance.

For the @goldengoalmag.bsky.social newsletter I wrote about the 1998 World Cup game between Iran and the United States and the upcoming tournament goldengoalmag.substack.com/p/the-mother...

Golden Goal A World Cup magazine

Give the good people at @goldengoalmag.bsky.social all your money: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mag...

Why the World Cup? On why we're starting Golden Goal

"Golden Goal is a magazine about understanding and untangling this messy, chaotic jumble at the heart of the World Cup, with an internationalist vision that doesn’t shy away from the sport’s growing corruption but also resists cynicism and myopia." open.substack.com/pub/goldengo...

"The World Cup is now less than four months away. Has that sentence ever felt more deflating?"

We'll be sending out a newsletter every Friday through the end of the World Cup! Read the first installment and sign up here

Infantino got you down? Not sure how to feel about this year's World Cup? Want to read writers from around the world make sense of it all? Follow us: @goldengoalmag.bsky.social

Infantino got you down? Not sure how to feel about this year's World Cup? Want to read writers from around the world make sense of it all? Follow us: @goldengoalmag.bsky.social

@realgdt.bsky.social I know it still feels far away but I'm curious, with the World Cup happening later this year, what's your favorite World Cup memory?

fwiw it’s been about six weeks since Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras who had been convicted of trafficking drugs into the US

So for months they have tried to blame the entire fentanyl crisis on Venezuela and the indictment only mentions cocaine, which they pardoned a different guy for weeks ago

Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era | The Local A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.

A few months ago @thelocal.to got a promising pitch from a writer with bylines in whole bunch of reputable publications—The Cut, The Guardian, Dwell, Architectural Digest, etc. Then I started investigating. Here's a story about fabulists in journalism's AI slop era. thelocal.to/investigatin...

One way of thinking about Twitter, especially in the Elon Musk era, is as the latest and most sophisticated version of the mailing lists that have powered the conservative movement, and the various scams and cons and schemes that constitute it, since the 1960s--in other words, as a huge and immediately accessible collection of suckers, waiting to have their avidity and paranoia exploited for cash. The predictions markets here are happy to play the same role with heavy X.com users as crypto scams and meme-stock hustlers did on the same site a few years ago, or as cash-for-gold ads did with Fox News viewers a decade before that, or as direct-mail get-rich-quick schemes did with Goldwater voters deep in prehistory.1 But the demand for dumb money created by the increasing annexation of our everyday social and cultural lives into casino-market hybrids like predictions markets (or, arguably, social media itself2) isn’t going to be satisfied solely by a pre-existing population of Birchite suckers. We talk a lot about the “male loneliness crisis” but in my estimation we don’t talk enough about the “male suckerfication crisis”: The process by which young men are continuously cultivated--by politicians, influencers, podcasters, sportscasters, and the very structure of social networks--as dupes and suckers, both for the enrichment and empowerment of Trumpist politicians and movements but also in service of the profits an ever-expanding roster of gambling and gambling-adjacent industries, among them app-enabled retail day-trading, crypto speculation, predictions markets, and of course, actual sports betting.

we talk too much about the male loneliness crisis and not enough about the male suckerfication crisis maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...

Republicans post fake image of Oregon protest – using photos of South America A federal judge had blocked Trump’s request to deploy California national guard to Portland

The Oregon Republican Party tried to help Donald Trump make the case for military intervention in Portland with an image of a fiery protest — but since Portland is calm, they had to fabricate one by merging old photos of police in Ecuador and protesters in Brazil www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.

What a Government Shutdown Means for the Immigration System - American Immigration Council This is how a government shutdown in 2025 may impact ICE, immigration courts, USCIS, and the immigration system at large.

Quick reminder: most of ICE is deemed “essential” during a shutdown, but of course ICE agents (like most other essential gov employees) are working without pay right now and hoping Congress will eventually fill in back pay. www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/what-go...

Feds in military gear flood downtown Chicago; top border chief says people arrested based on ‘how they look’ The immigration agents were spotted making arrests in downtown Chicago and River North neighborhood early Sunday.

Whatever country you are from, the officially approved way to avoid getting grabbed off the street is to have pale enough skin. chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Statement from @postguild.bsky.social on the firing of Karen Attiah:

FIFA drops anti-racism, anti-discrimination messages for Club World Cup

America is one of those countries where if you host a global sporting event, inclusive messages have to be censored to so as not to anger the central government. In this case the message is “racism is bad” www.nytimes.com/athletic/643...

A Pope Who Prays for Palestine Pope Francis, who is in daily contact with Gazans, has consistently called for an end to the Israeli assault and for Palestinians and Israelis to be able to live in peace.

Every evening, without fail, Pope Francis speaks with priests and parishioners at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City. He tells them that they are not forgotten and that, as long as he has a voice to cry out for an end to the Israeli assault on Gaza, there is hope for peace and justice.

Again, the chart below is circa 2023, but Francis has had the College of Cardinals (who vote for the next pope) stacked with his own choices for roughly a year and a half.

sad to lose a pope that prayed for Palestine every day

Trump's Counterterror Czar Proposes Terror Charges for Democrats Either you love America or you don’t, he says

Trump's counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka says Americans critical of deportations like Abrego Garcia's are providing "material support" to terrorists — a felony crime.
www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-cou...

Lawyers Are Sounding The Alarm About Trump Disappearing People There’s a real risk that hundreds of people sent to a brutal prison camp will never be free.

One man in CECOT "doesn’t even know that his child’s been born," his lawyer said. Another has muscular dystrophy affecting his right arm, per a court filing. The facts fit "every definition of an enforced disappearance under international law," an attorney told me.
www.huffpost.com/entry/cecot-...

hmm