Author: nick

[ad_1] Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Hurry up and enjoy your Taco Tuesday Cinco de Mayo today. We’ll start with thoughts on Saudi Arabia’s sports takeover that’s been stopped in its tracks. After that it’s time to dive into the implications of the Dianna Russini–Mike Vrabel affair for league policies. We’ll close with a slightly bonkers idea: Did the Sixers beat the Celtics with a little help from the war on drugs? Don’t miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason. The Milwaukee Brewers donated $27,000 for pothole repairs and are getting some advertising out of…

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[ad_1] The world is leaning on China a lot these days as a counterweight to the lunacy of Donald Trump. No one has illusions that China and its leader, Xi Jinping, are champions of democracy, but at a time when the US president is gleefully bombing boats and countries, and debating which regime to change next, China is an island of sanity. I’ve made the analogy to Stalin in World War II, which continues to be appropriate. Roosevelt and Churchill had no illusions about Stalin’s USSR as a beacon of democracy, but they understood the essential role it played in…

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[ad_1] Is it plausible that James Comey, a former federal prosecutor, deputy attorney general, and FBI director, publicly threatened to murder President Donald Trump? No, it is not. But that is what W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, claims in an indictment filed on April 28. That improbable allegation is based on a picture that Comey posted on Instagram in May 2025 while vacationing in North Carolina. Captioned “cool shell formation on my beach walk,” the photograph showed seashells arranged in the sand to form the message “86 47.” According to the indictment,…

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[ad_1] The rule of law has been buried under the rubble in Gaza, allowing Israel to brutally abduct 175 humanitarian activists aboard Sumud Flotilla, 500 nautical miles from Gaza. By Chris HedgesScheerPost   Nothing illustrates the inversion of the international and moral order more than the genocide in Gaza and the shipment of tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel by Western nations, especially the United States, to sustain it. Part of this inversion is the unrelenting persecution of those who denounce the genocide — especially those who risk their lives to halt it and demand the rule of law. But the rule…

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[ad_1] On April 30, 2026, David Copperfield took his final bow at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, closing a residency that lasted more than 25 years. Longer than many entire entertainment careers, it was an extraordinary run. For audiences, it marked the end of a show. For magicians, it marked the close of a defining era. As a professional magician, I’ve spent years studying the craft, performing, and thinking about how wonder is created and how human perception operates. Like many in my field—and millions of others—I grew up watching Copperfield’s television specials.The Copperfield Theater at MGM Grand, Las…

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[ad_1] When we can no longer tell the truth because the cost is so high that it threatens our reward for compliance, we’re unimaginably impoverished. Truth has an intrinsic, irreplaceable value. There’s the truth, and then there’s everything else. Truth has value, and so it has a cost. Whatever has the highest value has the highest cost, and high cost commands sacrifices. When the cost of truth is high, we lie. And since AI is a distorted reflection of humanity, the same is true of AI: when the cost of telling the truth is too high, AI lies. AI lies to get the…

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[ad_1] When used to describe Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in the wake of the latter group’s brutal October 7 massacre, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, the word genocide no longer functions primarily as a condemnation of military action designed to destroy a civilian population group. Instead, it has become shorthand for outrage at the scale of destruction in Gaza and, often, a broader condemnation of Israel’s entire military campaign, and sometimes of Israel’s very existence. The force of the accusation has grown through repetition, reinforced by the undeniable emotional impact of images emerging from the conflict. But…

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[ad_1] Health officials in South Carolina recently declared the 2026 Spartanburg County measles outbreak over. The outbreak involved nearly 1,000 cases, the largest in the U.S. in more than 30 years. For those who follow that and other 2025-2026 outbreaks, a number of lessons should serve to revise the current narrative around the status of measles in the US measles outbreaks.   First: Large-scale population displacement resulting in relocation of the unvaccinated contributes to outbreaks. Although public health officials do not routinely record “country of origin” of measles patients, it can be critical information. The Spartanburg outbreak was concentrated in the…

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