Some stories are so useful in our present media environment that they are quite literally immune to fact-checking - despite being very and immediately obviously false in a trivially provable way.

The Argentine midterm elections this week were not just a pure win for Milei, but also for the White House. I'm disappointed in myself for feeling disappointed.

Despite the ongoing and thrilling World Series between the never-say-die Blue Jays and Shohei Ohtani, the biggest sports story of the moment is unquestionably the NBA gambling scandal. The arrests of TrailBlazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Heat guard Terry Rozier were just the latest unintended consequences of the full-on embrace of gambling by pro sports leagues. Beyond the crazy details about the rigged poker games, Billups was alleged to have provided information to bettors about his plans to rest basically all of his starters in a game late last season, and Rozier took himself out of a game for an "injury" so that his associates could win "unders" on his player prop bets.

There’s controlling the narrative and then there’s whatever it is that the Pentagon is doing.

In case you haven’t been paying very close attention, it has been a wild couple of weeks in both traditional and social media narrative-land since the Department of Defense announced a sweeping new set of requirements for the Pentagon press corps. Threats would probably nearer the mark than requirements. Basically, the new policy is that you can’t ask for info except from the official Pentagon source, and if you even try, they will prosecute you.