The Independent Variable (Page 4)

Many of the new lawyers installed in senior posts over recent months “don’t care what the right answer is”, bemoans the former senior JAG. “They spend all their time trying to figure out what the administration wants and then reverse engineer how to get to it.”

I called it out a while ago, but at a minimum, Trump is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and now I think it’s pretty clear he and Hegseth are guilty of international war crimes as well. Since Trump is such a great “businessman man,” he should be familiar with

📝 ProNotes

apps

Mac App

So this is a genius app/extension to Apple Notes that works on top of Apple Notes to give you better formatting tools, markdown, slash commands, backlinks, and templates. It has me rethinking where I keep my notes—currently in iA Writer—especially with the idea of the Forever Notes framework for Apple Notes.

🆕 So many ".new" options

tech

I have long been a frequent user of "docs.new" to quickly create new Google Docs. TIL that there are far more '.new' style "action domains" that work in this way. This list of all of the .new shortcuts is super useful – even if .new first rolled out to non-Google entities way back in 2020.

Some of these feel a bit spammy ("New casino blog") and a good number don't work as of this writing but there

📚 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025

books

Lithub

Tons of awesome looking and sounding books here. Support small presses this holiday season! The dream is for a Foofaraw book to one day be featured on a list like this.

🍷 The Michelin Guide is coming for wine. Here’s what it means

wine

SF Chronicle

Although Michelin has positioned its inspectors’ anonymity as a key component of its process in evaluating restaurants and hotels, the wine inspectors’ visits will not be anonymous.

I find the Michelin Guide to be absolutely fascinating—and their move into wine isn’t surprising. It’ll be interesting to see how their approach actually works in implementation and how it affects the Napa Valley, when they inevitably make their way out here.

⚽️ America is now the biggest market for international football

sports

The Economist

Football still struggles in America, though. MLS remains a dull watch, despite its sprinkling of foreign mega-stars such as Lionel Messi, who plays for Inter Miami.

Not surprising that a country with one of the highest populations is now the biggest market for the world’s most popular sport. Nor is it surprisingly that MLS is still an awful watch. The only way that ever changes is if they start paying Saudi type money to get players in their prime in an attempt to make MLS a real competitor to the Premier League and La Liga.

💣 Will Congress rein in Pete Hegseth and his boat-bombing campaign?

📝 ProNotes

🆕 So many ".new" options

📚 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025

🍷 The Michelin Guide is coming for wine. Here’s what it means

⚽️ America is now the biggest market for international football

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🇺🇸 DOJ deletes study showing domestic terrorists are most often right wing

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