A year ago, I set a goal to lose 34 pounds before my 34th birthday. I'm proud to say I did it! I wrote up some reflections on the experience, in case it resonates with or inspires anyone else.

Carrying a Smaller Bag

Reflections on a year of losing weight

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

The title of this essay, and beyond that my general preferred term for the recent changes in my body, came from Tony Soprano. Well, sort of.

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · 22h ago

A year ago, I set a goal to lose 34 pounds before my 34th birthday. I'm proud to say I did it! I wrote up some reflections on the experience, in case it resonates with or inspires anyone else.

The kicker here is that the point he somehow comes around to make about Bernie and Platner is completely correct

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 8h ago

Wolf Blitzer: Why is Israel, another country, your red line right now, this is what your critics are saying, rather than a domestic issue that impacts Americans' everyday lives? John Fetterman, visibly confused throughout the entire interview: Yeah, absolutely.

I don't like focusing on my weight loss with friends or family, let alone strangers on the internet. So I am not sharing my vulnerabilities for my own enjoyment. Rather, I wrote this in hopes that my words resonate with other people who are in my shoes — as James Gandolfini's (sort of) did for me.

Carrying a Smaller Bag

Reflections on a year of losing weight

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

The title of this essay, and beyond that my general preferred term for the recent changes in my body, came from Tony Soprano. Well, sort of.

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · 22h ago

A year ago, I set a goal to lose 34 pounds before my 34th birthday. I'm proud to say I did it! I wrote up some reflections on the experience, in case it resonates with or inspires anyone else.

A year ago, I set a goal to lose 34 pounds before my 34th birthday. I'm proud to say I did it! I wrote up some reflections on the experience, in case it resonates with or inspires anyone else.

Carrying a Smaller Bag

Reflections on a year of losing weight

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

As I wrote in my lasagna recipe: "When the sight of the cheese bubbles makes you gasp involuntarily, it’s done."

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · 9mo ago

It's Monday night. In our household, that means I'll be spending the evening making lasagna for @lasagnalove.bsky.social. I'd like to tell you a little bit about why. Lasagna Love is a nonprofit group that connects folks in need of comfort food with home chefs nearby who can provide them.

I hope somewhere out there there’s a Tigers prospects podcast that is exactly three episodes in and looking for a title for their fourth

If you don’t like the Skubal trade, the best way to stop this kind of thing from happening isn’t any CBA policy. It’s for the Tigers, who are currently only 2.5 games back in the Wild Card race, to make the playoffs and wish they still had him

bae: come over me: I can't bae: I'm watching Father of the Pride (2004), the CGI-animated show about the scandalous lives of Siegfried and Roy's show animals me:

If only the protagonist of a recent superhero movie had a famous creed about how having a bigger influence means you are held to higher standards

Steve Burtch@stephenburtch.bsky.social · 4d ago

Also, comic books have a large history of similarly abandoned subplots, forgotten threads, and similarly dangling unfired "Chekhov guns". The span of entire comic universes is just so much larger they are easily memory holed. The double standard you are applying lacks justification IMO.

Speaking of threads not getting picked up: I wrote this four years ago and it’s frustrating how well it has held up

There is No Endgame Now

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has lost its cohesive arc

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

Danny Page@danny.page · 4d ago

every movie should have just kept the other stuff to the post-credits scenes, especially since half the threads never end up getting picked up

If I had a nickel for every Tom Holland/Zendaya movie I’ve seen in the last week that suffered as it shifted focus away from its protagonist’s famous personality traits because people think every modern film has to be about Trauma, I’d have two nickels.

Which Isn't A Lot But It's Weird It Happened Twice

Alt: Which Isn't A Lot But It's Weird It Happened Twice

static.klipy.com

It's Stir-Fryday! (hoorayyyy)

One of the best parts of going to Vegas is seeing how people react when you tell them you're going to Vegas

Of people who have an opinion about Mamdani, 46% view him favorably. Of people who have an opinion about Schumer, 25% view him favorably. I look forward to the MattY op-ed about how the Democrats need to move left so they can meet voters where they are!

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · 5d ago

Just by raw favorability — even before accounting for net approval or name recognition — the average American voter is twice as likely to support Zohran Mamdani as they do Chuck Schumer

Just by raw favorability — even before accounting for net approval or name recognition — the average American voter is twice as likely to support Zohran Mamdani as they do Chuck Schumer

Ariel Edwards-Levy@aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 6d ago

Generic ballot numbers tend to get outsized attention, but IMO we asked a bunch of interesting stuff in our latest poll, so I want to highlight some of the findings that aren't directly horserace: www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-midterm-generic-ballot-democrats-republicans-change

I wrote this a year ago, but at this point I could add a whole new section just about Haley Stevens

The Antisemitic Fight Against Antisemitism

A Passover plea to let Jewish people define our own values

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

When Mad Men does a flashback episode:

USER WAS BLOCKED FOR THIS POST@blockedforthispost.bsky.social · last wk.

Now I'm confused, are you upset because there's too much dick or not enough?

Just realized that "Wingstop" is the opposite of "Go Birds"

Was this show good? No. Was it sensitive to marginalized groups, even grading on a curve for mid-aughts comedy? Also no. Are there a handful of scenes that I still quote 20-odd years later? Well...

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · last wk.

bae: come over me: I can't bae: I'm watching Father of the Pride (2004), the CGI-animated show about the scandalous lives of Siegfried and Roy's show animals me:

The problem with omitting the "Nobody" scene is not that it is sacred to the narrative. It's that it is 1) the clearest early example of Odysseus' distinctive cleverness and 2) his most-offensive act of hubris that turns the gods against him. The joke is not important, but those themes are

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · last wk.

And where is Odysseus? Cunning, hubristic, charismatic, dead-set on returning home but disciplined in exacting his vengeance. All this, the good and the bad, flattened into some wartime trauma and a sense of honor. As if Bruce Wayne were much older during his Bhutanese prison-brawling days

bae: come over me: I can't bae: I'm watching Father of the Pride (2004), the CGI-animated show about the scandalous lives of Siegfried and Roy's show animals me:

"As an American Jew, I deserve better than to be spoken for by people who only remember I exist when it becomes useful to them."

daniel sieradski@self.agency · last wk.

"The Israeli government does not listen to American Jews. It speaks over us, in real time, in the wake of real violence against us." hell yeah brother @joelhs.bsky.social

I imagine that, as with so many other Christopher Nolan movies, it would feel more cohesive a second time, now that I understand the interpretation he was going for. But you don’t need to read the actual The Odyssey twice to love it!

Lewie Pollis@lewispoll.is · last wk.

When we meet Homer's hero, he has spent seven years rejecting immortal life with a beautiful goddess and grieves nightly for the wife and son he cannot reach until the Olympians intervene. Nolan's Odysseus simply asks to leave once he regains his memory from his guilt. It's far less interesting!

I wrote about Andruw Jones, Trevor Bauer, and the incoherence of baseball's moral standards. www.thelewsletter.lewispoll.is/p/keeping-up...

Keeping up with the Bauers

On Andruw Jones and baseball's selective morality

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

Part of what makes Andruw Jones' presumptive induction so frustrating is that there isn't any precedent I can think of for the BBWAA electing known DV offenders into the Hall of Fame. This year the writers are actively choosing to be more inclusive of scumbags, and I'd posit that that's pretty gross