Nick Hagen

Former BigLaw Attorney. Fan of San Francisco Giants, Utes, Jazz, UVA. Writer and podcaster at Never Close The Inquiry.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

@bryceharper3 @kschwarb12 @jwalker0522 @MLBTV @jac_caglianone

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

@netflix @MLB The camera angles for the Home Run Derby are so, so, so, so, so, so bad. Every single swing should be shown from behind the pitcher or, if you want to shake things up, from behind the catcher but wide enough that the ball’s trajectory is immediately apparent.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

The video production reeks of severe inexperience with baseball. You have cut the legs out from under what should by all rights have been an extraordinary event with a great crowd and great performances by the players.

[Golf Digest @GolfDigest]

Scottie Scheffler just gave one of the best (and deepest) press conference answers ever heard.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Good. @MLB is turning the All-Star game into more and more of a joke with each passing year.

[Matt Gelb @MattGelb]

The Phillies have agreed to pay Cristopher Sánchez a $50,000 bonus in his contract for being an All-Star, Sánchez said. Nice gesture.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Misiorowski is off to a great start, but this is one of the worst selections in the history of the All Star game. Making an All Star team is supposed to be a real honor. Selecting a rookie who has made all of five career starts cheapens that honor badly. There are very good pitchers who have made a full half-season’s worth of starts and will be hanging out at home because MLB’s marketing department decided to lean in on the game being a fundamentally unserious marketing gimmick.

[Jeff Passan @JeffPassan]

Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski has been named to the National League All-Star team. He has thrown in five games and has 25.2 innings pitched for his career. That is the fewest games ever played by someone named to the All-Star Game.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

#iranisraelwar #israel #iran #Palestine

https://t.co/ZTDlH5Dbka

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Certainty, particularly about questions of morality, of good and evil and right and wrong, is powerful. It clarifies direction, strengthens resolve, lifts spirits, fortifies defenses, and motivates courageous action. It convinces and can intimidate—it’s no coincidence that the platforms of our political parties are often driven less by majority view than by morally certain individuals and interest groups: strong opinions, strongly held often win out over weak opinions, weakly held.

But certainty, in and of itself, is not good nor bad nor right nor wrong—it’s just certain.

https://t.co/VPh7pnk7uB

[Karen Vaites @karenvaites]

Why have reading scores declined in the last decade-plus (the Common Core era and the Ed Tech era)?

And how do the four “Southern Surge” states, which have bucked national trends in reading declines, inform our understanding of the CCSS and other education policies?

@NickHagen9 and I discuss all of this and more on his recent podcast.

Thanks for having me, Nick!

[Nashville Sounds @nashvillesounds]

He was Oliver that fastball now that ball is Dunn for.

[Gabe Fleisher @WakeUp2Politics]

The 119th Congress is less than five months old. In that time, three House Democrats have passed away in the middle of their terms.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

I’m growing more and more open to the idea, if not more convinced, that the filibuster needs to be eliminated. In theory, it forces deliberation and compromise; in practice, it doesn’t. Instead of empowering Congressional dealmakers, it has empowered a minority to neuter the entire body. An impotent Congress means more responsibility falls to the president, but with constitutional limitations on the president’s powers, what you end up with is a Fisher-Price monarchy. 

But the push to eliminate it can’t come from the party in power or it just looks like another bad faith, partisan escalation. At the same time, it would be a bold move for any Democrat to suggest giving Republicans the keys to the kingdom—the ability to enshrine in law what they’ve been encouraging/allowing President Trump to do by fiat.

So, realistically, maybe the best chance for this to happen is for Democrats to take the House in 2026, but not the Senate, and for Senate Democrats in the minority to support its elimination in 2027. Republicans would have the White House and the Senate, but Democrats could use the House as a check.

And, down the road, the focus would return to where it never should have left: Congress. Our current government is a pale imitation of what was intended; the filibuster seems like a big reason why.

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

How activists and non-activists alike can be less divisive for the purposes of being more persuasive:

People often treat “depolarization” as some sort of cop-out—reflexive centrism, or being quiet about [thing the other party does that is bad] for the sake of getting along. That’s just not what it is. Put simply, it’s much easier to talk someone into your point of view if (1) they don’t pre-hate you, (2) you don’t pre-hate them, and (3) the lack of pre-hating is clear to both sides. Depolarization is about making political arguments persuasive, or, where they aren’t persuasive, productive.

Zachary Elwood (@apokerplayer) of Defusing American Anger is one of the most consistent, persistent, and insightful advocates for depolarization I’ve come across, and it was an absolute treat having him on the podcast (https://t.co/i5ZZI0Px1r) to talk about the what, why, and how of depolarization.

If you’d like to learn more, subscribe to his Substack (https://t.co/tBb2MI4SDD) or buy one of his books, Defusing American Anger: A Guide to Understanding Our Fellow Citizens and Reducing Us-vs-Them Polarization (https://t.co/MzocThRI4v) or How Contempt Destroys Democracy: An American Liberal’s Guide to Toxic Polarization (https://t.co/21l0Fy19pn).

The episode is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

[Matthew Noah Smith @MattNoahSmith]

In response to the linked article.

1: The rampant use of ChatGPT is due in part to a society-wide failure to value education for its own sake. By treating a pure means to an end - wealth - as a final end, we have ethically crippled a generation.

https://t.co/K3HwwhIsZv

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

I would have been sympathetic to this view in college (I think). Now, married and a parent, suburban living seems great.

[Sami Gold @souljagoyteller]

What about *this* is appealing

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Benjamin Jolley, an independent pharmacist in Salt Lake City, has a lot to say about it. Long story short, vertical integration among insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and pharmacies (think of CVS Health controlling Aetna (insurance), CVS Caremark (PBM), CVS Specialty (specialty pharmacy), and CVS Minute Clinic (provider services)) screws pharmacies that operate outside that paradigm. On most drugs, they’re making literal pennies per prescription. Jolley’s take is that these integrated monopolies have a lot to do with screwing everything up (for what it’s worth, he spoke at the Bernie/AOC rally in SLC and his Substack is followed by some major industry thinkers). I interviewed him about it all in March:

https://t.co/k7Db6HchVw

[MLB @MLB]

In honor of @SlangsOnSports' birthday, we asked her friends and colleagues to share how she's impacted them.

Birthdays are important - and so are you, Sarah. ❤️

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Sarah Langs is as cool as it gets—a consistent bringer of joy (and fun statistical trivia).

[Sarah Langs @SlangsOnSports]

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 oh my goodness 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Thank you so much to everyone here for the inordinately kind words, and to the amazing @MLB social squad for making this happen !! 🫶

Baseball is the best because its people are the best 💕

[Nick Hagen @NickHagen9]

Spoke yesterday with @NicoPerrino, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, about the early experiences that led him to FIRE, our shared appreciation as religious fellows for the great Christopher Hitchens, the most restrictive actions of the Obama and Biden administrations, the same of the Trump administrations, and why all of it matters. Genuinely, one of my favorite interviews thus far.

Also available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Please listen and subscribe!
https://t.co/Qy080EZ7pe