Andy Specht

Covers North Carolina politics for @WRAL and @PolitiFactNC. Formerly at the @newsobserver. Raleigh native. @Campbelledu alum.

[Greg Wyshynski @wyshynski]

ESPN opening night games! Welcome to our new 84-game NHL regular season.

[Andy Specht @AndySpecht]

RT @WaltRuff: A box office matchup for opening night! 🍿

The #Canes will start their 2026-27 regular season on Tuesday, September 29, at Le…

[Elliotte Friedman @FriedgeHNIC]

In a major development, the Red Wings announce Steve Yzerman is stepping down as the team’s head of Hockey Operations and becoming an advisor to Chris Ilitch.

A search for the team’s next President/GM is underway

[Bryan Caplan @bryan_caplan]

Pretty good.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

“We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

- Condoleeza Rice on Iraq, September 2002

[Buffalo Sabres @BuffaloSabres]

Round 2:

https://t.co/FJZbQ7QyNG | @Ticketmaster

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Spain has beaten every team they’ve seen in this tournament

Except one

[Jeff Putnam |✍ @TheJeffPutnam]

Just thought of a new side gig.

For $200 I’ll show up at your house with a tape measure and a clipboard and give you insanely high estimates on projects your wife wants done so you don’t have to do it.

[Jordan Martinook @Martyman17]

@DurhamBulls need a replacement. Went tarps off at the parade and someone went home with this jersey!!!

[Spittin' Chiclets @spittinchiclets]

Jordan Staal had a feeling before the iconic Game 1 captain’s fight that Brady was going to ask him to go 🥊🍿

[BuffaloRon @BuffaloRon]

Me: I'm going to eat healthy

Lettuce: I'm going to give you explosive diarrhea

Oreos in the pantry: I would never do that to you

[NHL @NHL]

William Carrier's day with the #StanleyCup was picture perfect. 🌅

(📸: IG/oli.langevin)

[Raccoon @trashincrisis]

just hanging out with my new friend

[Brad Wilcox @BradWilcoxIFS]

Insanely anti-family: "Of the housing wealth America added since then, two of every three dollars now sit w/ Americans 55 & older. Empty nesters own about 28% of large homes in the U.S. Millennials w/ children own about 16%." https://t.co/Gv768pcIni

[katsu @katsuxbt]

Will Ferrell says his friends gave him a Staples Center security uniform as a joke. Then he spotted Shaq courtside

“Friends of mine got me a full Staples Center security outfit as a joke gift. My name on it was ‘Ted Vagina.’ I snuck it in, and during one of the breaks I stood up next to the players and pretended to be security, kept a serious face”

“It became this viral thing. Then I sit back down, get a tap on the shoulder: ‘Shaq’s here, on the baseline. He thinks it’s funny, you want to throw him out? He’s about to leave anyway.’ I’m like, ‘Yes’”

“So I stood up during the commercial break, start looking at him: ‘Hey, cut it out.’ He goes, ‘What?’ ‘Stop it, you.’ ‘What?’ ‘That’s it.’ So I throw him out of the game and it gets this big round of applause”

“And it was all Shaq’s idea”

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Nike pays Erling Haaland roughly $20 million a year to be photographed with their products. A family-run western store in Dallas just got the same treatment for free. Better than free: Haaland paid them $750 for a taxidermy raccoon hugging a whiskey bottle.

The backstory makes it better. Haaland walked into Wild Bill's Western Store during Norway's World Cup run and bought cowboy hats, exotic boots, a longhorn belt buckle, and a shirt reading "Y'all can kiss my Dallas." The owner says Haaland knew nothing about cowboy hats and had to be fitted for his first one.

Then Norway's Cinderella run ended in the quarterfinals, and the tournament's breakout star, seven goals, carried the raccoon off the plane in Oslo himself. Caption: "It followed me home." Then he ran an Instagram poll asking fans to name it.

The results for a boot shop that's been family-owned since the 1970s: the Whiskey Raccoon is sold out. The Dallas shirt is nearly gone. Their $500 Belligerent Squirrel, a taxidermy squirrel smoking a cigarette and holding Jack Daniel's, is down to low stock. Local shoppers are lining up at a store most of them had walked past for years.

Sports brands run entire celebrity seeding departments trying to manufacture exactly this: a global superstar genuinely delighted by a product, on camera, unprompted. Every one of those campaigns reads as an ad, because it is one.

Brands spend $20 million a year renting Haaland's image. Wild Bill's sold it to him for $750.

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

The cure for cancer isn’t in the AI data center, it was in the forest cut down to build the AI center

[🏆 - seth jarvis fan club @jarvybradly]

One month ago today, we did it.

Still giving me all the chills.

[Carolina Hurricanes @Canes]

One month ago today 🏆

[Financial Dystopia @financedystop]

Upper-middle-class families are in a weird dead zone with college.

They make too much to qualify for meaningful financial aid, but not enough to casually write $100,000 checks every year without it completely changing their life.

So the kid looks rich on paper, gets little help, and the parents are expected to absorb the cost of a house down payment every single year.

College pricing has also obviously become absurd.