Writer for "Veep." Friend. Neighbor.
Los Angeles, CA
Joined June 2013
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Billy Kimball retweeted
A packaged hamburger bun can have more alcohol by weight than a non-alcoholic beer.
Researchers in Germany measured packaged burger rolls at 1.28 g of ethanol per 100 g in a 2016 study. A non-alcoholic beer has to be under 0.5% alcohol by volume, about 0.4 g per 100 ml. Gram for gram, those buns were about 3 times that.
American bread has it too. A 1998 study from the Washington State Toxicology Laboratory tested bread from Seattle-area stores and bakeries. Original Wonder Bread had 0.37 g per 100 g, close to the non-alcoholic beer cap, and a rosemary onion loaf had 0.98 g.
Brazil's numbers run higher. In 2024 the consumer group Proteste tested 10 brands of sliced bread, and one lot of Visconti came in at 3.37% alcohol. Proteste blamed heavy use of preservatives against mold, and the industry's trade group disputed the testing method.
Yeast makes ethanol when it ferments sugar, so anything leavened carries a little. In the US, ethanol can also be applied to pizza crust before final baking as an antimicrobial, at up to 2% of the product's weight.
Billy Kimball retweeted
On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions
Billy Kimball retweeted
Personally, I think this is nonsense. I will break down what I think is happening in this video.
It appears that Jeff Banks is a longtime Reform supporter, so Nigel is granting him two favors. The first is the opportunity to secure a contract to produce Reform's merch. The second is the opportunity to appear in this video, which effectively functions as an advertisement.
I think it is a mischaracterization to call Jeff Banks a "designer." A more apt term is "businessman." There's nothing inherently wrong with being a businessman, but if we were to survey everyone in the menswear industry, the greatest concentration of hucksters would be in this category.
For decades now, Jeff Banks has been sourcing his production in low-wage countries and then importing those items into Britain, which in turn undercuts British production. For instance, this shirt pictured below, which was made in China. To be clear: there is nothing inherently wrong with Chinese production. Some of it can be quite high-quality. But when someone arrives in the country with only the intention of maximizing profits, quality is not their central concern.
If Nigel actually cared about British manufacturing, he could have contacted @paddygrant, who has been a champion in this area for decades. While Jeff Banks was outsourcing his production, Patrick was not only manufacturing in the UK, but also saving British factories. In 2015, he saved the Blackburn factory Cookson & Clegg from closure by purchasing the operation and saving countless jobs. That factory could have easily made Reform's merch. And the money would have gone to someone who has been a genuine champion of UK manufacturing.
Jeff Banks claims that it's a "nightmare" to produce neckties in the UK, so he had to go to Como, Italy to get his silk. This is the sort of lie you can expect from a huckster who is principally concerned with profits, not British jobs.
I'm sure he knows that Macclesfield has a long tradition of producing British silk. Adamley still produces there, as you can see in the third slide. Some of their designs are inspired by David Evans's archival prints, which would have given Nigel and his team the opportunity to promote a long-forgotten British tradition. (I will save the story for David Evans for another time). These Macclesfield silks could have been given to Drake's, a domestic British neckwear producer.
Yes, this would have been expensive for the end consumer. But this is what you would have had to tell Reform supporters: if you want genuine, high-quality British manufacturing, it will cost you.
Jeff Banks doesn't take this route with his production because he knows supposed "British patriots" are often cheap bastards, much like their American counterparts. So he cuts corners where he can. By cutting costs in this way, you undercut actual British producers. Consumers see this advertisement, go to Jeff Banks, and see that the goods are cheap. They then wonder why British manufacturers are charging so much more.
Unfortunately, this corner of the market is full of hucksters who are not real patriots. Nigel promotes this guy in return for his support, which brings consumers to him, helping line his pockets — much of it cheap imports. If you want real British-made clothing, there is no shortage of options. But you have to be serious about supporting domestic craftspeople and factory workers.
Billy Kimball retweeted
I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky. He said he wishes men would stop wearing slim fit suits, adopt animals from their local animal shelter, and build affordable housing in walkable neighborhoods. I told him thank you.
Billy Kimball retweeted
My answer to almost every style-related question is the same. It depends on your intended aesthetic, which should be informed by culture.
What pant break is "ideal?"
If you're interested in classic men's tailoring, the standard answer is either a shivering break (where the hem grazes the top of your shoes) or a single break (where there's just a single indentation breaking what would otherwise be an uninterrupted leg line). There's no reason for this other than cultural practice. If you take inspiration from the way men wore tailored clothing from the 1930s to the '80s — often considered the Golden Age of men's tailoring — then this is how men wore their clothes.
But that's not the only legitimate aesthetic. The aforementioned aesthetic was shaped by the ruling class in Britain, Italy, and the United States during the 20th century. However, this group has not defined how men should dress for over a hundred years.
If your dress inspiration comes from the louche aesthetic of Armani, bohemian hippies, streetwear (e.g., skate and hip hop), trailer park types, or even some sections of Westernwear, then it makes sense that your pants should be a few inches longer. For Westernwear, this creates a stacked leg line on your slim jeans. For louche tailoring, the wider, looser silhouettes with engulfing hems and a low center of gravity almost cry out for extra fabric pooling around your ankles.
Similarly, some people intentionally wear cropped trousers, such as members of the punk and ska communities (look up old photos of Paul Weller).
In the 1960s, Japanese youths loitered around Miyuki Street in the upscale Ginza shopping district while wearing preppy American clothing — madras shirts, oxford button-downs, soft-shouldered sport coats, and slim chinos cut a few inches above their white socks and penny loafers. Much like the Lo Heads in New York City, they were technically borrowing from a classic American aesthetic, but they did not aspire to look exactly like White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Instead, they were their own thing, and the cropped leg symbolized belonging to a subcultural group called the Miyuki-zoku (Japanese for Miyuki subculture).
Certain menswear aesthetics, such as techwear, also feature cropped legs. Monitaly sells pants in an extreme carrot fit, where the pants are super billowy at the top and strongly taper to a narrow cuff intended to be worn slightly above the ankle.
If you don't yet have a strong sense of aesthetics, then it makes sense to go with something middle-of-the-road and versatile. Before chopping 5 inches off your chinos or jeans, let them graze the top of your shoes. You can wear these pants with Oxford button-downs, Western shirts, field jackets, sport coats, bombers, etc.
As you develop this foundation, read about historical and contemporary culture. Over time, save photos of outfits you like and try to identify themes. Are you inspired by classic tailoring, Westernwear, streetwear, workwear, avant-garde, techwear, Mod, punk, or something else? How do these groups treat concepts such as fit, silhouette, color, material, and styling?
Then purchase a few things to experiment with that aesthetic. If you're inspired by punk, maybe you get a black leather jacket to wear with those same slim-straight, non-cropped jeans. But if you wear that for a while and decide it's not for you, you can purchase something else that falls under a different aesthetic (say, a navy blazer or an MA-1 bomber). Once you find something that truly makes you feel like yourself, maybe you can chop those jeans up to lean more into the look (if that's what the look calls for).
Of course, this is not the only way to build a wardrobe. Many stylish people are embedded in communities and naturally dress like members of those groups, so they lean into the look on day one. But if you're not sure, I would first lay a foundation of basics and let yourself play around, always keeping culture in mind.
To me, this is a much more sensible way of building a wardrobe than what you occasionally see from other menswear writers, who focus on what a celebrity recently wore or ask you to run through some checklist ("shorts should always be five inches," "pants should always be high rise," "blue never goes with black"). Such dictums treat style as a science when it's more like a language. Just as there are many spoken languages, there are many dress languages, so it's good to be open-minded and try to understand what others (and you) are trying to express.
Billy Kimball retweeted
Nice patchwork madras on Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman. Classic American clothiers such as J. Press and Chipp used to make these jackets for well-dressed Americans during the 20th cent, but this tradition has since been eclipsed by MTM operations focused on Italian fabrics.
Billy Kimball retweeted
This is not what sprezzatura means.
The term sprezzatura comes from The Book of the Courtier, a 16th-century text by the Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione. At the time, the livelihoods of certain European elites depended on their proximity to the throne. The better you could serve the King or Queen, the more prosperous and secure your lifestyle would be.
In his book, Castiglione used the word sprezzatura to describe how a courtier should perform their duties while concealing all effort, so that even the most difficult accomplishments seem natural and effortless. As he wrote, it's "a certain nonchalance, to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it." In this way, you would seem indispensable to the royal court, as you are too talented to give up.
Menswear writers later co-opted the term to describe the process of looking stylish without seeming like you tried. This idea goes back to Beau Brummell, arguably the single most important figure in menswear history, as his dictums in the early 19th century still shape how we think about dress today. At the time, there were powdered fops who wore ornate dress and giant wigs. Brummell championed a simpler, more austere form of male attire consisting of a dark tailcoat and full-length trousers (rather than breeches). His style of dress at the time was known as the dandy, even though today we use the term to describe someone who visibly puts effort into their dress.
Brummell was fastidious about his presentation. There's an often-passed-around story about how he would spend hours in the morning tying his white cravat so it would look perfect without seeming like he tried. One morning, guests saw one of Brummell's dressing rooms with a container full of cravats. When asked what those were, the valet said: "These are our failures."
Brummell insisted that you always look stylish, but effortless. If lore is to be believed, he once said: "If John Bull turns around to look at you, you're poorly dressed: either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable." (John Bull was a term for a random man at the time, sort of like Joe Blow).
Whether rightly or wrongly, this still shapes how we think about men's style today. Hence, my objection to the first outfit below on Brunello Cucinelli. A peak-lapel sport coat with a crisp white dress shirt, a dark tie, blue jeans, and bright tan shoes signals a lot of effort. To me, it looks calculated and contrived. Whereas a slightly more casual shirt (light blue) worn with a tweed jacket, no tie, and jeans looks more natural. Did Tom Selleck consider his clothes when getting dressed? Of course, no one would fall into these clothes while climbing out of bed. But he has hidden his effort better.
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Billy Kimball retweeted
If you're looking for fabrics that you can wear in the summer, it's useful to consider three things: weight, weave, and fiber. If you only pay attention to one of these dimensions (say, linen), you will miss the bigger picture.
Let me show you. 🧵
Billy Kimball retweeted
Since I post a lot about tailoring, especially bespoke, people think I'm telling them they should get a bespoke suit. Or a made-to-measure suit. Or they should consider custom tailoring at all.
This is not my message. I don't think you should get a custom suit, whether bespoke or made-to-measure (and, more broadly, I don't think everyone should or needs to wear suits or sport coats).
Should you decide you want to wear a suit or sport coat for whatever reason — whether for work, weddings, or fun — I encourage you to educate yourself on tailoring and figure out what solution is best for you. I've tried to provide some of this information on Twitter, although the bulk of my service writing is at Put This On. These guides will help you think more deeply about fit, silhouette, styling, etc.
Custom tailoring is not better than ready-to-wear tailoring. In fact, if taken as a whole, custom tailoring can be worse because the vast majority of custom tailoring companies are bad. Even if you choose a good one, there are many ways that a custom garment can go awry or ultimately not work for you.
IMO, there is no shortcut like "just go here" or "go buy that brand." I don't use affiliate links here, so I have no financial incentive to tell you to buy anything (unlike many influencers, who are paid in some way to tell you what to buy). The best route is to educate yourself first on fit and silhouette. Learn the language of tailoring so you can choose the right cloth and details for your occasion. And consider what's available given your budget.
I have seen people look better in a $300 Jos. A. Bank suit than in a $20,000 bespoke Savile Row suit because they were clear-eyed and educated, while the bespoke customer was not.
The "best possible" garment for you will depend on a host of factors, which must be approached with a bit of education and discerning eye. It's not as simple as "go bespoke" or "go to this store."
Billy Kimball retweeted
As a general matter, my advice isn't really "go to this store" or "buy this brand." Rather, I encourage people to think about clothes in a certain way.
Let me show you how to shop for a good suit. 🧵
@dieworkwear My brother is going to get his first suit and is gonna go to Nordstroms, do you recommend?
Billy Kimball retweeted
I'm a cardiologist. NPR reported this morning on something that could save more lives than any drug I've ever prescribed.
One blood test. One vial. Screening for 50 different cancers simultaneously.
It's called Galleri. And the FDA could approve it later this year.
Right now, we routinely screen for exactly five cancers in the United States — breast, colon, cervical, prostate, and lung. Each requires its own separate scan or exam. For the rest — pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, and dozens more — we have no routine screening at all. We find them when symptoms appear. By then, most are Stage 3 or 4. By then, for many patients, it's too late.
Pancreatic cancer has a 12% five-year survival rate — because we almost always catch it late. Ovarian cancer: 50%. Liver cancer: 21%. These numbers aren't medical failures. They're detection failures. The treatments exist. We just find the disease after the window for those treatments has closed.
Galleri changes the math entirely.
Here's how it works. Every tumor — no matter where it is in your body — sheds tiny fragments of DNA into your bloodstream as cancer cells die and divide. These fragments carry specific methylation patterns — chemical signatures that are unique to cancer cells and different from the DNA your healthy cells release.
Galleri captures these fragments from a standard blood draw and reads their methylation patterns using next-generation sequencing and AI-driven analysis. The AI doesn't just detect whether cancer is present. It predicts where it's coming from — which organ, which tissue type — with over 90% accuracy in studies. One vial of blood tells your doctor: there's a cancer signal, and it's likely originating in your pancreas, or your lung, or your liver.
Your physician then orders targeted follow-up imaging to confirm or rule out the finding. Galleri isn't a diagnosis. It's a precision compass that tells your doctor exactly where to look.
The data is building fast.
GRAIL has now sold over 475,000 Galleri tests commercially under a special FDA designation. The NHS-Galleri trial — the largest randomized controlled trial of any multi-cancer detection test in history — enrolled over 142,000 people aged 50-77 in England. The primary endpoint — an overall reduction in late-stage cancers — was not met. But by the third year of annual screening, they found a 26% reduction in Stage IV cancers in key deadly types including pancreatic, liver, lung, and gastric. The test detected four times more cancers overall when added to standard screening — catching cancers that would otherwise have been found late or not at all.
The U.S. Pathfinder 2 study — 25,490 participants — showed similar positive signals and forms the basis of the FDA submission filed in January 2026.
Congress has already acted. The Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act passed in February. If the FDA approves Galleri, Medicare will begin covering one test per year starting in 2028.
The current retail price is $950. Exact Sciences' competing test Cancerguard is $659. These prices will fall dramatically once FDA approval triggers insurance coverage and competition scales.
As a cardiologist, let me tell you why this matters far beyond oncology.
Cancer is now the number one killer of Americans over 50. Not heart disease. Cancer. And the patients I lose to cancer are often the same patients whose hearts I saved — patients who survived their cardiac event, optimized their metabolic health, and then received a late-stage cancer diagnosis that nobody screened for because no screening tool existed.
I've written on this platform about GLP-1 drugs reducing cancer metastasis by up to 50%. About personalized mRNA cancer vaccines cutting recurrence by 49%. About inflammation as the common root of heart disease and cancer. About AI detecting disease years before symptoms.
Galleri is the missing piece that connects all of it.
Detect the cancer early — with a blood test. Confirm it with AI-enhanced imaging. Treat it with personalized mRNA vaccines, targeted therapy, and GLP-1 drugs that may slow progression. Monitor response with liquid biopsy in real time.
That's not five separate breakthroughs. That's one integrated system of cancer prevention and treatment that didn't exist five years ago — and could be standard of care within five more.
The shift from reactive to proactive medicine — from "we found it too late" to "we caught it in time" — has been the central theme of everything I've written on this platform. Preventive cardiology. Advanced lipid testing. Inflammation detection. AI imaging. Gene editing.
Galleri applies the same principle to cancer. And it could save more lives than all of them combined.
One blood test. Fifty cancers. FDA decision expected this year.
Prevention is the new cure. And the science just took its biggest step yet.
open.substack.com/pub/afshin…
Billy Kimball retweeted
That mud nest on your porch wall is not a threat. It's not even occupied.
Mud daubers are solitary wasps, meaning they have no colony, no workers, nothing to defend. A female builds the nest alone, hunts spiders, paralyzes them with a single sting, stacks them into each mud cell as food for one larva, lays an egg on top, seals the cell, and leaves. She does not come back.
The nest is finished. Whatever is inside is a developing larva and a pile of paralyzed spiders, sealed in clay, doing nothing.
The spiders she's hunting are often black widows. Mud daubers are documented as one of the primary predators of black widows across the South and Southwest.
Mud daubers can technically sting if grabbed, but without a colony to defend there's essentially no trigger for aggression. Thousands of people walk past active mud dauber nests every day without incident because the wasp has no reason to engage.
The nest looks alarming. It isn't. Leave it through the season. By fall the adult is long gone, the larvae have pupated, and the structure is inert. Knock it down then if you want the wall back.
Or leave it. She might use the mud again next year, which means more black widows getting paralyzed and stored in your eaves, which is not the worst outcome.
Billy Kimball retweeted
Recently chatted with Matthew Gonzalez, the first American to hang his banner on Savile Row, about his career as a bespoke tailor, what American style means to him, and why people buy bespoke.
pod.link/blamo/episode/ZjAyN…
Billy Kimball retweeted
Gillibrand's son graduated from undergrad on Sunday. Today it's reported that he's received $30 million in venture capital funding to launch a derivatives exchange. His mom sat on the Senate Agriculture committee—which has jurisdiction over derivates—until this past year
scoop: sen. kirsten gillibrand's 22-year-old son theodore raised at a $300 million valuation to launch a perpetual futures exchange:
fortune.com/2026/06/18/theod…
Billy Kimball retweeted
A growing body of research suggests popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy may also help treat or prevent certain cancers. It’s the latest unexpected benefit to be associated with GLP-1s, which are now taken by one-in-eight American adults.
@WmBrangham has more.
Billy Kimball retweeted
A new study shows HPV vaccination in England has led to the number of deaths from cervical cancer falling to zero in vaccinated women under 25.
Please encourage all eligible children to get vaccinated.
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
