Tim Ball

Strawberry springtime negroni: strawberry-infused Campari, @graywhalegin , @flyingfoxwines Spring vermouth. Cool breeze optional.

For the last month or so, I’ve been delivering junk food and booze for GoPuff (I know, the glamour of it all!) and I have learned three things: 1. College kids tip the best (likely with their parents’ credit cards). 2. Drivers can leave reviews of YOU so be nice. And 3. Charlottesville is a really pretty city.

“Hey Liz, did you know that in the morning they have food, TV, almost everything?!” Anyway, good morningtimes.

This week's @politicoeurope cover: How Europe became the Wild West of spyware: Forget the EU’s reputation as a global tech enforcer. For surveillance companies, it’s a place where anything goes. Illustration by the brilliant @petexryan , whose only fault has ever been coming up with too many great ideas at once.

This week's @politicoeurope cover: The End of Photographic Truth: Who you gonna believe? Me, or your own lying AIs? Photo-illustrations by @pablodelcan and Midjourney. Out tomorrow morning in Brussels.

Europe's power outage: How the Israel-Hamas war exposed the EU's irrelevance. Last night, I was knee deep in thousands of photos from the Middle East when an email from @tomatokosir popped into my inbox, with an illustration that looked a lot like this. And less than 24 hours later, hey, it's this week's @politicoeurope cover! Incredibly powerful image imo. Thanks, Tomato! You made my job easy this week. (Photographs on inside pages by @samarabuelouf and Yahya Hassouna.)

A month later, finally getting around to editing photos I shot at the Little League World Series — sport's greatest event (yes it is; shup). Here, Louis Lappe is mobbed by his California teammates after hitting a walk-off home run to put a bow on the championship game in Williamsport. (Kinda forgot about posting anything here [or anywhere], so please forgive the pending flurry of pics/pages/etc. in the next few days.)

As with most things, I am extremely late here, but I am thrilled and proud to share that Politico Europe again finished in the Top 5, worldwide, in the Society for News Design’s annual print competition. With 48 awards overall, only the New York Times, Washington Post, Star-Tribune and National Geographic won more. (And for those keeping track, our visuals staff still numbers, uh… three.) One of my design portfolios also netted a silver medal this year, an enormous honor for which I’m very humbled, and for which I profusely thank the artists whose collaborations made that possible. (That portfolio is the work you see posted here. Judges commented: “Each piece in this portfolio seamlessly fits together, creating a cohesive and harmonious collection. These are visually striking covers worthy of framing.”) The work of my colleagues @abusgu and @maxfahlerx2 — neither of whom had designed a newspaper page, ever, a couple of years ago — stands tall among these 48 awards, as does the work of so many brilliant artists, commissioned by each of us. Because our numbers are so small, I’ve found it impossible to post all too this work, but here’s a massive list of all our award-winning collaborators: TO @skizzomatstudio , @showmethelights , @_ricardotomas_ , @danlinz_art , @ann_kiernan , @catherinegraffam , @matthewbillington_illustration , @anthonywgerace , @iarafath , @nicolerifkin , @jascraggart , @_lee_martin_ , @edmon_deharo , @gregthings , @ivlevyorke , @julius__maxim , @obrienillustration , @filiperaic , @dakotarandallart , @wbrezinka , @shanecluskey , peterstrain … THANK YOU ALL. Click the link in my bio to see all the pages, photographs and illustrations honored by SND. (To find ours, click Filter, select Add Condition, Company Publication, and then select Politico Europe from the drop-down menu.) And a massive thanks to everyone who helps us punch far above our weight class every year since our 2015 launch in Brussels. My very rough count puts our SND award tally north of 300 at this point (and one syringe of my own blood for that "Never again" cover).

Monday morning, I called on the great @dougchayka to illustrate this week’s special report on defense. By midday Wednesday, he had delivered six (!) brilliant images, including the cover (concept and headline by @stephanfaris … I’m really just a translator).

Tina Fey at UVA this afternoon was delightful. She told a story of climbing Old Rag Mountain to get closer to a boy, except the boy showed up with another boy (who hated Tina), and the first boy tumbled down the mountain not long into their hike. When they found him at the bottom, she said, “he started telling me about this girl he liked. And the thing that he liked most about her is that he offered her a piece of gum, and she tore it in half … because a whole piece of gum was too big for her.” How this didn’t wind up being one of Liz Lemon’s sexual misadventures, I’ll never know. An American treasure, this one.

This week's front page.

Picked up some @jamaccording Damson this week, and made some little tarts out of it — read more on the history of Virginia’s “Caramel” Pie at Atlas Obscura — with a crumbled cookie crust inspired by @bakernobakery ’s chamomile recipe (only mine use chrysanthemum). It tastes better than the picture looks (and is served with Damson plum sorbet).