No new content directly from me this week for subscribers to the Athletic, but if I can shake this cold I have right now – the first time I’ve been sick since we all started masking just under two years ago – I’ll have a draft piece this upcoming week. I have done Q&As with our beat writers who cover the Orioles, Dbacks, Pirates, Red Sox, Twins, and Royals, and subscribers can also see all parts of my prospects ranking package here.
My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Matthew Murphy, lead singer and songwriter of the Wombats, talking about their latest album Fix Yourself, Not the World; his unusual lyrics; and mental health. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. My free email newsletter returned last week as well, catching those of you who subscribe up on various things from my life from the last month as well as links to all the things I have written since the start of 2022.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The wife of a Supreme Court justice was active in the efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election. Ginni Thomas is also active in the fight to ban abortion in the United States, while her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, has been flouting ethics guidelines for decades by attending events for her pet causes.
- Forbes writer Laura Shin identifies the man likely behind a 2016 crypto hack that stole abouto $11 billion in Ethereum.
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the head of the state’s power grid to keep wholesale power prices at their maximum level, tossing billions in extra revenue to power companies, during the state’s deep freeze last winter.
- Two separate research teams used machine-learning tools to identify the same two men as the likely initiators of the QAnon hoax. Ron Watkins, one of the two men, has been identified by previous efforts as well.
- Reuters explains how a glitch in software used to hack a Saudi activist’s iPhone revealed how the Israeli company NSO Group was helping governments spy on their own citizens across the world.
- Even a mild case of COVID-19 can lead to much higher heart disease risk after the infection is over.
- Another grifter has emerged in the COVID-19 denial world – Marc Girardot, who wants you to subscribe to his substack even though he evinces ignorance of basic chemistry.
- China employed thousands of fake Twitter accounts to push propaganda around the recent Winter Olympics.
- Tucker Carlson started backpedaling after years of his praise for Vladimir Putin showed up on state-run TV in Russia this past week. Then the Fox News host said putting Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court would make the U.S. like Rwanda, his go-to country for white nationalist commentary even though Rwanda has a lower homicide rate than the United States.
- A California couple faces charges of bilking $2.8 million from Grand Rapids School District using some pretty basic phishing techniques.
- The Baltimore Museum of Art hired some of its security guards to curate special exhibitions of artworks the guards selected from the collection.
- Singer Isobel Campbell offered her tribute to former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, who died this week at age 57.
- The Lord of the Rings series has sparked ridiculous criticism over its casting of nonwhite actors as (checks notes) dwarves and elves and such.
- My editor at Paste got to check out the new Disney hotel/LARP experience the Galactic Starcruiser, writing about the juxtaposition of being in a fictional war setting while an actual war was going on; as did a writer for Gizmodo, who noted that a two-day stay for a family of four will run you $6000.
- The cooperative board game The Warriors: Come Out and Play, based on the cult classic film from 1979, is now on sale.