My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30th.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).
I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.
- Patrick Burleigh wrote about growing up with testotoxicosis, an extremely rare condition that causes boys to begin puberty as young as age two.
- The Denver Post tells how a consultant to the Denver Art Museum used her position and imprimatur to help an art smuggler move looted items from holy sites in southeast Asia. The consultant, Emma Bunker, died last year.
- The New York Times, which was also guilty of the sins described in this article, looks at how biased polls that implied there would be a ‘red wave’ this November screwed up the narrative and led Democrats to commit resources to many of the wrong races.
- The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.
- You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.
- Dr. Céline Gounder, Grant Wahl’s widow, wrote about how anti-vaxxers also pounced on her husband’s death to spread misinformation and outright lies. Fucking ghouls.
- A romance novelist faked her own death, and has now returned like nothing ever happened.
- The cousin of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter flagged down a police car after an accident. One of the officers Tased the man so extensively that he died of cardiac arrest. Keenan Anderson was unarmed. The LAPD is already blaming the victim, saying he had cocaine in his system, which, last I checked, is not a capital crime.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis is weaponizing Florida’s public schools, using political appointees to try to stifle any future dissent coming from its students. Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin explains just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be.
- Damar Hamlin’s tragedy has been fodder for anti-vaxxer lies. The BBC also looked at how the conspiracy theorists pounced. So did WBUR, while Forbes looked at the backlash to the anti-vaxxers, including a tweet from yours truly.
- A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.
- Meanwhile, public confidence in the MMR vaccine, which fights measles, mumps, and rubella, is waning after two years of attacks from denialists and grifters against COVID-19 vaccines.
- The BBC invited a cardiologist turned anti-vax grifter (he charges $10K-$20K per speaking appearance now) on air to discuss a cholesterol medication, but he hijacked the interview to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.
- Germany has warned Twitter that it’s running afoul of EU laws against misinformation.
- An adjunct professor at Hamline University in Minnesota followed multiple steps before showing a painting of Muhammad in an art class, and was still fired after a Muslim student complained.
- Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.
- Writer Hilary de Vries described her struggle getting effective treatment for her sister, who has schizoaffective disorder and has trouble holding on to housing.
- New York City is paying $135,000 to a homeless man its cops beat and dragged off the subway. The cops lied about him hitting them first, but body-camera footage proved them wrong.
- One recent poll found that two-thirds of Britons now want a referendum to rejoin the EU. So it was Leave, Remain, or Regret?
- The Times continues to uncover lies and inconsistencies in Rep. George Santos’ background, including possible campaign finance violations.
- CNBC joins the parade of investigations into Santos, this time showing his campaign may have committed fraud when a staffer allegedly posed as a member of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s team on fundraising calls.
- Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.
- For example, Central Bucks schools in Bucks County, which I think is where Deliverance was filmed, have banned teachers from displaying Pride flags or other inclusive materials in classrooms, thanks to a school board dominated by right-wingers.
- Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.
- Texas’ Department of Agriculture issued a report stating that climate change threatens the state’s food supply. Of course, Gov. Greg Abbott, when he’s not busy spending Texas citizens’ money on busing migrants to northern cities, has blocked local attempts to fight climate change.
- In other performative political stunts, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) banned state officials from using the gender-inclusive term “Latinx.” She also signed an order banned state schools from teaching critical race theory, which I hope some Arkansas journalist asks her to define.
- Alabama, fighting for the title of America’s biggest backwater, is now claiming (via its Attorney General) that women there who use abortion pills obtained from out of state will be prosecuted, which I don’t think is constitutional but I’m not a lawyer.
- A deputy campaign manager for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent an email to teachers asking them to encourage students to volunteer for her re-election campaign in exchange for class credit.
- A baseball player for Northwestern has filed a defamation suit against multiple women who accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, even one who did not make those accusations public, according to this Deadspin story.
- Scientists have observed quantum interference between two different kinds of particles – similar to entanglement, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” which occurs between two related particles – for the first time.
- Why is cutting the U.S. defense budget such a forbidden concept?
- Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal explains why passing gun control laws is futile with an archconservative judiciary in place.