Stick to baseball, 2/11/23.

My top 100 prospects and team reports have been running for the last 12 days, finishing up today with the AL West team reports/top 20s. You can see the index of everything I’ve written here, which includes direct links to the reports for every team, the top 100, the farm system rankings, my chats on that site, and more.

My latest review for Paste actually went up last week, and even I missed it in all the hubbub. I reviewed the board game It’s a Wonderful Kingdom, the two-person variant of the popular game It’s a Wonderful World, but I have to say I think the original is a better game, even for two people. It’s a bit like 7 Wonders meets Century Spice Road, but with a little more to it than that might imply. You can buy It’s a Wonderful World here on amazon if you’re intrigued.

My free email newsletter has been almost-weekly this year, and I’ll send out the next iteration this weekend. I skipped my podcast this week because I was writing so much. I think it’ll be back next week. Maybe. Life is full of uncertainties.

And now, the links…

• The Toronto Star looks at the fall of Jamie Salé into conspiracy theory and denialism. The 2002 Olympic gold medalist, previously best known as one of the two skaters originally cheated out of the gold by corrupt judges, has become a COVID and vaccine denialist – and, of course, now she’s trying to profit off these false views.

• The Hollywood Reporter has more details on the implosion of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland’s animation empire in the wake of his arrest on domestic abuse charges and multiple former co-workers detailing harassment by Roiland.

• Intelligencer looks at the increasing “junkification” of Amazon, where legitimate products are getting harder to find as the company tries to muscle its way into more spaces. My outsider’s take: this is what happens when a company needs unbridled growth to prop up a stock price (or a billionaire owner’s wealth).

• The right-wing propaganda site Revolver states that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R )’s takeover of that state’s schools, including the previously progressive New College of Florida, is the blueprint Republicans need to use to take down public education across the country. (The article also says that African American studies is “a joke of a subject,” if you doubt my characterization of Revolver’s leanings.)

• Elon Musk fired a top Twitter engineer because engagement on the billionaire’s tweets is low. Totally stable genius there.
  
• Twitter glitched for me twice this week – once when we all got the “exceeded the daily limit” warning, and once when the app showed me misplaced white boxes where certain tweets should have appeared in my timeline. Former employees say this is due to a series of code freezes and Musk’s frequent, mercurial demands for changes.

• The BBC profiles the French author Colette, calling her “the most beloved French writer of all time,” although in the English-speaking world she’s probably best known for writing the novel Gigi that became a hit musical and film.

• Native American groups are protesting the Kansas City NFL team’s nickname, mascot, and their use of the embarrassing “tomahawk chop.” Atlanta baseball fans, pay attention.

• A Montana bill would prevent schools from punishing students who intentionally misgender or deadname classmates. Just say bullying is allowed and be done with it.

• Is disdain for the less educated the “last acceptable prejudice,” as Michael Sandel writes in the New York Times? He also argues that it’s a problem for the Democrats, and a perception they need to shed.

• Voice actors are being asked to sign away rights to their own voices so studios can create AI versions and save a few bucks.

• Tony Dungy and James Brown (the NFL announcer) have withdrawn from their speaking slots at an event hosted by an anti-gay Pharisee preacher.

• Republicans are not serious about governing, except when it comes to using the government as a weapon against their enemies, which is, you know, what fascist regimes do.

• Also in Florida, the state is going to pass legislation to end Disney’s extra-governmental Reedy Creek Improvement District as retaliation for the company’s opposition to the state’s anti-LGBT “don’t say gay” law. See the previous bullet point.

• Attempts to erase Black history from curricula, as Florida is doing, end up doing nothing except leaving students less literate in American history, rather than getting them to “love” the U.S. more, writes education Prof. Adam Laats in the Washington Post.

• By the way, sometimes pressure works, even on zealots: Florida’s interscholastic sports committee has dropped plans to make questions about athletes’ menstrual cycles mandatory. It was a blatant attempt to out trans kids, of course, although they claimed otherwise.

• Missouri’s Republican-led legislature rejected a measure to ban children from carrying guns in public.

• Iowa Republicans introduced a bill that would expand child labor in the state, including jobs previously deemed too dangerous for kids like those in mining, logging, and animal slaughterhouses.

• A professor at the University of Wyoming tweeted about a former student of hers who was trans and killed themselves. Legislatures passing laws attacking trans people, especially trans kids, are destroying lives just to score political points.

• We’re seeing fewer big scientific breakthroughs, with the pace dropping steadily for over three-quarters of a century. Part of it is that breakthroughs are harder to come by as the low-hanging fruit is long picked, and part is that nations don’t invest in basic science research without promise of immediate financial returns the way they used to.

• Over 200 people have been quarantined and at least 8 have died in Equatorial Guinea from an as-yet unidentified hemorrhagic fever (a category that includes dengue and the Ebola and Marburg filoviruses).

• Board game news: Allplay (formerly known as Board Game Tables) has a Kickstarter up for four new small box games, with pledges starting at $19 for any one of the titles.

• Rock Manor Games has a Kickstarter, already over 400% funded, for the new expansion to the game Set a Watch.

• This blog post arguing that Dominion killed replayability in board games makes a great point – the need to constantly buy expansions to is a great business model for a very small number of games/publishers but not sustainable for the industry as a whole.