Stick to baseball, 1/26/24.

The top 100 prospects ranking will run on The Athletic on Monday, February 5^th, followed by the farm system rankings later that week, and the team top 20s start running on February 12^th.

My friend and one-time colleague Chris Crawford has had a tough year, losing his mother and just last week his stepfather while a site for which he was writing & producing podcasts decided to just not pay its people. He started a GoFundMe last week to help cover the mortgage on his parents’ house.

I’ve got a newsletter about 80% written and just need to finish it up this weekend. It’s free and you can sign up here.

• And now, the links…
• Longreads first: The New York Times reveals the extensive playbook behind the war on “wokeism” and DEI programs at major universities in red states. It’s a coordinated attack, much as the war on trans people and the war on abortion and the war on CRT, yet people keep falling for it – even people at major, nationally-read newspapers.
• From the guardian Long Read, how the fact that so many hipster coffee shops look the same exemplifies the “tyranny of the algorithm.”
• Martin Luther King, Jr., warned against the evils of militarism, racism, and poverty, yet the media outlets who praise him every January seem quite inured to the existence and impact of those three facets of our society.
• Speaking of the death of journalism, a member of the family that runs the right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting Group – the same company that botched a bunch of MLB rights deals – bought the Baltimore Sun and immediately insulted the staff. This Twitter thread has more details on the meeting between David Smith and the Sun’s newsroom.
• Right-wing troll Christopher Rufo’s push to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay cited the work of a data scientist with close ties to eugencists and so-called “race scientists.”
• Climate scientist Michael Mann, who co-created the famous “hockey stick” graph showing the rapid warming of the planet, sued two conservative hacks who compared him to a serial child molester back in 2012. The case finally reached trial this week. One of the two, National Review’s Mark Steyn, stands by his comments, which I think tells you all you need to know.
• Meanwhile, that bastion of leftist thought The Financial Times wrote that the world’s cities are not ready for climate change.
• I reviewed R.F. Kuang’s Nebula-winning novel Babel earlier this week, right around the time that news broke that it had been declared ineligible for this year’s Hugo Awards – with zero explanation why. Those awards were held in China, and there’s reason to believe that she and at least one other author were targeted for their views by the Chinese Communist government. The head of the awards committee has steadfastly refused to provide any insight or further details on why it was declared ineligible; I reached out to the committee myself and have received no response. John Scalzi, himself a Hugo winner, wrote about it as well.
• We are not ready for the onslaught of disinformation around the 2024 election that’s about to hit us, writes Brandy Zarozny for NBC News.
• A midwife on Long Island (of course) faked vaccinations for 1500 children, giving them a worthless homeopathic pill, and won’t serve a day in prison, instead paying a $300,000 fine. I would much rather see her jailed for ten years than ever see someone behind bars for drug charges.
• Jared Woodfill (R) is running for the Texas House of Representatives, with an endorsement from the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. A new lawsuit alleges that Woodfill covered up his former law partner’s Paul Pressler’s rapes of multiple boys even when alerted to Pressler’s crimes.
• Big Tech will save no one but itself: Netflix caved to pressure from India’s Hindu nationalist movement by removing a film about a woman overcoming caste prejudice from its service.
• Sam Altman really comes off like he has zero empathy for other humans in some of his latest comments about the future of AI.
• Aaron Rupar interviewed the man behind the hilarious Twitter account New York Times Pitchbot.
• Pitchfork reviewed the 25^th anniversary reissue of Swervedriver’s 99^th Dream album, which was plagued by label troubles and a rapidly shifting British music landscape. The title track is one of their best songs from any era or LP.
• Can New Haven-style pizza spread beyond Connecticut? My guess is yes, of course, but most places will offer poor imitations of the real thing.
• Asmodee and the LEGO Group jointly announced the fall release of a new board game, Monkey Palace, from two relatively new game designers.