I’ve got some new content coming up this week, with a new draft ranking due to run on Thursday and a draft scouting blog probably running Monday or Tuesday.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the collectible card game Star Wars: Unlimited – Spark of Rebellion, which I enjoyed even though I’m not generally a fan of deckbuilders.
I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter, detailing a rather ridiculous dinner I had at the bar at The Publican, an acclaimed Chicago restaurant where, to say the least, one does not belch as loudly as one can.
I’m going to be on a new TV show, Diamond Dreams starting on Monday, April 15th, on the streaming channel Stadium. The show is a half-hour look at prospects around the minors and for the draft, and will be followed by a show on collectibles where I’ll also offer some comments on the prospects they’re discussing. You can watch via the app on pretty much any platform.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: How Elon Musk convinced MAGA partisans that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was a treatment for COVID-19 – which it absolutely is not – and set off four years of online misinformation around the pandemic.
- Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in the New York Times about how “colorblindness” has been hijacked by the white-grievance movement, in direct opposition to the original intent of the term, which meant ending racial discrimination against people of color.
- Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about how the Key Bridge disaster demonstrated the importance of immigrants to our society.
- A hardcore conservative group is making it harder for Idaho school districts to renovate or upgrade their facilities.
- There’s a big scam going around that has tricked a number of content creators into ceding control of their Facebook pages. It starts with what seems to be an invitation to appear on a big podcast, which of course is very appealing to most people trying to build their online audience.
- Over half a million Arizonans signed a petition to put codifying abortion rights on the ballot this November. It’s part of a Democratic strategy to drive voters to the polls in purple states – and also, by the way, a basic human right. This comes on the heels of the GOP-packed Arizona Supreme Court reinstating the state’s 1864 abortion ban – yes, a law that predates Arizona’s statehood by almost 50 years.
- The Guardian revealed that Boise State Professor Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, an extreme right-wing site that attacked LGBTQ+ rights and accused Republicans of being insufficiently conservative. Yenor now also works for the Claremont Institute and just a month ago wrote a piece for the Federalist that said DEI had to die for Western civilization to survive.
- ProPublica explains how authorities are trying to crack down on gift-card crime rings, where consumers often end up buying gift cards that appear new but that have already been drained of value by crooks.
- Maria Bustillos writes in The Nation about the rise of journalist-owned news outlets amidst the ongoing bloodletting in the industry.
- David Chang’s Momofuku company is trying to trademark the generic term “chili crunch” to describe a staple Chinese condiment best known as chili crisp – and they’re suing smaller firms to try to have their way.
- Why is Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R – and not the former pitcher) doing the bidding of Elon Musk by suing Media Matters for reporting on Twitter’s failure to police hate on their site?
- Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, removed Judd Blevins (R) from the city council after his ties to white supremacist groups were exposed.
- The BBC has a first-person narrative from a woman who found deepfakes of herself online – and eventually learned it was a close friend of hers who made them.
- This Twitter thread has some solid details on the IDF’s attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza that killed seven WCK volunteers. I don’t know why those seven deaths should lead to more calls for a cease-fire when the 30,000+ Palestinian deaths before that haven’t … of course I do, let’s not kid ourselves.
- Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reposted a piece from the Kansas Reflector critical of Meta’s ad policy around climate change, and moments later, Meta removed all links to both sites from Facebook and Threads. After an outcry, Meta reversed the decision and blamed a “security error,” but, come on.
- Landfills emit far more methane than previously believed, more bad news for the planet as methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
- Before voters wisely rejected a stadium tax proposal to replace the two perfectly fine sports facilities outside of Kansas City, the KC Studio had a sensible op ed on what a waste tearing down Kaufmann Stadium would be.
- Former SCOTUS justice Steven Breyer wants everyone to get along, like his former colleagues on the high court, even though some of those colleagues are busy destroying Americans’ basic civil rights, writes Elie Mystal of The Nation.
- The BBC reports on exploitation of workers in Brazil who harvest the common ingredient carnauba wax, bordering on slavery.
- Cleveland Plain-Dealer editor Chris Quinn explains why the paper treats Donald Trump differently from other politicians & candidates. Hint: It’s because he lies.
- The Atlantic’s David Graham describes the “Trump two-step:” say something outrageous, claim that’s not really what he said or meant, and then quietly embrace the original statement.
- The New Republic’s Greg Sargent details just how entrenched election denial, January 6th denialism, and other insane conspiracy theories are within the Republican party right now.
- Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian that Justice Sonja Sotomayor needs to retire from the Supreme Court so President Biden can appoint a replacement, avoiding the possibility that Trump would get to appoint a fourth justice and give the court a 7-2 majority that would likely last decades. I’m not sure if I agree, but he at least offers a solid argument.
- Fox News and several right-wing podcasters, including beanie-wearing Tim Pool, are now facing a lawsuit from a man they all falsely identified as a mass shooter. The man’s lawyer previously represented two Sandy Hook parents in their lawsuit against Alex Jones for his false claims that that mass shooting didn’t happen. Fuck ’em up, Socrates.
- The Tampa Bay Times published a rare editorial pointing out that public subsidies for sports stadiums don’t work out for taxpayers, as the Rays try once again to soak Floridians for a new facility.
- Here’s a great summary and index of economic research showing how consistently these sports stadium deals fail to live up to economic promises. If you’re writing about the topic, or know a journalist who is, this is invaluable, because the pro-stadium forces will always trot out fabricated numbers from consultants who give them what they want.
- The PEN America awards are in a bit of a shambles after a number of high-profile authors withdrew their works from consideration or declined prizes in protest of the organization’s perceived bias towards Israel. The authors include Lorrie Moore, who just won the National Book Critics Circle’s Fiction award for I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.
- A senior editor at NPR wrote a bad-faith, error-filled critique of the public radio outlet on Bari Weiss’s blog. NPR responded, defending its hiring practices and its philosophy. You can find many takedowns of Uri Berliner’s original piece, but one fact that got me was that he accused NPR of downplaying or ignoring the lab-leak theory behind COVID-19’s origins, even when the evidence in favor of a zoonotic spillover kept mounting.
- WFLA has the story of a young boy with autism who can no longer receive health services because Florida kicked him off Medicaid. We need more stories like this, showing everyday people getting badly hurt by state policies that cut funding for essential services like health care, education, and even school lunches for underprivileged people.
- A former youth minister at a Baptist church in Bixby, Oklahoma, has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor as well as possession and distribution of child pornography. No drag queens were involved.
- Chicago police killed Dexter Reed during a traffic stop where he fired first, injuring one officer, after which the cops fired 96 rounds in less than a minute. The Sun-Times reports that the five officers involved in the incident have been investigated a total of 41 times since 2019, and that the area where they stopped Reed has a disproportionate number of traffic stops. The cops have said they pulled Reed over because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
- The brightest cosmic explosion scientists have ever seen has now led to new questions about how some of the universe’s heaviest metals are formed. The supernova occurred about 2.4 billion years ago in a galaxy far, far away, producing a huge burst of gamma rays but none of the elements like gold or platinum that scientists expected to find.
- Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride is running to be our at-large Representative, vying to become the first trans person elected to Congress. She’s one of at least three Democrats hoping to win the primary, which is tantamount to winning the election in our very blue state. Full disclosure: I’ve met Sen. McBride and we often see each other at our local Brew Haha coffee shop.
- Is social media really driving a surge in mental illness among teenagers, as Jonathan Haidt claims in his new book? The evidence is mixed at best, according to this review in Nature.
- Eric Hovde, who is running for Senate in Wisconsin as a Republican, is now facing backlash over his comments from a previous campaign where he called for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, attacked single mothers, said alcohol should never have been legalized, questioned whether farmers work hard, and lots of other great stuff.