Stick to baseball, 4/28/24.

Nothing this week from me at the Athletic, but I need to write up a couple of minor-league games I’ve been to so there will be something in the next few days.

I reviewed the board game Ancient Knowledge over at Paste; it’s pretty clever, but I found the title and theme didn’t connect to the game play at all.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET on Diamond Dreams and on their new collectibles show at 2:30 for one segment, all to talk about prospects. You can watch via the app or if you subscribe to Roku, Youtube, or some other sites; I have figured out that the shows re-air all week, but you can’t just watch an archived version.

I also sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday, talking about … death. Wait, that’s only the cat.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: ProPublica explores how a lack of funding and organization at a VA clinic in Chico, California, led to two preventable shootings, including one where a veteran shot and killed her own mother. If you want to support our troops, instead of just standing and clapping at a ballgame, vote for candidates who’ll fully fund the VA and its indispensable resources for our veterans.

• Climate change is driving us towards a “coffee apocalypse” as the growing regions for the plant shrink and the plant itself tries to migrate to higher altitudes.

• A tech bro wants to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco, in his own words. Balaji Srinivasan has worked at Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and the genetic testing firm Counsyl (which he co-founded). He sounds insane.

• A prosecutor in Texas has asked the courts to clear the conviction of a woman he helped put on death row. Melissa Lucio’s two-year-old daughter died after falling down a flight of stairs, but she was convicted of capital murder and spent 16 years behind bars.

• The LA Times’s Michael Hiltzik excoriates the cash grab in Nevada, where state legislators are trying to hand hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to the Oakland A’s’ billionaire owner in a climate of increasing voter resistance.

• Another relief agency has accused Israel of targeting its vehicles: the International Development and Relief Foundation says that the IDF deliberately bombed its trucks delivering water to Gazans.

• Columbia barred a student protester who said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” from its campus. Khymani James was active in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. This seems like a pretty simple case of someone crossing the line and the university responding appropriately – in contrast to the preponderance of stories about protests on campuses across the country.

• A Jewish student at Columbia wrote on Mehdi Hasan’s new site Zeteo that the news coverage of antisemitism on campuses is inaccurate and distracts from actual threats, like outside groups that dox Jewish students.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch wrote in praise of the student journalists covering the protests and the university responses at Columbia and beyond.
• Will the “cancel culture” pundits say anything about USC’s decision to cancel its Muslim-American valedictorian’s commencement speech? Don’t hold your breath, writes Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian.

• Transphobes have latched on to the dubious “Cass Report” as further evidence of … I don’t even know, it’s all just bigotry and trans panic, but the interesting bit here is that Dr. Hilary Cass herself is already distancing herself from the report’s conclusions, saying HRT and puberty blockers should be made available to trans teens. The same newsletter reports on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying that he wants to “end” trans and gender non-conforming teachers in the state.

• Tennessee Republicans passed a law arming teachers over loud opposition from parents and students. How long until the first “friendly fire” death in a Tennessee school?

• However, the state GOP’s attempt to ram through a school voucher bill and strip funding from the state’s already poor public schools failed.

• The risk of cardiomyopathy to young men from mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 actually decreases after the third dose, although the risk is always higher from even a single infection with the virus.

• Jay Bhattacharya has been a major purveyor of disinformation around COVID, from masks to vaccines to other public-health efforts, and he’s built a huge following. Now he’s about to get a big cash windfall from a large right-wing foundation. The grift is profitable.

• A new firm that includes disinformation reporter Ben Collins as as CEO bought the Onion from the turkey vultures at G/O Media.

• Iowa universities are closing their DEI programs after Republicans there passed a bill banning such endeavors.

• Measles cases are rising in the U.S. and it’s a big, underreported problem.

• The PEN literary awards’ annual ceremony has been cancelled after a large number of authors requested that their works be removed from consideration.

• 2023 ended with a surge in book bans, according to PEN America, but the children’s publishing world has responded by flooding the market with new titles representing diverse perspectives.

• The Atlantic has an appreciation of John Sterling (tied, a bit tenuously, to AI). My confession: Even when I was an ardent Yankees fan, I didn’t care for Sterling’s style, which always seemed to put himself front and center over the game he was calling.

• The Guardian interviewed Lauren Mayberry on going solo and the misogyny she experienced online.

• Also in the Guardian, a profile of two professors teaching the Gullah language, one of the only creole tongues based on English, including Harvard’s Sunn m’Cheaux (who is a great follow on Threads). Gullah is still spoken on some of the islands off the coast of South Carolina, and you may be familiar with it if you’ve read Pat Conroy’s book The Water is Wide.

• There’s finally been some movement to pass legislation banning deepfake nudes, with over 20 states doing so or at least considering bills to do so, and the impetus is teenage girls who often find themselves the targets.

• A former model decided to listen to some online wellness influencers rather than her doctors, choosing an all-juice diet to try to treat her stage 3 cancer. She nearly died before doctors convinced her to go the medicine route – but only after she kept refusing for several days while in intensive care.

• Time flowed five times slower right after the Big Bang. Imagine all the extra board games you could have played!

• Some light reading: Here’s the complete genome for SARS-CoV-2.