One new post at the Athletic this week, naming Boston’s Kristian Campbell as the Minor League Player of the Year for 2024, along with a bunch of honorable mentions and other honorees as usual. And, as usual, people got very mad that I didn’t mention some prospect from their favorite team. I’ve got a piece coming up Monday on the future of the White Sox given what’s in their farm system and what they’ve shown they can and can’t develop.
You can and should sign up for my free email newsletter, because think of all the worthless crap that’s in your inbox. I promise you my emails are better than the latest email blast from Lands’ End, and they’re much less frequent.
If you missed me on Codenames Live! this week, you can watch the replay here on Twitch. My teammate was the great Daryl Andrews, designer of Sagrada and the brand-new game Mistwind.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor reported on how Chief Justice Roberts engineered several major court decisions to favor disgraced ex-President Donald Trump.
- ProPublica reported on the deaths of two women in Georgia due to the state’s draconian ban on abortion, in that story and this one as well.
- A new study in Nature found that a combination of willful ignorance and cognitive distortions drives vaccine refusal and hesitancy. It doesn’t help when private companies allow misinformation to run rampant on their platforms, though. Or when the anti-science forces running Florida lead to a surge in vaccine refusals from parents, leaving pediatricians concerned and exhausted as they try to combat the nonsense.
- Northwestern has suspended Professor of Journalism Steven Thrasher due to his participation in the anti-Gaza War encampments in the spring and pro-Palestine statements he has made elsewhere. Over 1900 journalists, academics, and health professionals signed a letter to the school, saying he has been targeted for his views and what should be protected speech. I’m presenting the story here but acknowledge it may be more complicated than it first seems, as this only presents Thrasher’s side and that of his supporters.
- The Q-Collar claims it can protect athletes’ brains from concussions and that research “proves” its efficacy. The data may not be real. I don’t see any way this thing could possibly work as claimed.
- Some evangelical voters are standing up for their values by voting for Kamala Harris, turning their back on the vitriol of Trump’s rhetoric and his veiled calls for violence.
- A group of election officials and 2020 election deniers in Georgia are already strategizing on how to rig the state for Trump and to sow doubt about the result if Harris wins.
- Why are major newspapers sanewashing the incoherent word salads served up by Trump? Michael Tomasky gives some specific examples of this in the New Republic.
- Former Trump White House staffer and now Project 2025 co-author John McEntee posts inane rhetorical questions on his TikTok account, but when he posted one claiming no women had been denied critical medical care due to abortion bans, he got hundreds of responses from women who had indeed faced such circumstances. NBC News even had one of those women on air to discuss her traumatic experience. McEntee lost his job in the Trump Administration because of his gambling habit.
- Try to hide your surprise, but Justice Samuel Alito has been hanging out with right-wing billionaire and anti-abortion Leonard Leo, who’s spending a fortune to try to tip the election to Trump and the Republicans.
- A sheriff in Portage County, Ohio, ran his mouth on social media, asking residents to write down the addresses of people with Harris-Walz signs in their yards so someone could send migrants to live with them. Now his officers won’t be providing security at any election sites in November.
- Also in the New Republic, Greg Sargent excoriates Jay Divans – excuse me, I’m being told it is actually spelled J.D. Vance – for his unrepentant lies and xenophobia about Haitians living and working in Springield, Ohio.
- Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) issued an executive order banning conversion therapy for minors, a harmful pseudoscientific practice that pretends it can turn gay people straight.
- Sorry, more Ohio stuff, and more from ProPublica: The Buckeye State is now using public taxpayer dollars to build religious schools. I hope they get sued into oblivion. Or into Michigan. Whatever they would hate more.
- Climate change is impacting coffee farmers’ yields, and after a drought hit Vietnam – a major producer of lower-quality Robusta beans – some coffee farmers there switched to the malodorous fruit durian, and the loss of product has driven Robusta and Arabica prices to near-highs on the global market.
- Climate change is acting as a “chaos multiplier” in the fragile African nation of Somalia, which has been wrecked by 30 years of civil war, has one or two breakaway republics in its north (depending on how you define it), and has to deal with terrorist attacks from al-Shabab.
- Former U.S. Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) wrote in Forbes about the utility of a “tipping fee” on emissions that contribute to climate change – not that different than the so-called carbon tax in effect, just a little bit in implementation and nomenclature. You pay for what you use, so to speak. Inglis was also in the news this week for announcing he’s voting for Harris for President.
- Prof. Deborah Kelly at Penn State has had two papers retracted and a third may be on the way, but she’s lawyered up and is fighting it even though other researchers have found fabricated data or images in 21 of her publications.
- Two Alameda, California, residents are suing to stop the relocation of a local Food Bank to … an empty parking lot. One litigant claims the parking lot is “historic;” the other appears to be motivated by NIMBY.
- Paste’s Jim Vorel wrote a defense of the Aviation, a drink that had a brief renaissance about 15 years ago but seems to have lost some of its luster. I’m a fan – it is the only drink I’ve ever seen that uses crème de violette, but those floral notes are a great complement to the juniper flavors of a quality gin. And it’s a good drink to order out in the world because you’re never going to buy crème de violette to make it at home.
- Wirecutter’s Hannah Rimm wrote an ode to the wide and enduring popularity of Ticket to Ride.
- Studio Ghibli released a print-and-play board game to help advertise its quirky theme park in Japan.
- A Kickstarter for Railroad Tiles, a new game inspired by the roll & write series Railroad Ink, is already over $250,000 in funding. I actually don’t like Railroad Ink, but this looks more up my alley.