Stick to baseball, 10/11/24.

Nothing from me this week at the Athletic, although I should have at least two pieces going up in the next seven days.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the board game Little Alchemists, a streamlined version of the heavy game Alchemists that also works as a light legacy game, building you up over seven modules to a full midweight deduction game that you could play with the family.

I’ve been much more regular with my free email newsletter since taking some PTO in August, which I don’t think is a coincidence as it gave me some mental downtime after the crush of the draft and the trade deadline.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The Guardian has the unbelievable story of how a UK’s Serious Fraud Office investigation into a global mining company called ENRC might lead to British taxpayers paying millions to Russian oligarchs.
• The New York Times has finally turned the same scrutiny it gave President Biden on current candidate Trump: Trump’s rambling, incoherent, forgetful speeches may be a sign of age-related cognitive decline.
• Why are so many evangelical Christians obsessed with beating their kids? You can call it “corporal punishment,” but that is child abuse.
• America Last? In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, then-President Trump sent scarce COVID tests to Vladimir Putin – and the two still appear to talk regularly even with Trump nearly four years out of office. How any so-called “patriot” can support this man is beyond me.
• Meanwhile, the head of MI5 says that Russia’s intelligence agency is trying to create sustained mayhem on Britain’s streets through arson, sabotage, and more.
• At least some of the Sri Lankan migrants who have been held in deplorable conditions for years on Diego Garcia will be allowed to resettle in Romania and potentially then in the UK.
• I’ve bought and read many sci-fi and fantasy novels under the Del Rey imprint, but until this week I didn’t know it was founded by Judy-Lynn Del Rey, a woman with dwarfism who became one of the most influential publishers or editors in the genre’s history.
• The online misinformation machine is just getting worse and worse, with threats now against FEMA workers and meteorologists from people who fall for fake info and images online.
• A Minneapolis elementary school student has measles. Vaccine mandates are under attack everywhere, but the outcome is going to be dead and disabled children.
• Israel attacked a shelter for displaced families in Gaza, killing at least 28. They claimed, as usual, that there were Hamas fighters there.
• UN investigators have accused Israel of deliberately targeting medical personnel and facilities in Gaza.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has threatened to prosecute stations for running ads supporting a pro-reproductive rights ballot question, earning a rebuke from the FCC. I thought this was the party of “free speech.”
• Another self-proclaimed “free speech” absolutist, Elon Musk has censored any mention on Twitter of the RNC’s dossier on JD Vance, and even banned independent journalist Ken Klippenstein for publishing it. Musk has gone full white nationalist in his own tweets and the linked story says he may be pumping up to half a billion dollars into the Trump campaign.
• Delaware is about to elect Sarah McBride as its at-large Representative, making her the first openly trans member of Congress. She’ll have to serve alongside people who question her right to live as a trans person, or to have basic human rights others take for granted. I’ve met State Senator McBride twice and have read her book, Tomorrow Will Be Different, which also has the story of how she became a widow at 2014 when her husband, Andrew Cray, died of cancer.
• One of my tweets appeared in this BuzzFeed roundup of jokes and criticism of Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)’s comments on tampons and hurricane relief. The UN has ruled that access to sanitary products is a fundamental human right.
• A conservative think tank has said that Trump’s economic proposals would crash the U.S. economy – and Michael Hiltzik says they’re being kind.
• Trump invoked Nazi beliefs on eugenics when he talked about immigrants having bad genes in an especially unhinged talk on conservative radio this week. That Times article doesn’t get at the madness; this LA Times op ed calls him out more forcefully.
• Board game news: The Gamefound campaign for StarDriven: Gateway is fully funded and live for another two weeks; I know the publisher very well, but I also backed this game myself.
• The Kickstarter for Snow Planner appears to be a second printing along with an expansion of a midweight game that came out earlier this year from Japanese publisher 14games.
• I know nothing of this publisher, but the theme of Cerro Gordo Silver Mine, now up on Kickstarter, looks interesting and novel.