Stick to baseball, 1/18/25.

One new piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my reaction to Roki Sasaki’s announcement that he’s going to sign with the Dodgers. I also contributed to the Athletic’s Hall of Fame ballot roundup, listing my selections with a brief explanation.

I do have another board game review going up at Paste next week, but most other writing has been on hold as I work on the top 100 prospects ranking, which is due to go live on January 27^th. I actually still haven’t settled on who’s #1 – I see six or seven worthwhile candidates, but nobody is a clear leader. I do hope to get a newsletter out in the next few days as I feel more comfortable about my progress on the top 100.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Vulture ran an extensive exposé detailing the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman, with specifics from several women who came forward last year to accuse him.
• Miss Hall’s School, an all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts, protected a teacher who was grooming and raping students for over 25 years, according to multiple victims who spoke to Vanity Fair. The school ignored complaints from students, even (allegedly) expelling two who pointed out what was happening, until one of the victims went public last spring.
• This New York Times story about a woman who is “in love” with a ChatGPT character she created is disturbing and also extremely well-crafted.
• RFK Jr. admitted that he lied about how much money he’s made from his anti-vaccine grift. Spreading health misinformation is extremely profitable, as long as you don’t care about who your words harm.
• One of the best headlines of the month comes from Jezebel, in a piece about Mark Zuckerberg: “It Must Suck to Be Such a Whiny Little Bitch.” That scene from last year’s Thelma where she keeps mispronouncing his name comes to mind every day now.
• The Washington Post spiked its editorial page’s endorsement of Kamala Harris by claiming they weren’t in the endorsement business or some such nonsense. Now they’ve endorsed 19 Trump nominees.
• Neko Case spoke to the Times about her upcoming memoir.
• AI is also screwing up the world of academic publishing, as people are using it to push garbage commentaries at journals to try to juice their personal impact factors.
• Can the TikTok ban end up helping the seriously fucked-up social media landscape?
• There are a couple of would-be Instagram competitors out now, Flashes (based on BlueSky’s protocols) and PixelFed, at least in part as a response to Facebook’s decision to stop most content moderation and allow users to say pretty much anything they want about LGBTQ folks.
• Garrett Martin, my editor at Paste, wrote about playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in explorer or easy mode. I still haven’t tried it because I spent so much time playing the original series all the way through, several times, including all sorts of mods. I’m sure I’d love it, though.