I posted my first mock draft of 2025 this week for subscribers to the Athletic, and took questions from readers about that and other prospect matters on Friday.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Finspan, the new fish-themed spinoff to Wingspan that features simpler rules and a faster teach.
I’m about to send out the first new issue of my free email newsletter since February, before my travel schedule went nuts; I’ve been to fourteen states to see players, just via air, plus two more around here.
A short list this week, for no particular reason, but here are the links…
- Longreads first: Automakers are going back to physical buttons and moving away from touchscreens, like the massive billboard-sized screens in Teslas, as consumers prefer the physical buttons and touchscreens are associated with much-reduced reaction times. I rented a car with physical buttons and no touch screen recently, and it took me all of about 30 seconds to figure it out.
- Current Affairs has a detailed takedown of the Douglas Murray, who wrote a book on the Israel-Palestine conflict and self-described expert, but whose writing appears to omit or misrepresent facts that don’t support his (pro-Israel) conclusions. I haven’t read Murray’s book, though, and would be curious to hear from any of you who have.
- At Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré spoke with an AI “sloperator” who floods Pinterest with fake recipe links and home décor posts, and who says he’s specifically targeting women over 50 with his content.
- The Pulitzer Prize board chose to give the Fiction award to Percival Everett’s James, overriding the selection committee, which recommended three other titles. I just started one of the three, Mice 1961, because I want to see if I agree with the choice. I thought James was incredible.
- Trump threatened to withhold $3 million in USDA funding from Maine schools because their Governor, Janet Mills, refused to comply with his extra-legal demand that they ban trans girls from playing girls’ sports. The USDA caved. If you don’t comply in advance, they back down. There’s still an ongoing court case over trans athletes in Maine, but the funding is restored.
- Trump’s entire process for finding people to fill out executive branch jobs seems to be picking the worst purveyors of misinformation on Twitter: He made Vinay Prasad, a massive COVID and vaccine denier, in charge of the FDA’s vaccine regulation arm; and now he’s nominated a grifting “wellness influencer” without a medical license to be his Surgeon General.
- The Trump family cryptocurrency offering – I’d call it a scam, but I think all crypto is a scam – has enriched them by nearly $3 billion.
- ICE agents arrested Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka at their “immigration detention center” in his city, a facility that he says is not properly permitted and should not have been allowed to open.
- New Yorkers are about to make a huge mistake if they elect Andrew Cuomo, he of the numerous sexual harassment cases and $60 million use of taxpayer funds, to be their next mayor, writes Alex Shephard in the New Republic. The man is walking ethical disaster.
- Côte d’Ivoire had been one of the democratic success stories of Africa in the last decade-plus, but the recent court ruling that the leading candidate to oppose three-term incumbent President Alassane Ouattara is ineligible because of a technicality. The “little-used post-independence law” says that Tidjane Thiam, who was born in Côte d’Ivoire, should have lost his Ivorian citizenship automatically when he accepted French nationality, something he already had had through his father.
- Mainstream media outlets seem loath to credit independent journalists for scoops and stories, as happened last week when multiple big-name sites failed to even name Marisa Kabas when she was the first to report on Trump’s deal with Rwanda to deport an Iraqi refugee to the central African nation.
- A new preprint argues that it is nearly impossible that we live in a simulation because the energy required to ‘run’ the universe as a simulation is beyond the energy we see anywhere in the universe.
- The Guardian has a wonderful interview with my favorite Doctor, David Tennant.
- Rock Manor Games, whose owner, Mike Gnade, is a friend and frequent gaming opponent, has a new Kickstarter up for a reprint of Seas of Havoc, their top-rated game on BGG.