My first Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects for this year’s draft, is now up for subscribers to The Athletic; I held a Q&A on Thursday to take questions about it and other prospects. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook from my recent looks at Andrew Painter, George Lombard, Jr., Jhostynxon “The Password” Garcia, Mikey Romero, and others.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Diatoms, which has some incredible art and high-quality components, and almost plays too quickly – I wanted a few more rounds to keep building patterns.
I’ve now sent out two issues of my free email newsletter in the last two weeks, which I think counts as a streak.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The best thing I’ve read this month is this San Francisco Chronicle story by their food critic, MacKenzie Chung Fegan, about her experience eating at The French Laundry and how chef-owner Thomas Keller treated her. It is nuanced, thoughtful, and ultimately allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
- The Columbia Journalism Review has an extensive investigative report on the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against journalist Wesley Lowery.
- The Guardian has an excerpt from the new book that their reporter Dom Phillips was writing when he was murdered, along with indigenous Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira. The two were investigating the illicit destruction of the Amazonian rain forest and the threat to indigenous peoples in the region. The book, How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist’s Deadly Quest for Answers, will come out on May 27th.
- The New Republic has the full story of the state-sponsored executions of four American nuns in El Salvador in 1980. The Reagan Administration, by the way, kept gaslighting the public by claiming the nuns were secretly communist sympathizers or activists. Today they’d just claim the nuns were MS-13.
- AI’s energy consumption is completely out of control, surpassing cryptocurrency mining and massively increasing carbon emissions from big tech firms.
- Trump tried to stop Harvard from taking in any students from outside the U.S., and Harvard sued and immediately got a temporary injunction. Do not comply in advance.
- A man shot and killed two Israeli diplomatic staff near the Jewish Museum in DC in an apparent act of terrorism. He later shouted “Free Palestine” after his arrest. Reuters has more on the victims and the suspect.
- The Administration is trying to intimidate progressives in Congress with the charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver. Progressives need to stand up and fight for her, writes Elie Mystal in The Nation.
- The vaccine denialists running the FDA are saying they won’t approve COVID boosters for healthy people under 65, despite all of the evidence showing those are effective and no evidence showing they’re not safe.
- Nathan Fielder’s show The Rehearsal stumbled on a technique used in Europe to help facilitate communication between pilots on commercial flights and prevent accidents … but it’s not used in the U.S.
- Matthew Cherry won an Academy Award for his short film Hair Love, which then turned into a book and an animated series on HBO Max. He’s now working on a new short film, an animated musical project called Time Signature, and has a Kickstarter up for it.
- An unusual genetic mutation explains the coloring of orange cats, but it doesn’t explain why they are completely bonkers.
- My editor at Paste, Garrett Martin, reviewed a new video game called Despelote that is about sports but not specifically a sports video game. It sounds fascinating.
- Two new boardgame Kickstarters this week: Tangerine Games has one for Sauros, a dinosaur-themed trick-taking and tile-laying game.
- Board & Dice, which specializes in heavy Eurogames, has one for a new edition of Trismegistus, which is very highly rated on BGG but also has a game weight rating of 4.18/5.
I have had many cats in my life and it seems all of them are at least somewhat bonkers, regardless of coloring. (And adorable and endlessly entertaining.) Thanks for the interesting read; I’ve always found the genetics around cat coloring fascinating.
He killed them because he thought they were Jews. He had no idea they were embassy employees. He went to a Jewish venue and a Jewish event for the purpose of killing Jews. And he did it, expressly, because killing Jews is deemed an acceptable form of “resistance.” Referring to them as embassy employees, while technically true, white washes the virulent antisemitism that has taken hold on the far left and the pro-Palestinian movement.
killing Jews is deemed an acceptable form of “resistance.”
Bullshit. Citation needed, desperately.
Almost no one thinks killing Jews is an appropriate response to what’s happening in Palestine. You can easily be pro-Palestine and think what happened in DC was awful. It’s not complicated. Just like I can be appalled by what happened on October 7 and still think the Israeli response has been awful to the point where I think Bibi deserves to be tried at the Hague. There’s a lot of gray area here.
“He went to a Jewish venue and a Jewish event for the purpose of killing Jews.”
Obviously this just happened and we know nothing for sure, but early evidence indicates he specifically targeted Christian Zionists. And even if things weren’t pointing in this direction in this specific instance, the default assumption of actions taken against those perpetuating a genocide as inherently “antisemitism” just doesn’t hold water anymore, man. People see what’s going on.
For example, you are making a far more inflammatory claim than literally the Israeli ambassador, the person whose de facto job it is to make inflammatory claims about those who oppose Israel: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjyxay1zxg
Oh come on. You really don’t think there’s been a terrifying rise of antisemitism on the left that justifies violence against Jews as a form of protest against Israel? The hundreds of documented examples of harassment and intimidation on college campuses? Have you seen the security Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers have to pay for? Are you aware of the Jewish school in Toronto that has been shot up THREE times in the past year? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/bais-chaya-mushka-gunshots-toronto-1.7416067
You’re acting surprised that all this led to bloodshed? Ilhan Omar couldn’t even bring herself to answer a reporters question about it.
But sure, I’ll indulge this fantasy that the far left doesn’t have a Jewish problem. Here you go. This is just on X, and took me all of five minutes. The willful blindness that otherwise smart people have towards this issue is quite something.
https://x.com/BXAntiWar/status/1925590844343472262
https://x.com/TheSethDawg2/status/1926465506300555511
https://x.com/rezayazdan_/status/1926428880950157717
https://x.com/BlackIntifada/status/1926389392232325481
https://x.com/Marxist777/status/1925912064310067618
https://x.com/Shensawee/status/1925451852226642259
https://x.com/DelhiTF/status/1925610891417886874
A bunch of Twitter posts from anonymous trolls is not evidence that “killing Jews is deemed an acceptable form of ‘resistance.'” There are lunatics in every movement.
You can’t provide evidence, like, say, a poll showing 47% of Israelis supported the IDF killing all Gazans in cities they captured.
“The hundreds of documented examples of harassment and intimidation on college campuses?”
Sorry but this argument doesn’t work anymore. Trump is literally trying to deport demonstrably peaceful protestors. You got your way and yet you’re still coming on here to complain? I beg you to please do anything else with your life than post warmed-over Hasbara for an unwilling audience.
If you’re gonna use a few random twitter accounts as your proof, then you have to concede that the right has a major fascist problem given the current actions of the administration. Hell what the administration is trying to pull on Harvard is a really bad precedent. If you’re okay with the President being able to target a private institution, just imagine how’d you feel if President AOC could do the same to conservative institutions.
Who said anything about getting my way? You don’t know anything about my personal politics. Who said anything about Trump or even the IDF? And is the point of the deflection to say their behavior justifies killing or harassing Jews? Otherwise, I don’t see the relevance.
Look, it’s Keith’s website he can post whatever he wants and ask whatever he wants. There’s no requirement to stay on topic. I don’t have to come if I don’t like it. I just wish people actually used some common sense. He went to a Jewish professionals event at a Jewish museum, murdered two people indiscriminately and shouted a bunch of pro-Palestinian slogans. This didn’t come out of left field. It’s not that different than the Tree of Life shooter who was inspired by Trump 1’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. One would hope there would be a little introspection instead of the knee jerk “he was crazy and anyway Israel is bad” reactions.
Sorry but you don’t get to complain about the spectre of “intimidation on college campuses,” a thing we all understand is blown well out of proportion by Israeli supporters, and then wash your hands of the bipartisan political project pushing this line. The detainment of Mahmoud Khalil and others is a direct result of this…either own that or shut up about it.
One would hope there would be a little introspection instead of the knee jerk “he was crazy and anyway Israel is bad” reactions.
Who said that? I don’t see that anywhere in the post.
@brian in nova—I totally agree. I think deporting people for op eds or protesting is illegal and dumb. I think the pulling of the funding is terrible. To be clear, I think Trump is a very bad guy. And there is absolutely a virulent strain of antisemitism on the right. The next GOP president could be Tucker Carlson for godsake. The guy dabbles in Holocaust denial. But it has literally nothing to do with the shooter in DC
Keith—I was referring to your comments that (1) it’s just a few fringe nuts on social media that celebrate this, when that’s not the case at all (if you don’t believe me that it’s widespread, such is life. I’m seeing it everywhere and it’s not new) and (2) the IDF does bad stuff too. My point is that your instinct is to downplay the motivation of this person and the movement that inspired him. It’s terrifying in this country to be a Jew right now, and I don’t need other people to tell me I’m wrong.
it’s just a few fringe nuts on social media that celebrate this,
I didn’t say that. You’re just pushing one strawman after another.
I don’t need other people to tell me I’m wrong
You mean you don’t want other people to tell you you’re wrong. You are wrong, by the way.
1) “The IDF does bad stuff too” is such a perverse rhetorical minimization of literal genocide that it’s hard to read you in good faith. You understand this, right?
2) The people being rounded up and sent to camps in America right now are Venezuelans, Palestinians, and other dissenters. In this light, it’s hard to read your “its terrifying in this country” as anything other than self-aggrandizing paranoia.
3) And even if we make the generous assumption that this isn’t paranoia, perhaps the first people you should be taking issue with are the millenarian death cult brandishing the Magen David as it exterminates a people.
Now you’re just being pedantic. You called them “anonymous trolls” and “lunatics.” I think my point still stands. As for what counts as antisemitism and whether you have any right to define it, query whether you’d ever say something that offensive to someone of any other ethnicity, race or religion.
Speaking of trolls, Mike—yeah, I’m not engaging with that.
I think this conversation has run its course
You come here with random tweets and the same bs we’ve heard a million times and you call me a troll for responding to the things you are saying. Convincing!