For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote about three prospects who’ve really seen their stock rise this year and three who’ve seen theirs fall as a follow-up to last week’s top 50 ranking. I also wrote a news story (which I think is free to read) on Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter using a homophobic slur during a game, and his weak apology after he got caught on camera. And I held a Klawchat here on Thursday.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Zenith, an outstanding new two-player game where you fight your opponent for control of five planets, playing cards from your hand to three different areas to try to pull planets your way. You win by getting the same planet to your end of the table three times, or four different planets to your side, or five planets in any combination at all.
I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter on Friday, my third in four weeks, which for me constitutes some sort of hot streak.
I appeared on Marty Caswell’s Youtube channel to talk about the Padres’ farm system, potential trades if they stay in the race, and what to do with Xander Bogaerts; and on 92.3 the Fan in Cleveland to talk about Travis Bazzana and Cleveland’s struggling offense.
And now, the links:
- Longreads first: This undated story on the main suspect in the Tylenol poisonings and how he slipped through multiple murder investigations is the best thing I read all week. At least part of the basis of a new Netflix documentary series, this story is at least two years old, as James Lewis, the suspect in that case and at least one other murder, died in July 2023.
- Federal and Texas state law enforcement officers arrested 47 people at a house party, claiming they were members of a gang called Tren de Aragua. Months later, they’ve found and offered no evidence of any gang connections, according to a Texas Tribune investigation.
- The AP reports on how Trump’s slashing of public health budgets is destroying our national infrastructure of preventative health services, which will cost us billions more in lost lives and years while further eroding trust in those same authorities.
- Oklahoma Republicans passed a law allowing parents to opt their children out of any class subjects they believe to be “harmful.” Rational-minded parents there are now using the law to withdraw their kids from classes pushing election conspiracy theories and Christian theology. If you live in Oklahoma, the form you can use is here.
- WIRED has the story of a study on the keto diet and arterial plaque that keto proponents claim validates their position – but one of the study’s authors left the project and has called for its retraction, due to conflicts of interest and shoddy work. There’s an underlying theme here on how peer review can break down and how bad actors are increasingly trying to exploit the academic-research system.
- “Israeli gunfire” targeted Gazan civilians outside an aid distribution center, according to the Red Cross. The Guardian had a later update that raised the death toll to over 30. Israel first denied anything happened, then denied firing at civilians, then later admitted to firing “warning shots.”
- The Trump Administration has ended an NIH program that was working towards a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS – a program that also had potential in many other areas, including possible therapies for autoimmune disorders.
- NBC News interviewed several families who are leaving the U.S. because of the increasingly anti-transgender climate. I’ve assumed we’ll see, or even already are seeing, migration out of red states for LGBTQ+ families because of hate laws passed there, but adding this to the brain drain from the Administration’s war on academia is going to further erode our economic position for decades to come.
- Indeed, even in red states where voters have passed progressive ballot initiatives on subjects like abortion and cannabis, Republican lawmakers are trying to subvert the will of the voters, usually in the name of religion.
- MIT banned one of its scheduled student speakers from graduation because she gave a pro-Palestinian speech the day before.
- The GENIUS Act looks like it will prioritize crypto holders over depositors if a bank becomes insolvent.
- The New York Times reports on WelcomeFest, a gathering of so-called “centrist” Democrats who are mad that we’re all yelling at them online. The story notes on politicians taking shots at Indivisible, an important voter mobilization group with hard-left ideas like “don’t cut aid to the poor.” These people are only centrist if you ignore how much the Overton window has lurched to the right in the last decade.
- Talking Heads enlisted director Mike Mills (the C’mon C’mon guy, not the REM bassist) to film a music video for “Psycho Killer,” starring Saoirse Ronan. It’s excellent, and Ronan is both hilarious and unsettlingly weird in it.
- The Spanish publisher Salt & Pepper Games has a new crowdfunding campaign up for Battle of the Divas, a two-player game that casts the players as Maria Callas and Renata Tibaldi, fighting to be the greatest singer of their era.