I wrote two pieces for the Athletic this week, breaking down the MacKenzie Gore trade and the Freddy Peralta trade. My top 100 prospects ranking runs on Monday.
At AV Club, I reviewed the board game Gingham, a family-level game of area control that gets very tense as the game approaches its end.
I sent out an issue of my free email newsletter last weekend, but the next one won’t go out until at least Monday, for obvious reasons.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: My colleague Paul Tenorio wrote about the kidnapping of soccer coach Adrian Heath, as he was lured by the promise of a lucrative job with a Saudi club. The club exists, but the job didn’t, and Heath was lucky to survive the ordeal.
- The New Yorker exposes Bari Weiss’s “hostile takeover” at CBS News, which has been a ratings and credibility disaster.
- In Harper’s, Jasper Craven writes about the impending sports betting cataclysm, with the added perspective from a habitual sports bettor – himself.
- ICE officials claim their agents can enter homes without a warrant, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. And this story just sort of drifted by as Trump and his toadies continue to flood the zone with so many outrages that we can’t keep up.
- Black pepper and olive oil contain chemicals that may help our bodies absorb nutrients in other foods. I use both of those ingredients constantly, so I will live forever.
- Researchers at the Kiel Institute found that American taxpayers paid 96% of the added costs of Trump’s tariffs, calling it an “own goal.”
- A new European social network called W is coming, maybe, although I’m not sure what this offers that other alternatives to the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter.
- The White House used AI to make a civil rights attorney appear to be crying when she was arrested when, in fact, she was quite stoic at the event. She was part of a group protesting at a church whose pastor is the acting director at a local ICE office in St. Paul.
- Cochise County (Arizona) Sheriff Mark Dannels, a Trump sycophant, has used his public office to promote a private drone company with a Trump crony on its board. The Phoenix New Times had previously reported on how Dannels may have gotten up to $250,000 in slush money from ICE.
- Cows can use tools, if we let them. I for one welcome our new bovine overlords!
- Allplay has a Kickstarter up for the Mountain Goats legacy game and the solo game Enchanted Ivy. I like Mountain Goats as a fun, quick-playing filler game.