Stick to baseball, 6/27/26.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have an updated Big Board and a reaction to the Futures Game rosters in the coming week, plus probably a scouting blog – I’ve been accumulating some notes but have been waiting for something big or wow or otherwise hook-worthy to lead the column. Getting Anthony Eyanson’s worst outing of the year – he was 90-93 and couldn’t find the plate – did not help matters.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday morning. You should sign up. Also, you should follow me on Instagram or TikTok, because I’m posting videos on both places now. Please don’t call me a ‘content creator.’ (Or an ‘influencer.’ I might die of shame.) I’m still on Bluesky first among all social media outlets.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The Colorado River system is headed for a crash, with likely water restrictions and reductions in hydropower output, according to this report from the Denver Post.

• A massive miscarriage of justice and a violation of the First Amendment took place in Texas, where else, as several anti-ICE activists were sentenced to decades in prison for distributing leftist zines. It deserves far, far more attention than it has received. These people were convicted of terrorism charges for spreading words.

• Speaking of the First Amendment, ICE agents found a woman who posted the name of the agent who killed Renee Good in Minnesota, Jonathan Ross, after he was identified in numerous news reports. The agents demanded that she take the post down. She has steadfastly refused.

• Charlie Warzel writes in The Atlantic (gift link) about the myth of SpaceX, a meme masquerading as a company.

• Some asshole called child protective services with a false claim against Pete Buttigieg. It’s swatting, but with a new twist. And in many states, CPS will investigate even anonymous, nonsense claims.

• Texas’ push towards Christian nationalism – and against the Constitution – continues as the state will now require public-school students to read the Bible, or at least parts of it. I wonder if they’ll read Judges 21 or Numbers 16 or Deuteronomy 20!

• Israeli troops murdered a Palestinian man who was on his way to the hospital for the birth of his son. So much for the “cease fire.”

• The Trump Administration is cutting 20-30% of NSF’s funding for basic science research to redirect it to techbro “X-labs.”

• Kalshi gave Donald Trump, Jr., equity worth about $300K, and now the government is actively fighting states that are trying to block the gambling sites (because gambling is illegal).

• More Perfect Union has a video report on Yotta, the not-bank that tricked thousands of Americans into depositing their savings by falsely claiming they were FDIC-insured – which the customers discovered when Yotta suddenly stopped allowing withdrawals in 2024.

• Cambodia’s crackdown on phone-scam compounds, where trafficked people were held captive and forced to mass-text or call potential victims, has put those people on the streets of Phnom Penh with no place to go and no easy way back to their home countries.

• Parker Molloy points out how Giants reporters held Buster Posey accountable in a way White House reporters refuse to do with Trump.

• The headline says it all: “I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately.”

• I loved this post on Bill Watterson’s refusal to compromise his integrity in any way, giving up millions of dollars in potential earnings by declining to license Calvin & Hobbes for anything, and then closing up shop while he was still at his creative peak.

• A professor at Indiana University was dismissed for teaching students that “Make America Great Again” is a slogan for white supremacy, which, well, it is. It’s America First for the modern age.

• Researchers at Texas A&M published a paper that may identify ways in which coffee helps slow the aging process in our bodies.

• Rep. Jamila Prayapal (D-WA) warns Democrats not to throw trans people under the bus, on moral and strategic grounds. If you give up on the rights of one oppressed minority, the other side will go after another minority, and another, and another, because they have learned you won’t fight for them.

• An Alberta court upheld a permanent ban against ex-doctor William Makis practicing anything like medicine there, as he’s now hawking ivermectin as a cancer cure (it’s not, at all, this is just fraud).

• This New York Times piece on bank tellers stepping in to stop people, often the elderly, from falling for phishing scams is both heartening and depressing. Most people want to do good. We are also so far away from being able to manage and regulate the technologies that we use every day.

• On the Gamefound page for Galileo’s Truth, ThunderGryph Games announced they’re being acquired by Awaken Realms. I’m waiting to see how this pans out; Awaken Realms was caught using AI art in some reissues but they seem to have found the true path of using human artists for their upcoming reprint of Concordia.

• I nearly backed this Kickstarter for Sprout, an upcoming game about houseplants – a core interest of my wife – but couldn’t get enough of a sense of what the game is like, and at $39 it seemed a lot to commit for a game I didn’t understand. Which is a long way of saying it might be awesome, but I want to wait and see.