Stick to baseball, 8/8/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic, here are all of my trade deadline writeups, in chronological order:

• Curtis Mead to Boston for Connolly Early
• Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers for three prospects
• Luis Castillo for the White Sox
• Freddy Peralta to the Rays for three prospects
• Luis Garcia, Jr., to the Yankees for two prospects
• Kevin Gausman to the Cubs
• Jose Soriano to Toronto for Arjun Nimmala-plus
• Luis Arraez to Philadelphia for two prospect arms
• Taylor Ward to Seattle for relievers
• Liam Hicks to the Rays for quite a lot
• Adley Rutschman to Boston for four prospects
• The Dustin May (Milwaukee), Luke Weaver (Pittsburgh), and Robbie Ray (San Diego) deals
• Erik Miller to Boston for Marcelo Mayer
• The Cubs’ trades for Ryan Zeferjahn and Clay Holmes
• The Foster Griffin (Cleveland), Casey Mize (San Diego), Heliot Ramos (Yankees), and Lars Nootbaar (Arizona) trades

I went to Gen Con, the largest board game convention in North America, last week, and continued my tradition of writing it up with the ten best new games of the convention and a rundown of everything else I saw.

My next stop is my free email newsletter.

You can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

• Neko Case wrote about her experience of being sexually harassed by an unnamed musician who is pretty clearly the late Glen Hansard.

• Nine more women came forward to accuse Jared Leto of sexual misconduct.

• It’s hardly news any more, but here’s the Mother Jones exposé on the horrifying abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller (R), whom Mike Johnson and Donald Trump can’t be bothered to condemn.

• Israel committed a war crime by murdering a Lebanese journalist, according to three independent NGOs. The man leading Israel in its illegal actions, including its genocidal attack on Gaza, is more upset that NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for the U.S. to enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant.

• Women accounted for one hundred percent of the decline in the U.S. labor force in July. That’s 165,000 fewer women in the labor force just in the last month. On the year, twice as many women have left the labor force in the U.S. as men. And it’s entirely the doing of this Administration.

• ICE deported a Guatemalan man who was living and working in Overland, Missouri, last year, leaving his pregnant wife alone in the U.S. Earlier this year, she returned to Guatemala with their child to be with him. The couple were found dead last month, bound and shot, with their 14-month-old daughter crying next to them.

• Wisconsin Public Radio has a measured profile of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong (D), who’s been hit with the “socialist” tag along with some not-subtle misogynistic and racist propaganda. The piece delves into the Democratic establishment’s fear of progressive candidates and willingness to sabotage their own party to try to prevent progressives from winning.

• Four indie music publications were gutted by layoffs this week, including Brooklyn Vegan, which I’ve read on and off for longer than I can remember. The sites are owned by Live Nation’s Veeps, which was founded and is still partly owned by the poseur-punk band Good Charlotte, which has said nothing about the mass firings.

• On soi-disant Christian evangelists preaching on airplanes. Don’t do this, although if you’re here, I doubt the thought ever crossed your mind.

• Austin police shot and killed an unarmed Black 17-year-old named Anthoneil Williams, and the Police Chief claims it was “suicide by cop.” How convenient for them.

• Jamelle Bouie asks why we tolerate Elon Musk’s overtly racist commentary. The Times, which employs me and Bouie, was still advertising on Twitter, the last time I checked.

• Measles cases in the U.S. have now hit a 35-year high. Vaccinate your kids and ostracize anyone who won’t.

• I agree with this editorial by Aftermath founder Luke Plunkett that many consumers will avoid brands that use obvious AI slop in their ads, but I was looking for some evidence to back up the claims. FWIW, Jeep’s been running commercials with AI slop since at least the NFL playoffs.

• AI firms’ large language models keep going “rogue.” (I’d argue they do exactly what they are designed to do.) So who’s responsible when an LLM does something illegal? How could it be anyone other than the company that made them?

• Mathematics is unusual among STEM research fields in that the youngest practitioners often do the best work. Bucking that trend is 99-year-old Joan Birman, who joined two (younger) colleagues in publishing the solution to a decades-old problem called the Burau representation, referring to whether matrices corresponding to four-strand braids are ‘faithful.’

• Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., has reached its lowest recorded level ever.

• My friend Justin Bell wrote on BoardGameGeek about how the people are what make Gen Con special. I agree completely.

• I missed this when it came out in May, but Board Game Wire had a lovely piece about me and the shuttering of Paste/AV Club’s Games section. I’ve been surprised and gratified by the support I’ve gotten within the board gaming space for my writing, and it’s encouraged me to kick it up a notch over here and make this space a little more professional on all counts.