Stick to baseball, 9/12/26.

One post this week on The Athletic, a scouting notebook on Gage Wood, Zyhir Hope, and a couple of other Phillies & Tigers prospects. I feel like the minor-league schedule has been personally screwing me over the last month or so; I’ve been home and around to go to games, but the matchups have been lousy.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

• ProPublica examined Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz’s role in and after a deadly highway crash in the Dominican Republic where he was blamed at first for driving while intoxicated, but prosecutors declined to pursue charges after the victims’ families were paid by Cruz’s camp.

• The New Yorker looks at a custody battle between a vaccine-denialist mom and a not-exactly pro-science dad in West Virginia that became even more serious when all three kids got sick.

• The woman profiting from those transphobic XX-XY shirts is an opportunistic grifter whose own son thinks she’s just after the notoriety. Also, those aren’t the only chromosomal patterns.

• Meta’s AI tool used data across multiple platforms to reveal all kinds of personal information about a mother’s kids, their ages, where they all lived, and more, starting from a single prompt on Instagram.

• A MAHA-cult mom in Oklahoma tried to stop cancer treatments for her autistic teenager with the help of Republican politicians there and the astroturfed Moms for Liberty group. The boy now lives with his father after a still-ongoing legal battle.

• The Wall Street Journal details the bottomless corruption of Corey Lewandowski, who struck side deals with outside entities – including asking the governments of Qatar and the UAE to pay him – while working at DHS.

• “I moved to New York to pay more in taxes – and I’m glad I did.” I resonated with this, having moved to Delaware in part for the lower taxes, only to learn that the outcome is worse public schools. Our taxes here should be higher, and people in many low-tax states don’t realize how much they’re losing in public services.

• The Fifth Court of Appeals ruled that you don’t have a right to safe drinking water.

• This August was the hottest month in recorded history, and the summer as a whole was the hottest ever.

• The popularity of “brain rot” on TikTok and Instagram may be a cry for help from the young people scrolling through it.

• Water levels at Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico approached a 55-year low in late July.

• Palestinian parents in the West Bank now have to worry about the safety of their children as terrorist attacks by settlers are increasing.

• NPR talks to an epidemiologist working to fight the current Ebola outbreak in the DRC’s eastern region, which has already been hit hard by civil war and the Trump Administration’s gutting of foreign aid.

• Activists at Yale, including students and faculty members, held an ‘unauthorized’ demonstration against the school’s potential plans to capitulate to the Trump Administration.

• John Mulaney stopped into J. Michaels Books in Eugene, Oregon, while on tour earlier this year. He can’t stop talking about the books the bookseller recommended to him.

• Kickstarter szn again: Tycoon Games has one up for Everdell Journeys, the latest game in the Everdell universe, with a card-drafting adventure rather than the forest city tableau- and engine-builder of the original.

• Inside Up Games has a Kickstarter up for The Adventure Store, a deckbuilding trick-taking game built around the theme of buying equipment for your adventuring party.

• The Kickstarter for the Clank! Big Box is already well over $1 million.

• The annual Summit Awards honor games that represent historical themes through board gaming. This year’s winners include games about the 1968 protests in Chicago, one of the last Japanese soldiers to surrender after WWII, and queer life in early 1700s London.

• Charlotte board game people – there’s a new FLGS (friendly local game store) opening in Camp North End called Good Game on September 19^th. I’ll have to wait till spring to check it out, but I hope some of you can visit now and report back.