→ May 10, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 5/10/26.

I posted my first mock draft of 2026 for subscribers to the Athletic this past week. I held a Q&A on Thursday to take your questions on the mock and anything else. I also posted a scouting notebook on Liam Doyle, Ike Irish, Dante Nori, and some other Phillies & Orioles prospects, as well as a draft scouting notebook on some Arkansas and Mississippi prospects, three of whom are probably going in the first round.

I also sent out another epistle of my free email newsletter. Trying to ramp that up to at least every other week.

I’m on Bluesky more than anything else right now. I’ve also been posting longer videos to Instagram and TikTok, talking about players I see or reacting to news, including two clips about the mock. I’ve also been messing around on the restaurant app Beli, if anyone else out there is using it.

A very short links post this week, not sure why. Anyway, and now the links…

  • Longreads first: Babies are dying because their parents have been scammed by online misinformation into rejecting the vitamin K shot, possibly thinking it’s a vaccine (which is also stupid, as vaccines are safe). Vitamin K is essential for clotting and this ProPublica story reports on babies who have bled to death because they didn’t get the shot.
  • All life on earth emerged from a single common ancestor, about 4 billion years ago. A new study posits that it was about 200 million years before previously thought, while also revealing some new info on what that first prokaryote was like.
  • Ravenous is a new worker-owned food journalism outlet founded by five people who had previously worked/published at Eater.
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→ May 6, 2026
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The Most Secret Memory of Men.

In 1968, a Malian novelist named Yambo Ouologuem saw his first novel, Le devoir de violence, published to great acclaim, including winning the Prix Renaudot, before accusations that he’d plagiarized text from two other novels stained Ouologuem’s reputation and led to his withdrawal from public life. He eventually returned to Mali, publishing two books under a pseudonym and some poetry, before leaving writing entirely, dying in 2017 with his book still out of print in France. (A new edition appeared in 2018, and a new English translation came out in 2023.)

Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr took Ouologuem’s story and spun it into a novel of his own, The Most Secret Memory of Men, in which Diégane, a young Senegalese writer in Paris, learns of an obscure 1938 novel by T.C. Elimane, nicknamed “The Black Rimbaud” before he, too, was mired in a scandal of plagiarism accusations. He refused to address the claims and disappeared from public life entirely, while the novel, scarcely seen for decades, created a cult-like following in all who read it, with some readers trying to locate Elimane as he slides silently across the globe in his seclusion. Much as the Entertainment film in Infinite Jest drives everyone who sees it to madness, Elimane’s book, The Labyrinth of Inhumanity, possesses all who read it, driving Diégane to learn more about the author, the book’s publication, and the controversy that brought it and its author down.

Ouologuem became the first African author to win the Prix Renaudot, and his defenders have argued that the attacks on his authorship were motivated in large part by racism and nationalism. (In a lovely twist, Sarr won the Prix Goncourt for this book, making him the first African author to win the prize.) Sarr clouds the issue around Elimane’s case; the fictional author’s book did not borrow as much from any single source as Ouologuem appears to have done, but instead patched together lines and phrases from many books, maybe dozens, to create an entirely new work of art, like an album made entirely of samples that ends up sounding nothing like any of the original material. Elimane is, according to his acolytes, using colonialist literature as the building blocks for a post-colonialist novel that might have shaken the world had its white critics not had their way.

Sarr’s novel is itself a giant experiment, as he plays with genres as diverse as noir and the epistolary novel, and the result is a book that feels more out of breath than simply breathless. There is tremendous narrative greed as Diégane searches for Elimane, or anyone who knew him, or anyone else who has read the book. There are also some long monologues, particularly by one of the women who knew Elimane and tells her story in winding paragraphs that may not be reliably narrated. Sarr also includes a tangential subplot that nods to the Arab Spring, where a Senegalese activist lights herself on fire to protest the autocratic regime that rules their country, although its connection to our main story is tenuous. (Senegal did have an election in 2024, with some controversy, but the current leader has still clamped down on civil rights.)

The Most Secret Memory of Men’s greatest strength its anger: Elimane dared to win a prize previously reserved for white French authors, so they tore his novel and ultimately him to pieces. That may explain what happened to Ouologuem; it is also a powerful metaphor for post-colonial Europe, where countries that exploited the people and land of Africa, South America, and much of Asia have paid lip service to their ‘special’ relationships but still engage in racist and nationalist practices most obvious in the so-called migrant crisis. France wasn’t ready for an African writer to put them in their place in 1968; maybe they’re more ready to hear it now.

Next up: I just finished Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland and started Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw.

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→ May 5, 2026
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Arkansas eats, 2026 edition.

I did not expect to find stellar sushi and well above-average pizza in northwest Arkansas, but that region contains multitudes. It was my second trip to the reason and I have to say it’s one of my favorite places in the U.S. to visit.

Pizzeria Ruby is an artisan pizza shop with a sign from Fenway Park hanging up over the bar, for some reason. (My server didn’t know why. He also thought it was from New York.) Their pizza style is somewhere between Neapolitan and coal-fired Brooklyn or New Haven styles, crispier than Neapolitan on the outside and the undercarriage, and they use Bianco tomatoes for their red pizzas. I got their version of a margherita, which has more sauce and a few other Italian cheeses in addition to the fresh mozzarella, and would land in my top 30 for sure. I didn’t actually love the sauce, which I think might have been a little too salty, or maybe there was just too much of it relative to the cheese. Their pizzas are huge, 18”, so go with a friend. I also loved their anti-ICE and pro-people signage.

Junto is a sushi restaurant inside the Motto hotel, a boutique hotel in the Hilton chain that seems like an extremely cool place to stay. I know you can get high-quality fish shipped anywhere at this point, but I was still floored to get fish this good in the middle of the country, nowhere near a major airport. The salmon usuzukuri was as tender as I’ve ever had it, and the ponzu sauce paired well with its inherent fatty texture. The miso soup, despite being just miso soup, was also a big hit, mostly because of the dashi – someone’s making that from scratch. The pressed rainbow roll was my server’s suggestion, and it was good for what it was – again, really fresh fish – but probably not ideal for me because those rolls blur all of the different flavors.

Songbird Sandwiches is a food truck located by the 8th Street Market, serving 5-6 gourmet sandwich options along with fancy sodas and kombuchas, because this is actually California, not northwest Arkansas. I got the turkey sandwich which, to their credit, had so much slaw and lettuce and turkey that it probably could have fed me and my wife (had she been there) comfortably. I love their focaccia as well, although focaccia does struggle to hold the fillings when you use it for sandwiches. I’m not complaining one bit about the cost, but I was surprised that it was just over $25 for a sandwich, soda, and 20% tip. Thanks, Donnie!

Hail Fellow Well Met is a restaurant from the owner of Onyx Coffee, which is my favorite coffee roaster in the country and has been for a few years now. HFWM is located next door to Pizzeria Ruby and has a gorgeous space with a ton of natural light and multiple distinct seating areas. It’s counter-service, with a full coffee bar including a pour-over option from Onyx, and I went for brunch on the recommendation of the same person who suggested Junto. I thought I was being boring by getting the “HFWM Simple,” which is just eggs, bacon, potatoes, avocado, and one piece of toast. It is neither boring nor simple: The potatoes are in a rosti/knish sort of combination patty, the eggs are softly scrambled (and served in a cute clay cup), the bacon is thick rashers of pork belly, there’s also a dressed herb salad, the avocado has seeds and spices on it, and also there’s a piece of toast. The only hiccup, if that, was when I asked for hot black tea. You would think I ordered the world’s most obscure cocktail or something, but they did eventually figure it out. I was going to eat there and then go to an Onyx shop to work until my flight, but loved the space so much that I got the same coffee I would have gotten at the café and stayed there the whole morning.

Wright’s BBQ is an Arkansas chain doing Texas-style BBQ, which does mean their signature item is something I don’t eat – brisket. (I gave up eating cow about 7-8 years ago for medical reasons.) Instead I went with a quarter rack of ribs and the smoked chicken, with collards and cole slaw as my sides. The ribs were solid-average, maybe a touch better than that, good flavor, meat that was almost too tender inside, a little toughness around the edges. Probably just average. The chicken was a waste of time – I don’t understand why anyone smokes white meat. It just dries out – dark meat loves slow cooking, white meat needs something fast because it has so little fat. The cole slaw was really vinegary, just right to cut into the sweetness of the rub on the rubs, and clearly fresh because it was so crunchy. The collards were also pretty good, and I appreciate that the pork they used in them was still in large chunks so I could avoid them (just for health, I don’t need to eat what is essentially just more bacon) while still claiming I ate a lot of vegetables.

I stopped by Ozark Mountain Bagel Co. for a quick breakfast one morning, and, well, I got about what I expected. It’s just round bread, and the egg on the egg sandwich was one of those pre-cooked discs.

Finally, Onyx. I’m obsessed, especially with their space in downtown Bentonville, where the line wraps around the bar and out the door for hours on weekend mornings. Their coffee is superb – I’ve probably tried five or six single origins from them and at least two different blends, and I’ve loved all of them. They hit the right roasting level for me, at least, so the tasting notes come through, and with enough coffee to get some good body in the cup. (I’ve been to a few places recently where the flavor was good but the coffee itself felt thin.) Their pour-over menu this weekend included a Rwandan bean that was good enough for me to grab a bag on the way out, after which I walked around the Saturday morning farmer’s market for a while just to take in the atmosphere. If the rest of the state wasn’t somewhere to the right of Gilead, I could easily live there. As for Onyx … it’s still undisputed.

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→ May 4, 2026
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Music update, April 2026.

We’re warming up here, I think – the music is getting better, more albums are on the calendar, spring hath sprung, and so forth. My two favorite albums of the year so far came out in April or just before it, and I think May/June will add quite a few more to that list. As always, if you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist on Apple Music or Spotify.

Angine de Poitrine – Sarniezz. I guess I barely got ahead of the wave of publicity from Angine de Poitrine’s KEXP appearance, but including them here now feels anticlimactic. Vol. II is easily my album of the year so far, not for the outfits or the weird interviews, but because their music manages to be wildly inventive (including the microtonal guitar, which blows my mind as someone who has played a regular guitar for 40+ years and finds it challenging enough) and still melodic and hook-filled and entertaining.

Courtney Barnett – One Thing at a Time. Barnett’s latest album Creature of Habit is a little more rock-oriented than her last proper LP, although I think her lyrics might be a little less clever? The best tracks on the record are “Site Unseen,” her duet with Waxahatchie; “Stay in Your Lane;” and this song.

Temples – Vendetta. I can’t help it. I love Temples’ throwback psychedelic-rock sound, and if they slip one crunchy guitar riff in there I’m putting the song high on the next playlist.

Snail Mail – Tractor Beam. Snail Mail’s latest album Richochet opens with this song, its best track, and a solid introduction to Lindsey Jordan’s newer sound, with better production and much stronger vocal lines.

Jack White – G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs. I like a lot of White’s time-traveling experimentation, but in the end he’s at his best when he drops a bluesy guitar riff and starts telling a story.

Failure feat. Hayley Williams – The Rising Skyline. Failure’s newest album Location Lost came out on April 24th, and yes, that is indeed the Paramore lead singer contributing a verse – and elevating the entire song out of its gloom.

My New Band Believe – In the Blink of an Eye. Former black midi bassist Cameron Picton has released his first album since that band went on hiatus in 2024, with a number of guest musicians supplementing him. It’s not surprising that it’s experimental and ambitious, crossing and blending genres; it’s surprising that it’s extremely catchy and seems to exist simultaneously in 2026 and 1969. So much of this self-titled album reminds me of Love’s Forever Changes, from the acoustic guitar work to the tempo shifts to the musical patterns in his vocals. It’s also much more coherent and less pretentious than former bandmate Geordie Greep’s album. MNBB released another song earlier this year, “Numerology,” that’s quite good but only appears on the deluxe CD version of the album.

JJerome87 – Track and Field. JJerome87 is Joe Newman, primary lead singer and guitarist for alt-J, and is now releasing his first solo album, The Canyon, in June. I’ve heard the whole thing already and it’s better than either of alt-J’s last two records, but not close to the brilliant combination of experimentalism and cohesion of An Awesome Wave. The best news is that he’s turned away from some of the most commercial aspects of Relaxer or The Dream, which convinced me that the worst thing that ever happened to alt-J was when “Left Hand Free” became an accidental hit.

Pond – Two Hands. This Aussie psych-rock band will drop their xth album Terrestrials on June 19th; the title track came out first and is the stronger of the two, a more immediate, catchier song, while this one takes about half its run time to get fully going.

Lime Garden – Cross My Heart. This British indie band released its second album, Maybe Not Tonight, on April 10th; this is the first song of theirs I’ve liked enough to include, with a drum/bass line that’s extremely catchy and danceable.

World News – Sidestep. I loved both of World News’ singles from last year, representing some of the best modern jangle-pop I’ve heard in … ever? This song veers into a different space entirely, with a more atmospheric rock sound that calls back to Oasis and Stone Roses (and, of course, the DMA’s).

La Sécurité – Snack City. The second Quebecois group on this month’s playlist is this art-punk collective from Montréal, about to release their second album Bingo! on June 12th.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Houses. I can’t decide if I love the mournful, Cure-like quality of Glenn Donaldson’s voice, or if it’s just too depressing to work at scale. This track comes off their latest album Acknowledge Kindness, as did “Heaven of Love” from my February playlist.

Fotocrime – Plowjob. I struggled a little with this one, because the music is so much like mid-80s Killing Joke, but the vocals don’t measure up to it across the entire album. Fotocrime is an offshoot of Coliseum, another post-hardcore band from Louisville, and their new album has guest appearances from Barney Greenway of Napalm Death, Jay Weinberg of Slipknot, and Brian Cook of Sumac, so they’ve got the right friends. I wish the vocals were stronger.

MORN – The Standard Model. MORN is a post-punk band from Monmouth, Wales, right near the border with England, not exactly a hotbed for new music, and this is just their second single to date. It’s fast and more punk than post-punk, reminiscent of DEADLETTER and a little of Yard Act.

Tooth – Restless in Bloom. Tooth are a very new grunge-adjacent quartet from London who’ve gotten a bit of music press buzz already after just a couple of singles this year. This is their best one to date, again grunge-like but not derivative of the style or any specific band.

Lambrini Girls – Cult of Celebrity. Good, but more of the same from this punk duo, who I think have to step up their lyrics and/or add something musically to get to the next level.

The Tubs – Fade to Black. Yes, it’s a jangle-pop cover of the Metallica song, and it’s weird and ultimately I think it comes off as snarky, but it is certainly interesting.

Downward – Drawl. A recommendation from Riley Breckenridge of Thrice, Downward blends post-hardcore and shoegaze with just enough melodic sense amid the gloom to make it all work. They put out a two-track single in April with this and “Get Some.”

Monolord – You Bastard. Doom metal from Gothenburg, that haven of melodic death metal, with all of the crunch and depth of that genre but clean vocals that make it way more accessible to a broader audience. They put out two tracks in April, with this the better of the two over “Oozing Wound.”

Armored Saint – Hit a Moonshot. The two tracks I’ve heard so far from Armored Saint’s Emotion Factory Reset, due out on the 22nd, are making me question everything I previously thought about this 1980s metal band, who I always thought of as less interesting than their thrashier contemporaries and less catchy than some of the bands who ended up in the hair-metal bucket (like early Mötley Crüe, before they went all glam). This is better than anything from Testament since the 1980s, really.

Venom – Kicked Outta Hell. I’ve always thought of Venom as something of a joke; they were much better known for their inane Satanic lyrics than for musical ability or great riffs, so their fan base had a lot of people attracted to the controversy rather than the tunes. Their album Black Metal gave the genre its name, but black metal, which just refers to metal with Satanic or sometimes occult lyrical themes, is itself dumb. It’s all for attention, and if in 2026 you still think that stuff is either cool or controversial, man, you’re about forty years behind the times. So I was surprised to hear that this new track, from a lineup with just one original member, is actually a decent song, sitting right in the middle of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (into which Venom sometimes gets lumped) and early speed or thrash metal. Go figure.

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→ May 2, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 5/2/26.

I had a weird lull over at The Athletic, as I didn’t really have games to hit or travel planned, so my scouting notebook from this week on Gerrit Cole, Franklin Arias, Ronny Cruz, and more was my first post in a couple of weeks. I’ll be back with at two pieces next week, including my first mock draft of 2026, tentatively scheduled to run on May 7th.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed the game Catan on the Road, and then spoke to designer Josh Wood about his upcoming game Let’s Go! To France, the sequel to the delightful Let’s Go! To Japan. The site shuttered its games section on Friday, so my regular reviews and writing there are done. I loved writing about games, so I’m open to freelance board game writing opportunities elsewhere.

I’m on Bluesky more than anything else right now. I’ve also been posting longer videos to Instagram and TikTok, talking about players I see or reacting to news.

I also appeared on 92.3 The Fan in Cleveland to talk about Travis Bazzana, Chase Delauter, and other Guardians prospects/players.

I’ll work on another free email newsletter next.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: North Carolina cop Scott Collins shot and killed Brandon Webster, a Black man, in 2019, and claimed self-defense. The Marshall Project finally got the truth, which includes the state never even bothering to investigate Collins’ rendition of events.
  • The President of Cornell ran his car over the foot of a protesting student and bumped another, then claimed they had attacked his car and blocked his exit. Student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun obtained video of the incident and found that he made up that excuse.
  • A mother whose daughter died of SSPE, an incurable, fatal disorder caused by a past measles infection, wrote about the tragedy in The New York Times. The Times’ editorial board ran this editorial a few days later about how RFK Jr. and the Trump Republicans have created a terrifying new reality of preventable infectious diseases.
  • The London Review of Books notes that the genocide in Gaza continues, and those who still live there face appalling conditions, with over 70,000 cases of rodent and ectoparasitic infestations just this year.
  • Israel continues to attack journalists in Gaza and now Lebanon, killing Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil and injuring her colleague last week in what appears to have been a deliberate act of murder – when the first airstrike didn’t kill her, they fired again.
  • I posted this in the last roundup but I’m re-upping here after the sanitizing biopic Michael made so much money last weekend: Tim Grierson writes about the now-unavailable documentary Leaving Neverland and how impossible it is to forget the clear accusations against Michael Jackson that documentary laid out.
  • Janet Mills’ withdrawal from the Maine Senate race makes Graham Platner the presumptive Democratic nominee. A Maine reporter and former classmate of Platner’s writes about his appeal.
  • In more free-speech-for-me-not-for-thee news, Utah Valley (corrected) caved to a right-wing political campaign that included Senator Mike Lee (R, of course) to disinvite speaker Sharon McMahon … over McMahon quoting Charlie Kirk’s own words after his death.
  • I’ve never played Kohaku, but there’s a Kickstarter up for a reprint and new expansion.

  • MENSA does some annual board game awards that are probably the only thing MENSA does that’s worth noting; you can see this year’s winners here over on Board Game Wire.

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→ April 21, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 4/21/26.

My one post on The Athletic last week was a long scouting notebook covering Vahn Lackey, Joseph Contreras, Liam Peterson, and other players I saw in a week in South Carolina and Georgia.

Over at the AV Club, I reviewed Catan on the Road, a new portable Catan game that loses the map – and thus the competition for space – but keeps the resource-trading mechanic and even tweaks the rules to encourage players to trade more.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter late last week. You should subscribe.

And now, the links…

  • Upward Bound is a bestselling novel written by nonverbal, autistic author Woody Brown using the discredited communication technique called Rapid Prompting. His mother may be the actual author.
  • A group chat started by the secretary of Miami-Dade’s Republican Party was filled with racist slurs and antisemitic comments by FIU students, but so far the school has yet to take any action against them. One of those students, Ethan Ratchkauskas, is suing the school on First Amendment grounds after saying someone had to “swiss cheese that professor,” later clarifying that he meant shooting them full of holes.
  • Courtney Williams was one of the whistleblowers who spoke to a journalist about sexual harassment and discrimination at Fort Bragg in the 2010s. The Justice Department just arrested her, claiming she revealed sensitive information.
  • Most of the stories about former Virginia Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax (D)’s murder of his wife and subsequent suicide were about him. CNN profiled Cerina Fairfax, the victim in his case.
  • It appears that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which traces its origins to 1786, will continue publishing after all, as the nonprofit institute that owns the Baltimore Banner is buying the paper. Block Communications, owned by the Block family, had decided to shut the paper down rather than abide by federal labor court rulings against their unfair labor practices.
  • Senegal just passed a law doubling the penalty for same-sex relationships, while also criminalizing “promoting” or “financing” LGBT relationships. The bill passed the West African nation’s legislature with no votes against it.
  • A Missouri cop who killed a 2-year-old girl while working as a SWAT team sniper is now a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper. Keaton Siebenaler has never faced any consequences for firing at a silhouette during a hostage situation, which is how he ended up killing Clesslynn Crawford during a standoff between her father and police.
  • Quined Games’ reprinting of Rudiger Dorn’s Goa is up on Gamefound right now. I owned it, and played it, but it didn’t quite do it for me – at least not to the level of its reputation.

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→ April 20, 2026
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Charleston, Atlanta, and Athens eats.

I’ve been Charleston a few times, and I can never run out of new restaurants to try there. I don’t think any city of its size is this dense with quality places to eat (and drink, both coffee and cocktails). This time around, I finally tried one of their two famous barbecue places, Lewis BBQ, which also has locations in Greenville, SC, and now Atlanta. Their ribs were some of the best I’ve ever had, with the perfect texture to the bark and the interior, sliding off the bone while still retaining some bite, and the rub has a rich brown sugar flavor. The pulled pork sandwich has maybe two servings’ worth of meat on it, also with excellent texture, although I didn’t get a lot of bark there so the flavor was more muted. The collard greens are solid, but the corn pudding is a star, almost dessert-like because it’s so rich and the corn gives it so much sweetness. It’s got to be among the top five BBQ places I’ve ever tried, although that list isn’t growing as much now that I’ve stopped eating beef and eat much less pork than I used to. (I’ve still yet to get to the other Charleston institution, Rodney Scott’s.)

Dave’s Carry Out is a tiny Black-owned shop that mostly does just one thing: fried seafood. It looks like it’s closed, or even abandoned, and the interior is bare-bones with only a few places to sit, but man is that fried flounder good. It was more than a serving’s worth, two large fillets, fried to order, perfectly crisp with plenty of seasoning. The sandwich comes with basic white bread, lettuce, tomato, and mayo. They also offer fried shrimp, red rice (which was fine), and sometimes special sides like lima beans.

I’d wanted to go to EVO, a pizzeria in North Charleston, for probably a decade or more, and finally got there on this trip. They offer wood-fired pizzas that sit somewhere between Neapolitan and New York styles, with a crispier crust than the former, and they use mostly locally grown and sourced ingredients. The pizzas are small, and the crust itself is more texture than flavor – it’s crisp, but without a whole lot of interior to it, so you don’t taste the dough very much, and it’s more a vehicle for the toppings than a part of the whole. We also got their version of a caprese salad, which was some early tomatoes (so their flavor wasn’t close to peak) with a small amount of crumbled mozzarella on top. I’d call this a disappointment, given how long I’d heard that they were one of the best pizzerias, if not the best, in Charleston.

For coffee, I went to my downtown favorite, Second State, twice, getting a pour-over once and a macchiato the other time. The pour-over was a Colombian Sidra that was fermented using the thermal shock process, so the beans are rapidly heated and cooled, described here. The barista said there were guava notes, and she wasn’t kidding – this coffee is a guava bomb, from the aroma through the first note you get on every sip. That won’t be for everyone, but I thought it was outstanding, with some more complex notes in the finish that were less overtly tropical. I also spent some time writing at Mudhouse over on King, as they have a better loose-leaf tea selection (and above-average coffee). My favorite coffee roaster in the area is Prophet up in North Charleston, but I didn’t get there on this trip.

I had lunch at Sorelle, a restaurant inspired by Italy’s all-day cafes, which has a take-away market with seating available for lunch before the tables turn over to the fine-dining dinner menu. The excellent spicy chicken Caesar sandwich isn’t actually that spicy, with a little ‘nduja in the dressing, and includes some roasted peppers and lemon, so it’s much more interesting and complex than the typical Caesar salad. The Sicilian pizza was a little disappointing, as there wasn’t much cheese on it and there was way too much garlic (a phrase I very rarely use in my life).

Portrait Coffee in Atlanta’s West End is a Black-owned roastery/café – very rare in the specialty coffee space, unfortunately – that recently did a collaboration with Big Boi to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Outkast’s Stankonia. I didn’t try that coffee, as it’s a darker roast than I typically like, but did have a lighter roast Honduran coffee that was excellent with the honeyish notes common to that region. I also loved the café space itself, which was decorated with LPs, books, and art from Black artists of the last half-century.

Portrait happens to be next door to one of Eater’s top restaurants in Atlanta, the all-vegan Tassili’s Raw Reality, which mostly sells wraps and salads built around their dressed kale, which you can get as mild, spicy,  or a mix of the two. I went for the mixed, which was just the right spice level for my tepid palate, in the South of the Border wrap, which has black-eyed pea hummus, couscous, avocadoes, and tomatoes on a chili-pepper tortilla. I got the half size, which was more than enough for a meal for me. After my first bite, I thought I’d made a huge tiny mistake; it was a little bitter, which definitely happens with raw kale if you don’t dress it properly, and seemed underseasoned. I ended up eating the whole thing, because it clearly got better the more I ate – or maybe I just got the end of it without as much dressing and other toppings in that initial taste. So if you go there, don’t give up after a bite or two. It was all good enough that I’m going to try to replicate the concept at home with my own dressings.

Moving along to Athens, I got out of the Friday night game just in time to get into Puma Yu’s right before their kitchen closed at 9:30. It’s a “non-traditional Thai” restaurant and cocktail bar in what is otherwise mostly an industrial park, with a pergola outside and a dozen or so tables inside that help wall off the distinctly un-homey vibe of the rest of the complex it’s in. I was looking for something lighter, so I ordered their spring salad and tuna crudo. The salad had mixed local greens, including chard, little gem, and spinach, with crushed peanuts, fried shallots, several herbs, chili flakes, and a tangy tamarind dressing. I’d go back just for that salad – it was ridiculously good, from the quality of the greens themselves (mostly ‘baby’ greens so they were still pretty tender) to the balance of salt, acid, and sweetness in the dressing and the shallots, to the texture contrasts from the peanuts, shallots, and the crisp greens. The tuna crudo in lemongrass vinegar and makrut lime leaf oil ended up a little overshadowed because its flavors were milder, and I probably should have eaten them in the reverse order because the acidity of the salad’s dressing ended up muting that of the tuna. The fish’s quality was superb, though. For a cocktail, I tried the Retirement Plan, which, hey, I’m 52, it’s never too early to think about retirement, right? It’s made with rhum agricole, which doesn’t always play well with mixers, along with cachaça, both spirits made from sugar cane juice (rather than molasses, like traditional rum). The drink is finished with maraschino liqueur, melon (I think honeydew), lime, and Thai basil; it was pleasantly alcoholic but not overpowering, and the Thai basil was prominent enough to keep the drink from tasting too much like a beach resort cocktail.

White Tiger is a small barbecue & burger spot in a converted house a stone’s throw south of Puma Yu’s; I zagged a little here and got the seared salmon sandwich, thanks in part to their employee’s recommendation, and the grilled vegetables of the day. The sandwich comes with cream cheese (which I omitted because that stuff is gross), capers, cucumbers, organic field greens and lemon vinaigrette dressing, on a toasted ciabatta, and my only complaint is that ciabatta isn’t strong enough for that much stuff in the middle. The salmon was dead-on medium, which is how I like it (probably more than most folks like it cooked, but I either want salmon raw or close to cooked through, not the in-between gummy-bear consistently of rare), and vegetables on top added plenty of bright acidity and salt to help balance the fattiness of the fish. The grilled vegetables will vary by season; I got primarily broccoli and cabbage, which were really smoky and a little charred to bring out some sweetness, although they needed a little acidity so I ended mixing them with some of the toppings that fell off the sandwich.

My one coffee stop in Athens was 1000 Faces, which I’d actually been to before, when I went to UGA in 2020 to see Emerson Hancock and Cole Wilcox. It’s a great space, busy both times I’ve been there, and their pour-overs are just $5.

Mama’s Boy comes up on lots of lists of the best restaurants in Athens, particularly for their biscuits. The biscuits are good, but not elite, and everything else was just okay or worse, particularly the “hashed potatoes,” which tasted like they came out of a freezer bag.

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→ April 12, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 4/12/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I posted my ranking of the top 50 prospects for this year’s draft, although unfortunately one of them, Jacob Dudan, is now undergoing Tommy John surgery. He threw 110+ pitches five times in his last six starts, after throwing just 30 innings last year as a reliever. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. If I added another name, it would be Virginia Tech’s Brett Renfrow or Arkansas’ Ryder Helfrick.

I swear I’ll get a newsletter out next – I’ve had a mad week of travel, so I’ve had very little time to just sit and write freely.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: By now, you’ve probably seen the New York Times piece that claims that Satoshi, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, is actually a British cryptographer named Adam Back. I have some issues with the article, particularly the way it centers the author’s search and feelings rather than Satoshi/Back or why finding him might be important, but in general I think it’s an excellent piece of reporting. (And I have no opinion on whether he’s right.)
  • Two Congresspersons from Arizona conducted a surprise inspection of an ICE concentration camp there and found the detainees packed “like sardines,” with rooms meant for 24 people holding up to 40, no beds, and no showers. Anyone responsible for this should be put on trial, with life in prison the sentence for anyone found guilty for creating, carrying out, or enabling this inhumane treatment.
  • The online left is, unfortunately, also prone to believing in conspiracy theories. Brandy Zarozny details one of them, a man named Sascha Riley who has been pushing a fantastical (and probably delusional) tale that, as a child, he was sexually assaulted by several prominent Republicans, including the current President. Riley seems to be unwell, making this all kind of sad beyond just the maddening aspect of people believing so ardently in something untrue.
  • Four women have come forward to accuse Rep. Eric Swalwell (D), also a candidate for Governor of California, of sexually assaulting them. Several Democrats have called on him to end his campaign, but I have yet to see a single one calling on him to resign from Congress – which he needs to do.
  • Washington state has held a man with an intellectual disability in inhumane conditions for 23 years, all for a crime he can’t understand. He’s been assaulted and bullied by other prisoners and residents of the house where he lived on conditional release at one point.
  • Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse, who has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, spoke to the Times’ Ross Douthat about the disease and his choice to be so public about his journey. I don’t wish this fate on anyone. I also don’t think it exempts him from answering for, say, opposing efforts to fight climate change or fighting against LGBTQ+ or reproductive rights. Indeed, isn’t that the time to ask questions like that? Would you do anything differently? Are you thinking less about the here and now and more about the world you’re leaving behind?
  • Author Alex Preston used an LLM to write a book review that was published in The New York Times, and he got caught. The Times has dropped him as a freelancer. Also, write your own shit, people.
  • The Department of Defense sent U.S. soldiers into harm’s way in Kuwait ahead of the Iranian missile attack that killed six service members and injured 30, and they were totally unprepared for the strike, according to survivors – directly contradicting the lie put out by Pete Hegseth.
  • An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter states quite clearly that Catholics who support this Administration are choosing between complicity in the war on Iran, with its attacks on civilian infrastructure and vulgar, hateful language towards the Muslim nation, or the true tenets of their faith. The Administration has couched the war on Christian nationalist rhetoric, but there is no squaring that with the nonviolent Christ of the Bible.
  • Board game news: Bitewing has a new Kickstarter for two more games in its travel-sized game series, Arribada and Seagrass.

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→ April 11, 2026
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Music update, March 2026.

March ended with a rush of new releases and I’m still working my way through them, on top of the LPs that have already come out in April – this feels like the first big release period of 2026, with Arlo Parks, Angine de Poitrine, Snail Mail, The Twilight Sad, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, Courtney Barnett, deary, Flea, Butler Blake & Grant, Neurosis, and Avalon Emerson putting out albums in the last month that I need to listen to or that were on my to-do list.

As always, if you can’t see the widget below, the playlist is available on Apple Music and Spotify.

Young Fathers – Don’t Fight the Young. The latest War Child Records album HELP(2) has an incredible roster of names, but most of the songs are clearly throwaways for the artists who wrote and recorded them, a marked step down from their usual material. Young Fathers’ contribution, however, is on par with some of their best work, and more importantly, it sounds exactly like their usual stuff. They actually wrote several songs for the project, and if this is any indication, I hope the others show up on a future album or EP.

Snail Mail – Tractor Beam. Snail Mail is Lindsey Jordan, whose third album Richochet came out at the end of March. This single is more polished and better produced than her earlier stuff, giving her guitar a richer texture, although her vocals are still quite clear.I’ve only listened to about half of the album so far, but it’s my favorite by her to date – the stronger production values help her vocals quite a bit, and I’m getting some Velocity Girl vibes from her melodies now that they’re cleaner and more forward.

Julia Cumming – Please Let Me Remember This. Cumming is the lead singer and bassist for Sunflower Bean; her first solo album Julia is out on the 24th. The first single, “My Life,” was fine, but this one is eight levels higher, especially musically, as there are layers and layers here, not just of different instruments but of varying beats and rhythms that tap into some 1970s pop and even light jazz.

Brigitte Calls Me Baby – I Can Take the Sun Right Out of the Sky. I adored the first two singles from BCMB’s sophomore album Irreversible, while this third one is more solid than plus for me, getting them a little too far into Smiths homage territory. The first half of the album is much stronger than the second, with the first two singles as well as “The Pit” and “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction,” while the back half started to lose some steam and felt slightly more derivative of the ‘80s new wave sounds that inspire so much of their music.

Spencer Thomas – The World is Fucked and I Love You. Thomas is a multi-instrumentalist from Mississippi who seems to be able to write songs in any genre you’d like; here he goes hard into synth-pop, sounding like Heaven 17 with a Morrissey guest vocal (1980s Moz, not the current shithead version). I really love the cover of his new album Cynical Vision.

Pond – Terrestrials. Like most great Pond songs, this one starts out in an inauspicious fashion and then blossoms into a bigger sound when it hits the chorus. It’s not quite “America’s Cup” or “Neon River,” but it’s a strong lead single for this Aussie psychedelic-rock band’s upcoming album, also called Terrestrials, due out June 19th.

The Twilight Sad – Attempt a Crash Landing. I need to get to their latest album, It’s the Long Goodbye, but the tracks I’ve heard so far have been some of my favorites ever by them. I think I’d been too skeptical of them based on the name, but their music over the last decade or so has blended gloom with richly textured guitars and even some hints of industrial music.

SPRINTS – Trickle Down. A solid punk song of protest against late-stage capitalism and the lie of trickle-down economics (which is the disgraced philosophy behind both of Trump’s major tax cuts). Maybe not as immediate as SPRINTS’ best stuff, but still good.

The Afghan Whigs – House of I. Not sure if this is a one-off track or if it heralds another new album, but Greg Dulli – who still sounds fantastic – called it a “banger” and I think he’s right.

Tigers Jaw – Primary Colors. I see Tigers Jaw called emo and punk-pop, but I don’t know that either fits – here they’ve got classic pop melodies over a heavier guitar track that draws on post-hardcore. The contrast is the real hook.

TVAM – Love Like Glue. TVAM’s debut album, Psychic Data, was #2 on my list of the best albums of 2018, but I missed his 2022 album High Art Life completely and would have missed his latest, Ruins, if one of you hadn’t pointed me to it. I still prefer his first LP, which was more melodic and immediate, but Ruins is strong enough and really brings me back to the late goth/new wave sound; this track sounds like it came from somewhere in between Ministry’s shift from “Every Day Is Halloween” to the industrial sound of The Land of Rape and Honey.

Trashcan Sinatras – Bad Husband. This new track from these Scottish folk-rockers features Tracyanne Campbell, lead singer and co-founder of Camera Obscura; it’s the second single so far from their new album Ever the Optimist, due out on July 31st. I’ll forever be grateful to Beavis & Butthead for introducing me to them via their mockery of the video for “Hayfever.”

Courtney Barnett – One Thing at a Time. Barnett’s first album in five years, Creature of Habit, came out on March 26th; the three singles all point to a return to the more uptempo indie rock of her earliest work (her double EP and then her debut album). Her collaboration with Waxahatchee, “Site Unseen,” is the best track on the new album.

Metric – Time is a Bomb. I remember Metric’s first album and how XM’s Alt Nation overplayed the pretentious song “Succexy;” that was 23 years ago, and now their tenth LP, Romanticize the Dive, is coming out on the 24th. I’ve come around on Metric as they’ve also shifted their sound slightly more towards mainstream alternative, although I think Emily Haines is a better singer than lyricist.

Jessie Ware – Automatic. Ware might be my favorite straight-up pop singer right now, as her current style, dating at least back to What’s Your Pleasure?, blends disco, funk, and ‘70s pop, mixed with some great hooks, enough to overcome the occasional lyrical clunker. This is the third single from her album Superbloom, due out on the 17th. It reminds me of a specific track from the 1970s, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Jorja Smith – The Price of It All. This soaring ballad comes from the soundtrack to the limited series Bait, created by and starring Riz Ahmed, so why exactly have I not heard of this before? Someone’s done a piss-poor job of marketing it. Anyway, Smith remains one of my favorite vocalists, and I especially love when her voice isn’t competing with a drum machine that drowns her out.

Arlo Parks – Get Go. A small departure for Parks, with a twee-pop backing track and notably upbeat melodies in the vocals. Her third album Ambiguous Desire came out on the 3rd.

Maria BC – Channels. This track is barely over a minute but gives me a chance to recommend their new album Marathon, which is definitely more of a single document than a set of tracks, with their voice still reminding me a ton of Alejandra Deheza of School of Seven Bells.

Miki Berenyi Trio – Island of One. Berenyi was the lead singer/guitarist for the shoegaze legends Lush, who took a sharp turn into alt-pop with their final album Lovelife and called it a day. Her latest band includes her partner Kevin McKillop, with their debut album dropping last year; it was more shoegaze-light, with her voice still a highlight. This is apparently a standalone single ahead of a new tour.

Pye Corner Audio feat. Andy Bell – Cycle. This popped up on my Release Radar because of the presence of Bell, founding guitarist of Ride and current bassist for Oasis. This track, from PCA’s upcoming album More Songs About the Sun, is shoegazey electronica; Bell contributes guitar and vocals, and he’s apparently on three other songs on the record as well.

Soft Cell feat. Nona Hendryx – Out Come the Freaks. Soft Cell was Marc Almond and David Ball, best known for their cover of “Tainted Love,” and they had reunited after a twenty-year hiatus in 2022, recording three albums before Ball’s death last year. That third record, Danceteria, comes out at some point this year, with a tour to follow, but it’ll be the last new music under the Soft Cell name according to Almond. Oh, as for Nona Hendryx, you know her, too: She was one-third of Labelle, best known for “Lady Marmalade.”

Les Big Byrd – Hökvind. I wasn’t familiar with this Swedish psychedelic rock band before stumbling on this homage to space-rock pioneers Hawkwind. It’s bottom-heavy and intricate with a real groove to it.

The Black Crowes – Profane Prophecy. Definitely the Crowes’ first appearance on one of my playlists. I’m one of the basic Black Crowes fans: I had the first album before they got famous, loved the bluesier stuff and hated “She Talks to Angels,” played the shit out of “Remedy” when that came out, and pretty much gave up on them around the release of Amorica (with the manufactured controversy over its album cover convincing me they were a joke). I happened to see a positive review of A Pound of Feathers, their newest album, and thought, “how bad could it be?” It’s fine, not as good as their first two albums, but it’s got a few memorable numbers, led by this uptempo song.

Jehnny Beth feat. Mike Patton – Look at Me. The great Jehnny Beth of Savages and Anatomy of a Fall pairs up here with the Faith No More/Mr. Bungle lead singer Mike Patton on a weird, experimental noise-rock track with an interesting video that seems to show Beth cracking up.

Armored Saint – Close to the Bone. Armored Saint is still around! I had no idea. Granted, I was never as big a fan of their heyday, as the tracks I heard were not their best (like “Chemical Euphoria,” played to death on Headbanger’s Ball). They’re still going, singer John Bush still sounds good, and their ninth album, Emotion Factory Reset, drops on May 22nd.

The HU – The Men. This Mongolian folk-metal band has released two new tracks this year, and they’re openers on two different tours in the U.S. later in 2026 (one of which includes Marilyn Manson, unfortunately) so I assume an album is coming. Their cover of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper”, translated into their native language, from a year or so ago is pretty badass, too.

Sepultura – The Place. Sepultura are calling it a career, releasing a four-song EP called The Cloud of Unknowing later this month that includes this crunchy, almost groove-metal track along with the mellower “Beyond the Dream.” Bassist Paulo Jr. is the only remaining original member, and I don’t think they’ve really been the same band – not worse, just different – since singer/guitarist Max Cavalera left in 1997.

Cruel Force – Whips-a-Swinging. ThisGerman band started out as yet another blackened speed metal band, but morphed into a more old-school speed metal/early thrash sound in the late 2010s. They’re back with a new album, Haneda, that sounds very 1982ish, like a band that might have inspired Kreator rather than one that was inspired by them.

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→ April 4, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 4/4/26.

I’ve been traveling like mad lately; this is the first weekend I’ve been home both Friday and Saturday nights since the Super Bowl. That’s put a damper on any posting here, and of course makes me a little anxious about getting started again because doing so seems overwhelming. Some of the links below are as much as a month old.

Here are some of my most recent posts at the Athletic: I interviewed Bill White on his career and the announcement that he’s the latest Buck O’Neil Award recipient; I wrote up a draft scouting notebook on a bunch of mostly high school players I saw in mid- to late March, as well as USC lefty Mason Edwards; I did my annual predictions posts, including the full standings and the player awards; and I wrote up what I saw at the Arizona Breakout Games, including Brewers-A’s, White Sox-Dodgers (with 27 walks), Mariners-Brewers, Reds-Giants, and Guardians-Angels (plus some Rockies back fields notes). The record-setting heat in Arizona pushed some game times around, so I ended up seeing one fewer game than expected, missing Padres-Cubs from my original plan. I appeared on The Athletic Show to kick off the MLB season.

At AV Club, I reviewed the worker-placement game Skara Brae (no relation to The Bard’s Tale series); the polyomino tile placement game Wispwood; and the light set-collection game Sanibel, from the designer of Wingspan.

My newsletter is next up on my to-do list, followed by a new music playlist.

And now, the links…

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