→ 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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→ March 8, 2026
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Music update, February 2026.

Whew, February turned out to be a loaded month, especially with experimental or art-rock bands, along with a decent supply of new metal and more singles from the newest War Child charity album HELP(2). As always, if you can’t see the widget below, you can access the playlist on Apple Music or Spotify.

Temples – Jet Stream Heart. This British psychedelic-rock band is good for at least one absolute banger per album, sometimes more, with this track following “Cicada,” “Holy Horses,” and “Shelter Song,” among others. The guitar riff that drives this sucker is the earworm of the year so far.

Savages – Prayer. Savages’ second album Adore Life turns 10 this year, and it’ll serve as their final music, aside from this one-off track and a bizarre piano-ballad cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.” It’s a damn shame, as their first album Silence Yourself was an outstanding work of feminist post-punk.

Arlo Parks – Heaven. Another lovely vocal track from the Mercury Prize-winning British singer/songwriter, although I’m still not as big a fan of her electronic-backed songs as her folkier early work. Her third album, Ambiguous Desire, comes out on April 3.

flowerovlove – Casual Lady. An absolute gem of a pop track; recommend this to people in your life who unfortunately love the washed-out pop of Sabrina Carpenter. The hooks are better, the lyrics are wittier, and it hasn’t been produced within an inch of its life.

Jorja Smith – Don’t Leave. Smith’s best track since her last album, 2023’s Falling or Flying, is a jazzy R&B/grime track that is, as usual, powered by her indelible voice.

Brigitte Calls Me Baby – I Danced with Another Love in My Dream. They sound so British, but this new wave-revivalist quartet is from Chicago, and I think they’re about to get huge, with the first two singles from their sophomore album Irreversible (due out on the 13th) both among the best tracks of this year – and last year, too.

Trashcan Sinatras – Bitter End. I assumed this Scottish band was done, as they hadn’t released any music since an EP in 2022 and hadn’t put out a full album since 2016, so this song, very reminiscent of their third album A Happy Pocket, was a pleasant surprise. There’s apparently a new album in the offing but I can’t find any details.

Crystal Tides – Better Weather. Crystal Tides are unsigned and released their album Toothpaste independently, cracking the British top 40 albums chart last month without the typical support you get from a record label. It’s power-pop in the vein of the Lottery Winners, and this is the album’s best track.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Heaven of Love. I wasn’t familiar with this band, led by Glenn Donaldson, which will release its latest album Acknowledge Kindness on April 24th. This song sounds like the Cure decided to experiment with shoegaze’s atmospheric sounds, but not the heavy distortion.

Swim Deep – Pieces of You. Speaking of shoegaze, this British band will drop its fifth album, Hum, in June, with this lead single sneaking in some jangle-pop melodies and a generally more upbeat vibe than you typically get from the shoegaze genre.

Puscifer – Pendulum. I always forget this is Maynard James Keenan’s side project because it’s so unlike anything from Tool or A Perfect Circle – and I was never a huge fan of either band. This is weird, but in a very good way, a minimalist art-rock track that showcases Keenan’s baritone.

King Tuff – Twisted on a Train. I’ve heard plenty of King Tuff’s music before but I believe this is his first appearance on one of my playlists. I just like the guitar riff.

Bedelia – Valley Sadness. This is the first single from Bedelia, a trio of members of Fleshwater, Ethel Cain, and other bands you’ve never heard of. It’s dream-pop, with spacey (fine, ethereal) vocals and a sweet melody through the chorus.

Lucia & the Best Boys feat. Lauren Mayberry – Lonely Girl. Including CHVRCHES singer Mayberry on your track isn’t a guarantee to get it on my playlist … but the song is actually pretty good even before her guest verse. There’s a little Wolf Alice here, and Lucia Fairfull’s vocals in the chorus remind me of Jehnny Beth from Savages.

Charli xcx feat. Sky Ferreira – Eyes of the World. I don’t know if Ferreira’s second album, Masochism, will ever see the light of day, but getting her on a Charli xcx track – especially one this searing – has to help at least generate some buzz.

Greg Foat, Jihad Darwish, Moses Boyd – Skipping Tones. This showed up on my Release Radar because of Boyd, a jazz drummer whose work I’ve appreciated for a decade; his “Shades of You” was my #1 song of 2020. He’s part of this new project with Foat, a jazz pianist and composer, and Darwish, a multi-instrumentalist whose talents include playing the double bass, sitar, and guitar. Their album Opening Time came out last August, but I only caught it because of the new version, Opening Time (Library Edits), that dropped last month.

1000 Rabbits – Virgin Soil. This British quintet, formerly known as Rabbitfoot (although Virgin Soil would be a better name than either of these), adds a violinist to the usual guitar-bass-keys-drums combo. Their first single starts with a quirky art-rock vibe before a sudden crescendo to a big post-punk finish.

Hen Ogledd – End of the rhythm. This Welsh experimental folk-rock quartet, which includes the solo artist Richard Dawson (not the Family Feud host, he’s dead), just released its first third album Discombobulated, which includes this clever offbeat track … and a nearly 20-minute song called “Clear pools.”

Angine de Poitrine – Fabienk. A reader asked last month if I’d heard this Québécois duo, who perform their experimental rock/jazz hybrid in disguises and under pseudonyms; the next day, they appeared on my Release Radar, because the algorithm is listening. I hear Battles, Altin Gün, even a little King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They’re called math rock and they’re using microtonal guitars, but it’s also just catchy.

Ezra Collective feat. Greentea Peng – Helicopters. HELP(2), the latest record to support the efforts of War Child International, features 23 songs from a broad array of artists, including Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines DC, Olivia Rodrigo, Depeche Mode, and Arlo Parks. This song is one of the better ones I’ve heard so far, although it’s mid as Ezra Collective tracks go.

plantoid – Parasite. More experimental jazz-rock, which seems to be the flavor of the month for February, here with a more pronounced rock guitar in front. This song actually has words, though.

Mateus Asato – Cryin’. Some fun instrumental guitar work from this Brazilian guitarist who Wikipedia tells me rose to fame through posting videos of his playing on Instagram.

Blackwater Holylight – How Will You Feel. I’m new to this doomgaze (is that a thing?) trio, but I’m into it – it’s dark and atmospheric, but rather than veering towards death metal with extreme vocals, they offer melody and the added instrumentation of Sunny Faris’ voice.

Green Carnation – Sanguis (Blood Ties). Prog metal from Norway with a dash of growled vocals in the last third of the track, which also has a Hammond organ and a very Creeper-esque melody and vibe throughout.

At the Gates – The Fever Mask. At the Gates are pioneers of the melodic death metal sound, with their 1995 pre-breakup album Slaughter of the Soul one of the pillars of the subgenre. I liked their earlier stuff more than their music since their return; singer Tomas Lindberg, who died in September of 2025 of cancer, always had a higher-pitched death growl style, but it became screechier as he got older (and maybe because of his illness). Their final album with Lindberg, The Ghost of a Future Dead, comes out on April 26. I’ll also mention Worm’s Necropalace as an incredible album of music that unfortunately gets too extreme for me in its vocals. Former Megadeth/Cacophony guitarist Marty Friedman guests on the album closer.

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→ March 7, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 3/7/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I ranked the top 30 prospects for this year’s MLB rule 4 draft, and ranked the top 20 rookies by potential MLB impact in 2026. I also posted two draft scouting notebooks, one on the loaded Globe Life Field last weekend that featured Roch Cholowsky, and one on potential top 5 pick Grady Emerson and some second-tier college guys.

At AV Club, I reviewed the two-player game The Yellow House and the capture-the-flag game Space Lion.

With the support of the Athletic, I’m now posting some short videos about prospects, the draft, etc. on Instagram and TikTok. You may also see these videos embedded in stories on the Athletic’s site. As always, my main social media outlet for links and commentary is Bluesky.

Next up for me is a new issue of my free email newsletter, plus my February music update.

And now, the links…

  • A crypto scammer known as Bitcoin Jesus lobbied Trump and got himself a sweetheart deal where he just had to pay the taxes he owed, neither pleading guilty nor spending a single day in prison.
  • A new cohort study found that people who very frequently (‘always’) listen to music have a lower risk of dementia, as do people who also play music. Excuse me while I go practice guitar…
  • Mike Piellucci wrote about the Rangers’ disgraceful decision to install a statue of a racist who fought integration in the 1950s and then refuse to answer questions about it. That’s the same team that refuses to host a Pride Night, the only MLB team not to do so, and one of two MLB teams without a paid maternity leave policy. They are who you thought they were.
  • A story in Quanta asks if Georg Cantor plagiarized or at least failed to credit Richard Dedekind for large parts of his 1874 letter on the different sizes of infinities and the existence of transcendental numbers. I find it odd that the story never mentions the name of Cantor’s paper, “On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers,” which demonstrated that the set of algebraic numbers is countable. (Thanks to reader Shaun P. for sending this along.)
  • An ICE hostage held at concentration camp in Florence, Arizona, died of an untreated tooth infection. And there’s a raging measles outbreak at an ICE concentration camp in Texas.
  • Meanwhile, Customs and Border Patrol dumped a nearly-blind man who didn’t speak English on the streets of Buffalo, where he was found dead outside a Tim Horton’s several days later. The agents didn’t take him home, and put him out without shoes.
  • The University of Mississippi fired an executive assistant who reposted a comment on the legacy of Charlie Kirk after his murder; faculty members in Oxford have testified that the firing “chilled free speech” on campus. She’s suing the school, saying her First Amendment rights were violated.
  • For example, a woman who went to a Tennessee hospital for a sterilization procedure was admitted, given an IV, and then told that the hospital wouldn’t do the procedure because the hospital’s Catholic Ethics Oversight Committee said they had “a duty to protect her sacred fertility.” Sounds like they set her up to waste her time, just like those pregnancy ‘crisis’ centers do.
  • Longtime essayist and blogger Michele Catalano re-shared her 2025 post about how gambling wrecked her family in the wake of the various infuriating news items about people betting on the Iran war and the use of nuclear weapons.
  • One new Kickstarter this week, for Kaelora, a set collection game from Tangerine Games.

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→ February 23, 2026
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For the Emperor.

For the Emperor is another tiny-box game from Allplay, part of their line of games in their smallest packages with a list price of $9. It’s a dueling/capture-the-flag game that adds the twist of limiting the number of cards players can play to each flag – but those numbers aren’t assigned to the flags at the start of the game, only appearing as the game progresses. It’s a very good idea that the game doesn’t fully execute.

Players in For the Emperor fight to control seven battlefields between them, with those battlefields all the same when the game begins. Each player has a deck of nine warrior cards, numbered 1 through 9, each with a unique power, with a hand size of three during the game. There are also banners, separate from the battlefield flags, numbered 1 through 4, that will help determine when flags are full. On your turn, you play one card to any flag that isn’t ‘full,’ then use its power if you so desire. After that, you check all flags to see if any of them has a number of warriors equal to the highest numbered banner that isn’t already on a battlefield. You’ll place banners on battlefields (flags) in descending order until you don’t have any more matches, which starts to clamp down on where you can place your cards – once a battlefield is full, meaning it has as many cards as the number on its banner, you can’t place there unless someone uses a power to pull a card back. You also can never have more than three battlefields with three or more cards.

The result of those rules is that your choices narrow quickly, making the game seem to speed up as it progresses. The beginning is a little slow, almost amorphous, because you’re just putting cards down without a ton of information to guide you – nothing’s restricted, you only have three random cards in your hand, your opponent doesn’t have many cards down either, so you both sort of throw stuff out there to maybe set up a better endgame situation given the cards you happened to draw. That makes the endgame more exciting because you’ll be resolving flags more quickly, but also means your moves later in the game are more obvious. There will usually be one clear, optimal move, as some flags will be out of reach even if they’re not resolved.

When all battlefields are full, you compare the strengths of the cards on each side, also counting any tokens you added as a result of card powers. Higher total strength wins the flag; whoever controls the majority of flags wins the game. My plays were all very close, and the game does truly play in less than 15 minutes.

The art is from the Japanese artist Sai Beppu, who’s also illustrated some other great Allplay games, as well as some other games that originated in Japan (Trio/Nana, No Loose Ends) or have Japanese themes. It’s probably the game’s strongest attribute, as the cards go beyond the usual Edo-inspired style of most Japanese-themed games, with more whimsical, cartoonish (in a good way!) drawings of the various warrior characters.

I filed a review to Paste for another capture-the-flag game, 2024’s Space Lion, that will run this week or next, and while they’re very different games in complexity and components, at the end of the day they’re both fundamentally like Air Land and Sea, which is itself a kicked-up version of Battle Line. You’re playing cards of varying powers to the flags between you, trying to control a majority of them or some other combination to win the game. I’m very interested in games that follow that template and add something new to it, but they have to flesh out that vision in the game play. For the Emperor does give that new twist, but the way it’s implemented here, it ends up feeling rote.

I’ll get to it soon, but of the Allplay Tiny Box series, my favorite so far is Soda Jerk, which truly lives up to its name – you win by being mean.

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→ February 21, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 2/21/26.

I was on PTO from Wednesday to Wednesday, so I haven’t written anything new on the Athletic in nearly two weeks. I’ll begin draft content this upcoming week.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed two smaller games with surprising depth and complexity for their size in Oddland and Neko Syndicate.

I appeared on Sox Machine to talk about the White Sox’ farm system and a little more about Colson Montgomery.

I sent out another edition of my free email newsletter on Friday.

And now, the links…

  • Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré has been all over the harms propagated by the AI sector and the amoral actors pushing the technology. Her latest piece looks at how ChatGPT is fueling and encouraging stalkers, because these LLMs are nothing more than compliment machines – they tell you what you want to hear. Well, that, and plagiarism.
  • The Heritage Foundation published a “roadmap” for the country that is really a playbook for a Christian nationalist future; Jessica Valenti exposes this under the headline “they’re coming for our daughters.” I can’t describe the Heritage Foundation’s worldview as anything other than sick. It is a diseased way of looking at women and humanity as a whole.
  • A brainwashed mother in South Carolina whose unvaccinated son is hospitalized with complications from the measles told The Independent that she still wouldn’t vaccinate him. There is no risk from vaccines even close to what that poor kid has already suffered, and what he’ll suffer in the future if he survives.
  • Also in Oklahoma, a man speaking out at Claremore City Council meeting against the construction of a new data center was arrested – not stopped, but fucking arrested – for going a few seconds over his allotted time.
  • Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) has taken up MTG’s mantle as the most overtly racist member of Congress; he has a challenger this fall in Democrat Jennifer Jenkins, who has a history of calling out Fine’s bigoted language and rhetoric. I knew Fine in college; I thought he was pretentious, but if he held these views back then I didn’t know it.
  • Harvard took a $350 million gift from Gerald Chan, the second-largest in the university’s history, and then named their school of public health after his father. Chan had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Harvard physics professor Lisa Randall is also all over the Epstein files. I’ve seen some comments that mere association with Epstein, especially for scientists (given his interest in patronizing scientific research), shouldn’t be a capital offense; I might be sympathetic to that perspective if any of these assholes owned up to schmoozing with the convicted sex offender before their names appeared.
  • At Salon, Andi Zeisler writes that academics who communicated and fraternized with Epstein may not be criminals, but they did so in pursuit of a shared vision of a world where only certain people (men, mostly) were worthy of attaining knowledge and the status that comes with it.
  • The same folks who were all about “free speech” and talking about opposing cancel culture have been dead silent as the Trump Administration attempts to quell free speech by demanding that social media platforms reveal the identities of users who criticized ICE. Maybe it wasn’t actually about free speech after all.
  • The delightful folks at Flatout Games have a new Kickstarter up for two smaller games, Forage and Honeypot.

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→ February 20, 2026
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It Was Just An Accident.

Part psychological thriller, part political satire, but entirely human at its core, It Was Just An Accident is the latest film from acclaimed director Jafar Panahi, who has continued to make movies despite decades of conflict with the Iranian dictatorship, which extended to a conviction and prison sentence in absentia just last December. The movie won this year’s Palme d’Or and landed nominations for Best Non-English Language/International Film at the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and, like several of his prior films, was made without the permission of the theocrats in Tehran. (You can rent it on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

It Was Just An Accident begins with a coincidence: a man is driving home at night on an unlit road with his wife and daughter in the car when he hits an animal, probably a dog, and damages the car. He pulls into the first garage he finds, where a mechanic, Vahid, recognizes the man as his torturer from an Iranian prison. He never saw the man’s face, but knows the squeaking sound of the man’s prosthetic leg. He follows them home, returns the next day, knocks the man out, and kidnaps him, nearly killing him before the man pleads that Vahid is mistaken. Vahid then contacts other former prisoners to see if they can confirm that the man is indeed their captor, Eqbal, also known as Peg Leg, leading to a very darkly comic sequence of events that has six people traveling around in a van, arguing about what to do with the guy who might have destroyed all of their lives.

The plot is secondary to the dialogue and the gamut of emotions it reveals; each of the four former prisoners has a different perspective on how to handle maybe-Eqbal, from the volatile Hamid, who just wants to kill the guy, to the more measured Shiva, who is just as angry as the rest of them but seems to understand that his death won’t solve anything. Instead, the story is the canvas on which Panahi can paint his characters, with enough narrative greed to keep up the pace during the stretches where the characters are just driving around and talking.

For most of its running time, It Was Just An Accident is close to perfect, maintaining an ideal level of tension, including the core mystery of whether the guy is actually Peg Leg, while allowing each of the characters to expostulate with the others enough to give the audience a sense of how the government’s persecution of its enemies has infected all of Iranian society. These four survivors are not visibly wounded; the irony is that the only injured person in the van is the suspected torturer, not his victims. Yet they are all scarred from their experiences in prison, where they were thrown after protesting against economic hardships – another coincidence, as the country is currently engulfed in similar protests, with prices rising and the Iranian rial crashing to record lows. How can they simply go about their lives after the trauma they endured, and now with the added knowledge that the man who tortured them, threatened to kill them, may have even raped one of them, is walking around scot-free?

The movie doesn’t quite stick its landing, unfortunately, as another coincidence of sorts, or at least an unrelated event, crops up that forces the motley crew to make some sort of decision, although it does also allow Panahi to further demonstrate the deep humanity of these people and further contrast them to the regime that would imprison or kill them on the slightest pretense. Once that’s resolved, we get to the climax, with its Shakespearean tone and series of monologues, before a brief final scene that recalls the perfection of the earlier parts of the film.

I’ve only seen three of the Best Picture nominees so far, but I’d put this over Train Dreams and behind Sinners and One Battle After Another. It’s unlikely to win for Best International Feature, as two of its competitors, Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent, scored Best Picture nods, but I wonder if it has a slight chance in its other category, Best Original Screenplay, which seems to be a way to honor a film that’s not going to win anything else, at least about half the time in recent years.

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