Two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week – one just on Red Sox prospects I saw recently, including their top 3 prospects plus 18-year-old Franklin Arias; and another on prospects from several other orgs, including Jarlin Susana (Nats), Vance Honeycutt (O’s), and Parker Messick/C.J. Kayfus (Guardians). This past week’s schedule really did me no favors, unfortunately, and nearly all of the teams close to me missed the playoffs.

At Paste, right at the end of August I had a review of the game Rock Hard 1977, designed by former Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs (Fox); and a related ranking of the five best thematic games I’ve played.

And now, the links…

• Louisiana hospitals are pulling misoprostol, a life-saving medication used in cases of post-partum hemorrhaging, off emergency response carts because of evangelicals’ control of the state’s government. A new law in the state reclassified the drug as a Schedule IV controlled dangerous substance, which is not even remotely backed by evidence.

• The public interest group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with a retired federal judge and two constitutional lawyers, filed a brief arguing that Judge Aileen Cannon should be reversed and removed from the case involving criminal charges against Donald Trump. I doubt this goes anywhere in any time to matter, though.

• After the 2020 election and the January 6^th insurrection, several big tech firms kicked Trump off their platforms and major media outlets appeared at least to push back on his constant falsehoods, but those guardrails are largely gone as those for-profit entities see dollars in a competitive race.

• Michael Hiltzik isn’t in that camp: he calls out Trump’s blatant lying and pandering to transphobes after the convicted felon lied in an interview with a co-founder of the hate group Moms for Liberty about schools essentially kidnapping kids and turning them trans.

• By now you’ve probably seen that right-wing media platform Tenet Media was funded by the Russian-owned media firm RT to spread pro-Russian propaganda and interfere with U.S. elections. Tenet’s podcast/video hosts include(d) Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin. Here’s the BBC with more, and Matt Gertz offering commentary where he points out that the hosts who claim they were unwitting “victims” have no one to blame but themselves, citing Pool’s video rant on how Ukraine was “the enemy of” the United States.

• Donald Trump shared a post from a Twitter account that has denied the Holocaust and said that Hitler was right, as well as routinely using the n-word and claiming that Jews were behind 9/11.

• Trump is now losing ground in states where he was competitive or safely in the lead, including New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Florida.

• Trump’s rants, online and in rare interviews, are growing increasingly incoherent, so why does the mainstream media “sanewash” them for him? Use his own words and let readers or viewers judge, rather than making these irrational comments sound normal.
  
• Haaretz called out Tucker Carlson for hosting a Holocaust denier on his Twitter video show, and Elon Musk for amplifying him.

• Vaccine opt-outs continue to climb in Florida schools, including life-saving vaccines like MMR and TDaP. The inevitable outcome of this is kids hospitalized or killed by ignorance, made possible by the state’s governor and surgeon general coming out strongly against vaccinations.

• A Minnesota police officer with a long history of driving misconduct, including causing four crashes while on duty and driving 135 mph in a 55 mph zone without using his siren or lights, hit another car while driving 83 mph, killing an 18-year-old passenger. Shane Roper had been suspended twice for his driving but was still on the force and allowed to drive a police car.

• Author Kurt Anderson wrote that while they were in college together, RFK Jr. sold him cocaine, which doesn’t exactly dovetail with Trump’s sort-of policy intention to execute drug dealers.

• Stanford has gutted its creative writing program, which was founded in 1946 by Wallace Stegner, terminating the current positions of 23 of its lecturers and moving them to short-term contracts.

• 25^th Century Games has a new Kickstarter up for a fresh printing of their new edition of the Reiner Knizia game Ra, along with a new game from Knizia called Ratzia.