Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I have a top 50 pro prospect rankings update slated for Monday the 3^rd.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game French Quarter, from the designers of Three Sisters and Fleet: the Dice Game. I think it’s fantastic, although it’s harder than any of their previous games to play well.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and somewhere in the 2:30 pm show Unpacked for one more segment. We’ll discuss some of my new rankings on the first show and have an interview with Colt Emerson lined up.

A million bonus points if you know what today is, by the way. I’ll accept two answers, although one is more obvious than the other.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: You’ve probably seen this Guardian longread on the so-called “pro-natalist” family who, among other things, think nothing of physically abusing their children in the name of “discipline.” My issue with the piece is this: The parents claim that their parenting is “evidence-based,” yet they then do many things, including smacking their children, that are unequivocally contrary to all available evidence – and the piece’s author does not push back in any way. That is your job as a journalist.

• This New York Times retrospective on Cass Elliot and the vicious hoax about how she died is an empathetic and thoughtful look at a major figure in pop music history who was, unfortunately, best remembered for that false rumor.

• WIRED has the story of Jane Willenbring, the victim of sexual harassment by disgraced Professor David Marchant while they worked in Antarctica, whose willingness to come forward led to Marchant’s firing and the renaming of the glacier that once bore his name.

• Two stories on the 19^th century state of Mississippi: In DeSoto County, a hospital transfers some patients to jail while they await mental health treatment, with the results you would expect. Meanwhile, Mississippi Today also obtained transcripts of WhatsApp messages from the soi-disant “Goon Squad” of racist, abusive cops who terrorized a central Mississippi County – including torturing two Black men and shooting one in the face – for a generation.

• A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found a strong positive correlation between public school expenditures and Black student achievement during school and later in life. They used data from that same backwards country of Mississippi, which has been busy trying to find ways to spend less on education.

• A new paper in Nature shows how researchers used machine learning to help explain how insect wing hinges work. We know of four separate times when a species has developed the ability to fly, but insects are the only case where flight evolved without muscles or nerves in the wings.

• Quanta has the story of two groups of physicists using machine-learning to try to understand the nature of the ‘missing’ dimensions required by superstring theory.

• Splinter’s Jim Vorel looks at the slow death of QAnon and the even more virulent strains that have replaced it. There’s a strong sense of “When Prophecy Fails” here – when people realized they believed in a con, they don’t just come to their senses; they look for another con to believe.

• Greenpeace sided with the anti-science crowd and blocked the introduction of the nutritious Golden Rice variety into the Philippines, claiming, among other things, a “human health risk” that has never been demonstrated with any genetically-modified foodstuff.

• A nurse at NYU’s Langone Health hospital mentioned the genocide in Gaza during her speech accepting an award for her compassion in caring for mothers who’d lost their babies. The hospital fired her. They’ve said she was warned before “not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace.” The hospital took its name from Republican billionaire donor Kenneth Langone, who has previously compared critics of rising income inequality to Nazis.

• UC-Irvine law professor David Kaye writes in the New York Times that we should allow the International Criminal Court to do its job after the Court announced charges against the leaders of Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The U.S. has remained outside of the ICC for twenty years, even though we could do the most good by accepting its tenets and supporting its efforts to pursue war-crimes charges – as we have asked the ICC to do against Vladimir Putin.

• Many students walked out of Harvard’s commencement last week, spurred by the University’s corporate board’s decision to overrule a faculty vote that would have allowed 13 students to graduate after they’d been suspended for their actions in the campus protests over the Israeli war on Gaza.

• Even before Friday’s verdict, Greg Sargent noted that Trump’s anti-media rhetoric had turned more dangerous with the convicted felon’s apparent endorsement of a rant about how he’ll “get rid of all you fucking liberals.”

• The Washington Post sat on the story of Samuel Alito hanging pro-insurrection and pro-nationalist flags at his house for several years. The New York Times has been reporting on the story now, including this very measured piece on what seems to have happened, including disputes over the order of some of the events in the neighborhood dispute.

• The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina is a QAnon-touting, Holocaust-denying, antisemitic, anti-LGBT conspiracy theorist. Will he cost Trump a swing state he won in 2020?

• A passenger on a United flight into Fresno this week has tested positive for measles. This should be a criminal offense – they put many, many other people at risk through their actions, like driving drunk.

• Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times that now Democrats are just as bad at Republicans in putting political concerns over science, as Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) continues his sham hearings promoting the debunked lab-leak hypothesis.

• RFK Jr.’s turn into vaccine disinformation came after he spoke to and then totally ignored Dr. Paul Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine.

• Pope Francis apologized for using the Italian equivalent of the f-slur and saying there was too much of that in the priesthood when arguing against allowing celibate gay men to take orders. I think there’s too much emphasis here on the word choice and nowhere near enough on pretty much everything that lies behind it.

• Two board game Kickstarters of note this week: 25^th Century Games (who published French Quarter) just put up a new crowdfunding effort for a four-pack of smaller games that you can back as a bundle or individually.

• Luthier is the latest complex game from Paverson Games, publisher of last year’s excellent heavy game Distilled. There’s a full site up for the game but the crowdfunding link isn’t open yet. I saw Luthier at PAX Unplugged; it’s gorgeous and huge, but my guess is it’s too long a game for my personal tastes and attention span.