artificial intelligence

September 19, 2026 · 4 comments

Stick to baseball, 9/19/26.

This week at the Athletic, I did my annual column on players I was wrong about, previewed the Arizona Fall League rosters, and held a live Q&A on Thursday.

I’m due for another issue my free email newsletter this week. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok. I’d love to hear any feedback on my videos on the latter two so far, particularly around their length.

And now, the links…

One of the best and most horrifying longreads of the year comes from WIRED as they explain the “burnerverse,” where anonymous accounts on X trade nonconsensual intimate videos and images, and then try to ruin the subjects’ lives by doxing them and contacting family and friends. The story centers on University of Florida student Maddie Kowalski, who is fighting back with lawsuits even in the face of a tepid police response (two of her accused tormentors remain on campus). One of the other burner accounts unveiled here was of Jacob Gomberg, a pitcher at Indiana University; I reached out to their Athletics Department and received this comment: “Yesterday we were made aware of charges filed against Jacob Gomberg in Alachua County, Florida. We take these allegations very seriously and promptly turned the matter over to the University’s Office of Civil Rights Compliance who will continue to gather information, assess the matter, and determine any next steps.”

Bloomberg exposes how multiple intelligence and human failures led the United States to bomb an Iranian school for girls, killing 123 children and at least 27 more people. One of the many errors came from overreliance on Palantir’s Maven AI system. This all comes days after a United Nations committee found evidence that the U.S. committed a war crime in doing so.

Futurism investigates an AI slop empire that buys up established blogs, fires everyone, and posts AI-generated content, often under fraudulent bios of fake authors, gaming search engine results to crowd out actual human-written content.

Robert Kraft claims his donations have helped the Palestinian people, but he’s actually donated to AIPAC and Friends of the IDF.

Hackers stole a Flock camera, extracted its software, and revealed how it collects data on cars and people.

Four measles deaths so far in Pennsylvania, while the vaccine-denial crowd is busy trying to claim that none of those were actually due to measles. That’s four preventable deaths due entirely to the efforts of the misinformation crowd that has also seized power in the Republican Party.

Sen. Katie Britt praised Trump’s tariffs in public, but The Wall Street Journal reveals that she worked to secure exemptions for constituents in private.

Nate Hochman lost his job on the DeSantis campaign in 2023 when he shared a video showing a sonnenrad, a Nazi symbol containing a swastika. Now he’s deputy director of the State Department’s policy planning office.

Michael Rawson marched with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, called for gay people to be put to death, and worked with the bigoted secessionist group the League of the South. He’s also set to win Florida’s 10^th district for the State House, given how conservative the district is. Here’s his Democratic opponent’s site.

Meanwhile, Thomas Ross, the Republican candidate for MO-161, was arrested and charged with attempting to plant drugs on his primary opponent. He won the primary by 31 votes, but has since withdrawn, allowing the party to replace him with Louise Secker, the woman he tried to frame.

Scientist Bob Garry fought lab-leak conspiracy theorists and put himself at risk working on some of the world’s deadliest virus, but the Trump Administration wants to shut him and similar research efforts down. It’s fine, I’m sure there isn’t another potential pandemic around the corner.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding posted this video explaining the apartheid highway system in Palestine, where Israel limits who can use what roads based on ethnic origin and legal status.

It looks like Tampa and the Rays did something very sketchy about a $22 million fund that should have gone to community improvement projects.

Trump’s plan to ban media outlets he doesn’t like from the White House led to criticism from some of his own more ardent supporters.

Three new board game Kickstarters this week: Perennial, the latest game from Flatout Games, by the designer of Knitting Circle and Pirates of the High Teas.

Kart, a tabletop racing game from Leder Games, publishers of Root, Fort, and Oath.

Caravanserai, a family-level resource management game, which first came out in 2024 from a Hungarian publisher and will get its first full English-language release next year.

Tagged artificial intelligence, baseball, board game news, first amendment, florida, harassment, iran, israel, links, longreads, measles, missouri, palestine, privacy, stadium scams, stick to baseball, vaccines, white nationalism

September 12, 2026 · 4 comments

Stick to baseball, 9/12/26.

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tagged artificial intelligence, baseball, board game news, health, highly recommended, links, longreads, palestine, stick to baseball, the swamp, trans rights, vaccines

September 5, 2026 · 22 comments

Stick to baseball, 9/5/26.

Over on the Athletic this week, I looked at nine September(ish) callups of note; posted a minor-league scouting notebook on Jarlin Susana, Joseph Dzierwa, and other O’s and Nats prospects; and posted a draft scouting notebook covering both the PG All-American and Under Armour games.

I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter this week. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok, and posted a new video to the latter two sites this week about the top three prospects recalled in the last week.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Texas Monthly goes very long on the war over the Rio Grande River’s water, with the potential for taps to run dry as early as next year. This is Pulitzer-worthy material.

ProPublica exposes how Texas AG and Senate candidate Ken Paxton (R) may be violating federal ethics laws. It also sounds like he may be committing mortgage fraud, too?

Semafor exposes the rise of paid actors using AI scripts in unlabeled and often misleading videos that push outrage bait, often targeted at specific Democratic politicians and candidates, across social media.

The Trump Administration continues to weaponize the IRS to attack its enemies, threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of six universities if they don’t bend the knee to his whites-first policies.

ICE gave a 20-year-old Haitian immigrant and Wright State student, here legally, an ankle monitor. He killed himself a few days later. I’m unclear whose interests were served here.

Texas Monthly also has the scoop on TCU revoking the Star-Telegram’s media credentials for (checks notes) reporting on something that happened in TCU’s locker room. I didn’t know frogs were that petty.

Dan Ariely, the best-selling author of Predictably Irrational and the inspiration for the network procedural Irrational, is facing a new round of allegations of research fraud after a review of the data used for a major 2002 paper on procrastination found evidence of fabrication.

A Yale study estimates that universal health care in the United States would save 114,000 lives and $1 trillion every year. So why is the mere suggestion of it supposed to be some sort of political poison?

NPR asks what happened to the U.S. campaign to end child marriage? The answer is “Republicans.” And, more specifically, evangelical Christianity’s hold on the party.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison forced out a professor who (allegedly) slept with and harassed some of his students, so of course Arizona State welcomed him with open arms.

A German court has found that the AI music software Suno is basically a big plagiarism engine, and now Jason Isbell and other U.S. musicians have filed a suit of their own, this time charging Suno with unlicensed imitation of their voices rather than straight copyright infringement. And now the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada is suing Suno too.

Bari Weiss’ CBS News pushed out a story that appeared to tie Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 attacks.

California’s legislature passed a bill designed to support – or even save – community news outlets through public investment.

The police chief in Senatobia, Mississippi, where an officer shot and killed a 1-year-old while pursuing a woman suspected of shoplifting, has been fired. Harold Vanderford had also used racist slurs about Black people in text messages, and tried to resign before he was fired. Maybe Arizona State will hire him?

Israeli settlers murdered two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank.

The widow of a U.S. airman killed in Trump’s illegal war on Iran had to go to social media to get death benefits because, in her words, the military claimed it wasn’t a war, so she wasn’t entitled to the benefits that accrue to the surviving spouse when a soldier is killed during a war.

The United States was the only nation to vote against a UN resolution to change its official map to one that reflects Africa’s true size.

Tagged arizona, artificial intelligence, california, climate change, environment, frauds, harvard, israel, links, longreads, metoo, michigan, palestine, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

August 22, 2026 · 1 comment

Stick to baseball, 8/22/26.

My only piece at Athletic this week was a contribution to this news story on Kade Anderon’s imminent promotion, although I did get to some games and will be back to writing scouting notebooks next week when I get to at least one more.

I appeared on NBC News to talk about Tommy John’s legacy, and on Bleed Dodger Blue to talk about the Dodgers’ farm system and recent trade for Tarik Skubal.

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

And now, the links…

The New Yorker looks at the legacy of Nobel Prize winner Carleton Gadjusek, who won the award in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the brain-wasting prion disease kuru, but also used his research trips to find young boys to bring back to the U.S. so he could molest them.

Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré explains the growing problem of teenaged boys using pervert glasses like Meta’s to film themselves harassing classmates without consent.

The Trump Administration is planning to add new concentration camps to hold up to 3000 immigrant children. Meanwhile, the hostages at one ICE camp in Tacoma are on another hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions there.

ICE agents are asking airline employees to help them kidnap people. Some of those employees are fighting back. You have no obligation to help ICE.

ICE agents also detained the Padres’ minor-league catching coordinator, claiming he had remained in the country illegally after his work visa expired. I’ll be very curious to see how MLB responds to this, given their obeisance to this Administration and its ideas on many other fronts.

Israel’s National Security Minister said that the country should be killing 30 to 40 Palestinians every night in Gaza.

Israel finally admitted that they killed 5-year-old Hind Rajab and the emergency responders trying to save her from the car where she was trapped with her dead family members, as they opened an investigation into the killings. However, Israel refuses to open a similar investigation into the IDF’s killing of a World Central Kitchen aid worker in 2024.

Iowa State Rep. Shannon Lundgren (R) used her official stationery to write a letter vouching for the character of a man convicted for at least the second time of sexually abusing a minor.

Noted Islamophobe Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) was caught on camera going through the mailbox of a voter in his district, a violation of federal law.

In a debate ahead of a runoff election for the Republican nomination, Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) couldn’t answer a basic question about Taiwan and China.

The debunked lab-leak hypothesis is making the rounds yet again. Dr. Philip Markolin wrote about the harm mainstream media do by platforming it. This came the same week a preprint – a paper that has not been peer-reviewed, so keep in mind it is merely preliminary – appeared that showed that coronaviruses can naturally evolve furin cleavage sites like the one that made SARS-CoV-2 so dangerous.

404 Media dropped a tracker in shipment of rare books to see which AI company bought it. The answer was Amazon, which then destroyed the books after scanning them.

Also from 404 Media, a new study shows Twitter’s algorithm feeds you more ragebait and impacts Democrats more than Republicans, although I think the latter is just a function of the former – the current Republican platform is very driven by the politics of rage.

Delaware’s Kent County, the purple county between New Castle (blue) and Sussex (red, except for the beaches), has a measles outbreak with at least six cases already. Measles is entirely preventable with the safe MMR vaccine, no matter what the White House claims.

And Arizona parents are skipping vaccinations for their kids at a record rate, even as measles surges there too. In eight to ten years, we’re going to have a slew of deaths from SSPE that would never have happened had the anti-vaccine movement not gotten into this position of power.

Scientific American dives into what really happened to the indigenous people of Easter Island, questioning a long-held hypothesis that they died out because they didn’t manage their limited natural resources prudently.

I have only the faintest sense of who Hasan Piker is, other than that he has a scary-sounding name that right-wing outlets are trying to wield against Democrats, but it sounds like he might sue Scott Jennings and Salem Media for defamation.

Some board game kickstarters of note: Whisperwood is a sprawling bag-building game that can take up to 3.5 hours, to be published by Cardboard Alchemy (Flamecraft).

A new-to-me publisher called Play for Keeps has a Kickstarter effort up for new editions of three games: Mexica, Bridges of Shangri-La, and Reel Rivals (fka El Caballero).

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, coronavirus, florida, immigration, iowa, links, longreads, science, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, technology, vaccines

August 8, 2026 · 8 comments

Stick to baseball, 8/8/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic, here are all of my trade deadline writeups, in chronological order:

I went to Gen Con, the largest board game convention in North America, last week, and continued my tradition of writing it up with the ten best new games of the convention and a rundown of everything else I saw.

My next stop is my free email newsletter.

You can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

Neko Case wrote about her experience of being sexually harassed by an unnamed musician who is pretty clearly the late Glen Hansard.

Nine more women came forward to accuse Jared Leto of sexual misconduct.

It’s hardly news any more, but here’s the Mother Jones exposé on the horrifying abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller (R), whom Mike Johnson and Donald Trump can’t be bothered to condemn.

Israel committed a war crime by murdering a Lebanese journalist, according to three independent NGOs. The man leading Israel in its illegal actions, including its genocidal attack on Gaza, is more upset that NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for the U.S. to enforce the ICC’s arrest warrant.

Women accounted for one hundred percent of the decline in the U.S. labor force in July. That’s 165,000 fewer women in the labor force just in the last month. On the year, twice as many women have left the labor force in the U.S. as men. And it’s entirely the doing of this Administration.

ICE deported a Guatemalan man who was living and working in Overland, Missouri, last year, leaving his pregnant wife alone in the U.S. Earlier this year, she returned to Guatemala with their child to be with him. The couple were found dead last month, bound and shot, with their 14-month-old daughter crying next to them.

Wisconsin Public Radio has a measured profile of Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong (D), who’s been hit with the “socialist” tag along with some not-subtle misogynistic and racist propaganda. The piece delves into the Democratic establishment’s fear of progressive candidates and willingness to sabotage their own party to try to prevent progressives from winning.

Four indie music publications were gutted by layoffs this week, including Brooklyn Vegan, which I’ve read on and off for longer than I can remember. The sites are owned by Live Nation’s Veeps, which was founded and is still partly owned by the poseur-punk band Good Charlotte, which has said nothing about the mass firings.

On soi-disant Christian evangelists preaching on airplanes. Don’t do this, although if you’re here, I doubt the thought ever crossed your mind.

Austin police shot and killed an unarmed Black 17-year-old named Anthoneil Williams, and the Police Chief claims it was “suicide by cop.” How convenient for them.

Jamelle Bouie asks why we tolerate Elon Musk’s overtly racist commentary. The Times, which employs me and Bouie, was still advertising on Twitter, the last time I checked.

Measles cases in the U.S. have now hit a 35-year high. Vaccinate your kids and ostracize anyone who won’t.

I agree with this editorial by Aftermath founder Luke Plunkett that many consumers will avoid brands that use obvious AI slop in their ads, but I was looking for some evidence to back up the claims. FWIW, Jeep’s been running commercials with AI slop since at least the NFL playoffs.

AI firms’ large language models keep going “rogue.” (I’d argue they do exactly what they are designed to do.) So who’s responsible when an LLM does something illegal? How could it be anyone other than the company that made them?

Mathematics is unusual among STEM research fields in that the youngest practitioners often do the best work. Bucking that trend is 99-year-old Joan Birman, who joined two (younger) colleagues in publishing the solution to a decades-old problem called the Burau representation, referring to whether matrices corresponding to four-strand braids are ‘faithful.’

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., has reached its lowest recorded level ever.

My friend Justin Bell wrote on BoardGameGeek about how the people are what make Gen Con special. I agree completely.

I missed this when it came out in May, but Board Game Wire had a lovely piece about me and the shuttering of Paste/AV Club’s Games section. I’ve been surprised and gratified by the support I’ve gotten within the board gaming space for my writing, and it’s encouraged me to kick it up a notch over here and make this space a little more professional on all counts.

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, immigration, israel, links, math, measles, metoo, police, religion, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, wisconsin

July 11, 2026 · 7 comments

Stick to baseball, 7/11/26.

Happy Draft Day! I posted my final mock draft on Friday and held a Q&A to answer your questions about it, after posting one on Monday and holding a Q&A that afternoon. I posted my final Big Board of the top 100 prospects in the draft class, ss well as some scouting reports on prospects beyond the top 100 who will probably still be drafted. I also previewed the Futures Game rosters, and posted a scouting notebook on Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, and Mets prospects.

I appeared on KIRO-Seattle to talk Mariners prospects and the trade deadline, and on The Score Chicago to talk about the draft and some big-picture baseball questions.

I’ll send another issue of my free email newsletter once I clear the draft stuff. You can also find me on Bluesky – I’m only posting links on X at this point, not replying to anything and not allowing new followers – and I continue to be more active on Instagram and TikTok.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This Vulture story by Irin Carmon on Today’s handling of the Nancy Guthrie story, including the environment behind the scenes and the difficult questions the show has had to face, is absolutely fantastic. I can’t even do it justice in a sentence or two here.

America is entering a postliterate age, as succeeding generations read less and comprehend less of what they read, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Those of us who do still read account for an increasing share of books purchased in what Horowitch refers to as a “niche hobby.”

America is self-destructing, writes Stephen Marche in The Guardian, arguing that this was written in our founding. I loved the line “Donald Trump is the ultimate nostalgia act.”

RFK Jr.’s vaccine-denial organization Children’s Health Defense helped Andrea Shaw file a lawsuit claiming that her twins died from being vaccinated, but she’s now been arrested on charges that she murdered them. That’s right: Children’s Health Defense is supporting a child murderer. Here’s a local story on the case.

The University of Tennessee will pay $1.9 million to a professor the school fired over her comments in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. Good for her. I hope the taxpayers of Tennessee think this was worth it!

In Springfield, Ohio, the subject of Republican lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, a Haitian man was shot in the head while taking his children to church.

Florida is the new Texas: Gov. Ron DeSantis is killing prisoners at an unprecedented rate, signing death warrants and leading to the state’s highest execution levels ever. Two of every five U.S. prisoners put to death were killed by Florida.

A professor at Brown University made his midterm exams take-home, and believed that nearly all of his students cheated by using AI, so he switched the final exam to in-class and everyone’s grades plummeted.

A day before Trump announced his first tariff ‘pause’, he made 327 stock trades that he didn’t disclose until this past week, almost 15 months later. Prior to 2016, this would have been immediate grounds for impeachment.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is running for the Senate seat held by Jon Ossoff, spent $400,000 in taxpayer money to make campaign ads, which is illegal. That’s in Judd Legum’s Popular.info newsletter; I see zero mainstream coverage of what sure seems like misuse of taxpayer funds.

A New York resident sent an email to the head of ICE. DHS agents tracked him down and threatened him. He’s suing with the help of FIRE, arguing that his First Amendment rights have been violated.

And Florida International University is also ignoring the First Amendment, threatening to withhold the diplomas of students who silently protested ICE’s presence on campus unless those students apologize on video.

Sticking with Florida, a cop there became obsessed with a woman he met on a TV shoot and used license-plate readers to stalk her around the state, nearly causing a head-on collision as he raced to accost her.

In The American Prospect, David Dayen writes that Maine Democrats should hold a “lighthouse primary” – essentially a caucus – to pick a new candidate whenever Graham Platner gives up the ghost.

Elie Mystal writes in The Nation how SCOTUS’ anti-trans ruling isn’t just about sports, but denying that trans people are entitled to equal rights.

The U.S. District Court judges of the Western Washington District wrote an editorial about how tyranny threatens an independent judiciary, whether it’s threats of violence against jurists on the bench or claims that someone is above the law entirely.

How the love affair between the Algerian national team and the people of Lawrence, Kansas, became one of the best stories of this year’s World Cup – that is, before the refs and the President ruined everything.

I’ve seen very little news coverage of the civil war in Sudan – maybe because we’re busy starting wars or prolonging those of other countries – but there’s a massive humanitarian crisis about to happen in the Sudanese city of El Obeid, with the potential for another massacre by the RSF militia.

There’s an outbreak of the Marburg virus, a filovirus that causes hemorrhagic fevers like the Ebola virus does, in Uganda.

This NPR piece on creative ways to use up leftovers (and stop wasting food) was both validating – fried rice is a go-to for us – and inspiring.

Also in The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber examines Lizzo’s latest album flopping and how easy it’s become to fall into the “Khia Asylum.” I liked Lizzo’s 2022 album Special, and didn’t even realize she’d released a new one, Bitch, until I saw this story.

Scientists have found evidence of a new chemical compound on Pluto and Titan. I propose they call it “unobtainium.”

Another week, another story of AI hallucinations: A ProPublica reporter found an AI-generated website for a shell company that fooled Google’s AI overviews into thinking the company was real.

Egypt and Turkey turned away a cruise ship for LGBTQ+ folks on ‘morality’ grounds. Which makes them just like Texas!

So many Kickstarters for interesting board games: Ringyo, the latest game from the publishers of Distilled and Luthier. It’s a simultaneous worker-placement game and is in beta on Board Game Arena.

A three-in-one from Allplay that includes Kabuto Sumo Dice, IMPS, and Wild Berries.

The Isle of Penguins, the latest game from the designer/publisher of The Isle of Cats and its various spinoffs.
Galileo’s Truth, from two of the designers of Egizia (one of the best complex games ever), Lorenzo il Magnifico, and Coimbra.

Tagged africa, artificial intelligence, astronomy, board game news, death penalty, first amendment, florida, georgia, health, immigration, links, longreads, Music, ohio, scotus, soccer, stick to baseball, tennessee, the swamp, trans rights, vaccines

June 20, 2026 · 1 comment

Stick to baseball, 6/20/26.

Four new posts this week at the Athletic: How the White Sox helped Jacob Gonzalez get his groove back, my redraft of the 2016 draft class, my look at all of the first-round misses from that year (and there were so, so many), and a story on Cubs pitcher Matthew Boyd’s efforts to help Ugandan kids and his collaboration with Connect Roasters on a new coffee release. (Full disclosure: Connect sent me a bag of Hope Blend, and has sent me other coffees to try in the past as well.)

You can sign up for my free email newsletter. You can find me on Bluesky for text-based commentary and links, and TikTok and Instagram for short videos, mostly on baseball.

Longreads first: All this talk about putting some kind of colony on Mars ignores the reality that it’s an unbelievably hostile environment for life, writes Henry Wismayer in the Berggruen Institute’s magazine, No?ma.
The Atlantic discovered that popular AI song-generating agents were trained on millions of stolen copyrighted tracks. Make ‘em pay.
The kleptocracy in Washington knows no bounds: Markwayne Mullin, now head of Homeland Security, has fought any regulation or warnings about the dangers of kratom, because he’s invested $1 million in a kratom company. Kratom has two psychoactive compounds and can cause liver toxicity, but because it’s a “supplement” it’s basically unregulated.
Also in The Atlantic, Adam Serwer points out that the war on the abortion pill shows that the whole “leave abortion up to the states” story was just another lie.
Trump and his cronies debated ending the Constitutional right of habeus corpus for people arrested as potentially undocumented immigrants.
One common claim from creationists and other evolution deniers is that humans are some sort of end point in the process of evolution. This is disproven by copious evidence that humans are still evolving.
The Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a system of ocean currents that moves heat around the Atlantic ocean, may be heading towards collapse due to anthropogenic climate change. The UK and EU are threatening to cut funding that helps monitor it.
A cop responding to a shoplifting incident shot into a car and killed a one-year-old boy, even though the officer knew the child was in the vehicle. I am struggling to understand why any shoplifting claim would provoke the use of a firearm. The officer has since been placed on administrative leave, but we all know that’s a temporary and often worthless response.
The high school group that had sued to block Idaho’s anti-trans bathroom bill dropped its case after one of the students involved took their own life. A few days later, a federal judge blocked the law. These bills/laws do absolutely nothing except put targets on trans people. There is zero evidence that they’re addressing an actual problem in child safety.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), a Trump toady and election denier, pointed a gun at his ex-wife and threw scalding water at her, according to police audio. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, is the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno, and she has accused Miller of physical abuse, while he’s responded by calling her crazy. He’s opposed this year by union ironworker Brian Poindexter.
Oklahoma regulators approved a new mine that will threaten a fragile aquifer, because in Oklahoma, profits are more important than clean water!
The Frontier obtained contracts various Oklahoma cities and towns signed with data centers, often with NDAs that prevent officials there from even acknowledging the deals’ existence.
Texas’ state Board of Education is going to vote on whether to teach second graders the story of the “Black Robe Regiment” Christians who did not actually help lead the American Revolution. It’s just not true.
The University of Texas used specious logic to block a fund-raising festival for the public-radio station KUT, then fired the station manager when she put the lie to their claims.
The son of Sen. Kristin Gillenbrand (D-NY) just graduated from college and then landed $30 million in investment in his crypto-derivatives startup. I’m sure there’s no connection.

Tagged abortion, artificial intelligence, climate change, evolution, idaho, links, longreads, mars, ohio, oklahoma, police, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trans rights

June 6, 2026 · No comments yet

Stick to baseball, 6/6/26.

Quirky timing this week led to just one post for subscribers to the Athletic, a scouting notebook on Gage Wood, Gavin Fien, Eli Willits, and some other Nats/Orioles prospects. I’ve got at least two already on the docket for this upcoming week.

I appeared on the Rates & Barrels podcast to talk about my top 50 prospects, which you can get on Apple, Youtube, or directly on our site.

My free email newsletter is still free and still infrequent. I also posted a new video about hitting 20 years as a full-time baseball writer to Instagram and TikTok.

Longreads first: Old Apostolic Lutheran Church leaders have ignored child sex abuse within its ranks for generations, and refused to report these crimes to the police, according to a new report from ProPublica. Church teachings also tell victims that they can’t speak about the crimes against them once the abuser has been “forgiven.” Excuse me if I find it impossible to distinguish this from a cult.

Companies that “donated” to Trump’s ballroom boondoggle subsequently took home over $50 billion in government contracts, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The New Yorker exposes how private prisons increase their profits by starving inmates.

TechCrunch writer and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick writes about how decentralization is one way to combat the enshittification that has ruined the major tech services over the last fiteen years, notably social media.

In their annual report on the use of sexual violence in war zones, the United Nations listed Israeli forces, both armed and security, along with Hamas and Russia, documenting at least nine cases of Gazans raped by IDF or Israeli prison security members.

One in sixteen pardoned J6 insurrectionists have been arrested again for new crimes, including child molestation and homicide.

Scientific American revisits the unsolved Riemann Hypothesis, one of the Millennium Prize problems that would net the person or team who solves it $1 million, but which isn’t a major research focus because its solution may not have many practical applications – it’s just interesting. There’s a great book about the hypothesis called Prime Obsession, which I reviewed back in 2010.
The Chapel Hill High School yearbook omitted twelve graduating students with disabilities. The school claims it wasn’t intentional. Uh-huh.

A devastating flesh-eating parasite called a screwworm that regularly devastated U.S. cattle farms until the 1960s has reappeared in Texas, just in time for an Administration that has slashed budgets for food safety and epidemic prevention.

Vaccine denialism is leading to more cases of preventable diseases in hospitals, which threatens to further their spread, while doctors are also seeing idiot adults refusing tetanus shots.

In the department of what the actual fuck: The Minnesota Republican Party held a moment of silence for convicted murderer Derek Chauvin at its state convention.

A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, gave a speech that criticized AI companies for their willful ignorance of copyrights and the likely impacts on the journalism industry, even as the Times Guild, the union that represents the paper’s journalists, has said the Times hasinsufficient guardrails around AI use.

From the great Jamelle Bouie: America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance.

Druid City Games has a Gamefound crowdfunding page up for Bloodstone, an “epic dice combat game” for 1-5 players.

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, carceral state, gaza, israel, links, longreads, math, minnesota, north carolina, religion, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

May 30, 2026 · 2 comments

Stick to baseball, 5/30/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I updated my ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors, and also held a Q&A to take questions about that and really anything else. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook that covered Kyson Witherspoon, Yoeilin Cespedes, and other Boston/Baltimore prospects.

I sent out a new missive of my free email newsletter last Friday.

I’ve continued posting baseball-related videos, mostly about the players I’m going to see live, to Instagram and TikTok. My daughter is now mad that I have more TikTok followers than she does. I told her to talk more about baseball. I’m also posting often on Bluesky.

And now, the links…

ProPublica exposes how telecom companies in Alaska scam billions of federal taxpayer dollars to provide slow internet access to the state’s residents, including a convicted felon who gets $1 million a year from the FCC.

Also from ProPublica: Trump directed a $620 million loan to a company his son Donnie Jr. partially owns.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) has been living secretly for a much-reduced rent payment at a house owned by the far-far-right Christian group The Fellowship, which opposes labor rights and pushes wealth as somehow “Christian.” His primary opponent, Danielle Welch, seems to have little chance of unseating him.

Sports economist JC Bradbury shared this link about a fight between a developer and the owners of the Richmond Fighting Squirrels, whose new stadium deal has, shocker, turned out to be a dud for the community.

The city of Nashville is promising a big return on its investment in hosting the Super Bowl, but we know that’s an empty claim.

Ryan Fournier, co-founder of the astroturf group Students for Trump, was arrested on domestic violence charges.

The New Republic, spoke to Paulina Mangubat, author of that iconic DNC reply tweet calling Stephen Miller an “ugly fuck” – a charge he is not going to be able to escape any time soon – about how Miller’s wife’s choice to dox her has affected her life, and why she’s not sorry for the tweet. It was a reply to Miller falsely labeling Senate candidate James Talarico as “transgender,” because to MAGA, that’s an insult. Meanwhile, the real issue is that Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton, approved a plea deal that gave a serial child rapist one day in prison.

AI is fueling a rise in “home-brewed” lawsuits where plaintiffs use LLMs instead of lawyers, clogging up the court system. Futurism covered this two months ago as well.

The Commonwealth Prize, a British literary award that includes publication of winning stories in Granta magazine, is embroiled in controversy as one of its winners this year was very likely produced largely with the help of AI. That story, submitted by a writer from Trinidad named Jamir Nazir, was full of turgid prose that has inspired mockery online – but it’s also true that these AI “detectors” aren’t necessarily trained on different styles of prose, such as that from non-native speakers or those from regions where their English dialect varies from British or American English. Meanwhile – and probably not coincidentally – the Afro-Caribbean author Chanel Sutherland is now having to defend her work as not AI-generated after that same AI detection program (mentioned in the Atlantic piece) claimed her Commonwealth Prize-winning story was the product of AI.

Another person who was penalized for comments about Charlie Kirk after his death has won compensation after a lawsuit. Suzanne Swierc posted on her private Facebook account that his death was a “tragedy” but the killing was “a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed,” after which Ball State fired her. The University settled the suit, which alleged that the school violated her First Amendment rights, arguing that it was cheaper than fighting it.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary is trying to build an enormous data center that would be two and a half times the size of Manhattan in Utah, and people on the left and right are opposing it.

In Washington state, a sketchy clean-energy storage project to be build on land sacred to the Yakama peoples is actually going to help power new data centers. From this story: “There is no sign the project is needed to provide more power to meet growing local energy demand in Klickitat County.”

Wilmington mayor John Carney (D), formerly our governor and at-large Congressman, closed the city’s only permitted encampment for homeless people over protests that the city government told these people to move there in the first place. I agree with the protestors – this is cruel, and unnecessary.

Tagged alaska, artificial intelligence, climate change, delaware, environment, first amendment, free speech, links, longreads, stadium scams, stick to baseball, the swamp, utah, washington state

May 23, 2026 · 4 comments

Stick to baseball, 5/23/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I spoke with teenaged umpire Jameson Morris about his confrontation with a standoffish rec league coach, the video of which has gone viral; published a minor league scouting notebook on Seth Hernandez, Edward Florentino, and some other Pirates & Phillies prospects; and wrote up scouting report on hard-throwing high school lefty Brody Bumila.

I appeared on TSN 1050 in Toronto to talk about the Jays, Trey Yesavage, and what the next year or so will be like for Jose Berrios; and on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco to talk about the Giants’ lost season and how maybe Buster Posey isn’t the savior.

I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter on Friday.

Apropos of nothing, this Lyrics Born performance of his 2003 song “Callin’ Out” for KEXP is an absolute banger. KEXP is on quite a roll this year with their in-studio performances.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This New Yorker story on a mysterious Chinese couple in LA who have used surrogate mothers to amass over 20 children doesn’t have a big, punchy finish, but the whole thing is wildly disturbing, from the neglect and abuse of the kids to the broader issues of what the fuck is even going on.

404 Media exposes how Radnor (PA) Township School District completely fumbled a case where a 14-year-old boy made pornographic deepfakes of his classmates, including letting him return to school at one point before he was eventually charged with a crime. (The post was free when I first read it, but it appears now to be only for paid subscribers.)

The NAACP issued a call to Black athletes and fans to stop supporting athletic programs in states that are suppressing minority voters’ rights, which includes pretty much the entire SEC.

ICE deported a mother to Honduras but refused to send her 3-year-old son with her, leaving him in the care of an abusive uncle. That uncle beat Orlin to death, and now ICE is blaming the mother for abandoning her child.

Nicholas Kristof wrote in the Times’ opinion section about the world’s silence to the substantial reports of rapes of Palestinian men, women, and children by Israelis, including soldiers, prison guards, and even colonizers. The UN has long recognized the use of rape as a tactic in war.

In March, the Israeli military dropped criminal charges against soldiers caught on video raping a Palestinian detainee. This past week, they were allowed to return to military service, and the Israeli Defense Minister apologized to them.

Texans are probably going to elect Republican Ken Paxton as their Senator, despite his history of scandals that have led to an impeachment and an indictment.

Also in Texas, Democratic Congressional candidate Maureen Galindo wrote that she wants to turn an ICE facility into a concentration camp for American Zionists, the latest in a stream of antisemitic falsehoods coming from her and her campaign. She’s in a runoff to become the Democratic candidate in TX-35, with early voting open now and the election proper on Tuesday, May 26^th. She’s also been backed by the Republican SuperPAC that bills itself as Lean Left.

I usually put the board game news at the bottom of these links, but whoa boy, this one is special. BoardGameGeek fired their longtime advertising manager for rejecting an ad because he claimed demonic possession is real and an unfit subject for a game. It’s worse than it sounds; I hope this guy gets professional help, as he seems to be suffering from delusions, notably that demons are real (they are not, nor is demonic possession). Here’s the Gamefound page for Possess Me, Satan, which is already fully funded, perhaps thanks to a little extra publicity.

A Trump-loving Tennessee sheriff jailed a resident of his county for 37 days for posting a meme after the death of Charlie Kirk. That resident just won an $835,000 settlement in his lawsuit against the county. Maybe Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems should have to pay some of that.

I linked a few weeks ago to a story about Iowa Republicans forcing an oxymoronic “Center for Intellectual Freedom” on the University of Iowa. Students aren’t taking its bullshit classes, so now those same Republicans are going to mandate the classes for all students.

Sports Illustrated is at it again with the AI slop; Sportico caught SI plagiarizing some of its content, Futurism delved further, and now everything that author supposedly wrote is gone from SI’s site, along with the author’s social media presence.

I’ve seen several stories this week about the murders of trans women; one was Juniper Blessing, a student at the University of Washington whom the Seattle Times honored with a piece about her life and legacy.

A now adult daughter of anti-vaxxer parents recalls how she ended up hospitalized for almost a month with meningitis when she was eleven – and how her classmates thought she was drunk.

Oklahoma Republicans are pushing through two bills to ban “obscene” material – by their definition – from schools. This is, of course, not about protecting children at all, but about enacting Christian censorship within public education.

A New York doctor is facing 21 felony counts for faking vaccination records for her own kid and anti-vax parents. Lock her up.

Three former CDC executives say “enough is enough” to RFK Jr.’s war on vaccines.

The Broadview Six, including onetime Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, had all charges against them related to their protests outside an ICE facility dismissed with prejudice this week, with the judge issuing some excoriating commentary on the unethical behavior of federal prosecutors in the game.

Mathematicians appear to have proven the convexity conjecture first posed by Michel Talagrand in 1995, and did so with an assist from AI.

Florida man Alan Chambers once ran a Christian ministry that promised to “cure” LGBTQ+ people. He was arrested last week for soliciting sex from a teenaged boy.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting and slapping activists abducted by Israeli forces from a peace flotilla heading for Gaza; France has now banned him from entering any French territory. The now-freed activists have also alleged they were sexually assaulted while in Israeli custody.

The Times Guild, representing workers at the New York Times, filed an unfair labor practice charge this week against the paper. The Athletic’s unionizing effort has been fighting for over a year for the Times to recognize us as part of the Guild as well, rather than a separate bargaining unit.

Let’s Go! To France is up on Kickstarter now; my final piece for AV Club before they shuttered their games section was an interview with designer Josh Wood about the game.

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, censorship, college sports, gaza, immigration, iowa, israel, links, longreads, math, oklahoma, pennsylvania, police, religion, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, trans rights, unions, vaccines

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