board game news

→ August 22, 2026
→ By keith
→ 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).

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

→ August 8, 2026
→ By keith
→ 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.

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

→ August 5, 2026
→ By keith
→ 3 Comments

Gen Con 2026 recap + Top 10 games.

This was my tenth Gen Con, and in some ways it was the best, although I think that’s more about the people at this point and a little less about the games I saw and played. That said, I did see a lot of great new games, and had a hard time paring my “top games of the con” list to ten, but almost everything that I even considered for the list was on the shorter side, with the exception of Railway Boom (the last cut). It was a little bittersweet, as it was also the first Gen Con where I wasn’t there representing Paste/AV Club, although I am very grateful that publishers continued to open their metaphorical doors to me even as a solo act.

Gen Con, for the uninitiated, is the largest board game convention in the Americas, attracting over 74,000 attendees to Indianapolis and over 800 vendors. It’s held over four days in late July or early August, with a very unfortunate habit of landing on or just before the trade deadline. It’s the main place and time for publishers in this market to release new games, with a lot of ancillary activities like author signings, artist booths, and even some celebrity sightings (apparently Felicia Day and Mychal Threets were there).

Some big picture thoughts first: here were three big themes I noticed at this year’s Gen Con:

Shorter is better. The vast majority of games I saw offered playing times of 45 minutes or less. Games are smaller, shorter, and many of them are $30 or less, some as little as $9-10 for a full game. I saw lighter or family-level versions of Wingspan, Distilled, and Azul. There were still a decent number of heavy games there for sale or previewed for an upcoming Kickstarter, as well as at least one (Ada’s Dream) that only had a deluxe Kickstarter version available for sale, but I am not bringing home anything with a playing time over 45 minutes, and that’s not by my design.
What’s old is new again. Bringing out-of-print games back, as is or in new skins, has been a trend for a few years, but it was as prominent as ever this year. Tigris & Euphrates, Schadenfreude, Scoville, Camp Grizzly, North American Railways, Las Vegas, and Hacienda are just some of the as-is reissues; Hanami (Samurai), Wild Magic (Vampire), Six Sojourns (Eight-Minute Empire), Gold Country (Spectaculum), and Skyward Republic (Skyward) are some of the old games made new again.
The forest is overpopulated with critters. We do not need any more games with adorable woodland creatures. Please. I’m begging you.

If you haven’t seen my Gen Con wrap-ups before, here’s how it all works. I use BoardGameGeek’s invaluable preview and create a list of games/publishers I want to see, and work my way through the exhibit hall each day, talking to publishers and demoing or playing everything I can. I take notes, which gets a comment maybe 30-40% of the time (usually good, people respect the pen and paper method), and then dump everything into this recap each year. I rank the ten best games I saw, and then I run through everything else, sorted by publishers, and those are listed alphabetically.

Here are my top ten new games of Gen Con 2026:

1. Drillers (Czech Games): I’m pretty sure this one sold out before Saturday, for good reason. Drillers is a midweight game where you send your mechs into an abandoned mine to collect ore and other valuables, opening up new levels by spending some of your resources, but avoiding going too far down to where you won’t have the fuel to get back up. You do all of this via hand management, building your deck to get additional powers so you can go deeper into the mine later in the game. I’ve read comparisons to CGE’s Lost Ruins of Arnak; there are some structural similarities, but Drillers is simpler mechanically and tighter thematically. (That’s not meant as a knock on Arnak, which I also enjoy.)

2. The Glasgow Train Robbery (Salt & Pepper): This is is a cooperative heist game for two players, with no talking allowed, as the players try to pull off a mission on The Great Train Robbery of 1963 (which had 15 participants, not 2). You each have different skills and must go through all of the steps from planning the heist to executing it, finishing all five plan cards before the train reaches its destination. The art is very stylish and the game play appears to be tight.

→ July 25, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/25/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week I posted an updating ranking of the top 70 prospects still in the minors.

I sent a new issue of my free email newsletter last weekend, and hope to get another one out Sunday or Monday. For social media shenanigans, you can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

From three of my colleagues at the Athletic: how ESPN’s Matt Miller may have scammed readers out of tens of thousands of dollars.

How the hell is there an anti-sunscreen movement? I see some of these videos from wellness grifters and they should all be forced to lie in the sun for hours every day without sunscreen.

The Wall Street Journal reports on how Israel is spending $50 million to try to influence American voters, even as colonizers in the West Bank continue to commit violent acts against Palestinians and the IDF bombs funerals.

West Virginia Assistant Majority Leader David Elliott Pritt (R, of course) was arrested for allegedly raping an eighth grade girl he groomed via Roblox.

Francesca Hong is running for Governor of Wisconsin. In 2021, the Democrat was a new state rep, and she wrote in Bon Appetit about how running a restaurant prepared her for public service.

By now you’ve likely seen or read about Madison (WI) Police executing a Black man by shooting him three times while he was restrained and lying on the ground.

The Trump Administration is gutting evidence-based programs for reducing teen pregnancies in favor of religious-based, ineffective abstinence programs and programs aimed at increasing birth rates.

Bo French is the Republican candidate for a spot on Texas’ Railroad Commission, despite a long history of racist & antisemiticposts and posts sharing conspiracy theories. Texas Monthly also has more on how the party is silent on his hatemongering.

The developer of a data center in southern California said numerous times over many months that the project would not use any water from the Colorado River. He lied: He’s suing the local irrigation district to get access to 260 million gallons every year from the drought-stricken river.

The Seattle Times explains why Costco stocking Indian mangoes is such a big deal.

Estonia seemed to defeat the scourge of fentanyl, only for new, more dangerous synthetics to take its place.

My home state of Delaware requires that any organizations engaging in political advertising in the state disclose the names of donors who give over $100, regardless of where the donors live. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a Koch-backed anti-government group, sued the state over this transparency law and lost. Good.

Oklahoma is experiencing a drop in vaccination rates even after the number of measles cases there rose in the last year, thanks to false information parents are reading online.

Measles can cause all kinds of serious complications short of death. It’s not a binary construct.

A SEPTA (Philly transit) officer shoved a man into another man who was using a wheelchair, knocking the second man over. There’s video of the incident and SEPTA Is now investigating.

The Times’ editorial board points out that the second home tax is a net positive for New York – and underscores the lies that wealthy homeowners told to try to dissuade lawmakers from passing laws that ask them to pay their fair share. I’d go much further: I don’t think mortgage interest should be tax-deductible on any residence after your primary one.

A New York City sculptor spent $100,000 to make a statue of Charlie Kirk. No one wants to buy it.

The board game publisher CMON has been struggling for several years now, but NFTs are not the answer. They’d planned to invest $2.1 million in an NFT video game maker, whatever the hell that means, but backed off that plan when, I assume, they sobered up.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, california, delaware, environment, frauds, gaza, israel, links, longreads, measles, oklahoma, palestine, philadelphia, police, science, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, water crisis, west virginia, wisconsin

→ July 18, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/18/26.

The draft is over, which means my team-by-team recaps are up:

If you’re more interested in just the top names regardless of teams, here’s my day one recap. Plus I held a Q&A on Friday to talk draft & prospects. I also recapped the Futures Game on Sunday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter today. You can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

I appeared on KJR with Chris Crawford to talk about the Mariners’ draft and prospects, on HB with Soren Petro to talk Royals draft, on 101 ESPN in St. Louis to talk Cardinals draft & deadline, and on 92.3 the Fan in Cleveland to talk about the Guardians’ draft, prospects, and young hitters.

And now, the links…

This Reuters special report looks at RFK Jr.’s ongoing effort to dismantle decades of U.S. vaccine policy that helped make this country free of many highly contagious and often deadly diseases. Now measles is back and other diseases are sure to follow, all because a fringe movement clinging to the fiction that vaccines cause autism (they do not because they can not) gained access to power.
The Texas Observer investigates the rise in arrests at Texas schools, with children as young as 10 taken into custody for incidents of misbehavior that shouldn’t rise to the level of criminal.
Madison Square Garden is suing WIRED for this report on MSG’s surveillance apparatus, which Knicks owner James Dolan allegedly used to harass fans and compile a list of LGBTQ+ attendees. Dolan is a close Trump ally and was buddies with Harvey Weinstein, according to the story.
Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) has extremely close ties to a Hitler-loving white nationalist influencer: his son-in-law.
California transplant Ken Paxton, running for Senate in Texas, purchased three condos in Utah in February for $1.6 million, adding to a real estate portfolio worth over $9 million that seems unusual given his salary of $153,000 to be the state’s attorney general.
Radley Balko writes in The New York Times that there is a simple solution to stopping ICE’s violence against American citizens: Allow us to sue ICE’s leaders and the policymakers enabling the rogue agency.
The Democratic consultant who recruited Graham Platner to run for Senate without doing proper due diligence on the guy was dismissed from Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA)’s campaign for sexually harassment and verbal abuse.
In The Nation, Jeet Heer writes about the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) choosing evil over truth or country, becoming “the president’s most obsequious lackey.”
Amnesty International caved to pressure from billionaire transphobe J.K. Rowling, removing the page that designated her sexual abuse crisis center “anti-rights.”
Also in the Times, a report on the massive pushback to the Administration’s attempt to make all science grants and programs subject to review by politicians who can cancel funding for entirely subjective, political reasons.
Board Game Wire profiled a new publisher, Valor Mountain, that’s hoping to bring some overlooked European games to the U.S., as founder Christopher High thinks major publishers have become too conservative. I agree that bigger publishers are leaning hard on things like sequel games or IP games, but the market seems saturated with smaller publishers fighting for floor space, many of which do import cool games at all complexity levels from around the world.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, georgia, immigration, links, longreads, maine, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, white nationalism

→ July 11, 2026
→ By keith

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 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 27, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/27/26.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have an updated Big Board and a reaction to the Futures Game rosters in the coming week, plus probably a scouting blog – I’ve been accumulating some notes but have been waiting for something big or wow or otherwise hook-worthy to lead the column. Getting Anthony Eyanson’s worst outing of the year – he was 90-93 and couldn’t find the plate – did not help matters.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday morning. You should sign up. Also, you should follow me on Instagram or TikTok, because I’m posting videos on both places now. Please don’t call me a ‘content creator.’ (Or an ‘influencer.’ I might die of shame.) I’m still on Bluesky first among all social media outlets.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Colorado River system is headed for a crash, with likely water restrictions and reductions in hydropower output, according to this report from the Denver Post.

A massive miscarriage of justice and a violation of the First Amendment took place in Texas, where else, as several anti-ICE activists were sentenced to decades in prison for distributing leftist zines. It deserves far, far more attention than it has received. These people were convicted of terrorism charges for spreading words.

Speaking of the First Amendment, ICE agents found a woman who posted the name of the agent who killed Renee Good in Minnesota, Jonathan Ross, after he was identified in numerous news reports. The agents demanded that she take the post down. She has steadfastly refused.

Charlie Warzel writes in The Atlantic (gift link) about the myth of SpaceX, a meme masquerading as a company.

Some asshole called child protective services with a false claim against Pete Buttigieg. It’s swatting, but with a new twist. And in many states, CPS will investigate even anonymous, nonsense claims.

Texas’ push towards Christian nationalism – and against the Constitution – continues as the state will now require public-school students to read the Bible, or at least parts of it. I wonder if they’ll read Judges 21 or Numbers 16 or Deuteronomy 20!

Israeli troops murdered a Palestinian man who was on his way to the hospital for the birth of his son. So much for the “cease fire.”

The Trump Administration is cutting 20-30% of NSF’s funding for basic science research to redirect it to techbro “X-labs.”

Kalshi gave Donald Trump, Jr., equity worth about $300K, and now the government is actively fighting states that are trying to block the gambling sites (because gambling is illegal).

More Perfect Union has a video report on Yotta, the not-bank that tricked thousands of Americans into depositing their savings by falsely claiming they were FDIC-insured – which the customers discovered when Yotta suddenly stopped allowing withdrawals in 2024.

Cambodia’s crackdown on phone-scam compounds, where trafficked people were held captive and forced to mass-text or call potential victims, has put those people on the streets of Phnom Penh with no place to go and no easy way back to their home countries.

Parker Molloy points out how Giants reporters held Buster Posey accountable in a way White House reporters refuse to do with Trump.

The headline says it all: “I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately.”

I loved this post on Bill Watterson’s refusal to compromise his integrity in any way, giving up millions of dollars in potential earnings by declining to license Calvin & Hobbes for anything, and then closing up shop while he was still at his creative peak.

A professor at Indiana University was dismissed for teaching students that “Make America Great Again” is a slogan for white supremacy, which, well, it is. It’s America First for the modern age.

Researchers at Texas A&M published a paper that may identify ways in which coffee helps slow the aging process in our bodies.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) warns Democrats not to throw trans people under the bus, on moral and strategic grounds. If you give up on the rights of one oppressed minority, the other side will go after another minority, and another, and another, because they have learned you won’t fight for them.

An Alberta court upheld a permanent ban against ex-doctor William Makis practicing anything like medicine there, as he’s now hawking ivermectin as a cancer cure (it’s not, at all, this is just fraud).

This New York Times piece on bank tellers stepping in to stop people, often the elderly, from falling for phishing scams is both heartening and depressing. Most people want to do good. We are also so far away from being able to manage and regulate the technologies that we use every day.

On the Gamefound page for Galileo’s Truth, ThunderGryph Games announced they’re being acquired by Awaken Realms. I’m waiting to see how this pans out; Awaken Realms was caught using AI art in some reissues but they seem to have found the true path of using human artists for their upcoming reprint of Concordia.

I nearly backed this Kickstarter for Sprout, an upcoming game about houseplants – a core interest of my wife – but couldn’t get enough of a sense of what the game is like, and at $39 it seemed a lot to commit for a game I didn’t understand. Which is a long way of saying it might be awesome, but I want to wait and see.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coffee, first amendment, frauds, gambling, gaza, immigration, indiana, israel, links, longreads, scams, science, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trans rights, white nationalism

→ June 13, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/13/26.

My second mock draft of 2026 went up this week, with a new name at #1. I also held a Q&A on Wednesday to discuss it. Last Sunday, I posted a scouting notebook on Theo Gillen, Miguel Sime Jr., and other Rays & Nationals prospects.

I sent out a new epistle of my free email newsletter this week. You can find me on Bluesky for text-based commentary and links, and TikTok and Instagram for short videos, mostly on baseball.

I appeared on The Fan LA on Wednesday to talk about the Dodgers’ farm system.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Longtime vaccine denier and supplement peddler Joseph Mercola – who has taken up other anti-science positions like claiming aspartame is behind all sorts of health problems – quickly changed his tune on vitamin K shots after ProPublica asked him for comment on why he’d made false claims about these lifesaving injections for infants.

WIRED (reprinted on KFF Health News) explored the devastation caused by vaccine denialism in Utah, where a measles epidemic has sickened many infants too young to be vaccinated and strained hospitals unprepared for a highly contagious disease that had been eradicated from the Western hemisphere. We all pay the cost for these grifters and the idiots who follow them.

The Times spoke to Scott Pelley on his ouster from 60 Minutes and the self-immolation of CBS News under Bari “Free Speech” Weiss.

In a related story, noted Trump-lie debunker Daniel Dale hasn’t appeared on CNN in three months. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the Justice Department’s review of the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger.

The Guardian looks at the rise and fall of West Ham United owner David Sullivan, asking how someone who made his fortune in pornography reached the pinnacle of English football.

Republican Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia owns an empire of coal-mining companies. The Trump Administration closed investigations into potential criminal violations by Justice’s firms.

Auburn University’s board of trustees dissolved the faculty senate and took control of curricula to comply with a law that doesn’t apply to the school.

Conservative Americans have higher mortality rates and worse health outcomes than liberals because of ‘ideological divides,’ which is a polite way to refer to science denial.

In the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik writes that the right’s war on science has reached a new low, and could go lower.

Avelo sucks to begin with, but now the CEO is demanding that regional airports give him equity in exchange for the airline flying there.

China is producing more solar energy than it can use. The Financial Times notes that it is “madness” to waste this surplus. Meanwhile, U.S. solar energy output has passed coal for the first time, despite a federal government openly hostile to green energy. Imagine what might happen if we had people in charge who accept scientific facts.

Gun-rights extremist Brandon Herrera is likely to end up representing Uvalde in Congress.

San Carlos Lake in Arizona is now closed to visitors after drought and a water release from a dam upriver killed all of its fish.

A 21-year-old Seattle man who was recently playing basketball for his junior college team was arrested for running an abusive pornography content mill, kidnapping, threatening, and beating girls to get them to produce pornography for OnlyFans and similar sites.

A good use of artificial intelligence: Mathematicians used an internal model from OpenAI to find a better solution to Paul Erdös’ planar unit distance problem.

I enjoyed this Vulture interview with KISS’ Paul Stanley, who never directly answers the interviewer’s questions but gives insightful comments on just about every one.

AVClub’s Sam Barsanti writes that it might be for the best that Doctor Who is on hiatus after the BBC sacked Russel T. Davies.

Dire Wolf has a Kickstarter going for a board game based on Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, climate change, denialism, guns, links, longreads, math, Music, soccer, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, tv, vaccines, west virginia

→ June 6, 2026
→ By keith

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.

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

→ May 23, 2026
→ By keith

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 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

Archives