For subscribers to The Athletic, I posted a ranking of the top 50 prospects in this year’s MLB draft, and had a draft blog post earlier in the week that looked at Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews, Kyle Teel, Jake Gelof, and Alex Mooney. I also did a Q&A at the Athletic to talk about the draft.
My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Will Leitch, whose new novel, The Time Has Come, comes out on May 16th (pre-order here), talking about this book and his last one, plus a little about the Cardinals and just our general banter. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Earth, one of the hottest new games of this year, one that reminds me a lot of Wingspan but with more of the engine-building.
I’m on Spoutible and Bluesky now, both as keithlaw.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: New York looks at Richard Walter, a self-appointed criminal profiler who testified in multiple murder cases despite a lack of credentials and increasingly tall tales about his resume. National media coverage of Walter and his so-called “Vidocq Society” helped elevate his profile (no pun intended) and allowed him to continue pulling his con for two decades – even to this day.
- We need a new antifungal drug to combat the spread of resistant Aspergillus fumigatus, and one’s on the way – but a fungicide that attacks the same molecular pathway may hit the market first and render the antifungal drug ineffective.
- ProPublica explains how South Carolina Republicans booted the only woman on state’s Supreme Court and replaced her with a compliant male candidate instead.
- Two articles on the murder of Jordan Neely: Intelligencer looks at New York City’s failure to grapple with the homeless epidemic, and Hellgate NY looks at the bystander effect and the people who watched Neely die and did nothing.
- The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey had an exceptionally transparent and reflective response to its failure to respond to bullying of a student there who later committed suicide.
- Herschel Walker’s Senate run never seemed like a serious endeavor, but a Daily Beast investigation found that he may have redirected over a half a million dollars in donations intended for his campaign to his personal accounts.
- Dr. Peter Hotez, co-developer of the Corbevax vaccine against COVID-19, wrote in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology’s BioAdvances journal about the threat of anti-science conspiracies among Americans to scientists and their work.
- The anti-trans American College of Pediatricians left a huge batch of confidential files on an unsecured Google Drive account, including member info, tax records, and more. You can find their member list here if you want to check to see if your pediatrician (or one you know) belongs.
- Scientific American offers a simple, lay explanation of what puberty blockers are and how they work, something I think most anti-trans arguers don’t understand.
- Former GLAAD Chair Jennifer Finney Boylan, a trans woman and activist, wrote for the Washington Post about how biological sex is determined in the brain, and it’s not just a matter of sex organs.
- Three Texas churches donated to a political candidate in Abilene County, a clear tax code violation that should cost them their tax-exempt status.
- The Health and Human Services Department has warned hospitals that deny women abortions when they experience medical emergencies that they are violating federal law.
- The teen section at a library in an Indianapolis suburb was half empty after a “review” by the library board that cost $300,000.
- More than half of the early adopters of Twitter Blue have already unsubscribed. It’s almost like the guy running the place lacks a business plan!
- Putative Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy paid someone to remove unflattering content from his Wikipedia entry, which makes him a moron, because who the hell pays to edit Wikipedia?
- Two anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists are on trial in the UK for plotting to destroy 5G cell towers.
- E.J. Dionne wrote that we should follow Pres. Biden’s exhortation that we argue about freedom.
- Marc Elias writes about how organization can’t defeat Republican voter suppression efforts.
- I can’t even keep up with the tide of Clarence Thomas corruption stories, but here’s one I caught that doesn’t seem to have received enough attention – Harlan Crow said that tenant protections hurt his profits, and Thomas voted twice to end them.
- Dire Wolf’s Kickstarter for Clank! Legacy Season 2 is already over $450,000. I have only played four of the ten chapters of the first one with my friend Mike, but we both really liked it.