Just one piece from me at the Athletic this week, my story on how and why Catan Studios is forging partnerships in the sports world. I’m on PTO right now, so I won’t be posting anything there for a few more days.
I sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Wednesday. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.
And now, the links – heavy on the NY Times this week…
- Trump took $100 million from a crypto scammer under investigation in the UK for money laundering. No investigation, no scandal.
- Removing the fallopian tubes can reduce a person’s risk of ovarian cancer by 80% – but this preventative measure, which would ideally happen during any other abdominal surgery, is rarely recommended.
- Israeli settlers have blockaded two West Bank families in their homes, tearing down the property walls and putting stones in the roads around them to drive the owners out of their property.
- Attacks by Israeli settlers and the suffocating occupation by Israel forces has produced the Palestinian West Bank’s worst olive harvest in years, depriving rural residents of major source of income.
- MAGA grifter Nick Adams is pocketing money donated to his charity that’s supposed to go to civics education, according to a report from ProPublica.
- Former University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, who resigned last week in the wake of a series of accusations of plagiarism and of fabricating parts of his life story, was found dead on Friday, which we will almost certainly learn was suicide. It’s a horrible tragedy, propelled to the level of worldwide news thanks to bad-faith actors including a white nationalist who publicized the plagiarism claims. It’s also true that Arday probably did plagiarize, and probably did make up many of the more incredible claims about his life.
- Chicago Public Media is building a new online community and social network at Chicago.com aimed at boosting civic engagement at the neighborhood level.
- Three people have been charged with threatening a judge, a witness, and officials tied to the investigation of the death of Nolan Wells in Mississippi. None of the three lives in that state; one, Edward James Porter of Illinois, threatened to murder Wells’ family and others involved in the case.
- Rep. Brandon Herrera (R-TX) trashes women, especially mothers, and makes sexual comments about children, so of course Speaker Mike Johnson is campaigning for him.
- In The Chronicle for Higher Education, Professor Méadhbh McIvor at Arizona State writes about encountering online students who weren’t real people at all.
- A U.S. citizen who has been fighting Georgia’s Cop City training center was re-entering the country when Customs and Border Protection demanded his phone. He used a duress code to wipe its contents, and now the feds have charged him with felony obstruction. Unfortunately, we have grossly limited rights at our own borders when it comes to the Fourth Amendment.
- U.S. firms that kept their DEI programs in place in 2024, including Costco and Apple, fared no worse than companies that caved to the right-wing frenzy over three letters most of them could barely spell.
- Why do some people seem to enjoy being assholes online? Incoming Harvard professor Joshua Conrad Jackson argues that our innate desire to stand out means we get more of a boost from being negative than from being positive or agreeing with the crowd.
- Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) crossed party lines to vote for a Republican anti-trans bill. When trans constituents confronted him at a ton hall over his choice, he swore at them and stormed out.
- Meanwhile, a crazy mom in Oregon is suing her kid’s Portland school district for introducing “trans ideology.” It’s weird how the word “ideology” gets appended to LGBT rights, but never to religion, which is nothing but ideology.
- Cards Against Humanity is raising money to build a monument on the land they bought on the U.S.-Mexico border that happens to be right next to Elon Musk’s Starbase in Texas. Musk dumped trash and gravel on CAH’s land (illegally) in 2024, so now the company is raising funds to build the Elon Musk is a Sad Little Bitch With No Friends Monument.