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→ February 21, 2026
→ By keith
→ 2 Comments

Stick to baseball, 2/21/26.

I was on PTO from Wednesday to Wednesday, so I haven’t written anything new on the Athletic in nearly two weeks. I’ll begin draft content this upcoming week.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed two smaller games with surprising depth and complexity for their size in Oddland and Neko Syndicate.

I appeared on Sox Machine to talk about the White Sox’ farm system and a little more about Colson Montgomery.

I sent out another edition of my free email newsletter on Friday.

And now, the links…

ProPublica got a hold of letters written by children being held in one of ICE’s concentration camps. The camp’s Schutzstaffel responded by raiding the facility to destroy any further missives. Meanwhile, a group of pediatricians wrote about the harm that ICE detentions are already doing to children. Remember that when anyone tells you they’re concerned about, say, what bathroom a person uses because of “the children.”

The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper explains why Democrats should defund ICE and CBP permanently. The Nation’s Andrea Ritchie says essentially the same thing.

ICE agents zip-tied a 14-year-old girl in Idaho in October during one of their ‘raids.’ She is a U.S. citizen, but that’s beside the point.

Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré has been all over the harms propagated by the AI sector and the amoral actors pushing the technology. Her latest piece looks at how ChatGPT is fueling and encouraging stalkers, because these LLMs are nothing more than compliment machines – they tell you what you want to hear. Well, that, and plagiarism.

The Guardian exposes just how Substack profits from all the neo-Nazi content it hosts.

A new study published in Nature found that X/Twitter users who had the For You feed turned on saw their political views shift to the right, but turning it off did not move them back towards the left (or center).

The Heritage Foundation published a “roadmap” for the country that is really a playbook for a Christian nationalist future; Jessica Valenti exposes this under the headline “they’re coming for our daughters.” I can’t describe the Heritage Foundation’s worldview as anything other than sick. It is a diseased way of looking at women and humanity as a whole.

Israeli settlers shot and killed an American in the West Bank. No one will do anything about this.

The far-right elites in Texas are backing MAGA candidate Don Huffines for state comptroller as he promises to “DOGE Texas government.”

Meanwhile, the self-immolation of Texas’ public universities continues, as UT-Austin is consolidating four departments relating to Black, Latino, and women’s studies, a move that appears motivated by ideology; and all University of Texas schools now must limit discussion of “controversial topics” in the classroom. I wonder who decides what is “controversial.”

I am shocked, shocked to note that cryptocurrency is now being used to facilitate human trafficking.

A brainwashed mother in South Carolina whose unvaccinated son is hospitalized with complications from the measles told The Independent that she still wouldn’t vaccinate him. There is no risk from vaccines even close to what that poor kid has already suffered, and what he’ll suffer in the future if he survives.

The FDA’s site removed pages that exposed fake autism treatments like MMO (bleach) and raw camel milk.

However, the FDA’s thoroughly unqualified leader Vinay Prasad reversed course and will now review Moderna’s mRNA-based flu vaccine. I wonder what pushback got to him; I suspect it wasn’t the public outcry, but the business one.

Why is Prasad unqualified? Well, for one thing, he’s already facing sexual harassment accusations, and is making us taxpayers pay over $65,000 a year for him to commute from California to DC. And he’s only been on the job for 9 months.

Oklahoma’s radical Gov. J. Kevin Stitt (R) says he will eliminate tenure at most public colleges in his state, a great move for a state widely ranked in the bottom five for education.

Also in Oklahoma, a man speaking out at Claremore City Council meeting against the construction of a new data center was arrested – not stopped, but fucking arrested – for going a few seconds over his allotted time.

There’s some real evidence that Putin murdered dissident Alexei Navalny … and it barely made a dent in the news this week.

The Lemoneads’ Evan Dando is a creep.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) has taken up MTG’s mantle as the most overtly racist member of Congress; he has a challenger this fall in Democrat Jennifer Jenkins, who has a history of calling out Fine’s bigoted language and rhetoric. I knew Fine in college; I thought he was pretentious, but if he held these views back then I didn’t know it.

Harvard took a $350 million gift from Gerald Chan, the second-largest in the university’s history, and then named their school of public health after his father. Chan had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Harvard physics professor Lisa Randall is also all over the Epstein files. I’ve seen some comments that mere association with Epstein, especially for scientists (given his interest in patronizing scientific research), shouldn’t be a capital offense; I might be sympathetic to that perspective if any of these assholes owned up to schmoozing with the convicted sex offender before their names appeared.

At Salon, Andi Zeisler writes that academics who communicated and fraternized with Epstein may not be criminals, but they did so in pursuit of a shared vision of a world where only certain people (men, mostly) were worthy of attaining knowledge and the status that comes with it.

The same folks who were all about “free speech” and talking about opposing cancel culture have been dead silent as the Trump Administration attempts to quell free speech by demanding that social media platforms reveal the identities of users who criticized ICE. Maybe it wasn’t actually about free speech after all.

Defector’s Patrick Redford wrote how Eileen Gu will never be the ‘traitor’ that J.D. Vance and other nationalist nitwits are calling her.

Astronomers might have seen a star in the Andromeda Galaxy become a black hole.

The delightful folks at Flatout Games have a new Kickstarter up for two smaller games, Forage and Honeypot.

Two minor scandals in the gaming world from the last two weeks: Dice Tower contributor Sam Healey resigned from the site – claiming God told him to step away or some other non-apology nonsense – after he said that Alex Pretti and Renée Good were to blame for being murdered; and Alderac (AEG) COO Ryan Dancey, who has left a trail of messes and controversies behind him in his three decades in the industry, was forced out by CEO John Zinser after Dancey posted a pro-AI and very anti-designers rant on LinkedIn. Hey, I guess something good did come out of that site!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ai, astronomy, board game news, christian nationalism, education, florida, harvard, immigration, israel, links, longreads, measles, oklahoma, russia, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ February 10, 2026
→ By keith
→ 1 Comment

Stick to baseball, 2/10/26.

The top 100 index page is here, with links to all 30 team reports and everything else in the package. If you’re looking for the highlights, you can go right to the top 100 prospects, the prospects who just missed the top 100, and my ranking of all 30 farm systems, as well as the Q&As I did on top 100 day and this past Monday.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed the small-box game Point Galaxy, a sequel game to Point Salad; and Knitting Circle, a lighter game with a similar theme and art to Calico.

My free email newsletter is back as well, and you should sign up for more of me.

I appeared on the Detroit News’ Tigers Today podcast to talk about Detroit’s loaded farm system; on Friar Territory to talk about what’s left in the Padres’ system; on the JD Bunkis Show to discuss the state of the Jays’ system after their World Series run; and on Halo Territory to talk about the Angels’ system and why it’s so bad.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Texas Monthly looks at the meltdown – or self-immolation – at Texas A&M. The Republicans who run the state are going to ruin their public universities to the point where they don’t get the same kind of out-of-state interest that helps add revenue to the system.
Grub Street looks at the decline of the veganism movement in the restaurant world (and our tables). I’m not vegan, or vegetarian, but eating more plants is clearly better for our health and that of the planet.
Deadline doesn’t mince words in its headline about Disney’s new CEO choice: “Dana Walden Expands Oversight To Film in New Role As Media Glass Ceiling Remains Intact.”
That was not Liam Conejo Ramos in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show; he is in hiding with his family and still traumatized from being kidnapped by ICE.
Writing in Vanity Fair, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the white nationalist movement that led to the murders of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
ProPublica named the two ICE employees who killed Pretti.
Meanwhile, a comedy club in St. Paul cancelled an upcoming series of shows by a comedian who made vile, hateful comments about Renée Nicole Good, and CAA is threatening to sue the bar over it. Maybe CAA should drop Ben Bankas instead.
Why do ICE agents wear masks? So it’s easier for them to violate our Constitutional rights. Duh.
Jonathan Haidt is making bank by running around telling anyone who’ll listen that social media is wrecking the current generation of kids. Two new studies undermine his claims, as the evidence of harm just isn’t strong enough.
The Israel Defense Force accepted the Gaza Health Ministry’s estimate of 71,000 Gazans killed in Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory.
Saudi Arabia is pulling back plans for its new city project Neom, which included the especially bizarre project known as The Line (apparently now dead).
The mass-market paperback is going extinct. What a gigantic shame; I understand the economics of it, in general, but the lower price point can get more people into books or new authors or new-to-them genres, and the smaller form factor is a godsend to people who travel and or just love to stuff a book in a pocket.
Members of our military have reported that their commanding officers are mandating that they go see the fawning ‘documentary’ Melania.
Harvard is, again, all over the Epstein files, including the campus Jewish center Harvard Hillel soliciting donations from Jeffrey Epstein after his 2008 conviction for child sex trafficking.
Yale isn’t faring much better; computer science professor David Gelertner recommended a graduate student to Epstein by praising her looks, and he defended those messages to the dean of the school’s engineering department. Meanwhile, Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis also seems to have been rather cozy with the convicted sex offender.
I prefer the original headline for this op ed by Molly Jong-Fast, which called Jeffrey Epstein “the devil’s concierge.”
Physicists sort of turned lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider, smashing lead atoms into each other at such high speeds that a few spit out exactly three protons, which made them gold atoms. Others spit out one proton, making thallium, or two, making mercury, but that’s hardly as fun.
Agrovoltaic canopies – solar panels installed above crops to protect them from excessive sunlight and heat – increased crop yields and reduced water loss in trials in France.
The Burn It All Down podcast has a Kickstarter up to try to fund a return of the show, which features two people I’ve met (Jessica Luther and Lindsay Gibbs) and another I know from the site formerly known as Twitter (Shireen Ahmed). The show is about feminism in sports, and feminism and sports, and women’s sports, and men’s sports through a feminist lens. I don’t understand the podcasting space; it seems like it’s just getting overrun by celebrities with podcasts and nothing interesting to say.
There have been a slew of new boardgame crowdfunding efforts in the last three weeks. Here’s a list:
- Stellar Ventures, a heavy, 150-minute game for 3-5 players about space exploration for fun and profit. I know one of the publishers and have a prototype (yes, I need to play it) and have gotten a demo, and I think it looks pretty fantastic, even though it’s about as heavy a game as I typically play.
- A second edition of Logic & Lore, one of the best games I saw at Gen Con last year, along with a brand new expansion.
- Red Leaf University, a midweight worker-placement game co-designed by Adrian Adamescu, who co-designed Sagrada.
- LODGE, a small spatial-puzzle game from the designer of Tiny Towns and Wormholes. I’ve played this on BGA; the game is very good but I hate the art.
- Gold Country, yet another game from Reiner Knizia, based loosely on his 2012 game Spectaculum.
- Tinctura, a worker-placement game about apothecaries in the 18^th/19^th centuries where players gather ingredients and fulfill contracts.
- Spirited, a hand-management and set collection game co-designed by Shem Phillips (Raiders of the North Sea, Architects of the West Kingdom).
The BBC podcast Witness History has an 11-minute episode on the creation of the game Catan.
And finally, for the August 2024 issue of newsletter-magazine Wyrd Science, Dan Thurot spoke to the designers of three politically-themed board games about incorporating real politics and history into tabletop play, including Tory Brown, designer of the fantastic Votes for Women.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, books, climate change, epstein, gaza, harvard, immigration, links, longreads, physics, podcast, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vegan

→ January 24, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/24/26.

I wrote two pieces for the Athletic this week, breaking down the MacKenzie Gore trade and the Freddy Peralta trade. My top 100 prospects ranking runs on Monday.

At AV Club, I reviewed the board game Gingham, a family-level game of area control that gets very tense as the game approaches its end.

I sent out an issue of my free email newsletter last weekend, but the next one won’t go out until at least Monday, for obvious reasons.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: My colleague Paul Tenorio wrote about the kidnapping of soccer coach Adrian Heath, as he was lured by the promise of a lucrative job with a Saudi club. The club exists, but the job didn’t, and Heath was lucky to survive the ordeal.

The New Yorker exposes Bari Weiss’s “hostile takeover” at CBS News, which has been a ratings and credibility disaster.

In Harper’s, Jasper Craven writes about the impending sports betting cataclysm, with the added perspective from a habitual sports bettor – himself.

ICE officials claim their agents can enter homes without a warrant, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. And this story just sort of drifted by as Trump and his toadies continue to flood the zone with so many outrages that we can’t keep up.

Black pepper and olive oil contain chemicals that may help our bodies absorb nutrients in other foods. I use both of those ingredients constantly, so I will live forever.

Researchers at the Kiel Institute found that American taxpayers paid 96% of the added costs of Trump’s tariffs, calling it an “own goal.”

A new European social network called W is coming, maybe, although I’m not sure what this offers that other alternatives to the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter.

The White House used AI to make a civil rights attorney appear to be crying when she was arrested when, in fact, she was quite stoic at the event. She was part of a group protesting at a church whose pastor is the acting director at a local ICE office in St. Paul.

Cochise County (Arizona) Sheriff Mark Dannels, a Trump sycophant, has used his public office to promote a private drone company with a Trump crony on its board. The Phoenix New Times had previously reported on how Dannels may have gotten up to $250,000 in slush money from ICE.

Cows can use tools, if we let them. I for one welcome our new bovine overlords!

Allplay has a Kickstarter up for the Mountain Goats legacy game and the solo game Enchanted Ivy. I like Mountain Goats as a fun, quick-playing filler game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, artificial intelligence, board game news, gambling, links, longreads, science, soccer, social media, stick to baseball, taxes

→ January 17, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/17/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I had three pieces this week, on the Cubs’ signing of Alex Bregman, the Yankees’ trade for Ryan Weathers, and the three-team trade between the Rays, Reds, and Angels. I am primarily working on the prospect rankings, which are scheduled to start running on January 26^th.

For the AV Club, I reviewed Iliad, a fantastic new two-player game from Reiner Knizia that made my top ten for 2025.

I am about to hit send on the next edition of my free email newsletter. It was almost done, then I set it aside for a moment, which turned into five days.

I have many links this week to pieces in the New York Times, which I often do because I assume many of you have access to those with your Athletic subscriptions (if you have the bundle). I believe the Times in general produces some of the best journalism in the country. I do not endorse all of the views printed in the paper; I just work there.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The outgoing governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin (R), and the board that oversees the University of Virginia appear to have rushed through the appointment of a new President, even though that candidate, Scott Beardsley, appears to have fabricated or embellished large parts of his resume, according to the Augusta Free Press. After that ran, over 200 faculty members signed a letter to the board saying that the appointment should not stand.

The so-called “peace” deal between Israel and Gaza is a fiction, as Israel continues to demolish Gaza one building at a time, according to a New York Times investigative report.

The Times also profiled NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who has chosen to fight back against Republicans’ attacks on the public-radio institution and even taken the Trump Administration to court, although some other public-radio figures disagree with her tactics.

America, a magazine published by the Jesuits, published a scathing piece on the attempts by the Administration and its toadies to demonize murder victim Renee Nicole Good, just as the Reagan Administration did with the four nuns raped and killed by the right-wing government of El Salvador in 1980.

The Texas Observer exposed four businesses operating in North Texas with ties to the neo-Nazi Patriot Front.

The Trump Administration demanded that UPenn send them detailed personal information on all Jewish professors, students, and staff members. If this doesn’t make you think of Nazi Germany, I really can’t help you.

The suspect in the arson attack against a Mississippi synagogue told the judge at his arraignment that “Jesus Christ is Lord” and said to investigators that the building was “a synagogue of Satan.” So who radicalized him? Can we deport him to Vatican City?

Those “alt” government accounts on social media that popped up during Trump’s first term always looked like grifters, not actual government employees trying to leak information. The Alt National Park Service one is the worst of the lot, and certainly not authentic in any sense of the word.

A new documentary looks at Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, a celebrity chef from the days prior to social media who turned out to be a serial sexual predator who likely assaulted dozens of young boys.

The notoriously left-wing Wall Street Journal exposes how RFK Jr. is cozying up to supplement makers, who peddle unproven and sometimes dangerous remedies that aren’t subject to the same safety and efficacy requirements as prescription medicines.

A white nationalist who praised the Nazis’ use of concentration camps has flipped from Republican to Democrat to try to capture a Congressional seat in California. Kyle Langford posted a picture of himself last year at Auschwitz and called it his “0% unemployment plan.”

I came across this March 2025 story from the Times about the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem, as I saw they have a new album, Liturgy of Death, coming out in February. The article is a heck of a read, and treats the band – who have released just seven albums over 35 years due to suicide, murder, controversies (to put it mildly), breakups – as a sort of counterculture icon. It doesn’t mention that at least one of the current members, longtime drummer Hellhammer has voiced indisputably racist and homophobic views, which I find very hard to understand given that it’s hardly a secret.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-semitism, california, gaza, immigration, links, longreads, mississippi, Music, scams, social media, virginia

→ January 10, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/10/26.

I had one story this week for subscribers to the Athletic, breaking down the Cubs’ trade for Edward Cabrera. I’m spending most of my time right now working on the annual prospect rankings, which are tentatively slated to run starting January 26^th with the top 100.

At AV Club, I reviewed the flip-and-write game Ra and Write, which borrows the theme from the auction game Ra but doesn’t have many similarities beyond that; and Propolis, a bee-themed engine-builder in a small box.

I’m trying to squeeze in another edition of my free email newsletter this weekend before the heavy phone work resumes on Monday. We’ll see how that works out for me.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: WIRED has the story of how a down-on-his-luck private detective named Brad Dennis helped find “Torswats,” a teenager who made well over 300 swatting calls to schools, universities, and other targets, when the FBI appeared not to take the case very seriously at all. The culprit, Alan Filion, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to four charges, while it appears that the case has sent Dennis in the wrong direction. (Unrelated, but the swatter Dennis knew in the early 2000s who ended up targeting him eventually was charged and convicted, then died quite young in 2023.)

The New York Times investigates how a teenager died while working at the Nebraska pork production factory Pillen Family Farms, founded by now Gov. Jim Pillen (R), while two years have produced no charges or even explanations for the minor’s family. Maybe Morrissey was right: meat is murder.

In the National Catholic Reporter, John Grosso calls out JD Vance’s gross misuse of both his platform and his soi-disant Catholic faith to blame murder victim Renee Good for her own killing, referring to Vance’s actions as a “a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith.” I’m secular now, but grew up Catholic and certainly understand the tenets of that religion enough to say ‘hell yeah.’

Ben Lorber at Religion Dispatches points out that Elon Musk openly endorsed a white nationalist position and nobody has said a thing about it.

The notoriously left-wing Wall Street Journal reveals how lobbyists are charging $1 million to secure a pardon from President Trump.

WIRED explains what the “quantum apocalypse,” where existing cryptographic methods would become obsolete almost overnight, might mean for our society and the global economy.

The #3 official at the Interior Department didn’t disclose that her husband held a multi-million dollar water rights contract with a lithium mine that her department approved. That story ran a week ago, and there’s been absolutely nothing since then – I don’t see a single member of Congress so much as calling for an investigation.

An Ohio teenager died from the flu despite being otherwise healthy, because the flu can kill a healthy person. Get vaccinated.

An unvaccinated person with the measles visited the Ark Encounter fiction park in Kentucky, which, well, a person who doesn’t believe in science visited an entire theme park built around ignorance of science.

An NBC News investigation into 31 states that provide county-or other below state-level data found that 70% of jurisdictions have fallen below the herd immunity vaccination rate for pertussis, which is why whooping cough cases are now soaring in this stupid country.

Utah theocrats are pushing to end all gender-affirming care for minors despite a report from the state’s Health and Human Services Department finding positive outcomes from such treatment. Keep your nonsense religion out of my house, please.

Montana revoked the medical license of a quack doctor who diagnosed healthy patients with cancer and treated them with chemotherapy and opioids, killing at least one of them in the process. This came about due to investigative reports from ProPublica, which found that the state renewed Thomas Weiner’s medical license twice despite complaints about his conduct.

The Intercept calls on Democrats to fight back against the MAGA machine’s attempts to destroy trans people, which is straight out of the totalitarian playbook.

Kansas’ Governor Laura Kelly (D) has claimed the deal for a new NFL stadium that provides $4 billion in subsidies to the Chiefs will not cost anything in new taxes. Field of Schemes explains why that’s a lie.

The Guardian’s Andrew Lawrence wrote about how Sinners became the most culturally important film of 2025.

Here are 19 artists who pulled their music from Spotify in 2025.

The notoriously left-wing Financial Times walks us through the executives at “the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter.”

A former Times editor spoke about what she perceived as anti-trans bias coming from the top levels at the newspaper. The Times responded, although the paper’s response does not provide evidence to counter the former employee’s claims.

The city of Wilmington announced a plan to have a local nonprofit manage an encampment for homeless people within the city. Mayor John Carney, formerly the Governor of Delaware, had campaigned on making housing and combating homelessness a priority, but this is the first move forward on that front after his decision in October to ban other encampments and step up enforcement against people with nowhere else to go.

Denny Carter writes at his Bad Faith Times how popularism has failed miserably in the UK and Democrats need to give up that strategy entirely.

A new study found that playing tabletop and/or role-playing games provides social, educational, and therapeutic benefits, especially for neurodivergent players.

Rock Manor Games has a Kickstarter up for the latest expansion to the Set a Watch series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2025 in music, anti-science, board game news, delaware, kansas, labor rights, links, longreads, religion, social media, stadium scams, stick to baseball, the swamp, trans rights, utah, vaccines

→ December 20, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/20/25.

I got sick out of the winter meetings, so I’ve been slacking on the Saturday posts (and blogging and my newsletter in general). Here are the breakdowns I’ve written for subscribers to the Athletic in the last two weeks, at least:

Over at AV Club, I ranked the ten best new board games of 2025, and reviewed the games The White Castle Duel and Trinket Trove.

I have a few writing things to get done this weekend but I really hope to get another (free) newsletter out before Christmas Day. You can sign up here.

I also appeared on the Cubs Weekly podcast with my friend Lance Brodzowski to talk some Cubs prospects and what it might take to get Mackenzie Gore (very, very hypothetically).

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A Mother Jones journalist asked the Pentagon about Pete Hegseth’s mentor. Serial fabulist Jack Posobiec responded with threats.

ProPublica looks at the deaths that resulted from the USAID cuts that Trump, Musk, and company celebrated with cake.

New Humanist looks at Finnish schools’ efforts to teach critical thinking so students can better detect fake news and misinformation.

Brown alumna Lucy Feldman writes in TIME about why the mass shooting at the university hit her (and so many Brown graduates) so hard.

Also in Mother Jones, serial plagiarist and Russian operative Benny Johnson has become a major propagandist and content creator for the White House.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) diverted taxpayer funds for child welfare and health care to pay for his own consultants and advertisements, according to a report in the Tampa Bay Times.

My Congresswoman, Rep. Sarah McBride (D), spoke out about her experience as a trans woman as the House prepared to pass two bills designed just to make trans peoples’ lives hell.

Ohio Republicans are trying to groom and indoctrinate kids by putting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court struck down that state’s social studies curriculum that mandated all kinds of Christian nonsense, noting that the changes were rammed through without adequate debate or public notice.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) encouraged his Twitter followers to follow accounts belonging to a white supremacist and someone who has posted CSAM, and he doubled down when Westword called him out on it.

U.S. students read fewer books than ever; the article points out that teachers assign fewer full-length books, in part because of the belief that kids won’t read them, but that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Other potential causes are state book bans and don’t-say-gay laws, social media, AI, and a privately produced reading curriculum called StudySync that leans more on excerpts.

An ICE supervisor in Cincinnati was arrested for trying to strangle his partner, who is at least 22 years his younger as well.

ICE arrested a woman in Minnesota merely for observing their agents arresting someone and asking what they were doing.

Plastic pollution is on track to double by 2040, entering the soil, the oceans, and of course, our bodies.

A proposed data center in Chandler, Arizona, won’t disclose how much water it expects to use. You know, in a desert.

NPR looks at Syria a year after the fall of Assad.

Two board game crowdfunding efforts of note: Grassfed is “a farm to tabletop” game from the publishers of Ascension and Shards of Infinity, and Chess Joker is a new game from Carl Chudyk, co-designer of Glory to Rome and designer of Innovation.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, books, climate change, delaware, environment, florida, immigration, lgbt rights, links, longreads, ohio, oklahoma, stick to baseball, syria, the swamp, trans rights

→ December 6, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/6/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote my analyses of the Sonny Gray trade; the Dylan Cease signing (featuring a massive temper tantrum by Jays fans in the comments); the Cody Ponce & Devin Williams signings; and the Jhostynxon Garcia-Johan Oviedo trade.

At AV Club, I reviewed the game White Castle Duel and wrote up my weekend at the PAX Unplugged board game convention here in Philly.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last weekend, right after the holiday.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the story of another woman killed by Texas Republicans and their anti-abortion crusade. Just worth noting that the unholy marriage between Christians and the anti-abortion movement is an entirely modern creation, not supported by the Bible or the previous 1700 or so years of Christian thought.

Bill McKibben, an environmental activist and lifelong Methodist, writes in the Guardian of how Trump and his allies are doing to America what they did to Christianity – subverting their meanings and destroying them from the inside.

Dr. Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto and a professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that the ending of USAID funding has already killed hundreds of thousands worldwide.

Princeton Prof. Robert P. George, a highly influential conservative philosopher and legal scholar who was in the news recently for his resignation from the board of the Heritage Foundation, spoke to The Chronicle of Higher Education about the state of academic thought and the growing ‘illiberalism’ on the far right.

Also in ProPublica, a Minnesota pediatrician who challenged the methods of the director of the child abuse team at the state’s primary children’s hospital says he was sacked for speaking out. The director in question, Dr. Nancy Harper, appears to still use debunked ideas like “shaken-baby syndrome” and thus overdiagnoses child abuse, separating children from families without sufficient cause.

Twitter turned on location identification for its accounts, and shocker of shockers, a huge number of self-proclaimed MAGA accounts are based in Pakistan or Morocco or elsewhere outside the U.S.

Prof. Jack Goldsmith, a conservative scholar at Harvard Law School who authored the memos authorizing the Bush Administration’s use of warrantless wiretaps in 2004, writes that the U.S. strikes on boats in the Atlantic are murder even if you assume all of the government’s claims are true.

I won’t link to too much about the Olivia Nuzzi scandal, given how much attention it’s received and the fact that Vanity Fair finally undid its mistake in hiring her (although whoever approved that hiring needs to be held accountable for the decision), other than this New Republic piece on the public-health cost of Nuzzi’s utter lack of ethics.

Speaking of which, Kentucky has reported its third infant death in the last year from pertussis, a vaccine-preventable disease; all three infants were unvaccinated, as were their mothers.

Michael Scherer writes about the delusions of RFK Jr., who is dismantling public health in the face of all available evidence and massive pushback from the scientific community.

Dr. Rachael Bedard writes in the Times about her experiences attending an anti-vaccine conference and why these grifters and liars are so easily able to capture people’s minds.

Scientific American has a somewhat related story about how AI chatbots could sway voters’ opinions even when the bots were fabricating ‘facts.’

Drew Magary writes that it is time to declare war on AI, and I couldn’t agree more.

Government bans on the use of puberty blockers for trans teens set a dangerous precedent for further intrusion into individual health-care decisions.

Concerned Republican Senator Susan Collins (ME) is backing a referendum to overturn Maine’s protections for trans students. National media members need to stop calling her a “centrist.” She is as extremist as the rest of the party.

Drain the swamp! Trump commuted the sentence of David Gentile, who had served just two weeks to date for his role in defrauding investors of $1.6 billion through his private equity funds. The corruption is coming from inside the White House.

Tennessee libraries have begun shutting down to purge books that Republican theocrats wish to ban because they contain LGBTQ+ characters or themes.

I’m absolutely stunned that a Turning Point staffer and Arizona city councilwoman has been accused of sexually harassing another TP employee – and kidnapping his daughter when he rebuffed her. People that obsessed with others’ sex and sexuality are telling you something about themselves.

The government of the Caucasus nation of Georgia sprayed anti-government protestors with bromobenzyl cyanide, a toxic form of tear gas introduced by the Allied Powers during World War I, according to a report from the BBC.

Disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed an order that would ban any city agency heads or staff from doing pretty much anything in line with the BDS movement against the government of Israel, just a month before the door hits him on his way out of Gracie Manson in four weeks. Incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani could undo this with a similar order, but of course there will be an outcry calling this antisemitism if he does.

Europe’s water reserves, especially those in southern Europe, are drying up due to climate change, while Tehran is approaching day-zero for water.

There’s a new Kickstarter from Spanish publisher Salt & Pepper Games, publishers of the solo game Resist!, for Queen of Spies, another solitaire game, set this time set during World War I.

Mike Drucker’s parody of Isaac Chotiner interviewing Santa Claus is note-perfect.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, academia, arizona, artificial intelligence, board game news, book banning, climate change, journalism, kentucky, links, longreads, maine, minnesota, new york city, religion, science, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

→ November 22, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/22/25.

One new post for subscribers to The Athletic this week, breaking down the surprise trade that sent Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels for Taylor Ward.

Over at AV Club, I reviewed the game Ink, the newest title from Kasper Lapp and his best game since his award-winning Magic Maze.

My next free email newsletter might have to wait until after this weekend’s PAX Unplugged convention, as I’ll be there gaming as much as humanly possible.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Toronto-based site The Local has a piece on a freelance scammer who published pieces at some legitimate sites that appeared to be entirely AI-generated. I ran into something similar recently, where a site and writer I’d never heard of had a quote from me that I’d never said and that made no sense.
Mother Jones digs into the grifter Riley Gaines, who finished 5^th in a swim meet, was gracious in defeat, and then realized she could make a career out of bashing trans people – and even cis women who she just decides are trans.
This October 2024 story from Stereogum on the end of Japandroids is a tremendous piece of writing, not just music writing but any writing, especially with the Japandroids’ lead singer/guitarist Brian King being such a notoriously difficult person to get to know.
The Guardian – one of the sites fooled by the AI scammer that The Local exposed – has the story of two men who have made a career of helping people leave cults. They eschew the term deprogramming and the sometimes coercive methods involved in that process in favor of an approach where you try to convince the cult member-victim that leaving was their idea.
The Harvard Crimson has been all over the Larry Summers-Jeffrey Epstein connection, to a degree that professional outlets have not, highlighting how Epstein was Summers’s wing man as the Harvard professor tried to sleep with a student, and breaking the news that Summers reversed course and immediately left his teaching responsibilities for the semester.
NPR details the backlash to Megyn Kelly’s claims that Epstein raping 15-year-olds doesn’t make him a pedophile, including this superb video by a 14-year-old girl named Eloise. (There are, in fact, some very good things on TikTok.)
President Trump pardoned a January 6^th rioter who has now been charged with molesting an 11-year-old. I don’t know why Democrats aren’t pushing this headline everywhere; in 1988, Republicans used the case of Willie Horton, a Massachusetts convict who fled while on furlough, assaulted two people, and raped a woman, to help defeat Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.
A new research paper documents the discovery of a chemical found in a common soil bacterium that is 100 times stronger than current antibiotics and would be effective against MRSA.
Thanks to climate change, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, carrier of dengue, Zika, and chikungunya, is now appearing in the Rocky Mountains.
Texas A&M now prohibits any classroom discussions of topics related to “race or gender ideology” or sexual orientation.
Switzerland has passed a law expanding the state’s power to force email and VPN providers to decrypt user messages and log IP addresses.
Several countries are developing their own messaging apps to compete with and/or separate their people from the global behemoths of Meta, TikTok, etc., most of which are based in the unstable and uncertain United States.
Amine Kessaci is a 22-year-old activist in France who started an organization to help victims of drug-related violence after his brother was killed for his involvement in the drug trade. This week, another of Amine’s brothers was killed in apparent retaliation for Amine’s political work.
Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos (R) blocked a bipartisan bill that would expand Medicaid coverage from 60 days after a mother gives birth to a full year. ProPublica has more on this story, noting that Vos claimed he would “protect the unborn” but doesn’t seem to care if they die after that.
A rare bit of positive news: A Republican candidate for Governor in Michigan had been demonizing the Muslim population in Dearborn, claiming Sharia Law was imminent and organizing a (white) march there, but after visiting the town and speaking to religious and civic leaders, he admitted he was wrong and said the propaganda about the Muslim community there was all lies. I’m most impressed that Anthony Hudson took the time to go to Dearborn and visit mosques and businesses, meaning his mind was at least somewhat open to the possibility that his views were based on misinformation.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: artificial intelligence, cults, epstein, france, frauds, harvard, health, links, longreads, michigan, Music, privacy, science, stick to baseball, switzerland, texas, trans rights

→ November 15, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/15/25.

Nothing new from me at the Athletic this week as I wait for a trade or signing to write up. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday here on the dish.

At Endless Mode, I reviewed Vantage, the new open-world cooperative game from designer Jamey Stegmaier (Tapestry, Scythe); it’s like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books converted to the tabletop, but despite incredible art and a massive amount of content in the box, I found it frustrating to try to play.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, finally. I’ve gotten a bit stuck with one or two of the ideas I’ve had for newsletters and I think that held me back from writing one.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A group of New York-based investors used a loan program designed to help revitalize disused properties in Baltimore to borrow over $100 million to buy properties, and then default on the loans, screwing over lenders, tenants, and the Baltimore housing market in general.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used a tax dodge to avoid paying over $900,000 in taxes from 2021-23. He now oversees the IRS.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem steered a $220 million contract to a firm to which she is closely tied, skipping the competitive bidding process by claiming there’s an “emergency” at the border with Mexico.

I don’t understand why this has received so little attention, but the Senate passed a bill that would wipe out the U.S. cannabis industry, which will do significant economic harm to a nascent industry and to the states that have benefited from taxing an activity that is just going to move underground anyway.

KFF Health News looks at the destruction wrought by Russ Vought, the architect of Project 2025, on our public health infrastructure. Holding these people accountable if and when they ever lose power is going to be crucial to preventing a recurrence.

Canada culled a flock of ostriches where at least some were infected with the H5N1 avian flu, despite some ridiculous interference and protests from anti-vax nut jobs. The ostrich farmers in question tried to hide the infections and didn’t follow requirements for basic biosafety.

Meanwhile, two longtime anti-vax grifters are now overseeing the FDA’s vaccine regulation program.

The unionized writers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been on strike for over three years now, but finally got their day in court and won a ruling that covers management’s violations back to 2020.

Child rapist and cult leader Warren Jeffs went to prison over a decade ago, but the harm he inflicted on his community continues, as measles has swept through Colorado City because he preached that vaccines were part of a government plot to make people infertile.

The resident of a home in Whitestown, Indiana, shot and killed a cleaning woman who went to the wrong house. Police have yet to name the shooter, who could (should!) face criminal charges.

A corrupt police chief in Marion County, Kansas, abused his power to raid the offices of a tiny local newspaper there in 2023 to prevent the Marion County Record from publishing a story about a local restaurant owner who may have lied on her liquor license application. This week, the county agreed to pay $3 million to the paper’s publisher and several of the journalists. The chief, who later resigned, is still facing criminal charges.

The husband of Michigan Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson (D) is the VP of development for a company planning to build a massive data center in the state over objections from the local community. At best, it’s a huge conflict of interest.

This is how you write a fair and honest obituary: James Watson “co-discovered DNA’s structure but later engaged in rank racism and sexism.” We do not have to paper over the misdeeds of the deceased to comply with some dated sense of decorum. Watson was part of one of the most significant discoveries of the 20^th century. He was also a racist asshole.

A 13-year-old girl in Louisiana was expelled (and later reinstated on probation) for hitting a classmate who made and distributed a deepfake porn image of her. Her parents notified the school, which appears to have taken no action against the boy.

This LitHub piece is well worth reading if only for how it explains why the phrase “Critics say” should not appear in serious journalism. You need to name those critics and show what they’re saying and why it might be valid.

Alex Berenson, dubbed “the pandemic’s wrongest man” for his consistently incorrect predictions about first the spread of the virus and then the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines against it, lost his lawsuit claiming the federal government “censored” him when Twitter nuked his account in 2021. He’s still making bank from his Substack newsletter, though.

A student from Colorado Academy applied early decision to Tulane and was accepted, but later backed out. The university then punished the entire school with a one-year ban on early-decision applications.

Chile named its Miss World winner this past week, which is newsworthy because Ignacia Fernández is also a death-metal vocalist for the band Decessus and even gave a performance as such in the finals. There are very few female vocalists in that particular subgenre; I could only name two without searching, Arch Enemy (Alissa White-Gluz) and the defunct Nuclear Death (Lori Bravo).

The Climate-Colored Goggles newsletter writes about the Dodgers’ partnership with Phillips 66, a fossil-fuel company driving the same climate change that’s feeding the devastating wildfires that hit California just about every year.

Mystic Lands, the sequel/update to the card-crafting game Mystic Vale, has six days left on its successful Kickstarter (although I am surprised it hasn’t raised more money given the original’s popularity).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baltimore, board game news, cannabis, cults, death metal, first amendment, frauds, guns, kansas, links, longreads, louisiana, michigan, science, stick to baseball, the swamp, unions, vaccines

→ November 8, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/8/25.

I had two new pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my annual ranking of the top 50 free agents (which I’ve updated to reflect option decisions and the probable return of Cody Ponce from the KBO) and a column on why the Contemporary Era Committee should put Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame. I also held a Q&A on Monday after the rankings went live.

At Endless Mode, I looked at the massive board game Luthier, which has its own soundtrack to reflect the composers depicted within the game.

I’ll do another newsletter any day now, I swear.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica investigates what was really happening in Portland before Trump illegally sent the National Guard to the Oregon city. The short answer: not much, just peaceful protests and a whopping three people charged with crimes.

The Atlantic has the unbelievable story of a Wisconsin man who appeared to have drowned while fishing, but when police couldn’t find his body, the story started to get very weird.

The Guardian examines Tucson residents’ fight against a data center that is going to put a huge strain on the region’s water and energy supplies. It doesn’t help that the center’s developers have been sketchy about who’s going to use the facility – but it’s probably Amazon.

One major lesson from Tuesday night’s decisive victories by Democrats is that supporting trans rights is a winning issue – or, I suppose, at least not a losing one. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been rushing to throw trans rights out the window as he lines up to run for President in 2028, and it’s both cruel and unnecessary.

In The Nation, Gillian Branstetter goes further, pointing out that so-called centrist Democrats need to stop blaming trans people for the party’s failures in 2024.

Democrats can be sketchy too! Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL) is withdrawing his reelection papers to try to gift the seat to his chief of staff, which critics are calling a “coronation.”

The stochastic terrorists of the online right, especially on Twitter, directed death threats to Arizona teachers who wore the same Halloween costumes they wear every year, because the right-wing loons assumed without evidence that the costumes were mocking the death of Charlie Kirk.

Speaking of Kirk, his death left a void in the white-nationalist wing of the Republican Party that Nick Fuentes is happily trying to fill.

An 18-year-old man in Oklahoma was convicted of raping two girls, including strangling one until she fell unconscious, but the judge approved a plea deal that charged him as a minor and turned a minimum of 10 years in prison to counseling with no prison time. Jesse Mack Butler was 16 at the time of at least one of the assaults. The linked story implies that he received favorable treatment because his father was the football director at Oklahoma State, where the ADA went to school; I think he got favorable treatment because he’s a white man.

Australia is generating so much electricity from renewables that they’re offering consumers three free hours of solar energy in the middle of the day, when demand is lower and generation is highest. This could be us, but you playin’ (taking fossil fuel money to prop up a dying, suicidal industry).

The north African country Mali may be about to fall to a rebel group affiliated with al-Qaeda. America’s influence in the Sahel was already waning before January, and it appears to be diminishing even further.

A couple of Philadelphia restaurants found their Google pages spammed with fake 1-star reviews … plus a “review” offering to remove those for a fee.

Astronomers detected the longest-lasting gamma-ray burst on record, so now they’re trying to figure out what caused it.

Bluesky’s official blog noted the huge traffic surge during the World Series, with a 30% bump for Saturday’s game 7, and in doing so they used a post from yours truly.

Board game news: The Gamefound campaign for The Mix, a midweight game about making cocktails, funded in just an hour and is approaching C$60,000 as I write this.

And the campaign for Movers & Shakers, a railway game of building routes and completing contracts, also funded inside of a day. It’s looks a bit lighter than the typical title from Quined, who specialize in heavier Euros and have a great reputation.

Damion Schubert looked at 365 board game rankings, condensed the games by game families (e.g., putting all Ticket to Ride games into one bucket), and then compiled the top 100 families based on those individual rankings. The list skews towards medium-heavy games, but not the heaviest, which I appreciate, and there are three families in this top ten that appeared in my own top ten last November. (Damion confirmed my list was one of the 365.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, arizona, astronomy, board game news, climate change, frauds, links, longreads, oklahoma, oregon, scams, social media, stick to baseball, trans rights, white nationalism

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