metoo

October 17, 2026 · 11 comments

Stick to baseball, 10/17/26.

The first of three posts from my trip to the Arizona Fall League is now up, examining and excoriating the ridiculous outfield-positioning experiment happening in games at Salt River Fields. My notes on players I saw will run Sunday and Monday in two posts, split up by league. I’ll also work up a post on the five new restaurants I tried on this trip.

I have a newsletter written but have been holding it until the AFL posts were up, so I’ll probably send it on Monday. In the meantime, you can sign up for the newsletter (it’s free) or follow me on Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, or Threads.

And now, the links…

A video first, from The New York Times: In the first episode of a new show called “Sound Off,” former Chicago Tribune editor Marc Jacob explains how he thinks the Times is failing readers by whitewashing the lies and corruption of the Trump Administration.

On to the longreads first … also from the Times, a look at the increase in threats and incidents of political violence aimed at elected officials in the United States. Yes, right-wing elements are pushing some of this, but as someone who’s received such threats, I think it’s also a result of the increasing isolation and depersonalization that come from people who are too online.

ProPublica’s investigations have found 506 U.S. citizens detained by ICE and DHS under Trump, contrary to the Administration’s lies that say this isn’t happening.

The deeply unethical vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau championed by RFK Jr. – where some children will be denied the hepatitis B vaccine for six weeks – will go ahead after all, with U.S. taxpayer funding. A hepatitis B infection in an infant can cause lifelong health problems. The study is pushed by anti-vaxxers hoping to find support for their claims that vaccines are harmful. The New York Times also has a story up on how much RFK Jr. is advancing anti-vaxxers’ goals (polies that are already killing Americans).

Also from ProPublica, Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate in Texas, has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on junkets around the world, to at least 17 countries, with no business justification for the expense.

Science details the results of a study looking at why attrition rates are higher for women faculty than men.

A 19-year-old white man, radicalized by right-wing content online, planned to shoot up a Hindu temple in the Chicago area, and only a jammed gun and a co-worker who thought to call the police stopped a massacre.

Zeteo reports on how Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, is selling trips to Israel with the promise of access to top Israeli officials, and is still raising money for the PAC he pledged to dissolve when he got the job.

A couple of tech writers announced that they’re going back to X in the last week, despite, you know, all the Nazis, the hate speech, the false information, and the way the owner is trying to undermine our democracy. Another tech writer lists eleven reasons why Elon sucks, using that as his argument to avoid X.

Mother Jones explains how that Ukraine drone strike on a data center didn’t wipe out a bunch of Russian bots, but people believed it anyway.

Israel “settlers” attacked Palestinian olive farmers and a Washington Post journalist in the West Bank, part of their annual effort to wreck the olive harvest. These people are not “settling” anything.

A study from Norway found that wealth taxes did not lead to the affected taxpayers fleeing the country.

The Times looks at the upheaval in mathematics after the release of hundreds of new proofs and findings generated by OpenAI, including a proof of the quasi-Riemann hypothesis, which may get mathematicians (or AI) closer to solving maybe the most famous currently unsolved problem in math.

Yet another sexual assault at a frat party, this one at the University of Chicago.

Singer/guitarist Geordie Greep, formerly lead singer of black midi, was accused of sexual assault by a woman after a show earlier this month in Vancouver. The accusation was followed by a flyer, not written by the accuser, that claimed he’d raped her, a claim she flatly denies.

Two women have filed a lawsuit accusing disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) of sex trafficking, after which he attempted to dox them.

A 20-year-old woman in Milwaukee called the police to ask for protection from her 39-year-old boyfriend; he killed her hours later.

Bestselling author Sally Rooney (Normal People) has supported the group Palestine Action, which the UK has branded as a terrorist organization, meaning under UK law her publisher could not pay her royalties for her books sold in the country. As a result, Faber will no longer supply her books to stores in Britain, a move she supports. We aren’t the only western country rolling back civil rights.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) holds millions of dollars’ worth of shares in data center companies, so of course he’s pushing legislation that will make it harder for states to regulate their activities.

Cranio Creations has a Gamefound page up for a new edition of Lorenzo il Magnifico.

Eagle-Gryphon has a Kickstarter page up for a new edition of Empire: Age of Discovery (previously published as Age of Empires III).

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, free speech, guns, immigration, israel, journalism, links, longreads, mathematics, metoo, palestine, rhode island, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

October 3, 2026 · 11 comments

Stick to baseball, 10/3/26.

One new piece from me at The Athletic this week, my annual Minor League Prospect of the Year column, with this year’s honor going to Rainiel Rodriguez of the Cardinals.

I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok. And yes, I’m overdue for a newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Atavist has the incredible story of a family that worked to find a treatment for their daughter’s extremely rare kidney disease, a thirty-year effort that turned into a worldwide endeavor and that has already yielded two effective medications.

Family separation under Trump 2 means deporting the parents and leaving their children, often babies, alone in the U.S. I’d love to hear how evangelical Christians who support this Administration rationalize this kind of exceptional cruelty.

The parents of 17-month-old girl gave her raw milk, thanks to a recommendation from her chiropractor (of course), and the girl nearly died of an E. Coli infection. California has done nothing to the unlicensed dairy that sold the toxic liquid. No one even seems to expect the chiropractor to face any consequences; the quack’s office banned the mother from the Facebook group it runs when she explained what happened to her daughter.

The New York Times looks at the collapse of a massive for-profit Montessori school chain that they call a Ponzi scheme, where the founders walked away scot-free and have already founded another school.

The Texas Tribune has identified Gregory Feathers as the ICE agent who shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Aruajo in Houston this summer.

We all got a good laugh at the clownery of Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) this week when he accused Jack Smith of being at an Atlanta Hawks game when Smith was actually at an Iowa Hawkeyes game. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger uses this to expose Schmitt’s ridiculous state lawsuit against China for supposedly hoarding masks during the pandemic – masks Schmitt claims don’t work, by the way – which is costing Missouri taxpayers millions of dollars.

There’s a dengue fever outbreak in Florida, perhaps the worst-equipped state to deal with a public health crisis. Climate change is going to push more of these so-called “tropical diseases” into the mainland U.S. as the mosquitoes that spread them are better able to survive our winters.

The Washington Post broke the story of Trump using money intended for memorials for fallen police officers to fund his campaign ads. These ads are illegal, by the way, almost certainly violating the Hatch Act.

A 14-year-old boy in England chased a girl who refused to date him through a shopping area and then stabbed her. He received probation.

The Cut has the scoop on how student journalists at Cornell broke open the story on the Chi Phi rape case, and a story written by Professor Kate Manne on the environment at Cornell right now.

Tennessee was so eager to kill Christa Pike that they botched the execution, leaving her unconscious and on life support. It’s an indictment of every state that still uses the death penalty and everyone who supports this barbaric practice. Capital punishment is state-sponsored vengeance.

California has passed a law to subsidize local journalism, offering large tax incentives for outlets that hire new journalists in full or even part-time roles. The article praises Gov. Newsom for signing it, but this is a rare win for Newsom after he’s vetoed all kinds of bills designed at protecting Californians from Trumpism, including a bill that would have protected medical providers there from prosecution by red states over abortion or gender-affirming care, and just the other day a bill that would have banned the use of ‘pervert glasses’ and other secret recording devices.

Express-News columnist Mike Finger (a longtime reader as well) writes how NBA stars are lining up to endorse gambling sites at their fans’ expense. Of course, now the CFTC is suing states that are trying to block the probably-illegal gambling operations of Kalshi and Polymarket because Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in the latter.

Ravenous looks at private equity-backed cookie chains like Insomnia and Crumbl, where the cookies are mid at best but the profits are huge. The obvious message: Find a local bakery. They’re everywhere, the cookies will be better, and you’ll be doing more good with your money.

Todd Rundgren got the attention he sought when he claimed that Taylor Swift has ruined music. I’m not a Swiftie at all – I think she might have two songs I like – but this is some serious old-man-yells-at-cloud stuff. The flattening of popular music is driven by technology and by rudimentary capitalism, not by any one artist, who, by the way, is far from the worst out there (like, has he heard Stella Lefty?).

From June, a church leader in Michigan is still under investigation for abusing dozens of children, with over 60 felony charges and counting. No trans people were charged.

MAGA podcaster and noted plagiarist Benny Johnson is now being sued by two anti-ICE protesters he labelled as “terrorists.” Good.

While arguing with the president of the local Building Trades Countil in a bar in his home district, Pennsylvania Rep. Aaron Bernstine (R) shouted a gay slur about his colleague Malcolm Kenyatta (D) and falsely claimed that Kenyatta has AIDS. Kenyatta has called on Bernstine to resign.

A reader sent along this story about a controversy in the wine-writing world as the winner of the Pall Mall Awards’ short-form category was probably written by or with AI.

Phil Williams points out how a publisher of white nationalist books is happily selling its content on Amazon and, until he called them out, via Target. As of Friday morning one of the two books Williams highlights is still up on Amazon, with a rating of 4.6 stars.

Last week, I linked to Futurism’s story on an AI content farm that buys up legitimate blogs, shitcans the staff, and pumps out AI slop instead. Turns out one of that operation’s owners has extensive ties to Ghislaine Maxwell.

The Minnesota Star-Tribune’s David Perry decries the University of Minnesota’s plans to cut $225 million from its budget over the next two years.

Restoration Games has already raised nearly $1.5 million as of Friday morning for its Kickstarter for The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit, the huge, special-edition reboot of 2000’s Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit. There won’t be a regular edition from Restoration after this one, so if you’re into this game, now’s your chance.

Board & Dice has a crowdfunding page up on Gamefound for Thessaloniki (from Daniele Tascini) and Windmill Valley Duel (from Dani Garcia).

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, california, colleges, cornell, florida, frauds, health, immigration, journalism, links, longreads, medicine, metoo, minnesota, missouri, pennsylvania, science, stick to baseball, tennessee, the swamp

September 5, 2026 · 22 comments

Stick to baseball, 9/5/26.

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli settlers murdered two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank.

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

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

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

August 8, 2026 · 8 comments

Stick to baseball, 8/8/26.

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

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

My next stop is my free email newsletter.

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

And now, the links…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 21, 2026 · 6 comments

Stick to baseball, 4/21/26.

My one post on The Athletic last week was a long scouting notebook covering Vahn Lackey, Joseph Contreras, Liam Peterson, and other players I saw in a week in South Carolina and Georgia.

Over at the AV Club, I reviewed Catan on the Road, a new portable Catan game that loses the map – and thus the competition for space – but keeps the resource-trading mechanic and even tweaks the rules to encourage players to trade more.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter late last week. You should subscribe.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times has another exposé on how Harvard professors and administrators were happy to take Jeffrey Epstein’s money, even after his initial conviction. Three more professors found their names included in the latest files that the Times reporters reviewed: Howard Gardner, Anne Harrington, and Andrew Strominger. All are still active faculty members.

The New Yorker investigates how the Trump Administration has made locking up immigrant infants and children a core part of its strategy.

Upward Bound is a bestselling novel written by nonverbal, autistic author Woody Brown using the discredited communication technique called Rapid Prompting. His mother may be the actual author.

A group chat started by the secretary of Miami-Dade’s Republican Party was filled with racist slurs and antisemitic comments by FIU students, but so far the school has yet to take any action against them. One of those students, Ethan Ratchkauskas, is suing the school on First Amendment grounds after saying someone had to “swiss cheese that professor,” later clarifying that he meant shooting them full of holes.

Courtney Williams was one of the whistleblowers who spoke to a journalist about sexual harassment and discrimination at Fort Bragg in the 2010s. The Justice Department just arrested her, claiming she revealed sensitive information.

The BBC goes through all of the insider trading allegations against Trump, his family members, and his Cabinet.

Most of the stories about former Virginia Lt. Gov Justin Fairfax (D)’s murder of his wife and subsequent suicide were about him. CNN profiled Cerina Fairfax, the victim in his case.

Also in the Times, Michael Jackson’s estate is hoping the upcoming hagiography Michael will help restore some of the disgraced singer’s image and thus boost their profits. Of course, if you’ve seen Leaving Neverland, you know exactly why this whole endeavor is disgusting.

Good riddance to Eric Swalwell, whose downfall came about due to the efforts of many women (including some of his victims) who organized themselves online, as detailed by NPR.

Oh, hey, another person President Trump pardoned has gone on to be convicted of sex crimes against children.

The Lancet has an editorial beseeching readers not to forgive people like Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, ostensible scientists who sold their souls to Trump and have peddled misinformation that will set public health efforts back for decades.

It appears that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which traces its origins to 1786, will continue publishing after all, as the nonprofit institute that owns the Baltimore Banner is buying the paper. Block Communications, owned by the Block family, had decided to shut the paper down rather than abide by federal labor court rulings against their unfair labor practices.

The same white supremacist behind the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that knocked down affirmative action in college admissions is now targeting the Congressional Black Caucus’ scholarship program for Black students. Hell isn’t hot enough for people who want to roll us back to the days after Reconstruction.

A worker died during his shift at an Amazon warehouse in Oregon earlier this month. His co-workers were told to ignore his body and keep working.

Mother Jones details the Trump Administration’s potential ‘nuclear bomb’ to stop all gender-affirming care for trans youths. I’m not sure if Monday’s federal court ruling vacating the Kennedy Declaration changes what’s in this story.

Senegal just passed a law doubling the penalty for same-sex relationships, while also criminalizing “promoting” or “financing” LGBT relationships. The bill passed the West African nation’s legislature with no votes against it.

The Texas A&M professor who was told by that fake university’s Board of Regents that he couldn’t teach a portion of Plato’s Symposium because of the school’s new censorship regime spoke to The Chronicle of Higher Education about his decision to resign.

Traffic to publishers from social media is plummeting, particularly from Facebook and Twitter.

AI-driven accounts promoting Trump and/or conservative politicians are popping up all over TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.

A Missouri cop who killed a 2-year-old girl while working as a SWAT team sniper is now a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper. Keaton Siebenaler has never faced any consequences for firing at a silhouette during a hostage situation, which is how he ended up killing Clesslynn Crawford during a standoff between her father and police.

Quined Games’ reprinting of Rudiger Dorn’s Goa is up on Gamefound right now. I owned it, and played it, but it didn’t quite do it for me – at least not to the level of its reputation.

Tagged africa, artificial intelligence, board game news, frauds, harvard, immigration, lgbt rights, links, longreads, metoo, missouri, pittsburgh, police, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trans rights

April 12, 2026 · 5 comments

Stick to baseball, 4/12/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I posted my ranking of the top 50 prospects for this year’s draft, although unfortunately one of them, Jacob Dudan, is now undergoing Tommy John surgery. He threw 110+ pitches five times in his last six starts, after throwing just 30 innings last year as a reliever. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. If I added another name, it would be Virginia Tech’s Brett Renfrow or Arkansas’ Ryder Helfrick.

I swear I’ll get a newsletter out next – I’ve had a mad week of travel, so I’ve had very little time to just sit and write freely.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: By now, you’ve probably seen the New York Times piece that claims that Satoshi, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, is actually a British cryptographer named Adam Back. I have some issues with the article, particularly the way it centers the author’s search and feelings rather than Satoshi/Back or why finding him might be important, but in general I think it’s an excellent piece of reporting. (And I have no opinion on whether he’s right.)
Two Congresspersons from Arizona conducted a surprise inspection of an ICE concentration camp there and found the detainees packed “like sardines,” with rooms meant for 24 people holding up to 40, no beds, and no showers. Anyone responsible for this should be put on trial, with life in prison the sentence for anyone found guilty for creating, carrying out, or enabling this inhumane treatment.

The online left is, unfortunately, also prone to believing in conspiracy theories. Brandy Zarozny details one of them, a man named Sascha Riley who has been pushing a fantastical (and probably delusional) tale that, as a child, he was sexually assaulted by several prominent Republicans, including the current President. Riley seems to be unwell, making this all kind of sad beyond just the maddening aspect of people believing so ardently in something untrue.

Four women have come forward to accuse Rep. Eric Swalwell (D), also a candidate for Governor of California, of sexually assaulting them. Several Democrats have called on him to end his campaign, but I have yet to see a single one calling on him to resign from Congress – which he needs to do.

NPR has a wonderful, interactive piece on life on Tristan da Cunha, the world’s most isolated inhabited place.

Washington state has held a man with an intellectual disability in inhumane conditions for 23 years, all for a crime he can’t understand. He’s been assaulted and bullied by other prisoners and residents of the house where he lived on conditional release at one point.

The Times also ran a positive profile of an AI-driven startup that’s peddling GLP-1s and other prescription drugs – but that company is doing so with fake ads and other very sketchy practices that the original story didn’t mention, according to this exposé by Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré. Medvi is just a pill mill that may be violating FDA rules as well, which is noted now in a correction below the original article.

Trump’s Health and Human Services Department is funneling millions of dollars in taxpayer money to so-called “pregnancy crisis centers,” anti-abortion facilities that are nearly always backed by Christian groups.

Former Republican Senator Ben Sasse, who has stage 4 pancreatic cancer, spoke to the Times’ Ross Douthat about the disease and his choice to be so public about his journey. I don’t wish this fate on anyone. I also don’t think it exempts him from answering for, say, opposing efforts to fight climate change or fighting against LGBTQ+ or reproductive rights. Indeed, isn’t that the time to ask questions like that? Would you do anything differently? Are you thinking less about the here and now and more about the world you’re leaving behind?

The right-wing news outlet Dallas Express ran smear stories about the minor child of a Democratic Texas state rep under a fake byline. It’s just another example of how dark money has poisoned the online information ecosystem.

Author Alex Preston used an LLM to write a book review that was published in The New York Times, and he got caught. The Times has dropped him as a freelancer. Also, write your own shit, people.

The Department of Defense sent U.S. soldiers into harm’s way in Kuwait ahead of the Iranian missile attack that killed six service members and injured 30, and they were totally unprepared for the strike, according to survivors – directly contradicting the lie put out by Pete Hegseth.

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews historian and law professor Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed about her new book and, more salient to us, how the right’s attacks on education and historical research are designed to lead academics and writers to self-censor.

An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter states quite clearly that Catholics who support this Administration are choosing between complicity in the war on Iran, with its attacks on civilian infrastructure and vulgar, hateful language towards the Muslim nation, or the true tenets of their faith. The Administration has couched the war on Christian nationalist rhetoric, but there is no squaring that with the nonviolent Christ of the Bible.

Board game news: Bitewing has a new Kickstarter for two more games in its travel-sized game series, Arribada and Seagrass.

I’ve never played Ostia, which is on the heavier side and has also been hard to find in the U.S., but folks are excited that Crafty Games is going to publish/distribute a fresh edition this fall.

Tagged artificial intelligence, board game news, california, carceral state, conspiracy theories, iran, links, longreads, metoo, religion, stick to baseball, texas

May 24, 2025 · 26 comments

Stick to baseball, 5/24/25.

My first Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects for this year’s draft, is now up for subscribers to The Athletic; I held a Q&A on Thursday to take questions about it and other prospects. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook from my recent looks at Andrew Painter, George Lombard, Jr., Jhostynxon “The Password” Garcia, Mikey Romero, and others.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Diatoms, which has some incredible art and high-quality components, and almost plays too quickly – I wanted a few more rounds to keep building patterns.

I’ve now sent out two issues of my free email newsletter in the last two weeks, which I think counts as a streak.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The best thing I’ve read this month is this San Francisco Chronicle story by their food critic, MacKenzie Chung Fegan, about her experience eating at The French Laundry and how chef-owner Thomas Keller treated her. It is nuanced, thoughtful, and ultimately allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

The Columbia Journalism Review has an extensive investigative report on the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against journalist Wesley Lowery.

The Guardian has an excerpt from the new book that their reporter Dom Phillips was writing when he was murdered, along with indigenous Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira. The two were investigating the illicit destruction of the Amazonian rain forest and the threat to indigenous peoples in the region. The book, How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist’s Deadly Quest for Answers, will come out on May 27^th.
The New Republic has the full story of the state-sponsored executions of four American nuns in El Salvador in 1980. The Reagan Administration, by the way, kept gaslighting the public by claiming the nuns were secretly communist sympathizers or activists. Today they’d just claim the nuns were MS-13.

AI’s energy consumption is completely out of control, surpassing cryptocurrency mining and massively increasing carbon emissions from big tech firms.

Trump tried to stop Harvard from taking in any students from outside the U.S., and Harvard sued and immediately got a temporary injunction. Do not comply in advance.

A man shot and killed two Israeli diplomatic staff near the Jewish Museum in DC in an apparent act of terrorism. He later shouted “Free Palestine” after his arrest. Reuters has more on the victims and the suspect.

The Administration is trying to intimidate progressives in Congress with the charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver. Progressives need to stand up and fight for her, writes Elie Mystal in The Nation.
The vaccine denialists running the FDA are saying they won’t approve COVID boosters for healthy people under 65, despite all of the evidence showing those are effective and no evidence showing they’re not safe.

Nathan Fielder’s show The Rehearsal stumbled on a technique used in Europe to help facilitate communication between pilots on commercial flights and prevent accidents … but it’s not used in the U.S.

Matthew Cherry won an Academy Award for his short film Hair Love, which then turned into a book and an animated series on HBO Max. He’s now working on a new short film, an animated musical project called Time Signature, and has a Kickstarter up for it.

An unusual genetic mutation explains the coloring of orange cats, but it doesn’t explain why they are completely bonkers.

My editor at Paste, Garrett Martin, reviewed a new video game called Despelote that is about sports but not specifically a sports video game. It sounds fascinating.

Two new boardgame Kickstarters this week: Tangerine Games has one for Sauros, a dinosaur-themed trick-taking and tile-laying game.

Board & Dice, which specializes in heavy Eurogames, has one for a new edition of Trismegistus, which is very highly rated on BGG but also has a game weight rating of 4.18/5.

Tagged board game news, brazil, climate change, harvard, israel, links, longreads, metoo, movies, restaurants, stick to baseball, vaccines

January 18, 2025 · 8 comments

Stick to baseball, 1/18/25.

One new piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my reaction to Roki Sasaki’s announcement that he’s going to sign with the Dodgers. I also contributed to the Athletic’s Hall of Fame ballot roundup, listing my selections with a brief explanation.

I do have another board game review going up at Paste next week, but most other writing has been on hold as I work on the top 100 prospects ranking, which is due to go live on January 27^th. I actually still haven’t settled on who’s #1 – I see six or seven worthwhile candidates, but nobody is a clear leader. I do hope to get a newsletter out in the next few days as I feel more comfortable about my progress on the top 100.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Vulture ran an extensive exposé detailing the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman, with specifics from several women who came forward last year to accuse him.
Miss Hall’s School, an all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts, protected a teacher who was grooming and raping students for over 25 years, according to multiple victims who spoke to Vanity Fair. The school ignored complaints from students, even (allegedly) expelling two who pointed out what was happening, until one of the victims went public last spring.
This New York Times story about a woman who is “in love” with a ChatGPT character she created is disturbing and also extremely well-crafted.
RFK Jr. admitted that he lied about how much money he’s made from his anti-vaccine grift. Spreading health misinformation is extremely profitable, as long as you don’t care about who your words harm.
One of the best headlines of the month comes from Jezebel, in a piece about Mark Zuckerberg: “It Must Suck to Be Such a Whiny Little Bitch.” That scene from last year’s Thelma where she keeps mispronouncing his name comes to mind every day now.
The Washington Post spiked its editorial page’s endorsement of Kamala Harris by claiming they weren’t in the endorsement business or some such nonsense. Now they’ve endorsed 19 Trump nominees.
Neko Case spoke to the Times about her upcoming memoir.
AI is also screwing up the world of academic publishing, as people are using it to push garbage commentaries at journals to try to juice their personal impact factors.
Can the TikTok ban end up helping the seriously fucked-up social media landscape?
There are a couple of would-be Instagram competitors out now, Flashes (based on BlueSky’s protocols) and PixelFed, at least in part as a response to Facebook’s decision to stop most content moderation and allow users to say pretty much anything they want about LGBTQ folks.
Garrett Martin, my editor at Paste, wrote about playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in explorer or easy mode. I still haven’t tried it because I spent so much time playing the original series all the way through, several times, including all sorts of mods. I’m sure I’d love it, though.

Tagged academia, links, longreads, metoo, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines, video games

November 11, 2024 · 23 comments

Stick to baseball, 11/11/24.

We updated my ranking of the top 50 free agents in baseball this offseason on Monday after all options were declined or exercised to reflect the actual free agent pool. My next article there will probably come when we have a big transaction.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter, covering my feelings on the election, on Saturday.

I locked my Twitter account earlier in the week due to the site’s change to allow blocked users to see your posts. At this point, I will only post links to my work there, and I’ll be more active on Bluesky and Threads. Of course, I’ll still be here, and in the comments under my articles on The Athletic.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Does the NIL era mean the end of Ivy League athletics? I think it does, at least as we have known it. And maybe that’s fine.

Fine, here are some of the better post-election pieces I’ve seen, bearing in mind I’ve skipped a lot of the blame game going around. The New Republic has had the best content in the wake of the election disaster, including Kat Abughazaleh’s story saying the Democrats need to clean out their party leadership after losing to Trump twice in three elections, a Greg Sargent column on how Trump voters don’t realize how he actually hurt the economy and reproductive rights, and a podcast with Sargent and the Philly Inquirer’s Will Bunch on Jeff Bezos sucking up to Trump after the election. In The Nation, Elie Mystal wrote what I also believe, that Trump is not a fluke, but that this is what the United States is. In The Atlantic, Lora Kelley wrote about how the economy ended up more important than the issues on which the Democrats focused, including abortion rights and democracy itself. The Texas Tribune wrote about the rightward shift of the southern part of that state. Just before the election, Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic that Trump needs help, as we had even more evidence that the former and now incoming President might be losing his grip.

Scientific American covered how catastrophic a Trump Presidency will be for climate action.

There were some tiny, isolated bits of good news from Election Day, including Arizonans defeating three GOP-led ballot measures to restrict voting rights; my state of Delaware electing Sarah McBride to be the first openly trans member of Congress (I’ve met her and I’m a big fan); and abortion rights passing everywhere except in a rigged vote in Florida, where the ballot measure got 57% of the vote, but the Republicans moved the goalposts to 60%.

Iowa tried to purge alleged noncitizens from voter rolls after early voting had already begun. Sounds fair. It’s not like they had any warning that an election was coming.

A court in Maricopa County, Arizona, cancelled the registrations of some voters based on errant information that they had been convicted of felonies.

The Guardian’s Arwa Madhawi writes that we are witnessing the final stage of genocide in Gaza, citing historian Omar Bartov. The Associated Press covered Israel’s renewed attacks on hospitals in Gaza, buildings that Israel has already previously bombed.

A dismaying story from the Times on older folks giving all their money to scammers while their kids have no way to stop them from doing so. This isn’t people with (diagnosed) cognitive decline or impairment, but people who are perhaps a little more credulous because of their age and unfamiliarity with the digital world.

NPR has a story on attorney Victoria Burke, who helps victims of sexual assault fight defamation suits filed against them by the accused. Such lawsuits can become a way to silence victims and make it harder for them to come forward or pursue their cases, and Burke has helped expand anti-SLAPP statutes in California to cover these cases.

Not all tech companies are bad: Apple quietly added a feature to iOS 18 to protect users’ data on phones seized by police from potentially unlawful searches. Phones that have remained in the lock state for four days will automatically reboot to their Before First Use state, making it harder for forensic analysts to break into them.

Multiple women have accused University of Florida men’s basketball coach Todd Golden of stalking and sexually harassing them, according to a report in the independent site The Alligator. The University received a Title IX complaint against Golden on September 27^th.

Jason Yates, an evangelical Christian who supports Trump and previously was CEO of the activist group My Faith Votes, was arrested on charges of possession of over 100 images of child pornography. No trans people were involved in the case.

Jamie Oliver wrote a children’s fantasy novel, and it turns out it has some really dated stereotypes of indigenous Australians. Worse, neither he nor his publishers even consulted with anyone on cultural sensitivity to maybe avoid this fiasco.

Swifties are fleeing Twitter for BlueSky, too.

A 13-year-old girl in Florida went to the police after she was raped by her adoptive father; the police didn’t believe her and charged her with lying. When he raped her again, she recorded it on her phone. Taylor Cadle, now 21, came forward this week in a PBS story on the police’s complete mishandling of the case.

Prof. Donald Fanger taught my favorite class at Harvard, Comedy and the Novel, where we read several novels I still love, including my all-time favorite, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Prof. Fanger died this July at age 94.

I mentioned the letter urging a literary boycott of Israeli cultural institutions in an earlier roundup; there is now a countering letter opposing that boycott, with hundreds of signatories of its own.

I had a couple of short links about the shocking and untimely death of Amber Cook, who worked in marketing for several board game companies and was an avid gamer herself, last weekend. Her partner wrote a slightly longer note about her passing and some upcoming events to raise funds for Amber’s young son.

An 11-year-old girl in Alabama killed herself as a result of bullying, possibly after just one incident at school.

Two updates on elections in Eastern Europe: Molvoda’s pro-western President Maia Sandu won re-election despite a massive disinformation campaign by Russia, while outside observers say that the election results in Georgia (the country) make no statistical sense. The incumbent Georgian Dream party claimed victory, while opposition parties have alleged fraud and blame Russian involvement.

A new study in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia found a correlation between higher caffeine consumption and lower risk of memory impairment. This is just one study, and it showed correlation, not causation, but that’s none of my business (sips tea).

Rich countries, led by the EU, blocked a proposal to help poorer countries restore their environments at the COP16 global biodiversity summit in late October.

France is prosecuting seven people involved in spreading the lies that led to the beheading of a French teacher who had shown an example of the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo that Islamist terrorists cited as their reason for murdering 12 people at the magazine’s offices in 2015. The actual killer was shot dead by police shortly after he murdered the teacher, Samuel Paty; this trial is about the online “hate campaign” that took place before the attack.

Trump’s Truth Social platform outsourced coding jobs to Mexico even as he threatened companies with retaliation for sending jobs outside of the U.S. American Second to Profits.

The progressive voter mobilization group AllVote sent misleading and/or inaccurate text messages to voters in swing states claiming they had already voted or sending links to the wrong sites for voting information, according to state officials in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona.

Elon Musk’s false or misleading claims about the election, including those about the major candidates, were viewed over 2 billion times, according to an analysis by CNN. I’m sure that had no effect on anyone’s voting choices, though.

Nearly 400 people have joined lawsuits alleging sexual abuse at state-run youth detention centers in Washington, with the allegations dating as far back as 1956.

Tagged alabama, arizona, board game news, climate change, coffee, delaware, europe, florida, france, gaza, harvard, iowa, links, longreads, metoo, police, social media, stick to baseball, suicide, technology, trump, voter suppression, washington

July 13, 2024 · 3 comments

Stick to baseball, 7/13/24.

I posted a third projection for Sunday’s first round of the MLB draft, and updated my Big Board of the top 100 prospects in the draft class, both for subscribers to the Athletic. I also took your questions here in a Klawchat on Thursday. On Saturday, I’ll have a new post with smaller scouting reports on about 20-25 more players in the draft class, guys whose names you might hear Sunday or Monday but who didn’t make the cut for the top 100.

At Paste, I reviewed Neotopia, a perfectly cromulent filler game for family play that didn’t bring anything new to the tabletop. I do like the way the scoring forces players to think about balance throughout the game, though.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Gateway Church founder Robert Morris blamed his 12-year-old victim for the sexual abuse he inflicted on her. And so did Morris’s wife, according to the victim, Cindy Clemishere, who courageously came forward a month ago with the story, leading to Morris’s abdication and the resignations of four other Church leaders. No drag queens, no trans people, just a pastor and the leaders of a giant, tax-exempt religious organization.

Texas Monthly exposed how the Texas Senate has buried sexual harassment claims against its members and senior staffers even after it revised its policies to supposedly address the issue.

Also in Texas – what a great government they have down there! – the state has spent years siphoning public funds to so-called “pregnancy crisis centers,” usually religious groups that try to convince pregnant women not to have abortions, but there’s no evidence it has had any effect at all, aside from violating the principle of separation of church and state.

Vaccine denialist and antisemite Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped spawn a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed several children. He’s denying that, too.

Vaccines save lives. We need new strategies to increase vaccine uptake and counter bullshit from bad actors like RFK Jr.

Donald Trump is Unfit to Lead: He Is Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action. The NY Times editorial page belatedly gets the point. Biden may not be fit to be President. Trump is a threat to our democracy.

Trump is also lying to the press and public by saying he doesn’t know about Project 2025. We’ll see if Inquirer columnist Will Bunch’s belief that Project 2025 is poison for Trump’s candidacy is valid.

A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, killing at least two children. Trump has said he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.”

It doesn’t matter what Trump says or does, though. His supporters don’t waver. If they think an action is bad, and Trump does it, they change their opinion of the action. If that’s not cultlike behavior, well, I don’t have a better word for it – and the media needs to cover his campaign accordingly.

A former student of the Kyrene School District in southeast Phoenix is suing the district for failing to address a long string of antisemitic bullying incidents that already resulted in a citation from the U.S. Department of Education.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s public schools chief is trying to push the right-wing PragerU materials into classrooms, promoting the misinformation group’s content on the department website, by claiming that teachers have only been presenting the “extreme left side” in classrooms. I’m very glad I didn’t raise my daughter there.

Our brains are wired to see patterns – even when they aren’t there. Which, coincidentally, is the theme of a single released last month by Mercury Rev.

Voters in Jackson County, Missouri, resoundingly rejected a sales tax hike to use taxpayer funds for stadium projects for the privately-owned Chiefs and Royals just three months ago, so, of course, the owners are just going to try to put it up for another vote and threaten to move the teams out of state.

Many species of tropical frogs are endangered because of a fungus that causes the disease chytridiomycosis; it turns out the fungus is heat-sensitive and a sort of ‘sauna’ can help kill the fungus and save the frogs.

Plaid Hat Games introduced a Kickstarter for Wandering Galaxy, a board game set in the Crossroads universe.

Tagged arizona, board game news, environment, links, longreads, metoo, neuroscience, religion, science, stadium scams, stick to baseball, texas, trump, ukraine, vaccines

Archives