Nothing new from me this week on the Athletic, and just a pair of posts from me here, actually, reviewing the board game Forage and the abysmal novel Verity. So let’s get right to the links…
- Longreads first: This New York Times investigation of the three people orchestrating smear campaigns against certain women in Hollywood, doing so at the behest of Justin Baldoni, Rebel Wilson, and others, is appalling – and very well-sourced. They uncovered messages between Wilson and one of the ringleaders, saying that for $110,000 they could put up a website that accused her target, writer Amanda Ghost, of sex trafficking.
- The Atlantic spoke to the trucker who hit Pierre Damas Bel, the Haitian man who killed himself by jumping in front of the truck after Trump revoked the Temporary Protected Status of Haitian refugees earlier this year. The driver, Jack Burhing, was absolutely not at fault, and writer Stephanie McCrummen shows tremendous empathy for Buhring, Bel’s family, and others in the community in Springfield, Ohio.
- Bernadette Greene-Placentia, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Arizona’s 8th district, revealed this week that she was raped while fixing one of her campaign signs. She’s running against election denier and incumbent Abraham Hamadeh, who has received $60,000 from AIPAC and other pro-Israel PACS this cycle.
- Science exposes how much NSF has destroyed its social sciences research under Trump and Russ Vought.
- A pastor and his wife who are Christian influencers and wrote a relationship book have been arrested for physically and sexually abusing their daughter. Seth Day is a professor at a Southwestern Adventist University – that religion was founded by a nutcase who claimed Jesus was coming back in 1843 or 1844, and, well, he’s a bit late – and he was charged with the abuse, while his wife Heather was charged with knowing of the abuse and failing to protect her daughter or report it. There were no trans people or drag queens arrested or involved in this story.
- Of course the MAGA right, notably Christian nationalist Matt Walsh, have jumped into the Cornell 7 discourse by defending the rapists. It’s inherent to that fringe worldview.
- A cop in North Carolina shot and killed a woman’s two dogs during a break-in in 2024. A court told her she can’t release the camera footage of the incident, but she’s doing it anyway. The court claimed releasing any of the body or dashcam video would endanger the police officer; that says to me that the officer must really be in the wrong here.
- Multiple soldiers are already planning to file for religious exemptions to avoid participating in the planned public execution of the mass murderer Nidal Mikal Hasan. Public executions are banned under international law; Iran and Afghanistan were the only countries to use them in 2025.
- Writing for The New Republic, Michael Tomasky praises Sen. Jon Ossoff’s highly effective quips and one-liners against his opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R), and says Ossoff is the 2028 Democratic front-runner until proven otherwise. I would broaden the statement to point out that candidates who are taking this aggressive approach, including Ossoff, El-Sayed, and to some extent Adam Hamilton, seem to be faring better than those who are playing defense (like engaging with transphobes).
- The Kansas reflector and MS.NOW investigated Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-KS) use of taxpayer dollars to fund his campaigns.
- In Ohio, there are ads attacking U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown (D) that show a trans woman claiming she underwent gender-reassignment surgery as a minor. It turns out she’s a phony – she’s not from Ohio and didn’t have that surgery until she was 19.
- Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R) has been posting deepfake videos of his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke, who has hit Van Orden with a cease-and-desist order over this AI slop. He isn’t even labeling the fake ads as AI, which is generally required by the sites where they’re posted.
- Paul Waldman attacks the credulous mainstream reporters trying to make Rahm Emmanuel happen. Emmanuel is already trying to gear up for a Presidential run, despite lacking any real constituency, bringing a milquetoast policy platform, and carrying a major scandal – he covered up the police murder of a 15-year-old boy while he was Mayor of Chicago.
- One of the measles deaths in Pennsylvania was a 20-year-old Amish woman who had leukemia and wanted to get vaccinated, but couldn’t because the cancer had suppressed her immune system.
- New research found that James Watson’s claim that he first found the helix in a famous photo of human DNA is bogus; Rosalind Franklin, who died in 1958 and still is not properly honored for her role in the discovery, spotted it first.
- Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, writes in the Times editorial pages how attribution science may end up forcing oil and gas companies to pay for the damage they’ve caused.
- Another one of those bought-and-paid-for “economic reports” claims that a new Royals stadium will produce $1.4 billion in economic benefits for Kansas City, without real sources or a valid method for calculating such a wild figure, and no actual authors named in the paper!
- Board game Kickstarters: Cole Wehrle’s Buried Giant Studios has one for a second edition of An Infamous Traffic, a fairly heavy game about the opium trade in China in the 1800s. I haven’t played this game but have been looking for a copy in trade for a while because the theme is so good.
- This Way! Games has a Gamefound page for Arctica, an engine-building game about creating an ecosystem in the Arctic, with intriguing gear-driven player boards. I will say those cards look a lot like Wingspan’s, though.
- Tycoon Games has one up for Fable Quest, a cooperative game set in the world of 2014’s Arcadia Quest.