the swamp

→ August 29, 2026
→ By keith
→ Leave a Comment

Stick to baseball, 8/29/26.

Over on the Athletic this week, I had a new minor-league scouting notebook, covering some Mets, Orioles, Nats, and Phillies prospects, including two guys the Mets just acquired at the deadline. I’ll have another one early next week. I’m not bylined but I did contribute to this newser on Walker Jenkins’ first callup.

You should sign up for my free email newsletter, which I’m hoping to get back to on Monday. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This New York cover story on the proliferation of travel teams for young athletes, and the harm it’s doing to our kids (at great cost to the parents), is a must-read for anyone interested in sports, even professional ones, because this is how we fumble our future and create leagues full of the privileged at the expense of anyone unable to access this narrow pipeline. I have long had a personal policy to avoid pay-to-play events, but it’s a little easier for me because the amateur players I’m seeing are the best of the best.

German actress/journalist Collien Fernandes was being stalked and impersonated online by someone sending men explicit images and videos purporting to be of her. It turned out her assailant was her husband.

A Christian cult in Idaho called Followers of Christ keeps killing its babies by ‘praying’ instead of seeking medical care, and Idaho law lets them do it.

Music journalist Natalie Weiner writes about Dolly Parton’s lifelong commitment to her values, whether in the arts, literacy programs, or general human kindness.

Houston Chef Adrian Torres won a James Beard Award this year, but almost missed the ceremony because Trump tried to deport him. He’s here under the DACA program, which Republicans have been trying to kill for no reason I can find beyond pure racism.

The Guardian and the Associated Press obtained documents that show that RFK Jr. lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearings when he claimed his visit to Samoa – which prompted a measles outbreak that killed 83 people – had nothing to do with discouraging vaccinations.

Epidemiologist Dr. Tara Smith writes for MS NOW how RFK Jr. has caused this measles epidemic and is making it harder for us to stop it, which is going to mean more deaths, more health problems, and a growing dent in our economy.

There’s been a lot of attention over the two reported deaths from measles in Pennsylvania, but that’s the tip of a giant iceberg. There’s an outbreak in Wisconsin now, almost entirely among unvaccinated people, with 41 reported cases.

A federal judge ruled that Florida International University violated the First Amendment rights of students when it required those protesting the school’s collaboration with ICE to record two-minute videos ‘reflecting’ on their conduct.

Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), who is running for Iowa’s open Senate seat, has failed to disclose that her husband is a lobbyist who arranged meetings between his clients and four Iowa representatives, including Hinson.

Victor Marx, the Republican candidate for Governor in Colorado who has made fantastical claims of killing people and performing exorcisms, appears to be selling campaign merch and taking the profits for himself.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), who is up for re-election, threatened schools that won’t remove books the state’s theocrats deem objectionable, saying “we’re coming for the books.” These book bans are much more about targeting anything LGBTQ+ or otherwise un-Christian, despite the schools being publicly funded.

Meanwhile, Texas Tech leadership is using AI as a pretext to cut so-called “leftist” content from its curriculum. I do not understand anyone from out of state sending their kid to college there.

The Israeli commander who ordered the airstrike that killed an Australian volunteer working for World Central Kitchen stands by his decision and said he’s not sorry, claiming WCK had a “connection with Hamas.”

Finland had set a goal to end homelessness by 2027, and was well on its way there until a right-wing government took power in 2024 and started cutting social welfare programs, reversing a long-standing decline in the country’s homelessness rate.

A civilian engineer who alleges she was raped in her own bed on a Navy transport ship sued the federal government, and this week a federal judge threw out her lawsuit by arguing it’s a worker’s compensation issue.

Rep. Max Miller made a writer delete a tweet that said he had broken his toddler daughter’s collarbone. She did so, because this remains an allegation, and in response she wrote about a bunch of violent things he’s done to women that are not mere allegations.

What remains of The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah last September for her social media posts in the wake of the death of Charlie Kirk. An arbitrator ruled that the firing violated the paper’s CBA with its union and that the Post must re-hire her. Heh.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Economics, finland, gaza, immigration, iowa, israel, links, longreads, measles, Music, religion, Sports, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

→ August 15, 2026
→ By keith
→ 7 Comments

Stick to baseball, 8/15/26.

Just one piece from me at the Athletic this week, my story on how and why Catan Studios is forging partnerships in the sports world. I’m on PTO right now, so I won’t be posting anything there for a few more days.

I sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Wednesday. For socials, I’m still mostly on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links – heavy on the NY Times this week…

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

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: cancer, chicago, colleges, fourth amendment, georgia, israel, links, mississippi, palestine, social media, stick to baseball, the swamp, trans rights, virginia

→ August 8, 2026
→ By keith
→ 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.

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

→ July 11, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/11/26.

Happy Draft Day! I posted my final mock draft on Friday and held a Q&A to answer your questions about it, after posting one on Monday and holding a Q&A that afternoon. I posted my final Big Board of the top 100 prospects in the draft class, ss well as some scouting reports on prospects beyond the top 100 who will probably still be drafted. I also previewed the Futures Game rosters, and posted a scouting notebook on Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, and Mets prospects.

I appeared on KIRO-Seattle to talk Mariners prospects and the trade deadline, and on The Score Chicago to talk about the draft and some big-picture baseball questions.

I’ll send another issue of my free email newsletter once I clear the draft stuff. You can also find me on Bluesky – I’m only posting links on X at this point, not replying to anything and not allowing new followers – and I continue to be more active on Instagram and TikTok.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This Vulture story by Irin Carmon on Today’s handling of the Nancy Guthrie story, including the environment behind the scenes and the difficult questions the show has had to face, is absolutely fantastic. I can’t even do it justice in a sentence or two here.

America is entering a postliterate age, as succeeding generations read less and comprehend less of what they read, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Those of us who do still read account for an increasing share of books purchased in what Horowitch refers to as a “niche hobby.”

America is self-destructing, writes Stephen Marche in The Guardian, arguing that this was written in our founding. I loved the line “Donald Trump is the ultimate nostalgia act.”

RFK Jr.’s vaccine-denial organization Children’s Health Defense helped Andrea Shaw file a lawsuit claiming that her twins died from being vaccinated, but she’s now been arrested on charges that she murdered them. That’s right: Children’s Health Defense is supporting a child murderer. Here’s a local story on the case.

The University of Tennessee will pay $1.9 million to a professor the school fired over her comments in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. Good for her. I hope the taxpayers of Tennessee think this was worth it!

In Springfield, Ohio, the subject of Republican lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, a Haitian man was shot in the head while taking his children to church.

Florida is the new Texas: Gov. Ron DeSantis is killing prisoners at an unprecedented rate, signing death warrants and leading to the state’s highest execution levels ever. Two of every five U.S. prisoners put to death were killed by Florida.

A professor at Brown University made his midterm exams take-home, and believed that nearly all of his students cheated by using AI, so he switched the final exam to in-class and everyone’s grades plummeted.

A day before Trump announced his first tariff ‘pause’, he made 327 stock trades that he didn’t disclose until this past week, almost 15 months later. Prior to 2016, this would have been immediate grounds for impeachment.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is running for the Senate seat held by Jon Ossoff, spent $400,000 in taxpayer money to make campaign ads, which is illegal. That’s in Judd Legum’s Popular.info newsletter; I see zero mainstream coverage of what sure seems like misuse of taxpayer funds.

A New York resident sent an email to the head of ICE. DHS agents tracked him down and threatened him. He’s suing with the help of FIRE, arguing that his First Amendment rights have been violated.

And Florida International University is also ignoring the First Amendment, threatening to withhold the diplomas of students who silently protested ICE’s presence on campus unless those students apologize on video.

Sticking with Florida, a cop there became obsessed with a woman he met on a TV shoot and used license-plate readers to stalk her around the state, nearly causing a head-on collision as he raced to accost her.

In The American Prospect, David Dayen writes that Maine Democrats should hold a “lighthouse primary” – essentially a caucus – to pick a new candidate whenever Graham Platner gives up the ghost.

Elie Mystal writes in The Nation how SCOTUS’ anti-trans ruling isn’t just about sports, but denying that trans people are entitled to equal rights.

The U.S. District Court judges of the Western Washington District wrote an editorial about how tyranny threatens an independent judiciary, whether it’s threats of violence against jurists on the bench or claims that someone is above the law entirely.

How the love affair between the Algerian national team and the people of Lawrence, Kansas, became one of the best stories of this year’s World Cup – that is, before the refs and the President ruined everything.

I’ve seen very little news coverage of the civil war in Sudan – maybe because we’re busy starting wars or prolonging those of other countries – but there’s a massive humanitarian crisis about to happen in the Sudanese city of El Obeid, with the potential for another massacre by the RSF militia.

There’s an outbreak of the Marburg virus, a filovirus that causes hemorrhagic fevers like the Ebola virus does, in Uganda.

This NPR piece on creative ways to use up leftovers (and stop wasting food) was both validating – fried rice is a go-to for us – and inspiring.

Also in The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber examines Lizzo’s latest album flopping and how easy it’s become to fall into the “Khia Asylum.” I liked Lizzo’s 2022 album Special, and didn’t even realize she’d released a new one, Bitch, until I saw this story.

Scientists have found evidence of a new chemical compound on Pluto and Titan. I propose they call it “unobtainium.”

Another week, another story of AI hallucinations: A ProPublica reporter found an AI-generated website for a shell company that fooled Google’s AI overviews into thinking the company was real.

Egypt and Turkey turned away a cruise ship for LGBTQ+ folks on ‘morality’ grounds. Which makes them just like Texas!

So many Kickstarters for interesting board games: Ringyo, the latest game from the publishers of Distilled and Luthier. It’s a simultaneous worker-placement game and is in beta on Board Game Arena.

A three-in-one from Allplay that includes Kabuto Sumo Dice, IMPS, and Wild Berries.

The Isle of Penguins, the latest game from the designer/publisher of The Isle of Cats and its various spinoffs.
Galileo’s Truth, from two of the designers of Egizia (one of the best complex games ever), Lorenzo il Magnifico, and Coimbra.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, artificial intelligence, astronomy, board game news, death penalty, first amendment, florida, georgia, health, immigration, links, longreads, Music, ohio, scotus, soccer, stick to baseball, tennessee, the swamp, trans rights, vaccines

→ June 27, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/27/26.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have an updated Big Board and a reaction to the Futures Game rosters in the coming week, plus probably a scouting blog – I’ve been accumulating some notes but have been waiting for something big or wow or otherwise hook-worthy to lead the column. Getting Anthony Eyanson’s worst outing of the year – he was 90-93 and couldn’t find the plate – did not help matters.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday morning. You should sign up. Also, you should follow me on Instagram or TikTok, because I’m posting videos on both places now. Please don’t call me a ‘content creator.’ (Or an ‘influencer.’ I might die of shame.) I’m still on Bluesky first among all social media outlets.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Colorado River system is headed for a crash, with likely water restrictions and reductions in hydropower output, according to this report from the Denver Post.

A massive miscarriage of justice and a violation of the First Amendment took place in Texas, where else, as several anti-ICE activists were sentenced to decades in prison for distributing leftist zines. It deserves far, far more attention than it has received. These people were convicted of terrorism charges for spreading words.

Speaking of the First Amendment, ICE agents found a woman who posted the name of the agent who killed Renee Good in Minnesota, Jonathan Ross, after he was identified in numerous news reports. The agents demanded that she take the post down. She has steadfastly refused.

Charlie Warzel writes in The Atlantic (gift link) about the myth of SpaceX, a meme masquerading as a company.

Some asshole called child protective services with a false claim against Pete Buttigieg. It’s swatting, but with a new twist. And in many states, CPS will investigate even anonymous, nonsense claims.

Texas’ push towards Christian nationalism – and against the Constitution – continues as the state will now require public-school students to read the Bible, or at least parts of it. I wonder if they’ll read Judges 21 or Numbers 16 or Deuteronomy 20!

Israeli troops murdered a Palestinian man who was on his way to the hospital for the birth of his son. So much for the “cease fire.”

The Trump Administration is cutting 20-30% of NSF’s funding for basic science research to redirect it to techbro “X-labs.”

Kalshi gave Donald Trump, Jr., equity worth about $300K, and now the government is actively fighting states that are trying to block the gambling sites (because gambling is illegal).

More Perfect Union has a video report on Yotta, the not-bank that tricked thousands of Americans into depositing their savings by falsely claiming they were FDIC-insured – which the customers discovered when Yotta suddenly stopped allowing withdrawals in 2024.

Cambodia’s crackdown on phone-scam compounds, where trafficked people were held captive and forced to mass-text or call potential victims, has put those people on the streets of Phnom Penh with no place to go and no easy way back to their home countries.

Parker Molloy points out how Giants reporters held Buster Posey accountable in a way White House reporters refuse to do with Trump.

The headline says it all: “I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately.”

I loved this post on Bill Watterson’s refusal to compromise his integrity in any way, giving up millions of dollars in potential earnings by declining to license Calvin & Hobbes for anything, and then closing up shop while he was still at his creative peak.

A professor at Indiana University was dismissed for teaching students that “Make America Great Again” is a slogan for white supremacy, which, well, it is. It’s America First for the modern age.

Researchers at Texas A&M published a paper that may identify ways in which coffee helps slow the aging process in our bodies.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) warns Democrats not to throw trans people under the bus, on moral and strategic grounds. If you give up on the rights of one oppressed minority, the other side will go after another minority, and another, and another, because they have learned you won’t fight for them.

An Alberta court upheld a permanent ban against ex-doctor William Makis practicing anything like medicine there, as he’s now hawking ivermectin as a cancer cure (it’s not, at all, this is just fraud).

This New York Times piece on bank tellers stepping in to stop people, often the elderly, from falling for phishing scams is both heartening and depressing. Most people want to do good. We are also so far away from being able to manage and regulate the technologies that we use every day.

On the Gamefound page for Galileo’s Truth, ThunderGryph Games announced they’re being acquired by Awaken Realms. I’m waiting to see how this pans out; Awaken Realms was caught using AI art in some reissues but they seem to have found the true path of using human artists for their upcoming reprint of Concordia.

I nearly backed this Kickstarter for Sprout, an upcoming game about houseplants – a core interest of my wife – but couldn’t get enough of a sense of what the game is like, and at $39 it seemed a lot to commit for a game I didn’t understand. Which is a long way of saying it might be awesome, but I want to wait and see.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coffee, first amendment, frauds, gambling, gaza, immigration, indiana, israel, links, longreads, scams, science, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trans rights, white nationalism

→ June 20, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/20/26.

Four new posts this week at the Athletic: How the White Sox helped Jacob Gonzalez get his groove back, my redraft of the 2016 draft class, my look at all of the first-round misses from that year (and there were so, so many), and a story on Cubs pitcher Matthew Boyd’s efforts to help Ugandan kids and his collaboration with Connect Roasters on a new coffee release. (Full disclosure: Connect sent me a bag of Hope Blend, and has sent me other coffees to try in the past as well.)

You can sign up for my free email newsletter. You can find me on Bluesky for text-based commentary and links, and TikTok and Instagram for short videos, mostly on baseball.

Longreads first: All this talk about putting some kind of colony on Mars ignores the reality that it’s an unbelievably hostile environment for life, writes Henry Wismayer in the Berggruen Institute’s magazine, No?ma.
The Atlantic discovered that popular AI song-generating agents were trained on millions of stolen copyrighted tracks. Make ‘em pay.
The kleptocracy in Washington knows no bounds: Markwayne Mullin, now head of Homeland Security, has fought any regulation or warnings about the dangers of kratom, because he’s invested $1 million in a kratom company. Kratom has two psychoactive compounds and can cause liver toxicity, but because it’s a “supplement” it’s basically unregulated.
Also in The Atlantic, Adam Serwer points out that the war on the abortion pill shows that the whole “leave abortion up to the states” story was just another lie.
Trump and his cronies debated ending the Constitutional right of habeus corpus for people arrested as potentially undocumented immigrants.
One common claim from creationists and other evolution deniers is that humans are some sort of end point in the process of evolution. This is disproven by copious evidence that humans are still evolving.
The Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (Amoc), a system of ocean currents that moves heat around the Atlantic ocean, may be heading towards collapse due to anthropogenic climate change. The UK and EU are threatening to cut funding that helps monitor it.
A cop responding to a shoplifting incident shot into a car and killed a one-year-old boy, even though the officer knew the child was in the vehicle. I am struggling to understand why any shoplifting claim would provoke the use of a firearm. The officer has since been placed on administrative leave, but we all know that’s a temporary and often worthless response.
The high school group that had sued to block Idaho’s anti-trans bathroom bill dropped its case after one of the students involved took their own life. A few days later, a federal judge blocked the law. These bills/laws do absolutely nothing except put targets on trans people. There is zero evidence that they’re addressing an actual problem in child safety.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), a Trump toady and election denier, pointed a gun at his ex-wife and threw scalding water at her, according to police audio. His ex-wife, Emily Moreno, is the daughter of Senator Bernie Moreno, and she has accused Miller of physical abuse, while he’s responded by calling her crazy. He’s opposed this year by union ironworker Brian Poindexter.
Oklahoma regulators approved a new mine that will threaten a fragile aquifer, because in Oklahoma, profits are more important than clean water!
The Frontier obtained contracts various Oklahoma cities and towns signed with data centers, often with NDAs that prevent officials there from even acknowledging the deals’ existence.
Texas’ state Board of Education is going to vote on whether to teach second graders the story of the “Black Robe Regiment” Christians who did not actually help lead the American Revolution. It’s just not true.
The University of Texas used specious logic to block a fund-raising festival for the public-radio station KUT, then fired the station manager when she put the lie to their claims.
The son of Sen. Kristin Gillenbrand (D-NY) just graduated from college and then landed $30 million in investment in his crypto-derivatives startup. I’m sure there’s no connection.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, artificial intelligence, climate change, evolution, idaho, links, longreads, mars, ohio, oklahoma, police, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trans rights

→ June 13, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/13/26.

My second mock draft of 2026 went up this week, with a new name at #1. I also held a Q&A on Wednesday to discuss it. Last Sunday, I posted a scouting notebook on Theo Gillen, Miguel Sime Jr., and other Rays & Nationals prospects.

I sent out a new epistle of my free email newsletter this week. You can find me on Bluesky for text-based commentary and links, and TikTok and Instagram for short videos, mostly on baseball.

I appeared on The Fan LA on Wednesday to talk about the Dodgers’ farm system.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Longtime vaccine denier and supplement peddler Joseph Mercola – who has taken up other anti-science positions like claiming aspartame is behind all sorts of health problems – quickly changed his tune on vitamin K shots after ProPublica asked him for comment on why he’d made false claims about these lifesaving injections for infants.

WIRED (reprinted on KFF Health News) explored the devastation caused by vaccine denialism in Utah, where a measles epidemic has sickened many infants too young to be vaccinated and strained hospitals unprepared for a highly contagious disease that had been eradicated from the Western hemisphere. We all pay the cost for these grifters and the idiots who follow them.

The Times spoke to Scott Pelley on his ouster from 60 Minutes and the self-immolation of CBS News under Bari “Free Speech” Weiss.

In a related story, noted Trump-lie debunker Daniel Dale hasn’t appeared on CNN in three months. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the Justice Department’s review of the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger.

The Guardian looks at the rise and fall of West Ham United owner David Sullivan, asking how someone who made his fortune in pornography reached the pinnacle of English football.

Republican Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia owns an empire of coal-mining companies. The Trump Administration closed investigations into potential criminal violations by Justice’s firms.

Auburn University’s board of trustees dissolved the faculty senate and took control of curricula to comply with a law that doesn’t apply to the school.

Conservative Americans have higher mortality rates and worse health outcomes than liberals because of ‘ideological divides,’ which is a polite way to refer to science denial.

In the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik writes that the right’s war on science has reached a new low, and could go lower.

Avelo sucks to begin with, but now the CEO is demanding that regional airports give him equity in exchange for the airline flying there.

China is producing more solar energy than it can use. The Financial Times notes that it is “madness” to waste this surplus. Meanwhile, U.S. solar energy output has passed coal for the first time, despite a federal government openly hostile to green energy. Imagine what might happen if we had people in charge who accept scientific facts.

Gun-rights extremist Brandon Herrera is likely to end up representing Uvalde in Congress.

San Carlos Lake in Arizona is now closed to visitors after drought and a water release from a dam upriver killed all of its fish.

A 21-year-old Seattle man who was recently playing basketball for his junior college team was arrested for running an abusive pornography content mill, kidnapping, threatening, and beating girls to get them to produce pornography for OnlyFans and similar sites.

A good use of artificial intelligence: Mathematicians used an internal model from OpenAI to find a better solution to Paul Erdös’ planar unit distance problem.

I enjoyed this Vulture interview with KISS’ Paul Stanley, who never directly answers the interviewer’s questions but gives insightful comments on just about every one.

AVClub’s Sam Barsanti writes that it might be for the best that Doctor Who is on hiatus after the BBC sacked Russel T. Davies.

Dire Wolf has a Kickstarter going for a board game based on Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, climate change, denialism, guns, links, longreads, math, Music, soccer, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, tv, vaccines, west virginia

→ June 6, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/6/26.

Quirky timing this week led to just one post for subscribers to the Athletic, a scouting notebook on Gage Wood, Gavin Fien, Eli Willits, and some other Nats/Orioles prospects. I’ve got at least two already on the docket for this upcoming week.

I appeared on the Rates & Barrels podcast to talk about my top 50 prospects, which you can get on Apple, Youtube, or directly on our site.

My free email newsletter is still free and still infrequent. I also posted a new video about hitting 20 years as a full-time baseball writer to Instagram and TikTok.

Longreads first: Old Apostolic Lutheran Church leaders have ignored child sex abuse within its ranks for generations, and refused to report these crimes to the police, according to a new report from ProPublica. Church teachings also tell victims that they can’t speak about the crimes against them once the abuser has been “forgiven.” Excuse me if I find it impossible to distinguish this from a cult.

Companies that “donated” to Trump’s ballroom boondoggle subsequently took home over $50 billion in government contracts, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The New Yorker exposes how private prisons increase their profits by starving inmates.

TechCrunch writer and Bluesky board member Mike Masnick writes about how decentralization is one way to combat the enshittification that has ruined the major tech services over the last fiteen years, notably social media.

In their annual report on the use of sexual violence in war zones, the United Nations listed Israeli forces, both armed and security, along with Hamas and Russia, documenting at least nine cases of Gazans raped by IDF or Israeli prison security members.

One in sixteen pardoned J6 insurrectionists have been arrested again for new crimes, including child molestation and homicide.

Scientific American revisits the unsolved Riemann Hypothesis, one of the Millennium Prize problems that would net the person or team who solves it $1 million, but which isn’t a major research focus because its solution may not have many practical applications – it’s just interesting. There’s a great book about the hypothesis called Prime Obsession, which I reviewed back in 2010.
The Chapel Hill High School yearbook omitted twelve graduating students with disabilities. The school claims it wasn’t intentional. Uh-huh.

A devastating flesh-eating parasite called a screwworm that regularly devastated U.S. cattle farms until the 1960s has reappeared in Texas, just in time for an Administration that has slashed budgets for food safety and epidemic prevention.

Vaccine denialism is leading to more cases of preventable diseases in hospitals, which threatens to further their spread, while doctors are also seeing idiot adults refusing tetanus shots.

In the department of what the actual fuck: The Minnesota Republican Party held a moment of silence for convicted murderer Derek Chauvin at its state convention.

A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, gave a speech that criticized AI companies for their willful ignorance of copyrights and the likely impacts on the journalism industry, even as the Times Guild, the union that represents the paper’s journalists, has said the Times hasinsufficient guardrails around AI use.

From the great Jamelle Bouie: America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance.

Druid City Games has a Gamefound crowdfunding page up for Bloodstone, an “epic dice combat game” for 1-5 players.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: artificial intelligence, board game news, carceral state, gaza, israel, links, longreads, math, minnesota, north carolina, religion, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

→ May 30, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/30/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I updated my ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors, and also held a Q&A to take questions about that and really anything else. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook that covered Kyson Witherspoon, Yoeilin Cespedes, and other Boston/Baltimore prospects.

I sent out a new missive of my free email newsletter last Friday.

I’ve continued posting baseball-related videos, mostly about the players I’m going to see live, to Instagram and TikTok. My daughter is now mad that I have more TikTok followers than she does. I told her to talk more about baseball. I’m also posting often on Bluesky.

And now, the links…

ProPublica exposes how telecom companies in Alaska scam billions of federal taxpayer dollars to provide slow internet access to the state’s residents, including a convicted felon who gets $1 million a year from the FCC.

Also from ProPublica: Trump directed a $620 million loan to a company his son Donnie Jr. partially owns.

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) has been living secretly for a much-reduced rent payment at a house owned by the far-far-right Christian group The Fellowship, which opposes labor rights and pushes wealth as somehow “Christian.” His primary opponent, Danielle Welch, seems to have little chance of unseating him.

Sports economist JC Bradbury shared this link about a fight between a developer and the owners of the Richmond Fighting Squirrels, whose new stadium deal has, shocker, turned out to be a dud for the community.

The city of Nashville is promising a big return on its investment in hosting the Super Bowl, but we know that’s an empty claim.

Ryan Fournier, co-founder of the astroturf group Students for Trump, was arrested on domestic violence charges.

The New Republic, spoke to Paulina Mangubat, author of that iconic DNC reply tweet calling Stephen Miller an “ugly fuck” – a charge he is not going to be able to escape any time soon – about how Miller’s wife’s choice to dox her has affected her life, and why she’s not sorry for the tweet. It was a reply to Miller falsely labeling Senate candidate James Talarico as “transgender,” because to MAGA, that’s an insult. Meanwhile, the real issue is that Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton, approved a plea deal that gave a serial child rapist one day in prison.

AI is fueling a rise in “home-brewed” lawsuits where plaintiffs use LLMs instead of lawyers, clogging up the court system. Futurism covered this two months ago as well.

The Commonwealth Prize, a British literary award that includes publication of winning stories in Granta magazine, is embroiled in controversy as one of its winners this year was very likely produced largely with the help of AI. That story, submitted by a writer from Trinidad named Jamir Nazir, was full of turgid prose that has inspired mockery online – but it’s also true that these AI “detectors” aren’t necessarily trained on different styles of prose, such as that from non-native speakers or those from regions where their English dialect varies from British or American English. Meanwhile – and probably not coincidentally – the Afro-Caribbean author Chanel Sutherland is now having to defend her work as not AI-generated after that same AI detection program (mentioned in the Atlantic piece) claimed her Commonwealth Prize-winning story was the product of AI.

Another person who was penalized for comments about Charlie Kirk after his death has won compensation after a lawsuit. Suzanne Swierc posted on her private Facebook account that his death was a “tragedy” but the killing was “a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed,” after which Ball State fired her. The University settled the suit, which alleged that the school violated her First Amendment rights, arguing that it was cheaper than fighting it.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary is trying to build an enormous data center that would be two and a half times the size of Manhattan in Utah, and people on the left and right are opposing it.

In Washington state, a sketchy clean-energy storage project to be build on land sacred to the Yakama peoples is actually going to help power new data centers. From this story: “There is no sign the project is needed to provide more power to meet growing local energy demand in Klickitat County.”

Wilmington mayor John Carney (D), formerly our governor and at-large Congressman, closed the city’s only permitted encampment for homeless people over protests that the city government told these people to move there in the first place. I agree with the protestors – this is cruel, and unnecessary.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alaska, artificial intelligence, climate change, delaware, environment, first amendment, free speech, links, longreads, stadium scams, stick to baseball, the swamp, utah, washington state

→ May 10, 2026
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/10/26.

I posted my first mock draft of 2026 for subscribers to the Athletic this past week. I held a Q&A on Thursday to take your questions on the mock and anything else. I also posted a scouting notebook on Liam Doyle, Ike Irish, Dante Nori, and some other Phillies & Orioles prospects, as well as a draft scouting notebook on some Arkansas and Mississippi prospects, three of whom are probably going in the first round.

I also sent out another epistle of my free email newsletter. Trying to ramp that up to at least every other week.

I’m on Bluesky more than anything else right now. I’ve also been posting longer videos to Instagram and TikTok, talking about players I see or reacting to news, including two clips about the mock. I’ve also been messing around on the restaurant app Beli, if anyone else out there is using it.

A very short links post this week, not sure why. Anyway, and now the links…

Longreads first: Babies are dying because their parents have been scammed by online misinformation into rejecting the vitamin K shot, possibly thinking it’s a vaccine (which is also stupid, as vaccines are safe). Vitamin K is essential for clotting and this ProPublica story reports on babies who have bled to death because they didn’t get the shot.

The Guardian’s Adrienne Mantel describes how Christian nationalists are destroying our public health infrastructure, and potentially exporting their toxic, superstitious worldview around the globe.

Texas Monthly exposes how the Southern Baptist Convention was built by a serial child molester.

The Wall Street Journal investigates betting markets, and, shocker, most bettors there lose money.

Economist Justin Wolfers calculated the cost to each U.S. household of the current, illegal war on Iran will run to thousands and maybe tens of thousands of dollars.

Fayetteville, Georgia, residents, noticed their water pressure was low. It turned out that a data center had stolen 30 million gallons of water via two hookups, paying for neither.

All life on earth emerged from a single common ancestor, about 4 billion years ago. A new study posits that it was about 200 million years before previously thought, while also revealing some new info on what that first prokaryote was like.

The AI craze has led to “RAMageddon,” an impending shortage of random access memory chips for all kinds of devices that will likely lead to price increases in the second half of this year.

Trump’s FDA blocked publication of research showing that the COVID vaccines and the shingles vaccine are both safe. There’s no public health benefit here – they’re just pandering to their anti-science base.

We’ve got anti-vaxxers, anti-seed oil loons, anti-sunscreen charlatans, and now self-styled “sleep experts” are telling parents to ignore the guidelines on preventing SIDS, giving them dangerous advice that is likely to lead to more infants suffocating in their cribs.

Video shows an ICE agent tasing a man multiple times in Bushwick, NYC, after which the Department of Homeland Security lied and said he wasn’t tased.

Fiddler Ashley Macisaac is suing Google after its AI search results wrongly tagged him as a sex offender. It’s only for $1.5 million, which I’m sure Google will settle as a rounding error.

Ravenous is a new worker-owned food journalism outlet founded by five people who had previously worked/published at Eater.

NPR’s Marketplace had a segment on the social media excitement over beans, particularly on “BeanTok.”

Why is Kristi Noem still living in taxpayer-subsidized military housing?

Rock Manor Games – whose owner is a neighbor of mine – has a new Kickstarter up for two games, The Lost Island and Secret Valley.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: artificial intelligence, environment, evolution, food writing, gambling, immigration, links, longreads, nutrition, religion, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

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