→ September 6, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 9/6/25.

Over at The Athletic, I wrote some brief updates & outlooks for five prospects called up on August 31st/September 1st, and an in-person scouting notebook on Guardians pitcher Joey Oakie plus some other Guards, Orioles, Nats, and Phillies prospects.

At Endless Mode, I reviewed the one vs. many game 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the player who takes on the HAL role does indeed get to close the pod bay doors. It’s a good game, Dave.

I’ve moved my free email newsletter over to Kit, away from the place that proudly hosts white nationalist newsletters.

And now, the links…

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→ August 23, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 8/23/25.

I’m on PTO this week, but a piece I helped report ran at The Athletic this week, with Brendan Kuty taking the lead, looking at why the Yankees took a player in the draft last month who, as a college freshman, drew a swastika outside the door of a Jewish classmate. It’s not about his baseball ability, but what the player, Core Jackson, did to try to convince teams that that’s not who he is as a person, and what the Yankees did to decide they were willing to take him in spite of that. I got the initial scoop, and expected that I would end up writing a straightforward story about a kid who’d done an inexcusable thing – and maybe one that no one would want to discuss on the record. It turned out to be something very different.

Over at Endless Mode, I reviewed the two-player game Gatsby, which is an above-average (and very spiteful) game with a well below-average theme that has nothing at all to do with the great novel.

I wanted to get this posted and the next time I get a window to write I’ll work on my free email newsletter, which you should sign up for because it’s awesome but also it’s free so if it’s not awesome have you really lost anything?

And now, the links…

  • WIRED looks at the rising problems for Roblox, as the company faces lawsuits over the lack of moderation and claims that the platform is a haven for child predators.
  • A couple of people who look exactly like you’d expect are trying to create a whites-only community in a state where you’d expect it, Arkansas. I saw some negative reaction to this New York Times article, but I don’t think the authors went easy on these neo-Nazis at all – and this is a good example of where sunshine should work as a disinfectant.
  • Colorado has their 17th measles case this year, this one of an unvaccinated child under the age of 5. You can put the blame for that on RFK Jr. and his cronies, too, profiting off years of spewing false information about the MMR vaccine.
  • Bradford William Davis spoke to Texas state Rep. Nicole Collier (D), who spent two full days round the clock in the Texas Capitol building in protest against Republicans’ extreme gerrymandering of the state, about her action and how it’s the kind of move that more Democrats need to make to show voters they’re actually fighting.
  • Eddie Kim, a reporter for the new worker-owned San Francisco publication The Gazetteer, went to report on an ICE kidnapping action and got pepper-sprayed by an ICE officer. They wear masks, they attack the press, all because they know what they’re doing is wrong.
  • More great board game Kickstarters: Keymaster has one up for Hanami, the retheming of my all-time favorite game by Reiner Knizia, Samurai; and Weird City has one up for Satchel Quest, a competitive bag-building dungeon crawl game from the designers of Point salad.

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→ August 16, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/16/25.

Over at Endless Mode, I reviewed the light but very fun game Wine Cellar, which scales really well up to 8 players, an unusual player count for anything that’s not a party game. It’s out of stock at Miniature Market but the bad place still has it.

My free email newsletter went out last weekend, and I’ll send another one out whenever my next piece at the Athletic runs (I do like to time them so that they serve the function of catching readers up on things I’ve written).

And now, the links…

  • The New York Times exposed how the AI bubble is going to drive up energy costs for everyone. Not mentioned is how it’s probably going to drive water shortages as well. If you’re searching for something on Google, by the way, you can disable the automatic AI-generated tosh that appears at the top of the results just by adding “-ai” to the end of your search terms.
  • Brandy Zarozny exposes the chaos and infighting at HHS under RFK Jr., who didn’t even tell his own staff – or maybe even the President – before announcing that he was killing funding for further research into safe, effective mRNA vaccines.
  • One woman in Oregon is using an old law aimed at stopping nuclear power plants there to fight green energy projects like wind and solar. Nuclear power was and is much safer and far more efficient than its critics (mostly on the left) claim it is, so while this is just bad for humanity, it is a bit of perverse justice to see the same side that fought nuclear plants hoisted on their own petard.
  • Scientists have found ‘sex reversal’ in five different species of birds in Australia, including one bird that was genetically male but laid eggs. Taxonomy is a human creation. Nature is too complex to make our artificial categorization schemes as accurate as we pretend they are – which makes the war on trans people even more disgraceful than it is just on humanist grounds.
  • The staff at an English pub threatened to walk out if the restaurant accepted a reservation from Vice-President JD Vance, so they turned him away. It’s even more humiliating because Kamala Harris ate there a few weeks earlier.
  • The cases before the Supreme Court on states’ powers to discriminate against trans athletes are about much more than just sports. The seat has been open for years because Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) blocked a nomination by then-President Joe Biden, just because she could.
  • There was a global summit on plastics pollution this past week, where talks on a pact to fight the issue broke down (something that plastic doesn’t do!). I didn’t see this in any U.S. press, probably because our current government is cutting every effort to help the environment.
  • Two very exciting games I saw at Gen Con went up on crowdfunding sites this week: The Voynich Puzzle, a crunchy worker-placement game based on the unsolved Voynich manuscript; and Camp Grizzly, a co-op title based on 1980s slasher films that is a reprint of a game so hard to find that full copies have gone for $600.

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→ July 19, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 7/19/25.

My recaps of all 30 teams’ draft classes are now up for subscribers to The Athletic, organized by division:

I wrote up a recap of day one that ran overnight Sunday into Monday, and my editor Melissa helped compile all of my comments on first & comp round picks as they happened into a single post.

I also wrote up some observations on the Futures Game.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new edition of the push-your-luck game Celestia, which really needs the expansions and promo cards that will come in the redo of the big box version, supposedly out later this year.

And now, the links…

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→ July 5, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 7/5/25.

I posted my final (mostly) Big Board for the 2025 draft this week for subscribers to the Athletic, and then held a Q&A to take questions on it on Wednesday.

Paste Games is now Endless Mode, still under the Paste umbrella, but its own site with more coverage of all things gaming, which will include about twice as many stories from me each year. My first story at the new site is a review of the 2024 reprint of Gold West, a great, family-level strategy game that went out of print with the demise of publisher Tasty Minstrel Games.

I’ll try to get another issue of my free email newsletter out this upcoming week, before the draft drowns me in content.

I appeared on Seattle radio to discuss the Mariners’ farm system and possible draft picks this week, and talked mostly Orioles prospects and the draft with Ryan Ripken on his Youtube show.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Hollywood Reporter explains that Pixar’s Elio, which is on pace to be the studio’s biggest box-office flop ever, was stripped of some key thematic elements in what appears to be an attempt to remove queer-coded parts of the film and make the main character more “masculine.” The only Pixar films to fail to reach $100 million in domestic box office gross were the ones affected in some way by the pandemic (Onward, Luca, Soul, and Turning Red); Elio is at $49 million after two weeks, and saw a 44% decline from week 1 to week 2.
  • Futurism looked at incidents of “ChatGPT psychosis,” where people using the energy-hogging AI tool descend into madness, believing the software is telling them deep secrets about the universe or communicating from beyond the grave or other nonsense. There are no guardrails around these LLMs and clearly no will at the federal level to even consider them.
  • It was not a great week for the New York Times’ coverage of Zohran Mamdani, but this editorial by M. Gessen nails how Mamdani’s opponents cover their anti-Muslim bigotry in the veneer of claims that he’s antisemitic. Gessen points out that Mamdani is the only mayoral candidate who has spoken about real antisemitism and the costs it imposes on Jews in New York and beyond.
  • A couple of rich homeowners in King County decided that some very old trees were blocking their view, so they had the trees cut down. Except the trees were on public land, and no one is taking responsibility for the actual destruction.

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→ June 21, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 6/21/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my annual ten-year redraft column, looking back at the 2015 class, along with the companion piece on the first-rounders who didn’t pan out. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I have a free email newsletter and more people should sign up for it.

And now, the links…

  • This piece is from 2022, but I found it while looking into the band Tulip, whose latest single popped up on a Spotify playlist. Turns out their origin story is fascinating – the two leads were married to other people and members of a conservative evangelical church, then fell in love and were excommunicated. They left the church and formed a symphonic metal band.
  • ICE is trying to deport a Texas woman who is married to a U.S. citizen, arresting her when she returned to the mainland U.S. from her honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. Ward Sakeik is considered ‘stateless,’ as she was born a refugee and arrived in the U.S. on a refugee visa when she was 8. The federal government wants to deport her to Israel, even though she has never been there or in Palestine. This is not someone who arrived here illegally, or overstayed a visa, or committed a crime.
  • Two Michigan parents let their baby girl die of jaundice because they believed God would heal her. They’re going to prison, in part because they’ve said they’d do the same thing all over again. They belong to a Pentecostal church that preaches faith healing, but the church apparently doesn’t proscribe seeing doctors.
  • JK Rowling called the Scottish newspaper The National “anti-woman,” so the editor of the paper, Laura Webster, responded.
  • Stonemaier Games announced the summer release of their newest title, Vantage, an open-world, cooperative, exploration game where players have all crash-landed on a planet and can communicate with each other but can’t see anyone else’s locations or views.

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→ June 7, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 6/7/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote about three prospects who’ve really seen their stock rise this year and three who’ve seen theirs fall as a follow-up to last week’s top 50 ranking. I also wrote a news story (which I think is free to read) on Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter using a homophobic slur during a game, and his weak apology after he got caught on camera. And I held a Klawchat here on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Zenith, an outstanding new two-player game where you fight your opponent for control of five planets, playing cards from your hand to three different areas to try to pull planets your way. You win by getting the same planet to your end of the table three times, or four different planets to your side, or five planets in any combination at all.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter on Friday, my third in four weeks, which for me constitutes some sort of hot streak.

I appeared on Marty Caswell’s Youtube channel to talk about the Padres’ farm system, potential trades if they stay in the race, and what to do with Xander Bogaerts; and on 92.3 the Fan in Cleveland to talk about Travis Bazzana and Cleveland’s struggling offense.

And now, the links:

  • Longreads first: This undated story on the main suspect in the Tylenol poisonings and how he slipped through multiple murder investigations is the best thing I read all week. At least part of the basis of a new Netflix documentary series, this story is at least two years old, as James Lewis, the suspect in that case and at least one other murder, died in July 2023.
  • WIRED has the story of a study on the keto diet and arterial plaque that keto proponents claim validates their position – but one of the study’s authors left the project and has called for its retraction, due to conflicts of interest and shoddy work. There’s an underlying theme here on how peer review can break down and how bad actors are increasingly trying to exploit the academic-research system.
  • NBC News interviewed several families who are leaving the U.S. because of the increasingly anti-transgender climate. I’ve assumed we’ll see, or even already are seeing, migration out of red states for LGBTQ+ families because of hate laws passed there, but adding this to the brain drain from the Administration’s war on academia is going to further erode our economic position for decades to come.
  • The New York Times reports on WelcomeFest, a gathering of so-called “centrist” Democrats who are mad that we’re all yelling at them online. The story notes on politicians taking shots at Indivisible, an important voter mobilization group with hard-left ideas like “don’t cut aid to the poor.” These people are only centrist if you ignore how much the Overton window has lurched to the right in the last decade.
  • Talking Heads enlisted director Mike Mills (the C’mon C’mon guy, not the REM bassist) to film a music video for “Psycho Killer,” starring Saoirse Ronan. It’s excellent, and Ronan is both hilarious and unsettlingly weird in it.

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→ May 31, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/31/25.

For subscribers to The Athletic this week, I re-ranked the top 50 prospects still in the minors, updating the list to reflect various graduations and some of the new information from the small sample of 2025 so far. I also did a Q&A on the site to answer questions about it.

I’m due for another newsletter but got a little caught up with the top 50; you can subscribe here for whenever I send the next one out, hopefully over the weekend.

And now, the links…

  • Elon Musk’s legacy in Washington is “disease, starvation, and death,” writes Michelle Goldberg (accurately) in The New York Times. Musk’s decision to unilaterally shut down USAID programs has killed thousands, and may end up killing many more, around the globe.
  • Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa), who is up for re-election next year, responded to a constituent’s question about SNAP and Medicaid cuts by saying “we’re all going to die.” This clip should appear in every Iowa Democrat’s campaign ad from now until November 2026, regardless of what office they’re running for.
  • Ohio State Rep. Rodney Creech (R) was accused by his own daughter of sexually abusing her, yet his Republican colleagues – who knew of the investigation – backed him for re-election last November. Let me repeat that: Ohio Republicans backed a candidate who may have molested his own daughter.
  • As a man who often eats alone in restaurants, I loved this Times piece on how weird people get when women dine alone. Some of it was familiar to me, but of course much of this never happens to me because I’m a man. People in restaurants or bars who serve me or sit next to me often just assume I’m traveling for work. Clearly that is not the assumption people make about women. Also, eating alone can be a wonderfully restorative experience.
  • Zohran Mamdani’s poll numbers are rising and he appears now to only trail the $60 million man Andrew Cuomo – who resigned as Governor after multiple women came forward to say he sexually harassed them in the race to be NYC’s next Mayor.

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→ May 17, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/17/25.

I had one piece for subscribers to the Athletic this past week, a minor league scouting notebook on some Yankees, Nats, Rays, and Orioles prospects; it’s rained just about every day since then, so I haven’t been to a game since Sunday (despite trying, twice, only to have the games cancelled after I was at or nearly at the park).

I did finally send out a new issue of my free email newsletter this past week, and I’m going to try to get back to doing that weekly now that my spring travel appears to be done. I think I ended up in 15 different states this spring, seeing over 70 guys who are legitimate draft prospects along the way, and of course I’m still annoyed at a few I missed (like Gavin Kilen, who was hurt the weekend I went to Knoxville).

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Trump Administration pressured African countries to give more business to Elon Musk, according to this report from ProPublica. All of the other stuff is a distraction – all of the funding cuts, the hate laws, the executive orders are there to suck up the oxygen so we don’t notice that they’re using the power of the federal government to enrich themselves. Like with this Amtrak project that Musk’s Boring Company is probably going to “win.”
  • Meanwhile, Musk’s attempt to take over the Copyright Office flopped because of opposition from conservative media companies and content creators, who, as it turns out, do have some principles when it comes to protecting their own bottom lines.
  • A preprint that appeared last fall that claimed that materials scientists who had access to AI tools were substantially more productive – and that received publicity from credulous reporters at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere – was almost certainly a complete fabrication. MIT issued a press release this week saying they had “no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper” and that the author, former graduate student Aidan Toner-Rodgers, was no longer affiliated with the school. The link above argues that the paper was full of red flags, including impossible access to corporate data and too-good-to-be-true results.
  • Alex Shephard says in the New Republic that Trump is the most corrupt President the U.S. has ever seen.
  • Political scientists who study the decline of democracies say that the United States is sliding towards autocracy in the way that other previously-free countries like Hungary and Turkey have done in the last twenty years.

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→ May 10, 2025
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/10/25.

I posted my first mock draft of 2025 this week for subscribers to the Athletic, and took questions from readers about that and other prospect matters on Friday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Finspan, the new fish-themed spinoff to Wingspan that features simpler rules and a faster teach.

I’m about to send out the first new issue of my free email newsletter since February, before my travel schedule went nuts; I’ve been to fourteen states to see players, just via air, plus two more around here.

A short list this week, for no particular reason, but here are the links…

  • Longreads first: Automakers are going back to physical buttons and moving away from touchscreens, like the massive billboard-sized screens in Teslas, as consumers prefer the physical buttons and touchscreens are associated with much-reduced reaction times. I rented a car with physical buttons and no touch screen recently, and it took me all of about 30 seconds to figure it out.
  • The Pulitzer Prize board chose to give the Fiction award to Percival Everett’s James, overriding the selection committee, which recommended three other titles. I just started one of the three, Mice 1961, because I want to see if I agree with the choice. I thought James was incredible.
  • Trump threatened to withhold $3 million in USDA funding from Maine schools because their Governor, Janet Mills, refused to comply with his extra-legal demand that they ban trans girls from playing girls’ sports. The USDA caved. If you don’t comply in advance, they back down. There’s still an ongoing court case over trans athletes in Maine, but the funding is restored.
  • Trump’s entire process for finding people to fill out executive branch jobs seems to be picking the worst purveyors of misinformation on Twitter: He made Vinay Prasad, a massive COVID and vaccine denier, in charge of the FDA’s vaccine regulation arm; and now he’s nominated a grifting “wellness influencer” without a medical license to be his Surgeon General.
  • Côte d’Ivoire had been one of the democratic success stories of Africa in the last decade-plus, but the recent court ruling that the leading candidate to oppose three-term incumbent President Alassane Ouattara is ineligible because of a technicality. The “little-used post-independence law” says that Tidjane Thiam, who was born in Côte d’Ivoire, should have lost his Ivorian citizenship automatically when he accepted French nationality, something he already had had through his father.

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