{"id":10592,"date":"2025-01-18T11:42:54","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T16:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10592"},"modified":"2025-01-19T23:05:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T04:05:10","slug":"stick-to-baseball-1-18-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/18\/stick-to-baseball-1-18-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 1\/18\/25."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One new piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6071216\/2025\/01\/18\/roki-sasaki-dodgers-signing-analysis\/\">my reaction to Roki Sasaki\u2019s announcement<\/a> that he\u2019s going to sign with the Dodgers. I also contributed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6059101\/2025\/01\/14\/baseball-hall-of-fame-ballots-2025\/\">the Athletic\u2019s Hall of Fame ballot roundup<\/a>, listing my selections with a brief explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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<sup>th<\/sup>. I actually still haven\u2019t settled on who\u2019s #1 \u2013 I see six or seven worthwhile candidates, but nobody is a clear leader. I do hope to get <a href=\"https:\/\/keithlaw.substack.com\/\">a newsletter<\/a> out in the next few days as I feel more comfortable about my progress on the top 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Longreads first: Vulture ran an extensive expos\u00e9 detailing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html\">the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman<\/a>, with specifics from several women who came forward last year to accuse him.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Miss Hall\u2019s School, an all-girls boarding school in Massachusetts, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/style\/story\/miss-halls-boarding-school-sex-abuse\">protected a teacher who was grooming and raping students for over 25 years<\/a>, according to multiple victims who spoke to <em>Vanity Fair<\/em>. 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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This <em>New York<\/em> <em>Times<\/em> story about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/15\/technology\/ai-chatgpt-boyfriend-companion.html?\">a woman who is \u201cin love\u201d with a ChatGPT character<\/a> she created is disturbing and also extremely well-crafted.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>RFK Jr. admitted that he lied about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/rfk-jr-admits-he-didnt-come-clean-on-anti-vax-fortune\/\">how much money he\u2019s made from his anti-vaccine grift<\/a>. Spreading health misinformation is extremely profitable, as long as you don\u2019t care about who your words harm.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>One of the best headlines of the month comes from Jezebel, in a piece about Mark Zuckerberg: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jezebel.com\/mark-zuckerberg-is-a-whiny-little-bitch\">It Must Suck to Be Such a Whiny Little Bitch<\/a>.\u201d That scene from last year\u2019s <em>Thelma<\/em> where she keeps mispronouncing his name comes to mind every day now.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The <em>Washington Post<\/em> spiked its editorial page\u2019s endorsement of Kamala Harris by claiming they weren\u2019t in the endorsement business or some such nonsense. Now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.findinggravity.net\/p\/the-washington-post-just-endorsed\">they\u2019ve endorsed 19 Trump nominees<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Neko Case spoke to the <em>Times<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/16\/arts\/music\/neko-case-the-harder-i-fight-the-more-i-love-you-memoir.html\">about her upcoming memoir<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>AI is also screwing up the world of academic publishing, as people are using it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/shoddy-commentaries-quick-and-dirty-route-higher-impact-numbers-are-rise\">to push garbage commentaries at journals to try to juice their personal impact factors<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Can the TikTok ban end up helping <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/technology\/395541\/tiktok-ban-trump-supreme-court-instagram-rednote\">the seriously fucked-up social media landscape<\/a>?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are a couple of would-be Instagram competitors out now, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/01\/15\/bluesky-is-getting-its-own-photo-sharing-app-flashes\/\">Flashes<\/a> (based on BlueSky\u2019s protocols) and <a href=\"https:\/\/lifehacker.com\/tech\/pixelfed-the-ad-free-instagram-alternative-now-has-a-smartphone-app\">PixelFed<\/a>, at least in part as a response to Facebook\u2019s decision to stop most content moderation and allow users to say pretty much anything they want about LGBTQ folks.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Garrett Martin, my editor at Paste, wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/games\/baldurs-gate-3\/theres-no-shame-in-taking-it-easy-playing-baldurs-gate-3-on-explorer-mode\">playing Baldur\u2019s Gate 3 in explorer or easy mode<\/a>. I still haven\u2019t tried it because I spent so much time playing the original series all the way through, several times, including all sorts of mods. I\u2019m sure I\u2019d love it, though.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One new piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, my reaction to Roki Sasaki\u2019s announcement that he\u2019s going to sign with the Dodgers. I also contributed to the Athletic\u2019s 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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1247,190,961,971,907,870,807,707],"class_list":["post-10592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-metoo","tag-social-media","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-vaccines","tag-video-games","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10592"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10596,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10592\/revisions\/10596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}