{"id":10779,"date":"2025-05-03T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10779"},"modified":"2025-05-02T11:55:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T15:55:52","slug":"stick-to-baseball-5-3-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/03\/stick-to-baseball-5-3-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 5\/3\/25."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had one post for subscribers to The Athletic this past week, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6318106\/2025\/04\/29\/mlb-draft-scouting-riley-quick-henry-ford-justin-lebron\/\">draft scouting notebook<\/a> on Riley Quick, Kyle Lodise, some UVA bats, and three college hitters who could be top ten picks in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Paste, I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/games\/board-games\/floristry-is-an-innovative-new-auction-game-that-isnt-complex-enough\">reviewed the two-player game Floristry<\/a>, which is important as I think it\u2019s the first two-player title to use an auction mechanic that really works, but unfortunately that doesn\u2019t have enough game beyond that.<\/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: The <em>New York Times<\/em> has the bonkers story of how a bunch of college-aged and high school kids stole nearly $250 million in crypto from one guy, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/24\/magazine\/crybercrime-crypto-minecraft.html\">then got caught within a month because they were so sloppy about it<\/a>. It includes a real-world kidnapping story that demonstrates how this stuff can and will spill over into physical danger, even for people not directly involved in the scams. (Also, the victim of the original theft is a ding-dong, falling for some of the most obvious tricks to get him to divulge his passwords.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Elon Musk\u2019s xAI is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eenews.net\/articles\/elon-musks-xai-in-memphis-35-gas-turbines-no-air-pollution-permits\/\">operating 35 gas turbines in Tennessee with no permits for all pollution they\u2019re spewing into the air<\/a>. AI is an environmental disaster as it is, but Musk using his dubious position in Washington to skip any and all regulations is making the problem worse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The author\/owner of Recipe Tin Eats wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.recipetineats.com\/bake-with-brooki-penguin-plagiarism-allegations-statement\/\">about how influencer and cookbook author Brooki Bellamy copied several of her recipes<\/a>, and those of other recipe sites, in Bellamy\u2019s best-selling new book. Nagi refers to it as plagiarism, which is probably inapt, but Bellamy at least appears to have swiped the recipes and very slightly reworded the instructions to avoid copyright claims.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A group of religious zealots called My God Votes are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/news-politics\/texas-capitol-prayer-nights-my-god-votes\/\">trying to turn Texas into a Christian theocracy<\/a> (they have lots of help, unfortunately), positively pissing on any notion of the separation of church and state in this country.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>And Texas is also threatening <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chron.com\/politics\/article\/texas-bookstores-obscene-books-20290932.php\">to go after bookstores that sell whatever it is that the religious right deems \u201cobscene,\u201d<\/a> allowing a minor to claim damages from such books.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As Trump and Musk ignore Congress by eliminating federal funding and firing workers, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/mar\/17\/trump-golf-taxe\">Trump\u2019s golf trips are costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars<\/a>. I thought these guys wanted to eliminate government waste. I just found a whole lot of it. Yet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/28\/us\/politics\/food-banks-trump-cuts-aid.html\">food banks across the United States are running desperately short<\/a> now that Trump\/Musk have cut off funding and supplies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>ICE agents raided a house in Oklahoma City \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/kfor.com\/news\/local\/were-citizens-oklahoma-city-family-traumatized-after-ice-raids-home-but-they-werent-suspects\/\">but they had the wrong place<\/a>. Instead they traumatized a mother and three daughters who had just moved there from Maryland when twenty armed agents broke down the door and seized the family\u2019s computers, phones, and cash. The <em>Philly Inquirer<\/em>\u2019s Will Bunch writes that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/opinion\/ice-homeland-security-hsi-customs-citizens-violations-rights-20250501.html\">people who were called crazy for saying we should abolish ICE were right all along<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>AI-generated slop sites are proliferating across the internet; Futurism\u2019s Maggie Harrison Dupr\u00e9 writes about one such site that <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/emerson-college-student-radio-zombie-ai\">used an old domain associated with Emerson College\u2019s radio station<\/a> to appear legitimate while churning out fake \u2018news\u2019 stories.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Polygon, the great gaming-news site that was under the Vox umbrella, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/games\/games-journalism\/game-websites-polygon-and-giant-bomb-both-dismantled-on-the-same-day\">was decimated after Vox sold it to a content-farming group<\/a>, with nearly all Polygon staffers laid off. It\u2019s now part of the same company that runs clickbait sites like ScreenRant. I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/authors\/keith-law\">two pieces<\/a> for Polygon in 2021-22, but if those disappear I\u2019ll repost the reviews here for posterity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Scientific American<\/em> reports on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/measles-vaccine-denial-is-a-massive-brainwashing-campaign\/\">the mass-brainwashing effort around measles<\/a>, spearheaded by the Republican Party and specifically the Trump Administration, pushing the twin lies that the measles vaccine causes autism (again, it does not) and that measles isn\u2019t that harmful (it has already killed two children in the U.S. this year, and can cause the fatal condition SSPE in people who recover from the infection).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The same anti-vaccine lunacy has led to a jump in pertussis cases \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/skepticalraptorblog.php\/another-outbreak-over-8400-us-whooping-cough-cases-in-2025\/\">over 8400 already in the U.S. this year<\/a>. Whooping cough kills about 1% of infants under one, children too young to be vaccinated, who contract the bacterial illness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>And bird flu continues to spread, with more people getting infected, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/bird-flu-risk-as-pathogen-spreads-60-minutes-transcript\/\">raising the specter of another pandemic<\/a>. If only we had some sort of government agency that could track and respond to this sort of thing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The NIH has rolled out new rules that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fiercebiotech.com\/research\/new-nih-grant-rules-override-civil-rights-act-1964-barring-recipients-dei-activities\">prohibit grants to anyone working on programs related to diversity, equity, or inclusion<\/a>. Like so many other executive orders and federal mandates of the last four months, it\u2019s probably not legal, but it won\u2019t matter. They\u2019ve already caused the chaos they sought.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A mathematician in Australia seems to have solved the problem of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/science\/algebra-oldest-problem-solved\/\">finding a generalized solution to polynomial equations of power 5 or greater<\/a>. I keep seeing the same headline for this one story, but nothing further about the method, or whether other mathematicians agree with what sounds like a controversial approach (among other things, he says he \u201cdoesn\u2019t believe in irrational numbers,\u201d which\u2026).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Two board game Kickstarters of note, even as the Trump tariffs threaten the entire industry: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/cardboardalchemy\/flamecraft-duals\">Flamecraft Duals<\/a>, a two-player version of the hit game Flamecraft that promises to be more directly competitive; and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/crowdgames\/nippon-zaibatsu\">Nippon: Zaibatsu<\/a>, a brand-new edition of a heavy game from 2015 just called Nippon.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had one post for subscribers to The Athletic this past week, a draft scouting notebook on Riley Quick, Kyle Lodise, some UVA bats, and three college hitters who could be top ten picks in 2026. At Paste, I reviewed the two-player game Floristry, which is important as I think it\u2019s the first two-player title [&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":[1083,96,1005,959,1456,190,961,553,870,940,807],"class_list":["post-10779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-board-game-news","tag-crime","tag-cryptocurrencies","tag-first-amendment","tag-immigration","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-math","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-the-swamp","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10779","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=10779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10780,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10779\/revisions\/10780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}