{"id":10920,"date":"2025-08-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10920"},"modified":"2025-08-16T20:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T00:15:27","slug":"stick-to-baseball-8-16-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/16\/stick-to-baseball-8-16-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 8\/16\/25."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Over at Endless Mode, I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.endlessmode.com\/article\/wine-cellar-is-a-well-balanced-board-game-with-a-short-finish\">reviewed the light but very fun game Wine Cellar<\/a>, which scales really well up to 8 players, an unusual player count for anything that\u2019s not a party game. It\u2019s out of stock at Miniature Market but <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4lnoQXb\">the bad place still has it<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My <a href=\"https:\/\/keithlaw.substack.com\/\">free email newsletter<\/a> went out last weekend, and I\u2019ll 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\u2019ve written).<\/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: My new colleague Nathan Fenno detailed the highly disturbing story of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6543065\/2025\/08\/13\/aaron-donald-stalker-rams-nfl\/\">the stalker who has hounded former Rams lineman Aaron Donald for years<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A Facebook\/Meta AI chatbot engaged in flirty conversation with a 76-year-old man who was suffering from cognitive decline, eventually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigates\/special-report\/meta-ai-chatbot-death\/\">giving him an address in New York City so he could come \u201cmeet\u201d her<\/a>. He fell while racing to catch a train and died from his injuries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <em>New York Times<\/em> exposed how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/08\/14\/business\/energy-environment\/ai-data-centers-electricity-costs.html\">the AI bubble is going to drive up energy costs for everyone<\/a>. Not mentioned is how it\u2019s probably going to drive water shortages as well. If you\u2019re 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 \u201c-ai\u201d to the end of your search terms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Brandy Zarozny exposes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/news\/news-analysis\/rfk-jr-alienated-maga-maha-white-house-mrna-vaccine-rcna225100\">the chaos and infighting at HHS under RFK Jr.<\/a>, who didn\u2019t even tell his own staff \u2013 or maybe even the President \u2013 before announcing that he was killing funding for further research into safe, effective mRNA vaccines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>One woman in Oregon is using an old law aimed at stopping nuclear power plants there <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/irene-gilbert-oregon-solar-green-energy-policy\">to fight green energy projects like wind and solar<\/a>. 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Scientists have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/sex-reversal-surprisingly-common-birds-new-study-suggests\">found \u2018sex reversal\u2019 in five different species of birds<\/a> 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 \u2013 which makes the war on trans people even more disgraceful than it is just on humanist grounds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A professor at Southeastern Louisiana University whose research uncovered high levels of heavy metals, including arsenic and lead, in and around Lake Maurepas <a href=\"https:\/\/lailluminator.com\/2025\/07\/31\/southeastern-sidelines-scientist\/\">was abruptly terminated from the project without explanation<\/a>, even though she is the only analytical chemist at the entire college.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/13\/new-zealand-woman-six-year-old-son-ice-detention-us-ntwnfb\">ICE kidnapped a woman here legally from New Zealand and her six-year-old son<\/a> when they re-entered the U.S. after dropping her two older children off at the Vancouver airport, holding them for nearly a month now in isolation at an ICE prison. (UPDATE: On Saturday evening, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattletimes.com\/seattle-news\/law-justice\/wa-state-employee-her-son-released-by-ice-after-three-week-detention\/?utm_source=marketingcloud&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=TSA_081625203055+ICE+releases+WA+state+employee%2c+son_8_16_2025&amp;utm_term=Active%20subscriber\">ICE released the pair<\/a>.) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The staff at an English pub threatened to walk out if the restaurant accepted a reservation from Vice-President JD Vance, so <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/staff-mutiny-forces-pub-to-turn-away-jd-vance\/\">they turned him away<\/a>. It\u2019s even more humiliating because Kamala Harris ate there a few weeks earlier.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The cases before the Supreme Court on states\u2019 powers to discriminate against trans athletes are <a href=\"https:\/\/ballsandstrikes.org\/scotus\/supreme-court-trans-sports-ban-cases-preview\/\">about much more than just sports<\/a>. 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The same bigoted judge from Mississippi who denied a trans teen\u2019s right to change his legal name and repeatedly misgendered the teen in his ruling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mississippifreepress.org\/trump-taps-mississippi-supreme-court-justice-james-maxwell-to-federal-court\/\">has now been nominated for a US District Court judgeship<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A Texas DA who incorrectly charged a pregnant woman who took abortion pills with murder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jezebel.com\/texas-da-who-charged-woman-with-murder-for-abortion-allegedly-paid-for-his-mistresss-abortion\">paid for his own mistress to have an abortion in the 1990s<\/a>. The charges were dropped a few days later, but the woman is suing authorities over the incident.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>There was a global summit on plastics pollution this past week, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cvgpddpldleo\">talks on a pact to fight the issue broke down<\/a> (something that plastic doesn\u2019t do!). I didn\u2019t see this in any U.S. press, probably because our current government is cutting every effort to help the environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Such as the White House\u2019s decision to stop a wind-power project, claiming it was based on \u201cflawed science,\u201d and then <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eenews.net\/articles\/trump-admin-redacts-entire-empire-wind-study-2\/\">redacting the entire 27-page report that purports to explain their logic<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Two very exciting games I saw at Gen Con went up on crowdfunding sites this week: <a href=\"https:\/\/gamefound.com\/en\/projects\/saltandpepper\/the-voynich-puzzle\">The Voynich Puzzle<\/a>, a crunchy worker-placement game based on the unsolved Voynich manuscript; and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/trickortreatstudios\/camp-grizzly-second-edition\">Camp Grizzly<\/a>, 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s not a party game. It\u2019s out of stock at Miniature Market but the bad place still has it. My free email newsletter went out last weekend, [&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":[1300,1429,1083,113,134,1456,190,961,1059,1079,799,870,477,940,1239,807],"class_list":["post-10920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-board-game-news","tag-environment","tag-football","tag-immigration","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-mississippi","tag-oregon","tag-science","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-texas","tag-the-swamp","tag-trans-rights","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10920","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=10920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10922,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10920\/revisions\/10922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}