{"id":10956,"date":"2025-09-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10956"},"modified":"2025-09-19T21:07:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:07:56","slug":"stick-to-baseball-9-20-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/20\/stick-to-baseball-9-20-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 9\/20\/25."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At the Athletic this week, I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/6634835\/2025\/09\/18\/minor-league-year-end-awards-2025-konnor-griffin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">my annual Prospect of the Year column<\/a>, giving the nod to the Pirates\u2019 Konnor Griffin and mentioning a handful of other prospects who had great years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Endless Mode, I reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.endlessmode.com\/tabletop\/board-games\/co-op-card-game-beasts-just-doesnt-stand-out\">the cooperative card game Beasts<\/a>, another limited-communication game that I thought was perfectly fine, but not novel or interesting enough to unseat better games in this genre for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I sent out a new edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/keithlaw.kit.com\/\">my free email newsletter<\/a> on Friday. I feel like that&#8217;s going to be the best place for my thoughts on the state of things for now.<\/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: <em>WIRED<\/em>\u2019s Katie Drummond <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/big-interview-podcast-matthew-prince-cloudflare\/\">interviewed Cloudflare CEO Matt Prince<\/a>, who has some wildly progressive views on content, AI, and the future of the Internet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In <em>Vanity Fair<\/em>, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/story\/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates\">how pundits and politicians are sanitizing the legacy of Charlie Kirk<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <em>Times<\/em> reported on two deals <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/15\/us\/politics\/trump-uae-chips-witkoff-world-liberty.html\">that allowed the Trumps to pocket billions from their cryptocurrency<\/a> while giving the U.A.E. access to computer chips.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Guardian<\/em> columnist Helen Pidd attended the far-right rally in the UK led by white nationalist Tommy Robinson and wrote that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/sep\/17\/tommy-robinson-rally-whitehall-racist-far-right\">this dangerous movement is only going to grow from here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Quanta explains an unsolved problem in computer science for the longest-running six-rule computer program, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/busy-beaver-hunters-reach-numbers-that-overwhelm-ordinary-math-20250822\/\">known as the Busy Beaver Challenge<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Defector reports on <a href=\"https:\/\/defector.com\/the-official-charity-of-the-savannah-bananas-has-a-hard-time-explaining-how-its-money-is-spent\">the sketchy goings-on at the Savannah Bananas\u2019 charity arm<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>NY Times<\/em> reporter Michael Wilson details <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/09\/18\/nyregion\/zelle-chase-banking-scam.html\">how he nearly fell for a phone scam<\/a>, where the caller purported to be from Wilson\u2019s bank, spoofing the bank\u2019s phone number, with other plausible details.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <em>Washington Post<\/em>, formerly a great American newspaper, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/attiah-free-speech-1.7634895\">fired editor and columnist Karen Attiah<\/a> for speaking out about gun violence in the wake of the shooting of Kirk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/en\/press-releases\/2025\/09\/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds\">Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip<\/a>, according to a UN Commission report released this week. Undeterred, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/09\/16\/nx-s1-5543007\/israel-military-gaza\">Israel continued moving ground forces into Gaza City<\/a>, displacing thousands more Palestinians.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan was a Republican who refused to go along with Trump\u2019s attempts to steal the 2020 election. He left the party entirely due to the harassment that ensued, and <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/200512\/trump-geoff-duncan-switch-parties\">now he\u2019s running for Governor as a Democrat<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Disney\u2019s decision to bow to the Trump Administration and take Jimmy Kimmel off the air is further evidence of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2025\/09\/this-wont-stop-with-jimmy-kimmel\/684251\/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8ELL-EKGkT96_oLzHqZwSqI&amp;utm_source=copy-link&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=share\">the assault on the First Amendment<\/a>. So are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/news\/us-news\/charlie-kirk-teachers-fired-social-media-posts-punished-free-speech-rcna227968\">the dozens of teachers and professors fired<\/a> for their comments on Kirk and his death.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Meanwhile, even though Kirk\u2019s (alleged) murderer was a white man, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/politics\/black-people-threatened-after-assasination\/\">Black Americans are receiving death threats over it<\/a>, writes Elie Mystal in <em>The Nation<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Chicago Public Media\u2019s WBEZ reached out to all 48 Illinois college instructors on Turning Point USA\u2019s \u201cwatchlist\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wbez.org\/politics\/2025\/09\/19\/illinois-professors-watchlist-charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa\">detailed the harassment they\u2019ve received as a result<\/a>, including death threats.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Department of Education is <a href=\"https:\/\/myfox8.com\/news\/trump-administration-ending-grants-for-colleges-with-large-minority-student-populations\/\">ending discretionary funding to multiple grant programs for colleges that primarily serve minority students<\/a>, because DEI.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The attorneys general of nine blue states have joined the National Women\u2019s Law Center to pledge <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/state-attorneys-general-transgender-youth\">to fight to protect the rights of trans students<\/a>, just as the ultra-right Heritage Foundation wants the Administration <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/us-politics\/charlie-kirk-shooting-transgender-extremism-terrorism-b2829621.html\">to brand trans activistists as terrorists<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Physicists at the University of Colorado-Boulder published a paper about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/weird-time-crystals-are-made-visible-at-last\/\">how they managed to create visible time crystals<\/a>, a strange state of matter that was only proposed in 2012 and had never been seen \u00a0at the macroscopic level until now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Board game Kickstarters: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/mikegnade\/disco-heist-laundry\">Disco Heist Laundry<\/a> is indeed a heist game, set in the early \u201880s; full disclosure: I know the publisher pretty well, as our kids go to the same school \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/pandasaurus\/dinosaur-island-fully-charged-x-treme-edition\">Dinosaur Island: Fully Charged<\/a> is an upgraded version of the 2017 tile &amp; worker placement game, with better components and some rules tweaks to improve the game\u2019s balance \u2026 I don\u2019t know anything about this publisher but I\u2019m intrigued by the game, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/rocnest\/smallfolk\">Smallfolk<\/a>, a \u201ccozy\u201d tableau-builder \u2026 I can\u2019t remember if I linked this one before, but B\u00e9zier is publishing a new title called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/tedalspach\/the-game-makers\">The Game Makers<\/a>, featuring the images and names of 300 actual board games that you\u2019ll compete to make.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Athletic this week, I wrote my annual Prospect of the Year column, giving the nod to the Pirates\u2019 Konnor Griffin and mentioning a handful of other prospects who had great years. For Endless Mode, I reviewed the cooperative card game Beasts, another limited-communication game that I thought was perfectly fine, but not novel [&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":[1429,1083,577,959,137,1387,146,1309,190,961,776,870,940,1239],"class_list":["post-10956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-board-game-news","tag-disney","tag-first-amendment","tag-frauds","tag-gaza","tag-georgia","tag-great-britain","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-physics","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-the-swamp","tag-trans-rights","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956","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=10956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10957,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10956\/revisions\/10957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}