Weekly Reading (6/29/24)

Yesterday got away from me, so here we are on a Saturday!

One in five households in Gaza go whole days without food, draft UN report says (The Guardian)

Pilgrim Deaths in Mecca Put Spotlight on Underbelly of Hajj Industry (NYT)

Trump made Nazi ‘ovens’ joke in Jewish executives’ presence, ex-employee says (The Guardian)

'Spy mania': Why is Russia accusing its own physicists of treason? (BBC)

The Flooding Will Come “No Matter What” (ProPublica)

Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants had housing. (Yahoo! News)

The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town (The New Yorker)

The horse wars of Stormy Daniels (WaPo)

Top Chinese Swimmers Tested Positive for Banned Drug, Then Won Olympic Gold (NYT)

A behind-the-scenes tour of the Red Sox Dominican Republic Academy (The Athletic)

Dungeons & Dragons' New Core Rulebooks Want to Show, Not Tell (Gizmodo)

The Most Exciting Play in Baseball (FanGraphs)

Weekly Reading (6/21/24)

Oh this is such a relief: Supreme Court upholds federal ban on guns for domestic abusers (NPR)

‘Unprecedented scale’ of violations against children in Gaza, West Bank and Israel, UN report says (The Guardian)

In Western Ukraine, a Community Wrestles With Patriotism or Survival (NYT)

Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting (WaPo)

And an update! Robert Winnett will not join The Post as editor (WaPo)

How voters turned against Narendra Modi in his party’s heartland (The Guardian)

Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course (NYT)

Clash of the Patriarchs (The Atlantic)

Willie Mays, Baseball’s Electrifying Player of Power and Grace, Is Dead at 93 (NYT)

Mega drive-throughs explain everything wrong with American cities (Vox)

MLB’s Next Order of Business? Saving Pitchers. (The Ringer)

! The Yankees’ Candlelit Clubhouse May Be Their Secret Weapon (SI)

Oh, Queer Canada: A Reading List for Americans in Search of LGBTQ Canadian History (LitHub)

Bonus Links (6/19/24)

Before Juneteenth (The Atlantic)

Why Juneteenth didn’t actually end slavery in Texas (WaPo)

Compulsory Voting's American History (Harvard Law Review)

Be like Bryce Harper: 3 novels to read if you love romance and baseball (The Athletic)

I did not have this on my 2024 bingo card: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping: A Grisly Theory and a Renewed Debate (NYT)

This River Is a Model (Places)

When your landlord bats leadoff: The insular, clannish world of baseball real estate (The Athletic)

The Lure of Divorce (The Cut)

Translating Philosophy: The Case of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (Words Without Borders)

The Japanese Sensei Bringing Baseball to Brazil (NYT)

A Manual for Adversity (City Journal)

C Is For… Cooky? An Investigation Into the Weird Alternate Spellings of Vintage Cookbooks (Racket)

Weekly Reading (6/14/24)

The Supreme Court’s Abortion Pill Ruling Should Satisfy Nobody (Slate)

Ukraine’s Big Vulnerabilities: Ammunition, Soldiers and Air Defense (NYT)

Srebrenica To Rename Its Streets…Without Any Mention Of The Genocide (RFE/RL)

Could the U.S. force treatment on mentally ill people (again)? (NPR)

China’s Advancing Efforts to Influence the U.S. Election Raise Alarms (NYT)

In ‘Barons,’ Austin Frerick Takes on the Most Powerful Families in the Food System (Civil Eats)

The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife (The New Yorker)

16 Takes On the "Kushite Wife" Verse That Have Nothing To Do With White Supremacy (Life Is a Sacred Text)

‘You feel like your life’s over:’ The painful limbo of a baseball DFA (The Athletic)

Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound: Rebuilding a Lost Masterpiece (Antigone)

Player's View: Consuming Baseball, Then and Now (FanGraphs)

Unsolvable Puzzles: Anna Shechtman on the Feminist Psychology Behind Crosswords (LitHub)

Links on Wednesday!

I've got a big backlog of bookmarks, so let's have some midweek links! These are mostly older things that I still think are interesting.

How Russian Spies Get Flipped or Expelled, as Told by a Spycatcher (VSquare)

These pansies are evolving to rely less on pollinators. Here’s why that may spell trouble (PBS)

The Case for Detracking (Culture Study)

The Mystery of the Coin That Shouldn’t Exist (NYT)

The Great Pretenders (Toronto Life)

On the Black Death in Africa and Asia, and the interconnected Middle Ages (Going Medieval)

Inside the Raptors’ ‘Puzzlepalooza’: Trust, egos and trash-talk thanks to Wordle and more (The Athletic)

What Frantz Fanon and Ian Fleming Agreed On (The New Yorker)

Hex Marks the Spot (The Strong National Museum of Play)

The surreal life of a professional bridesmaid (The Hustle)

Language barriers, culture shock and isolation: How the NHL’s loneliest players cope (The Athletic)

The Crochet Coral Reef Keeps Spawning, Hyperbolically (NYT)

Weekly Reading (6/7/24)

I always have a big backlog of links for you, and I definitely do not have the capacity to go back to posting them daily right now, but maybe I'll start doing some random extra posts when I have the time/inclination. We'll see!

Mexico elects its first female president (NPR)

This is also important and getting missed in a lot of the headlines: Mexico's first female president is also its first Jewish president (NBC News)

‘Kharkiv Is Unbreakable’: A Battered City Carries On (NYT)

Inside Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza (The New Yorker)

Europe’s centre left struggles to hold back surge from right (BBC)

What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise (NYT)

Mass deportations, detention camps, troops on the street: Trump spells out migrant plan (The Guardian)

Arizona’s Split Reality: Ground zero for the rigged-election conspiracy, the border state could decide both the fate of the Senate and the presidency. (Intelligencer)

Texas’ S.B. 4 Is Worse Than You Think (Slate)

The Truth About Organic Milk (The Atlantic)

I love him: How Cleveland’s Austin Hedges learned to stop worrying (about hitting) and love his job (The Athletic)

Why New Englanders are nuts for Teddie peanut butter (WBUR)

Weekly Reading (5/31/24)

4 takeaways from the historic felony conviction of Donald Trump (NPR)

The Infinite Dignity of Transgender Existence (Slate)

To Battle Wartime Hunger, Gazans Turn to a Humble Leafy Green (NYT)

HIV is no longer a death sentence. But states still have laws targeting people who live with it. (The 19th*)

‘They are breaking the law’: inside Amazon’s bid to stall a union drive (The Guardian)

Can Chicago Manage Its Migrant Crisis? (The New Yorker)

The massive change sweeping through MLB coaching: ‘What took us so long?’ (The Athletic)

Don Winslow Reflects on Writing His Final Novel (CrimeReads)

What Are Lineups Made Of? (Baseball Prospectus)

Advertising as Art: How Literary Magazines Pioneered a New Kind of Graphic Design (LitHub)

Ancient Skeletons Give Clues to Modern Medical Mysteries (NYT)

Inside ballplayers’ secret Uber identities (MLB)

Weekly Reading (5/24/24)

Happy long weekend!

When Home Is Now the Front Line (NYT)

GOOD: Michael Schumacher’s family win case against publisher over fake AI interview (The Guardian)

Folks who use they/them pronouns are less likely to get jobs – especially in red areas (LGBTQ Nation)

The Fight to Restore Abortion Rights in Texas (The New Yorker)

Arctic region of Norway asks EU Commission for 26-hour day (Politico)

What Is Left? Rebecca Solnit on the Perennial Divisions of the American Left (LitHub)

A Tantalizing ‘Hint’ That Astronomers Got Dark Energy All Wrong (NYT)

They Grow Up So Fast (Baseball Prospectus)

10 Queer Crime Novels to Check Out This Week (CrimeReads)

How Braves ace lefty Max Fried continues to win at a historic rate in the majors (The Athletic)

Figure skating wants ice princesses. Amber Glenn said, ‘Screw it.’ (WaPo)

Please Tread on Me: The Story of Cleat Cleaners (FanGraphs)

Weekly Reading (5/17/24)

Israel’s Military Campaign Has Left Gaza’s Medical System Near Collapse (NYT)

Extortion, threats, fear, traitors: How Russia recruits Ukrainian spies (WaPo)

Trump-linked dark-money group spent $90m on racist and transphobic ads in 2022, records show (The Guardian) 

You’ll Never Guess Which State Court Just Approved Religious Exemptions From Abortion Bans (Slate)

Resigned. Why Is The Left So In Love With The Politics of Refusal? (A Sigh of Relief)

Ocean Heat Has Shattered Records for More Than a Year. What’s Happening? (NYT)

The Past is a Fairy Tale: On Remembering and Forgetting in Modern Ireland (LitHub)

The Shuttle Program (Baseball Prospectus)

In the Kitchen with the Grande Dame of Jewish Cooking (The New Yorker)

Why Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole approve of new analytics whiz in dugout (The Athletic)

How real is Shōgun? (Vox)

Has Anyone Ever Hit the Target Field Target? (FanGraphs)

Weekly Reading (5/10/24)

Happy Friday! Sorry for the radio silence last week, I was traveling and had some family stuff going on and time got away from me.

The “Picture of the Year” That Violates the Humanity of Its Subject (Slate)

Trump may sound moderate on abortion. The groups setting his agenda definitely aren’t. (Vox)

Red states threaten librarians with prison — as blue states work to protect them (WaPo)

Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? (NYT)

Yay Vermont! Vermont poised to become first US state to charge big oil for climate damage (The Guardian)

Biden’s new Title IX rules protect LGBTQ students and sexual assault victims. Transgender athletes aren’t mentioned (PBS)

What Exactly Do the Christian Nationalists Want? (TPM)

This was fascinating: Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads (The New Yorker)

An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America (The Atlantic)

What Tommy John surgery looks like today: Revision surgeries, internal brace procedures (The Athletic)

A Frozen Pond and a New Way to Experience an Ancient Jewish Ritual in Maine (NYT)

The DH Is Universal, but Good DHs Are Rare (The Ringer)