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I woke up to some very sad news this morning: celebrated dancer, producer, and rapper, Steve “Stezo” Williams passed away Wednesday night. He was 52. Stezo was a fascinating guy. Hailing from New Haven, Connecticut, he started out in the music industry by working with EPMD as a dancer. After appearing in the “You Gots To Chill” video, he inked a deal with Sleeping Bag records through A & R Virgil Simms.

Hello and an official welcome to sweaty season in the Northeast! Things are…sticky here. First, a fun thing: Last week I crossed off a “personal life goals” bucket list item when I was featured in my very own Grub Street Diet(!!) If you’re not familiar, it’s a weekly New York Magazine series in which New Yorkers chronicle what they eat in a week. For anyone who loves this particular flavor of food voyeurism (what people have in their fridges, how much they spend on food in a week), it’s a must-read.

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Hello, friends! Welcome to the Cook Til Delicious newsletter, the space where I’m talking about the baking and baking-adjacent topics currently occupying my brain. If you’d like to receive the newsletter directly to your inbox, subscribe for free! If you’d like to directly support the work that goes behind developing and testing all the recipes on the newsletter and the blog, consider upgrading to a paid subscibers. Paid subscribers also receive access to extra content, such as chats/Q&A’s/exclusive recipes!

This is the second in our occasional series on Rethinking the Canon. Is there value in reading the classics at a time when they are increasingly viewed as unrepresentative texts that don’t speak to the diverse experiences of modern students? This week Amna talks with Roosevelt Montás, senior lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University.  FULL TRANSCRIPT AMNA KHALID:  A liberal education is one that takes the complicated condition of human freedom seriously, and addresses itself to its dilemmas and to the urgency of its lived experience.

No big-league franchise has been more successful in the 21st century than the Boston Red Sox. New England’s team has won four World Series over the past 21 seasons (2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018), a feat unmatched by any other club. Only the San Francisco Giants (three titles since 2000), New York Yankees, and St. Louis Cardinals (two apiece) have come close. And a fifth title might be on the horizon, since Boston reached this year’s All-Star break with the very best record in the American League.

Many Major League Baseball teams are parsimonious with retirement ceremonies. The Marlins have not retired the uniform of any former player, manager, or coach. The Rockies have saluted only Todd Helton. (Larry Walker is slated to be Colorado’s second honoree whenever fans return to Coors Field.) The Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, Mariners, and Rays have retired just two jerseys apiece. But the Astros take an entirely different approach. Houston has permanently pulled nine uniform numbers from rotation, the largest count for any of the 14 franchises created since 1961.

Seattle is the 13th destination on my every-other-Friday tour of baseball’s retired numbers — and it’s going to be a shorter stop than most of those that came before. Why? Well, to be blunt, the Mariners really don’t have much to work with. The franchise’s overall record since its creation in 1977 is a dismal one — 409 games below .500. Seattle has won just three divisional crowns in 44 seasons, and it has never qualified for a World Series.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Mature games and the Nintendo Wii. Efforts were made, again and again, but it just wasn’t ever meant to be the system that would attract the kind of gamer who wanted that specific thing above all.