Stick to baseball, 10/8/16.

I wrote short preview pieces for all four Division Series:
• Red Sox/Cleveland
• Blue Jays/Rangers
• Dodgers/Nationals
• Cubs/Giants

My predictions are all terrible. But I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the game Aquarium, which I found unbalanced and rather spiteful.

You can also preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

• Voter suppression laws in the guise of fighting voter fraud have been struck down repeatedly by courts, but Republican-led states are dragging their feet in complying with those court rulings.
• I was quoted in this NPR story on reactions to the original story. The author of the article that outed Ferrante did a Q&A with the Columbia Journalism Review, in which he arrogantly claims he “enhanced the work of art” that her books are. The New York Times also rounded up some reactions, focusing on the feminist aspects of the case. Lindsey Adler, who first turned me on to Ferrante’s work, explained why she didn’t and doesn’t want to know who Ferrante is.
• Unrelated to this week’s story, the Atlantic published an article in July on why Ferrante’s book covers aren’t as bad as they look, a link passed along by one of you.
• Speaking of reading, one study with over 3600 participants found people who read books regularly lived about 23 months longer than non-readers.
• Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey hasn’t been able to turn the company’s fortunes around, and he may be losing control of it entirely. My employer, Disney, is listed among potential suitors.
• Julie DiCaro appears here again, this time with a spot-on piece about why hazing rookies by making them dress as women is fucking wrong. (My words, not quite hers.)
• Of all the stuff released about Donald Trump this week, this victim’s story of him sexually assaulting her is the most damning. The BBC’s Katty Kay, who wrote a piece last week attacking Hillary’s role in attacking her husband’s accusers in the 1990s, asks if this is the tipping point for Trump.
• The patent troll firm Intellectual Ventures, led by Microsoft billionaire turned cookbook author Nathan Myrhvold, lost an appeal in a software patent infringement lawsuit against Symantec last week, possibly heralding the end of software patents. This would be great news as software patents have long been a joke, where ‘inventors’ merely took advantage of the US Patent Office’s inability to adjudge their novelty or merit. You’re not supposed to be able to patent an idea, and maybe now, about twenty years late, we’ll get back to that standard.
• My colleague Mina Kimes, our best business of sports writer, wrote a wonderful piece on the history and etiquette of the bat flip in Korean baseball. They do it right, with style and ease, without pitchers getting all mad about it.
• I read an ad for Blue Apron one day while guest-hosting the BBTN podcast, but I’m not a customer of theirs and have no real interest in their product. Buzzfeed investigated some questionable labor and health practices in their business that served to confirm my resolution not to try them.
• The Blue Apron founders are in the backdrop of a picture on this great Michael Ruhlman post on the NY Times food conference, which included a talk by future of food guru Chef Dan Barber.
• The Organic Center released a 16-page white paper (PDF link) on reducing antibiotic resistance through improved animal husbandry.
• Daniel Vaughn wrote a wonderful profile of Lexington, Texas, BBQ pitmaster “Tootsie” Tomanetz, who’s been running her pit for fifty years.
• NPR looks at a young scientist who’s trying to decipher sugar’s effect on the brain. Why is it so hard for us to cut it out of our diets?
• People with Crohn’s disease have higher levels of a specific fungus in their guts, as well as of two species of bacteria, which may lead to new treatments for the debilitating, incurable disease.
• Dr. Paul Offit, immunologist and developer of the rotavirus vaccine, discussed his new role combating and debunking myths about vaccines.
• A harrowing first-person account of a woman who survived being shot in the face by her boyfriend with the very gun he insisted she buy for her own safety. It’s also a story of abuse and control.
• Why has Sweden, especially the city of Gothenburg, become a major exporter of young jihadis? What can we learn from their failures at assimilating migrants from Muslim countries?
• Buzzfeed’s Monica Mark tracked down former Sierra Leone dictator Valentine Strasser, who took power at age 22, ruled for four years, and ended up destitute in London before returning home to a hermit’s life in his own country.
• The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team has been going hard after private schools that pass around teachers or faculty members accused of sexually assaulting students, and in their latest piece looks at the actual breakdown in the process of giving and getting references that allows these predators to continue to work with children.
• Riace, a small village in southern Italy, was slowly losing its population to migration to the north, when its mayor decided to welcome African migrants to live in the abandoned houses. The decision has saved the town and provided real economic opportunities to people who might otherwise have had none.
• Adult Swim has come under fire for a lack of woman writers on its shows and sexist comments made by some of the men in charge.
• Another story about a few good cops, or, really, just good human beings, using the power of the uniform to do something good across the race divide.
• Tweet of the week, or, really, quotation of the week that I found on Twitter:
  

  From the wonderful mind of David Sedaris. pic.twitter.com/Dz1E68g663

  — Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) October 2, 2016