Stick to baseball, 6/24/17.

I wrote two new pieces for Insiders this past week, one looking at teams that just drafted their new #1 prospects and a minor league scouting piece on Phillies, Cleveland, Red Sox, and Astros prospects. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Smart Baseball got a nice sales bump last week from Father’s Day and from George Will’s favorable review in the Wall Street Journal (subscriber link). Ty Duffy also mentions the book in passing in a smart piece on how analytics are changing the game on the field, possibly for the worse. Thank you to everyone who’s purchased it. I hope to see many of you at my upcoming signings/appearances:

* Toronto, The Sports Gallery, June 26th
* Miami, Books and Books, July 8th
* Harrisburg, Midtown Scholar, July 15th
* Berkeley, Books Inc., July 19th
* Chicago, Volumes, July 28th, 7:30 pm
* GenCon (Indianapolis), August 17th-20th

Still working on Brooklyn and Phoenix for later this summer/fall, and I believe I’ll be signing at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia in November. Bookstores interested in hosting should contact Danielle Bartlett at HarperCollins; we’re trying to accommodate everyone we can within my work schedule.

And now, the links…

• Chiropractors are bullshit, according to this longread, and in my experience a ridiculously high percentage of them are anti-vaxxers too.
• Speaking of vaccine deniers, enjoy this post on how one rabid denier can’t do basic math despite claiming the minuscule amount of formaldehyde in vaccines is harmful. (Your body produces formaldehyde every day.)
• WIRED looks at the leading hypotheses on the causes of autism spectrum disorder. Note that vaccines aren’t among them.
• Buzzfeed has a great longread on the British scientist likely assassinated by Russian agents, and the British government’s apparent complicity in covering it up. The victim, Dr. Matthew Puncher, had helped prove that a Russian dissident was himself killed, via polonium-120 poisoning, by the Russian state. That’s the same Russian government to which our current Administration is cozying up, by the way.
• Missouri, fighting to overtake Texas in the race to the bottom, is considering a law that would allow employers to disciminate against women who’ve had abortions or used birth control.
• The Guardian looks at a 19-year-old heroin addict turned dealer in West Virginia as part of its series on the U.S. opioid epidemic.
• The tick whose bite makes people allergic to red meat – specifically to a carbohydrate in red meat called alpha-gal – is spreading to the northern half of the U.S.. Use an insect repellent that contains DEET and, if you’re camping or otherwise outdoors in an area likely to have ticks, treat your clothing with permethrin.
• Last week brought the shocking (#notshocked) news that coconut oil isn’t a magical health food after all. How did it ever get that reputation in the first place? A couple of isolated studies on individual chemicals found in coconut oil fueled a lot of wacko theories and charlatans selling “alternative medicine” solutions. It can be pretty useful in baking, though.
• David French of the National Review had my favorite argument on why the Philando Castile verdict was “a miscarriage of justice”. Many of these cases are about race; this is about a cop who killed an innocent man who followed the cop’s instructions and died anyway.
• Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan tells the movie industry to stop blaming critics for their own bad blockbusters.
• Everyone’s got an opinion on why amazon is buying Whole Foods; I liked this explanation from The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson, although I think the real answers are probably even more complex. If Amazon merely wanted to buy a brick and mortar network to reach consumers, was this the best or only option? And what happens to folks like me, who’ve chosen Whole Foods because of the quality of its merchandise and/or because it allows consumers more choices for (ostensibly) responsible spending?
• One study on Seattle’s minimum wage hike found it didn’t hurt employment in the food services industry, one of the sectors that was, in theory, likely to be most affected by such a law.
• J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, author of the cookbook The Food Lab, is joining partners in opening his first restaurant, a sausage and beer hall in San Mateo, CA.
• A Rhode Island teacher got to meet the President after winning a state award, and in his photo op decided to be ‘visibly queer’ to make a statement. The reason I included it here: He asked the President if it was OK before the pic, and Trump said yes.
• Those Carrier jobs Trump/Pence claimed they’d saved? The company automated the plant and is moving the jobs to Mexico.
• The ransomware attack earlier this year may have distracted authorities from an even more serious attack using tools leaked from the NSA.
• I’ve mentioned the NYC cocktail bar Coup before, and they just got a positive writeup in the New Yorker. All proceeds there go to nonprofits fighting or threatened by the current Administration; you get a token with every drink you buy, and you place it in a vase for the charity you want to support.
• Former NFL player Ryan O’Callaghan planned to killed himself because he didn’t want admit he was gay, but members of the Chiefs medical staff noticed changes in his behavior and ended up leading him to choose to live and come out publicly. The conversation he had with then-Chiefs GM Scott Pioli is particularly touching.
• The “Angry Chef” now has a book coming out detailing how “alternative” ideas like detoxing are mostly just bullshit. Speaking of which, NASA just called bullshit on Gwyneth Paltrow’s fake-medicine site GOOP for claiming a product used the same material found in spacesuits. You are a complete idiot if you give her any of your money.
• A Wisconsin ironworker is going to challenge Rep. Paul Ryan for the House Speaker’s seat next year, and while he’s got to be the longest of longshots, his first campaign ad is a doozy.