Stick to baseball, 6/16/18.

My one piece for Insiders this week looked at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects, along with two teams that probably just drafted their new #2 prospects (although it’s debatable in both cases). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, which will be the last until July because I’m going on vacation.

I spoke to John Conniff at MadFriars about the Padres’ draft and the state of their rebuild.

I’ll be at Politics & Prose in Washington DC on July 14th, with my friend Jay Jaffe, to discuss our respective books (Smart Baseball and The Cooperstown Casebook) and all things baseball. I also have a tentative signing set up at Silver Unicorn Books in Acton, Massachusetts, for July 28th, so stand by for more details.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Most of what we know about the Stanford Prison Experiment is a lie. It turns out much of the so-called ‘experiment’ was staged or at least influenced by the organizers, and subsequent retellings have exaggerated its results.
• National Geographic‘s cover story this month is on the rising tide of plastic in our oceans and rivers. As the article says, this isn’t a controversial subject: “There are no ocean trash deniers, at least so far.”
• The Guardian goes long on a Texas man who finds missing persons – and is trying to find his daughter’s killer. The prime suspect is in jail for another murder, but hasn’t been charged with the death of Laura Miller for lack of evidence.
• The Boston Globe suspended columnist Kevin Cullen for fabricating two stories about the Marathon bombings, which sounds like a firing offense to me. What doesn’t sound like a firing offense? A political cartoonist taking aim at the current President, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette fired Rob Rogers for just that, and nothing more. I wouldn’t line a birdcage with that paper now.
• From the Atlantic: the extinguishing of the ‘beacon’ that was America. We are torturing migrant children while trying unsuccesfully to close our borders. Wherever the children of this modern concentration camp end up, they will end up with serious mental health problems that we won’t do a thing to treat. Shame on anyone – but especially any self-proclaimed Christian – who supports this atrocity.
• Contractors with shady pasts are cashing in on the construction of these concentration camps too.
• A linguist examines Trump’s use of words to push propaganda, with useful advice to journalists on how to stop enabling him.
• The Washington Post shares the story of an unqualified 24-year-old who was promoted six times by the Trump Administration, even with inaccuracies on his resume, primarily because he was loyal. I’d have some sympathy for the kid if he wasn’t so dumb as to say he still supports Trump.
• Are Nigerians the most successful ethnic group in the US?
• Snopes confirms that a photo that had been going around showing two brothers, one vaccinated, the other unvaccinated and sick with smallpox is real. The images are extremely disturbing – smallpox was a disfiguring and deadly illness.
• The mother of a two-year-old who died of measles has shared photos of the girl before and after she got sick; she died of heart failure on March 4th. She was exposed in the hospital when a baby with measles was placed in the same room as her. Every U.S. parent who declines to vaccinate should be forced to see these images.
• Texas is the new hotspot for vaccine denialism, which you can add to the list of reasons I’m glad I don’t live or work in the state.
• A Cornell study found that vaccine denialism is strongest at the ends of the political spectrum – both ends, the far right (religious nuts) and the far left (just plain nuts).
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has created a new resource library to help fight anti-vaxxer claims in court. Within that piece is a mention of Toni Bark, a fake doctor who tweets anti-vaccine propaganda and was actually permitted to testify in an Indiana court despite her lack of credentials.
• A Belgian professor of risk communication was targeted by an anti-GMO professor/lawyer and ultimately fired for his public views in support of glyphosate, the highly successful and generally safe herbicide found in Roundup.
• In the last 25 years, Antarctica has lost more than 25 trillion tons of ice, proving that the Chinese will go to unbelievable lengths to perpetuate this hoax.
• Iowa Representative Steve King (R-duh), a white nationalist who doesn’t even bother with a hood, quote-tweeted and echoed a prominent European neo-Nazi, and nobody in his district seems to care.
• Meanwhile, Virginia Republicans handed a primary win to “neo-Confederate” Corey Stewart in a Congressional race in the northern part of the state. Although many pundits seem to think this hands the district to his Democratic opponent, have we not learned by now that American whites are far more racist than they let on?
• Republicans are also purging voter rolls as quickly as they can as they attempt to rig this November’s elections. The purge follows a SCOTUS decision that such purges of ‘infrequent’ voters don’t violate the NVRA, a 1993 civil rights law that should protect the rights of people eligible to vote who just haven’t done so in a while.
• WIRED explores pro-eating disorder communities thrive on social media sites despite nominal attempts to moderate them.
• My friend Lindsey Adler talked to Mets first baseman Dom Smith about being more prepared and more mature in his second go-round in the majors. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Australian comedian Eurydice Dixon was assaulted and killed just meters from her house by a 19-year-old assailant; police fumbled their response by saying women needed to take more responsibility for being aware of their surroundings. Dixon was 22.
• Military History Now has a piece on a 19th century board game called Kriegsspiel, a tabletop war game that helped Prussian military leaders prepare for battles and was also a precursor to many modern tabletop games.
• Cartoonist Adam Zyglis gave us this incisive look at the cost of Trump cozying up to Kim Jong Un.
• I also liked these alternate proposals for dividing California into multiple states:
  

  Alternative Plans For Splitting Up California pic.twitter.com/PaijKlq02s

  — Bored Elon Musk (@BoredElonMusk) June 15, 2018