I was busy this week promoting The Inside Game, my new book, now available from bookshop.org and other fine retail outlets. As of Thursday, Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg had signed copies for sale. I’m especially thrilled to see how positive the reviews have been, from a starred review in Publishers Weekly to this glowing writeup in the Maine Edge. Library Journal also “highly recommended” the book, although the review is only for subscribers.
WIRED has an excerpt from The Inside Game on its site, a portion of the chapter on anchoring bias that discusses a major reason why the automated strike zone would be an improvement over human umps.
I appeared on several great podcasts this week, including:
- Jeremy Schaap’s The Sporting Life: ESPN Podcenter, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher
- Inquiring Minds: Apple; Stitcher
- Wharton Moneyball: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher
- Sox Machine: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher
- KPCC Airtalk: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher (around the 93:00 mark)
On my own podcast this week, I had board game designer & Blue Jays fan Daryl Andrews (Sagrada, Bosk), talking about his latest games, designing & playing during self-isolation, and his Toronto fandom. You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher.
I was interviewed by my friend Tim Grierson for MEL Magazine, talking about my new book and life in self-isolation.
Also, my first book, Smart Baseball, is now available in Korean. If you’re in South Korea, you can pick it up here on Kyobo.
I reviewed the game Half Truth, a fun party/trivia game designed by Ken Jennings and Richard Garfield, for Paste this week, and reviewed the digital adaptation of the great dice-drafting game Sagrada for Ars Technica.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: Can we just give Ed Yong a Pulitzer Prize for his essay in the Atlantic called “Why the Coronavirus is So Confusing?” It is clear, coherent, comprehensive, and serious without being alarmist. It makes clear the role disinformation is playing in the pandemic, lays appropriate blame for the U.S.’s poor and late response, and discusses the structural problems that made a pandemic of some sort inevitable. It’s the best piece I’ve read this year.
- CNN has the story of the man who spent 46 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, the longest such wrongful sentence in U.S. history.
- Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune and author of Blood, Bones, and Butter, wrote a poignant, self-searching editorial in the New York Times asking if her restaurant really is “essential” and whether she’ll have the energy or the funds to reopen.
- Writing for SB Nation, Shakeia Taylor looks at the curious life of Effa Manley, Negro Leagues owner and Baseball Hall of Famer, and, according to multiple sources, a white woman who passed herself off as black when it was convenient to do so.
- Why does Belgium have such a high COVID-19 fatality rate? One major reason is that they’re being more honest in reporting such deaths.
- It’s “doubtful” that COVID-19 was accidentally released from a Wuhan lab, but that won’t stop conspiracy-mongers and xenophobes from spreading a probable lie.
- Those two Bakersfield ER docs you might have seen on Youtube calling for states to reopen their economies? They’re quacks, pushing a bogus epidemiology, which I presume is for attention.
- Progressive women politicians are being offered “a poisoned chalice” when it comes to Joe Biden, who faces a serious allegation from Tara Reade that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Biden, obviously taking this very seriously, appointed notorious partier Chris Dodd, himself involved in sexual assault allegations (with Ted Kennedy) in the 1980s, to serve on his VP selection committee.
- Tennessee restaurants re-opened as the state saw its biggest one-day jump in COVID-19 cases. The states that were the slowest to shut down or refused to do so will compete with the states that rushed to re-open for the worst spikes in COVID-19 cases, and I expect they’ll ask the federal government to bail out their incompetence, too.
- Iowa is one of those states that never closed, but governor Kim Reynolds (R) is already loosening restrictions, even though COVID-19 cases there are surging.
- Cosplayers stormed the Michigan Capitol this week, armed with small-penis symbols, and some called for the Governor’s murder, to which state Republicans have said … nothing.
- The shutdown is changing how people buy books, and has given a huge boost to the startup bookshop.org, which I have begun using for all affiliate links to books on this site.
- Tim Grierson also interviewed the director of A Secret Love, a wonderful new Netflix documentary about two women, one a former AAGPL star, who were a couple for nearly 70 years but hid their relationship even from close family until the very end.
- Why did billionaire Monty Bennett get $96 million in Payroll Protection Program loans that his company, Ashford Inc., does not appear to plan to pay employees? It’s a bit of a shell game, as Ashford merely “advises” two hotel companies Bennett owns.
- Why did my undergraduate alma mater maintain such close ties with Jeffrey Epstein even after his conviction for sex crimes against a minor?
- Betsy Levy Paluck writes in the Washington Post about how she gave birth by herself during this pandemic, but she never felt alone.
- No board game news this week, but I know of two interesting Kickstarters coming on Tuesday and will tweet about them when they launch.
Considering the generally sorry state of science journalism, we’re really lucky to have Ed Yong.
The coverage of Tara Reade’s allegations has been unsurprising but disgusting nonetheless.
I work at a small-midsize accounting firm in PA. I have spent so much time trying to help multiple clients get PPP loans over the last month. They have been incredibly frustrating and nerve-wracking. The clients I work with are all small business owners who qualify for amounts between $20K-$80K. And I had several get turned down even after we pulled out our hair making sure the applications were correct and they had all the documentation they needed.
So when I see these stories about big companies getting millions of dollars………………sorry, I blacked out from anger.
We likely will see spikes in cases as we re-open but that does not mean re-opening is wrong. The goal of flattening the curve was not to lower the overall number of cases but to distribute them over a longer time period to avoid overwhelming hospitals. That has been achieved just about everywhere. The decision to re-open needs to be careful and thoughtful one but cannot be predicated on the idea or the goal of zeroing out cases.
Lol I would prefer my kids be able to go back to school before 2022
And do you think that is more or less likely if we remain shut down longer?
That”s true, but it seems like some states picked a date on the calendar to re-open instead of looking at the data. If they are still seeing their highest number of positive tests just as they re-open, it probably isn’t time yet. Any spike from re-opening is going to take 10-14 days to see the results. Colorado just re-opened and they have seen a steady decline in positive cases over a two week period prior to opening. I would say hospitalization rate is probably the best metric to look at, but not all states release those numbers.
They’re not opening schools if hundreds or thousands of people are dying every day. Hell they shut it down briefly this year here for a flu outbreak.
It feels like a straw man when you say that opening can’t be predicated on zeroing out cases. It does not seem that anyone generating and implementing our public health policies subscribes to that thinking. My understanding is that it’s unlikely ever to happen and that this coronavirus will be with us in some form for the foreseeable future.
Exactly, Mat. Nobody is pushing for zero cases, because that’s not realistic (or justified by any available science). Even with a vaccine, we won’t have zero cases for years if ever. The point is minimizing the risk – Kazzy’s emphasis on “flattening the curve” gets at one aspect of the public policy goals, but not the other major goal of reducing preventable deaths and illnesses that are individual tragedies and also will put a large dent into our economy. Our failure to take sufficient steps early, and our continuing failure to provide protections for essential workers (including paid sick leave), is already crushing our GDP and plunging us into the worst depression in 80 years. Even with a flattened curve, that would still have happened.
Agreed. I’m not supporting any particular decision to re-open but do think much of the opposition to re-opening talk/plans is based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the purpose of flattening the curve measures.