I had two ESPN+ pieces this week: my midseason ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball and my Futures Game wrapup. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I’d planned to send a newsletter out yesterday but I’m so backed up on life things from being sick for ten days (I’m recovered now, just dealing with a mild cough). I’m going to try to do that in the next few days, though, and you can still sign up here.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Author David Epstein argues for generalization, not specialization, against the current trope that experts in any endeavor need 10,000 hours of experience or practice to reach that level of competence. This is good for me as I do not have the discipline or attention span to do anything for 10,000 hours other than sleep.
• The BBC looks at how NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo went from a stateless migrant to a Greek icon, including the racism he faced growing up and even after he was drafted by the Bucks, and how he’s helped ease the path for migrant children born and educated in Greece.
• The Washington Post dives into how Sandy Hook parents are fighting back against hoaxers who claim the massacre was faked.
• The Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory, widely pushed by Fox News personalities, was in fact a hoax planted by Russian intelligence, according to an investigative report from Yahoo News.
• The Huffington Post reports that “progressive” baby boomers are fighting affordable housing projects in cities, a rather blatant “not in my backyard” mentality that masks both self-interest (preserving artificially high real estate values) and racism: Just look at the photo of Orange County, California residents fighting the placement a sober living facility.
• Justin Gest, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at George Mason, proposes an evidence-based overhaul of immigration policy, one that considers factors both economic and humanitarian.
• Biotech executive Michael Becker is dying of neck cancer at age 49, and is using his remaining time to urge parents to get their teenagers vaccinated against HPV. While HPV causes nearly all cervical cancers, it’s also responsible for many other cancers, including more than 70% of oropharyngeal cancers in the United States.
• ICE has just opened three new migrant detention centers, flouting limits placed by Congress in February. They’re run by private prison companies, who, of course, profit the more we lock people up in their facilities.
• “Healing crystals” are pseudoscientific bullshit. They’re also the new “blood diamonds,” often mined in war-torn areas or mined by children as young as seven.
• Harvard just suspended economist Roland Fryer for two years and closed his lab in response to sexual harassment claims.
• The Miami-Herald‘s Julie K. Brown, whose investigative reporting helped lead to the re-arrest of alleged child rapist & human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and resignation of Alex Acosta from the Cabinet, writes that more than a dozen additional victims of Epstein have come forward since his latest arrest.
• Mashable tries to explain the cult of Wawa. I don’t think they really get at just how much people in the mid-Atlantic love the chain of convenience stores, including their coffee and sandwiches.
• Yet another new tick-borne disease, the Bourbon virus, has shown up in the United States, thanks to climate change and global travel.
• Virginia state Senator Amanda Chase (guess) said in a comment on her office’s Facebook page that rape victims were naïve and unprepared. She’s only barely backed off of the comments since then, using them instead to justify carrying a firearm in public.
• Veterans’ rights activist Paul Rieckhoff, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, posted an excellent tweet thread about the invective and outright racism hurled at Kamala Harris, which came his way after he said he agreed with Harris’s statements on Trump’s ridiculous July 4th display. He singles out Laura Ingraham for her role in fomenting the racist and misogynist commentary.
• An extreme right-wing gubernatorial candidate in Mississippi denied a woman reporter access to his campaign because of her gender, and then played white nationalist bingo on Twitter to defend himself, citing the “liberal left,” “socialism,” and “putting men in women’s bathrooms.” I think the answer is simple: don’t cover him. He just played the media and got exactly what he wanted: free coverage of his theocratic worldview.
• The Kingston Whig-Standard posted the first of a three-part series on the impending global water crisis. The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast looked at the same topic through the lens of the water shortage happening now in Chennai, a city that relies on monsoon rains for its water supply.
• A Nebraska midwife faces homicide charges after delivering a baby who died two days later. The midwife actually did not have a certification to practice as one, and even if she had, state law prevents midwives from delivering babies at home. The newborn in this case was born breech and died from oxygen deprivation during the delivery. Hospitals seem like good places for births, but that’s just me.
• Remember how the GOP tax bill was supposed to boost our economy? The deficit just jumped 23% in the last year even as GDP growth is slowing.
• This tweet is from October but rather nicely sums up conservatives’ claims of “censorship” on social media.