Stick to baseball, 10/16/21.

My first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League is up now for subscribers to the Athletic. I’ll have probably one more post, a longer one that covers everything else I saw.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Riftforce, a great new two-player game that sort of combines Battle Line and Magic: the Gathering, if you can imagine that. It has a very high replay value as well, which is key in a two-player game.

With some more content out, I’ll get on my email newsletter as soon as I’m back from Arizona. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links, with a shorter list this week as I’ve been reading less while on the road…

Stick to baseball, 10/10/21.

My only content for subscribers to The Athletic this week was my contribution to our playoff predictions, where I pointed out that the evidence says playoff predictions by humans are probably no better those by than a dart-throwing monkey. I only got one of the wild-card winners right, and at the moment one of my four LDS picks is down 0 games to 2. Anyway, I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the semi-cooperative horror-themed board game Deranged, which I found too derivative of games like Arkham Horror without offering enough new ideas or mechanics.

On my podcast, I spoke with Jeremy Booth, founder of Program 15 and the Future Stars Series, talking about the 2022 draft’s deep high school class, player development in the majors, and more. You can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I will not have a new episode this week due to travel, but will return on the 18th.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, although I held off sending one this week with nothing immediate to promote. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The best thing I read this week was this Guardian longread on how the Booker Prize works – how judges are chosen, and how in turn they choose the shortlist and the ultimate winner. The UK’s rough equivalent to our Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Booker confers financial success on nearly all of its winners, often changing the courses of their careers.
  • Ed Yong writes that we are unprepared for the next pandemic as we refuse to learn lessons from our mishandling of this one.
  • A “dead” oil tanker that has been moored at a Yemeni port for 45 years is in danger of falling apart, sinking, or blowing up, all of which would lead to a massive humanitarian and environmental disaster, with minimal plans to prevent this catastrophe and no help from the Houthi forces that control western Yemen and its Red Sea ports.
  • Students who were victims of sexual assault at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical Christian college, found themselves blamed and punished while their abusers often escaped consequences. The same school fired a professor who helped students file a Title IX complaint a few years ago. Just like Jesus told his followers to do!
  • You read about the bad art friend, right? You should read about the bad art friend.
  • Kellogg workers are on strike, after months of being forced to work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, and now threats to outsource their jobs. You may choose to join me in avoiding buying their products while their workers are fighting for basic rights.
  • Case reports continue to show the risk of death and severe illness in children who contract COVID-19, such as the 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who died of cerebral edemas due to COVID infections.
  • Yet another ivermectin/COVID-19 study that claimed to show a benefit has serious problems with its data.
  • Writing in The Cancer Letter, the newsletter of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who has written several books on the policies of Nazi Germany called out the non-virologist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s recent comparison of COVID-19 mitigation measures to fascism, calling them “fundamentally racist.”
  • Moderna is prioritizing profits over public health, keeping prices for its COVID-19 vaccines out of reach of many poorer countries. Is the global benefit of curtailing the pandemic enough that wealthy nations should subsidize vaccinations in poorer ones?
  • “Pro-life” Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) declined to stay the execution of a man with the mental capacity of a small child, because nothing says you believe in the sanctity of life like signing off on a state-sponsored murder.
  • The vice-chair at the Fed shifted his portfolio towards stock ahead of a big announcement last year, as did two other Fed officials, which should make you ask why people in those positions are allowed to trade in equities at all.
  • The “Evolved Apes” NFTs turned out to be a scam. Color me shocked that a new, unregulated market is rife with fraud and con artists.
  • The Biden Administration says they want science advisers, but they haven’t been listening to them when it comes to policy choices.
  • I know very, very little about this topic, but thought this piece from Matt Yglesias on the “mobilization delusion” of progressives was well argued.
  • Literary Hub has a piece on how Rush’s lyricist/drummer Neil Peart helped lure young listeners over to the “dark side” of Ayn Rand, the terrible novelist.
  • Board game news: Asmodee imprint Space Cowboys announced a new edition of the out-of-print game Jamaica, a popular family game
  • The Kickstarter for Mythwind, a cooperative, asymmetrical game, is over $666,000 as I type this, and keeps going up, with 21 days to go.
  • Board & Dice announced Tabannusi: Builders of Ur, a heavy worker placement game co-designed by Daniele Tascini (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan).
  • The Kickstarter for North Star Games’ new Alice in Wonderland-themed game Paint the Roses will open up on October 12th.

Stick to baseball, 10/2/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my hypothetical ballots for the six major postseason awards. Fans are taking it extremely well, as you might imagine.

On my podcast, I spoke with Conor Murphy of the band Foxing, talking about their new album Draw Down the Moon and our mutual interest in games – he’s particularly into D&D and Magic: the Gathering, but we talk a lot about tabletop games we both enjoy. They’re hitting the road next week with Manchester Orchestra and I’m bummed I’ll be in Arizona for Fall League when they come through my area. You can hear their newest album on Spotify, and you can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I was also on the Athletic Baseball Show again on Friday, where you can hear me say Dylan Carlson might be a breakout candidate for 2022, which I recorded a few hours before he hit 2 homers against the Brewers.

Over at Paste, I recapped my experience at Gen Con, running through every game I saw or played at the convention, and ranked the ten best games I tried.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, with this week’s edition talking about how challenging I’ve found my role as an adjunct at a local university. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Guardian profiles Prof. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author who has emerged as a major celebrity in the culture wars while allying himself with some disreputable figures, including the white supremacist blogger Steve Sailer. Pinkerite, a blog dedicated to exposing Pinker’s links to bogus “race science” proponents, asks if this column is “the end of the gentlemen’s agreement” to avoid asking Pinker about his history of defending and working with white supremacists.
  • Zach Helfand writes in The New Yorker about the imminent arrival of the automated strike zone and the loss of the human element. I disagree with the basic premise here – as you might have guessed – but there’s one point worth bearing in mind: The actual strike zone is probably a lot smaller than the de facto one umpires call, and that might mean more walks and longer games.
  • From October of 2020, WIRED looks at the cultural problems that have bedeviled Amazon’s attempts to buy its way into the gaming market.
  • My colleague Meg Linehan wrote a powerful investigative report on NWSL coach Paul Riley’s history of abusive behavior towards his players, including rape, after which his employers, the North Carolina Courage, terminated him within hours.
  • A 2019 book called The Psychology of Pandemics presaged much of our country’s reaction to this current one.
  • Pitcher Kieran Lovegrove came out as bisexual, making him just the second player ever in affiliated baseball to do so and the closest player to the majors as well.
  • A 10-year-old girl in Virginia died of COVID-19 after she was told to walk sick kids in her class to the nurse.
  • As more evidence emerges against the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory, why does the mainstream media continue to push it?
  • Youtube appears to be finally moving to ban all anti-vaccine content.
  • The New York Times did what it too often does, highlighting the views of the deranged few, here talking to New York state health care workers who said they’d choose job loss over vaccination, but I think there’s a subtle message here: These people will use any loophole they can find to avoid the consequences of their choices, like claiming a religious exemption they don’t merit.
  • Yale historian Dr. Beverly Gage resigned as head of the school’s Program in Grand Strategy, citing the school’s unwillingness to fend off influence from conservative donors, including San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson, whom you might remember from his donations to Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
  • UNC officials met with an Israeli diplomat who pressured them to remove a teacher who criticized Israeli policy while teaching a class on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
  • South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) used her office to pressure a subordinate to issue Noem’s daughter a real estate appraiser’s license, according to the Argus-Leader.
  • Toxic microbial blooms on freshwater lakes and rivers may be a harbinger of a coming mass extinction event.
  • The New York Times’ Pete Wells offered an unflattering review of Eleven Madison Park’s new $335 vegan tasting menu.
  • Board game news: Days of Wonder is selling pink train sets for Ticket to Ride, with $2 from each $4.95 going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
  • The massive 4X game Voidfall, from European publisher Mindclash, is nearing $1MM raised already on Kickstarter.
  • Queen Games is publishing four Stefan Feld “city collection” games, three of which are reimplementations of older games of his (Bruges, Macao, and Rialto) and one of which is new, with a deluxe edition bundle that costs $695. (Not a typo.) I’m not linking to that nonsense, but I am linking to this video critique of Feld’s cultural appropriation in the game Marrakesh, including an embarrassing photo of him in a fez holding some sort of chain to an invisible camel. That this is still happening in 2021 – seven years after Bruno Cathala put actual slave cards in Five Tribes, which is the first major outcry to result in a change to a game that I can remember – boggles my mind. Whether you agree that this is cultural appropriation, or merely harmless appreciation, it was completely unnecessary, and says to me that no one around Feld or Queen thought to say, “hey, maybe this is a bad idea.”

Stick to baseball, 9/24/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I named my Prospect of the Year for 2021, going through a number of the top candidates this year (and there were too many to include), and two weeks ago I profiled Austin Riley’s transformation from a low-OBP hitter with exploitable holes to a downballot MVP candidate. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

I spoke to Joe Posnanski on my podcast this week, talking about his new book, The Baseball 100, which comes out on Tuesday. You can buy it here. And you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I ranked the ten best games that are currently out of print, and my Gen Con wrapup should be up today or maybe on Monday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

Stick to baseball, 8/21/21.

Two new posts since the last roundup for subscribers to the Athletic – my list of the five farm systems that have improved the most since February; and a scouting blog from two weekends ago covering some Rays, O’s, Nats, and Tigers prospects. I’ve been unable to do much this past week due to an illness in the family, but hope to be back on the road this upcoming week.

On the board game front, I had three reviews go up earlier this month. At Paste, I reviewed the great new family game Juicy Fruits and the midweight game CloudAge. For Polygon, I reviewed the upcoming second edition of Great Western Trail, which is still the top-rated complex game on my overall rankings.

On of the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, author of sixteen books, including The Constant Rabbit; and then had old pal Joe Sheehan as a guest this week.. And on The Athletic Baseball Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

My newsletter is getting back on track, although I didn’t send one this week since I didn’t write anything for any other sites beyond my own. You should sign up, though. Or you might consider buying my book, The Inside Game, now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Ed Yong, whose coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic (not my employer) won him a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, writes about how the pandemic is now likely to end: with a long, tapering whimper, rather than a bang. And much of it is our own stupid fault.
  • A new journal article in Cell looks at all of the evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and concludes that a zoonotic origin is far more likely than a so-called “lab leak.”
  • ProPublica reveals just how much some high-income donors saved in taxes by helping fund the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a major science denialist, was particularly helpful to his wealthy supporters.
  • The Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction has released their report, titled What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. Setting aside the question of whether it goes as far as it needs to go, the report doesn’t shy away from blaming U.S. policymakers who believed we could build a nation, threw good money after bad, and had perhaps the most expensive case of the planning fallacy in history.
  • What can you do in the wake of last week’s apocalyptic report on the climate? Anything at all. Just do something.
  • A reader contribution: The Guardian profiles the woman who goes through NYC residents’ garbage and highlights their waste and profligacy on social media.
  • The Washington Post tells the awful story of a Missouri widow who lost her husband to COVID-19 and is now facing financial ruin.
  • I missed this in June, but a bill to legalize cannabis in Delaware failed over concerns that it wouldn’t create sufficient racial equity in the resulting system. Given how disproportionately cannabis laws have affected Black residents of Delaware (and all states), I think it’s worth crafting a bill that ensures they’ll share in the spoils of the new industry.
  • College officials are concerned about students showing fake vaccination cards rather than complying with vaccine mandates. The answer to that seems to be simple – use a fake card, get expelled, no refunds.
  • The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors issued a statement that said that medical professionals who spread COVID-19 misinformation should lose their licenses. I’ll believe it when I see someone actually lose their license, but this is a good warning, at least.
  • A law professor writes that vaccine mandates are legal as well as based on solid science.
  • And that’s good, because the Nevada Board of Health just voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for college students in the state.
  • The anti-vaccine grift might be becoming untenable. The victims of cons are often unwilling to admit that they’ve been conned. A little help from law enforcement wouldn’t hurt, though.
  • Plenty of COVID deniers and minimizers like to claim that the virus has little effect on children (or did, pre-Delta). That’s highly misleading and takes advantage of a cognitive illusion called the contrast effect.
  • A spate of fabricated research papers hit certain academic journals this spring, and they were only caught because of certain “tortured phrases” (“colossal information” instead of “big data”) that caught other researchers’ eyes.
  • That Indiana doctor behind the viral video where he repeats anti-vaccine myths won’t even admit if he’s vaccinated and isn’t board-certified in any specialty. He should lose his license, though, because he’s full of shit.
  • Wilmington has a great little restaurant scene for such a small city, and for my money, Bardea is the best restaurant we’ve got. It’s improved even more since the pandemic began, as chef-owner Antonio DiMeo has been experimenting with koji and other fermentation techniques to boost flavors and create a more plant-forward menu.
  • The board game café chain Snakes & Lattes hired decorated chef Aaron McKay as COO as they try to establish the cafés as food destinations, not just board game spots where you get chicken tenders and soggy fries.
  • Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has long been linked to neurological damage in children, will finally be banned for use on food products after the Trump administration ignored scientists’ pleas to prohibit it.
  • This seems like it should be bigger news: A U.S. lab claims it has approached the goal of nuclear fusion ignition, using a laser to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen fuel that could become self-sustaining, providing enough heat to keep the fuel mass at a high enough temperature for fusion to continue. In theory, it’s a potential source of clean, limitless energy. It sounds too good to be true.
  • In a similar vein, did Google Labs really create “time crystals,” an entirely new phase of matter that would be a huge leap forward towards the goal of real quantum computing?
  • Board game news: Cranio Creations announced a new deluxe edition of the classic worker placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico.
  • Capstone announced pre-orders for Corrosion , a new game where your machines can rust and become useless, which I love as a concept and which also reminds me of a key plot point in Baldur’s Gate.
  • Publisher Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) laid off its entire staff last week and appears to be entering bankruptcy.
  • I don’t remember the 2007 game Get Bit!, but it’s getting a brand-new edition, now on Kickstarter.
  • And finally, this was highly entertaining. What better way to mock a lunatic than by setting his deranged words to music? (There’s some great guitar work here, too.)

Stick to baseball, 8/8/21.

My one new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic is a long scouting notebook with my observations on players from the Nats, Rays, Orioles, and Tigers’ systems, including five former first-round picks. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to Dr. Katy Milkman, author of the new book How to Change, about we can use psychology and knowledge of how our brains work to enact real, lasting behavior change in ourselves. You can subscribe via iTunes or Spotify. And on the Athletic Baseball Show, I got back together with my old Baseball Today partner in crime Eric Karabell (also on Spotify).

My email newsletter will return this week, and I’m going to give away a copy of a new board game (the publisher sent me two copies, so I offered to do a giveaway and they were on board, get it?) to one random subscriber.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 7/31/21.

I had a lot of content this week around the trade deadline for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

I also wrote up my notes from a game between the Yankees’ and Pirates’ AA affiliates. I was planning to do a chat but the pace of trades made that impossible.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Slate‘s Josh Levin, talking about his One Year: 1977 podcast episode about baseball broadcaster Mary Shane and his book The Queen. You can subscribe on iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Whistle Mountain, a medium-heavy worker placement game from the designer of the train game Whistle Stop.

I returned to my email newsletter, with a note on why I’ve been absent from there and largely from here over the last six weeks. Also, my second book The Inside Game is out in paperback and available from bookshop.org or wherever you buy books.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 7/24/21.

I had two new posts this week for subscribers to The Athletic – an update of my ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball, including recently-drafted players, and a look at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects. I did include unsigned draftees on the former list, which is not my typical practice, but with the signing deadline so late this year (and maybe in all future years) I saw more value in this method than in pretending those players didn’t exist; if someone I ranked doesn’t sign, I’ll update the rankings with a new player.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Snakesss, the new social-deduction/trivia game from Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Cacao, Gizmos, Silver & Gold, and Imhotep). It’s quick and fun and appropriately silly, definitely the best party game I’ve tried so far in 2021.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I talked with Fangraphs draft analyst and prospect expert Eric Longenhagen about this year’s MLB draft. You can listen & subscribe on iTunes and Spotify as well.

And now, the links…

  • The New York Times explains how the quack Joseph Mercola, who has been spreading bogus anti-science information online for at least a quarter century, is now profiting by lying about COVID-19 vaccines. He should be de-platformed everywhere.
  • Anti-vaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates violate “the Nuremberg Code.” They’re wrong, of course – but I’m sure they understand the power of invoking something related to the Nazi regime.
  • The Washington Post explains how the despotic ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of the UAE used the Israeli spyware product Pegasus to track and abduct his own daughter after she attempted to flee the country.
  • PragerU, the right-wing extremist site that distributes conservative “educational” videos online, has been pushing its content into schools as well through direct outreach to teachers and parents.
  • An Alabama doctor wrote about patients begging for the vaccine as they’re dying of COVID-19. Where are the consequences for the politicians – like Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who was quick to sign a bill that banned so-called “vaccine passports” just two months ago – who discouraged vaccinations, or the people spreading misinformation online about the vaccines? It’s easy to mock the ignorant, but someone had to put the wrong ideas in their heads.
  • It looks like Southern Republicans in power are belatedly getting religion on vaccines, as the threat of an unvaccinated South begins to undermine any progress we’ve made against COVID-19.
  • The great Dr. Peter Hotez explains the triple-headed monster that President Biden and all pro-vaccination efforts face – disinformation groups, the money that funds them, and state actors like Russia that help spread anti-vaccine nonsense.
  • A Trump-supporting vaccine denialist in Massachusetts died of COVID-19 last week.
  • Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike for over three months, seeking better pay and improved safety conditions. Why has there been no media coverage of it?
  • This may be an unpopular take, but I do not see the point of putting the couple whose gender-reveal party sparked a deadly wildfire in prison. It’s not going to undo any damage, it’s not going to bring the firefighter who lost his life trying to stop the fire back, and I don’t think it’s going to deter future idiots from doing the same thing any more than massive fines would. It’s a twisted sort of revenge, and just means the state has to incur the cost of keeping the couple in prison (if they’re convicted and sentenced).
  • A fundamendalist Christian church in Ireland with a history of spreading anti-Semitic views (e.g., that Jews are manipulating the stock market, and that Jews started the COVID-19 pandemic) has used an Irish law to have one of their critics arrested on charges of ‘inciting hate’ against them. Yes, a hate group is using a law designed to stop hate crimes to silence one of their critics.

Stick to baseball, 7/17/21.

All of my draft coverage is now up for subscribers to The Athletic, including my team-by-team draft recaps, posted by division:
AL East
AL Central
AL West
NL East
NL Central
NL West

I also recapped the Futures Game with notes on prospects who stood out or who I saw for the first time. I held a Klawchat on Friday.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: A new preprint on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 states that “there is substantial body of scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2” and “there is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin.” This failed hypothesis isn’t just the province of the right-wing; the anti-GMO movement has also latched on to it.
  • A conservative activist invented the nontroversy over critical race theory. If someone tells you CRT is bad, just ask them to name an author who’s written about it, or a book on the subject. Like this Alabama columnist did to a state lawmaker.
  • This ran a few weeks ago, during my hiatus from these posts, but former sportswriter Kat O’Brien detailed how she was raped by a major league ballplayer while she was on the Rangers beat.
  • Influencers who peddle anti-vaccine misinformation are raking in cash from their efforts. It’s almost entirely a grift, with a societal cost measured in bodies.
  • The Delta variant’s threat explained in three simple points by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong.
  • The “mystery Chinese seeds” that made the rounds of the news last summer? Probably just a brushing scam.
  • Why don’t we have a vaccine against Lyme disease? It’s complicated. Anti-vaxxers, a dubious claim about side effects, and the regional nature of the disease all contributed.
  • A nurse in Louisiana who posted anti-vaccine views and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines has, in fact, died of COVID-19.
  • Poynter spoke to Walter Hussman, the conservative megadonor to UNC who led the school to deny Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure and ultimately cost them her services. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong, but also disputes some of the story that’s been publicly reported.
  • MEL magazine is coming back.
  • A power plant in upstate New York is primarily powering a bitcoin mining operation, warming Seneca Lake and polluting the air (as well as contributing to climate change). I’m not sure what the solution is – taxing bitcoin is the most rational economic move, but tricky because of its nature – but cryptocurrencies are an environmental threat that demands some sort of government action.
  • Why did three people in different states contract the often-fatal tropical bacterial disease melioidosis?
  • The state of Alabama took a man’s gun after he shot his wife. Nine months later, they gave it back to him, despite a protection order, and he used it to kill her. I’m sure the fact that he was a cop had nothing to do with this.
  • Men read far fewer books by women than women do. This has real-world implications for the way readers’ minds work.

Stick to baseball, 6/5/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I did my annual redraft column, looking back at the best players from the 2011 draft class, as well as the first-rounders who didn’t work out.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Umbra Via, an afterlife-themed game with route-building elements that just did not click for us at all.

My free email newsletter has returned, with my first edition in over a month, where I explain why I just haven’t felt much like writing lately – an unusual feeling for me.

My second book, The Inside Game, is now out in paperback, and I don’t think I’m just being a buy-my-book marketing guy when I suggest that it would make a great Father’s Day gift. Midtown Scholar still has a few signed copies of the paperback available, and you can buy the book via bookshop or amazon or anywhere else you buy books.

And now, the links…

  • There’s growing evidence that UNC’s decision not to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah Jones was driven by the interference and objections of mega-donor Walter Hussman, Jr, for whom their journalism school is named. In one email to a board member, he wrote that “he was concerned about how Hannah-Jones’s work could clash with his vision for the school and what it teaches.”
  • A group of unvaccinated staffers at a Houston hospital have filed a lawsuit against the hospital’s vaccine mandate, aided by a Houston lawyer with a long history of deranged legal actions including homophobic and anti-trans moves. I can’t speak to the legal issues here, but the plaintiff’s claims (e.g., that the vaccine can alter your DNA, which, come the fuck on already) are crazy, and if a hospital can’t mandate vaccinations, we are going to have to live with the pandemic forever.
  • Sharyl Attkisson, a faux-journalist who has spread anti-vaccine disinformation for years and made the news in 2020 when she tried to air an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claimed COVID-19 was the product of a secret a government plan, is threatening to sue Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, for defamation, a baseless threat aimed at silencing one of the most vocal and erudite advocates of vaccination.
  • A new editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine explores incentives for increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake, including mandating it in health care settings, requiring it for access to events that “involve close person-to-person contact,” and raising life and health insurance premiums for people who refuse to get the shot. I’m a big fan of the last approach: people respond strongly to financial incentives, and those of us who have gotten vaccinated shouldn’t be subsidizing those who won’t.
  • We loved Mare of Easttown, especially since we caught many of the local references, living just a mile or two away from the border between Delaware (state) and Delaware County. The show’s depictions of the residents of DelCo, however, isn’t very accurate. That county has historically been quite red, with deep racial tensions going back to the Civil War.
  • The best reaction I saw this week to the French Open telling Naomi Osaka that she can go fuck herself was from the Guardian‘s Jonathan Liew, arguing that we in sports media are not the good guys here, and that press conferences are problematic. Indeed, the day after Osaka withdrew, some asshole reporter asked 17-year-old Coco Gauff an insulting, racist question that should have gotten his credentials yanked. (Apparently that only happens if you dial into a press conference from a supermarket.) Scottish tennis coach Judy Murray, mother of two tennis champions in Andy and Jamie Murray, supported Osaka and talked about the absurd demands of the press on players.
  • New York Times health writer Tara Parker-Pope writes about four lessons we’ve learned in the last year for your anxious brain. Strengthening your connections seems like an especially valuable one in a year when most connections have become slack (pun intended).