No Insider piece this week, but I held my weekly Klawchat on Friday.
My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the reissue of the classic Reiner Knizia game Samurai.
I mentioned this on Twitter yesterday but it’s such a good deal it’s worth sending again – Ruhlman’s Twenty
- Julie DiCaro wrote a great piece for SI about the threats female sportswriters receive via social media. She’s been besieged by numerous accounts (several fake so I presume they’re all from the same sociopath) calling for her to be maimed, raped, or killed.
- Dan Rather, of all people, had a spot-on rant about science denialism and false balance in the media.
- Foreign Policy has an excellent longread on the history and future of antibiotics, focusing on the iChip, a new device that allowed scientists to find and work with new species of bacteria that can only survive in soil.
- Opposed to genetic modification? GMO methods are in more than just foods, appearing in medicines, detergents, and other products that make our lives safer and better.
- The New Republic looks at the complicated world of cannabidiol, the anti-convulsant/anti-psychotic chemical in marijuana, as state and federal authorities try to roll back often pointless policies on the drug. (Delaware became one of eighteen states to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana this summer, and we now have one dispensary for medical marijuana.)
- Sour flavors are making a comeback, thanks to globalization, rising popularity of healthful fermented foods, and a change in our attitudes towards sugar.
- Reader Kelvin sent along this piece on Chris Bianco and the rise of Phoenix’s pizza scene, and I read it only to realize afterwards that I know the writer.
- Harvard Law and Policy Review discusses the fallibility of finality vis-a-vis the death penalty, specifically the case of Richard Glossip, whose execution in Oklahoma was delayed about five weeks but only due to questions about the drug cocktail the state will use to murder him.
- Superhumanoids’ new video, for the wonderfully-titled “Norwegian Black Metal,” features SNL player Kyle Mooney in corpse paint. I reviewed their latest album Do You Feel OK? last week.