For Insiders this week, I wrote about the Giants signing Johnny Cueto and the Todd Frazier three-team trade. I also held my usual weekly Klawchat.
Here on the dish, I compiled lists of my top 100 songs of 2015 and my top 15 albums of 2015.
Folks have been asking about my year-end gift guides, so here they are, once more:
• Top 80 boardgames of all time
• My 2015 gift guide for cooks
• My updated cookbook recommendations
• My all-time top 100 novels (from February 2013)
And now, the links…
- That $10 Mast Brothers chocolate bar you bought along with your single-origin pour-over coffee at Blue Bottle? Well, it’s bad chocolate and might not even be what they claim it is.
- Restaurant chain Fig & Olive, which had a salmonella outbreak in the fall, was caught using previously frozen food prepared at a central “commissary” and shipped to their individual locations.
- What kind of person calls a mass shooting a hoax? Fortunately, Florida Atlantic has moved to terminate that nutjob professor, who has to be suffering from some kind of mental illness to so thoroughly believe these delusions he preaches.
- Ah, the National Review‘s climate change graph was a big joke, and the Washington Post gives a concise explanation of why. I reviewed a book called Proofiness in June that talks about how organizations like NRO distort and manipulate stats to mislead the public.
- Meanwhile, the New Yorker talks about how not to talk about nuclear power and climate change. Nuclear power can be a big part of the solution to both climate change and ocean acidification, but it’s already under a renewed attack from people who should probably know better.
- Hate crimes against Muslims are surging over the past few weeks. It would be nice if we didn’t have an entire traveling circus competing to demonize this entire demographic group.
- This Times review of the new book Lactivism by Courtney Jung details how unscientific and aggressive the anti-formula movement has become. There are even “ban the bag” movements to try to force hospitals to stop supplying bottles and other free equipment to new mothers – even though there’s little to no evidence to say breast-feeding is better for the baby.
- A wonderful piece from the Times on the founder of the company behind the Hinge dating app going after the one who got away before it’s too late. (I’m also fairly sure I went to college with the author’s sisters.)
- CTE isn’t just a problem affecting NFL players – Vice has the story of a D2 college player who died of it at age 26. This is the crux of my argument over Brandon McIlwain’s decision to enroll early at South Carolina: Not only did he pass up a guaranteed payday in June – actually, he passed up the mere chance to have someone offer it to him – but he’s entering an extremely dangerous profession for which he will not be paid for the next three years of his labor.
- This isn’t new, but I just came across it this week: McSweeney’s imagined letter from Comic Sans.
- My former residence of Arizona may be shifting from red to blue, thanks to the Latino vote – although I imagine the influx of engineers to work at Intel will contribute as well.