Stick to baseball, 2/6/16.

I held my usual Klawchat yesterday. The top 100 prospects package starts to roll out on Wednesday with the organizational rankings; the top 100 list itself follows on Thursday, with the org reports (including top tens) posting the following week.

And now, the links…

• I actually didn’t know that cleaning the outside of your ears – where cerumen (a.k.a., “ear wax”) builds up – was actually bad for you, but this piece on the weird history of Q-tips explains why it is. I’ve cleaned my ears for ages, because my mom always cleaned mine when I was a kid. I also use Q-tips for cleaning lots of odd items in the kitchen that you can’t get to with a paper towel, like the gasket above my espresso machine’s portafilter.
• Zika virus is not a global health emergency, people. You know, no one gives a shit about dengue fever, another mosquito-borne illness that kills 25,000 people a year, but show pictures of babies with tiny heads (which, by the way, might not even be because of the zika virus) and suddenly the media starts talking global pandemic.
• Oh, hi, California’s about to execute an innocent man. Does Netflix have to make another series to get anyone to care?
• No, Marco Rubio, Sweden does not have a President, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask of a Presidential candidate to know such a thing.
• Are we seeing the end of Twitter? I doubt it, but there’s no question that audience engagement via Twitter is more fleeting than engagement on other social media platforms. Of course, Twitter is about to totally screw with what tweets you see, so maybe it is dying after all.
• The Useless Department of Agriculture is at it again, revoking the (weak) labeling standards behind calling beef “grass-fed”.
• School of Seven Bells’ final album comes out on February 26th, featuring the last recorded works of late co-founder Ben Curtis, and the 405 has the best interview with surviving member Alejandra Deheza that I’ve seen. She’s also going to appear on NPR Weekend Edition some time today.
• Luxembourg has jumped into the fray in support of space mining, which seems inevitable as our demand for rare metals like iridium increases. I think the fuel expense of hauling that kind of weight gets underestimated in this kind of mainstream media coverage, though.
• Two Arizona State scientists have argued that silica formations on Mars might be evidence of earlier microbe life.
• Look at Cam Newton’s father talking sense about why college athletes should be paid.
• Boardgamegeek polled its readers on the “most anticipated games of 2016,” and the resulting list is high comedy, because these games are almost all extremely heavy strategy games, the kind you need two hours minimum to play and that only hardcore gamers like. If there’s a Splendor on the horizon, this poll missed it in favor of the next four-hour marathon game with a rulebook the size of a Russian novel.