Stick to baseball, 7/22/16.

My one Insider piece this week ranked the top five farm systems in baseball, a list that may look different by August 2nd. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, and reviewed the reissue of the boardgame Agricola for Paste.

And now, the links…

• The co-producer of Vaxxed, the faux documentary that tries to whitewash Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud, encouraged vaccine denier parents to use guns to fight mandatory vaccinations. This sounds like a terrorism threat to me.
• And the denialists’ production company is now trying to shut down critics of the film via legal threats, which won’t work, but still shows you their venality.
• The Economist weighs in on the potential disaster of a Trump presidency, comparing it to the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.
• Trump just can’t seem to tell the truth, and that piece is from before his acceptance speech in Cleveland.
• Meanwhile, Politico covers the so-called shadow GOP convention in Cleveland, which seems to be planning for a Trump defeat that at least right now is far from certain.
• I mentioned this in passing last week but it bears repeating: GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Mike Pence supports “gay conversion” therapy, which doesn’t work and is dangerous.
• Alex Speier of the Boston Globe follows up on Brian Johnson’s return from a DL stint for anxiety disorder. The Red Sox seem to have been exemplary in their handling of Johnson’s request for help.
• Panic attacks are like death. I agree.
• The “Savvy Psychologist” discusses two big beliefs linked to anxiety with tips on how to counter them. The first one I’ve heard about before, as “catastrophic thinking,” while the second spins off that into a kind of “racing thoughts.” Whatever you call them, if you have anxiety, you’ll recognize them immediately.
• The Ringer weighs in on Twitter getting half-serious about curbing abuse.
• El Salvador scrapped its amnesty law, opening the door to prosecutions for crimes committed during the country’s civil war – which might lead to some unsavory revelations about the U.S.’s role in the conflict too.
• What makes a knuckleball do that thing it does? Maybe it’s the seams, or maybe it’s “drag crisis,” per a new study. Our friend Alan Nathan (@pobguy) weighs in as well.
• An interesting pair of recipes for smoked cashew salsa and guacamole with pistachios. The former is the one that made me include it here – that sounds like nothing I’ve ever eaten before.
• Stella Parks, aka Brave Tart, shares her ultimate cherry pie recipe, which works for just about any fruit (it’s the same base 4:1 ratio I used for the blueberry-apricot-strawberry pie I photographed and shared earlier this week) and includes a link to her fast and easy pie dough recipe too.
• A chemist accidentally creates a new blue dye, safer than cobalt versions. The story is reminiscent of chemist William Perkin’s discovery of aniline dye, which gave the world the color mauve, chronicled in an excellent book by Simon Garfield.
• The gleeful bashing of Taylor Swift this week says a lot about how we view successful women. I’ve understood the enmity towards Swift; I don’t particularly like her music, but she’s a reasonably good role model for young girls, writes her own stuff, sticks to appropriate subject matter, and has enough of a feminist streak that I’m happy to have my daughter look up to her.
• Forbes looks at the actual evidence on which mosquito repellents really work. Shorter version: DEET, IR3535, picaridin, and para-menthane-3,8-diol (distilled from oil of eucalyptus) work; citronella, geraniol, thiamine patches, and those stupid wristbands don’t. And that means that the Honest Company’s bug spray lies when they claim it works.
• So many good Giuliani-meme tweets, but this was my favorite:
  

  pic.twitter.com/Y30BaSL0JJ

  — Tom Darby (@magicChopstick) July 19, 2016