Stick to baseball, 2/18/17.

For Insiders, I ranked the top prospects for 2017 impact, although we later removed Alex Reyes from the list now that he’s out for the year. I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

On the boardgame front, I reviewed the light family-friendly game Imhotep for Paste this week; it was one of the runners-up for the Spiel des Jahres last year, losing to Isle of Skye. Last week, over at Vulture, I wrote about some of the best games for couples.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

• Two great investigative reads this week from the New York Times. First, the already disastrous legacy of the Rio Olympics, which should serve as a warning to future bidders (but won’t). Brazil is still a poor country, and they’re poorer for the huge investments they made in now-useless infrastructure for the Games. Second, the growing water crisis in Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, which also happens to be sinking (as is the other contender for largest city, Shanghai).
• Baseball and depression collide in this story on the life and suicide of Jake Eliopoulos, a former day-one draft pick of the Blue Jays who struggled with mental illness and took his own life on his fifth attempt.
• Speaking of depression, is it possible that it has an actual purpose in evolutionary terms?
• Thanks in part to decriminalizing many drug offenses, the Netherlands has a lot of empty prison cells, so they’re using some to help provide temporary housing to migrants and refugees. Our draconian drug laws and privatized prisons have done far more harm than good, and the Dutch and Portuguese present strong models if we ever want to change our policies.
• Austin has a new boardgame bar and restaurant called Vigilante, and I need to visit this place, stat.
• Phoenix eats news! The folks behind the wonderful Tacos Chiwas are opening a new tamale place right next door. They’re hoping to have it open around March 4th, just in time for spring training.
• Claims about yogurt and other probiotic foods are likely overblown, as research indicates that consuming these foods doesn’t alter the makeup of your body’s microbiome. (They may still be good for you in other ways, of course.)
• There’s a coffee shop in Brooklyn that sells an $18 cup of gesha coffee, sparking faux outrage over the price. The coffee costs that much because the beans themselves are hard to grow and of especially high quality. If you don’t want to spend that much, you have plenty of other options, from $4 pour-over cups of still-great coffee on down.
• This story is from four months ago, but highlights how climate change seems to be causing a rise in ciguatera toxins’ presence in fish. The toxin can be fatal to humans, as it was in this case, and isn’t removed by cooking.
• Meanwhile, a woman in Texas is suing Popeye’s, claiming she got a debilitating screwworm infection from their food. The suit may be baseless – as the article points out, food served at 165 or higher wouldn’t have the live parasites – but I posted it to point out that screwworm infections are almost unheard of in the U.S. now because of a government-run program of eradication using synthetic pesticides in the 1950s.
• We might be getting closer to a dengue vaccine, according to that editorial by one of the scientists overseeing some of the trials, where he also explains why vaccine development takes so long. (Hint: One reason is that vaccines have to be incredibly safe to be approved.)
• Unfortunately, the vaccine-denial movement is gaining traction, spurred on by President This-is-fine-dog’s open embrace of the debunked vaccine/autism claim. The same writer, Vox’s Julia Belluz, also exposed the bullshit agenda of RFK Jr. and Robert Deniro, who promised $100K to anyone who could prove vaccines are safe, which has already been proven. I’d like to see people skip Deniro’s film festival this year as long as he’s making public health threats like this one. (And, Bob, I’m sorry, but the most likely reason your son has autism is that the DNA in your old-man sperm was degraded.)
• A new group called 314 Action is trying to get more scientists to run for elected office, because politicians who think they know more than scientists are dangerous. Remember that Republican Congressman Lamar Smith (Texas, where else?), chair of the House Committee on Science is a raging science denier, notably on climate change.
• Texas is really pushing hard to turn the clock back a century or more, but their fight with the NFL over so-called “bathroom bills” that strip protections from LGBTQ citizens looks like a battle they can’t win. I’d like to see MLB step up on this one now that a state with major league teams is trying to pull the same crap North Carolina and Mississippi did.
• Get ready for a nationwide, GOP-led assault on voting rights. If the majority won’t support your party – as demographic trends indicate is likely – then the way to retain power is to make it harder for opposing voters to cast their ballots. It’s on all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen.
• Trump’s assault on the free press included credentialing a pro-Trump/white nationalist blog whose 28-year-old founder has promised to “troll” other media.
• It appears that the White House’s failed travel ban, which they’re promising to reinstate, has already hurt American businesses by deterring international travel to the U.S.. Trump promised to create jobs, but his biggest move to date will likely destroy them.
• Haaretz argues that Trump is an anti-Semite, and no Jewish person should support him.
• Activist Attorneys General in left-leaning states represent one of the strongest arms of the anti-Trump movement, one that this Vanity Fair editorial argues he underestimated.
• Author Kevin Birmingham, whose book The Most Dangerous Book, about the writing and publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, was one of my favorite reads from 2016, spoke at length about the great shame of universities abusing “adjunct” professorships, using such de facto freelancers to keep costs down (even as tuition keeps rising, so where’s that money going?).
• There was a very strange heist in London last week – thieves broke into a storage facility and stole over £2 million worth of rare books, including one of the original copies of Copernicus’ treatise on the movement of the sun and planets. No one can figure out why they did it, since such books would be impossible to fence, but there’s fascination over their daring way of getting into the building.
• This BBC audio segment explores left-handedness’ prevalence and reasons it exists, as well as debunking “ambidextrousness” and explaining how we can be right-footed or left-eyed (like Lisa Lopes).
• Alabama is embroiled in its own scandal, as the corrupt Governor appointed the Attorney General who was supposed to investigate him to Jeff Sessions’ vacated Senate seat.
• The Oroville Dam evacuations created a temporary surge in refugees, and a local Sikh temple opened its doors to them, building new connections with their neighbors in the process.
• Finally, this piece about why liberals are wrong about Trump is a must-read regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.