Stick to baseball, 10/7/17.

My lone Insider piece this week looked at the top under-25 players on playoff rosters, so of course someone complained that I’d left Manny Machado off the list. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Next Saturday, October 14th, I’ll be at Changing Hands in Phoenix, talking about and signing copies of Smart Baseball, starting at 2 pm ET. This Changing Hands location serves beer and wine, which may help make me more interesting.

And now, the links…

• This BBC piece on a young adult who daydreams constantly, a habit that may be a disorder called maladaptive daydreaming, was the best thing I read this week.
• Runner-up: An Eater piece titled Christ in the Garden of Endless Breadsticks.
• The LA Times ran a six-part series on a con man who romanced women by pretending to be a doctor.
• A woman whose fetus had a malignant tumor describes having an abortion at 23 weeks and why Republican attempts to ban such procedures are cruel.
• The Trump Administration is refusing to let Puerto Ricans use food stamps to buy hot meals even though electricity and fuel are scarce on the island. But hey, they have those paper towels.
• Trump’s pick for an EPA position overseeing chemical safety has previously argued that kids are less sensitive to toxins than adults (this is not true, by the way). Dourson defended himself at a confirmation hearing as “very science.”
• Kris Kobach is trying to weaken key federal voter rights protections, part of his bogus “voter fraud” effort that continues despite the lack of any evidence of voter fraud occurring in recent elections.
• Senator John Thune (R) of South Dakota blamed the Las Vegas shooting victims for failing to “get small” when the gunfire began. He’ll win reelection handily.
• Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator who has abused his power in the movie industry to harass young women and worse. I would like to see the industry turn its back on him, but given their recent history, I doubt that’ll happen. The New York Times has been calling on Democrats to cut ties with him, but it seems like that’s already starting, just nowhere near fast enough.
• Sweden’s economy has more restrictions and higher tax rates than that of the United States and most other European nations, so why does Sweden have so many startups? The answers hinge largely on how laissez-faire you like your capitalism. There are good lessons here for when we have adult supervision in the United States again.
• This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to three scientists for the 2015 discovery of evidence of gravitational waves as predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein.
• The Red Cross stands accused of failing to deliver aid to victims of Hurricane Harvey despite a massive fundraising effort after the storm.
• Contrary to popular belief, tropical forests add CO2 to the atmosphere, rather than trapping it. Of course, it’s because of what we’ve done to those forests.
• The Guardian looks at how the residents of the Scottish island of Eigg bought their own island back after years of private ownership.
• Splinter listed every member of Congress who took money from the NRA and then tweeted that “thoughts and prayers” bullshit after the massacre in Vegas.
• American fast-food outlets like KFC may be contributing to the rise in obesity in African nations like Ghana, according to this NY Times report.
• Modern humans of non-African descent may owe some of our looks from Neanderthal DNA.
• The Stranger‘s David Lewis posted as a white nationalist and attended a Seattle neo-Nazi convention.
• The British pharmacy chain Superdrug is under fire for selling homeopathic products that don’t work. The firm that manufactures them won’t back up claims of efficacy, probably because homeopathy is bullshit.
• A Detroit mother is going to jail for violating a court order to vaccinate her son, an order to which she had previously agreed. This is more a question of custody and family law than of science, but notable because she trots out the “able to make medical choices for my child” canard. Courts have ruled repeatedly that parents cannot deny medical care to their children, and have ruled that governments can require or, in case of epidemic, force vaccinations over parental refusals.
• A small biotech company plans to introduce apples that don’t brown, but won’t specifically label them as “genetically modified” for fear of scaring off consumers. I’ve generally favored labeling GMOs because consumers do have the right to know what they’re buying, even if their choices are dumb, but this speaks to the rising science-phobia and anti-intellectualism across our culture.
• A recent study by the National Soil Project found that soils from organic farms sequester 26% more carbon than those from conventional farms. If you have journal access, you can read the original paper here.