Stick to baseball, 11/17/17.

I had one Insider column this week, on Friday, looking at a few free agents who might sort of possibly perhaps be bargains this offseason. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday; that will be the last chat until after Thanksgiving.

If you’re at PAX Unplugged in Philly this weekend and have a copy of Smart Baseball, I’ll be signing on Saturday afternoon at 3:30 pm.

Feel free to sign up for my free email newsletter, which I send out … I guess whenever I feel like it. I aim for once a week, although I’ve gone as long as two weeks between issues when I haven’t had much to say. You can see past issues at that link.

And now, the links…

• Longreads: The Daily Beast on the murder of a Navy SEAL by two of his comrades in Mali after the victim realized his eventual killers were stealing cash.
• I didn’t realize that Second Life still exists, with a small but loyal user base. I tried it once for maybe an hour and gave up. I found it both annoying and hard to use.
• Texas Monthly profiles Tania Joya, the ex-wife of a Texas man who became a Daesh fighter and propagandist. She’s now back in the US after a hellish experience in Syria with her then husband and their three kids.
• WIRED examines a long-running case of digital harassment that nearly ruined the victim’s life and still hasn’t quite ended despite a seven-figure civil judgment.
• Also from the Atlantic, a consistent producer of great longreads, the search for the origins of racist troll Andrew Anglin, who runs a popular neo-Nazi website and actively encourages the doxing and threatening of his critics.
• Michael Lewis looks at Trump’s dismantling of the USDA from the inside in a long piece for Vanity Fair. The process here is inexcusable, but the USDA has not been very good at many of its responsibilities, including policing safety in our food supply.
• A former lobbyist for the pesticide industry is at the Department of Agriculture and fighting to deregulate these chemicals, granting wide and possibly unethical access to her former colleagues on the industry side. It may not be safe to go back in the water.
• Author Rebecca Traister says we are all implicated in the current reckoning on sexual abusers, observing how we still worry for the fates of the men accused more than the women they victimized.
• In my review of City of Ghosts, I mentioned the liberation of Raqqa last month. Well, it turns out the “liberation” involved buying off Daesh fighters, bribing them and letting them leave the city safely.
• The New Yorker looks at the bullying tactics behind the shutdown of DNAinfo and Gothamist by Joe Ricketts, who opposed the writers’ desire to unionize.
• The Colombian soda industry, with help from the country’s government, has silenced a consumer group that was raising awareness of obesity, fighting for a tax on the sodas and running ads linking them to obesity. I am not a fan of sugar taxes, but this is beyond heavyhanded for a country that is trying to present itself to the world as a functioning, modern democracy.
• The Kansas City Star has been doing important investigative work on malfeasance in Governor Brownback’s administration, with this latest piece asking why the government is blocking even basic transparency with constituents. There’s no good reason for any government to hide this kind of information from voters. There are many bad ones.
• American oil and gas companies no longer have to disclose how much money they’ve given to foreign governments, opening the door to unfettered, unreported bribery.
• Actress Mara Wilson, who played the title character in Matilda, wrote about how society sexualizes young girls, as she found out as a prepubescent movie star.
• With all due respect to Blake Shelton, Shepherd Smith became the sexiest man alive this week.
• I included a post last week about disturbing Youtube videos aimed at kids; the site responded quickly and plans to age-restrict such content.
• There’s a beautiful minor-league ballpark in Camden, New Jersey, just over the bridge from Philly, without a tenant, and it might be torn down. NJ.com looks at how the $35 million taxpayer expense has gone for naught.
• Bruce Arthur wrote about how Jays fans need to “get over” the loss of Alex Anthopoulos, who exit from Toronto was mishandled by the team’s ownership.
• The faculty at my alma mater rejected a motion that would have allowed single-gender social groups at the school. Harvard does not have fraternities and sororities, but has long-standing, off-campus “finals clubs” that serve a similar purpose. (I was not a member of one and barely even saw evidence of their existence while there.)
• Astronomers found a planet that might be suitable for life just 11 light-years away from us. The EPA responded by issuing blanket permits for drilling and mining for the new body.
• The abusive parents in Canada who were convicted of failing to get medical help when their toddler had meningitis – which killed him – still don’t get it and are ranting about the justice system. They’re anti-vax, anti-science people who are now expecting another child whom they won’t vaccinate or provide with modern medicine.
• A stem-cell researcher hopes to run against Republican Dana Rohrabacher for California’s 48th Congressional district.
• A Trump judicial nominee wrote about politics on a sports site and didn’t disclose it. That’s the same guy I mentioned last week, whom the ABA rated “not qualified” for the bench.
• I saved a slew of links on the Alabama special election, but it’s just been so well-covered elsewhere that I’ll only include two here: conservative columnist George Will endorses Doug Jones and calls Roy Moore “an embarrassment,” and David French, also a conservative, explains why “due process” is not a reasonable standard when considering candidates. Also, there’s a site that shows which politicians have supported, renounced, or waffled on Moore since the revelations of his sexual assaults against young women appeared.
• And by the way, Al Franken groped a woman and otherwise forced his attentions on her in 2006, and he should resign.
• The Atlantic also published an expose on the correspondence between Donald Trump, Jr., and Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
• FEMA contracted with a tiny Georgia company to send “meals” of junk food to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.
• The FDA issued a warning about herbal supplement kratom, which is used as a pain treatment and as a possible way to fight opiate addiction, but which is unregulated and can thus be laced or tainted with unlisted, toxic ingredients.
• TLC has given a forum to a quack healer who claims he can cure infections and chronic diseases through energy healing.
• I’ve never been a Brand New fan, but I know many of you are; their lead singer stands accused of inappropriate contact with minors, including soliciting nudes.
• Ars Technica looks at some of the hottest new games from Essen SPIEL 2017, the world’s biggest boardgame convention, with over 1000 new titles introduced there.
• Handelabra Games is currently running a Kickstarter for a Steam adaptation of One Deck Dungeon.