Stick to baseball, 12/30/17.

Since my last links post, I’ve written three Insider pieces, on Colorado signing Wade Davis, Cleveland signing Yonder Alonso, and San Francisco trading for Evan Longoria.

On the board game front, I reviewed Photosynthesis for Paste, and ranked my top ten board games of 2017 for them too. Over at Vulture I did another Best of 2017 list, looking at the best light game, heavy game, board game app, expansion, and more.

The Wall Street Journal asked me to contribute to their annual “Who Read What” series, where 50 avid readers provide one or two books that really stood out for them in the preceding year. I was specifically asked to name one work of fiction and one of non-fiction, and chose The Erstwhile and Betaball.

As always, feel free to sign up for my email newsletter, which costs you nothing and won’t clog your inbox; I’ve only sent three total in the last two months, so if anything, I should probably be sending more. And, of course, thanks to everyone who bought Smart Baseball for themselves or as a Christmas gift.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: ProPublica looks at the disastrous handling of criminal mental-health cases in Mississippi by focusing on one young man who spent four years in custody before receiving the requested psychiatric evaluation.
• Tulum, a trendy vacation spot on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, is seeing violent evictions as part of land-grabs by wealthy developers looking to cash in on the coastal town’s newfound popularity among tourists looking for an ‘alternative’ getaway.
• The Washington Post has been looking at the ongoing problem of teen suicides in the U.S.; this story of a 15-year-old boy’s suicide by cop was the most powerful in the series.
• The Post also broke down how the Justice Department undercut a DEA investigation into McKesson’s role in the opioid epidemic, settling the case for a much smaller fine than expected and no facility closures or criminal indictments.
• Automation is threatening blue- and white-collar jobs in the developed world, but in Sweden, workers don’t see it as a threat, thanks to the country’s social welfare system and a very different relationship between capital and labor.
• The New Yorker exposes corruption, racism, and illegal activity at Turning Point USA, a conservative nonprofit active on college campuses, and one that is close to the Trump family.
• Also from ProPublica, the explosive compound RDX is now polluting groundwater across the country near where it’s been manufactured. The Pentagon has fought efforts within the EPA to name RDX a “likely” carcinogen (up from “possible”) because it would produce substantial legal liability for the agency. Affected water supplies include Grand Island, Nebraska; Salt Lake City; Cape Cod; and sites in Virginia and California.
• The Koch brothers are now funding legal efforts to fight government projects to roll out broadband, which can help address the problem of the digital divide, where people are locked out of job and educational opportunities if they lack sufficient access to the internet. It seems to be a philosophical issue for the Kochs, that the government shouldn’t be engaging in what I would at least consider an infrastructure investment.
• The EPA is considering allowing a massive increase in the use of a bee-killing pesticide after a new application by the chemical’s manufacture, Syngenta. Thiomethoxam is a neonicotinoid, a class of pesticides suspected of playing a role in the ongoing collapse of bee colonies, impairing honeybees’ ability to fly and homing powers. No bees, no food.
• The right-wing American Civil Rights Union, with help from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, seen in an unflattering light in The 13th), is pushing state legislators to further crack down on voting rights by cross-checking voter rolls with jury duty summonses. This piece from the Memphis Daily News looks at Tennessee reps who appear to do ALEC’s bidding, pushing “model bills” in that state’s legislature.
• Former sportswriter Lisa Olson writes for The Athletic about how the sports journalism world is long overdue for a sexual harassment reckoning. I doubt she knew when she wrote that piece that a photographer would tell the world Miguel Sano assaulted her in 2015. Deadspin’s Diana Moskovitz wrote just a week prior about her experiences working at the NFL Network, which has been hit with a sizable lawsuit over ongoing harassment of women in its workplace.
• David Frum’s piece at The Atlantic was the best response I saw to the absurdity of the GOP tax bill, which appears to be a sop to party donors and a direct tax on Democratic constituencies while flying in the face of any economic theories on growth or job creation.
• The current Administration has talked up reducing federal regulations as a way to boost the economy, which on the whole is a Bad Thing – I like clean water and air, for example – but the FDA is starting to look at regulating so-called ‘homeopathic’ remedies, which have previously been able to make all kinds of vague health claims without any proof. And they can’t prove any of it, because homeopathy is bullshit. If people want to buy this stuff anyway, that’s fine, but consumers deserve to know not only that the products don’t work, but that they can’t work.
• An Australian mother and father have lost a court bid to prevent their three children from receiving vaccination against the measles. The father, who is apparently dumber than a pile of dogshit, claimed that because he had the measles as a kid, he’d passed on his “natural immunity” to his children.
• Lab-grown meat is becoming a reality, as feeding seven billion people by raising livestock is just not a sustainable long-term solution. Will “real” beef become even more of a luxury good in the future?
• Two more New York Times pieces of merit: how lawsuits are slowing research into health issues and technologies, and how unions are making inroads into digital media. I’m not a union member and I don’t believe anyone at ESPN is unionized.
• This editorial asking why Americans don’t realize how poor their lives are is laughably awful. The author’s Europhilia has apparently distorted his views of that continent and of life in the United States.
• A friend – okay, fine, it’s Chris Crawford – bought me a MoviePass, and I’ve already used it twice, saving almost what he spent for the three-month subscription. The movie theater industry is trying to figure out what to do with the new company, which lets you see one movie per day for free under the $10/month subscription.
• I’m very excited for the upcoming board game adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel; The Player’s Aid interviewed the game’s designer, Brian Kelley.