Stick to baseball, 1/13/18.

No new Insider content this week, as MLB appears to still be asleep and I was working on the top 100 prospects package, which is scheduled to start running on January 22nd. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest board game review for Paste covers Pandemic: Rising Tide, a standalone spinoff of the original Pandemic, this time pitting players against rising waters threatening to flood the Netherlands, so players must build dikes and pumps while trying to complete four hydraulic stations to win the game. We liked it, as it gives a new twist to the now-familiar cooperative mechanics of Matt Leacock’s various games.

Feel free to sign up for my email newsletter, which costs you nothing and totters somewhere between occasional and infrequent. And, of course, thanks to everyone who bought Smart Baseball for themselves or as a Christmas gift, or as a Christmas gift for themselves.

And now, the links…

• I Made the Pizza Cinnamon Rolls from Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter is everything I wanted it to be and more.
• That “gay wedding cake” case that was in the news last month? The bakers, who lost in an appellate court, helped spur an ongoing harassment campaign against the gay couple they refused to serve, including posting the couples’ contact information. The couple claims to be Christian, of course, but I doubt Jesus would be doxing anyone.
• The New York Times looks at a French woman who made propaganda videos for the Daesh, was captured when Raqqa fell, and now wishes to return home. The quandary of what to do with citizens who fought for or with terrorists in Syria and are now coming back is facing many European countries.
• Electric vehicles require a lot of cobalt right now in their lithium batteries’ cathodes, but demand may soon outstrip supply for the metal, most of which comes from the barely functional Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mining for cobalt and coltan (also known as tantalite) has helped fund the last four decades of civil wars.
• Pfizer announced it is folding its division working on treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases after several failures in those two areas. It surprises me to see a major drug company walk away from a market that seems likely to grow in an aging world, although I suppose they could wait for a smaller company to develop one and buy the firm; Pfizer did announce they will start a venture fund for such efforts.
• Grass-fed beef is trendy now, but the grass cows eat is getting less nutritious. The article cites a few reasons, but other research supports its claim that climate change is a major cause.
• Speaking of (John B. McLemore accent) climate change, Grist argues that we need to get nuclear power back in the mix for our energy supply. It’s cleaner than fracking for natural gas, more efficient than wind or solar, and of course superior to coal in almost every way, yet cheap gas prices have made nuclear less economically viable and coal is taking nuclear’s place in markets where fear of nuclear power has made it politically toxic.
• Climate change is one of several suspects behind the ongoing mass extinction of insect species, according to this long read from the Guardian.
• Jeb Lund (aka @mobute) wrote that something racist fell out of the President’s shithole for 50 States of Blue. One aspect of this disaster I haven’t seen mentioned: Many of those countries Trump labelled with that epithet have natural resources, like cobalt, that we’re going to need. Maybe antagonizing them isn’t just racist or evil, but bad economic policy too.
• While we were distracted with vulgarities and porn stars, Trump waived a punishment for Deutsche Bank, to whom he owes $130 million.
• Also brushed aside by more lurid scandals was the report that Trump’s work day runs about seven hours. I wasn’t aware running the country was a part-time job.
• The Trump administration rolled back an EPA proposal to take the pesticide chlorpyrifos off the market. Now scientists say the chemical is killing endangered salmon and the orcas that eat them. Previous research has found that chlorpyrifos can harm the brain of a human fetus or young child.
• You will often hear commentators on the right decrying abrogations of free speech rights on left-leaning college campuses, but The Chronicle of Higher Education writes that conservatives are the ones truly threatening freedom of speech at American universities, including harassment of faculty members that has cost some professors their jobs.
• Asmodee Digital officially announced the upcoming Steam port of Scythe, one of the best-reviewed heavy strategy board games of all time.
• This WIRED story from 2015 looks at the underappreciated art of extreme metal band logos.
• Vulture took a look at the backlash against Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri after the film won the top prize at the Golden Globes. I still have The Florida Project atop my personal 2017 rankings, with at least three major candidates still unseen.
• I don’t know much about the game play, but Everdell, which already blew past its Kickstarter goal, might have the cutest board game art I’ve seen.
• Restoration Games’ Justin Jacobson blogged about the development process behind Fireball Island, the next in their series of reissues of classic games. Past titles have included Stop Thief!, Downforce, and Indulgence.
• Calliope Games has launched a Kickstarter for The Mansky Caper, a press-your-luck game with a robbery theme.
• Jason Holt wrote a retrospective on helping write/translate the rulebook for Galaxy Trucker.