My org reports and top ten prospect lists for all 30 teams are now up for Insiders, which concludes this year’s prospect rankings package:
• NL East
• NL Central
• NL West
• AL East
• AL Central
• AL West
I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday.
I’ve been selling some of my board game collection and donating the proceeds to charity, including the Food Bank of Delaware and hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
With the prospects project done, I resumed my free email newsletter this past week. Also, the paperback edition of Smart Baseball comes out on March 13th; you can buy any of the editions through HarperCollins’ site.
And now, the links…
- Damon Krukowski, formerly of the band Galaxie 500, has a long (and somewhat rambling) piece on the state of the music industry in the age of streaming, and how only the most popular artists are well served by the emerging model.
- Undark looks at the debate over the debate over cell phone radiation safety, much of which hinges on the understanding of terms like “evidence” or “proof.”
- Climate change is threatening coffee farms around the world; genetic engineering may be our best weapon to fight it, even though it’s a popular bogeyman of the anti-science crowd across the spectrum.
- This piece was everywhere last weekend, but in case anyone missed it, the New York Times piece on the fake Twitter follower industry, in which they outed many heavy Twitter users who have bought followers – including former ESPN employee Britt McHenry, 90% of whose followers are ‘fake.’ (I have never bought any followers on any social media network, but I do have followers that independent sites tag as ‘fake.’)
- Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service are a major reason we know about Russian interference in our elections.
- The Sydney Morning Herald published an extract from an upcoming book about a tattooist at Auschwitz, a Slovakian Jew who becomes the camp’s Tätowierer to survive.
- Stephanie Springer looks at pseudoscientific therapies on the rise in baseball, including “cupping,” which Bryce Harper has adopted.
- The CEO of Oxfam America writes we must pass a real disaster relief package for Puerto Rico, and now. I can’t help wondering if Congress would move faster if Puerto Ricans 1) had actual votes in Congress 2) spoke English as their first or only language or 3) were white.
- I’m a devoted Penzey’s customer because I think their spices and herbs are some of the best around, but it doesn’t hurt that they’ve taken a clear stand against bigotry and intolerance at a time when most companies avoid taking any kind of political stance.
- NYC chef Elise Kornack writes about enforcing decency to make restaurants a better place for everyone.
- Florida Representative Matt Gaetz brought a right-wing troll and Holocaust denier to the SOTU, and still brought him after he was informed of the man’s views.
- The city of Philadelphia now has a daytime service center for the city’s homeless, including medical services for people with opioid addictions.
- BBC Travel has a delightful photo/video essay on Monowi, Nebraska, population 1, the only incorporated municipality in the U.S. with just one resident.
- The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank writes that Republicans have vacated their definitions of morality, accepting whatever Trump does and moving the line to condone it.
- Paul Rosenzweig writes in the The Atlantic that dreams of Mueller indicting Trump are a fantasy, as it won’t be Mueller’s call to make.
- There’s an unfortunate truth in this sarcastic rant: If Larry Nassar had been selling unauthorized T-shirts, Michigan State would have shut him down right away.
- Farhad Manjoo argues in the NY Times that the online advertising model is the real problem with the modern Internet.
- The Republican National Committee voted to define being transgender as “a disqualifying psychological and physical” condition, even though the American Psychological Association is clear that being transgender is not a mental disorder.
- South Dakota Republicans have approved a bill out of a Senate committee to allow concealed carry without a permit.
- Julian Assange is so desperate to help the GOP that he offered dope on Senator Mark Warner to a fake Sean Hannity Twitter account.
- Also from Undark: Zooey Deschanel’s new web series peddles pseudoscience, even discouraging people who can’t afford organic produce – which is no more healthful for consumers than conventional – from buying certain fruits and vegetables at all.
- Acram Digital, developers of the app versions of Eight Minute Empire and Martin Wallace’s Steam, announced that their next board game app will be the outstanding medium-weight strategy game Istanbul.
- Eggerspiele announced their next release, Coimbra, a dice-drafting, heavy strategy game. (The link is in German but you can switch to English by clicking the flag in the upper right.)