Stick to baseball, 3/17/18.

My biggest news this week is that Smart Baseball is now out in paperback. This edition has a new afterword covering a few new developments from the 2017 season.

For Insiders this week, I had three posts from the Cactus League, covering:
• Hunter Greene & prospects from four orgs (CIN, LAD, CWS, LAA)
• Chris Paddack, Adrian Morejon, and other Padres & Rockies prospects
• Mackenzie Gore and even more Padres prospects.

I also wrote about the Jake Arrieta contract. Due to spring travel, the next chat may not be until April, unless I get a rainout on the road somewhere.

Here on the dish, I wrote up a slew of new restaurants I tried in Arizona this month.

And now, the links…

• One true longread this week: Jane Meyer profiles Christopher Steele of ‘Steele dossier’ fame for the New Yorker, which, in particular, shows the absurd, counterfactual lengths to which the President’s sycophants will go to defend him.
• The Guardian has revealed how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook profile data on 50 million users, without authorization, to help Trump’s election campaign in 2016.
• Meanwhile, the Administration is pushing new voter suppression efforts, like dispatching Secret Service agents to polling stations; fortunately Maryland is already considering legislation to combat such efforts.
• This extremely candid interview with former ESPN President John Skipper was illuminating, and also explains why he quit so abruptly, just days after an all-hands meeting where he explained his strategy for the company going forward.
• The Iowa GOP is hard at work trying to rig upcoming elections, through such means as putting the Republican candidate first on nearly all ballots in the state. Richard Thaler wrote in Nudge that the candidate listed first gets a 3.5% bump in votes, more if the candidates are generally not well known (e.g., there’s no incumbent).
• The Justice Department is fighting for an anti-vaxxer parent in Wisconsin under the bullshit guise of “religious freedom.” The plaintiff was a nurse in a nursing home and refused to get the flu shot mandated by her employers, who fired her, because she’s a fucking idiot. I don’t think that goes far enough: You should lose any medical license you hold if you decline to get vaccinations mandatory in your profession.
• The GOP tax bill, or “tax scam” depending on your perspective, was not really tax reform (which I favor), but just shifted around a bunch of giveaways to corporations. The Center for Public Integrity broke down the corporate welfare, including tax breaks for craft beverage makers, a rum tax that benefits distillers on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, tax credits for mining operations on Native American reservations, and a faster depreciation schedule for people who own racehorses.
• Matthew Yglesias examines the truth about public and campus support for free speech in the face of anecdotal claims that ‘political correctness’ is threatening it.
• A disabled writer explains what the elegies to Stephen Hawking got wrong about the astrophysicist’s disability. Also, the death of a great scientist was a perfect time for a Republican Texas state rep to show his ass.
• Is Russia fomenting anti-GMO sentiment online? One study looking at online coverage of the topic found Russian sites would slip anti-GMO content even into unrelated articles. GMO foods are safe, and public bias against them, which is rising, isn’t based on any actual science.
• The Oath Keepers are a white, anti-government, extremist group that has, among other things, shown up unbidden to protect white businesses during the Ferguson riots or to ‘guard’ schools in the wake of shootings. Their founder stands accused of beating his wife and trying to choke his daughter, in a request his wife filed for a restraining order as she seeks a divorce.
• The Guardian explores the questions and evidence around vitamin D’s role in health, including mixed signals on supplements and the difficulty of getting enough in plant-centric diets.
• Climate change is very real, but FEMA has dropped the term from its strategic plans.
• Arizona will hold a special election in April to fill the seat vacated by Trent Franks; it’s expected to go to Republican candidate Debbie Lesko, given how red the district is, even though Lesko denies climate change and blames it on the sun. Her opponent, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, accepts the science on climate change and advocates increased solar and wind power in the state.
• A new study by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that people who believe the untruth that the MMR vaccine causes autism were then less likely to accept a hypothetical vaccine against Zika.
• Our diets have shaped how our species has evolved, with adaptations like lactose tolerance and lighter skin arising in response to what we eat.
• Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald caught up with former Red Sox prospet Ryan Westmoreland, whose promising career was cut short by a cavernous malformation in his brain. He just had his 16th surgery related to the issue on Monday.
• My daughter and I both loved this photo essay from the BBC on the abandoned Ross Island in the Indian Ocean, which nature is slowly taking back, as it does.