Stick to baseball, 7/21/21.

For Insiders this week, I updated my ranking of the top 50 prospects in the minors and posted analyses of the Manny Machado trade and the Brad Hand/Francisco Mejia trade. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My next game review for Paste will go up next week; this week I reviewed the app version of Istanbul, a great strategic game of pathfinding and set collection, here on the dish.

I’ll be at the Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts, on July 28th at 1 pm to talk Smart Baseball and sign copies.

And now, the links…

• Before I hit the longreads, I want to highlight this editorial from The Daily Barometer, a student-run newspaper at Oregon State, which states what probably should have been obvious all along: “OSU supporters who cheered Luke Heimlich have embarrassed the entire community.” It placed winning baseball games over believing the words of a sexual assault victim and over the impact of the trauma that Heimlich caused. I wish this had run a few months ago, but I am proud to see OSU students put this message out there themselves, knowing the backlash they’ll likely receive for doing so.
• OK, longreads: Popula’s Maria Bustillos has the last great interview with Anthony Bourdain, a wide-ranging piece that runs over 10,000 words. Their argument over Obama’s tenure and legacy is outstanding. There are so many wonderful quotes in here, but I’ll pick just one: “We live in a world where we cannot, if you’re running for political office, you cannot admit to speaking a second language, extensive travel, or a familiarity with arugula.” Maybe that’s why our dear leader nicknamed the North Korean dictator “Rocket Man?”
• There will be no Nobel Prize in Literature this year in the wake of a scandal involving a serial sexual abuser married to an Academy member, where the two of them also misused Academy funds. Eighteen women spoke about against him, two accusing him of rape. Resignations of other members in protest left the Academy without a quorum for its vote on the candidates for this year’s honor. The story is one of men protecting men, but also symptomatic of the rot of small institutions that operate without oversight.
• You’ve probably seen this already, but just in case: Mina Kimes spoke at length to Aly Raisman about the gymnast’s vault to prominence as a forceful advocate for sexual assault victims and for change in the corrupt hierarchy of U.S.A. gymnastics.
• Anti-wolf activists ruined the career of a tenured professor who researched the canines’ habits and pushed for conservation efforts, including extorting his employer, Washington State, by threatening to withhold state funding for a new medical school on campus.
• George Will’s op ed’s title sums up its message: “This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man” who is now our President.
• The Guardian also ran an excerpt from Michiko Kakutani’s forthcoming book The Death of Truth, in which she argues that ‘truth decay’ and alternative facts gave us Trump and are eroding our democracy.
• I enjoyed the Atlantic‘s piece calling this the “moment of truth” for Republicans as if there was a damned chance in hell of any of them stepping out of line to criticize their dear leader.
• And why would they, when the Supreme Court nominee they’re about to confirm promises to roll back voting rights sixty years.
• Actually, one Republican found a backbone here: Will Hurd, a Republican House member from Texas, wrote a searing op ed for the New York Times that Russia is manipulating the President, calling for Congress to act to protect our interests.
• Another Republican Congressman broke with Administration on the issue of net neutrality, as Colorado’s Mike Coffman signed a petition to force a vote on legislation to reverse the FCC’s giant gift to the telecom industry.
• Meanwhile, current Minnesota Congressman Jason Lewis said African-Americans have a “cultural” problem and an “entitlement mentality” on a previous radio show where he pushed the idea of a race war.
• The Treasury will no longer collect information on large donations to 501(c) nonprofits, meaning ‘dark’ money can flow unimpeded to political groups. “The news was well-received among conservative groups and congressional Republicans,” whom I’m sure have nothing at all they’d like to hide now that they can do so without fear of disclosure.
• There’s scant good news on the rationalist front, but some scientists running for office have fared well in elections this year. Hiral Tipirneni nearly won a special election in a crimson-red district in Arizona this spring, and she is running for the same seat again in November.
• A new investigative paper published in JAMA found that the poor quality of sleep received by hospital patients slows their healing, so stop waking them up for routine tests that might not be necessary for all patients.
• Should lab-grown meat be labelled as meat? It’s biochemically identical to meat that came from an animal’s carcass, but is cultured and grown in a lab, obviating some ethical and environmental concerns. Of course, the meat manufacturing and processing industries are trying an end run around the technology, hoping to ban those products from calling themselves ‘meat,’ rather than, you know, telling consumers what the product is and letting the market decide.
• Wild optimism over CRISPR-based therapy has been slapped with several large charges on its latest reality bill, including potential long-term DNA damage to patients, some of which could lead to cancer.
• CNN got played by a pseudoscience-pushing conspiracy theorist who claimed on air that cell phones cause cancer – but didn’t disclose his conflict of interest, working for a company that sells equipment to “protect” people from such radiation.
• An arcane type of numbers called octonions (beyond real and complex numbers) may provide the unifying math behind the Standard Model of Physics.
• No one can quite explain those $2000-plus used book prices on amazon, charged by third-party sellers with murky identities.
• Eritrea and Ethiopia have signed a peace deal promising to end their pointless, twenty-year border war, giving hope that democracy may finally come to Eritrea, Africa’s last true one-party state.
• Every time I bring up offensive team nicknames like those of the baseball teams in Cleveland or Atlanta or the football team in Washington, some chud shows up with a “What about Notre Dame?” Here’s a well-written editorial from Irish news site The Journal that explains why the analogy isn’t just wrong, but ignorant of history.
• r/Dodgers has solved the mystery of Kiké Hernandez’s (tight) pants.
• Alan Sepinwall reviewed Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show and says it’s about 15 years out of date with its conceit of trying to shock the audience by what victims of his pranks will say or do.
• Your brain is always looking for problems to solve, so when problems become a bit scarce, it can try to find problems where there are none.
• Eagle-Gryphon published a Kickstarter for Escape Plan, a new game from Vital Lacerda, known for overlong, complex games like Lisboa.