Stick to baseball, 10/20/18.

My first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League went up for ESPN+ subscribers this week, covering Forrest Whitley, Vlad Guerrero Jr., Julio Pablo Martinez, and more. I’ll file another, likely longer report this weekend.

My latest board game review for Paste covers the Spiel des Jahres-nominated cooperative game The Mind, where all players have to try to play all their hand cards to the table in ascending order – but without communicating with each other at all.

I’ll be at the Manheim Library in Manheim, PA, on Monday, October 22nd, to talk about Smart Baseball and sign copies of the book (which will be available for purchase there too).

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday night. If you don’t get it, you don’t know what you’re missing.

And now, the links…

• The most important read of the week is the late Jamal Khashoggi’s final column for the Washington Post, on the need for more freedom of expression in the Arab world. He was killed by Saudi intelligence agents shortly after writing it.
• Longreads (and longish reads): Graduate student Urmila Mahadev appears to have solved the verification problem in quantum computing, a major unsolved problem in the theoretical field where researchers lacked a method of knowing if a quantum computer had actually carried our your instructions.
• Evangelical writer Jen Hatmaker has built a following through her books and popular blog on her faith and family. Her recent turn into political writing, on how Trump and his supporters are acting contrary to Christian beliefs and teachings, has earned her both praise and vitriol, including death threats.
• Popular Mechanics spoke to nine scientists running for Congress this year across the country.
• This obituary of a 30-year-old woman who died as a result of an opiate addiction, written by her parents, is crushing, and a good reminder of the humanity of people who fall prey to this increasingly common disease.
• The two surviving members of the Beastie Boys, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, have a new book coming out on the band’s history; Vulture has an excerpt on the mis-marketing of Paul’s Boutique.
• CityLab examines why public transit works better outside the United States and tackles a few common myths. Most interesting to me: The example of Toronto’s supra-municipal authority considering the needs of the city and the suburbs when building mass transit, and the examples of European cities building bus or metro stations first and developing urban and suburban areas around them. Also, Nashville: WTF?
• Sears filed for bankruptcy after its hedge-fund investor owner bled the company of most of its valuable assets, and his recovery plan signals that he’d like to continue to do so.
• The Republican Party is coming after Social Security and Medicare as they try to solve the budget deficit, a crisis utterly of their own making due to tax cuts and military spending.
• Racism drove white voters to switch to Trump, not economic anxiety. Try not to have a heart attack and die from not surprise.
• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke failed to disclose his partial ownership of a weapons manufacturer, which creates several conflicts of interest with policy areas of his day job. You’d think that would get him removed from his post, but in this Administration, it’s just his way of fitting in.
• Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (guess) pushed the VA to use an unproven and likely fraudulent ‘brain wave’ treatment for PTSD sufferers, because the company offering it has a connection to one of his senior aides.
• Virginia Rep. Dave Brat (guess) told a recovering addict that he understood the latter’s troubles because he’s been targeted by negative campaign ads by his opponent. Totally the same thing.
• Someone stole a Seattle homeless woman’s car, which was her only shelter at the time, after which it was found and towed. The towing company refused to return it to her, then sold it for $175, then bought it back on a judge’s order but charged her for storing it. She finally got it back after a year of fighting, although the towing company – which is the official towing company of the city of Seattle – claims she owes them over $21,000 in fees.
• The conservative Weekly Standard asks why Iowans keep returning white nationalist Steve King to Congress. The Des Moines Register endorsed Democratic candidates across the state, arguing that Republicans have failed in their opportunities at the helms of our federal and state governments while obstructing attempts to stop corruption and collusion with foreign powers.
• Coloradans concerned about the deleterious environmental effects of fracking should vote yes on Proposition 112, which would require a buffer zone between fracking sites and schools or water sources like underground aquifers. John Elway recorded a vague TV ad for the oil & gas companies fighting it.
• Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital have recommended 31 papers co-authored by a former lab director be retracted because he fabricated or falsified data.
• Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent paper claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism has led to a twenty-year decline in vaccination rates, won this year’s Rusty Razor award for bad science. Indeed, the percentage of toddlers in the U.S. who have received zero vaccinations keeps rising.
• The state of Arizona had to cancel a parent vaccination education course after negative feedback from about 120 parents, many of whom admitted they hadn’t even seen the course information. Vaccination levels are especially low among Arizona kindergarteners, to the point that the state’s schoolchildren are below herd immunity levels.
• A pair of low-level Republican Party employees in Arizona tried to donate to state Democrats in the name of a fictional Communist party.
• They’re not the only terrible people in the Arizona Republican Party: Debbie Lesko, who won a special election to replace Trent Franks in the House of Representatives this spring, is flat-out lying about her opponent, Dr. Hiral Tipirneni, in a new campaign ad. Lesko’s district includes a lot of retirees, who ought to be concerned about the GOP’s plans (mentioned above) to cut Social Security and Medicare.
• A group of 21 Democratic lawmakers wants to know why the Administration is cozying up to the neo-Nazi government of Hungary, including cancelling a planned grant to support independent media in the former Soviet bloc nation, which has lurched to the right by electing an openly anti-Semitic leader.
• Voter suppression in Georgia got more literal this week as county officials ordered 40 black senior citizens off a bus taking them to vote. Meanwhile, a Salon examination found that Secretary of State and current GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has purged over 300,000 registered voters from Georgia’s rolls.
• Kansas, seeing Georgia’s moves, said “hold my beer” and moved the lone polling station in Dodge City, which is 60% Latino to a location outside the city limits. It’s really amazing that I, a white American who has always lived in majority-white areas, have never had any difficulty finding a place to cast my ballots. So weird.
• CAP Action found that Florida’s murder rate jumped after the state enacted a so-called ‘Stand Your Ground’ law in 2005.
• A new study examines how easy it is to vote in all 50 states, with a ranking from 1 to 50. Oregon is first (easiest), while Mississippi, about 20 seconds removed from blowing up black churches, is 50th. I was most surprised to see three states in the Great Lakes region – Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio – all ranked in the 40s.
• The Houston Chronicle endorsed Beto O’Rourke for Senate, saying his opponent, incumbent Ted Cruz, has shown “little interest in addressing the needs of his fellow Texans during his six years in office” while calling out Cruz’s unwillingness to serve as a check on the powers of the President.
• Nature says that the biggest risk for a global pandemic comes from misinformation spread by denialists, such as “anti-vaxxers” and charlatans like Wakefield and others selling supplements to those made afraid of conventional medicine.
• A reader sent along this link on the best new pizzerias in the state of New Jersey, some of which I will try to hit this winter.