Stick to baseball, 1/26/19.

I had one ESPN+ piece this week, on the three-way trade that sent Sonny Gray to Cincinnati. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday. The 2019 top prospects package begins its rollout on Monday.

At Paste, I reviewed the cooperative game Forbidden Sky, from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, who adds a fun STEM element to the same framework he’s used in Pandemic and the other Forbidden titles.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The Longreads site has The Hunt for Planet Nine, spending time with two astronomers scrutinizing the skies for a ninth planet, beyond Neptune, that would explain the presence and behavior of several bodies in our solar system – but that no one has been able to find yet.
• The Atlantic cancels Brian Singer with a litany of stories about sexual assaults, mostly of young, often underage, vulnerable men, usually involving a lot of alcohol and drugs. It’s an awful read, but it should really be the end of Singer’s career, and, I hope, the end of any talk of Bohemian Rhapsody winning Best Picture. In a short, related story, Queen’s Dr. Brian May tried the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ trope for Singer but had to apologize and walk it back.
• The Guardian‘s Long Read looks at the endless hunt for a single, long-lasting flu vaccine, an excerpt from an upcoming book on influenza, here also looking at the history of vaccination and why countries differ in their vaccine recommendations.
• Also from the Guardian, the Rwandan government may have killed the country’s exiled spy chief in a story reminiscent of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi Arabian government.
• This excerpt from an upcoming book on the micronation of Sealand is just delightfully nuts. I first heard about Sealand through HavenCo, a short-lived “data haven” colocation company which Ars Technica remembered in a condensed history back in 2012 after its demise.
• The New Yorker‘s Isaac Chotiner interviewed one of the scientists claiming that ‘Oumoamua is from an alien race, a sort of real-life Rama, and the interview kind of goes off the rails as it progresses.
• Several good links on the Covington Catholic students’ actions at the March for Life last weekend: Father Edward Beck, a Roman Catholic priest, writes that MAGA hats do not belong on Catholic school trips. The Atlantic‘s Ian Bogost implores us to stop trusting viral videos. A Republican PR firm in Louisville played a key role in helping – or protecting – the privileged white students of the school.
• Then there are pieces on the video itself. Reason‘s Robby Soave, who I think it is fair to characterize as a contrarian writer, argued that the ‘full’ video exonerated the students. Cartoonist Matt Bors of the Nib vehemently disagreed. So did Rewire editor Jodi Jacobson, who said There is a longer video. And it’s worse.. I don’t even know who wrote this piece tying the revisionist takes to the our disinformation age, but I thought it was spot on.
• My friend Will Leitch says the upcoming Stephen Soderbergh film High Flying Bird is the most radical sports film he’s ever seen.
• Israel’s Health Ministry is considering sanctions against eight anti-vaccine doctors. (Link requires subscription; it was free when I first read and saved it.) This should be policy everywhere. Doctors who tell patients not to vaccinate are as bad as doctors who sell useless supplements or fraudulent treatments – maybe worse, because the failure to vaccinate hurts more than just those patients.
• The New York Times‘ editorial board argues for ending nonmedical exemptions to vaccination laws and improving pro-vaccine messaging to counteract anti-vaxxer bullshit. There are measles outbreaks everywhere in the U.S. now, even though the disease was eradicated in the entire hemisphere less than 20 years ago. As many as 19,000 people were exposed to measles at a Portland Trail Blazers game recently. You should be mad enough to call your state rep and your state senator and demand that they eliminate religious and philosophical exemptions.
• Curiosity explores what “travel to origin” means for things like food or coffee and why you should care about it.
• Eater asks if white Yelpers demanding ‘authenticity’ are hurting non-white restaurant owners and chefs because the customers don’t know what authentic means in those contexts and tend to substitute their own prejudices.
• Arizona, you never cease to disappoint me: Gail Griffin (guess) proposed a tax on watching pornography to pay for a border wall.
• Meanwhile, a federal judge found that people who were leaving water and other supplies for people trying to cross the desert to enter the U.S. illegally guilty of ‘abandoning personal property’ as well as using a motor vehicle in the area without a permit.
• Senator Jodi Ernst revealed that she was raped in college, and is now leaving her abusive husband. It is hard to square her history of traumatic experiences with her refusal to believe the women who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. That said, I have great respect for Sen. Ernst for coming forward with a private memory that must still be very painful to discuss.
• The new Los Angeles County Sheriff reinstated a deputy who had been fired for domestic abuse and stalking.
• Sudan’s people are rising up against their longtime dictator, and the regime is cracking down, but George Clooney and his compatriots are nowhere to be found this time when the former object of their attention needs their help.
• I guess the American “Rooster” sriracha isn’t what Thai people expect from the condiment.
• Board games! Tom Lehmann’s game The City will get its first English-language edition and it’s currently on Kickstarter.
• Next Move Games is holding a contest around its upcoming game Tuki to win a free copy of the game.
• Finally, the tweet of the week contains a not very well-known clip from Martin Luther King, Jr.