Stick to baseball, 2/23/19.

Just one ESPN+ piece this week, looking at the Padres’ deal with Manny Machado. I held a Klawchat on Friday since my afternoon game in Texas was rained out.

I sent out the latest issue of my free email newsletter this week, complete with Obscure Music Reference as the subject. I nearly always tailor those song quotes to the subject of the email, although I think this week’s might have been a bit too obscure.

For the next five Mondays, High Street on Market, my #1 restaurant in Philadelphia, will host “sandwich battles” in the evenings, featuring area chefs and personalities in a competition to build the best sandwich using High Street’s phenomenal artisan breads and a mystery ingredient each week. Tickets are $25 apiece and you might see me in the crowd one night.

And now, the links…

• The chefs from Montreal’s acclaimed restaurant Joe Beef discuss their kitchen’s culture of excess and the process of getting sober, and how that changed the whole restaurant. I thought it was interesting that people in rehab are told to avoid working in food service, since there’s booze everywhere.
• The gaming world has moved quickly to banish writer Zak Smith after multiple women accused him of assault/abuse, including his ex-wife. Gen Con, the tabletop convention I attend every August and where I spoke on writers’ panels the last two years, has canceled his planned appearance and fully banned him from the con.
• I generally find those “stop using your phone!” guides and self-help articles to be both patronizing and unrealistic; I use my phone more than I should, or want to, yet using it 75% less or not using it at all is impractical. That said, this New York Times piece on the topic is actually helpful and acknowledges that the same devices that distract us also provide essential services to us in life and at work.
• A viral video of a white Delaware police officer pulling his gun on a black motorist has sparked controversy and calls for the officer to be disciplined or fired. I haven’t seen any more than that video but thought this was interesting – a lawyer who’s sued the Delaware State Police before in other cases argues that the officer may have been overzealous but wasn’t wrong to draw his weapon. The Attorney General’s office has said they are not investigating the case right now.
• Vanderbilt has denied tenure to a neurology professor who spoke out against a professor who was later put on leave after he was accused of drugging and raping a student. If you believe such things matter – I’m not sure they do – you can sign a petition urging Vanderbilt to reconsider.
• Measles, that “benign childhood disease,” has killed over 900 in Madagascar in an ongoing epidemic.
• A British Columbia measles outbreak started because one idiot father took his three unvaccinated sons to southeast Asia, where they caught the virus and then brought it home. He gives the bullshit autism story as his explanation, just one more reason Andrew Wakefield should be denied the right to even enter the United States or Canada by our respective governments. He’s a terrorist.
• Facebook lets advertisers, including anti-vaccine groups, target users interested in “vaccine controversies,” according to a Guardian report. BuzzFeed also reported on how one anti-vax community built its following on Facebook. Cool cool cool.
• The Charlotte Observer‘s editorial board writes that North Carolina needs to crack down on vaccine-denier parents.
• This New York Times piece on a couple of bibliophiles who connected over their shared love of books … except that, for reasons the author sort of explains, she’d almost totally stopped reading when they met.
• There’s a GoFundMe with an explanation worth reading for the abused ex-wife of David Sorensen, who is now suing her for defamation (but not the Washington Post, which printed the story, since they have the resources to fight back).
• Is ‘Oumuamua actually material from a nearby, newly formed star? That seems more plausible than the claim that it was some sort of real-life Rama.
• The Inspector General is investigating FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for improper conduct in pushing for Sinclair’s takeover of Tribune Media’s local TV assets.
• The News & Observer published a timeline of the investigation into fraud in NC-9, where the Republican candidate seems to have suddenly remembered having two strokes that harmed his memory.