Stick to baseball, 3/16/19.

New ESPN+ content this week included a Grapefruit League scouting notebook and a draft blog post on Carter Stewart and Matt Allan. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

At Paste, I reviewed Tiny Towns, a new, light strategy game from AEG that has players placing resources on their boards to try to match set patterns, but where you have to take whatever resources your opponents take as well, which means you can easily get screwed by someone else’s choices, especially with more players (it handles up to 6).

My email newsletter is alive and well, and also free, with more of my writings whenever the spirits move me.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Gizmodo’s Earther looks at Apple’s complicated efforts to reduce its reliance on mining for heavy metals, an environmentally hazardous process that doesn’t have easy replacements via recycling programs for reasons the author details here.
• Lifehacker interviewed Stella Parks, author of Brave Tart (and @bravetart on Twitter and Instagram), as part of their This is How I Eat series, although it includes lots of insights from Parks on baking as well. I learned she and I have identical coffee preferences.
• The New York Times interviewed Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of the new board game Wingspan, which incorporates real information about various bird species to inform game play. I’ve played Wingspan and it is excellent; it’s also one of the only games I’ve ever seen designed by a woman and with all art by women as well.
• Jane Coaston looks at some of the highlights from the college admissions fraud investigation.
• The Boston Globe has a story on local indie bookstores thriving by creating communities of readers or holding events you might consider unorthodox for bookstores. Silver Unicorn Books owner Paul Swydan, ex-Fangraphs and Hardball Times writer, is interviewed here; I visited his shop in Acton, Massachusetts, last summer for a talk and signing.
• The New Zealand mosque shooter told viewers of his massacre livestream to subscribe to Pewdiepie, the youtube star with a long history of embracing racist tropes and videos but then denying that he did so. Was this a serious line, or just part of a pattern of shitposting that you’d only catch if you’re extremely online?
• That Oregon boy who nearly died of tetanus because his irresponsible dipshit parents didn’t get him vaccinated required the care of over 100 medical professionals during his 57-day, nearly $1 million hospital stay. The kicker: His parents still refused to vaccinate him after his ordeal.
• New York says unvaccinated kids six and under must stay home if their schools are at high risk of a measles outbreak, so a bunch of denier parents are suing. If that happened here, I’d go to the courthouse and look for parents I knew.
• The NY Times editorial board argues that lawmakers and social media sites need to do more to fight anti-vaccine trolls and raise immunization rates. I imagine science-denier Bret Stephens sat this one out.
• Scientists in Congress used Pi Day as a platform to urge greater use of science in public policy discussions, as seen when Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) blasted an air horn at an ignorant NOAA official during a hearing earlier this month.
• A new report from the UN Environment assembly says Arctic temperatures will rise by over 3 C even if humanity meets the Paris accord goals. You should be scared, especially since our current Administration denies climate change even exists.
• The OED’s blog has a post on the history of the singular ‘they’, including this gem: Tennessee Republicans passed a law in 2016 banning the use of state funds to “promote the use of gender-neutral pronouns.”
• Tennessee ain’t done trying to convince us of their atavistic tendencies: Legislators there have already introduced a dozen anti-LGTBQ bills in 2019, including yet another bill targeting trans people in bathrooms or locker rooms as well as a bill that tries to roll back marriage equality.
• Not to be outdone, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin just signed a bill allowing concealed carry without a permit, over objections by state police groups. I’m glad I don’t have any travel to Kentucky this year.
• Republican legislators across the country, even in blue states like Connecticut, have been introducing bills that would stop schools from teaching kids about climate change or minimize man’s role in it, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that we’re warming the planet. Making our kids dumber to own the libs, right?
• On the bright side, Georgia state rep Dar’shun Kendrick (D) introduced a “testicular bill of rights” package (heh) that, for example, would require men to obtain permission from their partners before getting a prescription for erectile dysfunction medications.
• Did you catch the “Jexodus” joke going around online this week? The idea that Jews will leave the Democrats en masse is a delusion, according to Talia Levin, in part because the GOP has zero intention of pursuing policy goals that might matter to Jewish voters. How’s Blexit going, anyway?
• A strange study published in the Royal Society journal Open Science claimed that listening to gore-themed death metal didn’t inspire or trigger violent thoughts in test subjects. I never believed this was true, but not because of anything in the lyrics. It’s because you can’t understand anything death metal singers are saying.
• Ken Jennings wrote a lovely tribute to Alex Trebek in the wake of the longtime Jeopardy! host’s announcement that he has stage IV pancreatic cancer.
• Board game news: Glen More II, an expanded update/sequel of the top 100 game Glen More, is up on Kickstarter now and of course blew past its goal in about two days.
• Paladins of the West Kingdom, the second game in the West Kingdom series after Architects of the West Kingdom (which I liked a lot and will be reviewing shortly for Paste), is also on Kickstarter for a few more days. It’s the same designer who made the Kennerspiel-nominated Raiders of the North Sea back in 2015.
• Dire Wolf Games announced Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker, a new social deduction game due out later this spring.