Stick to baseball, 3/30/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers, I posted my second Cactus League scouting notebook, covering prospects from Cleveland, the Giants, the A’s, the White Sox, the Cubs, and the Padres; my first scouting notebook from Arizona went up the previous week. I also posted a draft scouting post that looked at four of the top college position players in the draft class, including Adley Rutschman and Andrew Vaughn, the top two players on my first draft board. I also wrote up my predictions for this year’s standings, playoff outcomes, and postseason award winners, which has already upset Yankee fans (who cares, my picks don’t affect anything) and had one Mariner fan trying to told-you-so me because they’ve scored a lot of runs through (checks notes) four games.

At Paste, I gave the first perfect score (10/10) I’ve given to any board game in the 100+ reviews I’ve written for them in the last five years, awarding the honor to Wingspan, an incredible, smart, beautiful, and scientifically accurate new game from Elizabeth Hargrave that, coincidentally, is one of the only games I know that was designed and illustrated entirely by women. It’s so well-designed, yet easy to learn and doesn’t take that long to play once you understand a few basic mechanics. The game has sold out its first two print runs but the next one is expected in early May.

I didn’t chat this week for a few reasons, and am behind on my email newsletter for the same, but hope to pick all of that back up in the next few days. I appreciate your patience. That sounds ominous but they’re mostly good things that have simply demanded more of my time.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: This is from February, but this New York/The Cut longread on the rise and fall of Tulum, Mexico as a vacation destination is fascinating, and a lesson in how some of the ills of western prosperity are causing environmental destruction and economic harm in the developing world.
• The surgeon who writes and tweets as Doc Bastard has compiled a list of rebuttals to 73 common anti-vaxxer claims, including some I’d never seen before.
• Mother Jones looks at how crowdfunding has made catastrophic medical care into an online popularity contest.
• Alex Jones is being sued – I hope into oblivion – by parents of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, and in his deposition he claimed he had a “psychosis” that led him to say Sandy Hook was a staged, false-flag operation, and frequently denied saying or doing things he actually did.
• Nevada Lt. Governor Lucy Flores details getting an unwanted kiss from then-VP Joe Biden in 2014. I have zero interest in a Biden candidacy for President anyway, but I hope this finally ends it.
• The New Yorker‘s Helen Rosner describes Julia Child’s commitment to progressive politics, which became more public as her profile grew.
• Ginny Searle, writing for Deadspin, takes a critical look at the increasingly fan-unfriendly policies implemented across MLB, often with the outright complicity of media shills like Darren Rovell.
• The Economist tweeted and then deleted a teaser that asked, rhetorically, if trans people should be sterilized. The Daily Dot examines the transphobic history of editor Helen Joyce, arguing that this was far from an isolated or accidental incident.
• The NRA had quite a week: They fought against renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, arguing that domestic abusers shouldn’t lose their rights to own guns, and then a Huffington Post investigation revealed that NRA executive Mark Richardson solicited a Sandy Hook hoaxer, asking him to do the same for the Parkland mass shooting.
• The Atlantic describes the chytrid fungus Bd, responsible for the decline or extinction of over 500 amphibian species, making it the deadliest pathogen in recorded history.
• My friend Adnan Virk is starting a great new gig at DAZN, co-anchoring their nightly whip-around baseball show. He spoke to the Washington Post‘s Ben Strauss about his new job and how ESPN treated him, up to his firing in February.
• NPR profiles Bob’s Red Mill, especially how it became a force in gluten-free products. I counted three Bob’s bags in my pantry just now, and need to pick up two more items – their GF flour mix and their almond flour – today. Their products are great for any bakers, since they’re often the only source of things like tapioca or potato starch, both superior to corn starch for hot fruit pies, Mike.
• The CDC helped fund the development of a drug that can prevent HIV transmission even during unprotected sex, so why is a private company reaping all the profits and pricing it as a monopolist?
• A California GOP delegate appointed a white nationalist to an ‘associate’ delegate position, and seems rather pleased with himself.
• An African-American attorney in Maryland says he was detained in a Harford County courthouse because the deputy thought he was pretending to be a lawyer.
• Here’s this week’s roundup of vaccine news and anti-vaxxer madness. Maryn McKenna, writing for WIRED, looks at the real costs to society of the anti-vaxxer movement. We all pay more for health insurance because of these idiots.
• VICE‘s Joseph Cox says Instagram’s algorithm pushed him into an anti-vaccine ‘rabbit hole’ within ten seconds of him following one prominent denialist account.
• Maine’s rate of pertussis infections is eight times the national average because of Mainers’ higher than normal rate of refusing vaccines.
• I’ve included a few links recently on California doctors selling questionable or outright fraudulent ‘medical exemptions’ to the state’s tight vaccination laws; now Dr. Richard Pan, a state Senator there, has introduced new legislation targeting such doctors, who put personal profits over the good of the community.
• New York’s Rockland County has declared a state of emergency due to a massive measles outbreak caused by anti-vaxxers, with over 150 reported cases of the highly contagious, dangerous disease. Prof. Peter Hotez, writing for the BMJ‘s opinion blog, calls the outbreak nightmarish, especially how anti-vaxxers targeted orthodox Jews with their messaging. This is an increasing problem – anti-vaxxers find vulnerable groups and bombard them with bullshit, but face no consequences when outbreaks occur.
• Someone ran around Cook County (Chicago) with the measles, sparking a warning to the public of possible exposure at fifteen different locations over the past week. I hope this person is held accountable for the costs of their actions, but I doubt it.
• There’s a mumps outbreak near me in Philly, spurring officials at Temple University, where the outbreak is centered, to give students booster shots to try to counter the waning immunity teenagers seem to experience from that specific vaccine.
• Deadspin’s Albert Burnenko asks Which Online Edgelord Mishaps Will Derail Trevor Bauer’s Season?.
• Oceans, a new standalone game with similar mechanics to its parent game, Evolution, is now on Kickstarter; I demoed this at PAX Unplugged in December and found there were some aspects I preferred, especially the mechanics around feeding.
• Dire Wolf’s upcoming Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker social deduction game is now available for pre-order.