I had one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the demotion calculus in a short season with no minor leagues, plus notes on Spencer Howard, Ryan Castellani, and Luis Basabe. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.
My podcast guest this week was Dr. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, discussing concepts from her book and how baseball scouts and executives might apply them – and how to avoid the pitfalls of using “intangibles” as a cover for more insidious biases. You can buy Grit here via bookshop.org.
You can also buy my new book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us about Ourselves, which came out this April, via the same site. I’ll send out the next issue of my free email newsletter as soon as my fall board game preview comes out over at Paste.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: Carina Chocano spent hours taking MasterClass sessions and wrote about the product for The Atlantic, asking what it is they’re really selling since they’re not selling actual education.
- At Slate, William Saletan lays out the timeline of how Trump’s bad decisions have led to over 171,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19.
- Current Affairs’ Nathan J. Robinson points how, increasingly, verifiable information is behind paywalls while alt-right bullshit is free, and looks at the consequences of that dichotomy.
- Novelist Chimamanda Adichie suffered a concussion earlier this year, and wrote about the experience, including the introspection that came with the temporary loss of part of her brain function.
- The World Health Organization has created a one-stop shop for correct answers to common myths about COVID-19.
- The Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association made the correct decision to delay fall sports until February. Some parents are pushing a petition to demand they reverse this, and the comments from parents in that article drip with ignorance and privilege.
- A Florida church leader has been arrested for pushing the fake cure known as “miracle mineral solution” (MMS), which is really just bleach.
- Mom influencers on Instagram are spreading anti-mask propaganda. Instagram is owned by Facebook and neither site seems willing to clean up their own shit.
- Almost a third of elite sportswomen reported harassment or trolling on social media according to a survey by BBC Sport.
- The opposition to masks is beyond belief at this point. You probably read about the sheriff in Marion County, Florida, who banned masks in his offices, and banned his deputies from wearing them. He eased those restrictions slightly after the backlash, but really, why is anyone objecting to mask mandates at this point other than ignorance or selfishness?
- Putting more healthful, nutritious foods into school lunches appears to have improved health outcomes like obesity for children who receive them – so of course the Trump Administration’s USDA has rolled back those changes.
- A major Iowa Republican donor who ‘somehow’ won a no-bid contract to provide PPE from China to the state is now under investigation for prostitution and possession of child pornography.
- The Massachusetts Democratic Party helped a college group orchestrate a campaign to entrap and smear a local Democratic candidate for the state’s 1st Congressional District.
- That Georgia high school that suspended a student for taking a picture of all of the maskless kids packed in the halls as they resumed classes? They had to shut down for several days due to an outbreak.
- Reproductive rights took a huge hit this week at the Supreme Court thanks to John Roberts’ conservative majority and their decision to allow several anti-abortion and outright misogynistic laws in Arkansas to stand.
- A telling comparison of the different speaker lists at anti-vaxx and pro-vaccine conferences.
- We watched season one of Perry Mason on HBO and I agree with everything Alan Sepinwall said about it.
- Board game news: There’s an Umbrella Academy card game in the works, for fans of that Netflix series.
- I’ve never played Arkwright given its length and complexity, although it’s pretty highly regarded. Now there’s a simpler version coming as a card game, on Kickstarter this week.
- I enjoyed Elizabeth Hargrave’s Designer Diaries around her newest game, Mariposas, due out later this month.