I had one post this week for subscribers to the Athletic, looking at six of the players who impressed me or beat my expectations for them in the truncated 2020 season.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Tekhenu and Tawantinsuyu, two heavy, complex games from the publishers Board & Dice. Tekhenu made my top ten games of the year. I also have a post up at Vulture on the best board games of 2020 in various categories.
If you missed it here on the dish, I posted my annual rankings of my top 100 songs and favorite 15 albums of the year.
This link roundup is a bit skewed – I was fully possessed by the Christmas spirit this week and offline a good bit more than usual – but here are the links…
- Longreads first: Actor Leonard Roberts detailed explicit and implicit racism from his time on the NBC series Heroes.
- Ed Yong’s superb writing on the pandemic continued for the Atlantic with his latest column on how science defeated the virus, going from zero scientists studying the virus 13 months ago to multiple effective vaccines already delivered to first responders.
- ProPublica detailed the misdeeds of a family court judge in Ohio who brought his own denialism of COVID-19 into the courtroom, including threatening to jail a mother for contempt of court if she got one her sons tested for the virus. He’s also collecting a salary and a pension by exploiting a loophole in Ohio laws, claiming he intended to retire but also running for re-election (which he won, running unopposed).
- A new study out by two LSE economists shows that cutting taxes on the rich does not, in fact, create jobs for anyone. This had been a long-argued point by classical economists; I was taught it in college and business school. The evidence says otherwise.
- A CNN/Bellingcat investigation identified the specific Russian agents who poisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny.
- The New York Times had a wonderful history of Chartreuse liqueur and how the spirit is surviving when most bars are closed.
- Monopoly accounts for about 30% of mass-market board game sales – which excludes the hobby channel – and it got there in large part due to monopolistic behavior by Hasbro. Competition from new publishers, including the acquisitive, PE-owned Asmodee, might dent that stranglehold on the niche.
- Denver’s Tattered Cover is now the country’s largest Black-owned bookstore.
- Philly’s independent, listener-supported radio station WXPN counted down the top 2020 songs of all time, and the ranking reflected the eclectic nature of their audience. (If you just want the list, it’s here.)
- NME ranked every Arctic Monkeys song ever.I’m not nearly as high on their #1 choice, and would put “R U Mine” in that spot, with “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor,” “Arabella,” “Flourescent Adolescent,” “Do I Wanna Know,” and “From the Ritz to the Rubble” also in the top ten.
- Two of the surviving members of the Waitresses told the Guardian about the making of their song “Christmas Wrapping.”
- Megachurch leader and entrepreneur Joel Osteen received a $4.4 million PPP payment, from funds primarily intended for small businesses. Neither Osteen nor his wife, who also works for the church, received any of the payout.
- New research shows that COVID-19 is much deadlier for younger people than previously believed.
- Delaware’s New Castle County bought a local hotel and is turning it into a shelter for unstably housed persons.
- The BBC has a video on the growing hole in the earth in Siberia, the result of the interaction between permafrost and the environment.
- The new diplomatic agreement between Israel and Sudan, one of several trumpeted by the Trump Administration as a foreign-policy victory, threatens the status of Sudanese migrants in Israel.
- Sen. Mitch McConnell bragged about being the “grim reaper” of Congress; the pandemic has made that nickname a reality.
- One of the local leaders of the protests in Louisville in response to the police murder of Breonna Taylor was himself shot and killed on Friday.
- From my colleagues at the Athletic ($), Omar Vizquel’s wife has accused him of domestic violence.
- There’s just four days left in this Kickstarter for the Vindication board game’s new edition and its Chronicles expansion.