I had two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week: a breakdown of the Nolan Arenado trade, and a look at a dozen prospects who just missed my top 100 ranking. That ranking ran the previous Thursday. I did a video chat via the Athletic’s Twitter account on Tuesday. Org rankings will run on February 10th, and team by team reports begin the next day.
I’ve had two podcasts since my show returned from my holiday break last month, with guests Britt Ghiroli, national baseball writer for the Athletic; and Seattle Mariners prospect Adam Macko, who was born in Slovakia and first learned to play baseball in Bratislava. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Cloud City, by one of my favorite designers (Cacao, Gizmos, Silver & Gold), but it was a huge disappointment.
My last edition of my free email newsletter shared some details of my recent nuptials; I’m overdue for another issue because I’ve been writing the team reports and top 20s. You can still buy The Inside Game and Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: One of the worst and most generally underreported aspects of Trump’s reign of error was the spate of executions of federal inmates while Trump was a lame duck. ProPublica has the inside story of their rush to kill as many people as possible.
- Jeff Passan has the incredible story of outfielder Drew Robinson, his improbable survival from a suicide attempt, and his ongoing effort to come back to baseball despite losing an eye. My colleague Levi Weaver shared his own story of depression in the wake of Robinson’s story.
- “We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.” This editorial is deeply philosophical but ties into multiple issues of our day, including the erosion of privacy and the velocity of misinformation.
- The Guardian looks at the power of Big Lens, the duopoly that controls most of the world’s eyeglasses market.
- Josh Miller, a spring training announcer for the Giants, has resigned after an Arizona state Senator revealed that he was sending her vulgar, misogynistic tweets.
- Tanzania’s government has rejected the COVID-19 vaccine as part of their ongoing denial that the virus even exists in their country, which appears to be run by MAGA people (MATA?).
- Dungeons & Dragons has an anti-Semitism problem, derived from its use of JRR Tolkien’s mythology and non-human races – the dwarves were, by his own admission, a mythical representation of some awful Jewish stereotypes.
- Anti-vaccine terrorists put a temporary halt to a mass vaccination setup at Dodgers Stadium. I have no sympathy for these people. This is terrorism and they should be charged as such, and Facebook should be held responsible for their tacit aid in promoting it.
- Those same anti-vaxxer nuts are also misusing the federal VAERS database to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. If someone uses VAERS to claim the vaccines are unsafe, just ignore them. That data is not clean or reliable enough to use for that purpose.
- That misinformation, combined with systemic inequalities in our health-care system, means that the mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus will spell disaster for our Black communities.
- Speaking of terrorists, one of the people who has been charged with storming the Capitol on January 6th has asked a judge to allow her to travel to Mexico for a “work retreat.” I’ve seen a lot of articles saying permission was granted, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
- Erik Malinowski was right: Never tweet.
- Fifty years of cuts to the top marginal tax rates did not result in “trickle-down” benefits for people in lower income strata, according to a recent study out of LSE (which I may have linked previously, but it came up recently when my daughter asked about JFK and Reagan as Presidents).
- St. Louis is now paying a $5 million settlement to a (Black) protester beaten by four (white) cops who turned out to be an undercover cop himself. Great use of tax funds, guys.
- Rochester police officers pepper-sprayed a suicidal 9-year-old girl, renewing scrutiny of the department’s use of a hood on a Black man who suffocated as a result.
- Did a supermassive black hole influence the evolution of life on earth? Something to muse about, at least.
- Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump continued to enrich themselves as a result of their unappointed, unelected positions in the Administration in 2020, with combined income of at least $23.8 million. The grift worked, folks.
- Copper and Cotton, one of the most acclaimed new restaurant in the Phoenix area of the last few years, is closing as its head chef is moving to Utah.
- Board game news: Jamey Stegmaier, designer and owner of Stonemaier games, asks if the Kickstarter mindset is increasing consumer confusion around things like ‘deluxe’ components and special versions of new games.
- Japanese publisher Oink Games has a Kickstarter up for three new titles, one of which is a reimplementation of three previous game Deep Sea Adventure.
- Tweet of the week:
I was a pretty serious chess player growing up, so I’m sure that identity shapes my thinking about what I want from a board game, which is:
1. A game that is designed well such that the game play is effective and enjoyable
2. A rule book that has been tested for completeness and effectiveness via game testing
3. A complete gaming experience in the core game.
I don’t need fancy extras. I don’t need expansions that fix the game or make a limited game something better or something more.
I want to see, experience, and enjoy the genius of the game design. Good art and all helps, but shiny extras that don’t actually improve the game don’t.
I don’t like all Stonemaier games, but that’s about me. I respect their design, game testing, production, and distribution processes.
I’ve also discovered that expansions and fancy extras do less for me than they do for other people. I do want the components to be well-made, but I’d rather have the base version cost $5 more for that.
Looks like permission was granted for the “work retreat” after all:
https://www.npr.org/sections/insurrection-at-the-capitol/2021/02/05/963661854/u-s-judge-xxxx-accused-rioter-s-request-to-vacation-in-mexico
I think it’s worth pointing out that the judge who granted her request was a Trump appointee.
The Dungeons & Dragons article is a perfect example of the left-wing nonsense that is turning off moderate Democrats like me.
I’m Jewish and played D&D for many years….it never occurred to me that it was anti-Semitic. Nor did it ever occur to me when reading Tolkein’s works that the Dwarves were supposed to be denigrating Jews.
This is a perfect example of activists looking for “racism/discrimination” where none really exists.
The history of dwarves as a Jewish stereotype is actually quite interesting, and that article really doesn’t do it justice. I agree though, as a fellow Jew & fantasy enthusiast, the use of dwarves in modern fantasy doesn’t bother me at all.
Tolkien admitted his dwarves were his fictional representation of Jews.
I’m not Jewish, so I am not saying I found anything in LotR personally offensive, but I don’t think it’s also fair to dismiss this as “left-wing nonsense.” Unflattering portrayals of Jews in literature go back centuries. The “Wandering Jew” is a stock character found throughout literature – The Scarlet Pimpernel has a prominent one at the heart of its story. We can certainly discuss whether Tolkien explicitly using Jews as a model for his most unattractive, vulgar race is offensive without dismissing it.
Just because something never occurred to you before doesn’t mean it’s not true. Furthermore, if mild disagreement with a “left-wing” article is enough to make you doubt your political convictions, then they probably weren’t worth all that much in the first place.
Fellow Jew and D&D player here. I agree that dwarves in 5e don’t come off as an attempt to portray Jews in a particularly negative way. At the same time, given Tolkien’s statements that dwarves are a portrayal of Jews and that LotR is clearly an inspiration for D&D, I can see where people would object. I thought the discussion of phylacteries was more interesting. I’ve also only ever seen it as a translation for tefillin, but I never made the connection since tefillin is one of those words I only use the Hebrew for, whether in prayer or in conversation. To me, that feels like a more explicitly problematic connection.
If you want to see some pretty blatant non-flattering “Jewish” characters- just look to the Ferengi on Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Watto in Star Wars The Phantom Menace.