Stick to baseball, 10/10/21.

My only content for subscribers to The Athletic this week was my contribution to our playoff predictions, where I pointed out that the evidence says playoff predictions by humans are probably no better those by than a dart-throwing monkey. I only got one of the wild-card winners right, and at the moment one of my four LDS picks is down 0 games to 2. Anyway, I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the semi-cooperative horror-themed board game Deranged, which I found too derivative of games like Arkham Horror without offering enough new ideas or mechanics.

On my podcast, I spoke with Jeremy Booth, founder of Program 15 and the Future Stars Series, talking about the 2022 draft’s deep high school class, player development in the majors, and more. You can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I will not have a new episode this week due to travel, but will return on the 18^th.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, although I held off sending one this week with nothing immediate to promote. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The best thing I read this week was this Guardian longread on how the Booker Prize works – how judges are chosen, and how in turn they choose the shortlist and the ultimate winner. The UK’s rough equivalent to our Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Booker confers financial success on nearly all of its winners, often changing the courses of their careers.
• Ed Yong writes that we are unprepared for the next pandemic as we refuse to learn lessons from our mishandling of this one.
• A “dead” oil tanker that has been moored at a Yemeni port for 45 years is in danger of falling apart, sinking, or blowing up, all of which would lead to a massive humanitarian and environmental disaster, with minimal plans to prevent this catastrophe and no help from the Houthi forces that control western Yemen and its Red Sea ports.
• Students who were victims of sexual assault at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical Christian college, found themselves blamed and punished while their abusers often escaped consequences. The same school fired a professor who helped students file a Title IX complaint a few years ago. Just like Jesus told his followers to do!
• You read about the bad art friend, right? You should read about the bad art friend.
• Kellogg workers are on strike, after months of being forced to work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, and now threats to outsource their jobs. You may choose to join me in avoiding buying their products while their workers are fighting for basic rights.
• Case reports continue to show the risk of death and severe illness in children who contract COVID-19, such as the 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who died of cerebral edemas due to COVID infections.
• Yet another ivermectin/COVID-19 study that claimed to show a benefit has serious problems with its data.
• Writing in The Cancer Letter, the newsletter of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who has written several books on the policies of Nazi Germany called out the non-virologist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s recent comparison of COVID-19 mitigation measures to fascism, calling them “fundamentally racist.”
• Moderna is prioritizing profits over public health, keeping prices for its COVID-19 vaccines out of reach of many poorer countries. Is the global benefit of curtailing the pandemic enough that wealthy nations should subsidize vaccinations in poorer ones?
• “Pro-life” Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) declined to stay the execution of a man with the mental capacity of a small child, because nothing says you believe in the sanctity of life like signing off on a state-sponsored murder.
• The vice-chair at the Fed shifted his portfolio towards stock ahead of a big announcement last year, as did two other Fed officials, which should make you ask why people in those positions are allowed to trade in equities at all.
• The “Evolved Apes” NFTs turned out to be a scam. Color me shocked that a new, unregulated market is rife with fraud and con artists.
• The Biden Administration says they want science advisers, but they haven’t been listening to them when it comes to policy choices.
• I know very, very little about this topic, but thought this piece from Matt Yglesias on the “mobilization delusion” of progressives was well argued.
• Literary Hub has a piece on how Rush’s lyricist/drummer Neil Peart helped lure young listeners over to the “dark side” of Ayn Rand, the terrible novelist.
• Board game news: Asmodee imprint Space Cowboys announced a new edition of the out-of-print game Jamaica, a popular family game
• The Kickstarter for Mythwind, a cooperative, asymmetrical game, is over $666,000 as I type this, and keeps going up, with 21 days to go.
• Board & Dice announced Tabannusi: Builders of Ur, a heavy worker placement game co-designed by Daniele Tascini (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan).
• The Kickstarter for North Star Games’ new Alice in Wonderland-themed game Paint the Roses will open up on October 12^th.