Stick to baseball, 3/5/22.

I answered some questions on the Blue Jays’ farm system this week, which was a transcription of my appearance on our Spin Rates podcast. The Klawchats returned this week. I’m planning to start written draft coverage this upcoming week with a top 30.

On my own podcast, my guest was author and journalist Kathryn Schulz, talking about her wonderful new memoir Lost and Found, about the death of her father and how she met and married her wife, the author Casey Cep. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. I appeared on the Romantic About Baseball podcast as well.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Why are Wisconsin judges charging women who accuse their husbands of abuse? ProPublica documents the case of one woman who did just that and lost custody of her four kids because the judge charged her with contempt four times and ordered her arrest.
• The New Yorker has a tremendous interview with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, conducted by Helen Rosner, as his new book The Wok hits shelves on Tuesday.
• My friend Tim Grierson wrote about Tears for Fears’ enduring hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
• I don’t know if this New York Times piece, on how RFK Jr.’s family friends feel about his descent into anti-vaxx grifting, is helpful or not.
• Two new pre-prints show more evidence for a zoonotic origin for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. There’s also a follow-up thread that underscores one of the findings that wasn’t well-covered in that article. Needless to say, the lab-leak grifters were quick to attack – the author of a book that depends on the lab-leak hypothesis asked her followers on twitter to harass one of the journal’s editors to try to stop publication, and is trying increasingly desperate attacks on the pre-prints.
• Also, a new journal article found that gender-affirming care improved mental health outcomes in transgender children. Just in case you weren’t clear on what was going on in Texas and anywhere the Republican Party is in charge. Oh, Texas Children’s Hospital has paused hormone therapies for trans kids, thanks to the state’s directive. These could be your kids. We should all be outraged.
• Of course, now pro-Putin propaganda is flooding anti-vax groups online, along with the usual anti-science and anti-Semitic nonsense.
• There’s no evidence that wearing a mask leads to physical or psychological harm for kids. They don’t cause carbon dioxide poisoning, don’t lead to developmental delays, and help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
• The Biden Administration’s most recent moves have killed our collective approach to slowing the pandemic, by taking measures designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society and making them into personal decisions.
• Now anti-vaxxers are trying to convince parents not to take their kids to the pediatrician.
• Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and state Sen. Wendy Rogers are both directly connected to white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The connection may be part of why Ducey declined to run for the U.S. Senate this week.
• Supreme Court nominations have become a farce because of a Supreme Court ruling, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
• While nobody was paying much attention, Trump endorsed a right-wing plan to take over the GOP – and steal an election or two.
• The newly-elected government of Honduras is going to ban open-pit mining, a profitable but environmentally disastrous practice.
• A small bit of good environmental news: the scourge of purple sea urchins that has devastated the California coast’s kelp forests has led to a new industry that harvests and farms the urchins to sell uni, the roe of sea urchins often found at sushi restaurants, in turn easing some of the pressure on the kelp forests.
• Missouri lawmakers are rushing to legalize sports betting, but only in casinos and sports stadiums. So who’s funding them?
• Legendary video game designer Sid Meier (Civilization, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon) warned of the dangers of the industry’s shift towards in-game purchases.
• My friend Zabe Bent was quoted in a brief NY Times piece on how best to design bike lanes in cities.
• Board game news: Capstone Games opened pre-orders for the Terra Mystica: Big Box, including the base game, two expansions, and a solo “Automa” mode, for $149.95.
• Library Labyrinth, a cooperative library-themed board game from the left-wing publisher Dissent Games, is now on Kickstarter.