Stick to baseball, 3/13/22.

I released my first ranking of draft prospects for 2022 over on The Athletic, and held a live Q&A to take questions about it. I also wrote up the two trades from Saturday night, involving Chris Bassitt and Isiah Kiner-Falefa/Mitch Garver.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Adventures of Robin Hood, a narrative game from the designer of the Legends of Andor, but with simpler mechanics and a clever encounter system with a two-layered board.

I spoke with the Locked On Dodgers podcast in a two-part interview you can watch here and here. I also sent a new issue of my free email newsletter, talking about Monty Python and the development of my sense of humor.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The New York Times asks what it means that even Americans are consuming less beef.
• Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on Grimes, talking about her persona, her upcoming concept album, and that guy.
• Kathryn Schulz, who appeared on my podcast a few weeks ago, wrote about the complicated history of Bambi, the book, as it enters the public domain.
• ProPublica reports on barbaric conditions in Louisiana’s largest juvenile detention facility in Louisiana, part of the race in the Deep South to see which state can get to the 19^th century fastest.
• Conservative billionaires pushing fake news are becoming a major US export, as now a single South Korean oligarch is pushing conspiracy theories to keep the two Koreas at war.
• Vulture has a wonderful interview with Murderville showrunner Krister Johnson on the “treasure chest” of in-jokes, Easter eggs, and other small gags on Homestar Runner.
• Melissa Rodriguez, the former executive chef at Del Posto, is now opening three new restaurants in that space, including a high-end pizzeria. Resy interviewed her about the venture, the pandemic, and the end of Del Posto (which was good, but wildly overpriced).
• Several research papers still in the pre-print stage have put more nails in the coffin of the lab-leak hypothesis have appeared in the last two weeks. The New Republic looks at how we can learn from this to try to prevent the next zoonotic pandemic.
• The best path forward now is for institutions to work to improve mitigation efforts, including encouraging further vaccinations.
• Cobb County is taking a big loss on its public funding of Truist Park. This Axios piece has a quick summary of the same.
• Stop acting like pediatric deaths from COVID-19 don’t matter because of their numbers. Those children had names.
• Mask requirements in schools reduced COVID-19 cases. We’re going to see increases in cases again now that schools everywhere are lifting mask mandates.
• I don’t understand how asking people to harass a journal editor to try to short-circuit the peer review process is remotely ethical, but Alina Chan, who wrote a book that pushes the lab-leak hypothesis, is long gone around the bend at this point.
• The Philadelphia Inquirer had a long article on where to eat and what to do in Wilmington, hitting our big 3 fine-dining restaurants (Le Cavalier, La Fia, and Bardea), and several other favorite spots of ours (Swigg, Wilma’s, De.co Food Hall, The Queen), although they whiffed badly with some of their inclusions (Mrs. Robino’s, Wilmington Country Store).
• ABC News ran a long segment (about 12 minutes) on the lack of any evidence to support the use of ivermectin against COVID-19.
• Now bot accounts are using false fact-checks to spread fake news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Tennessee Governor Bill Lee appointed an arms dealer who sold ammunition to the Aurora mass shooter to the state’s board of education, not long after appointing a 9/11 hoaxer to the state’s “textbook commission.” What a shitshow.
• Brandon Tensley writes at CNN about how and why the GOP is targeting LGBTQ+ rights across the south and far west. I think the answer is simple: They’re pandering to their evangelical base. This is why the raving lunatics running Idaho want life in prison for anyone providing gender-affirming care to trans kids.
• And in Texas, a family that once invited Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife to dinner found themselves the target of one of the state’s witch-hunt investigations into families with trans kids. Shame on anyone who votes Republican in Texas this year. This policy is going to lead to more suicides and grievous harm to vulnerable people, all to satisfy a small population of bigots.
• Disney has been censoring same-sex affection in Pixar’s films, according to several employees, who wrote a letter also demanding that the company stop donating to Florida legislators who voted for the state’s “don’t say gay” bill.
• A Georgia man took an $85,000 SBA loan for his business, and then spent two-thirds of it on a rare Pokémon card.
• An American man wanted on rape and sexual assault charges in Utah is accused of faking his own death and pretending to be someone else in a COVID ward in Scotland, where he’s since married a British woman. The man, suspected of being George Rossi, has been identified by his tattoos, and his adoptive father also says that it’s him.
• A Trump-appointed judge dismissed a complaint against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, alleging that his support of the January 6^th insurrection made him ineligible to run for office, because people might take up arms otherwise.
• Apparently Trump has been holding “contests” where small-donor dollars would win trips to meet him, but then they never award the prizes, according to a report from the Washington Post.
• Board game news: Former Z-Man Games employees have founded a new publisher, Moon Crab Games, and announced their first game, Leviathan Wilds, a cooperative, tactical game of movement on various boards representing massive creatures the players try to climb.
• Hamlet, a cute town-building game from the designer of the lovely game Petrichor, is fully funded already on Kickstarter.
• So is Tiwanaku (formerly known as Pachamama), a Minesweeper-inspired board game from the publishers of Magic Maze.
• And so is Envelopes of Cash, a game about corrupt recruiting in college football (so, you know, reality), designed by a reader of mine.