Stick to baseball, 4/2/22.

I had three posts for subscribers to the Athletic in the last ten days, two scouting notebooks from the Cactus League (here’s one, here’s the other), and my annual breakout candidates post. That last one is shorter than usual because I just couldn’t confidently back any other names for it.

I’m working on the next edition of my free email newsletter. You can find both of my books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, in paperback anywhere books are sold, including Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

• This is an extremely long read, even by longread standards, but if you want to understand why the vast majority of scientists accept a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 as the most likely explanation, read Philip Markolin’s post.
• The University of Pennsylvania engaged in an unconscionable witch hunt against one of its own students, a victim of physical and sexual abuse whose mother appears to have told the school her daughter lied on her applications there and to the Rhodes Scholarship program. She is suing the school, which has not responded publicly to this article.
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott loves to brag about his so-called “border initiative,” but the evidence doesn’t support his claims.
• The Guardian has a look inside online cryptocurrency communities (although I suppose an offline one would be a bit weird), examining the sorts of people involved in that world, many of whom don’t fit the stereotypes.
• Leonard Leo is stepping down as head of the arch-right, Uihlein-funded opinion site The Federalist to found a new conservative advocacy group, probably funded by more dark money. Leo had disproportionate influence in the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary.
• The “CHEST” protocol supposedly used large doses of vitamin C to fight sepsis. It appears that the protocol’s creator, Dr. Paul Marik, fabricated his results.
• The editorial board of Nature argues that this is a terrible time to stop tracking COVID-19.
• Bitcoin is a disaster for our environment. Can we stop it?
• With scientists under attack for nothing more than doing their jobs, who will step in to defend and protect them?
• It’s no longer the main story from the awards, but Justin Chang pointed out that the improvement in the quality of Oscar nominees has come with the telecast’s increasing disdain for those same movies.
• Don’t Look Up was terrible, and director/co-writer Adam McKay really doesn’t get why.
• Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter published commentary from an Oscar voter who remained anonymous but was willing to show himself as a racist, retrograde asshole. I’m not sure why the Academy wouldn’t sift through the ballots to identify the voter and ban him from voting.
• The Governor of Utah vetoed the state’s bill against trans athletes, and his letter explaining why is worth reading. The transphobic theocrats in the state legislature overrode his veto, though. This was all over one athlete, by the way.

• South Dakota Republicans declined to impeach their attorney general even though he killed a man in a hit-and-run accident. He’s going to get off with zero consequences for the homicide.
• The University of Texas-Austin denied tenure to a pregnant professor and now has to pay her $3 million after losing a lawsuit. That’s good, but will it discourage them or any other university from doing it again?
• A Tennessee nurse made a medication error that killed a patient, admitted it immediately, and was still found guilty of homicide by a jury. I’m not sure how this helps medical safety. I do think it might deter people from becoming nurses in Tennessee.
• There’s a new wave of specialty coffee shops in India, a country that would traditionally export its best coffee to developed countries.
• Children are bearing the brunt of Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.
• A Wilmington, Delaware, teacher who mentored dozens of kids and became a popular advocate for students from the city died in a motorcycle accident last month.
• NEON announced that its film Memoria will go on permanent tour in cinemas around the country, which is incredibly ableist – many people can’t go to movie theaters for COVID-19 or other reasons.
• Board game news: The legacy game Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isle Nublar has one more week on Kickstarter.
• Nightmare Cathedral, what appears to a midweight area control and worker-placement game from the publishers of Teotihuacan and Tekhenu, is on Gamefound for another 11 days.
• Stefan Fatsis has a fun story about a ridiculous coincidence in competitive Scrabble.