For subscribers to The Athletic, I posted a minor league scouting notebook, with comments on players from the Red Sox, Orioles, Rays, and Nats systems. My first mock draft for 2022 will go up on Thursday, May 19th, and I’ll do some sort of chat or Q&A around it that afternoon.
At Polygon, I reviewed Ark Nova, the best new game I’ve played so far this year, a more complex title that draws heavily on Terraforming Mars but with streamlined rules and better art.
I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter yesterday, and I have to thank all of you who’ve sent such kind replies. I mentioned the possibility of an in-person event in London in August, and it looks like we’re going to be able to make that happen, with the help of a reader who works at a bookshop there. Speaking of books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game are both available in paperback, and you can buy them at your local independent book store or at Bookshop.org.
On The Keith Law Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell for a show last week. I was on the move most of this week (and then traveled again Thursday night) and didn’t have a recording window until Thursday morning morning, so I recorded next week’s episode with guest Jonathan Higgs of Everything Everything.
And now, the links…
- The New York Times ran a multi-part series on how Tucker Carlson became the king of cable ‘news’ by leaning into white nationalism.
- Far too many police departments are using far-right trainers to help teach their cops.
- An Alabama OB/GYN explained what will happen to women’s health when the state’s theocrats finally get their wish and make abortion illegal, including a lot more maternal deaths, just like Jesus wanted.
- AIPAC is working with the GOP to pour money into Democratic primary races to target anyone who might possibly at some point say something nice about Palestinian rights. You can support the progressive candidates they’re attacking here.
- One of the more toxic figures in the board game (and sci-fi) worlds, Jon Del Arroz, was accepted as a member by GAMA, the Game Manufacturers’ Association and group that organizes the annual Origins board game convention in Columbus, and was immediately called out for his history of sexist and transphobic commentary. GAMA suspended him from their Facebook group, and now he’s threatening to sue them, as he’s done in other cases (including winning one suit where a group called him ‘racist’). It does remind me of a certain MLB pitcher’s tendency to sue or threaten to sue everyone…
- The New Yorker looks at the strange life and disappearance of mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, one of the most important figures in the creation of the field of algebraic geometry.
- The COVID-19 outbreaks in U.S. meatpacking plants in 2020 were the result of years of corporate safety violations and a coordinated effort with the Trump administration.
- This 2019 piece looks at ethical and economic questions around a maize plant discovered on indigenous land in Mexico that can fix its own nitrogen (with the help of a symbiotic bacterium), which could be a massive boon to the global food supply. Who actually shares in this potential wealth?
- I reviewed Honorée Fannone Jeffers’ incredible debut novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois earlier this week, and in the book she mentions “The Weeping Time,” a large slave auction held in Savannah in 1859 that was especially cruel to its victims. I wasn’t familiar with the story and found this 2014 Atlantic story on the largely forgotten tragedy.
- Ticks are spreading across the U.S., abetted by increased (human & animal) mobility and climate change, and bringing new diseases with them.
- The 2021 experiment where a biotech firm released genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys has been a success, although proving its effect on long-term health outcomes will be difficult.
- Amanda Makulec writes in the New York Times about how anti-vaxxer assholes used the death of her 3-month-old baby to try to claim the COVID-19 vaccines caused it so they could discourage pregnant women from getting these safe, effective vaccines.
- The Tennessee nurse who was convicted of criminally negligent homicide after she accidentally adminstered the wrong medication to a patient received three years of probation but no jail time. Hundreds of nurses who were outside the courthouse protesting the prosecution cheered the decision. Prosecutions for medical errors are extremely rare, and criminalizing them is a dangerous precedent.
- The women’s lacrosse team from Delaware State University, an HBCU in Dover, was racially profiled and threatened by a couple of good ol’ boy cops in Georgia. The school is filing a civil rights complaint.
- PBS reports on the rise in lawn alternatives to grass, which requires a lot of water and chemical treatment to maintain.
- Now Italy is investigating whether commentators on its news programs are being paid by the Kremlin to spread disinformation.
- Marjorie Taylor Greene may have used campaign funds to buy herself a luxury car, according to FEC records. The grift goes on till the break of dawn…
- Why do so many people think Amber Heard is lying? And why would any woman risk coming forward with stories of abuse given the treatment she’s received?
- Margaret Atwood on how the Supreme Court is trying to make The Handmaid’s Tale a true story.
- Derek Thompson writes about the death spiral of our culture wars.
- Sounds like David Simon’s new limited series We Own This City is worth watching.
- A brand-new third edition of Reiner Knizia’s classic game RA is already funded on Gamefound.