Stick to baseball, 5/28/22.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I published my redraft of the 2012 draft class, as well as the associated look at the first-rounders who didn’t make the cut for the redraft.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Azul: Queen’s Garden, the fourth game in the Azul series, which is solid on its own but also has no real mechanical connection to the original, and has a fiddly placement rule that really bothered me.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to my friend Jonathan Mayo about this year’s draft, including our different mocks that went up on May 19^th. (Here’s mine, for subscribers to the Athletic, and here’s Jonathan’s.) You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I do send out a free email newsletter about twice a month, and now I realize I’m due for another one. My two 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.

And now, the links…

• The federal government has spent over $2 billion on what should have been an effort to save wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, but instead the money mostly went to prop up failing hatcheries, while the wild salmon population keeps dropping.

• The hunt for nonexistent election fraud in Wisconsin has been powered by a hypnotherapist and failed politician running what appears to be a grift, whether or not he actually believes in the Bie Lie.

• People who fight new development in their areas (often referred to as NIMBYs,” for “Not In My Backyard,”) under the guise of opposing overpopulation or fighting climate change are motivated by racism, xenophobia, or just outright misanthropy. We’re threatened less with overpopulation than with an aging global population, declining fertility, and too many people spread over too much space.

• If we can’t listen to ‘imperfect’ victims like Amber Heard, it will be the death of the #MeToo movement, writes Martha Gill in the Guardian.

• Speaking of which, here’s a twitter thread on men who were supposedly “canceled” for sexual harassments or assaults, and how successful they’ve been since. I don’t think every tweet here is accurate, as some of these men clearly have been worse off, but the gist is accurate.

• San Francisco Pride Parade organizers asked police, who typically march in the event, to do so in plainclothes. So the cops withdrew from the event, and now the Mayor has, too.

• Gabe Kapler wrote on his personal site about his decision to stop coming out on the field for the national anthem, calling the performative exercise “participating in a self congratulatory glorification of the ONLY country where these mass shootings take place.” I haven’t stood for the anthem in several years now, in accordance with my own conscience. That’s all the anthem is – performative patriotism.

• You want one specific reason why? How about Oklahoma rushing to ban trans students from using the proper bathrooms, a law designed to hurt some of the most vulnerable people in our society while solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

• Republicans’ favorite answer to calls for gun control – that a “good guy with a gun” would prevent these massacres – was thoroughly eviscerated this week in Uvalde, as the so-called good guys, with guns and badges, did nothing. Except, of course, pinning parents to the ground.

• Here’s a list of all the laws Texas passed last year that made it easier for the Uvalde shooter to get an assault rifle the minute he turned 18.

• The real reason we don’t have gun control in the U.S.? It’s the tyranny of the minority provided by the structure of the U.S. Senate.

• Republicans love to talk about “pedophiles” and “groomers” when referring to LGBTQ+ people, or just anyone they don’t like, which is some serious projection considering how many prominent Republican politicians have been accused or convicted of sex crimes.

• Or how about the Oregon Republican Congressional candidate who is anti-abortion, but who paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion (according to her)?

• Meanwhile, the party’s hero appeared at CPAC along with a Hungarian talkshow host who has called Jews “stinking excrement” and the same clown who pushed the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory several years ago.

• Scientific American weighs in on the rise in monkeypox cases around the world with some facts and lukewarm takes.

• Big Oil has already given a million dollars to fuel Republican candidates who back(ed) the January 6^th insurrection efforts.

• Certain hotels are considering using NFTs to create a secondary market for reservations – which would mean you’re buying your reservation, and would have no way to cancel it. You’d have to sell it to the next sucker.

• Paste‘s Clare Martin writes about John Mulaney’s decision to bring Dave Chappelle on stage, unannounced, at his comedy show, and the myth of the “good ones.”

• Dr. Paul Sax wrote a post in praise of ophthalmologist Dr. Will Flanary, whom you may know as Dr. Glaucomflecken, the very popular TikTok account where he skewers America’s dysfunctional health care system, the journal review process, and orthopedic surgeons. Dr. Flanary was the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony for the Yale School of Medicine this past week.

• Consequence of Sound offered one tribute (among many) to the late Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode, who died at age 60 this week.

• A new research paper argues that early RNA molecules may have allowed peptides to grow on them, which then helped the RNA molecules become more complex, which would be a key finding in explaining the origins of life.

• Board game news: Arcs, the latest game from Leder Games (Root, Fort, Oath), is now on Kickstarter.

• I missed this Kickstarter, but Fliptown looks like a pretty solid roll-and-write, due out next March. I’ll post this link again if they allow late pledges at some point.

• Offline Editions announced a new game, Kyudo, from designer Bruno Cathala, who also designed Kingdomino and Five Tribes. (Link in French, but there’s a video teaser.)