For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote two pieces this week, one on the Angels’ signing of Tyler Anderson and the Yankees’ re-signing of Anthony Rizzo, and one on four trades from earlier this week before teams had to set their 40-man rosters. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.
On The Keith Law Show, I spoke to Jessica Grose, New York Times opinion writer and author of the new book Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood, about the book and what we might do to make being a working mother easier in the U.S. You can pre-order her book, which is due out December 6th, and you can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
With Twitter imploding, you can find me in a bunch of other places, including Facebook, Instagram, counter.social, and cohost, as well as here and on my free email newsletter, which went out again yesterday. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: Population projections have the stretch of West African coastline that runs from Lagos, Nigeria, to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, becoming the largest zone of continuous, dense habitation on earth by 2100, with about 500 million people in it. The Guardian looks at what this means for the region, its people, and the planet as a whole.
- Clint Smith’s story in the Atlantic on his visits to Holocaust memorial sites and what they might tell us about how to grapple with our own shameful past is one of the best things you’ll read this year.
- And this New York Times Magazine article on the theft of an Afghan baby by a network of American evangelical Christians should win a Pulitzer. The lawsuit is still ongoing, but we should not be in the practice of stealing babies from countries we invade.
- The United States lags badly behind other developed nations in researching and preventing stillbirths. We still have 20,000 stillbirths every year in the U.S., and at least a quarter of them are (likely) preventable.
- A woman visiting Ohio had a miscarriage and began to hemorrhage. Because of Ohio’s anti-abortion law, the emergency room sent her home to wait because they couldn’t “prove there was no fetal development.” This is how these religiously-motivated laws will kill women.
- I was obsessed with the computer game Age of Empires when it first came out in the late 1990s. WIRED has an interview with the current CEO of Microsoft Gaming and the head of the studio that makes the Age games as the game celebrates its 25th anniversary and two new civilizations were added to the most recent version, Age of Empires IV.
- ProPublica has the inside story of how anti-abortion groups helped write Tennessee’s extremely strict ban on the medical procedure and are working to defend it.
- Colombia faces a difficult challenge as its new President wants to stop extracting fossil fuels and move to climate-friendly energy sources, including the lack of a transition plan for affected workers.
- This 12-minute BBC podcast looks at online harassment and threats against scientists investigating the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
- The CARES Act led to the release of 11,000 inmates from federal prisons during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 17 reoffended. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world and we spend nearly $200 billion just to keep people in prison. Maybe we should rethink this?
- A new research paper in Nature found evidence that climate change is increasing the risk of bat pathogens spilling over into humans.
- Yoel Roth was the head of trust and safety at Twitter, and wrote an op ed explaining why he quit a few weeks after Elon Musk took over the site. It’s not good, but it also explains how the company’s dependence on advertisers may prevent Musk from turning it into 8chan. Roth himself has some bigoted tweets from 10+ years ago.
- Eighteen unvaccinated Ohio children, all but one under the age of 5, have contracted measles in an ongoing outbreak across two day care facilities. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses we know, and it can cause death up to ten years after the infection from a progressive and incurable neurological condition called SSPE.
- More anti-vax loons are demanding “vaccine-free” blood and are trying to set up so-called “safe” blood banks.
- Meanwhile, America’s Frontline Doctors, a quack group that took in millions from prescribing useless COVID-19 treatments and offering online “consultations,” is imploding now because founder and January 6th insurrectionist Simone Gold may have been embezzling the group’s funds for personal gain.
- Also, it appears that someone contracted dengue fever from a mosquito bite in Arizona. Climate change makes this almost inevitable.
- Tucker Carlson’s attempt to play kingmaker this election season ended mostly with embarrassing defeats.
- It’s a weak substitute for the real thing, but Democrats should codify Roe v. Wade right now, and force SCOTUS – with five justices who are religious zealots or otherwise openly anti-abortion – to grapple with it, according to The Nation’s Elie Mystal.
- Mystal also wrote elsewhere about how Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the House to his fellow Republicans by gutting voting rights laws.
- Tom Scocca writes that Trump’s hold on the GOP is stronger than ever despite the drubbing many of his preferred candidates took in the midterms.
- The Virginia state education department has proposed major changes to social studies standards, written by five new appointees of the state’s Republican governor. Educators oppose the changes, calling them jingoistic and derogatory towards non-whites.
- Moms for Liberty, the astroturfing, pro-white/anti-LGBT activist group that’s been targeting school board elections, threw out a Black superintendent in South Carolina and banned critical race theory
- A Connecticut school district is so wedded to its racist mascot (the Redmen) that they’re forgoing $94,000 in state funding just to keep it.
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is shipping more migrants to Philadelphia in another instance of human trafficking, but the government of the City of Brotherly Love has posted a list of resources for folks who want to help welcome these new residents. Love > hate.
- And Texas Republicans have filed a bill that would criminalize gender-affirming care for minors – yes, putting parents in prison for getting medical care for their kids. Why is MLB putting the All-Star Game there?
- The Biden Administration is giving Saudi Arabian “Prime Minister” Mohammed bin Salman immunity from a lawsuit filed by the fiancée of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, because oil.
- All the news about Republicans investimigrating Hunter Biden’s laptop or something is overshadowing the real damage they’re going to do by going after science agencies.
- Board game news: Pandasaurus Games owners Molly Wardlaw and Nathan McNair face accusations from former employees of creating a toxic workplace environment through “negligence, mismanagement, and manipulation.” I have met Molly and Nathan, although I can’t say I know either of them well, and I’ve reviewed many Pandasaurus Games over the years. The company denied the allegations and their response is at the bottom of the linked article.
- Tabriz, the new game from the co-designer of the amazing Cascadia, is crowdfunding on Gamefound for two more days.