Just a quick note from me this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the Angels’ trade for Hunter Renfroe in exchange for three fringy reliever types, with notes from Sam Blum as well. I did do my annual livestream where I take your questions while I spatchcock a turkey, although the video quality appears to be terrible. I blame Twitter.
For Paste, I reviewed Splendor Duel and Botanik, two new small-box two-player games from the publisher Space Cowboys. Splendor Duel is a strictly two-player spinoff of the wonderful game Splendor, adding direct player interaction and special powers on the cards that make it more than two-player solitaire, which can be true of the original.
I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter last week. I’m on a bunch of wannabe Twitter replacement sites, including Post.news, Hive (keithlaw), and Counter Social, plus the usual Facebook and Instagram links. 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: ProPublica leads the way again, with a story on how a woman’s 911 call when her baby died was used to convict her of killing him, thanks to the police’s use of an evidence-free technique called “911 call analysis.”
- The World Professional Association for Transgender Health has issued a lengthy rebuttal to a recent New York Times article that claimed harm from puberty blockers that isn’t supported by available research. The report also questions whether the authors of the Times article misquoted some sources.
- A sheriff in a rural county in northern Minnesota has been accused of misusing corporate funds given to his office, arresting protesters against a water pipeline on tar sands in the county, and now retaliating against lawyers seeking to subpoena him
- The head of the Autism Science Foundation writes about the need to recognize profound autism as a distinct diagnosis from or within that of autism spectrum disorder, arguing that the people advocating for autistic rights represent just one type of autism diagnosis.
- The most likely GOP nominee for President in 2024 hosted white nationalist antisemite Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago this week.
- Anti-vax accounts are pretending to be legitimate by buying the blue check mark, allowing them to spread misinformation more widely, as Twitter appears to have given up on moderating content on its site.
- They’re also pushing a bullshit documentary called Died Suddenly that claims many people died suddenly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine – some of who are, in fact, not dead – and are harassing those people’s loved ones online, claiming they’re part of some sort of cover-up.
- This spike in militant anti-vaccine activity is leading to rises in measles cases, as measles is extremely contagious but depends on a pool of unvaccinated hosts, since the MMR vaccine is one of the most effective we have.
- Meanwhile, some former Twitter employees expressed their dismay at Twitter’s decision to reinstate twice-impeached former President Trump’s account. Of course, there are a lot of former Twitter employees these days.
- The New Republic examines Elon Musk’s implied anti-trans agenda, given his moves so far.
- The Washington Post interviewed dril about the state of Twitter. I admit it wasn’t quite as funny as I’d hoped it would be.
- The Atlantic wins for the best headline of the week, with Trump’s Terrifically Stupid Return to Twitter.
- Georgetown history professor Thomas Zimmer posted an interesting if disturbing thread on Musk’s lurch to the right and his embrace of an anti-democratic worldview, arguing as well that Twitter’s demise will be bad for democracy across the globe.
- A Christian (Baptist) preacher in Washington state said the massacre of five LGBTQ+ people at a club in Colorado Springs was “a good thing.”
- And it’s a vicious cycle, as the flood of anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech coming from the right leads to more violence, which spurs on more hate speech, and so on.
- The same far-right is now attacking the hero who stopped the Club Q shooter, calling him a “groomer” and a slur for gay men, led by the same troll who started the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy.
- Republicans are now trying to pass laws restricting investment firms from pursuing climate change-friendly policies, like divesting in fossil fuel producers, calling them “anti-boycott” laws.
- Government officials and candidates have visited Trump’s properties over 500 times, even continuing to do so in the wake of the January 6th insurrection.
- The Post’s Philip Bump argues that the Supreme Court has lost any justification for its claims of being above the partisan fray, with the news that Samuel Alito leaked a decision back in 2014 just the latest in a series of moves showing how polluted the institution has become.
- Meanwhile, Amy Coney Barrett, who isn’t even one of the two most conservative justices on the court, has yet to recuse herself from a case involving LGBTQ+ rights given her own membership in a religious group that practices the same sort of discrimination.
- The BBC reports on the kenari nut, a crop that may be about to boom as a possible dairy substitute, while also potentially driving economic growth in Indonesia.
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette co-owner Allan Block and his wife Susan responded to a question about why he won’t settle with striking workers with a “fuck you” and a slap (video included). You can support the strikers in several ways, including reading their strike paper at Union Progress.
- Board game news: Z-Man Games announced Mists over Carcassonne, a new cooperative spinoff of Carcassonne, due out in January.
- Holy Grail Games has a Kickstarter going for Copan: Dying City, a worker-placement game where resources get scarcer as the game progresses and the city of the title collapses.