biodiversity

Stick to baseball, 8/26/23.

Three new pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic: Some thoughts on Shohei Ohtani’s free agency in the wake of his torn UCL; a post mortem after the White Sox fired Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn; and why college conference realignment is probably bad for college baseball.

At Paste, I reviewed the board game Hickory Dickory, which has a very cute theme and some clever mechanics but I think might just be overdesigned in the end. I do like it, just with reservations.

On the Keith Law Show, I spoke with Joe Posnanski about his upcoming book Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, which comes out on September 5^th. You can listen & subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Quillette has a lengthy explanation of the failed lab-leak hypothesis around COVID-19’s origins, and the people who still refuse to accept its failure.
Vanity Fair gives the previously untold story of a Texas mom who was abducted by a serial killer in 1981 and talked him into letting her go by leaning on her deep religious faith.
Writing in the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow has an unflattering profile of Elon Musk and the billionaire’s increasing influence over public policy.
ProPublica provides the coda to their coverage of Illinois student Amara Harris, who was given a ticket by police when she was accused of stealing a fellow student’s AirPods. She won her case when a jury in Naperville determined that she did not knowingly take the AirPods (she thought they were hers and returned them when approached), and the story highlights the use of police in schools for incidents that could be handled first by school officials.
The man who shot a California store owner for flying a Pride flag was a far-right conspiracy theorist who followed the religious zealot Matt Walsh and espoused false-flag hoaxes and climate change denial.
Oppenheimer left out a key part of the history of nuclear weapons: the exploitation of Congolese people who mined the uranium ore by hand, including a massacre of workers who tried to bargain for higher wages in 1941.
This 2022 article from Vice explains productivity cafes, a Japanese trend of coffee shops and bars where you tell the employees the task you’re trying to finish when you enter and they won’t let you leave until you’ve finished (e.g., writing a chapter).
FIFA just temporarily suspended Luis Rubiales, the President of the Spanish football federation, after he kissed Spanish player Jenni Hermoso on the lips without her consent and subsequently claimed that she did consent in the wake of calls for him to resign.
A Maine hospital is threatening to sue a 15-year-old college student for defamation over his petition calling for increased patient safety at their facility. FIRE has stepped in to demand that Northern Light retract the threat, citing Maine’s anti-SLAPP law.
Guitar legend Carlos Santana went on a bizarre anti-trans rant during a recent concert in Atlantic City.
A goal that seemed impossible just a few years ago is in sight – we might be able to eradicate wild polio in the wild, which would make it just the third disease we’ve eradicated after smallpox and rinderpest.
Delaware has joined the growing list of states and cities prohibiting restaurants from using polystyrene containers, which don’t break down in landfills and can leach chemicals into the water supply.
The Baltimore Banner once again calls out Orioles owner/failson John Angelos for how his antics are overshadowing the team’s incredible season. We’re now over seven months past his promise to open the team’s books.
Tiny forests of native flora can help increase biodiversity and grab some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, growing even on spaces that might seem too small to support this kind of horticulture.
One version of a single gene may increase your chances of developing long COVID after infection.

Stick to baseball, 9/12/20.

I had several posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week. One was another scouting notebook looking at several top 100 prospects who debuted recently, including Ian Anderson, Ke’Bryan Hayes, and Deivi Garcia. Another looked at what the planned changes to the 2021 draft might mean in practice. The third was a Q&A with our Red Sox beat writer Jen McCaffrey, discussing the state of Boston’s farm system. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Nova Luna, one of the nominees for this year’s Spiel des Jahres award. It’s a reboot of an earlier game called Habitats, rethemed and redesigned by Uwe Rosenberg (Patchwork, Agricola). It’s very good, and definitely good for family play with kids 8 and up.

I’ve resumed writing my email newsletter more regularly recently, helped by the resumption of the baseball season and a few other things that have made life a bit more normal. Also, here’s your reminder that my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is available on bookshop.org and anywhere you buy books.

Charles Peterson, the Cardinals’ area scout in South Carolina and Georgia, has COVID-19 and is on a ventilator. You can join me in donating to his GoFundMe here … and maybe consider what it would be like to live in a country where we didn’t have to do this to pay our medical bills.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Susanna Clarke’s long-awaited second novel, Piranesi, comes out on Tuesday. The New Yorker has a lengthy profile of the author, who has suffered from an undiagnosed malady for much of the last fifteen years that sapped her energy and led to her writing hiatus.
BuzzFeed broke the story that billionaire Peter Thiel, who contributed significant funds to Trump’s campaign in 2016 and whose company Palantir holds numerous government contracts, cultivated contacts with white nationalist groups to gain their support for Trump before the last Presidential election, even meeting with the white supremacist Kevin De Anna.
Seattle Mariners prospect Taylor Trammell wrote a powerful essay for the Players’ Tribune that says that Baseball is Not Black Enough.
The Deadspin employees who resigned en masse last October have returned as Defector, a new, subscription-only site that promises the same sort of content Deadspin provided. The sports media world certainly has missed having some sort of watchdog to cover and spread
Here’s a discussion paper (equivalent, I think, to a pre-print, and not peer reviewed) that details the spread of COVID-19 as a result of the Sturgis motorcycle rally. And here’s a review of some problems in the pre-print.
The New York Times interviewed playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar, the new head of PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression and gives out numerous literary awards through its various chapters (including the PEN/Faulkner and PEN/Hemingway awards).
Regardless of what your bubble on the internet told you, the government did not break up a child sex trafficking ring in Georgia.
America Can’t Take Another Four Years of This Lethal Idiot.
A New York Daily News report found that the Trump Administration stole $4 million from a fund set up to pay for FDNY firefighters and medics still dealing with ill effects from 9/11.
Science spoke to Dr. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist who testified before Congress in May and has emphasized the need for stronger measures to combat the pandemic.
Two-thirds of the world’s wildlife vanished in the last fifty years due to human activity.
Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former Sheriff of Maricopa County , is on Cameo, so a furry convention hired him to welcome them to Arizona – and he did it because he didn’t know what a furry was.
This meme seems like it will be useful forever:

pic.twitter.com/WY362C4r2I
— Ireland Simpsons Fans (@iresimpsonsfans) September 10, 2020

Stick to baseball, 8/26/23.

Stick to baseball, 9/12/20.

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