My big item this week was my annual ranking of the top board games of the year for Paste, which runs 15 titles deep (plus a bonus for the best reissue). My music rankings will go up here next week, and I’ll have a PAX Unplugged recap at Paste next week too.

Nothing new at the Athletic from me, as I work on prospect rankings and there are no transactions to cover. I’ll do a chat next week, though, even if it’s mostly non-baseball stuff.

On The Keith Law Show, I spoke with Nik Sharma, author of the great cookbooks Season and The Flavor Equation, about those books, underused ingredients, and his unusual career arc. You can subscribe and listen on iTunes and Spotify.

I will also send out another edition of my free email newsletter this week, although I have a feeling with baking plans and the kids home I am already setting myself up for failure. And one last time, here’s another reminder that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has emerged as one of the most dangerous anti-vaccine propagandists in the world, and it’s made his “charity” a ton of money. He also gave a slightly unhinged interview to Gawker, in which he refuses to admit he invoked the Holocaust as a comparison to vaccine mandates in his book. (He already did this back in 2015, and apologized. He’s just back on his bullshit.) He’s also suing a blogger who wrote that he spoke at a rally with German far-right figures back in August – which he did, at a rally heavily attended by neo-Nazis.
• Utah is the second-driest state in the country, but rejects water-conservation efforts, thanks to lobbyists and Republican politicians. (Insert joke about it being a dry state here.)
• The Atlantic looks at the actual harm done by the right-wing’s fake child-sex-ring panics of the last few years (think Wayfair). Sex trafficking is real. You don’t need to buy into a conspiracy theory for that.
• You probably already saw the Atlantic’s extremely long piece on how Trump and his acolytes are well on their way to stealing the 2024 election.
• The New Yorker has the crazy story of a Welshman who threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin keys – and the bitcoin would now be worth a half a billion dollars, except that the town that controls the dump where his hard drive is located won’t let him dig for it.
• Geraldine DeRuiter, who writes as The Everywhereist, has an incredible takedown of a horrendous meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce, Italy.
• Police officers in Torrance, California, have jeopardized hundreds of cases through their practice of sending each other racist and homophobic texts. Decades of television, like the returning Law & Order, have indoctrinated viewers to believe that the police are always the good guys.
• Scammers in India targeted several high-profile female journalists who were critical of the government with an elaborate scam that promised trips to or jobs at Harvard. The university knew about these scams, at least at some point, and did not appear to take any action to stop them.
• There’s a lot of media coverage of retailers claiming theft is at an all-time high, but the data do not back this up.
• A Tennessee high school teacher tried to teach his students about white privilege, and ended up losing his job. Meanwhile, Tennessee is banning the teaching of words and concepts that are tangentially related to critical race theory, because there is no racism in Tennessee any more, obviously. Oh, and the state’s medical board posted and then deleted rules against spreading misinformation after pressure from the Republican Party. Nice state y’all have down there.
• Some states are moving against doctors and nurses who spread misinformation, at least.
• Some large, early vaccination surveys fell prey to the big data paradox.
• Andrew Cuomo appointed a crony of his to run the SUNY system of public universities in New York. Turns out the guy is a bully and a creep. Are you shocked? I’m shocked.
• A judge is preventing the New York Times from reporting on Project Veritas, which would set a horrible precedent by allowing subjects to sue to stop negative coverage.
• Kellogg is hiring scabs to replace striking workers. Don’t buy Frosted Flakes, folks.
• Kickstarter is moving its crowdfunding platform to blockchain. Ryan Reynolds But Why dot gif?
• Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa correctly described social media as “toxic sludge.”
• A school district in Utah had two students wear racist costumes, so they showed students a diversity video. White parents in Utah called it an attack on them. I mean, it was, but not in the way they think.
• Author and essayist bell hooks died this week at 69.
• Board game news: A Swedish video game company is buying board game behemoth Asmodee from the private equity firm that owned it, which I see as very good news for Asmodee itself and the tabletop space in general.
• Pachamama is heading back to Kickstarter soon after its first go-round didn’t get much traction.