Two new posts since the last roundup for subscribers to the Athletic – my list of the five farm systems that have improved the most since February; and a scouting blog from two weekends ago covering some Rays, O’s, Nats, and Tigers prospects. I’ve been unable to do much this past week due to an illness in the family, but hope to be back on the road this upcoming week.

On the board game front, I had three reviews go up earlier this month. At Paste, I reviewed the great new family game Juicy Fruits and the midweight game CloudAge. For Polygon, I reviewed the upcoming second edition of Great Western Trail, which is still the top-rated complex game on my overall rankings.

On of the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, author of sixteen books, including The Constant Rabbit; and then had old pal Joe Sheehan as a guest this week.. And on The Athletic Baseball Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

My newsletter is getting back on track, although I didn’t send one this week since I didn’t write anything for any other sites beyond my own. You should sign up, though. Or you might consider buying my book, The Inside Game, now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: Ed Yong, whose coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic (not my employer) won him a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, writes about how the pandemic is now likely to end: with a long, tapering whimper, rather than a bang. And much of it is our own stupid fault.
• A new journal article in Cell looks at all of the evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and concludes that a zoonotic origin is far more likely than a so-called “lab leak.”
• ProPublica reveals just how much some high-income donors saved in taxes by helping fund the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a major science denialist, was particularly helpful to his wealthy supporters.
• The Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction has released their report, titled What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. Setting aside the question of whether it goes as far as it needs to go, the report doesn’t shy away from blaming U.S. policymakers who believed we could build a nation, threw good money after bad, and had perhaps the most expensive case of the planning fallacy in history.
• What can you do in the wake of last week’s apocalyptic report on the climate? Anything at all. Just do something.
• A reader contribution: The Guardian profiles the woman who goes through NYC residents’ garbage and highlights their waste and profligacy on social media.
• The Washington Post tells the awful story of a Missouri widow who lost her husband to COVID-19 and is now facing financial ruin.
• I missed this in June, but a bill to legalize cannabis in Delaware failed over concerns that it wouldn’t create sufficient racial equity in the resulting system. Given how disproportionately cannabis laws have affected Black residents of Delaware (and all states), I think it’s worth crafting a bill that ensures they’ll share in the spoils of the new industry.
• College officials are concerned about students showing fake vaccination cards rather than complying with vaccine mandates. The answer to that seems to be simple – use a fake card, get expelled, no refunds.
• The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors issued a statement that said that medical professionals who spread COVID-19 misinformation should lose their licenses. I’ll believe it when I see someone actually lose their license, but this is a good warning, at least.
• A law professor writes that vaccine mandates are legal as well as based on solid science.
• And that’s good, because the Nevada Board of Health just voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for college students in the state.
• The anti-vaccine grift might be becoming untenable. The victims of cons are often unwilling to admit that they’ve been conned. A little help from law enforcement wouldn’t hurt, though.
• Plenty of COVID deniers and minimizers like to claim that the virus has little effect on children (or did, pre-Delta). That’s highly misleading and takes advantage of a cognitive illusion called the contrast effect.
• A spate of fabricated research papers hit certain academic journals this spring, and they were only caught because of certain “tortured phrases” (“colossal information” instead of “big data”) that caught other researchers’ eyes.
• That Indiana doctor behind the viral video where he repeats anti-vaccine myths won’t even admit if he’s vaccinated and isn’t board-certified in any specialty. He should lose his license, though, because he’s full of shit.
• Wilmington has a great little restaurant scene for such a small city, and for my money, Bardea is the best restaurant we’ve got. It’s improved even more since the pandemic began, as chef-owner Antonio DiMeo has been experimenting with koji and other fermentation techniques to boost flavors and create a more plant-forward menu.
• The board game café chain Snakes & Lattes hired decorated chef Aaron McKay as COO as they try to establish the cafés as food destinations, not just board game spots where you get chicken tenders and soggy fries.
• Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has long been linked to neurological damage in children, will finally be banned for use on food products after the Trump administration ignored scientists’ pleas to prohibit it.
• This seems like it should be bigger news: A U.S. lab claims it has approached the goal of nuclear fusion ignition, using a laser to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen fuel that could become self-sustaining, providing enough heat to keep the fuel mass at a high enough temperature for fusion to continue. In theory, it’s a potential source of clean, limitless energy. It sounds too good to be true.
• In a similar vein, did Google Labs really create “time crystals,” an entirely new phase of matter that would be a huge leap forward towards the goal of real quantum computing?
• Board game news: Cranio Creations announced a new deluxe edition of the classic worker placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico.
• Capstone announced pre-orders for Corrosion , a new game where your machines can rust and become useless, which I love as a concept and which also reminds me of a key plot point in Baldur’s Gate.
• Publisher Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) laid off its entire staff last week and appears to be entering bankruptcy.
• I don’t remember the 2007 game Get Bit!, but it’s getting a brand-new edition, now on Kickstarter.
• And finally, this was highly entertaining. What better way to mock a lunatic than by setting his deranged words to music? (There’s some great guitar work here, too.)