I had two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, one on the great 1980s video game Earl Weaver Baseball (for which I spoke to one of its lead developers), and one with the latest on MLB’s plans for minor league realignment and contraction.

On the gaming front, I had nothing new this week but have a few more pieces filed. Last week, I reviewed ClipCut Parks, a new “flip-and-cut” game that is great for younger kids who love using scissors but not much of a game for older players, for Paste. For Vulture, I updated my ranking of the top 25 board game apps available on mobile platforms. For Ars Technica, I reviewed the new app version of the legacy game Charterstone.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21^st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it. To be perfectly honest, I just haven’t felt up to writing that lately.

And now, the links…

• The most distressing this I read this week was the Washington Post‘s story on how attempts to re-open Wuhan after two weeks of no new (reported) cases of coronavirus failed miserably as new infections came back immediately. The Chinese government was able to enforce much more draconian measures than we’ll ever see here, and yet they couldn’t corral the virus; what does that imply about what June and July will be like here in the U.S.?
• A Guardian longread asks how our world will change permanently in the wake of the pandemic, highlighting decreasing civil liberties and the potential of a new response to climate change as two possible outcomes.
• A column in Foreign Policy calls the COVID-19 pandemic the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history. Ken Klippenstein wrote in the Nation that the U.S. military knew years ago that a pandemic caused by a “novel respiratory disease” was likely on the horizon, so was the failure of intelligence or of the President’s response to it?
• This New York Times longread investigates how a failure to test early in the U.S. – again, due to the Administration’s choice to ignore information it received – led to the pandemic and probably thousands of needless deaths.
• The right-wing dark money group Americans for Prosperity, founded by neoconservative billionaire Charles Koch, pushed a $1 billion cut to the Centers Disease Control’s funding and is now attacking shelter-in-place orders for harming businesses.
• Social distancing can’t last forever, and we need a comprehensive testing-and-tracing plan in place when the restrictions are inevitably eased.
• Arizona Governor Doug Ducey finally issued a stay-at-home order on Monday, after weeks of dithering and dismissing the concerns about COVID-19’s risks. Senior citizens make up 17.5% of the state’s population.
• On the other side of the coin, Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) have both earned praise for their fast, definitive moves to try to slow the virus’s spread in their states.
• Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia have used the cover of COVID-19 restrictions to criminalize mass protests, including those against fossil-fuel projects like Dakota Access.
• Senator Kelly Loeffler (GA-guess) sold millions of dollars in shares after receiving a confidential briefing on COVID-19 in early February, and bought shares in a company that makes protective equipment.
• Kara Swisher at the New York Times delineates how Fox News spread disinformation and downplayed the threat of COVID-19 to its viewers, even though they were taking significant precautions behind the scenes.
• We have it bad here in the U.S., but the impact of the pandemic and attempts to stop it will lead to massive suffering in the developing world, such as a lack of shelter or food for millions in India.
• A charity run by Franklin Graham, who has a long history of anti-gay commentary, has refused to allow LGBT people to volunteer in its tent hospital in New York’s Central Park.
• Meanwhile, the President is going to go golfing again.
• And he’s allowing a reporter from OANN – an extreme right-wing ‘news’ outlet that openly supports the Administration – to flaunt the White House Correspondents’ Association’s rules on social distancing. OANN didn’t belong in the press room in the first place.
• LitHub ranked 75 different covers of The Master & Margarita from around the world, and commented on them. I’ve had #25, #8, and #3 over the years.
• Hackers or pranksters have been breaking into random Zoom meetings and defacing peoples’ screens. The FBI has warned that the platform isn’t secure.
• Powell’s, one of the best independent bookstores in the United States, had laid off 100+ workers when the shutdown first hit Oregon, but has rehired them to meet a surge in online orders – one of which was from me, buying The Mirror and the Light as a birthday gift for my girlfriend’s mother. You can pre-order The Inside Game from them as well.
• Progressive/instrumental metal band Town Portal and post-metal act Kowloon Walled City worked together on a live mashup of Solange’s “Rise” and Kaki King’s “Jessica” when the bands met up last summer, and just released it on YouTube to support Town Portal’s record label Small Pond.
• Rock Manor Games’ two-player game Lawyer Up is in its last few days on Kickstarter. I’ve actually played this game with co-designer Mike Gnade, who lives near me, and would definitely recommend it based on that one play of a finished prototype.
• And finally, some tweets of note from the week: