This week’s MLB winter meetings weren’t great, but I did write up a few moves: Cleveland’s trades for Carlos Santana & Jake Bauers, the signings of Joe Kelly and Jeurys Familia, the Lance Lynn signing & Tanner Roark trade, the Rays’ signing of Charlie Morton, and the Phillies’ signing of Andrew McCutchen.

On the board game front, I wrote up every game I tried at PAX Unplugged for Paste, and reviewed the Terraforming Mars app (on Steam) for Ars Technica.

I resumed my free email newsletter this week, after a longer break than I wanted due to those same stupid meetings and stupid prospect calls getting in the stupid way, but you should join the over 5000 current subscribers for even more of my words.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: At the Hardball Times, Stephanie Springer writes about scouting makeup in an era where some teams are eliminating scouting jobs. I’m quoted in the piece.
• The Washington Post details how the Bradford pear tree became an invasive species after its sterile fruit became fertile through proximity to callery pear trees.
• The Atlantic‘s George Packer asks how the Republican Party got so corrupt, doing whatever it possibly can to maintain power even after crushing electoral losses last month.
• Attorney and former federal prosecutor Ken White wrote that “Individual 1” is in grave (legal) danger, based on the contents of memos released by the Mueller investigation on December 7th. Womp womp.
• A Baylor student drugged and raped a woman but was allowed to plead guilty, paying a $400 fine, without having to register as a sex offender. Meanwhile, Cyntoia Brown, a Tennessee woman who was trafficked and killed the man who ‘bought’ her as a sex slave, must serve 51 years in prison for the killing. Do you feel safer?
• Prion diseases, including “mad cow disease,” are terrifying enough. Now scientists have learned that these nearly indestructible proteins seed victims’ eyes. Prions aren’t alive, but they can self-replicate, and the diseases they are known to cause are all incurable.
• An archaeology team working in Azerbaijan found a 4000-year-old board game carved into the earth.
• Food52 writer Eric Kim discusses how an annual trip from NYC to Maine helps him deal with his depression.
• Scientists are examining the ice core on remote Bouvet Island to learn about the past wind patterns and sea ice extensions from Antarctica, in part to figure out if man’s actions are changing them.
• Yet another study has shown that GMOs do not cause cancer, part of a €15 million response to a junk study published in 2012. The resulting years of further research has wasted time, money, and the lives of thousands of rats.
• One major reason I sold my house in Arizona and moved back east was my belief that climate change and profoundly stupid state & local governments would lead to serious water shortages in the not-too-distant future. Well, the Phoenix City Council justified my fear by voting down a modest hike in the city’s low water rates, the proceeds of which were supposed to go to improving infrastructure and allowing the city to draw more water from existing ground supplies, rather than the depleted Colorado River.
• Speaking of the profoundly stupid local governments in Arizona, the Phoenix City Council was also set to subsidize the Phoenix Suns’ arena renovations before public outcry set in and they delayed their vote. You may have seen 90-year-old Greta Rogers tearing into the Suns’ owner as she spoke at a public hearing on the deal; the Phoenix New Times then interviewed her, and it’s wonderful.
• Democrats are trying to further gerrymander New Jersey in a naked power grab that would fit with the current Republican playbook in Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. There’s at least some pushback within the Democratic Party, but not enough so far to stop this antidemocratic effort.
• West Virginia voted for Trump in 2016, but their economy has gotten much worse under his reign, including a spike in the state’s already high poverty rate.
• The Trump Administration wants to make it easier for corporations to pollute waterways and destroy wetlands, because fuck the planet.
• The EPA is now supporting that effort by circulating an editorial from a newspaper owned by climate-denying GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, whose wife just happened to get a Presidential Medal of Freedom last month. I’m sure that’s all coincidental!
• North Carolina’s 9th District election, plagued by electoral fraud committed by a GOP operative, is such a mess that both parties may agree to hold a new election. The question will then be whether the Republican who won the tainted poll, Mark Harris, would be allowed to run again, even though the allegations – the operative appears to have illegally collected absentee ballots and then failed to submit them to try to suppress votes for Harris’ opponent – are connected to his camp.
• We all know Fox & Friends operates in some sort of alternate universe when it comes to facts, but claiming Obama paid off mistresses just like Trump did seems like a new low. (To be clear: He didn’t.)
• Russian spy Maria Butina pled guilty on Thursday to conspiracy charges, and her partner, a GOP operative, suddenly registered as a foreign agent, as did a former colleague of his who’s on the NRA’s board of directors.
• An Irish TD (legislator) has proposed a bill that would ban ads telling cancer patients that medical treatment is unnecessary so they can sell those patients quack treatments instead.
• Americans use way too many paper towels.
• Bread is just not bad for you, unless you’re among the ~6% of the population with celiac disease or a wheat allergy. Anyone claiming it causes “wheat belly” or “grain brain” does so in contravention of the available scientific research on bread consumption. And whole grain breads are good for you.
• The flailing New York Times tweeted a request for travelers’ stories of experiencing crime in London, but dry Brit wit hijacked their futile endeavor.
• The Department of Homeland Security posted a message in favor of the border wall that was strangely devoid of definite or indefinite articles, as if the message had first been written in, say, Russian.