Nothing new from me at the Athletic this week as I’m still dealing with an illness in the family, but I hope to have my next piece up on Thursday of this upcoming week.

I reviewed the board game adaptation of Red Rising for Paste this week, and also reviewed the book from which the game is derived.

I created a T-shirt celebrating the #umpshow to raise money to help Afghan refugees who are settling in the Wilmington area. Proceeds will go to Jewish Family Services of Delaware – they’re aware a donation is coming – and possibly a second group depending on how best we can help. We’re over $650 raised through T-shirt sales, not counting the handful of you who’ve donated directly to JFSD, so thanks to all of you who’ve bought the shirt or donated.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry about their new album, Screen Violence, which came out yesterday; as well as the toxic environment of social media, working with Robert Smith, and more. You can (and should!) subscribe on iTunes and Spotify. I also appeared as usual on the Friday edition of the Athletic Baseball Daily show.

I’ll be back with an email newsletter and I hope a chat this upcoming week. And don’t forget that my second book The Inside Game is now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: R.J. Anderson reports on the pushback and near-strike that took place after MLB pushed changes on the Atlantic League, particularly the choice to move the pitcher’s mound back a foot.

• The New Yorker profiled my colleague Katie Strang, who has become the industry’s leading writer on athletes and coaches accused of domestic violence or sexual assault.

• Dr. J. Stacey Klutts, a clinical associate professor of pathology and clinical microbiology at the University of Iowa, wrote a great primer on what we know now about the Delta variant. The Des Moines Register should have asked him to write an editorial, not the unqualified grad student and COVID-19 minimizer they invited instead.

• STAT reports on the complete lack of evidence that Ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. It’s all junk studies and anecdotal reports.

• Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee explains why it’s so hard to get people to back down from their misinformed beliefs: commitment bias.

• This April piece from McGill University’s Office for Science and Society exposes RFK Jr. for the dangerous anti-vaccine charlatan he truly is.

• Many professors are leaving their jobs rather than teach in-person, especially at schools that won’t require masks or vaccines. Some schools are, of course, prevented from issuing such mandates because of the death cult running their states.

• More U.S. police officers died of COVID-19 in 2020 than from all other causes combined. Yet I keep seeing reports of officers and even union chapters fighting vaccine mandates.

• A new lawsuit accusing Horatio Sanz of grooming and abusing a teenage girl that names him, Saturday Night Live, and NBC may blow the lid off a bigger story about the culture on that show and impugn other cast members from that time, notably Jimmy Fallon.

• Louise Godbold, who identifies herself as a “Harvey Weinstein survivor,” wishes media outlets would stop asking her the same questions about what should happen to the serial rapist and sexual abuser.

• The BBC has the story of a former Angolan child soldier who survived a near-fatal shooting to his head and is now a popular restaurant manager in London.

• Facebook refused two Representatives’ request for more information on the company’s (minimal) efforts to fight COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. I found multiple groups dedicated to the deworming drug Ivermectin, including at least two that purport to help people get prescriptions for it, active on Facebook just this week. Reporting them has had no apparent effect.

• The school board in Waukesha, Wisconsin, hometown of Jarred Kelenic, turned down state funding for free lunches because people might get “spoiled” by it.

• Board game news: The Price of Coal, a board game about coal mining and labor rights, is just about to hit its funding goal over at Kickstarter.

• Eagle-Gryphon Games has brought us a new(ish) title from the late designer Sid Sackson, combining elements of his games The Great Race and Can’t Stop into Route 66 The Mother Road, now on Kickstarter and already well past its funding goal.