links — Page 33

→ January 7, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/7/17.

I’ve been working on the top 100 prospects package, which begins a three-week rollout on January 18th, since New Year’s, so I didn’t write anything for Insider this week. My boardgame reviews continue, with a review of the Celtic-themed game Inis for Paste and a review of the boardgame and new iOS app for Colt Express here on the dish. I did hold my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Several former Justice Department lawyers penned an op ed claiming that Jeff Sessions is lying about his involvement in civil rights cases. They say, “Sessions knows that his real record on race and civil rights is harmful to his chances for confirmation. So he has made up a fake one.” In a rational world, that would end his nomination for Attorney General.
Venezuela’s ongoing political and economic meltdown may lead to a recall of president/dictator Nicolas Maduro, but he appointed a successor this week in new Vice President Tarek el Aissami, who is (or was) under investigating by U.S. authorities for drug trafficking.
Author Ryan Holiday wrote an insightful, somewhat angry piece on the ‘online diversity police’, folks who immediately decry the lack of diversity on any list or grouping (often inaccurately, as it turns out).
Lindy West wrote one of the week’s best, most important essays, on why she left Twitter after six years on the service, citing the endless abuse and the rise of neo-Naziism.
The Daily Beast exposed the long con of 55-year-old “millennial” comedian Dan Nainan, who tries to pass himself off as 35 and has fooled several media outlets as such.
Esquire has a longread on former Deadspin and Gawker EIC A.J. Daulerio, whose career was derailed by the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit.
Grierson & Leitch each posted their top ten films of 2016, along with a 100-minute podcast where they reveal their lists to each other and discuss them. As usual, Leitch’s list comprises fairly well-known films, while Grierson’s has several films I’ve heard of and three that may not actually exist.
The eight-year-old transgender boy kicked out of a New Jersey Cub Scouts group after other parents complained talked to the Jersey Journal, as did his mother, about what happened, in a piece that also explores the psychiatric community’s evolving understanding of “gender dysphoria.”
Jill Saward’s death didn’t garner much coverage here either, but she was an important figure in the movement for sexual assault victims’ rights, as the first British rape victim to waive her right to anonymity and publicly discuss her case.
Will Trump’s election mark the return of civil disobedience? So far it has, but can the various movements opposed to the Republicans’ reactionary agenda keep it up for four or more years?
Let’s talk about the Russian hacking operation, which a US intelligence report says Putin ‘ordered’ to get Trump elected. David Remnick weighed in as well.
The Seattle Times called out Trump’s “reckless linkage” of vaccines to autism, desperate overwhelming evidence that there is no link.
Lauren Duca of Teen Vogue has quickly become one of the most important voices in political journalism, thanks to pieces like this one about the family selling access to the President-Elect at a party at Trumo’s Mar-a-Lago resort that made over $420K.
Republican Christine Todd Whitman headed up the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, but she said she fears for the planet under a Trump regime for many reasons, including his denial of climate change.
The Washington Post‘s Dave Weigel outlines the Republican Party’s plan for a “sweeping conservative agenda” now that they control the White House and both houses of Congress. I’d dispute the word “conservative” here, though; this is very much an agenda written by and for white Americans, especially Christians, but doesn’t bear much resemblance to the traditional economic and libertarian-minded conservatism of Reagan or Buckley.
The political crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo hasn’t gotten much attention here amidst our own, but President Kabila hasn’t signed the agreement to end his rule, which has been marked primarily by his looting of the country’s coffers of millions of dollars.
Finally, the Huffington Post made news of nothing with a piece on Mark Zuckerberg apparently becoming an ex-atheist. I’m linking this for one major reason – my disdain for the need to classify people by their religious beliefs, something I first encountered on Wikipedia maybe a decade ago, where articles on people can be categorized by the subject’s religion. You can change your religious beliefs on a dime; you can lie about them (in many countries, you may have to); you can fail to fit in any neat bucket of beliefs. As a general rule, I don’t think your religion is any of my business unless you wish to make it so, so I particularly dislike the idea that you need to know what someone believes or, as in this case, that a possible change in the beliefs of a famous person are somehow newsworthy. I’ll be happier when Zuckerberg’s beliefs include extirpating fake news sites from Facebook.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, frauds, links, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ December 31, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/31/16.

No Insider pieces and no Klawchat this week, between the lack of MLB activity, a little holiday-related travel, and me just generally taking it easy this week. I did review the boardgame City of Spies: Estoril 1942 for Paste, and have reviews coming up for Doom, Kodama, and Inis.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Texas is making rapid progress in becoming the nation’s worst backwater, from anti-gay laws to wiping out abortion clinics to reducing environmental protections to a statewide cut in special education resources, as detailed in this Houston Chronicle investigative report on how tens of thousands of disabled children in Texas aren’t getting the education help they deserve.
This New York Times profile on an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD who was convicted of a home invasion highlights how little we do for soldiers returning from active combat duty, and how costly the war in Iraq has been in human lives.
I thought the Telegraph had the best piece on George Michael’s career, life, and death at age 53, possibly the result of a heroin addiction. If you haven’t heard his 1990 album, Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1, it stands up incredibly well today for its mixture of styles that, at the time, was seen as a disappointment by fans who wanted him to remain a bubblegum pop star. And the same publication also wrote how horrible Gene Kelly was to a 19-year-old Debbie Reynolds during the filming of Singing in the Rain, and how Fred Astaire came to the rescue.
Security expert Bruce Schneier, who coined the term “security theater” to refer to all the things we do to appear to make our lives safer, points out that TSA Pre-Check also won’t work, as it just provides a second way for a would-be terrorist to beat the system and get on a plane. He links to a former TSA administrator’s post explaining Pre-Check’s vulnerabilities, but the two disagree on the solution – Schneier wants less pre-flight screening for everyone, rather than for a select few, saying that terrorists are going to pick ‘clean’ operatives no matter what we do.
This longread on Olympian Debbie Thomas’ descent into mental illness and poverty is from March, but I just found it this week and it’s one of the best and most awful stories I’ve read in the last few months. Thomas won a bronze medal in Calgary in 1988, became a doctor, but has lost everything in the last few years as a result of bipolar disorder.
Donald Trump took credit for Sprint’s decision, made in April, to add 5000 jobs in the U.S., and here’s a partial list of media outlets who repeated his lie in headlines without pointing out its untruth. Yes, there’s more to an article than a headline, but I know from experience many people will read the headline and then move along … but will still send me an angry email about a headline I didn’t write. (Editors write headlines, not writers.)
A New York Times investigation found rampant bribery among Homeland Security officials charged with protecting our borders. I doubt there’s a simple solution to this: no private or public entity will pay agents more than defeating the security is worth to those trying to do so.
The same Russian hacker group that has been accused of trying to influence our election placed malware on a computer at the main electric utility in Vermont, raising concerns about an attack on our infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Russian government has also been supporting far-right movements across Europe in an attempt to destabilize EU states, finding success in Hungary, Estonia, and Bulgaria, along with the rise of the neo-Nazi National Front Party in France.
“More than a third of the almost 200 people who have met with President-elect Donald Trump since his election last month, including those interviewing for administration jobs, gave large amounts of money to support his campaign and other Republicans this election cycle.” So begins this Politico story on the rising kleptocracy in Washington, where money buys you direct access like we haven’t seen in decades (under either party).
Another neo-Nazi group is planning an armed march in Whitefish, Montana, where its founder’s mother lives. There’s more background, and information on the community’s response, in this audio piece from NPR, which describes businesses putting menorahs in windows to show support and solidarity this week.
Jane Coaston of MTV.com looks at the roots and insolubility of the Syrian civil war.
New York issued the first (known) birth certificate for an intersex person – that is, one that states the person’s sex as “intersex,” referring to someone born with physical and genetic characteristics of both sexes, often including sexual organs. This is law catching up to science, but I ask you, North Carolina and Texas and Mississippi and every bigot out there trying to make life miserable for people unlike you: What bathroom would you like her to use?
In 2018 and 2020, remember how the Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat by refusing to even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, nominated to fill that vacancy by President Obama.
The political crisis in Burundi, sparked by the questionable re-election of Pierre Nkurunziza to a third term as President, was not helped when he hinted he might run again in 2020. The Burundian constitution limits the president to a single re-election, and his decision to run roughshod over that clause led to 500 deaths and over 300,000 refugees leaving the country.
An open letter from 23 activists, many of them Nobel laureates, calls for the UN Security Council to stop ethnic cleansing in Burma against the Rohingya minority – and criticizes Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for her inaction on this issue.
That Gambian election a few weeks ago that appeared to end the tyrannic rule of President Yahya Jammeh? Yeah, well, so much for that, as Jammeh is trying to annul the results and declare himself the winner. Senegal, which surrounds Gambia on all but the latter’s tiny coastal border, has said a military intervention is only a “last resort.”
Fortune looks at the recent spate of frauds among tech startups, asking whether this is a growing trend giving the amount of VC money flying around.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, links, neo-nazis, ptsd, stick to baseball, texas

→ December 24, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/24/16.

For Insiders this week, I wrote up Cleveland’s deal with Edwin Encarnacion and the Clay Buchholz trade, as well as a piece last Saturday on some potential problems in the new CBA. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

My first-ever piece for Vulture ran this week, a holiday gift guide to boardgames for gamers at various levels (including newbies to the hobby).

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

The most important piece I read this week came from Michael Shermer, author and editor of Skeptic, who wrote about how to convince someone who refuses to accept facts. I think his core point – that people who reject, say, evolution or climate change are doing so because it challenges their worldview, especially religious ones – is entirely valid, but he doesn’t tell us what to do when the President-Elect and his entire Party appear unwilling to accept facts.
The Indianapolis Star has a lengthy investigative piece on how a child-molesting gymnastics coach continued working with kids for 20 years, working in a dozen gyms across four states before he was finally arrested and charged … and the parents of kids in that last gym came to his defense before he confessed. It’s a story of our failure to believe victims, of fear of liability, and of passing the buck instead of standing up to stop a dangerous predator.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail ran a two-part series on how drugmakers happily poured opiates into West Virginia despite evidence that there was an epidemic of addiction in the state. It’s a simple story of greed, corruption, and a stunning lack of empathy for the victims.
Deadspin’s The Concourse has a great piece on how technology isn’t going to turn Saudi Arabia around. The core message here, I think, is something I’ve believed for twenty years: the Saudis are not our friends, and the foreign policy of both parties and every Administration for the last forty years isn’t helping us or the Saudi people.
White supremacists led by Richard Spencer are causing hell in Whitefish, Montana, including targeting a local business owned by a non-Jewish family with a “Jewish-sounding” name.
Twitter trolls have a new tactic – sending seizure-inducing images to people with epilepsy, such as journalist Kurt Eichenwald.
Tucker Carlson gets called a “partisan hack” – rightly so – when he tries to shame a journalist for doing her job, and doing it well.
Ohio Governor John Kasich, who was one of the more moderate candidates for the Republican nomination (by comparison), signed bills this week allowing concealed carry in day-care centers and blocking local minimum wage laws.
I feel like everyone saw this, but it was one of the most entertaining things I saw all week: Many people remember a movie called Shazaam, starring Sinbad, that doesn’t actually exist.
Paul Krugman’s NY Times piece on how republics end was widely shared this week, seen primarily as a commentary on the Trump regime (which in some level it was), but he specifically cites the cut block executed by Republicans in North Carolina, which is rapidly becoming one of the nation’s biggest backwaters, heading down same path as Kansas.
The Kuwaiti embassy appears to have moved a major event to the Trump Hotel in DC to curry favor after members of the Trump team pressured them to do so. This is not normal.
Trump’s sons were caught earlier in the week using a Texas non-profit to sell access to the President-Elect in echange for million-dollar donations. His sons now won’t attend a particular fundraiser that raised these suspicions, but the connection is still there.
Trump’s national security adviser met with the head of Austria’s neo-Nazi Freedom Party, founded by ex-Nazis in the wake of World War II. This also is not normal.
The ACLU explains one possible workaround to the Electoral College problem, although I doubt there’s any movement on this front until Democrats control more state legislatures.
Why has Pakistan jailed a Christian woman on dubious blasphemy charges for five years? Like the Saudi government, the Pakistani government is not our ally, not if they use our desire to work with them against the Taleban as air cover for persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims.
Quartz reviews a new type of neurological study (they call it “brain health,” which seems facile) that somewhat predicts future criminal behavior for toddlers. The headline is clickbait; they’re saying that toddlers who score low in this type of test are more likely to engage in criminal behavior as adults. That’s a correlation, not a full-on prediction and not definitive by any means. But it raises no end of ethical and policy questions, not least of which is whether we should test all kids to identify those at risk so that they get early intervention, but with the likelihood that they’ll be tagged for life as such?
A junk study in Japan that claimed to have found a link between the HPV vaccine and certain adverse events has prompted demands for the journal to retract the paper.
I love The Muppet Christmas Carol, and now my daughter does too, so it’s an annual tradition for us to watch it. Mental floss had one of its trivia posts on fifteen odd facts about the film, including why the famous “When Love is Gone” scene is rarely found on home video releases.
Great piece from Indy Star writer Gregg Doyel on Grayson Allen’s behavior and the need for real, personal change, based on Doyel’s own experiences.
A football player in Idaho walked free on sodomy charges despite assaulting a teammate with a wire hanger, enough to cause internal tearing. The player was white, the victim black and developmentally disabled. The player won’t even have to register as a sex offender because the prosecutor didn’t think it was warranted. I see this stuff and, you know what, maybe we should just split the country in two, because if you think this shit is okay, then maybe we shouldn’t be in the same nation.
I thought Moonlight was outstanding, and the BBC wrote about how the film is making an unlikely romp through major critics’ awards, despite being a low-budget independent film about a black, gay male character at three stages of his life.
A South African cafe is making Nespresso capsules of one of the world’s most expensive coffees, which are catching on as the market of people who want the convenience of pod coffee is spawning a segment that wants coffee that doesn’t taste like swill. That’s great, except pods are an environmental nightmare, creating way more trash than other methods, which typically produce entirely compostable output (like pour-over).
Physicists managed to hit antimatter particles with a laser, the first time such an experiment has succeeded – mostly because antimatter doesn’t last very long in the presence of matter. One of the mysteries of our universe is how we ended up with more matter than antimatter during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, which is why anything exists in the universe today.
The livestock industry keeps talking about reducing antibiotic use, but it’s not happening, at least not yet.
“Thank God Nigel Farage has the courage to take a stand against whining do-gooder Brendan Cox,” writes Independent columnist Mark Steel, taking aim at the Brexit Muppet’s attacks on the widower of British MP Jo Cox.
Science fiction has offered its share of dystopian futures, several appearing to predict the rise of a Trump-like fascist leader, including an Octavia Butler story that had such a character promising to “make America great again.”
I’ve been to Bermuda three times but never knew why their roofs are shaped as they are, with stair-like patterns. It’s because the island has no real source of fresh water, and the roofs allow for more efficient collection of rainwater. The piece also talks about Bermuda’s culture of water conservation and how tourism and increasing population density threaten it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bermuda, drugs, food safety, links, neo-nazis, post-truth, vaccines

→ December 17, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/17/16.

My main piece for Insiders this week went up this morning, on the many lost opportunities in MLB’s new collective bargaining agreement, discussing money and rights the union may have left on the table, and why the agreement seemed to come together so late. I also wrote about the Dodgers’ two re-signings earlier in the week, and I held a Klawchat here on Thursday.

At Paste this week I ranked the ten best boardgames I saw in 2016. A few folks have asked why the highly-rated Scythe isn’t on the list; I think that game is too long and overly complicated, with playing times that can top two hours (and a retail price of $90). All ten games I listed are clearly better, in my opinion.

In case you missed it, my list of my 100 favorite songs of 2016 went up here on Wednesday night.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

“Never again” died at Srebrenica twenty years ago, so let’s not be surprised that the world is standing by, wringing its hands over a preventable massacre in Aleppo.
My favorite article this week was by the great food writer Harold McGee, on how our brain’s perception of food shapes how we think it tastes.
North Carolina Republicans have executed a brazen power grab after losing the gubernatorial election. The Election Law Blog had more details on the coup d’etat earlier this week. I said this on Twitter, but again, if you live in NC and your reps are Republicans, you should be calling their offices every day to express your displeasure at this subversion of the democratic process.
A difficult but important longread from Jess Luther, author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape, on the ongoing struggle of a ballerina and sexual assault survivor.
In a subscriber-only article (that somehow showed up in full for me last week), the Wall Street Journal‘s economics commentator Greg Ip argues that our economy is stalled by a lack of “big ideas,” technological advances that would both create jobs and raise the overall standard of living.
The Genetic Literacy Project discusses differing opposition to two similar programs of sterile insect release, one of screwworms made sterile by irradiation, and one of Aedis aegypti mosquitos made sterile by genetic modification. The reason for the difference is, at heart, science-ignorance.
The great Hugh Acheson is one of four chefs who weigh in on how the election affects their businesses and employees, since undocumented immigrants make up a huge portion of the restaurant workforce. Acheson’s big point is worth remembering – if we have a sphere of control, like a small business to run, then we make sure the people within it are taken care of.
It’s not a well-written piece, but the argument in this Japan Times editorial is a worthy one: if the CIA has hard evidence of Russian involvement in our election, they need to reveal it now, rather than leaking insinuations that are only creating controversy without informing anyone about the underlying facts. Here’s a perfunctory review of the accusations that Putin personally directed the use of hacked information. You’ll notice I’m not calling for anyone to do anything (e.g., Trump electors to vote for Clinton) because I really don’t know what to make of all this.
If you use Chrome, you can install the new extension from the Washington Post that tags Trump tweets with explanations of whether they’re false.
Philadelphia Eagles lineman Brandon Brooks spoke openly about his struggle with anxiety, which caused him to miss several games this year.
Are chiropractors backing the vaccine-denial movement? Is this a surprise to anyone? I’ve been to chiropractors for back and neck problems, and of the half-dozen I’ve seen, five have tried to dispense irrelevant and/or incorrect medical advice, like claiming gluten was the source of my other ailments or questioning the safety and efficacy of the flu shot. So-called “chiropractic medicine” is a magnet for quackery. These are perfect bedfellows.
Should states ban teens from tanning beds? It might save lives and money.
This Economist review of a forthcoming book delves into how and why sugar is our biggest dietary health risk.
The American College of Pediatricians’ name has been in the news a bit lately, and you should remember that they’re a hate group that targets LGBTQ youth with bullshit press releases and letters that misquote doctors and scientists.
The potential appointment of Betsy DeVos, who did much to destroy public education in Michigan, as our national Secretary of Education is a bad sign for the separation of church and state, especially regarding our secular, public schools.
A combination of active practice and passive study is best for learning languages, according to a pair of studies described in this Scientific American piece.
This list of ten things an author can do in a depressing global environment is actually good advice for readers too. Shorter version: Support good writing with your purse and your mouth.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, food science, Languages, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ December 10, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/10/16.

I wrote a bunch of stuff this week to cover all the major transactions before and during the winter meetings, including:

• The Cardinals signing Dexter Fowler
• The Yankees signing Aroldis Chapman
• The Nationals’ trade for Adam Eaton
• The Cubs/Royals trade with Wade Davis and Jorge Soler
• The Rockies signing Ian Desmond
• The Rays signing Wilson Ramos
• The Red Sox trading for Chris Sale
• The Red Sox trading for Tyler Thornburg
• The Giants signing Mark Melancon
• The Yankees signing Matt Holliday
• The Astros signing Carlos Beltran

I also held a Klawchat on Friday afternoon.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Terraforming Mars, one of the best new boardgames of 2016, and one that will place high on my ranking of the top ten games of the year when that’s published in the next few days.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

I doubt there’s been a more important story in the U.S. this past week than the CIA’s conclusion that Russia tried to help Trump win the election, providing hacked DNC emails to Wikileaks while apparently keeping hacked RNC emails to themselves. I truly don’t know where this goes from here.
Meanwhile, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory conceded defeat in this year’s election, ending fears that state Republicans would use a special legislative session and court-packing trick to try to overturn the popular vote. McCrory’s loss appears to have been at least in part due to his support of state HB2, the so-called ‘bathroom bill’ that also banned local ordinances that protected LGBT citizens from discrimination. Texas, learning nothing from this, is trying to pass the same sort of bill in its quest to roll back the clock a hundred years.
Trump’s continued refusal to sell his businesses creates an unprecedented tangle for him and his family, with evidence already mounting that he’s misusing his status as President-Elect to secure new deals for his business.
Mayors of the world’s biggest cities pledged at the recent C40 summit to act against climate change even if Trump won’t.
Does Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense harbor a decades-old grudge against Iran?
Carrier’s labor union leader said Trump “lied his ass off” about his role in keeping the manufacturer’s plant in Indiana.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich had a few things to say to Trump in a CNN appearance this week.
The man behind Ohio’s bill to essentially ban abortion in the state was accused in 2011 by his wife of abusing her.
A deranged man who believes everything he reads on the Internet brought a gun to a DC pizza shop and fired it, claiming he was “self-investigating” the lunatic conspiracy theory that the shop, Comet Ping-Pong, is a front for … I can’t even say it. These people are too fucking stupid for words.
Actress Sofia Vergara is facing a lawsuit from her own embryos, in effect saying she’s denying their right to be born. It’s really a money grab by her ex-husband, but the consequences of a successful suit here are chilling.
South Korea’s legislature has impeached the country’s President over a corruption scandal; she’s suspended from office now while the case goes to the country’s high court.
MTV News has a great profile of the nephew of defeated Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh; Jammeh’s nephew is gay and spoke out against his uncle’s policies against LGBT Gambians and statements like his 2015 promise to “slit the throats” of gay men in Gambia.
Is the key to boosting Nicaragua’s economy getting more women into the labor force?
A Pentagon study showed how the agency could save $25 billion a year by reducing wasteful administrative costs, so the agency buried it.
A study by the American Automobile Association found that drivers who drive on less than seven hours of sleep are much more likely to crash, with the probability doubling from seven hours of sleep to the range from five to six.
What’s the difference between speaking a language and being fluent in it?
For decades physicists have assumed dark matter exists and accounts for much of the universe’s missing mass, but a new theory holds that it’s not real and that its place in physics is replaced by “dark energy,” which produces the gravity (via quantum interactions) that we attribute to the invisible matter.
The New Yorker has a profile of A Tribe Called Quest and their final album, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and is still in the top 15 three weeks later.
Author Ann Patchett, whose Bel Canto is one of my 50 favorite novels ever, gave the New York Times her guide to independent bookstores for folks who visit such shrines the way many tourists seek out museums or old churches.
Former professional blackjack and poker player Cat Hulbert told the BBC her life story of beating male gamblers who underestimated her in a rambling but still fascinating narrative that explains some of the many lows she hit while playing cards for a living.
You can watch evolution happen in a giant Petri dish in a lab at Harvard where scientists are studying bacteria to see how antibiotic resistance occurs and how we might fight it. (Link includes a five-minute video.)
Tim Grierson and Will Leitch give movie-fan dilettantes like me a viewers’ guide to what movies might earn Oscar nominations. I need to get to the theater.
Give money to food banks, not canned goods. We have a local food bank in Delaware with a rating of 95% or so on Charity Navigator, and they’ve been my main target for charitable giving lately for the same reasons this article lays out.
Doctors at Yale New Haven Hospital saved a man’s life using an old but still novel approach to fighting a bacterial infection called “phage therapy,” where the patient gets a dose of bacteriophages, virii that specifically infect bacteria.
An artist or group of artists calling themselves Anonymouse made a tiny art installation of shops for mice on a street in Sweden.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2016 movies, africa, ann patchett, climate change, evolution, hip-hop, Languages, links, physics, stick to baseball, tin foil hats

→ December 3, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/3/16.

I had a couple of Insider pieces this week, on the trade of Jaime Garcia to Atlanta, the Cespedes contract, the trade of Alex Jackson to Atlanta, and my proposal for an international draft (written before the CBA negotiations ended). I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Grifters, a “deckbuilder without a deck” that I thought played a little too mechanically.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

An important longread from Scientific American: How factory farming is speeding antibiotic resistance, endangering animals and humans alike, while the government does virtually nothing to stop them. The best thing we can all do is buy only meat from animals raised without antibiotics – organic is not necessary for this but it does qualify – or just don’t eat meat. The article also details some of the oppressive conditions in the ‘contract growing’ business of raising animals for food.
Another longread, this time from the Guardian, on Italy’s “ultras,” dangerous gangs of soccer fans who exert unusual control over the sport and are behind much of the violence that surrounds the sport.
I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote about the disastrous policies of Henry Kissinger in Southeast Asia, which led to millions of civilian and military deaths.
The House Science Committee is notoriously hostile to real science, something that became apparent again this week when its official account tweeted a link to a climate-denial article at a neo-Nazi site.
The FTC finally did something good! They’re requiring so-called “homeopathic medicines” to include a label that says there’s no evidence they work. That’s because they can’t work. Homeopathy, like cupping and acupressure, is just woo.
The Kansas government of Governor Sam Brownback has been an economic disaster, but it’s also been a test tube for voter-suppression tactics, like requiring proof that voters are Americans, even though the state could only identify three non-citizens who voted in the ten years before the law in question was passed.
A junk study claiming a link between vaccines and autism has been pulled following heavy criticism. I doubt that’ll stop deniers from using it, though.
And those same looney-toons think that Donald Trump will be an ally for their cause. Given his actions so far as President-Elect, I think he’ll throw them overboard the moment it’s politically expedient.
A federal judge ruled that counties in Hawai’i can’t ban genetically modified crops because state law prohibits counties from legislating agricultural issues. It’s painted as a win for Big Ag, but it’s also a win for science.
Research by the Pew Center finds that Americans don’t understand the meaning or import of organic or GMO food. Organic food is not more healthful to your body than conventionally-grown food, although it may be better for the soil, and GM food is not less healthful or more dangerous than non-GM food.
Why are some Massachusetts district attorneys refusing to reveal lists of cases they’ve prosecuted, in violation of state public records laws? The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team is suing to get those records opened. Real journalism still exists, and I think it will matter in the next four years more than it has in decades.
The Daily Beast has a piece on Casey Affleck’s disturbing history of alleged harassment of women, including abusive behavior.
This Washington Post feature on the effort by the San Bernadino terrorists’ siblings to adopt the killers’ infant daughter is heartbreaking.
Rising ocean temperatures resulted in the worst bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef on record. Increasing carbon sequestration in the oceans raises the water temperature and lowers its pH. Both are bad for coral.
I loved the short-lived animated TV series The Critic, especially its crazy movie parodies, so I was thrilled to read this UPROXX conversation with the two creators.
News outlets are belatedly telling their writers not to use the term “alt-right” any longer, because it’s a euphemism for white nationalist, white supremacist, or neo-Nazi.
Another white-nationalist type has started a blacklist website devoted to identifying left-wing college professors, and Emory University Professor George Yancy is having none of it.
Miami Herald writer Armando Seguero absolutely lights up Colin Kaepernick for wearing a Fidel Castro shirt in a column published hours before the brutal, repressive Cuban dictator’s death was announced.
Many folks weighed in on Joe Posnanski’s columns about the WAR discrepancy between Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello; I particularly enjoyed Phil Birnbaum’s explanation of why the Baseball-Reference approach makes sense. You should read Birnbaum’s post, but in essence, he says that we should deduce from Verlander’s performance that he was the beneficiary of help from his defense, even though Detroit’s defense on the whole was not good.
Is the Internet a “failed state” along the lines of Somalia or now Libya? This Guardian op ed argues that the increasing lawlessness online makes it so.
Bloomberg View/Gadfly executive editor Timothy L. O’Brien argues that Donald Trump’s business is not too big to sell, and the President-Elect needs to sell before he takes office.
Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services is a member of a fringe, far-right, anti-science doctors’ group whose positions include opposition to mandatory vaccinations, opposition to abortion, opposition to stem cell research, and opposition to organ donations, and whose journal is “a repository for quackery.”
The Columbia Journalism Review profiles the overhaul and success of the Washington Post in a wide-ranging conversation with two of the digital media company’s leaders – although I think some of what they reveal is less flattering than they think.
Baltimore is attacking street violence by treating it as a public-health problem, not as a typical crime.
Let’s get to the Trump stuff: One potential pick to head NIH is opposed to stem-cell research and faces much opposition even within Republican circles.
His pick for Secretary of Education is a blow to our nation’s science health. She’s also a disaster for church-state separation, proposing more school-choice programs to allow parents to send kids to religious schools using government dollars, and with ties to the ‘intelligent design’ pseudoscience movement.
Reince Preibus confirmed that Trump’s default position on climate change is denial.
That Carrier deal? It shows Trump and Pence don’t understand the constant churn of jobs in our modern economy.
The NY Times editorial board published a blunt column on Trump’s flag-burning tweet saying Mr. Trump, meet the Constitution.
After Trump won the election, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a (symbolic) resolution saying they would oppose much of what he and the GOP stand for. Of course, it’ll matter when they act, or take the feds to court, but I wish more local politicians were so vocal about their opposition.
From June, a great New Yorker piece on just what a colossal scam Trump University was.
Here are a few of the Senate Democrats who’ve spoken out against Trump so far.
A Texas town’s mayor and government just learned it has had an independent housing authority for the last 40 years, which means that department, which had two employees, has had essentially zero oversight and, of course, hasn’t been fulfilling its mission to maintain living conditions in public housing.
The BBC spoke to hyperglots, speakers of many languages, about how they learned and retained so many tongues and why some people seem better able to do so.
A Canadian town’s police department has threatened to force people arrested for driving drunk to listen to Nickelback.
A 19-year-old Guatemalan woman with Down Syndrome has started a clothing line for other women with the genetic disorder.
Tweet of the week:

Quick recap: the new ed secretary is anti-public schools, the new HUD sec'y is anti-Fair Housing, and the new AG is anti-Voting Rights Act.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 28, 2016

But to that, you can add that the new HHS head is anti-science, and the potential Secretary of State is still on probation.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, climate change, food safety, Languages, links, pseudoscience, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ November 26, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/26/16.

Chris Crawford and I ranked and wrote up the top 30 prospects for the 2017 draft, with Vandy outfielder Jeren Kendall at #1. I also wrote posts for Insiders on the Segura/Walker trade, on the Brett Cecil & Andrew Cashner contracts and other moves, and on the Astros’ moves last week. I also held a Klawchat on Tuesday, in advance of the holiday.

Over at Paste I reviewed the new Martin Wallace game Via Nebula, a great, family-level route-building game that we found simple to learn and quick to play.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Some great longreads this week, including this New Republic piece on the ten-year odyssey to identify an amnesiac man.
Another one comes from Bleacher Report, on Aly Dia, who played one infamous game for Southampton FC and has long been suspected of deceiving club officials about his experience to get that spot.
One from VICE, a report exploring the connection between the drug Propecia and serious neurological side effects, with some patients committing suicide after taking the hair-restoration medicine.
And the BBC explores how British police let a serial killer slip through their fingers, likely because the victims were young gay men with drugs in their systems.
In “depressed rural Kentucky,” residents are worrying about Medicaid cutbacks under the GOP-dominated government. Trump carried Kentucky with nearly double Clinton’s vote total, and five of their six Representatives are Republican, with the lone exception coming from the district around Louisville.
Democrat Roy Cooper continues to lead the vote count in North Carolina’s gubernatorial election, but Roy McCrory and Republicans are trying to steal it. If you live in NC, call your state reps, regardless of party, and make sure they know you oppose any attempt to subvert the results of the state’s popular vote.
A Boston Globe op ed urges Washington to get out of regulating organic food, in essence because there’s no clear defintion of “organic.” I’m about 90% in agreement here, but I do think consumers deserve the protection of truth in labeling laws, regardless of which agency is in charge of it.
London has become a leader in cutting food waste via apps that connect people with extra food – restaurants or even individuals – with people and charities who need it.
Chef Tom Colicchio talked to Mother Jones about food policy, hunger, and the incoming GOP government.
An 18-year-old college student in Tennessee has been charged with shooting and murdering his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend while she slept, because she’d ended their relationship. I’m surprised the story hasn’t gotten more coverage – pretty white girl gets killed equals headlines – but perhaps no one wants to ask 1) why he had access to a gun and 2) what this says about our male privilege problem.
SNL Weekend Update anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost have come under fire for some tasteless (and unfunny) jokes about gender identity, and Paste‘s Seth Simons says they should be replaced.
NASA’s notorious paper on the EM Drive has finally been published, and claims that the propulsion system – which appears to break Newton’s Third Law – actually works.
Scientific American wrote in the wake of Trump’s election that he’s as anti-science a President as we could possibly have. Money quote: “A mandate is what you can get away with.”
Jeb Lund (aka Mobute) has a great piece at Esquire on surviving Thanksgiving by actually going out of your comfort zone and talking to people who maybe don’t see the world the way you do.
Dementia rates in the U.S. are dropping as the country ages but researchers don’t understand why.
Why did many Canadian writers, including the ostensible feminist Margaret Atwood, speak out in support of a professor fired for sexual harassment and bullying? You can find more details on the case and the backlash in the Toronto Star.
FBI data show a rise in hate crimes against Muslims and Jews in 2016.
Slate argues that Facebook’s problem runs deeper than fake news, which is that Facebook itself is a media company but Mark Zuckerberg won’t admit or accept it.
Journalist and writer Farai Chideya has a long, thoughtful, somewhat rambling essay on this year’s “call to whiteness,” those who answered the call, and those who chose not to speak out against it.
Trump won because college-educated whites supported him. Ultimately, that is the question Democrats will have to answer: why they couldn’t capture a segment of the electorate that tends to be more liberal (higher education correlates with more liberal/progressive political views).
Trump reportedly pledged support to vaccine denialists at an event in August, in case you weren’t sufficiently horrified yet.
He also once asked a reporter if it was wrong to be more attracted to his 13-year-old daughter than to his wife, in case you weren’t sufficiently horrified yet.
This Philly Daily News op ed explains how Trump & Co. will distract America while looting the country and breaking all manner of rules, in case you weren’t sufficiently horrified yet.
Trump continues to piss and moan about press coverage of him, including personally dressing down several reporters in a meeting last week, in case you weren’t sufficiently horrified yet. But at least New York Times columnist Charles Blow called him out on it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: food waste, links, organic agriculture, physics, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ November 20, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/20/16.

I spent the last week on vacation with my family, in the Bahamas, which was lovely due to the weather, the friendly people, and the rum. Before I left, I filed four offseason buyers’ guides, to the markets for starting pitchers, relief pitchers, infielders & catchers, and outfielders. I also participated in a ’roundtable’ piece with Dan Szymborski where we discussed our NL ROY ballots.

I reviewed the family boardgame Legendary Inventors for Paste; it’s cute but feels a bit unfinished given the imbalance across the various scoring methods. Earlier this month, I updated my all-time favorite boardgame rankings, which now runs to 100 titles.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

A Tribe Called Quest dropped its final album, We Got It From Here, Thank You for Your Service last Friday, and the New York Times has the definitive backstory on the album, which came about due to a thaw in the long estrangement between Q-Tip and Phife, only to have the latter pass away due to complications from diabetes in March.
We can’t let the bullies win. That’s psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who won the 2016 John Maddox Prize for her defense of science against denialists, but it could apply to any aspect of our public discourse on climate change, evolution, vaccines, or, now, civil rights.
Fear of science drove opposition to a plan to release genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys, but the plan is going ahead to try to prevent a Zika outbreak there. This isn’t straight science denial, but ignorance and fear, and it comes with the same arguments about unknown and unstated “risks” that simply aren’t consistent with an understanding of the technology at play here.
The murder of three elderly nuns in Burundi touched off an ongoing political crisis that has led to over 300,000 refugees fleeing the country, the President violating the constitution, and his government killing the son and son-in-law of the country’s leading human rights figure, who survived an assassination attempt himself. The global community, meanwhile, does nothing but watch, as we did twenty years ago.
If you live in North Carolina, it appears that the state Republican Party is trying to steal the gubernatorial election, even though the state was already among the biggest offenders in enacting voter-suppression tactics.
With food allergies still on the rise, there’s a rise in startups providing products that try to detect hidden allergens in food.
Vaccination refusals are up in Texas, a state that is rapidly becoming a gigantic experiment in rolling back civilization by a hundred years, and parents of at-risk kids are asking why. The answer is simple: End non-medical exemptions. In Delaware, I worked with my state rep to make it harder to get a so-called religious exemption, and philosophical exemptions were already prohibited.
If you’re wondering why I’m saying this about Texas, a state rep there has introduced a bill to ban local ordinances that protect LGBTQ residents from discrimination, along with the usual “bathroom privacy” bullshit (again, I ask, which bathroom should intersex people use?). If you live in Texas, call your state reps and tell them you oppose this bill, which business leaders in Texas have said could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues.
A hospital staffer in the UK came down with whooping cough (pertussis) and may have exposed newborns to the virus.
Pertussis can kill an infant, and they’re typically not vaccinated against it until they’re two months old.
A British woman who ended up comatose due to a flu infection in 2014 and nearly died is now urging others not to skip the flu vaccination as she did that year.
The proposed new head of the EPA under Donald Trump has called climate change ‘nothing to worry about’ and has called the Paris climate agreement ‘potentially a disaster for humankind.’
The attempts to intimidate and silence the Theranos whistleblower would be disturbing enough if they didn’t include his own grandfather, Theranos board member and former Secretary of State George Shultz.
Twitter has booted a few of the most virulent white-supremacist and alt-right figures on the service, including white nationalist (and UVA alum!) Richard Spencer. The Ringer has a piece arguing that the move means Twitter has finally started to follow its stated policies on hate speech.
A researcher programmed bot accounts to fight racism on twitter and found that they were somewhat effective … especially when the bot appeared to be a white male with a few hundred followers (as opposed to one or two).
Facebook’s fake news problem isn’t really the main reason the site reinforces false beliefs; it’s a more fundamental issue with how we receive and process such information. In other words, we seek out what we want to hear, and we believe what we want to believe.
Speaking of fake news sites, if you use Chrome, here’s a browser extension to let you know if you’re visiting one.
The American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan praised Trump’s hiring of Stephen Bannon as his “chief strategist,” in case you’re still kidding yourself about the direction of this cabal.
“We need to talk about the online radicalisation of young, white men” was the best headline of the week, and also touches on a very real concern for anyone who, say, views women as actual people.
Donald Trump’s tax plan strongly resembles the tax plan that has bankrupted Kansas. The Fed recently ranked Kansas last among all 50 states for employment growth, unemployment rate, and wage growth. This is the type of economic thinking – thunking? – we’ve now given the reins of our federal government.
Salmonella bacteria and other pathogens that cause food poisoning thrive in packaged salad bags. One solution is to just not buy these bags in the first place, but if you don’t have a better alternative, avoid bags where any leaves have started to turn mushy and dark green, avoid bags that appear tight and swollen (indicating bacterial growth that’s producing gases that expand the bag), and wash and pick over the leaves when you open the bag.
United Airlines is establishing a new lower class of service to make air travel more insufferable than usual. I’m a dedicated and happy Southwest customer and frequent flier, in large part because they don’t do this stuff.
Pete Wells gave a very positive review to a Japanese ramen/noodle-shop chain’s first outpost in the U.S.. He praised TsuruTonTan Udon Noodle Brasserie’s noodle dishes but says rather plainly to avoid their other offerings.
Deadspin suggests that we boo Mike Pence whenever possible. I find the right’s claims that the audience’s actions at Hamilton disrespectful absolutely ludicrous, given how the President-Elect publicly mocked a disabled reporter during the campaign.
Oxford English Dictionaries named post-truth its word of the year.
The agony and the irony: Mike Pence fighting a lawsuit, trying to keep his emails private. The plaintiff is trying to find out how much Pence cost Indiana taxpayers when he joined other states in a 2014 lawsuit against the Obama administration over an order to defer the deportation of some illegal immigrants.
Investing in infrastructure was one of the few aspects of Trump’s vague platform that I could support, but Paul Krugman argues its proposed implementation appears to be a financial scam, and won’t focus on the kinds of public works we need – which, unfortunately, don’t generate revenues.
The Federal Election Commission declined to investigate a dark-money group that spent all its funds on an election, even though it claims to be a social-welfare charity. At this point, we might as well shut the FEC down completely.
Area Man Considers Self Ally To Women Unless They Threaten His Status In Literally Any Way.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, denialism, gmo, japanese cuisine, links, ramen, rap, vaccines

→ November 12, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/12/16.

I ranked the top 50 free agents available this offseason, for Insiders; once these guys start signing, I’ll post reaction pieces as appropriate. My annual offseason buyers guide series started on Friday with the outfield market; the infielders guide will go up today, followed by relievers Sunday and starters on Monday. I wrote an overview of the potential for big trades this winter, given the weak free agent class.

I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday, but there will be no chat this upcoming week.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers Cones of … I mean, Council of Blackthorn, a pretty good backstabbing game that I think has one major mechanical flaw.

I also updated my all-time favorite boardgame rankings, which now runs to 100 titles. I think that’s plenty, even with the 40-50 or so I try each year for review purposes.

I’m going to start this week with reactions to the election of Donald Trump and the Republicans’ de facto control of all three branches of the federal government (assuming they fill the SCOTUS vacancy with one of their own). If you read just one story about the election, make it this one, on how the GOP’s attack on voting rights may have delivered them the White House. If you support the erosion of the voting rights of American citizens, you stand in opposition to a fundamental principle of the modern democracy. Rolling the clock back to the time of poll taxes and literacy tests just to get your guy elected is wrong, and every one of us should be willing to see a candidate we oppose elected if that is the cost of letting everyone who is eligible to vote have the opportunity to vote. If you live in one of the fourteen states that worked to restrict voting rights, you need to stand up now for yourself and for your neighbors.
Rod Dreher, senior editor of the American Conservative, called this America’s front-porch revolt. Michael Moore, of all people, predicted the Trump victory months ago and I think he’s correct about the economic insecurity that drove it. (His five-point “plan” for Democrats is a little light on details.) Glenn Greenwald points out that this was partly the result of politicians’ refusal to heed the lessons of Brexit, that (my words here) economic insecurity and self-interest will trump (pun intended) a lot of other concerns. Esquire‘s Charles Pierce is just plain confused by it all. David Remnick of the New Yorker called Trump’s victory an American tragedy. Unlike the book of that name, however, this won’t be boring, even if the ending is just as awful.
Garrison Keillor says Trump’s core voters won’t like what happens next; I suspect he’s right about much of this. Amanda Taub of the New York Times calls the win the rise of white populism, using social science research to identify three driving factors there – fear of outsiders, fear of physical attacks, and the collapse of “white identity.”
Even Leslie Knope weighed in, with her usual dose of wide-eyed optimism after despair.
A Muslim-American woman wrote for the Washington Post why she voted for Donald Trump. It’s an eloquent, thoughful piece, although I wish I shared her lack of concern over civil rights matters.
Climate Central says we’re fucked. Scientists in general are stunned and dismayed as the most anti-science President in our nation’s history is set to control the EPA, the NSF, the USDA … okay, that one sucks, but you get the idea.
The Guardian wrote before the election how journalists face “tough choices” when climate science deniers are elected. No, they don’t. You fucking hit them with the truth every time. There is no ‘both sides’ here, like there’s no both sides on evolution or vaccinations. If politicians, elected or appointed, deny the truth of climate change, then it is the media’s responsibility to stick to the truth rather than play along for their jobs’ sakes.
Did third-party voters cost Hillary the election? I find this piece overly speculative, since some of those voters may have stayed home rather than vote for either major-party candidate, but if you consider the issue of, say, Hillary failing to convince Jill Stein supporters to come vote for her, there’s merit in the examination.
“A KKK-endorsed man who openly bragged about assaulting women has risen to power by stoking rural, white Americans’ fears, and, come January, every branch of the federal government will belong to him and his allies.” Ann Friedman at the Cut tells voters angry over the results what to do now.
North Carolina’s HB2, the so-called “bathroom bill” that also created a statewide ban on ordinances protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination, may have cost Republican Governor Pat McCrory re-election. The race is close enough that provisional ballots must still be counted, so it’s not quite over yet. Yet despite this, Trump took North Carolina, in part by suppressing the African-American vote.
Kavitha Davidson, my colleague at the magazine and ESPNW, wrote about being a rape survivor, including a graphic description of how invasive the examination is at the hospital after the fact, for those of you who still think women just make this shit up for kicks.
The best longread of the week, election or otherwise, was the New Yorker‘s piece on the failing state of Venezuela, which has implications for baseball, oil, and global security. Hugo Chavez was a disaster, but his death has left the country even worse off.
The mother of comedian and writer Harris Wittels, who wrote for and appeared on Parks and Recreation, writes about her son’s long battle with and death from heroin addiction.
Astronomers around the world will collaborate in the spring of 2017 to try to take the first picture of a black hole. That’s tricker than it sounds, since nothing, not even light, can escape the black hole’s gravitational pull within its event horizon.
Researchers in Queensland, Australia, are trying to develop the first ‘vaccines’ for food allergies. With such allergies on the rise in the developed world, this could be a lifesaving invention for millions of people.
California voters rejected Proposition 60, which would have required porn stars to wear condoms on screen, but was opposed by public health groups as well as the industry itself as a backdoor (pun unintended) attempt to drive the industry out of state.
Does Trader Joes force its employees to act too cheerful? The New York Times explores some employee complaints about the privately-held retailer, which enjoys a cult following on both coasts (of which I am very much a member).
The NY Times article from last week claiming GM crops didn’t deliver promised results was flawed, but so were some responses to it, in part because of misunderstandings of the technology itself.
The Times also had an article just before the election on Latina hotel workers gaining a political voice in Nevada, one of the only swing states to end up on Clinton’s side on Tuesday. The article is extremely well-written and even David Simon praised its kicker at the end.
The BBC visits a private radio station in Damascus, still playing music and sharing news in the midst of the country’s devastating civil war.
A new strain of meningococcal disease is on the rise in Australia, raising calls for the relevant vaccine to become part of that country’s required list of childhood vaccinations.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, gmo, health, links, stick to baseball

→ November 5, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/5/16.

My big news this week was the formal announcement of my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, which will be released in April of 2017. I have gotten many requests from readers over the years for a recommendation of a book to let them get up to speed on ‘new’ stats, and since the book on that topic didn’t exist, I decided to try to write it. You can pre-order it via amazon and other sites already; it will be out in hardcover and as an e-book, but Harper Collins has not decided on an audio version yet. I also do not yet know what appearances I’ll be making or if there will be any sort of tour.

I held my regular Klawchat on Friday this past week, and my latest boardgame review for Paste covers the Hanabi-like deduction game Beyond Baker Street, where you can’t see the cards in your own hand and must give clues to other players on what cards they hold.

My email newsletter has now passed 2500 subscribers; thank you to everyone who’s already signed up. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?

And now, the links…

The LA Times has an outstanding investigative piece on alleged corruption in the development of an LA apartment complex. Congresswoman Janice Hahn, a Democrat from LA, took $200,000 in “donations” from people connected to the project, many of which appear to have been submitted under different names to skirt individual donation limits.
If you care in the least about American democracy, you should be outraged over ongoing voter suppression – especially of the black vote in states like North Carolina.
And, again, if you care in the least about our democracy and don’t want to see the GOP follow through on its promise to block any Hillary nominees for the Supreme Court vacancy, well, get out and vote to give Democrats control of the Senate. If the Republicans lose enough power, they will have to change their message (and pick a better candidate next time).
Top Chef alum Kwame Onwuachi’s new DC restaurant, Shaw Bijou, has garnered mediocre reviews for its $185 tasting menu, a price that doesn’t include wine pairings, tax, or tip, which can bring the total to $500 per person.
An Alberta judge ruled that a four-year-old boy who insists that he’s a girl cannot wear girls’ clothes, part of an ongoing custody battle where the child’s father refuses to even consider that his child is transgender. The risk of suicide or other self-harm in this case is through the roof and the judge’s actions are indefensible.
The New York Times ran a lengthy piece saying GM crops don’t deliver promised results, but the American Council on Science and Health immediately called bullshit on the article.
Deadspin has another fascinating longread this week, this time on con artist and self-styled foreign policy “expert” Robert Caruso, who’s scammed his way into numerous TV appearances and writing gigs, including one for the Council on Foreign Relations.
If you want to fight climate change, stopping deforestation is an essential step and probably the easiest large-scale move we can make to reduce global warming and ocean acidification. Some advocates have gotten pledges from major food manufacturers to help, but do these pledges actually mean or do anything?
Two states have major energy/climate change-related ballot questions this year. Washington is proposing a carbon emissions tax, while Florida has a tricky question pushed by traditional utilities that would make solar panels less cost-effective for homeowners.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a measles complication that is nearly always fatal and occurs up to ten years after infection, may be more common than we thought. Imagine watching your nine-year-old kid get something akin to ALS or multiple systems atrophy. The only way to prevent it is to not get measles in the first place, which means vaccination.
Meanwhile, a bunch of deranged parents in southern California are trying to cure their autistic kids with bleach. The scam artists peddling this crap claim to be part of a “church,” and they’re under investigation in Texas as well for selling what is essentially bleach as a miracle cure.
Alton Brown is bringing back Good Eats as an online show, although the title may change and he says the format will allow him to do some things he couldn’t do on TV for legal reasons. (Maybe that means using lye in the pretzel-cooking water?)
I mentioned those “Around the Web” ads in chat this week, and they were already on my mind because of this article explaining how some publishers are moving away from them anyway. They’re all clickbait, never really tied to the article I’m reading or any data that might indicate my real interests, and often the images used with them are disturbing or provocative (like a pic of Jose Fernandez) just to get you to click.
A 24-year-old Saudi Arabian student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout was beaten to death by an unidentified white man this past week. The suspect remains at large. While it’s not known if this was specifically a hate crime, the circumstances and timing point that way.
Liberal Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz writes that the Southern Poverty Law Center is wrong to label him “anti-Muslim,” pointing out that critics of Islam often say that the religion needs people to try to reform the religion from within and stop Islamist fundamentalism. The SPLC’s listing on Nawaz calls into doubt some of his motivations and details of his background, but also called him “anti-Muslim” for publishing a cartoon depicting Jesus and Mohammed.
The downfall of South Korean President Park Geun-hye is totally bonkers, tied to a forty-year connection with the daughter of a cult leader.
Land reclamation is increasingly popular as small city-states like Singapore and Monaco try to find more space for their people, or wealthy nations like Dubai (in the UAE) try to … do whatever it is they’re doing, but there are substantial environmental costs to these projects.
In response to an ongoing sexual harassment scandal, where male soccer players were writing and emailing sexually-charged “scouting reports” on female soccer recruits, Harvard did the right thing and canceled the rest of the men’s soccer season. Several of the women targeted in one of those documents wrote a powerful, indignant response to the men who objectified and degraded them.
Hillary Clinton faces intense animosity, often expressed in vulgar terms as she approaches the election. While some of it is clearly connected to her actions, much of it is about her husband and even more is because she’s a woman.
All right, let’s do this… The NY Times details how Trump used a legally “dubious” method to avoid paying taxes for so many years. Newsweek explains how his companies destroyed emails and documents in defiance of court orders. If you question Hillary’s ethics, how could you possibly think more of Trump?
Thomas Friedman points out that Trump’s stated policy goals will hurt, not help, his core voters. If you vote for him, you’re probably going to end up worse off economically if he wins. (I think we’ll all end up worse off as our economy contracts, but his base, less-educated white male voters, seem especially likely to suffer.) A Vox piece from a few weeks ago reached the same conclusion about Trump’s tax plans, which favor the highest-income bracket.
David Frum makes the conservative case for voting for Hillary, and against Trump, who is in no way a classical conservative. I disagree with Frum on one key point: I think as President, Trump would have plenty of help in trying to silence opposing media.
Ross Douthat points out the dangers of a Trump victory, from civil unrest (which we may see even if he loses) to global destabilization.
Prof. Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, who wrote a book on Hitler’s use of propaganda, compares Trump’s use of the same to Hitler’s and claims to find similarities.
The Guardian has a piece arguing the real reveal in the Podesta emails is how the American power elite protects and helps itself by retaining power. Whether you’re voting for Hillary (as I am) or not, the emails should disturb you for their demonstration of how money and back-room deals subvert the ostensibly open nature of our republic. Esquire details how Russia pulled off this hack, the biggest in U.S. election history (so far).
From May, Adam Gopnik’s excellent and prescient New Yorker piece on the dangerous acceptance of Donald Trump.
Scientific American, which does not normally take stands on political races, has pointed out several times that Trump’s lack of respect for and ignorance of science is alarming. That piece is from September 1st, but I think if anything he’s shown the issue is worse than we thought at the time, given his increasingly distant relationship with the truth.
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter lays waste to Trump, whom he’s known for over twenty years.
Because we all need some levity right now, here’s a hilarious BBC video of a clever honey badger who is a master escape artist.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, gmo, good eats, links, stick to baseball, top chef, vaccines

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