Happy New Year, everyone. I had one new piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week, breaking down my Hall of Fame ballot, which went about as well as you might expect. I held a Klawchat on the 23rd.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Iberian Gauge, an 18xx game that’s on the shorter side for that genre, and wrote up everything I saw and played at PAX Unplugged this year.
I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, talking about music and how we consume and categorize it has changed since I first became a big fan of pop music about 40 years ago.
I also appeared on my friend Elliott Garstin’s podcast, Twenty Eyes Radio, to talk about my favorite songs and albums of 2021.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: Dr. Irene Bosch, a molecular biologist currently at MIT, created a rapid test for COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, and had arranged for its manufacture. Thanks to the FDA, you still can’t get it.
- Dr. Robert Malone is a real scientist who has falsely claimed credit for inventing mRNA vaccines. That’s led him down a path of straight-up vaccine denialism, enough to get him suspended from Twitter this past week.
- COVID-19 denialists like to claim that deaths from the virus are overcounter, but the truth is that they’re significantly undercounted in many counties, based on large spikes in excess deaths that aren’t attributed to the virus for mostly innocuous reasons.
- Did the 76ers just announce a big partnership with a fake company? Defector was unable to find any evidence that the CEO of Color Star is even a real person.
- Wichita juvenile detention center employees murdered a Black teenager in their custody in September by restraining him in the prone position – which police also used to restrain George Floyd when they killed him.
- The Associated Press has the story of an Army veteran who spent a decade working for the FBI by infiltrating KKK groups to identify law enforcement officers who were members.
- Buzzfeed investigates two agencies that have exploited content creators on OnlyFans, and now face lawsuits claiming extortionary practices, failure to pay creators, failure to pay overtime, and more. Workers’ rights are workers’ rights, regardless of the industry.
- A “terrible” book called Viral that pushes lab-leak conspiracy theories shows why people won’t let that idea go. Indeed, there’s new evidence further supporting the hypothesis that COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon.
- One thing, and only one thing, has worked to get unvaccinated people to get the jab: Employer mandates.
- In the “it’s about fucking time” department, California revoked the license of a doctor who gave out fake vaccine exemptions.
- Meanwhile, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a vaccine, CORBEVAX, that they’re allowing countries around the world to use without patent restrictions. It’s just been approved for use in India, with more countries to follow. This might be the best weapon we have for slowing the pandemic.
- An Oklahoma lawmaker (guess the party!) wants to give parents the right to demand that a school remove any book from its library, and would reward such parents a bounty of $10,000 per day if the school doesn’t remove the book. It’s really about targeting LGBTQ+ books (and, by extension, LGBTQ+ kids), of course.
- One small thing anyone can do to help fight climate change: Eat less red meat.
- Georgia Republicans are trying to eliminate six of the seven polling stations in Lincoln County, a move activists see as targeting minority voters.
- “Christmas Wrapping” is unavoidable at this time of year; I’ve grown to hate the song thanks to a job in retail in the fall of 1989. Yahoo! has a look at the song’s complex history.
- The discourse, if you can even call it that, over critics’ disdain for Don’t Look Up is a symptom of society’s growing anti-intellectualism.
- Asmodee purchased Miniature Market, one of the biggest board game & miniatures retailers in the country, at some point in 2021, without any announcement.
- McSweeney’s offers An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush. Is it bad that I know all of the songs mentioned? My wife says that’s bad.