I held my usual Klawchat on Thursday; I’ll have a wrap-up reaction piece on Monday to all the smaller moves from the last few days (Butler and LaRoche in particular). If something huge breaks today or tomorrow, I’ll write a separate piece on that.

If you’re looking for a comment, I’m sorry, but I have none to offer. I appreciate all of the support I’ve received.

• My friend Wendy Thurm discusses the dominance of male followers on sports Twitter. I’m mentioned, and I too was surprised that the ratio of men to women among my followers was that high, given how many women I hear from via Twitter.
• Because I’m a language dork, here are 23 charts and maps about languages from vox.com.
• From Bon Appetit, some tips on not screwing up marinara sauce. I’ll add two more: Don’t add sugar, and add a splash of wine to extract some of the alcohol-soluble (but not water-soluble) compounds in the tomatoes.
• From The Guardian, Hunter Felt writes about transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox’s confrontation with the prejudice of Joe Rogan. There’s some interesting science in here too.
• The report this week from the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate on the failures to treat Adam Lanza’s mental illness is incredibly horrifying. I’m reminded of the result of these mistakes, many of which were from his mother refusing to see her son as severely ill, every time I drive to or from Bristol, right by the I-84 exit for Sandy Hook and Newtown. But reading that piece also made it seem like Lanza was suffering badly and denied treatment that might have helped him (and saved all those kids). We’d never think of refusing treatment, even palliative care, to someone suffering from cancer or MS. Mental illness shouldn’t be treated differently.
• NPR’s food blog goes after what’s really in “pumpkin spice” flavoring. I’m disappointed they linked to Vani Hari, who is wildly anti-science, but I would guess most people who down those drinks don’t know what they’re actually consuming. Eat real food, not facsimiles designed to remind your brain of real food.

And finally, a picture you won’t be able to unsee. What’s worse, the annexation of Crimea, or “Sweating Bullets?”

Dave Mustaine looks like Vladimir Putin. pic.twitter.com/C4pisxu7Gb

— Martha Young (@MarthaYoung) November 21, 2014

I was on vacation through Wednesday of this week, but did post an omnibus reaction piece to the Cuddyer, V-Mart, and Gose deals. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

This week’s links …

• I was arrested for voting. Iowa is ignoring the rules of our democracy.
• I was noodling around, looking for substitutes for cheddar cheese in a dish, and found two good links on the classes of cheese, organized by melting properties, one from Fine Cooking, and one from cheese expert Liz Thorpe.
• Scientists keep learning more about our microbiome, like how bacteria in our GI tracts might help fight off viruses.
• I know you’ll be shocked, but the 2014 All-Star Game didn’t live up to financial projections. Those projections are always pie-in-the-sky claims from people with a vested interest in the event. Ignore them.
• That video of the heroic Syrian boy who rescued a young girl while under fire? It was fake. Even if the creators’ hearts were in the right place, this will do far more damage than good.

I’m still on vacation, enjoying Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade with the family and getting some reading time in too, but all the stuff I filed for ESPN before leaving is going up:

* My top 50 free agent rankings, with scouting reports on each.
* My offseason buyers’ guides to:
→ Starting pitchers
→ Relief pitchers
→ Outfielders
→ Corner infielders
→ Middle infielders

The guide to catchers will go up Sunday, and on Monday my NL ROY ballot column will go up after the winner is announced.

And now, the links…

• Did a Johns Hopkins scientist write a journal article saying that the flu shot is dangerous? Of course not, but some idiots are still repeating that drivel.
• The truth about cast-iron skillets. Mythbusting from Serious Eats.
• A good explanation of the difference between fair trade and direct trade in coffee, featuring one of my favorite local roasters, Phoenix’s Cartel Coffee Lab. Related: The case for drinking as much coffee as you like.
• A New York Times piece on great donuts in New York City. A real public service, I say.
• Why kids sext, from The Atlantic. I’m a few years away from worrying about this crap, I think.
• A non-GMO way to get tastier tomatoes. Genetic modification is one way, just not the only way. Meanwhile, that rumor some moron shared on your facebook page about GMO corn killing 37 million bees in Canada? Bogus. They were probably killed by neonics, a kind of pesticide we need to consider banning.

No new ESPN content this week other than Klawchat; I’ve been working on my top 50 free agents ranking, which goes up some time after the World Series ends, and there’s a 2015 draft ranking in the editing queue up in Bristol.

Lots of links this week…

• Isaac Asimov was my favorite writer when I was a kid; I devoured his Foundation series, and taught myself algebra from his now out-of-print Realm of Algebra book, which is probably still sitting in the library of my junior high school. MIT Technology Review has a previously unpublished essay he wrote in 1959, asking how people get new ideas.
• A delightful BBC News piece commemorating what would have been the 100th birthday of mathematician, writer, and puzzle-master Martin Gardner, including ten puzzles for you to tackle.
• Last week’s Saturday five included some links to stories about the #GamerGate imbroglio, and reader Liz F sent along another story, from TechCrunch, that tries to look at the story as two separate controversies under one banner.
• From a Rwandan Dump to the Halls of Harvard. Of course, the headline could have just said “Harvard,” but “the Halls of Harvard” sounds so much more Norse-mythological.
• Via Richard Deitsch on Twitter, a powerful post from writer Jeff Benedict on getting his sister out of an abusive marriage. Not for the faint of heart.
• Economist Paul Krugman takes aim at Amazon’s monopsony in e-book retailing. I sort of agree, and I sort of disagree. It’s a complicated question because there’s not much evidence Amazon is harming consumers, which is usually the standard for evaluating anticompetitive practices.
• Vegas Watch summarized my perplexing Twitter conversation with RJ Bell, where I couldn’t seem to get an answer to my question about whether record against the spread (ATS) has any predictive value. (It doesn’t.)
• Biochemist and food writer (and frequent Good Eats guest star) Shirley Corriher talks food science with NPR’s The Salt.
• The Verge looks at how crappy “satire” sites are spreading Ebola panic. Read it if only to learn what sites you should blacklist from your own posts.
• And finally, a very clever commercial, from Finland, that spoofs the country’s tradition of death-metal artists to sell … well, you’ll see.

My second Arizona Fall League scouting post went up earlier this week, and I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

My review of this year’s Spiel des Jahres winner, the boardgame Camel Up, is up at Paste magazine. I’ll have three more reviews up for them over the next month or so, and my annual boardgame rankings post will go up here on the dish in mid-November.

Now, for the links – and there are a lot this week:

• The “reanalysis” of MMR data has been retracted. That’s the study that purported to show that African-American boys who received the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine at certain ages were more likely to develop autism. The whole thing was a fraud, and now the journal that let this junk slip the through the cracks has admitted its error.
• Speaking of anti-science, in Italy, several seismologists went on trial for failing to predict a massive earthquake that killed 297 people. This was the best long-form piece I saw this week, from the new online-only publication Matter.
• In South Carolina, prosecutors are arguing that “stand your ground” doesn’t apply to victims of domestic violence .
• I’ve been reading more about #GamerGate, the twin scandals that involve harassment of several prominent women in video game development and an attack on conflicts of interest in game reviews. Rawstory published a piece arguing GamerGate is an attack on ethical journalism, while Forbes argues that it’s really a consumer movement. For some more background on the harassment angle, the New Yorker had a great piece in early September on the hate campaign against Zoë Quinn, which set off the whole movement.
• Guy writes chilling post about being a stalker. He seems to think he’s done nothing wrong, which is the most disturbing part.
• A breast-cancer survivor explains why she doesn’t breastfeed – and why it’s rude to ask. My wife couldn’t breastfeed our daughter because of a medication she was taking that shows up in mothers’ breast milk. But really, it’s none of your business.
• A study in the journal Addiction shows results of a twenty-year study into marijuana use, arguing that pot is addictive and has harmful long-term effects. This seems like an argument for education, not for opposing decriminalization.
• The Atlantic posted an amusing/serious piece on how technology is enabling adultery and suspicious partners alike.
• Doctors Without Borders gives a no-bull update on the fight against Ebola in west Africa. All this promised aid hasn’t gotten to the group yet, and they’re also dealing with a smaller outbreak in central Africa at the same time.

My Tuesday column this past week announced that Kris Bryant is my 2014 Prospect of the Year, a piece in which I mentioned a dozen other guys, including the player with the best pro debut by a 2014 draft pick. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

I’ve been stepping up the boardgame reviews again, reviewing Valley of the Kings for Paste magazine, and Seasons and Spyrium here.

EDIT: Codito/Sage Board Games have a new iOS boardgame app bundle, which takes $1 off each of the games you haven’t bought. Tigris & Euphrates and Le Havre are both excellent, if you don’t already own them.

And now, to the links – seven this time, since I didn’t post last Saturday and had a few extras saved up:

• The most important link I’ve ever posted, I think: Leslie Morgan Steiner on why domestic violence victims don’t leave. She’s a survivor herself, and what she says will help educate people who ask this question.
• From the BBC World Service, an interview with one of the biologists who sequenced the coffee genome. That was part of a program, which you can download directly here, that also included a segment on aquaponics efforts in London and NFL cheerleaders fighting for better wages.
• From Salon, “Finally, Wall Street Gets Put on Trial.” But is that really what the case here means? Will it have any lasting effect – hell, is there even any reason to think this ruling will extend beyond this one court?
• From the NY Times, What we’re afraid to say about Ebola. I don’t know – I think people are rather duly freaked out by the whole thing, including the very scenario the author outlines.
• From Vice, We Should All Be Eating Animal Fat. This won’t convince any vegans, but he makes the case that carnivores shouldn’t be shy when it comes to the fat of the animals we eat. And yes, I do render and use fat from much of the meat I cook – both pork and poultry fats.
• From NPR, on the pleasure of bitter flavors, with a recipe for turnip ice cream.
• I tweeted this last night, but it’s worth repeating – a high school in Bucks County, PA, suspended the school paper’s student editor and faculty advisor because they refused to print the school’s team nickname, the same racist term the NFL team in Washington clings to in the face of mounting scorn and criticism. What a great way to teach kids about censorship and vulgar displays of power.

I wrote about the potential impact of some September callups for Insider, and held a Klawchat on Friday. I’m back on Baseball Tonight in the small hours this evening, with the show airing at 2:30 am Eastern.

This week’s links, from food science to gender bias in sports fanbases:

• The secrets of fake flavors. “Natural” flavors aren’t always what you think they are.
• How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty. A very long read that’s worth every word. It’s the new racism, which seems a lot like the old racism’s poll taxes and voter tests.
• Bud and Miller Are Trying to Hijack Craft Beer—and It’s Totally Backfiring. Reminds me of the day I learned Blue Moon was just Coors with different labeling. Screw that.
• Dr. James Andrews wants your young athlete to stay healthy by playing less. Story is over a year old, but more people are willing to hear the message due to the rash of elbow surgeries.
• Female hockey fandom and the good ol’ boys’ club. I guess it’s bias week here on the dish. I don’t think any male sport’s fan base or media contingent is particularly friendly to women.

Also, for fellow fans of melodic death metal, the upcoming In Flames album, Siren Charms, is available as a $5 pre-order through that link. I’m not that familiar with their work, but if anyone’s heard the new album, I’d love to hear your opinions.