The biggest piece I wrote this week was actually right here, the tenth annual ranking of my top 100 boardgames, including a list (at the bottom) of my favorite titles for two players. And you’ll see in the comments there are still plenty of good games out there I haven’t played.

For Insiders, I broke down MLB’s penalties for Atlanta, looking at the players set free and the impact of the league’s actions for the long term, and also looked at how the top few free agents might end up overpaid this offseason. My next scheduled piece will cover Shohei Otani and will run December 2nd, the day he hits the market for real, assuming there isn’t another roadblock between now and then.

No Klawchat this week on account of the holiday.

Buy Smart Baseball for all your loved ones this holiday season! It makes a great gift. By which I mean it’s great for me when you give it as a gift.

And now, the links…

• Longreads first: The New York Times found that civilian casualties from the U.S. airstrikes against ISIS are much higher than reported. I can’t shake the notion that the last fifteen-odd years of bombings, especially by drone, are merely incubating a new generation of potential terrorists who hate us.
• Buzzfeed blew the doors off the Congressional fund that pays off sexual harassment complaints against legislators and certain other federal employees, with $17 million paid out over 264 complaints. There’s so much wrong here, including the allegations against Rep. John Conyers (who needs to resign immediately), including the fact that taxpayers are covering this expense, and that settlements aren’t automatically made public.
• The Washington Post interviewed 25 North Korean defectors about life under the current dictator, Kim Jong Un, who has slightly liberalized the economy while further cracking down on any semblance of individual rights. The biggest takeaway for me: It’s no longer famine driving people to defect, but an increased awareness of the freedom of the world outside of North Korea’s borders.
• The Guardian has a long, entertaining, and wide-ranging look at the British prepared sandwich industry, which is a much bigger deal than I realized. The lack of time to eat a proper meal, however, is an issue here and in many other developed economies, even though it’s probably hurting our physical and mental health.
• Forbes, that bastion of liberal economic thought, says the current GOP tax bill “will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.” I rarely discuss economic policy here, feeling rather unqualified to do so, but I will say that I think this bill is a poor facsimile of a failed macroeconomic policy proposal, trickle-down economics, that instead is merely a massive transfer of wealth to the highest income earners. I might actually benefit from the bill, depending on the fine print, but I thoroughly oppose it, because it will make so many people worse off and drag our country into a length economic malaise it will be tough to escape. (Also, tax breaks on private jets? What possible rationale is there for that?)
• The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’s analysis also shows the bulk of the benefits going to higher income brackets, with the biggest gainers those in the 95th to 99th percentiles for income.
• Fake news in action: You’ll see many alt-right accounts (bots) and sites pushing the story of a Saudi princess whose tell-all interview with Le Monde revealed tales of orgies, white slavery, and other debauchery among the Saudi ruling class. The problem, according to Le Monde, is that the interview never happened (article in French). The fabrication is so pervasive that the esteemed French newspaper felt compelled to author a refutation, blaming the Iranian news service and a Sri Lankan paper for promulgating the lie.
• People with diabetes are dying because they can’t afford insulin, a situation created by the current nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. While Azar headed up Eli Lilly, he more than tripled the cost the company’s insulin product over ten years, even though the product’s patent expired. The company is also under investigation for price-fixing, and settled a set of cases over off-label marketing of its drug Zyprexa for over $1.4 billion.
• The Administration and the conservative wing of the Republican Party are trying to pack the courts with conservative judges, a threat to civil liberties and more for decades, even after the current occupant of the White House is out.
• The Attorney General of New York says the commenting process on net neutrality was compromised, and the FCC won’t provide the documents to help him investigate it. One researcher claims over a million of the comments were fake. It doesn’t really matter; Ajit Pai, the new FCC head, was going to axe net neutrality regardless of the public reaction. One of the minority Democrats on the FCC board wrote a piece imploring the public to keep the pressure on by contacting other board members. We should all do this, but you’ll have to forgive my cynicism: if the three conservative board members can physically get to the vote on December 14th, net neutrality is dead.
• Media consolidation erodes the myth of “liberal” media as large conglomerates pull major outlets to the right, according to Poynter.
• The Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan has banned all gay assemblies in the capital, Ankara, including forums, festivals, and film screenings, part of an ongoing crackdown on LGBT rights in the supposedly secular nation. Also, our current President loves Erdogan.
• Another tyrant, Robert Mugabe, has resigned after ruling Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980. The problem is that his successor was implicated in one of Zimbabwe’s deadliest massacres. The new boss is the same as the old boss.
• The hell is wrong with western Canada? One family of anti-science nutters lets their kid die of meningitis without seeking medical treatment, and they’re still raving about their rights. Now another mother is going to jail for failing to get medical help for her son, who had strep throat – easily treatable with antibiotics, as Streptococcus doesn’t readily develop resistance – and died after she treated it with bullshit. Yes, the story says “holistic remedies,” but there is no such thing, and the Tribune Media Wire author(s) behind the piece should be fired. Meanwhile, a “naturopathic doctor” (no such thing, folks) in Medicine Hat is pushing the “sanitation and hygiene” crap while ranting against vaccines on Twitter. I don’t know Canadian law, but if there’s a licensing board in Alberta, someone should ask them to strip his.
• Conservatives and the highly religious are more likely to endorse myths about rape, including victim-blaming, disbelieving accusers, or saying it’s only rape if the victim fought back. Pro tip: If your religion tells you that a woman can ask for rape, or that date rape is acceptable, then it’s time you found a new religion or none at all.
• The “Church” of Scientology covered up the rape of one of its members by actor Danny Masterson, telling her it wasn’t rape because they were in a relationship. I’d say this is yet another point in favor of stripping the cult of its tax-exempt status.
• I reviewed Ed Yong’s wonderful book I Contain Multitudes, about the microbiome in our ecosystem and all over our bodies, back in March. In a later chapter, he discusses the proposal to release male Aedes albopictus mosquitoes infected with a strain of the Wolbachia pipientis bacterium into the environment; when they mate, the eggs laid by the female mosquitoes won’t hatch because of the bacterial infection. Earlier this month, the EPA approved a proposal to do just that in 20 states and Washington DC. It could prove a game-changing advance in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. (Malaria is transmitted by a different genus of mosquito, Anopheles.)
• Coral researchers are coping with the effects of watching the reefs they cover die out as a result of ocean acidification and climate change.
• Three cups of coffee a day may have health benefits. I could confirm this, but I’d be in the bathroom all day long if I tried.
• If you know someone who’s both celiac and anti-GMO, ask them if they’d eat gluten-free flour made from genetically modified wheat that can’t form the key proteins that appear to trigger celiac disease. The genetic modification comes via CRISPR rather than gene transfer from an unrelated species.
• I travel quite a bit every year, enough to get premium status on at least one airline, and I’ve begun carrying a refillable water bottle on every trip now that many airports have refilling stations of filtered tap water, including the Philadelphia airport, which doesn’t have a ton to recommend it but does have a lot of these fountains.
• A leader of the Indian ruling party, as a bit of an overreaction to the forthcoming film Padmavati, has offered a bounty for anyone who beheads the star actress and the film’s director.
• The FBI and Department of Justice are investigating the St. Louis police force’s conduct during protests in September after the acquittal of a white officer who killed an unarmed black man in 2011. The police department is also under a temporary order blocking the use of chemical agents and dispersal orders, pending mediation.
• The Baseball Project is a supergroup comprising five well-known musicians who happen to be big baseball fans, including REM’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills and two former members of the Dream Syndicate. The fifth member, Scott McCaughey, had a significant stroke earlier this month, and there’s a GoFundMe to help cover his medical expenses. McCaughey is/was also a member of the Minus Five and the Young Fresh Fellows.
• The Verge looks at an ongoing Venmo scam that has netted the crooks over $100K, largely because the victims hear a chance to get a guaranteed, immediate profit, and don’t demand cash or use a more secure payment system.
• Bad headline, good piece: A NY Times editorial examines the increasing desire to find balance between our digital and analog lives.
• WIRED profiled one of New York’s most successful professional Dungeon Masters, known to D&D players as a “DM.”
• At PAX Unplugged last week, I met with a rep from a company called Shapeways that allows you to create your own meeples and dice.