The big piece from me this week was about GenCon, the massive annual boardgaming convention held in Indianapolis; I went from Thursday to Sunday and my wrapup post covers every game I saw or tried, with a ranking of my top 20. I even slipped in a mention of some upcoming boardgame apps of note.
My latest piece for Insiders was a minor league scouting notebook covering prospects from Pittsburgh (Mitch Keller), Baltimore (Austin Hays), Philadelphia, and Colorado’s systems. I also did my annual rankings of the top tools in the majors: the top hit, run, and power tools, the best pitches of each type, and the
top gloves and arms for catchers, infielders, and outfielders. I don’t particularly love writing these pieces, but readers seem to enjoy them. And I held a Klawchat on Thursday.
I gave a Talk at Google last month, discussing my book Smart Baseball, which you should definitely buy if you haven’t already.
And now, the links…
- My friend Will Leitch speaks sense when he says the ESPN/Robert Lee flap was “much ado about nothing.”
- Sam Miller described a trick play in a Rhode Island high school baseball game called skunk in the outfield. The play took 2:32 to complete and includes former Red Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland.
- Texas’ Republican Party believes so much in suppressing the vote that they’ve been wasting taxpayer money for six years fighting the courts and repeatedly losing. If the current Administration gets to pick some more federal judges, however, such efforts may end up succeeding.
- The Interior Department has killed a study into the effects of coal mining on the miners. Trump’s Administration is obsessed with coal, which is dirty, exhaustible, and not a part of our energy future.
- Gwyneth Paltrow’s pseudoscience site GOOP has been hit with formal complaints of deceptive advertising, mostly because they claim their bullshit actually works.
- Stephan Neidenbach, a middle school teacher in Maryland and operator of the @welovegv (GMOs and Vaccines) twitter account, has used FOIA requests to find conflicts of interest and malfeasance from anti-GMO academics. Genetically modified organisms are safe, and academics who attack them do so in contravention of the evidence on the topic to date.
- “Poland Spring … coming to you straight from the water main.” A lawsuit says it’s just tap water, not spring water as the company claims.
- Former Google engineer James Damore claims he was “fired for telling the truth,” but the truth is that his now infamous memo was based on some seriously flawed beliefs about science.
- Jess Luther exposes the deep ignorance of deposed University of Minnesota football coach Tracy Claeys, who still doesn’t think he or his players did anything wrong.
- The Washington Post looks at what actual anti-fascist protestors, dubbed “antifa,” do and believe. You’ll hear the alt-right/neo-Nazi camp use “antifa” to try to draw some false equivalence between racist shitheads and those who oppose them. Don’t fall for it.
- A British prisoner is now in year 11 of what was supposed to be a 10-month jail term under the bogus claim that it’s for his own protection, as he has a history of self-harm. Family members are trying to get him released before he kills himself in custody.
- VICE’s Tonic has a first-person account from someone who got a staph infection from a hospital visit.
- The civil war in Yemen has been going on for 29 months, but is rarely in our news because there’s little oil there. A Saudi-led airstrike in the capital of Sana’a killed at least 14 civilians, including children, but nobody seems to care.
- Angola, another country you never think about – John Oliver would do a map joke here – just elected its first new leader in 38 yeras. It’s expected to be someone from the outgoing dictator’s party, and the elections have been anything but free. Still, it’s their first change in leadership since 1979, and given their atrocious economy and widespread poverty, any change has to seem like a chance for optimism.
- TIME looks at how youth sports became a $15 billion industry. If your kid has talent, s/he doesn’t need to go pay to play at events for scouts or coaches. Save the cash and put it in a tax-deferred account for his/her tuition instead.
- I’ll end with one feel-good story: The cloakroom girl at a British opera house had to step in when the soprano fell ill – and wowed the audience.