{"id":5051,"date":"2016-08-13T11:47:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T15:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=5051"},"modified":"2016-08-13T11:47:02","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T15:47:02","slug":"stick-to-baseball-81316","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/13\/stick-to-baseball-81316\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 8\/13\/16."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote one Insider piece this week, on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2aOCv6F\" target=\"_blank\">the decline and fall of Yasiel Puig as a hitter<\/a>, not as a clubhouse problem or social media superstar. I also held a long <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2baz3Zm\" target=\"_blank\">Klawchat<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>I attended GenCon for the first time last week and wrote three pieces about it for <em>Paste<\/em>, including the <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2aFoWpV\" target=\"_blank\">top ten new games<\/a> I saw, the summary of <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2aHmBwE\" target=\"_blank\">every other interesting title<\/a>, and an essay on <a href=\"http:\/\/klaw.me\/2aJrKbN\" target=\"_blank\">the experience of attending for the first time<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This piece on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/charliewarzel\/a-honeypot-for-assholes-inside-twitters-10-year-failure-to-s?utm_term=.etW8YNmPa#.fqRnDpgJa\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter&#8217;s ongoing failure to deal with harassment<\/a> sheds much light on how and why the site has allowed abuse to flourish. Lack of diversity in company leadership has been one major problem.<\/li>\n<li>Vox advances the thesis that NBC&#8217;s coverage of the Olympics is terrible <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/8\/11\/12433144\/nbc-olympics-bad\" target=\"_blank\">because they view the games as entertainment, not sports<\/a>. I find their broadcasts unwatchable; we record them and fast-forward through maybe 90% of the content, including every recorded feature they&#8217;ve prepared on the athletes, because all I&#8217;m interested in is certain events.<\/li>\n<li>Deadly bacteria, like the one that causes cholera, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/deadly-bacteria-spread-across-oceans-as-water-temperatures-rise\/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_ENGYSUS_NEWS\" target=\"_blank\">are spreading as ocean temperatures rise<\/a>. Climate-change deniers tend to focus on air temperatures, but I&#8217;ve yet to find one who can rationalize away our warming and increasingly acidic oceans.<\/li>\n<li>A woman who was sexually assaulted while a student at Harvard Law School <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theestablishment.co\/2016\/08\/09\/why-harvard-should-justsaysorry-for-how-it-handled-my-sexual-assault\/\" target=\"_blank\">explains why the school needs to apologize<\/a>, part of the &#8220;just say sorry&#8221; campaign for schools to at least accept that modicum of responsibility. I&#8217;m ashamed to read the details of how HLS mishandled her case, including the subsequent readmission of her rapist and the actions of 19 professors who have defended <em>him<\/em> and participated in shaming her.<\/li>\n<li>Anita Hill spoke to NPR about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2016\/08\/10\/489359818\/anita-hill-weve-come-a-long-way-since-then\" target=\"_blank\">progress in workplace since her sexual harassment claim<\/a>, which became a story in 1991 but never really threatened the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. If a nominee today were accused of doing what Hill said Thomas did \u2013 and I see no reason to disbelieve her \u2013 would he sail through to the bench as Thomas did?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/07\/04\/business\/amazon-is-quietly-eliminating-list-prices.html\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon is quietly eliminating list prices<\/a> in response to a number of complaints, including lawsuits over misleading discounts off prices that never really existed.<\/li>\n<li>Three student-scientists at Stanford believe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2016\/08\/09\/489346240\/young-inventors-work-on-secret-proteins-to-thwart-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria\" target=\"_blank\">they&#8217;ve developed proteins that will kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria<\/a>. They&#8217;re seeking investors and aren&#8217;t disclosing the details \u2013 which I hope isn&#8217;t too similar to Elizabeth Holmes&#8217; history \u2013 but this could be very good news in what is about to become a huge public-health crisis.<\/li>\n<li>Clay Shirky explains why <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@cshirky\/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-protest-vote-c2fdacabd704#.8at8xdase\" target=\"_blank\">there&#8217;s no such thing as a protest vote<\/a>. I happen to agree, and I have in fact cast such a vote in the past \u2013 but won&#8217;t this year.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, <em>Reason<\/em> has an op ed on <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/archives\/2016\/08\/10\/for-republicans-a-vote-for-trump-is-a-wa\" target=\"_blank\">why Republicans voting for Trump would be wasting their votes<\/a>, although the author is really just arguing that Trump is not a conservative and that he&#8217;d be a disastrous president \u2026 but I believe he&#8217;s arguing conservatives should vote for Gary Johnson instead.<\/li>\n<li>Texas, which has executed more prisoners since 1976 than 45 other states combined, is about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2016\/08\/texas-prepares-to-execute-a-man-who-killed-no-one\/\" target=\"_blank\">to execute a convict who didn&#8217;t kill anybody<\/a>. He was in the getaway car when his partner in the planned robbery killed the store employee. <\/li>\n<li>So far, the Rio Olympics <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2016\/08\/the-disaster-olympics-that-werent.html\" target=\"_blank\">have not led to any of the disasters predicted for them<\/a>. That doesn&#8217;t mean giving Brazil the Olympics was a good idea; the economic harm done to the country could be long-lasting, such as wasting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2016\/jul\/16\/rio-olympics-crisis-brazil-zika-athletes-woes-uplift\" target=\"_blank\">$62 million on Olympic posters to hide a favela<\/a> from public view.<\/li>\n<li>The pseudonymous surgeon and scientist Orac weighs in on <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/2016\/08\/08\/how-should-we-deal-with-vaccine-hesitancy-refusal-and-antivaccine-beliefs\/#.V6g7UXzMzcc.twitter\" target=\"_blank\">the latest Medscape survey on vaccine-refusing or hesitant patients<\/a>, with some prescriptions for the best strategies in dealing with them. He also notes that the media (hi!) have become less tolerant of anti-vax bullshit over the last few years.<\/li>\n<li>The DoJ report excoriating the Baltimore police department included a note where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/08\/12\/us\/baltimore-police-sexual-assault-gender-bias.html?smid=tw-nytimes&#038;smtyp=cur\" target=\"_blank\">a prosecutor called a woman who reported a rape a &#8220;conniving little whore.<\/a>&#8221; Much of the coverage has focused on the department&#8217;s problems with racial bias, but the BPD has an abysmal record at investigating rapes, too.<\/li>\n<li><em>Vanity Fair<\/em> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2016\/07\/bill-cosby-andrea-constand-sexual-assault-trial?\" target=\"_blank\">a longread on the Bill Cosby rape case(s)<\/a>, explaining how this one particular incident reached a courtroom and opened the gates for fifty-nine other victims to come forward.<\/li>\n<li>A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, has gotten some positive attention on social media <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/read\/viral-judge-amber-wolf-kentucky-louisville?utm_source=vicetwitterus\" target=\"_blank\">for two cases where she showed some human decency<\/a>. The first case, of a female defendant who appeared to have been seriously mistreated by jailers, is about much more than just a judge showing compassion.<\/li>\n<li>Australia has a large detention center for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru \u2013 a functionally insolvent island state that depends on the center and foreign aid for its economic survival \u2013 and a <em>Guardian<\/em> investigative report found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2016\/aug\/10\/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other\" target=\"_blank\">widespread abuse of children in the camp<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote one Insider piece this week, on the decline and fall of Yasiel Puig as a hitter, not as a clubhouse problem or social media superstar. I also held a long Klawchat on Thursday. I attended GenCon for the first time last week and wrote three pieces about it for Paste, including the top [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[828,190,895,883,750,807],"class_list":["post-5051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-links","tag-olympics","tag-rape-culture","tag-twitter","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5052,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5051\/revisions\/5052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}