{"id":7305,"date":"2019-01-12T12:19:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T17:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=7305"},"modified":"2019-01-12T12:19:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T17:19:44","slug":"stick-to-baseball-1-12-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/12\/stick-to-baseball-1-12-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 1\/12\/19."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No ESPN+ content this week, as I&#8217;m working on the prospect rankings and saving those extra bullets in the hope that someone like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado will eventually sign. I did hold a <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2RJUB2Q\">Klawchat<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>My latest review for <em>Paste<\/em> covers <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2SSntDL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the deduction board game Cryptid, one of my top ten games of 2018<\/a>, in which each player gets one clue, and you need to deduce all other players&#8217; clues to identify the one hex on the variable board where the Creature is hiding for that specific board and set of clues. It&#8217;s quite fun, like a board game with a puzzle at its heart.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Longreads first: Many of you have already seen Malcolm Gladwell&#8217;s story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2019\/01\/14\/is-marijuana-as-safe-as-we-think\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">asking if marijuana is really as safe as its supporters claim<\/a>. His general answer, that we don&#8217;t know, is the correct one, and the reason is important: Puritanical federal policy has prohibited not just the use of marijuana but nearly all research into its benefits or side effects for decades. I&#8217;m ardently pro-decriminalization, including purging records of people arrested for personal possession, but there is a lot we don&#8217;t know about the effects of THC or CBD, and the burgeoning market for marijuana itself and extracts of it would benefit from evidence-based regulation.<\/li>\n<li><em>Marie Claire<\/em> has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marieclaire.com\/sex-love\/a25747273\/duped-book-abby-ellin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an excerpt from Abby Ellin&#8217;s new book about how she nearly married a con man<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Gizmodo profiles <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/how-cartographers-for-the-u-s-military-inadvertently-c-1830758394\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a family in South Africa whose house is mistakenly identified as the location of over a million IP addresses<\/a>, a colossal error created, at the start, by the U.S. government.<\/li>\n<li>ESPN&#8217;s Baxter Holmes wrote a delightful piece on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/25667397\/the-game-day-caffeine-routine-keeps-portland-trail-blazers-nba-most-well-traveled-team-running\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Portland Trail Blazer&#8217;s daily coffee routine<\/a>, which warmed the heart of this coffee snob (I prefer V60 to French press, but let&#8217;s not quibble).<\/li>\n<li>My Twitter friend Jane Coaston has a great piece on Vox about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2019\/1\/10\/18171912\/tucker-carlson-fox-news-populism-conservatism-trump-gop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how Tucker Carlson has sparked a big debate on populism within conservative social media circles<\/a>, arguing \u2013 as you would also hear on the progressive side of the debate \u2013 that economic inequality is a massive problem for developed countries. She spoke to Carlson, who, when not race-baiting on his Fox News program, always seems thoughtful and intelligent when speaking about serious issues. It&#8217;s a shame that person disappears when the red light goes on.<\/li>\n<li><em>Nature<\/em> looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-00035-x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a father&#8217;s efforts against bureaucracy to get access to a novel drug for his two sons<\/a>, who have a rare genetic disorder called alkaptonuria. The drug in question is nitisinone, which was originally developed as a potent herbicide but disused because of its harmful effects on fish \u2013 yet the same pathway it disrupts in plants contains the metabolic error in people with alkaptonuria.<\/li>\n<li>Craig Calcaterra wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/mlb.nbcsports.com\/2019\/01\/07\/a-warning-about-major-league-baseballs-record-revenues\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the bad news beneath MLB&#8217;s record revenues in 2018<\/a>, signs the revenue may not be sustainable, which could also lead to further labor strife in the sport.<\/li>\n<li>James Middleton, brother of the Duchess of Cambridge, went public with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-6583137\/With-devastating-honesty-courage-JAMES-MIDDLETON-reveals-private-battle-depression.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a first-person account of his battle with depression<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>A 50-year-old French novelist said recently that a 50-year-old woman&#8217;s body is &#8220;unlovable,&#8221; while the body of a 25-year-old woman is &#8220;extraordinary.&#8221; The <em>Guardian<\/em>&#8216;s Zoe Williams <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/jan\/09\/men-prefer-younger-women-not-for-their-firmer-bodies-but-their-greater-admiration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">calls him out on this self-serving, pretentious nonsense<\/a>, but the real kicker is the caption under the novelist&#8217;s photo.<\/li>\n<li>The central African state of Gabon experienced a failed coup attempt this past week. South Africa&#8217;s <em>Mail &amp; Guardian<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/mg.co.za\/article\/2019-01-09-three-reasons-why-the-gabon-coup-failed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">examines why the coup failed<\/a>, calling the country a &#8220;pseudo-state that is still run from Paris.&#8221; The family of current President Ali Bongo has ruled the oil- and timber-rich country for 50 years; Bongo&#8217;s father, who preceded him as de facto dictator, had 53 recognized children, many of whom run the state and its client companies while drawing off its resources for personal gain.<\/li>\n<li>There are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.citynews1130.com\/2019\/01\/08\/protests-bc-first-nation-pipeline\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">protests in British Columbia over the building a private pipeline across a First Nations enclave<\/a>, with RCMP officers clashing with the protestors as the latter try to block access to the building site.<\/li>\n<li>A Saudi teenager who was granted refugee status by the UN after fleeing her abusive family and holing up in a Thailand hotel room <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/news\/world\/saudi-teenager-rahaf-mohammed-alqunun-headed-for-canada\/news-story\/a0f8dbf72ec94a381fa9d4ecf6761a1f?nk=f3277a85381435937928a54d9a0d6c31-1547311625\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has been granted asylum in Canada<\/a>. Rahaf al-Qunun says her family abused her and had threatened to kill her for renouncing Islam, sparking her flight from the repressive kingdom.<\/li>\n<li>This was a big week for anti-vaccine bullshit. There&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/5460215\/chickenbox-outbreak-north-carolina\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a chicken pox outbreak at a Waldorf school in Asheville, NC<\/a>, a school with a high &#8220;vaccine exemption rate,&#8221; which would be easily addressed by eliminating non-medical exemptions.<\/li>\n<li>An Israeli father who didn&#8217;t feel well insisted on visiting his prematurely born son in the NICU. It turned out the father had measles, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/Israel-News\/More-than-80-babies-vaccinated-against-measles-after-exposure-by-sick-father-576445\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">so the hospital chose to vaccinate more than 80 babies<\/a> even though the MMR vaccine is typically given on a child&#8217;s first birthday. (Tangent: I had to get the MMR shot twice, because I&#8217;d originally gotten it <em>the day before<\/em> my first birthday, and the college I attended wouldn&#8217;t accept that, so at age 17 I got it again.)<\/li>\n<li>A longer read on a new anti-vaxxer crank story: Sharyl Attkisson, with whom I was sparring on Twitter this week until she blocked me, styles herself as an &#8220;investigative journalist,&#8221; but is anything but, as she hosted a program syndicated on Sinclair stations last week (including Seattle&#8217;s KOMO) <a href=\"https:\/\/respectfulinsolence.com\/2019\/01\/09\/sharyl-attkisson-is-back\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that dredged up the long-discredited hypothesis that vaccines cause autism<\/a>. Her main &#8220;source,&#8221; with whom she may not have actually spoken, is Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, who made an extraordinary claim in 2008 about a solitary case of developmental delay in a child with mitochondrial disorder, but again, that hypothesis has also been debunked. There&#8217;s a lot of bullshit to unpack in here, but if you read it and have a Sinclair-owned station near you, call or email its news director to voice your objection to them running this fraudulent report.<\/li>\n<li>Researchers at Dartmouth say they&#8217;ve found evidence <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/hysteresis-phenomenon-behind-anti-vax-movement-1283716\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">that hysteresis, where a force&#8217;s impact remains even after the force is gone, occurs in the sphere of public opinion<\/a>, such as the persistent, false belief that vaccines cause autism. Deniers get stuck in a so-called &#8220;hysteresis loop,&#8221; one that traps them in confirmation bias and makes it extremely difficult to shake them of their delusions.<\/li>\n<li>A woman whose parents refused to get her vaccinated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.moms.com\/vaccinated-as-adult\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has gone very public as she&#8217;s gotten all her vaccines as an adult<\/a>. She says that she got the flu &#8220;every year&#8221; as a kid and has extensive allergies even though one vaccine-denier delusion is that vaccines lead to allergies (they don&#8217;t).<\/li>\n<li>Great news, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2019\/01\/08\/new-ebola-like-virus-is-discovered-in-china\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">there&#8217;s a new filovirus<\/a>, like Ebola and Marberg, present in bats in China.<\/li>\n<li>A bunch of North Dakota legislators (guess) <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/north-dakota-lawmakers-want-to-require-bible-study-classes-in-public-schools-43acde0604b2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">want to require Bible study in public schools<\/a>. I want them to pass this law just so they can lose spectacularly in court.<\/li>\n<li>A federal border agent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/01\/10\/us\/border-patrol-agent-texas-killings\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">confessed to killing four Latino women he deemed &#8220;disposable&#8221; back in September<\/a>, and was only discovered because a potential fifth victim escaped.<\/li>\n<li>A new study found that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/1\/9\/18174631\/old-people-fake-news-facebook-share-nyu-princeton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">people over the age of 65 were much more likely to share fake news online<\/a>, regardless of party affiliation. That&#8217;s unsurprising; as we age, our lateral prefrontal cortices become weaker, reducing our cognitive inhibitions and making us more prone to believe things we&#8217;d find obviously false or absurd in our 30s or 40s.<\/li>\n<li>The Trump Administration&#8217;s proposal to allow coal plants and other manufacturers to dump more mercury into the environment <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/energy-environment\/423585-mercury-proposal-an-affront-to-economics-and-to-the-environment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">is &#8220;an affront to economics and the environment&#8221;<\/a> according to Rutgers Professor of Public Policy Stuart Shapiro.<\/li>\n<li>Jezebel spoke to <a href=\"https:\/\/jezebel.com\/the-owner-of-one-of-the-biggest-comedy-clubs-in-the-cou-1831577850\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wende Curtis, owner of a major comedy club in Denver, about why she turned down Louis CK<\/a> when his camp approached her about a gig on his would-be comeback tour.<\/li>\n<li><em>New York<\/em>&#8216;s Intelligencer argues that <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2019\/01\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-70-top-tax-rate-60-minutes-green-new-deal.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">raising the top marginal rate to 70% is actually a moderate, evidence-based idea<\/a>, citing research that such a rate on extremely high incomes discourages rent-seeking among top executives who are likely to earn seven- or eight-figure salaries.<\/li>\n<li>I enjoyed the unintentional comedy of this Politico piece on how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2019\/01\/11\/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democrats-establisment-1093728\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mainstream Democrats want to &#8220;rein in&#8221; Rep. Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>, in large part because they&#8217;re afraid she&#8217;ll boost primary challenges to Democrats led by more progressive candidates. To which I say: good. And I&#8217;d rather have her in front of the cameras proposing new ideas, even ones with which I disagree, than Chuck Schumer delivering more of the same, or, in the highest comedy of the week, <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/house\/424879-ocasio-cortez-responds-to-joe-liebermans-criticisms-new-party-who-dis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the irrelevant Joe Lieberman<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Tweet of the week:\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">[blind date]<\/p>\n<p>JEFF BEZOS: I brought you flowers<\/p>\n<p>HER: Oh thanks. That&#8217;s very sweet<\/p>\n<p>JEFF BEZOS: I see you\u2019ve liked flowers. Perhaps you\u2019d like these other flowers<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Todd &#8216;Papi&#8217; Carlos (@TheToddWilliams) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheToddWilliams\/status\/1083043124769894400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 9, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No ESPN+ content this week, as I&#8217;m working on the prospect rankings and saving those extra bullets in the hope that someone like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado will eventually sign. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday. My latest review for Paste covers the deduction board game Cryptid, one of my top ten games [&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":[899,49,84,844,113,961,1047,870,807],"class_list":["post-7305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-baseball","tag-coffee","tag-economics","tag-environment","tag-longreads","tag-north-dakota","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305","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=7305"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7307,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions\/7307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}