{"id":7964,"date":"2019-10-26T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=7964"},"modified":"2019-10-25T23:01:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T03:01:12","slug":"stick-to-baseball-10-25-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/26\/stick-to-baseball-10-25-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 10\/25\/19."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My one ESPN+ piece this week covered <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/31vpeu2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the possibility of realigning the minor leagues<\/a>, possibly contracting several dozen teams or demoting them to nonaffiliated leagues. I held a <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2N7HqEU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Klawchat<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Over at Paste, I <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2JjjZHj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reviewed Era: The Medieval Age<\/a>, the new game from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock. It&#8217;s a roll-and-build game that reimplements his own Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, but gives it better components and a spatial aspect absent from the first game.<\/p>\n<p>My second book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/9780062942722\/the-inside-game\/\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves<\/a>, will be out on April 21st, 2020, from HarperCollins. You can pre-order it now through that link (and please do so!).<\/p>\n<p>You should also subscribe to my <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">my free email newsletter<\/a>, because I said so.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Longreads first: Shane Mitchell writes for <em>Bitter Southerner<\/em> about <a href=\"https:\/\/bittersoutherner.com\/an-undeserved-gift-okra-shane-mitchell\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the long transatlantic history of okra<\/a>, a global plant that came to the west a few hundred years ago from Africa and that is now essential to the cuisines of the American south. I love it dipped in cornmeal and fried, or in a deep brown gumbo.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2019\/oct\/25\/why-do-people-hate-vegans\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Why do people hate vegans?<\/a> They&#8217;re a convenient punchline, says George Reynolds of the <em>Guardian<\/em>, but their dietary choices force us to confront harsh environmental and medical realities about the meat-centric diet of the west while also running up against a longstanding association of meat with prosperity.<\/li>\n<li>Psychologist Hans Eysenck&#8217;s work has been highly influential but also criticized on multiple grounds, including his dubious support of work that claimed there was a link between race and IQ. <em>Cosmos<\/em> details a bigger scandal, that <a href=\"https:\/\/cosmosmagazine.com\/society\/is-this-one-of-the-worst-scientific-scandals-of-all-time\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eysenck and a longtime collaborator may have faked data and conclusions<\/a>, including studies that claimed your personality could influence your chances of getting cancer or heart disease. If all 61 papers co-authored by Eysenck are eventually retracted, he would become, per Retraction Watch, the most retracted psychology researcher of all time.<\/li>\n<li>Jerome Groopman writes in the <em>New Yorker<\/em> about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2019\/10\/28\/can-brain-science-help-us-break-bad-habits\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">brain science and successful ways to break bad habits<\/a>. I don&#8217;t think these are panaceas, but they&#8217;re more likely to work than negative reinforcement, self-shaming, or just trying to beat bad habits with willpower. Excuse me, I feel like I need some Oreos after typing that\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Since Prince&#8217;s death in 2016, his estate has been releasing some of the trove of unreleased material the singer and multi-instrumentalist left behind \u2013 even though he was very protective of the same music while he was alive. <em>Paste<\/em>&#8216;s Richard Aaron looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2019\/10\/prince-estate-ethics.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the ethics and implications of listening to this music<\/a>, some of which has been quite good, while some was clearly never intended to see the light of day.<\/li>\n<li>In my chat this week, a reader sent a link arguing that wealth taxes failed in Europe. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/wealth-taxes-often-failed-in-europe-they-wouldnt-here\/2019\/10\/25\/23a59cb0-f4ff-11e9-829d-87b12c2f85dd_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This is at least misleading, if not outright false<\/a>, according to this editorial from the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, which highlights how much easier it is in Europe to evade taxes, how loophole-ridden their wealth taxes were, and how competition across the borderless EU made it easier to just pick up and move.<\/li>\n<li><em>Philly<\/em> magazine looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phillymag.com\/be-well-philly\/2019\/10\/23\/philly-food-co-ops\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the rise of food co-ops in the city<\/a>, asking how well they actually serve the communities in which they&#8217;re located.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/seattle-amazon-kshama-sawant\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Amazon has spent nearly $1.5 million to defeat a socialist incumbent on Seattle&#8217;s city council<\/a>. Kshama Sawant led the push for Seattle&#8217;s higher minimum wage, but lost (in the end) a battle to tax large corporations on a per-employee basis and use the funds to serve the city&#8217;s large population of homeless people.<\/li>\n<li>Gun sellers at a show on the Iowa State fairgrounds <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmoinesregister.com\/story\/opinion\/columnists\/rekha-basu\/2019\/10\/16\/iowa-state-fair-shouldnt-rent-space-vendors-who-glorify-death-camps\/3999071002\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">used Nazi symbols and racist\/anti-Semitic imagery to sell guns and explosives<\/a>. The state fair&#8217;s CEO passed the buck, saying that they don&#8217;t control what independent companies that rent the space do once they use it.<\/li>\n<li>Author Alex Berenson name-searched himself and showed up in my replies to harass one of my longtime readers on Twitter this week. I wasn&#8217;t familiar with him or his work before, but it appears that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2019\/feb\/17\/marijuana-book-tell-your-children-alex-berenson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the scientific consensus on his book about cannabis is that it&#8217;s alarmist and highly misleading<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>A new California law designed to curb abuses in the so-called &#8216;gig economy&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/everybody-is-freaking-freelance-writers-scramble-make-sense-new-california-law-1248195\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">appears to hurt freelance writers more than anyone else<\/a> because it would set such a low bar for the number of pieces someone could write before they&#8217;d have to be considered a full-time employee.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-50125843\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Prime editing&#8221; could correct up to 89% of disease-causing errors in our genes<\/a>, although the research and techniques are in their infancy. As someone with an inborn error of metabolism, I&#8217;m intrigued, but can we &#8216;fix&#8217; one gene (two, in my case, since it&#8217;s autosomal recessive) without causing any other unforeseen consequences?<\/li>\n<li>California&#8217;s state medical board has now targeted a second doctor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandiegouniontribune.com\/news\/health\/story\/2019-10-22\/vaccination-exemption-writing-doctor-charged-by-state-medical-board\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">accused of writing bogus vaccine exemptions for schoolchildren<\/a>, asking that her license be suspended or revoked entirely.<\/li>\n<li>Residents of Newtok, Alaska, are moving \u2013 yes, all of them \u2013 to a new village <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/science\/2019\/10\/climate-change-finally-caught-up-to-this-alaska-village\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">as climate change has eroded much of the land in Newtok<\/a> and threatens to make the entire town unlivable.<\/li>\n<li>Antibiotic resistance \u2013 and evolution \u2013 in real time: It took <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/it-took-just-three-weeks-for-superbug-to-resist-last-re-1839236816\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">just three weeks for a &#8216;superbug&#8217; to evolve resistance to the drug of last resort<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Board game news: Cities Skylines, the tabletop version of the popular citybuilder video game from Paradox Interactive, <a href=\"https:\/\/thamesandkosmos.com\/index.php\/product\/category\/games\/cities-skylines\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is now out from Thames &amp; Kosmos<\/a>. It&#8217;s a cooperative game, whereas I believe the video game version is competitive. I saw an early prototype last year, but at that point the game wasn&#8217;t co-op yet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My one ESPN+ piece this week covered the possibility of realigning the minor leagues, possibly contracting several dozen teams or demoting them to nonaffiliated leagues. I held a Klawchat on Thursday. Over at Paste, I reviewed Era: The Medieval Age, the new game from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock. It&#8217;s a roll-and-build game that reimplements his [&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":[828,107,800,137,190,961,388,284,870,807,872],"class_list":["post-7964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-drugs","tag-evolution","tag-frauds","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-prince","tag-southern-cooking","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-vaccines","tag-vegan","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964","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=7964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7965,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions\/7965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}