{"id":7974,"date":"2019-11-02T11:44:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-02T15:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=7974"},"modified":"2019-11-02T14:41:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-02T18:41:35","slug":"stick-to-baseball-11-2-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/02\/stick-to-baseball-11-2-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 11\/2\/19."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This isn&#8217;t quite new, but I put out a formal announcement this week that my second book, <em>The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves<\/em>, will be out on April 21, 2020. You can <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/333NwNc\" target=\"_blank\">pre-order it now<\/a> on HarperCollins&#8217; site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the board gaming front, I ranked the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/34j15IX\" target=\"_blank\">top 25 board games of the 2010s<\/a> for&nbsp;<em>Paste<\/em> this week, and also wrote about <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2019\/10\/roundup-three-programming-board-games-that-will-tickle-your-pseudocode\/\" target=\"_blank\">some recent programming games<\/a>, where players issue instructions as if they were writing code, over at Ars Technica. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can get more of me by signing up for <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"my free email newsletter (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\" target=\"_blank\">my free email newsletter<\/a>, which I send out irregularly but definitely not often enough to bother you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Longreads first: A ProPublica investigation found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/how-a-tax-break-to-help-the-poor-went-to-nba-owner-dan-gilbert\/amp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">billionaire Dan Gilbert got a huge tax break with the help of the Trump Administration<\/a> after making large donations to Trump&#8217;s campaign. The tax break in question involved &#8220;opportunity zones,&#8221; incentives aimed at spurring new development in disadvantaged urban areas \u2013 not, as in Gilbert&#8217;s case, for investments already made.<\/li>\n<li>One dollar of every $10 spent on AmazonBasics products is spent on batteries. One writer <a href=\"https:\/\/onezero.medium.com\/unraveling-the-secret-supply-chain-behind-an-amazonbasics-battery-e7b9ead4d72e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tried to track where those batteries come from and what their impact is<\/a> on the environment. She found a few answers, but not enough, and a lot of opacity from a company that is already under fire for labor concerns, climate impact, and its logistics operation&#8217;s effect on road safety.<\/li>\n<li>Allie Conti, writing for <em>VICE<\/em>, describes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/43k7z3\/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">discovering a vast, nationwide hosting scam on AirBnB<\/a> that costs unsuspecting guests hundreds of dollars and leaves them without a place to stay.<\/li>\n<li>The well-titled article &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hakaimagazine.com\/features\/the-fight-over-a-shitty-rock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Fight Over a Shitty Rock<\/a>&#8221; has a very serious point: There&#8217;s a dispute roiling over Rockall, a tiny and uninhabitable islet in the North Atlantic claimed by the United Kingdom, and whether the islet extends the UK&#8217;s fishing rights against the wishes and claims of Ireland.<\/li>\n<li>The chocolate industry has already been criticized for its use of child labor and even slaves; now the <em>Washington Post<\/em> points out that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2019\/national\/climate-environment\/mars-chocolate-deforestation-climate-change-west-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">cacao farmers in West Africa are decimating forests<\/a>, accelerating climate change, while western chocolate producers talk about sustainability without addressing this issue at all.<\/li>\n<li>Spotify&#8217;s dominance in the streaming industry <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/longform\/spotify-music-industry-profits-apple-amazon\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">is still tenuous and hasn&#8217;t led to consistent profits<\/a>, which explains in part the company&#8217;s acquisition of podcast producers Gimlet Media.<\/li>\n<li>Anti-vaxxer nuts send racist, violent threats to people who post pro-vaccine messages, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/11\/01\/health\/facebook-harassment-eprise\/index.html\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook does absolutely nothing about it<\/a>. The people running these sites \u2013 Twitter is no better \u2013 talk a big accountability game when it comes to abuse and harassment, but they don&#8217;t back it up with actions.<\/li>\n<li>Facebook also <a href=\"https:\/\/popular.info\/p\/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lets right-wing propaganda site The Daily Wire violate its rules by using sock puppet accounts<\/a> to promote its content. Again, Facebook does \u2026 nothing. And they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/facebook-axed-pro-vaccine-ads-from-hospitals-and-health-orgs-let-anti-vaxxer-ads-slip-through\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">blocked pro-vaccine ads while letting anti-vaxxer ads run<\/a>. It&#8217;s okay if we&#8217;re still getting paid.<\/li>\n<li>Anti-vaxxers love to claim that measles is &#8216;benign,&#8217; but there&#8217;s growing research on just how harmful a bout of the viral disease can be in the long term. New evidence shows that <a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2019\/10\/how-measles-wipes-out-the-bodys-immune-memory\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">causes &#8216;immune amnesia&#8217; in survivors<\/a>, whose immune systems must relearn how to fight infections because measles wiped out 11% to 73% of antibodies already present in that person&#8217;s blood.<\/li>\n<li>The anti-vaxxer faux-documentary <em>Vaxxed<\/em> has a sequel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2019\/oct\/31\/vaxxed-2-movie-sequel-release-fears-propaganda\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">but the producers aren&#8217;t saying where it&#8217;s playing for fear rational people will try to stop it<\/a>, so keep your eyes open, rational people, and demand any theater near you that tries to show <em>Vaxxed 2<\/em> pull their screenings.<\/li>\n<li>An evidence-based technique called <a href=\"https:\/\/parenting.nytimes.com\/childrens-health\/measles-vaccine-hesitancy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">motivational interviewing is proving useful in addressing vaccine-hesitant parents<\/a>. It involves one-on-one conversations between parents and trained counselors who don&#8217;t tell the parents what to do, but &#8220;simply talk through parents\u2019 fears and goals, and let them decide what to do.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Louisa Thomas wrote of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/sports\/sporting-scene\/the-stories-that-the-houston-astros-have-told\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the &#8216;stories&#8217; the Houston Astros have told<\/a>, which don&#8217;t always align with reality, in the <em>New Yorker<\/em>. I know of at least three more departures from their baseball operations department in the last few months, only one of which, longtime Jeff Luhnow lieutenant Oz Ocampo, is public.<\/li>\n<li>Michael Stipe and Mike Mills spoke to the BBC <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/entertainment-arts-50206491\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">about their album <em>Monster<\/em> on the 25th anniversary of its release<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Writing for <em>Paste<\/em>, Annie Merkley writes about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/articles\/2019\/10\/chile-protests-explained.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">what it&#8217;s been like as an American in the midst of the protests in Chile<\/a>, a piece that also explained to me what the protests have been about.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s from June of 2018, but John Pavlovitz&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/johnpavlovitz.com\/2018\/06\/26\/so-now-you-want-civility\/\" target=\"_Blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Now You Want Civility?<\/a>&#8221; post seems apropos after all the pearl-clutching over Nationals fans booing President Trump last Sunday. And, by the way, one of the clutchers was Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat I&#8217;m hoping gets primaried the next time he&#8217;s up.<\/li>\n<li>VICE asks <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/vb5j5b\/is-sex-addiction-real\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">if sex addiction is real<\/a>, or a misidentification of people who have sexual habits or preferences that might vary from the median.<\/li>\n<li>A Spanish court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-50257922\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">acquitted five men of rape because the victim was drunk<\/a>, so they didn&#8217;t have to use force. This is separate from the &#8220;Wolf Pack&#8221; rape case that led to protests earlier this year.<\/li>\n<li>A legislator from Cobb County, home of your Atlanta Braves, is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdjonline.com\/news\/cobb-legislator-proposes-new-law-to-criminalize-physical-gender-change\/article_01d7e572-fb4c-11e9-b280-5bf7ecee1ac6.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">trying to make it a <em>felony<\/em> for trans kids to get gender reassignment<\/a> via surgery or drugs. In two thousand and fucking nineteen, we are still doing this. This isn&#8217;t &#8216;protecting kids,&#8217; as she claims; it&#8217;s going to do nothing but increase suicides.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2019\/10\/31\/775068218\/how-deep-sleep-may-help-the-brain-clear-alzheimers-toxins\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Deep sleep may help protect the brain against Alzeimer&#8217;s<\/a> and other neurodegenerative diseases by triggering electrical pulses, according to one new study.<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This isn&#8217;t quite new, but I put out a formal announcement this week that my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, will be out on April 21, 2020. You can pre-order it now on HarperCollins&#8217; site. On the board gaming front, I ranked the [&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":[341,828,137,146,1112,190,961,1007,907,870,807],"class_list":["post-7974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chocolate","tag-climate-change","tag-frauds","tag-georgia","tag-lgbt-rights","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-sleep","tag-social-media","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974","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=7974"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7981,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions\/7981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}