{"id":8490,"date":"2020-06-20T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8490"},"modified":"2020-06-19T22:11:48","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:11:48","slug":"stick-to-baseball-6-20-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/20\/stick-to-baseball-6-20-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 6\/20\/20."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My one piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week\nlooked at which MLB teams just <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2UQzQTD\">drafted their\nnew #1 or #2 prospects<\/a>. No chat this week as I was busy with work calls or\nfamily commitments every afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over at <em>Paste<\/em>, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des\nJahres-nominated game <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2Y4i8xT\">The Crew: The Quest for\nPlanet Nine<\/a>, a cooperative trick-taking game that plays out over a series\nof 50 missions, like a legacy game but without asking you to change or destroy\nany components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Boston Globe<\/em> just named my second\nbook, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942722\"><em>The Inside\nGame: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About\nOurselves<\/em><\/a>, one of <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.bostonglobe.com\/arts\/graphics\/2020\/06\/summer-reading-2020\/#sports\">its\nrecommended sports reads for the summer<\/a>. The book&nbsp;has garnered similar plaudits from major\npublications as a Father&#8217;s Day gift or for summer reading, including from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/natashawolff\/2020\/05\/27\/fathers-day-gift-guide-the-best-books\/\"><em>Forbes<\/em><\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/books\/summer-reading.html#sports\"><em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>,&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/raisemagazine.com\/fathers-day-gift-ideas-2020\/\"><em>Raise<\/em><\/a>. My thanks to all of you who&#8217;ve already bought it; if you&#8217;re\nlooking to pick up a copy, you can&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942722\">get it\nat bookshop.org<\/a>&nbsp;or perhaps at a local\nbookstore if they&#8217;re reopening near you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m sending out my free email newsletter a bit more\nregularly lately, which is a good sign for my mental health, I think. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\">sign up for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Longreads first: <em>USA Today<\/em> has the story\nof the late scout Rudy Santin&#8217;s attempts to expose <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/mlb\/2020\/06\/16\/mlb-international-free-agents-deals-underage-prospects\/5334172002\/\">MLB&#8217;s\nbroken system for signing international amateur free agents<\/a>, which can\ninclude verbal (and thus unenforceable) agreements between teams and\n12-year-old players. The system doesn&#8217;t really work for either side \u2013 players\ncan, and do, walk away from these agreements as late as the day before the\nsigning period opens \u2013 but the likely alternative, a draft, will just result in\nless money flowing to players from teams.<\/li><li><em>Vanity Fair<\/em>&#8216;s Jeff Sharlet goes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2020\/06\/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel\">deep\ninside the cult of Trump<\/a>, talking to his diehard supporters and their\nbeliefs in some of the most bizarre, antifactual conspiracy theories you could\never imagine. These are people who think Q is real, that leading Democrats are\nliteral demons who eat children, and that Trump was sent by God to save us all.<\/li><li>One way to craft a response to a pandemic is to\nlook at successful responses to past pandemics. STAT News explains how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2020\/05\/08\/porn-industry-model-for-reopening-amid-covid19\/\">the\npornography industry dealt with the HIV epidemic<\/a>, successfully, and what\nlessons countries might take away from their strategy.<\/li><li>The <em>New York Times <\/em>looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/14\/health\/virus-journals.html\">two major\nfailures in the peer-review process this year<\/a>, asking why this happened and\nif the process itself is flawed (or, as some of the quoted sources say, simply\novertaxed).<\/li><li>Also in the <em>Times<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/16\/science\/social-media-bots-kazemi.html\">what\nexactly is a Twitter bot<\/a>, and are they as numerous as many recent headlines\nhave claimed? I shared a story a few weeks ago about research at Carnegie\nMellon that claimed as many as half of the tweets about COVID-19 in the study\nsample were from bots, but multiple sources here say that conclusion was not\nsupported by the data.<\/li><li>My friend Alex Speier looked at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/2020\/06\/10\/sports\/how-racial-bias-can-seep-into-baseball-scouting-reports\/?event=event25\">unconscious\nracial bias in baseball scouting<\/a>, including the language used in scouting\nreports. I&#8217;m quoted in the article.<\/li><li>Arizona&#8217;s COVID-19 pandemic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/story\/news\/local\/arizona-health\/2020\/06\/16\/doctors-data-raise-concerns-arizonas-covid-19-situation\/3193042001\/\">might\nbe even worse than the official data indicate<\/a>. The state&#8217;s Rt remains well\nabove 1, there&#8217;s barely any contact tracing, and the current trend has the\nstate on its way to running out of ICU beds. This is what happens when you\nelect anti-science people to run your state.<\/li><li>Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has told\ncounties that if they require citizens to wear masks in county buildings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.omaha.com\/news\/state_and_regional\/ricketts-tells-local-governments-they-wont-get-federal-covid-19-money-if-they-require-masks\/article_d15459b9-26df-527e-9899-9f579a3d8597.html?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter_OWHnews\">they\nwill not receive any of the state&#8217;s COVID-19 relief funds<\/a>. This is what\nhappens when you elect anti-science people to run your state.<\/li><li>Stefan Fatsis, author of the entertaining <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780142002261\">Word Freak<\/a><\/em>, writes\nabout the debate within the competitive Scrabble world over <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/human-interest\/2020\/06\/scrabble-players-debate-slurs.html\">whether\nto prohibit racial and other hateful slurs<\/a>.<\/li><li>Expecting college students to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/15\/opinion\/coronavirus-college-safe.html\">behave\nprudently if they return to campus this fall<\/a> is a fantasy, because people\nin that age range tend to engage in more risky and impulsive behaviors.<\/li><li>Troy Amen, who is entering his fifth year of a\njoint MD-MBA program at Harvard Medical School (and, I assume, Harvard Business\nSchool), writes about <a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/age-of-awareness\/a-memoir-on-race-and-inclusion-at-harvard-medical-school-we-must-do-better-14ac4e1163f9\">systemic\nracism at HMS and the school&#8217;s apparent refusal to hire a more diverse faculty<\/a>.<\/li><li>Prosecutors allege that 18-year-old Chicago man <a href=\"https:\/\/chicago.suntimes.com\/crime\/2020\/6\/16\/21293263\/man-murdered-transgender-woman-marquette-park\">murdered\na trans woman<\/a> after going home with her and learning she was transgender.\nAccording to the prosecution, he left, got a gun, returned to shoot her, left,\nand then went back to shoot her again.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/facebook-groups-are-destroying-america\/\">Facebook\nGroups are fountains of disinformation and crackpot conspiracy theories<\/a>,\naccording to this editorial in <em>WIRED<\/em> by two authors who research\ndisinformation and fake news. This isn&#8217;t shocking to anyone who follows\nanti-vaccine activity online, as Facebook is ground zero for so much of their\nbullshit.<\/li><li>Civil rights groups are <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/126dffbb05b92c79642008b8426e1826\">asking big\nadvertisers to pause spending on Facebook ads<\/a> for the month of July, citing\nthe platform&#8217;s failure to police hate groups on the site, as part of the #StopHateforProfit\ncampaign.<\/li><li>Two Virginia lawyers pleaded guilty to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whsv.com\/content\/news\/Virginia-attorneys-plead-guilty-to-200-million-extortion-scheme-571375721.html?ref=721\">attempting\nto extort $200 million from Monsanto<\/a> by threatening to file false legal\nclaims around Roundup (glyphosate). This is notable because the two lawyers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.acsh.org\/news\/2019\/12\/19\/usrtk-carey-gillam-collaborated-monsanto-plaintiff-attorney-charged-extortion-14467\">work\nwith scaremonger Carey Gilliam<\/a> and her anti-GMO organization U.S. Right to\nKnow. <\/li><li>Plenty of bad actors are spreading bogus stories\nof service workers tampering with the food ordered by police officers, but now\nthe police unions are doing the same, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/juliareinstein\/police-unions-shake-shack-milkshake-nypd\">disparaging\nShake Shack with a false claim<\/a> that workers there had &#8220;poisoned&#8221;\nseveral cops&#8217; milkshakes. The NYC Detectives&#8217; Endowment Association <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nycdetectives.org\/news\/shake-shack-incident-update\/\">didn&#8217;t\nadmit their error or apologize<\/a> for spreading the lie.<\/li><li>Writer and book critic Carolyn Kellogg revealed\non Twitter why <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paperhaus\/status\/1272504910509158404?s=20\">she quit\nthe National Book Critics Circle&#8217;s board<\/a> \u2013 the group&#8217;s refusal to issue a\nstatement on Black Lives Matter and the verbal abuse directed at another board\nmember who led the working group trying to craft a statement.<\/li><li>Zimbabwe may be on the verge of collapse yet again,\nand <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-53062503\">they&#8217;ve resumed\narresting and torturing opposition activists<\/a>.<\/li><li>Board game news: roll20 announced the upcoming\nrelease and pre-order availability for <a href=\"https:\/\/marketplace.roll20.net\/browse\/bundle\/5987\/burn-bryte-starter-bundle\">Burn\nBryte, a new tabletop RPG<\/a> that&#8217;s been three years in the making.<\/li><li>Asmodee Digital announced <a href=\"https:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/games\/1075190\/announcements\/detail\/2468484071681261527\">an\nupcoming port of the Game of Thrones board game<\/a>, a big, complex, long game\nthat might really benefit from a digital adaptation.<\/li><li>B\u00e9zier Games announced <a href=\"https:\/\/beziergames.com\/products\/maglev-metro\">pre-orders for Maglev\nMetro<\/a>, the newest game from the designer of Suburbia and the Castles of Mad\nKing Ludwig.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My one piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week looked at which MLB teams just drafted their new #1 or #2 prospects. No chat this week as I was busy with work calls or family commitments every afternoon. Over at Paste, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des Jahres-nominated game The Crew: The Quest for Planet [&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":[899,821,566,1083,1162,190,961,886,907,870,940],"class_list":["post-8490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-anti-science","tag-arizona","tag-board-game-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-nebraska","tag-social-media","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-the-swamp","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8490","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=8490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8491,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8490\/revisions\/8491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}