{"id":8787,"date":"2020-12-12T11:47:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-12T16:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8787"},"modified":"2020-12-12T13:06:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-12T18:06:14","slug":"stick-to-baseball-12-12-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/12\/stick-to-baseball-12-12-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 12\/12\/20."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I wrote one piece this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3qHDVaS\">the Lance Lynn and Carlos Santana signings<\/a> and the Angels&#8217; trades for two guys named Iglesias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Paste, I ranked the <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3qDxmWR\">top fifteen new board games of 2020<\/a>, which range from a game suitable for kids as young as 4-5 to a crunchy two-hour dice-drafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My guest on <a href=\"https:\/\/theathletic.com\/podcast\/168-the-keith-law-show\/?episode=42\">this week&#8217;s episode of the Keith Law Show<\/a> was Tony Paul, who&#8217;s covered the Tigers for ages for the <em>Detroit News<\/em>, talking about the Tigers, what it&#8217;s like to cover a bad team, and how baseball can improve its efforts on diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have two books out for the readers on your holiday shopping lists. <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942722\"><em>The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves<\/em><\/a>, available in hardcover; and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062490230\"><em>Smart Baseball<\/em><\/a>, available in paperback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also sign up for my <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\">free email newsletter<\/a> for more essays from me and summaries of everything I&#8217;ve written between issues of the newsletter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Before I get to the longreads, two stories relevant to the Georgia runoffs: Sen. Kelly Loeffler&#8217;s husband <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffpost.com\/entry\/kelly-loeffler-stocks-ethics-cares-act_n_5fcfa349c5b6787f2a9b15bf?bub&amp;guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvLw&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD8lOsuBQBZBVwb9Kf3ELpuqsArzxXXBvob1Kp4lFZyrOTxBRe1ssNDHy_Oc5hBKLrEnal-w44B2NEjxqxQorQ26Ll4gdODHqbPBRCaPZObF16569bXsxBcn_rtiRD7P-KJeoPV5_NFYQmUO68USjL26Pw8Krt9dAMuI9pt_z55o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">bought stock in companies likely to benefit from the CARES bill<\/a> while she was working on it, while Sen. David Purdue <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/sen-david-perdue-sold-his-home-to-a-finance-industry-official-whose-organization-was-lobbying-the-senate\">took $1.8 million from a board member of FINRA<\/a> while they lobbied the Senate on a bill relevant to their industry by selling his house to her privately for above its market value. Both have a history of profiteering from their positions, in levels of corruption that should lead to criminal charges, not re-elections.<\/li><li>Now the longreads: The <em>Hollywood Reporter<\/em>&#8216;s chronicle of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/features\/hes-radioactive-inside-johnny-depps-self-made-implosion\">Johnny Depp&#8217;s fall from grace<\/a> is shocking in just how much Depp was the architect of his own demise.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/news-desk\/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats\">Sen. Dianne Feinstein needs to resign<\/a> if this article on her cognitive decline is even remotely accurate.<\/li><li>A new journal article in <em>Science<\/em> shows <a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/early\/2020\/12\/07\/science.abe9728.full\">how fast COVID-19 spread in an unmitigated setting<\/a> in the Brazilian Amazon. It&#8217;s not good.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-02801-8\">The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the pandemic<\/a>, as this <em>Nature<\/em> article states, so why are people, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/news\/texas-rep-chip-roy-gets-shellacked-for-telling-biden-kiss-my-a-over-mask-mandate\/\">this half-witted Texas congressman<\/a>, still fighting them?<\/li><li>A community in South Dakota that ignored the pandemic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2020\/12\/09\/south-dakota-mitchell-covid-masks\/?arc404=true\">is now getting destroyed by it<\/a> \u2026 and they couldn&#8217;t do more than pass a defanged mask mandate because of the idiotic opposition.<\/li><li>\u201cWhat kind of country is this?\u201d asked a woman looking at a lengthy food bank line in Orlando, one devastating line of many from this <em>Washington Post<\/em> look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/2020\/national\/disney-layoffs-coronavirus\/\">theme park employees laid off<\/a> by Disney, Universal, and other operators. Of note: Disney restored pay cuts to its senior executives just a few weeks before laying off 28,000 low-wage workers.<\/li><li>The scientist who came up with the idea for the polymerase chain reaction technique was also <a href=\"https:\/\/elemental.medium.com\/the-nobel-prize-winning-lsd-dropping-yet-problematic-scientist-who-invented-pcr-26b6678ccd46\">a serial harasser of women<\/a>, making any attempts to grapple with his legacy complicated.<\/li><li>The Oregon Medical Board finally <a href=\"https:\/\/sciencebasedmedicine.org\/oregon-medical-board-suspends-license-dr-paul-thomas\/\">suspended the license of a Portland anti-vaxxer pediatrician<\/a> who had thousands of patients (and whose antics I&#8217;ve highlighted here before).<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2020\/12\/white-evangelicals-made-a-deal-with-trump-now-what.html\">What comes next for evangelicals who sold their souls<\/a> to make a deal with the devil in the White House?<\/li><li>We need <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2020\/12\/tis-the-season-for-shame-and-judgment\/617335\/\">better advice than telling people not to see family at the holidays<\/a>, because it&#8217;s not working.<\/li><li>Now we finally know <a href=\"https:\/\/www.exposedbycmd.org\/2020\/12\/09\/who-funds-the-federalist-finally-we-know\/\">who funds the Federalist<\/a>. It&#8217;s the Uihleins, major conservative donors in Wisconsin who run the shipping and business supply company Uline and who contracted COVID-19 while attending a Trump party in November; and DonorsTrust, a fund that allows donors to give anonymously to conservative candidates and causes \u2013 like <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/alexkotch\/status\/1334915976811454469\">the $1.5 million they gave the white nationalist, anti-immigrant group VDARE<\/a>.<\/li><li>An investigation by an independent government watchdog group found that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/rep-dan-crenshaw-linked-smear-campaign-female-vet-led-va-secretary-watchdog-says-1553928\">Rep. Dan Crenshaw smeared a fellow veteran<\/a> who alleged she was sexually assaulted at a VA facility. The Texas Congressman, who backed the failed attempt to get the Supreme Court to nullify the 2020 Presidential election, also refused to cooperate with the OIG&#8217;s investigation.<\/li><li>Florida whistleblower Rebakah Jones found herself <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/12\/11\/us\/florida-coronavirus-data-rebekah-jones.html\">the subject of a warrant and early-morning raid<\/a>, as the state accused her of unauthorized access to an internal emergency alert system. Several legal experts have said the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.floridatoday.com\/story\/news\/2020\/12\/10\/evidence-warrant-raid-rebekah-jones-cybersecurity-digital-rights-civil-liberties-whistleblower\/3867058001\/\">evidence to support the warrant was flimsy<\/a>, and the warrant was the judge&#8217;s first act since he was sworn in by Gov. De Santis.<\/li><li><em>WIRED<\/em> looks at the strange case of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/behind-paper-led-google-researchers-firing\/\">Google firing a researcher<\/a> for her work on an uncontroversial paper about bias in AI algorithms.<\/li><li>Speaking of Florida, the <em>Orlando Sentinel<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/opinion\/editorials\/os-op-michael-waltz-endorsement-editorial-apology-20201211-a4er2nccfbbeznc6yyqbq5moku-story.html\">apologized for endorsing Rep. Michael Waltz<\/a>, who also signed on to that abortive effort to subvert our democracy. Apparently his efforts to replace the progressive income tax with a regressive sales tax wasn&#8217;t enough reason not to endorse him before the election.<\/li><li>This New York Times article on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/12\/06\/us\/after-centuries-of-obscurity-wilmington-is-having-a-moment.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytimes\">Wilmington, Delaware, having a &#8216;moment&#8217; because of Biden<\/a> is actually pretty good except for the top photo of the Charcoal Pit, which is like a poor man&#8217;s Friendly&#8217;s.<\/li><li>A writer who has autism writes about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/movies\/sia-music-harmful-autistic-community\/\">the harm of Sia casting a neurotypical actor<\/a> as a character with autism in her new movie.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2020\/dec\/04\/cris-collinsworth-nfl-sexist-comments-football\">Cris Collinsworth put his foot in his mouth<\/a> by acting surprised that women might actually like and know about football, and later issued <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2020\/sports\/news\/cris-collinsworth-apology-nfl-1234845368\/\">a half-assed apology<\/a>.<\/li><li>The photos of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-55195390\">new underwater tunnel in the Faroe Islands<\/a> are quite stunning.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote one piece this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the Lance Lynn and Carlos Santana signings and the Angels&#8217; trades for two guys named Iglesias. For Paste, I ranked the top fifteen new board games of 2020, which range from a game suitable for kids as young as 4-5 to a [&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":[1162,742,128,190,961,870,940,807],"class_list":["post-8787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-delaware","tag-florida","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-the-swamp","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787","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=8787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8789,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8787\/revisions\/8789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}