{"id":8817,"date":"2021-01-02T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8817"},"modified":"2021-01-01T21:58:26","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T02:58:26","slug":"stick-to-baseball-1-2-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/02\/stick-to-baseball-1-2-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 1\/2\/21."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had three pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic: breaking down <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3hrfURb\">the Yu Darvish trade<\/a>, breaking down <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/38MMwkO\">the Blake Snell trade<\/a>, and one piece on both <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/38DyH86\">the Josh Bell trade and Kohei Arihara signing<\/a>. I <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3aWKkd8\">revealed my Hall of Fame ballot<\/a> in another post that included several other Athletic writers&#8217; ballots, with each of us explaining one particular vote for a player. I also held <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/keithlaw\/status\/1344755986511220736?s=20\">a video chat via Periscope<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over at Paste, I reviewed the <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2KAW627\">wonderful game for younger kids Dragomino<\/a>, a reimagining of the Spiel-winning game Kingdomino, and ranked <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/games\/board-games\/best-board-games-for-kids\/\">the five best games I&#8217;ve played for kids<\/a> in the 3-6 range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Ars Technica, I ranked <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/38HZD6u\">the best new board game apps of 2020<\/a>. I didn&#8217;t include Spirit Island, which is a gorgeous app, but the tutorial is so inscrutable that I just couldn&#8217;t figure out how to play the game at a reasonable level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A new edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\">my free email newsletter<\/a> is on my to-do list for the weekend. My thanks to all of you who bought \u2013 or asked for \u2013 either of my books this holiday season. You can still buy <em><a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942722\">The Inside Game<\/a> <\/em>and<em> Smart Baseball<\/em> anywhere you buy books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Longreads first: Is the new mutation of SARS-CoV-2 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2020\/12\/virus-mutation-catastrophe\/617531\/\">a ticking time bomb<\/a>, or merely <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/the-u-k-coronavirus-mutation-is-worrying-but-not-terrifying\/\">worrying but not terrifying<\/a>? It&#8217;s more infectious, and that&#8217;s going to mean it spreads faster, so our botched vaccine rollout \u2013 just 18 more days until the adults take over again \u2013 is even more problematic than it already was.<\/li><li>Bookshop.org has positioned itself as the alternative to Amazon for independent booksellers, giving those shops an easy way to set up an online storefront, and consumers a place to buy books that supports local shops, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/books\/2020\/12\/bookshoporg-independent-bookshops-andy-hunter-waterstones\">the calculus is quite different for individual shops<\/a>, as they earn far less from a sale through bookshop.org than in their own physical stores. I use bookshop.org for affiliate links on the dish, and buy books there now because we have few options here in Wilmington beyond big-box stores.<\/li><li>Cartoon Saloon, whose <em>Wolfwalkers<\/em> is a likely nominee for this year&#8217;s Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (and is only on apple TV+), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2020\/12\/21\/cartoon-saloon-and-the-new-golden-age-of-animation\">offers a different approach to children&#8217;s animation<\/a> from big studios using CGI. Even Studio Ghibli has gone to computer animation for its newest film. I haven&#8217;t seen <em>Wolfwalkers<\/em>, but enjoyed two of their previous films, <em>The Breadwinner<\/em> and <em>The Secret of Kells<\/em>.<\/li><li>Grub Street looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grubstreet.com\/2020\/12\/2020-bucatini-shortage-investigation.html\">the great bucatini shortage of 2020<\/a>, and the very weird, surprising cause of it.<\/li><li>The Daily Beast looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/anti-vaxxer-panic-about-the-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-meets-neo-nazi-fantasies-in-corona-chan?via=ios\">the plan by neo-Nazi groups to stoke anti-vaccine sentiment<\/a>, especially among white Americans, to create conflict with authorities that these racists can then exploit.<\/li><li>Just as they did in the 2017 GOP tax bill, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2020\/12\/25\/how-richest-1-percent-came-out-big-winners-covid-relief-bill\">the top 1% came out the big winners in December&#8217;s COVID-19 relief bill too<\/a>.<\/li><li>The Sackler family, owners of Oxycontin producer Purdue Pharmaceuticals, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/dec\/17\/sackler-family-purdue-pharma-congressional-hearing-apology?CMP=share_btn_tw\">refused to apologize for their role in creating and spreading America&#8217;s opioid crisis<\/a>.<\/li><li>The BBC has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-55295650\">a good primer on the Ethiopian conflict in Tigray and how Eritrea<\/a>, a repressive dictatorship that fought a border war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s, has become an unexpected ally of its former nemesis.<\/li><li>Also on the BBC: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-55372462\">the district attorney in San Francisco has an unusual background<\/a>, as his parents were members of the terrorist group Weather Underground and went to jail when he was still just a year old.<\/li><li>And one more from the BBC \u2013 Spain is going to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-55471282\">keep a registry of people who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine<\/a>. At that point, just make the vaccine mandatory. A registry just feeds into the fears of the cranks and conspiracy theorists.<\/li><li>The<em> Washington Post<\/em> <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/steve-mcqueen-education-small-axe\/2020\/12\/16\/2b061d2c-3e23-11eb-8db8-395dedaaa036_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">spoke to Steve McQueen<\/a> about his five Small Axe films, and how his own experiences helped inform them.<\/li><li>A Chesterfield County (Missouri) Councilman was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.riverfronttimes.com\/newsblog\/2020\/12\/23\/video-chesterfield-councilman-banned-from-best-buy-for-not-wearing-mask\">banned from a local Best Buy for refusing to wear a mask<\/a>. In December, nine months after the pandemic began, this jackass is still fighting mask mandates, and it sounds like the local police aren&#8217;t helping enforce anything.<\/li><li>An interesting opinion column submitted by one of you \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/arcdigital.media\/we-have-to-let-teenagers-make-mistakes-and-grow-aa49a778cf75\">we have to let teenagers make mistakes<\/a>, rather than ruining their lives forever for a bad moment caught on video when they were still children. There&#8217;s a limit to this, in my opinion; Madison Cawthorn&#8217;s mistakes should have followed him, but the former high school freshman named Mimi whom this writer mentions deserves a chance to move beyond her error.<\/li><li>The KLF is going to rock you again, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/entertainment-arts-55507226\">their biggest hits are finally available on streaming sites<\/a>.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had three pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic: breaking down the Yu Darvish trade, breaking down the Blake Snell trade, and one piece on both the Josh Bell trade and Kohei Arihara signing. I revealed my Hall of Fame ballot in another post that included several other Athletic writers&#8217; ballots, with each [&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":[899,1050,1162,190,961,233,870],"class_list":["post-8817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-bookstores","tag-coronavirus","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-pasta","tag-stick-to-baseball","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817","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=8817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8818,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817\/revisions\/8818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}