{"id":9194,"date":"2021-11-06T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9194"},"modified":"2021-11-06T20:21:24","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T00:21:24","slug":"stick-to-baseball-11-6-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/06\/stick-to-baseball-11-6-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 11\/6\/21."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>My one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3o3ov0u\">ranks the top 50 free agents in this winter&#8217;s class<\/a>. I also held a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheAthletic\/status\/1456351798772461575\">Zoom Q&amp;A<\/a> via The Athletic&#8217;s Twitter account. I feel like those don&#8217;t get as many questions as my old Periscopes did, so please let me know how I can make it easier for you to ask questions when I do them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over at Paste, I <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3GRDF1i\">reviewed Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition<\/a>, the shorter, streamlined version of the massive Terraforming Mars board game. I think it&#8217;s better than the original, which is a heavy (physically and in terms of complexity) two-hour affair that just doesn&#8217;t benefit enough from the difficulty or length it entails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My podcast was off this past week, but will return this Tuesday with a new episode. I was on the Athletic Baseball Show again on Friday, which you can catch on <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/ApTABS\">Apple<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/SpTABS\">Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the holidays approach, I&#8217;ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942739\"><em>The Inside Game<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062490230\"><em>Smart Baseball<\/em><\/a>, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, the links\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Longreads first: How two BBC journalists risked their careers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2021\/nov\/02\/jimmy-savile-bbc-journalists-risked-jobs-reveal-truth\">to expose Jimmy Savile&#8217;s decades-long history of child molestation<\/a>, and how various people in power tried to squash the story.<\/li><li>Insider&#8217;s Julia Black has a damning expos\u00e9 of Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/barstool-sports-dave-portnoy-sex-choking-violent-stoolies\">multiple women accusing him of engaging in nonconsensual violent behavor during sex<\/a>. Much of the subsequent coverage focused on the stock price of Penn National Gaming, which owns 36% of Barstool, rather than the actual substance of the allegations. The Cut <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecut.com\/2021\/11\/women-say-sex-with-dave-portnoy-was-violent-and-humiliating.html\">has a summary<\/a> if you&#8217;re not an Insider subscriber.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/sports\/sporting-scene\/the-great-bridge-boycott\">A cheating scandal rocked the bridge world<\/a>, leading to mass forfeits at a recent European championship.<\/li><li>In 1994, Rodney Wilson, a high school teacher in Mehlville, Missouri, came out to his students, and nearly lost his job. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.riverfronttimes.com\/stlouis\/coming-out-in-1994-nearly-cost-rodney-wilson-his-teaching-job-has-missouri-learned-anything\/Content?oid=36536936\">Things in Missouri aren&#8217;t really much better 27 years later<\/a>, as a gay teacher in Neosho was forced to resign because parents said he was going to &#8220;teach their kids to be gay.&#8221;<\/li><li>ProPublica exposes how Gov. Jim Justice (R), Gov. Jared Polis (D), former Secretary of Edumucation Betsy DeVos (R), Sen. Rick Scott (R), and other wealthy Americans <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/how-these-ultrawealthy-politicians-avoided-paying-taxes\">avoid paying most or all income taxes<\/a>, using loopholes around philanthropy, family trusts, the SALT deduction, and other forms of chicanery.<\/li><li>Via Craig Calcaterra, who posted this link in his <a href=\"https:\/\/cupofcoffee.substack.com\/\">newsletter<\/a> this week, a story from <em>Bitter Southerner<\/em> on <a href=\"https:\/\/bittersoutherner.com\/southern-perspectives\/2021\/this-is-braves-country\">what exactly is &#8220;Braves Country,&#8221; and the lies Atlanta fans are telling themselves<\/a> about the team&#8217;s name, imagery, and chop.<\/li><li>Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the developer of cognitive behavioral therapy (itself a rejoinder to Freudian analysis), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/01\/health\/dr-aaron-t-beck-dead.html\">died this week at age 100<\/a>.<\/li><li>There&#8217;s been some <a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/bad-art-friend-has-resulted-in-a-slew-of-staff-changes-and-internal-review-at-grubstreet\/\">real-world fallout at GrubStreet<\/a> from the Bad Art Friend story.<\/li><li>Whether the non-troversy over Critical Race Theory caused the Virginia gubernatorial race outcome or not, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NikkiMcR\/status\/1455700200673222666\">it is a non-troversy and the guy stoking it admitted as much on Twitter<\/a>. He&#8217;s funded by dark-money titan Charles Koch, of the Koch Brothers. Don&#8217;t fall for it.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-59148620\">The HPV vaccine is cutting cervical cancer cases by nearly 90%<\/a>. Can your horse deworming paste do that?<\/li><li>A new wave of COVID-19 cases, mostly among unvaccinated people, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/03\/us\/colorado-hospitals.html\">has overwhelmed Colorado ICUs<\/a>. Gov. Polis (D), mentioned above, has refused to reinstate any sort of mask mandates or restrictions on capacity.<\/li><li>The <em>Harvard Gazette<\/em> asked a pediatrician <a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2021\/11\/pediatrician-weighs-in-on-covid-vaccines-for-kids-5-11\/\">about vaccinations for 5- to 11-year-olds<\/a>.<\/li><li>Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, the quack who testified before the Ohio legislature that COVID-19 vaccines would make you magnetic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/anti-vaxxer-dr-sherri-tenpenny-said-she-traveled-covid-symptoms-2021-11\">bragged about traveling on airplanes while sick with COVID-like symptoms<\/a>. Ohio still hasn&#8217;t yanked her medical license.<\/li><li>The so-called ivermectin meta-analysis preprint that claimed to show evidence the anti-parasitic drug worked against COVID-19 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EricTopol\/status\/1456099341324615683\">has completely fallen apart<\/a> now that three of the studies it used have been retracted (or otherwise shown to be bogus).<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/threader.app\/thread\/1455615657148489730\">A great thread on the value of mentorship<\/a>, in this case in academia, but applicable to all fields.<\/li><li>Senator Tom Carper (D), one of our two Senators from Delaware, wrote an editorial in the <em>Delaware News-Journal<\/em> indicating that he has finally come around to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.delawareonline.com\/story\/opinion\/2021\/11\/04\/tom-carper-no-barrier-not-even-filibuster-stop-our-obligation-our-democracy\/6269169001\/\">supporting ending the filibuster<\/a>. Here&#8217;s hoping he can convince Sen. Chris Coons (D) of the same.<\/li><li>And the grift goes on till the break of dawn: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/zacheverson\/2021\/11\/03\/heres-what-was-going-on-at-trumps-dc-hotel-around-jan-6\/\">Trump&#8217;s DC hotel cashed in big-time on the January 6<sup>th<\/sup> insurrection<\/a>.<\/li><li>Do you want to be better at recycling? And sometimes you put stuff in the yellow (or green) bin that belongs in the trash? You&#8217;re wishcycling, and might actually be making the situation worse. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-59133056\">a guide to doing recycling better<\/a>. Did you know you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sierraclub.org\/sierra\/yes-you-can-recycle-your-pizza-boxes\">can recycle pizza boxes<\/a> after all? I had always read that the grease stains on them made them unsuitable for recycling, but it turns out that that is incorrect.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic ranks the top 50 free agents in this winter&#8217;s class. I also held a Zoom Q&amp;A via The Athletic&#8217;s Twitter account. I feel like those don&#8217;t get as many questions as my old Periscopes did, so please let me know how I can make it [&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":[1162,742,113,190,961,1105,783,940],"class_list":["post-9194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-delaware","tag-environment","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-missouri","tag-psychology","tag-the-swamp","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194","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=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9197,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions\/9197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}