links — Page 20

→ May 5, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/5/19.

I had two ESPN+ posts last week, my ranking of the top 50 prospects in this year’s draft class and a scouting blog post covering a half-dozen top prep players (five of them on the top 50). My first mock draft of 2019 goes up on Monday. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday as well. I’ve been trying to time those to when I’ve got actual content to tell you all about, especially baseball things.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Cut looks at a small cult that operated within the Sarah Lawrence campus, as the father of a student there ended up crashing in her dorm and taking control of many of her roommates’ lives. The university’s reluctance to act is especially disturbing.
BuzzFeed talked to former white nationalist writer/provocateur Katie McHugh, a piece that tries to exonerate her (and fails, in my opinion) but that is instructive into how the alt-right social media machine works.
The Saudi government has regularly helped its citizens living in the U.S. escape prosecution for crimes by spiriting them out of the country, yet we do nothing about this because we continue to believe that the Saudis are our friends despite forty-plus years of evidence that they are not. First it was oil, now it’s help against terrorism, but there’s always an excuse for treating the Saudis as allies even when their actions say otherwise.
My friend Tim Grierson interviewed director/actor Werner Herzog on the eve of the German film giant’s new documentary Meeting Gorbachev.
Kavitha Davidson wrote in the Guardian about sexual assault in sports and society, focusing on Luke Walton’s attorney is trying to use #MeToo to denigrate the coach’s victim.
The New York Times explores eleven major food crops already affected by climate change, which, as the article notes, is widely denied by elected officials (always Republicans) from many of the states that rely on agriculture for employment and income.
The Washington Post profiles D’Arcy Carden, who plays Janet on The Good Place.
The Post also argues that anti-vaxxers should bear the financial costs of their actions when outbreaks occur.
The anti-vaxxer movement is also turning to increasingly violent rhetoric. We ignored this as a society when anti-abortion activists did it, and then when white nationalists did it, and both movements eventually turned to violence and terrorism.
Those same anti-vaxxers are harassing and threatening a Toronto mother whose son died of the flu as she has been advocating for greater use of the flu vaccine.
Measles had been eradicated in this hemisphere in 2000; it just reached its highest level in the U.S. in twenty years, entirely because of anti-vaxxers.
Meanwhile, science-denier Darryl Metcalfe, Pennsylvania’s representative for its 12th district (guess which party!), introduced a bill making it easier for parents to skip vaccinations by requiring doctors to treat unvaccinated children even if it poses risks to other patients.
Germany’s health minister proposed issuing large fines to families who don’t vaccinate their school-aged children. Add that to liability and you might extinguish enough of the deniers to stop these outbreaks.
Indonesia announced a plan to move the capital away from Jakarta because that city is sinking.
The political science valedictorian at Brigham Young University announced during his speech that he’s gay, a huge move given that the Mormon Church just announced a month ago that homosexuality was no longer considered apostasy.
Adam Serwer argues in the Atlantic that Nazis are and have always been trolls.
A National Geographic editorial argues that we must keep half of all land mass in its natural state to stop climate change. That may be true, but, uh, good luck with that.
A federal court ruled that Ohio Republicans violated Ohioans’ constitutional rights with a 2011 gerrymander. I know New Jersey Democrats did this too, but are all of the remaining gerrymanders this decade by Republicans?
Board game news: Plan B Games opened pre-orders for Century: A New World, the third game in Emerson Matsuuchi’s trilogy that also included Spice Road and Eastern Wonders.
Acram Digital announced that they’re developing a digital port of Charterstone, the tremendous legacy game that was my #2 title of 2018.
Asmodee announced the creation of a new fiction imprint to publish works based on or tied to its wide stable of board game and RPG titles.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, links, metoo, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 20, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/20/19.

Nothing new for ESPN+ subscribers this week, although I’ll have another draft blog post next week, followed by a draft top 50 the week after (I got bumped by some other draft). My last ESPN+ post covered likely first rounders Alek Manoah and Josh Jung, with Manoah looking like a top ten pick when I saw him.

I reviewed the app version of Castles of Burgundy, one of my favorite high strategy games, for Ars Technica. MENSA also gave its Select tag to five games from 2019 and I’ve reviewed two already, Gizmos and Architects of the West Kingdom.

I rarely appear on podcasts due to time constraints, but when Kyle Bandujo asked if I’d come on his show, Trouble with the Script, to review the worst baseball movie I’ve ever seen, I couldn’t possibly decline. I think we properly eviscerated Trouble with the Curve.

My free email newsletter is becoming dangerously close to a weekly thing now. I must be mellowing in my old age.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This is from February but I hadn’t seen it until a friend sent it along this week – best-selling novelist Dan Mallory is a serial liar who has made false claims of cancer and bipolar disorder to try to further his career. None of the claims has anything to do with his book, The Woman in the Window, however; it’s just that much of what he says about his life to date is untrue.
Mariners pitcher Rob Whalen recently retired due in large part to anxiety disorder, and he says the Mariners handled his case extremely poorly.
WIRED has a long, in-depth look at the chaos inside Facebook in 2018 as the company was called to account for its role in influencing the 2016 election, the way it promulgates hate speech and fake news, and poor data privacy standards.
Audio link: KQED looks at the Coachella concert-goers and those of us at home don’t see, a community far less affluent than the attendees are, and that is dealing with environmental problems from the warming desert.
The Writers’ Guild of America has demanded that its members cut ties with their agents to protest conflicts of interest by agencies that also produce shows via “packaging” deals. This past week, the first writer came out to say he wasn’t going to do so, in a letter that is pompous, self-serving, and in at least one instance untrue.
Fair Harvard, doing me proud: The university’s health services rejected a student proposal to make naxolone, the treatment capable of reversing opioid overdoses, available on campus. The money quote: “They had some skepticism about whether the research actually suggested that naloxone would be effective at Harvard.” If Harvard students have different biology from other humans, I’d love to know about it sooner rather than later.
The FDA may start cracking down on the use of the Non-GMO Project label.
A Bangladeshi student who reported sexual harassment by one of her teachers to the police was burned to death by members of her community, sparking large protests in the Muslim nation in south Asia.
A pair of adults wore Nazi armbands and MAGA shirts in Providence, Rhode Island, and then stood atop the city’s Holocaust memorial where they gave the Nazi salute.
The Washington Post looks at one possible fix to the “nightmare” job market for academics.
Brewers reliever Jeremy Jeffress started a food truck with someone from his hometown to re-create a favorite childhood experience of fried seafood. I need reports from those of you in Milwaukee when it starts up on May 5th.
Apparently there’s a controversy brewing over a Canadian stamp with an inaccurate depiction of something called a Nanaimo Bar, which I’d never heard of it until this happened.
Board game news: Another Terraforming Mars expansion, Turmoil, is over $600,000 on Kickstarter already.
The unrelated game On Mars has also cleared the half-million mark on Kickstarter. The BGG listing for the game says playing time is 90-150 minutes, so I may end up giving this one a miss.
Not a board game, but after reading this review of Falcon Age at Paste, I’m suddenly interested in it despite my general avoidance of video games (because they suck up so much time).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anxiety, bangladesh, board games, gmo, links, rhode island, social media

→ April 13, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/13/19.

I’ve had four ESPN+ posts this week. On the draft blog, I covered last week’s NHSI tournament + Elon RHP George Kirby, then scouted West Virginia RHP Alek Manoah and Texas Tech 3b Josh Jung. I’ve heard Jung’s name pronounced a few ways, but I think it has to be either Josh Jung or Yosh Yung, for consistency’s sake. On the pro side, I looked at the most prospect-laden minor league rosters this year, and finally saw Luis Robert play against the Royals’ high-A squad. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Architects of the West Kingdom, the newest game from Shem Phillips, who got a Spiel nomination for 2015’s Raiders of the North Sea. Architects is a busy worker-placement game, but has a few fun quirks like capturing your opponents’ meeples and selling them to the prison, or trading reputation to steal tax money or go to the black market.

And now, the links:

Longreads first: Anne Boyer writes in the New Yorker about what cancer takes away from you even if you survive it.
Adjunct professors are the minor-league baseball players of academia: overworked, underpaid, and often living on the edge of poverty. The Atlantic looks at one such adjunct who died because she couldn’t afford basic medical care that might have saved her.
Hampshire College has long had a reputation as a ‘hippie’ school, loose on the academics, maybe heavy on the substances. The college may be on the verge of extinction as it seeks a partner or buyer.
Forbes looks at deadbeat billionaire Jim Justice, the current governor of West Virginia, a man who doesn’t pay his bills and ignores state regulations that don’t suit him.
I’ve written quite a bit here about antibiotic resistance and the need for aggressive, science-based policies to combat it. Well, fungi can also make us sick, and now Candida auris has evolved resistance to antifungal drugs, too – and it’s hard to kill even outside the body. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06), an engineer by training, had a tweet thread about this topic after the article ran. Guess her party.
Kyle Korver, who sources tell me is a professional basketball player, wrote in The Player’s Tribune about learning to understand his own privilege.
Isaac Chotiner interviewed writer Bret Easton Ellis for the New Yorker, and Ellis said some things that didn’t play particularly well online, for good reason. I’m not linking this to dunk on Ellis, but to praise Chotiner: Look at how consistently he probes when Ellis dissembles, and how he refuses to let Ellis off the hook for saying something wrong. This is how the media should interview people in power.
ScienceNews has a follow-up piece to a link I posted last week that profiled fossil hunter Robert DePalma and the possible discovery of a fossil record from immediately after the Chicxulub impact.
Chik-Fil-A continues to pour money into nonprofit groups fighting LGBT rights across the country. I haven’t set foot in one of their restaurants in at least a decade, for this precise reason, but J. Kenji Lopez-Alt shows you how to recreate their famous chicken sandwich at home.
WIRED explains why the robocall problem will never truly be fixed.
Elizabeth Warren may not be faring well in early polls or fundraising, but Moira Donegan writes in the Guardian that Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic Party, producing practical policy proposals where others purvey platitudes.
This week’s Hidden Brain podcast episode looks at how societal views of gay rights changed so dramatically inside of fifty years.
Stand your white ground: An Alabama woman who shot and killed the man who violently raped her and then assaulted her brother is now facing life in prison. Don’t get mad when people stereotype the south while this shit still happens in your backyard.
In Missouri, two legislators – guess which party! – are pushing anti-vaccine bills and conspiracy theories.
Another WIRED piece argues that our health laws have failed the public good when it comes to vaccines, making it too easy for idiots and the ignorant to opt out.
Amidst the furor over US-Israeli relations, we’re losing track of the various despots Trump is propping up around the world, including the rising dictatorship in Egypt.
Why am I including a link to a press release about a single-malt whiskey’s launch in India? You’ll see if you read it.
The New York Times crossword puzzle Twitter account got into a bizarre beef with another twitterer over what was pretty obviously a joke.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, gay rights, links, missouri, science, vaccines, west virginia

→ April 8, 2019
→ By keith

Longreads, 4/7/19.

My latest draft post for ESPN+ subscribers looks at the top prospects from last week’s NHSI tournament, including C.J. Abrams, Riley Greene, and Jack Leiter; as well as Saturday’s outing by Elon RHP George Kirby.

Here are some of the leftover longreads I hadn’t gotten through in time for yesterday’s post:

The Guardian looks at the evolution of the influencer market, which continues to grow even through scandals and fragmentation. The article also focuses, a bit oddly, on influencers’ drive for “authenticity,” which strikes me as a contradiction in terms.
A reader sent this lengthy Current Affairs overview of Pete Buttigeig as seen through his book Shortest Way Home, arguing that he’s not a progressive candidate and that progressive voters shouldn’t want any part of him as a Presidential candidate. I think the article makes many good points, notably when discussing his policies as South Bend mayor and how he seemed to deprioritize issues like poverty reduction or racial inequality, but also makes some dubious inferences and leans too much on the book itself, which is a campaign document. Buttigeig also wrote about his ten favorite books for Vulture and I find it hard to believe that these ten, which read like the list of books you want other people to believe are your favorite books, are actually his favorites.
The Indy Star profiles John Franzese, whose testimony sent his father, a Colombo crime family boss, to jail, and his life after leaving witness protection, trying to work with recovering addicts like himself.
I’ve read two great books on the Chicxulub impact event, the asteroid collision with the earth that wiped out the dinosaurs and caused the KT mass extinction event, in the last year: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and T. rex and the Crater of Doom. The New Yorker has a piece right in line with those, looking at the recent discovery of a site that may have a fossil record of the first few hours after the impact.
Matthew Komatsu documents his experiences as a Japanese-American in the wake of the 2011 tsunami, and what he found in his 2018 return to the country.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: history of science, links, social media

→ April 6, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/6/19.

No ESPN+ content from me this week, although I have a draft blog post to file tonight that will cover what I saw at NHSI this week as well as potential first-rounder George Kirby of Elon. I did hold a Klawchat on Tuesday.

Meredith Wills helped me do some of the research that went into Smart Baseball, and, in addition to being an astrophysicist and general baseball expert (who realized that a change in the thickness of the baseball’s laces likely explains the current home run surge), she’s also a knitter and generally quite crafty. She’s disassembled many baseballs to look into their construction and is now selling crafts made from the leather on these baseballs, repurposing material that would otherwise go to landfills.

And now, the links, with a note. I didn’t get through all the longer reads I’d saved this week, so I may post a bonus roundup tomorrow or Monday. We’ll see how my weekend goes.

The best thing I read this week, one with particular relevance to me and many people close to me, is the New Yorker‘s piece on Laura Delano and the poorly-understood challenges of going off psychiatric drugs. I take one of those drugs, escitalopram (Lexapro), at the lowest ‘therapeutic dose’ of 10 mg/day, to help manage my anxiety.
Irin Carmon, now of New York magazine’s Intelligencer, writes of how the Washington Post, including famed editor-in-chief Marty Baron, spiked her work (with Amy Brittain) revealing that 60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager had a history of sexual harassment. CBS and Fager barraged the Post with threats of lawsuits and implied that they’d leak information to sink the story and some individuals’ careers, so the Post excised Fager’s story from their exposé of Charlie Rose; Ronan Farrow eventually published these allegations last July, leading to Fager’s belated firing.
The BBC looks at the murder of Iraqi Instagram star Tara Fares, part of what appears to be an increasing campaign to silence “liberal” women with significant social media profiles in the country.
Two of the links this week are very difficult reads about the deaths of children. The Washington Post goes deeper on the story of the grieving mother Susan Stevens, whose daughter’s death by overdose been used by Trump as ‘evidence’ we need a border wall, but whose story is far more complicated, with abuse and sexual assault possibly contributing to her daughter’s drug use.
The second is a photo essay on NPR covering the life and death of 12-year-old Lola Muñoz from a brain tumor, documented by photojournalist Moriah Ratner, who spent over a year with Lola and became very close to her subject before Lola’s death one year ago.
Vox asked fifteen experts about what modern practices or beliefs will be “unthinkable” in fifty years; I thought Lux Alptraum’s answer on sex work and its possible decriminalization was particularly insightful. When we turn sex workers into criminals, we are often revictimizing the people we charge with crimes.
The Anti-Defamation League called out anti-vaxxers for misappropriating the Holocaust-era Star of David badge to try to make themselves into some sort of victims.
The HPV vaccine has led to a dramatic drop in cervical disease, referring to the precancerous cells found in cervixes as a result of HPV infections.
I may have included this once before, but Undark’s profile of 18-year-old Ethan Lindberger, who was unvaccinated until he gained his majority and whose mother is still off in cloudcuckooland when it comes to vaccines, is worth your time.
From McSweeney’s: “I’m Vaccinating my Child the Natural Way – With Measles.“
The Administration is draining that swamp by letting pork producers have more control over inspections. Getting food-borne illnesses to own the libs?
Texas billionaire and Trump ally Andrew Beal is trying to get courts and regulators to stop California’s clean energy goals so he can profit, with zero apparent concern for the effects on our environment. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be born without a soul.
The Fifth Circuit Court’s recent ruling in Gibson v. Collier abandons the rule of law so the majority could weigh in against trans rights, according to plaintiff’s attorney Max Kennerly.
Probiotics do little to nothing for your overall health; they may even be bad for your immune system. Want a healthier gut? Eat more fiber.
The Atlantic has a fun interview with songwriters Norm Stiles and Chris Cerf, who wrote many of Sesame Street‘s most famous songs and later co-created Between the Lions. I do dispute the writer’s assertion that Sesame Street‘s best-known tune is “Put Down the Duckie.” That’s not even the show’s best-known song about a rubber duck; “Rubber Ducky” was so popular it hit the top 20 on Billboard‘s pop singles cart in 1970.
In a video essay for the New York Times Venezuelan-American writer Joanna Hausmann says the American Left is wrong to glorify Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro, and that protests against U.S. action in the collapsed South American state seem to ignore the wishes of actual Venezuelans. She also points out that Venezuela’s economy collapsed due to decades of corruption, with Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez looting the state for personal gain.
BuzzFeed writers have unionized, but the company is refusing to even recognize the union. You can see the union’s open letter to management on its Twitter feed.
Political science professor Leah Stokes looks at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that corporate money, not public opinion, is the real opposition to the Green New Deal, and finds evidence to support it.
Wine Enthusiast has a guide to amari, potable bitters, mostly from Italy that I’m seeing more on dessert menus at fine restaurants. The piece mentions my two favorites for drinking straight – Meletti and Montenegro.
Nationals pitching prospect Sterling Sharp is running a pledge drive to benefit youth baseball in Detroit where you can donate a flat amount or do as I did, pinning your donation to the number of groundball outs Sharp records this year.
Renegade Game Studios announced pre-orders for two upcoming titles, Artsee and the trick-taking game Time Chase.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, depression, food safety, links, liquor, longreads, mental health, the swamp, vaccines

→ March 16, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/16/19.

New ESPN+ content this week included a Grapefruit League scouting notebook and a draft blog post on Carter Stewart and Matt Allan. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

At Paste, I reviewed Tiny Towns, a new, light strategy game from AEG that has players placing resources on their boards to try to match set patterns, but where you have to take whatever resources your opponents take as well, which means you can easily get screwed by someone else’s choices, especially with more players (it handles up to 6).

My email newsletter is alive and well, and also free, with more of my writings whenever the spirits move me.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Gizmodo’s Earther looks at Apple’s complicated efforts to reduce its reliance on mining for heavy metals, an environmentally hazardous process that doesn’t have easy replacements via recycling programs for reasons the author details here.
Lifehacker interviewed Stella Parks, author of Brave Tart (and @bravetart on Twitter and Instagram), as part of their This is How I Eat series, although it includes lots of insights from Parks on baking as well. I learned she and I have identical coffee preferences.
The New York Times interviewed Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of the new board game Wingspan, which incorporates real information about various bird species to inform game play. I’ve played Wingspan and it is excellent; it’s also one of the only games I’ve ever seen designed by a woman and with all art by women as well.
Jane Coaston looks at some of the highlights from the college admissions fraud investigation.
The Boston Globe has a story on local indie bookstores thriving by creating communities of readers or holding events you might consider unorthodox for bookstores. Silver Unicorn Books owner Paul Swydan, ex-Fangraphs and Hardball Times writer, is interviewed here; I visited his shop in Acton, Massachusetts, last summer for a talk and signing.
The New Zealand mosque shooter told viewers of his massacre livestream to subscribe to Pewdiepie, the youtube star with a long history of embracing racist tropes and videos but then denying that he did so. Was this a serious line, or just part of a pattern of shitposting that you’d only catch if you’re extremely online?
That Oregon boy who nearly died of tetanus because his irresponsible dipshit parents didn’t get him vaccinated required the care of over 100 medical professionals during his 57-day, nearly $1 million hospital stay. The kicker: His parents still refused to vaccinate him after his ordeal.
New York says unvaccinated kids six and under must stay home if their schools are at high risk of a measles outbreak, so a bunch of denier parents are suing. If that happened here, I’d go to the courthouse and look for parents I knew.
The NY Times editorial board argues that lawmakers and social media sites need to do more to fight anti-vaccine trolls and raise immunization rates. I imagine science-denier Bret Stephens sat this one out.
Scientists in Congress used Pi Day as a platform to urge greater use of science in public policy discussions, as seen when Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) blasted an air horn at an ignorant NOAA official during a hearing earlier this month.
A new report from the UN Environment assembly says Arctic temperatures will rise by over 3 C even if humanity meets the Paris accord goals. You should be scared, especially since our current Administration denies climate change even exists.
The OED’s blog has a post on the history of the singular ‘they’, including this gem: Tennessee Republicans passed a law in 2016 banning the use of state funds to “promote the use of gender-neutral pronouns.”
Tennessee ain’t done trying to convince us of their atavistic tendencies: Legislators there have already introduced a dozen anti-LGTBQ bills in 2019, including yet another bill targeting trans people in bathrooms or locker rooms as well as a bill that tries to roll back marriage equality.
Not to be outdone, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin just signed a bill allowing concealed carry without a permit, over objections by state police groups. I’m glad I don’t have any travel to Kentucky this year.
Republican legislators across the country, even in blue states like Connecticut, have been introducing bills that would stop schools from teaching kids about climate change or minimize man’s role in it, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that we’re warming the planet. Making our kids dumber to own the libs, right?
On the bright side, Georgia state rep Dar’shun Kendrick (D) introduced a “testicular bill of rights” package (heh) that, for example, would require men to obtain permission from their partners before getting a prescription for erectile dysfunction medications.
Did you catch the “Jexodus” joke going around online this week? The idea that Jews will leave the Democrats en masse is a delusion, according to Talia Levin, in part because the GOP has zero intention of pursuing policy goals that might matter to Jewish voters. How’s Blexit going, anyway?
A strange study published in the Royal Society journal Open Science claimed that listening to gore-themed death metal didn’t inspire or trigger violent thoughts in test subjects. I never believed this was true, but not because of anything in the lyrics. It’s because you can’t understand anything death metal singers are saying.
Ken Jennings wrote a lovely tribute to Alex Trebek in the wake of the longtime Jeopardy! host’s announcement that he has stage IV pancreatic cancer.
Board game news: Glen More II, an expanded update/sequel of the top 100 game Glen More, is up on Kickstarter now and of course blew past its goal in about two days.
Paladins of the West Kingdom, the second game in the West Kingdom series after Architects of the West Kingdom (which I liked a lot and will be reviewing shortly for Paste), is also on Kickstarter for a few more days. It’s the same designer who made the Kennerspiel-nominated Raiders of the North Sea back in 2015.
Dire Wolf Games announced Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker, a new social deduction game due out later this spring.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board games, environment, links

→ March 9, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/9/19.

No new ESPN+ content this week, but that will change now that I’m in Florida to see a little spring training and at least two potential first-rounders while I’m here. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday and a Periscope video chat on Friday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday, this time discussing a hypothesis I have on how some teams handle low-ceiling teenaged prospects; you can sign up here and maybe I’ll send you something too.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: I have four pieces in this week’s roundup from the New Yorker, including two longreads. I subscribe to their site – I signed up right after I cancelled my New York Times subscription – and, if you have the disposable income, I recommend it. The first is Jane Mayer’s incredible, horrifying piece on the transformation of Fox News into a Trump propaganda network, the closest thing we’ve ever had to state TV in this country.
The second longread profiles kaiseki chef Niki Nakayama, a pioneer here in a niche cuisine dominated by men.
Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur received a large file of thousands of scouting reports from the Cincinnati Reds from 1991 to 2003 and wrote up some of what they found from global analysis and looking at specific players in a three-part series. I’m quoted several times in the first piece, but I will mention again that I’m a little uncomfortable with this information, which is outdated but would still be classified as trade secrets, getting out to the public.
The Verge looks at popular Twitter user & activist Dr. Eugene Gu, who has been accused of sexual assault and of misrepresenting portions of his resume.
There’s been a lot of very bad writing in the last week over Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her comments on Israel and AIPAC. I thought this Politico piece contrasting Omar’s place on the policy continuum with that of fellow Rep. Dean Phillips, who represents a district that borders on Omar’s, was one of the few good pieces. Omar ended up in the news again for her candid comments on President Obama’s tenure, including his decision to continue the drone strike program started by his predecessor, and for her comments that questioned whether some people have “allegiance” to Israel, the latter being taken completely out of context and used as more evidence of anti-Semitism. It’s not, as you can see from this transcript of her remarks. AIPAC is a powerful lobbying group, and AIPAC is not Israel is not Judaism.
A Florida massage parlor owner has been selling access to President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I’m not sure how this isn’t a bigger story.
The framing here isn’t great but this New Yorker piece on the risk that we become so overwhelmed by climate change’s dangers that we give up is still worth a read. I haven’t run into this sentiment anywhere online or in the real world, at least not yet.
The New Yorker‘s Masha Green looks at why measles is “a quintessential political issue” of 2019, drawing parallels to Michael Cohen’s testimony while excoriating our public-health system.
Dorit Reiss writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that non-vaccinating parents should be liable for damages when their kids start outbreaks. This would put a stop to some vaccine refusals – plenty of wealthy or high-income parents are vaccine deniers, too – but even marginal increases in vaccination rates will boost herd immunity.
For example, many of you already saw the story of an Oregon boy, aged 6, who nearly died of tetanus and racked up about $1 million in hospital bills. One, the parents should lose custody; they subjected their son to an entirely preventable, prolonged period of physical suffering. (It’s described in detail in the article. Imagine putting your kid through that.) Two, those costs, which don’t include the opportunity costs of that helicopter or the associated doctors being unable to take care of other patients, are the result of the parents’ active decision not to vaccinate. They should be liable for all of it.
A Chicago man who wasn’t vaccinated as a kid, then caught measles at age 30 and nearly died from it says parents have “no excuse” for deciding not to vaccinate.
UK Health Minister Simon Harris has warned social media companies over anti-vaccine ads ($).
The Sackler family’s role in fueling the opioid epidemic to further enrich themselves represents a significant policy failure, according to the Washington Post‘s Charles Lane.
It looks like Big Tobacco and now its partners in the vaping world may have helped push FDA head Scott Gottlieb out of his job. He was a rarity in this Administration, an official who took a tough stance on regulating harmful products in the name of the public interest.
The era of easy recycling is over as China is no longer interested in our recyclables. Add this to your Green New Deal proposals: we need more reduction and reuse, and easier access to composting. I have had a working compost pile for five years now, and it makes a noticeable difference in reducing my trash, but even that isn’t enough to take all of my compostable plant-based items, and I can’t compost meat or dairy scraps or even most paper materials in there because it’s not big enough. (I have composted a few cotton shirts, though.)
Writer/producer Amy Berg posted a Twitter thread explaining the Writers Guild of America’s conflict-of-interest complaint that the major talent agencies representing them, which could lead to some pretty drastic action as soon as the end of this month. (Full disclosure: I am represented by WME.)
Steven Spielberg wants to ruin the Oscars out of spite. Well, the Oscars aren’t so hot anyway, but he wants to make them worse by ensuring that Netflix titles and, as a secondary consequence, other indie films have a harder time qualifying for the awards. Spielberg went on to yell at several clouds that he said looked too much like the amazon logo.
Drew Magary – back from the brink – goes goes General Sherman on Barstool Sports in the wake of the latter’s aggressive legal tactics to try to get away with copyright infringement.
Jane Coaston explains right-wing grifter Jacob Wohl, recently banned from Twitter for admitting he’s made and continues to make fake accounts to try to influence elections and/or get gullible conservatives to send him money.
Parker Molloy shows how conservative outlets and commentators use “Mister Gotcha”-like claims of hypocrisy against Democratic politicians or candidates to derail actual debate over policies.
An Alabama court ruled that an aborted fetus’s biological father had some say in whether the pregnancy was terminated while ruling the fetus had legal standing to sue, a huge step backwards for women’s rights and for secularism.
This video clip from INSIDER explains why white savior movies are bad for Hollywood and for viewers.
A new, deluxe edition of the Martin Wallace classic Age of Steam is now up on Kickstarter. The new version includes brand-new artwork and a better color scheme.
A roll-and-write version of the great tile-laying game Lanterns called Lanterns: Dice in the Sky is available for pre-order, with May delivery expected.
Game designer Rich Gain, who worked as an operations manager at Japanime Games until just a few months ago, lost his fiancée and infant son in a car accident last week; there’s a GoFundMe running on his behalf in the wake of the tragedy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board games, japanese cuisine, links, oscars, social media, the swamp, vaccines

→ March 2, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers this week, I wrote three pieces, breaking down the Bryce Harper deal, ranking the top 30 prospects for this year’s draft, and offering scouting notes on players I saw in Texas, including Bobby Witt, Jr. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On the gaming front, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des Jahres-winning game The Quacks of Quedlinburg for Paste, and also reviewed the digital port of the game Evolution for Ars Technica.

I went on the Mighty 1090 in San Diego with Darren Smith to talk Manny Machado, Olive Garden, and the Oscars, and on TSN 1050 in Toronto to talk about Ross Atkins’ strange comments on Vlad Jr.. I also spoke to True Blue LA about Dodgers prospects, and joined the Sox Machine podcast to talk White Sox prospects.

I’m due for the next edition of my free email newsletter, so sign up now while the gettin’s good.

High Street on Market’s Sandwich Battles begin this Monday, with tickets available for $25. They’re my #1 restaurant in Philly, in large part because their breads are otherworldly.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: GQ has a length profile of the prolific and highly disturbed art thief Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole artworks valued at over $1 billion but never sold anything.
21st Century Fox was hit with a $179 million penalty by an arbitrator over a wide scheme to defraud the actors and producers of Bones of residuals from streaming on Hulu. Fox lied about the profits they were receiving from Hulu, of which Fox owns 30%, and at one point a Fox executive signed both sides of a deal between the two companies.
MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, who was a huge help to me when I was working on Smart Baseball, has a superb primer up on the Rapsodo and Edgetronic devices that are revolutionizing player development, especially in the area of ‘pitch design,’ where coaches and pitchers can work together to change or develop pitches by using real-time data that show how changes in grips or release points affect a pitch’s velocity and spin. Driveline Baseball, mentioned in Mike’s piece, has a blog post up on gaze research, or tracking how hitters see the ball. Technology has allowed teams and players to measure things that were either estimated by scouts/coaches in the past or that were simply brushed off as unmeasurable.
Little Falls, Minnesota, has found success in fighting opioid addiction by treating it as a disease, rather than as a crime or a personal failing. It’s an approach that has worked in other countries – Portugal is a paragon in this area – but goes against the Puritanical strain in American culture that sees addicts as degenerates.
What if climate change leads to enough cloud loss to further accelerate the warming of the planet? The odds of this are higher than we previously realized.
Why is California’s Attorney General refusing to release a list of cops convicted of crimes? Xavier Becerra, running for re-election this year, has even rejected public records requests from his own agency, which has led to lawsuits and would appear to violate open-records laws.
Marcela García writes in the Boston Globe how the should-have-won-Best Picture film Roma has exposed the deep racism within Mexican society.
A popular talking point among Republicans right now is that doctors are “killing babies” right after they’re born. The President said it in his State of the Union address, and it’s been repeated ad nauseam over the last month. Dr. Jen Gunter, an OBGYN who herself gave birth to a son so premature he could not survive, points out what a dangerous lie this line is.
Anti-vaxxer Forest Maready, who likes to depict people with autism as “tragedies,” has a new book coming out that resurfaces the debunked myth that vaccines cause autism. Amazon and Apple are planning to sell it, but I signed this petition asking them to pull the title from their stores. Meanwhile, an inquiry from Rep. Adam Schiff led amazon to pull six anti-vaccination “documentaries” from prime video.
Anti-vaxxer groups on Facebook are harassing pro-vaccine doctors by trashing their Yelp and Google ratings as well as flooding those doctors’ Facebook posts with comments. Facebook has done little to nothing to combat the problem. The Atlantic points out that the Facebook anti-vax community is quite small, just loud, and banning them would be easy for the platform.
WIRED argues that amazon’s anti-vaxxer problem is worse than Facebook’s.
A Nova Scotia chiropractor lost her license for spreading anti-vaccine information and making other unfounded claims. We should strive for the same kinds of laws around chiropractors, naturopaths, and even the rare medical doctor who embraces this sort of bullshit.
CNN also weighed in on tech outlets failing to police the anti-vaxx bullshit on their platforms.
The Washington Post looks at how anti-vaxxers are responding to the overdue public backlash against their efforts, as well as bills in various state legislatures to end religious and/or philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccination requirements.
Scientific American presents public policies we can use to fight anti-vaxxer lunacy.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Kevin McDermott asks why so many Americans are rejecting science in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
Italian researchers used CRISPR to create a genetically modified version of a malaria-carrying mosquito; if released, it should lead to collapses of that specific species and thus reduce malaria transmissions.
Paste‘s Jacob Weindling noticed that CNN stacked its phony ‘town hall’ for Bernie Sanders with political operatives/lobbyists posing as regular folks.
LA Times movie critic Justin Chang wrote that Green Book is the worst Best Picture winner since Crash, calling the vapid white-savior film “an embarrassment,” “insultingly glib and hucksterish,” “a self-satisfied crock,” and a “palatable brand of godawful.”
Late Night with Seth Meyers rather perfectly sent up the film with their ‘trailer’ for White Savior.
And apparently Green Book producer sent critic Jenni Miller a condescending, tone-deaf email where he doesn’t even know the main character’s real name.
In a bit of things coming full circle, Pig Destroyer’s John Jarvis has formed a new baseball-themed grindcore band, Kolten Wong City, a name that alludes to Kowloon Walled City, whose bassist, Ian Miller, is part of baseball-themed grindcore band Puig Destroyer, whose name alludes to … well, you get it now.
Why are progressive artists still working with Morrissey despite his embrace of far-right causes and outright racist statements?
Talk Talk’s singer and main songwriter Mark Hollis died this week at age 64. His last release was a solo album in 1998, after which he retired from music to spend time with his family.
Splinter writer Samer Kalaf released an email exchange he had with conservative NY Times writer Bret Stephens, without Stephens’ permission, but I think Kalaf comes off far worse here than he realizes.
Roland’s Market, a collaboration between Chris Bianco and the couple behind Tacos Chiwas, closed without warning last month. The location will be converted into a larger outpost of Bianco’s Pane Bianco.
The former editor of the Rocky Mountain News writes of his fear that local journalism will continue to fade and die as newspapers are plundered by hedge-fund owners.
Charlotte Riley describes the game Patriarchy Chicken in a column subtitled “why I refuse to move out of the way for men.”
The FTC is finally cracking down on scammers who buy fake reviews on amazon, going after the seller of a bogus weight-loss ‘supplement.’
In board game news, Disney’s Villainous: Wicked to the Core hits Target tomorrow; it’s exclusive there for a month and will later roll out to other outlets. I’ve played it, and it’s as good as the original, but with rules that are much clearer for first-time players, enough that you might do better to start with this before going back to the first game. (This is a standalone expansion that you can combine with the original.)
Renegade Game Studios has Hex Roller, a new roll-and-write game that I haven’t seen yet, up for preorder.
Days of Wonder announced a few weeks ago that their next title will be Corinth, an update/retheme of the game Yspahan that alters some core rules and eliminates the caravan (which was a dominant strategy in Yspahan).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2018 movies, addiction, anti-science, art, baseball, board games, california, climate change, frauds, links, movies, oscars, pseudoscience, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ February 23, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/23/19.

Just one ESPN+ piece this week, looking at the Padres’ deal with Manny Machado. I held a Klawchat on Friday since my afternoon game in Texas was rained out.

I sent out the latest issue of my free email newsletter this week, complete with Obscure Music Reference as the subject. I nearly always tailor those song quotes to the subject of the email, although I think this week’s might have been a bit too obscure.

For the next five Mondays, High Street on Market, my #1 restaurant in Philadelphia, will host “sandwich battles” in the evenings, featuring area chefs and personalities in a competition to build the best sandwich using High Street’s phenomenal artisan breads and a mystery ingredient each week. Tickets are $25 apiece and you might see me in the crowd one night.

And now, the links…

The chefs from Montreal’s acclaimed restaurant Joe Beef discuss their kitchen’s culture of excess and the process of getting sober, and how that changed the whole restaurant. I thought it was interesting that people in rehab are told to avoid working in food service, since there’s booze everywhere.
The gaming world has moved quickly to banish writer Zak Smith after multiple women accused him of assault/abuse, including his ex-wife. Gen Con, the tabletop convention I attend every August and where I spoke on writers’ panels the last two years, has canceled his planned appearance and fully banned him from the con.
I generally find those “stop using your phone!” guides and self-help articles to be both patronizing and unrealistic; I use my phone more than I should, or want to, yet using it 75% less or not using it at all is impractical. That said, this New York Times piece on the topic is actually helpful and acknowledges that the same devices that distract us also provide essential services to us in life and at work.
A viral video of a white Delaware police officer pulling his gun on a black motorist has sparked controversy and calls for the officer to be disciplined or fired. I haven’t seen any more than that video but thought this was interesting – a lawyer who’s sued the Delaware State Police before in other cases argues that the officer may have been overzealous but wasn’t wrong to draw his weapon. The Attorney General’s office has said they are not investigating the case right now.
Vanderbilt has denied tenure to a neurology professor who spoke out against a professor who was later put on leave after he was accused of drugging and raping a student. If you believe such things matter – I’m not sure they do – you can sign a petition urging Vanderbilt to reconsider.
Measles, that “benign childhood disease,” has killed over 900 in Madagascar in an ongoing epidemic.
A British Columbia measles outbreak started because one idiot father took his three unvaccinated sons to southeast Asia, where they caught the virus and then brought it home. He gives the bullshit autism story as his explanation, just one more reason Andrew Wakefield should be denied the right to even enter the United States or Canada by our respective governments. He’s a terrorist.
Facebook lets advertisers, including anti-vaccine groups, target users interested in “vaccine controversies,” according to a Guardian report. BuzzFeed also reported on how one anti-vax community built its following on Facebook. Cool cool cool.
The Charlotte Observer‘s editorial board writes that North Carolina needs to crack down on vaccine-denier parents.
This New York Times piece on a couple of bibliophiles who connected over their shared love of books … except that, for reasons the author sort of explains, she’d almost totally stopped reading when they met.
There’s a GoFundMe with an explanation worth reading for the abused ex-wife of David Sorensen, who is now suing her for defamation (but not the Washington Post, which printed the story, since they have the resources to fight back).
Is ‘Oumuamua actually material from a nearby, newly formed star? That seems more plausible than the claim that it was some sort of real-life Rama.
The Inspector General is investigating FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for improper conduct in pushing for Sinclair’s takeover of Tribune Media’s local TV assets.
The News & Observer published a timeline of the investigation into fraud in NC-9, where the Republican candidate seems to have suddenly remembered having two strokes that harmed his memory.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: astronomy, delaware, links, metoo, north carolina, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ February 16, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/16/19.

No ESPN+ content this week, but my entire prospect ranking package is now up for subscribers, including the top 100, farm system rankings, and in-depth rankings for all 30 teams, with at least 15 prospects ranked in each system. Before my vacation I wrote up the J.T. Realmuto trade. I also held a Klawchat this Thursday and another back on February 6th.

My most recent board game review for Paste covered the light, fun engine-builder Gizmos, by the designer of Bärenpark and Imhotep, a very family-friendly title with no text to worry about that takes the engine-builder concept and boils it down to a simpler game that plays in well under an hour.

I also resumed my email newsletter, so feel free to sign up for that if you just can’t get enough Klaw in your life.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Jessica Luther and Dan Solomon have a massive piece up at Deadspin looking at how Baylor football became a haven for sexual assault, building on their great work over the last few years at Texas Monthly.
The Verge interviews Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan, who has made millions of scientific papers available ‘free’ online, violating copyrights to do so – but should scientific research not just be copyrighted, but held behind prohibitive paywalls that may slow the progress of other research by denying people access? Should copyright laws, which predate the idea of research journals and existed to protect the rights of publishers and content creators, treat scientific papers the way they treat novels or films?
SkepticalRaptor has a long review of a bad book from last fall that claims the HPV vaccine isn’t safe. The book’s authors aren’t scientists, but two lawyers and a homemaker, so nobody with a science background, and it shows in the text.
Amanita phalloides, the deadly mushroom colloquially known as the death-cap, is spreading across North America.
My friends Tim Grierson and Will Leitch ranked every film that won the Oscar for Best Picture. I’ve probably seen only 20 or so of these, but I at least agree with their praise of numbers 1, 3, 6, 12, and 17.
Why don’t we have a vaccine for streptococcus A, the aftereffects of which, including rheumatic heart disease and sepsis, kill half a million people a year? It’s a combination of a regulatory screwup, successful medical interventions in developed countries, and the low profit margins of vaccines.
In a Guardian longread, Tom Yarwood writes about surviving being sexually molested by a music teacher when he was a child. He’s specific about the nature of the abuse, in case you might find this triggering.
The BBC looks at how Helsinki ended street homelessness through progressive policies designed to get such people off the streets into stable housing, even if they have substance-abuse problems.
Laura Snapes writes in the Guardian that the Ryan Adams allegations are just the start in a field where such “beta male misogyny” is rampant.
Measles is on the rise in Europe thanks to anti-vaxxers, and our state laws here need to keep up by eliminating all non-medical exemptions for schoolchildren.
Facebook’s role in spreading vaccine-denial bullshit has come under fire in two directions – the rise of closed groups that freely share false information against vaccines, and now anti-vaxxer groups using Facebook ad targeting to serve ads to pregnant women scaring them away from vaccines.
Some unvaccinated teens are now going around their parents to get vaccinated or doing so as soon as they’re of age. I’d drive any unvaccinated kid to the doctor if they had the legal side sorted out to get their shots.
There’s a measles outbreak in the Philippines, including the capital city of Manila, with nearly 13 million people in its metropolitan area.
Now some especially dumbshit parents are refusing the vitamin K shot for newborns. It’s essential to help newborns’ blood clot properly, so look for a bunch of babies bleeding to death needlessly because their parents are morons and the law lets them stay that way.
Climate change may melt most Himalayan glaciers in the next 80 years, which, I don’t know, sounds like a national emergency to me.
Scientific American looks at proposed policies to combat rising temperatures in Phoenix, although I notice water conservation, an outright failure of the city and state governments there, isn’t mentioned.
Math geeks may enjoy this paper (PDF) on the Sheldon Conjecture, based on an episode of the Big Bang Theory where that character says 73 is the perfect prime number – and it’s possible that the writers were more right than they knew.
Harvard professor Jill Abramson stands accused of plagiarism as well as inaccurate quotes in her latest book, and she seems to think she’s above the fray. I’ve emailed multiple deans at Harvard to ask for any sign they’re even aware of these problems – she teaches seminars on writing there, for crying out loud – but so far I’ve had no response.
Instagram “influencer” Rachel Hollis has also been accused of plagiarizing quotes on her social media account.
Bernie 2020? Not so fast, if you look at his history of embracing pseudoscience.
Julian Edelman’s title as Super Bowl MVP exposes our ‘selective morality’ on performance-enhancing drugs in sports, Hunter Felt writes for the Guardian.
Oh, we back on that again? New York’s City Council is considering a ban on foie gras, based again on a misunderstanding of how the delicacy is actually produced. I’m not a huge fan myself, at least not commensurate with its reputation among foodies, but this is a needless regulation, and shouldn’t be near the top of anyone’s priority list of rules on food production and sale.
I shouldn’t laugh, but I did: “Investors” in a cryptocurrency exchange might be out $137 million because the founder died and no one knows his passwords.
Jane Coaston wrote in Vox about conservative pundits’ bad faith arguments around Gov. Ralph Northam while also arguing that the governor, who appeared in blackface in a yearbook photo from his time in graduate school, should resign. I feel like we should just turn Virginia off and turn it back on again.
George Will argues in the Washington Post that Democrats can bail out Trump by nominating someone too liberal/progressive in 2020. I don’t agree, but I think Will makes a cogent argument about the center (without, I think, considering voters on the far left who might have abstained in 2016).
A great podcast from the BBC explains why we don’t care about the war in Yemen, which we support by funding our ‘friends’ the Saudis.
Two unrolled Twitter threads worth reading: Harvard professor Juliette Kayam depantsed Rep. Dan Crenshaw over border security and the wall.
Writer Anand Giridharadas was invited to fill in as guest speaker at a dinner, only to have the ‘liberal’ crowd defend the Koch brothers. The dinner took place at The Players, a private social club founded by Edwin Booth, which has also been accused of labor law violations (detailed within).
Board games! Floodgate Games’ Bad Maps is now available for pre-order.
The board game Evolution is now out as an app for iOS, Android, and Steam. I have a review coming for Ars Technica, but I’ll report here that it’s pretty great – it looks fantastic and I think it’s easy to read, learn, and play on a tablet screen.
Villainous: Wicked to the Core, is a new standalone expansion to last year’s hit game Villainous, and will be available exclusively through Target starting on March 3rd, with pre-orders through that link. I’ve played it five times already, and it’s more of the same but with better rules explaining each villain character’s unique powers and victory conditions. This comes with three new characters – the Evil Queen, Doctor Facilier, and Hades (no James Woods, thank goodness) – and may be combined any way you like with the six villains from the original game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, board games, climate change, frauds, links, math, metoo, oscars, vaccines, virginia

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