olympics

→ September 19, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/19/20.

I had one post of my own this week for subscribers to The Athletic, on my disdain for MLB’s proposal to keep expanded playoffs beyond 2020. I also did a Q&A with our Royals writer Alec Lewis and answered some questions for our Nats writer Britt Ghiroli on each of those teams’ farm systems.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was my friend and former colleague Adnan Virk, talking about the season to date and some upcoming movies of interest to him (he hosts his own movie podcast called Cinephile). My own podcast is now available on Amazon podcasts as well as iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I ranked the five best board game reboots I’ve played, as a companion to last week’s review of Nova Luna, itself a reboot of an earlier game called Habitats.

I’ve been keeping up with my free email newsletter better recently; my thanks to those of you who’ve signed up and who’ve sent kind notes in response to some recent editions.

The holidays approach! My books The Inside Game and Smart Baseball make excellent gifts, or so I’m told by my editor and publicists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The most likely way to get infected with COVID-19 is coming into airborne droplets that contain the virus – that is, breathing in what infected people breathed out. All of your Lysol wipes and closing schools/workplaces for “deep cleaning” is hygiene theater: You get COVID-19 from being in an enclosed space with someone who has it and isn’t wearing a mask.
The New York Times looks at the strange case of Ed Buck, who appears to have killed multiple gay Black men by overdosing them with meth. Buck pitched himself as a major Democratic donor in southern California, but the evidence is that he talked a big game but really wasn’t a big deal.
NPR exposes how “Big Oil” sold U.S. consumers on the lie that plastics would be recycled.
This Washington Post story highlights the dangers of medical misinformation by showing how one 26-year-old film editor fell prey to online conspiracy theories about COVID-19, masks, and vaccines. By the end of the story, he’s gone completely off the rails.
A former Facebook data scientist alleges that the company has ignored blatant manipulation by autocratic governments or other political parties, including those in Honduras, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine, and says she was fired for spending time on these matters.
Scientific American has endorsed Joe Biden for President, the first time in the publication’s 175-year history that it has endorsed a Presidential candidate.
A second Washington Post story highlights the battles over the US Postal Service and how the Trump Administration scotched a plan to distribute hundreds of millions of masks to Americans.
Dividing athletes into male and female groups requires imposing a clear binary on a messy reality. So says David Epstein, writing for Slate on the decision to ban Castor Semenya from women’s track unless she agrees to suppress her natural testosterone production. Vonnegut called this one in “Harrison Bergeron.”
Shere Hite, a pioneering sex researcher who first rose to prominence with her 1976 book The Hite Report, which discussed female sexuality and sexual experiences, died earlier this month at 77.
Another woman has accused Donald Trump of sexual assault and his adherents do not care…
…because so many of them care only about ending a woman’s right to choose.
The group “Democrat Voters Against Joe Biden” doesn’t have any actual Democrats in it.
Meanwhile, Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump cult led by Charlie Kirk, is paying teenagers to tweet disinformation on COVID-19 and mail-in voting or post similar information on Facebook. I’m not clear why those sites haven’t banned Kirk and TPUSA for running de facto troll farms.
Trump’s legal strategy to suppress the vote is continuing apace in Wisconsin and other swing states, right in plain sight of everyone who should care.
A nurse who worked at an ICE detention center alleged that women held prisoner there were being given hysterectomies without their consent. Some women who were in that camp have alleged that the nurse was complicit in those forced sterilizations.
Climate change is killing Americans and destroying our physical infrastructure, but the Republican Party says we can’t afford to try to stop it.
The UK government’s chief scientific advisor revealed that he was strongly rebuked for arguing for a stricter lockdown earlier this year.
This New England Journal of Medicine editorial advises us how to build trust in an eventual COVID-19 vaccine. Hint: It’s not by promising one will be out before the election.
Two more white women revealed (or were exposed) in the last week that they’ve been posing as Black. I feel like this is a bigger problem than the salacious coverage implies – this isn’t just a scandal, but it’s a serious case of fraud, as these women all have taken jobs or academic positions that should have gone to Black women, and thus probably slowed or derailed other women’s careers as a result of their fraud. The news coverage focuses more on the scandalous part, which leads to pointless claims about “racial dysphoria” or other nonsense, when these women are just frauds.
My friend and colleague Lindsay Adler wrote about Dak Prescott and her own experiences with depression (for subscribers to the Athletic).
The NYC bookstore Kitchen Arts & Letters, which sells books about cooking, food, and drink, has a GoFundMe up to try to help them survive the pandemic’s drastic effects on their business.
There’s a fight going on within Spotify over the company’s new, exclusive deal with Joe Rogan, because of many transphobic comments he’s made over the years, and appearances by guests who engage in transgender denialism.
Board game news: Embarcadero, a 2021 game co-designed by the designer of Scoville, is on Kickstarter and already well past its modest funding goal.
Infinity Gauntlet, a new variation of the fast-playing deduction game Love Letter, is now out from Asmodee.
Dire Wolf announced the forthcoming game Dune: Imperium, an officially licensed property with art from the new movie version of Frank Herbert’s novel.
This about sums things up for 2020.

We should probably call it a night pic.twitter.com/YJbU1QGJpn
— The Oatmeal (@Oatmeal) August 29, 2020

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, conspiracy theories, coronavirus, environment, gender issues, links, longreads, mental health, olympics, sexual assault, social media, the swamp

→ August 27, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/27/16.

This week, for Insiders, I ranked the MLB players with the best hitting tools, fielding and throwing tools, and pitching tools. I held my weekly Klawchat on Friday.

For Paste, I reviewed the upcoming boardgame Tak, which was designed based on the fictional depiction of the game in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles novels.

My last run at the helm of the BBTN podcast for this year came on Monday’s show, with guests Jerry Crasnick and Joe Sheehan.

And now, the links…

TIME ran a thoughtful piece on how trolls are “ruining” the Internet, looking at why trolls troll and what we might do to combat the inevitable problem.
I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Mylan hiked EpiPen prices when their competitor shut down production. It’s basic economics, and while I’m very pro-free market, we do have protections against certain monopoly conditions. This is one such case. Mylan’s PR team is on the attack, with this semi-sympathetic portrait of their CEO running in the NY Times, which also ran a more analytical look at why our healthcare system enables this kind of price gouging.
We’re preparing to fight Zika in south Florida by releasing genetically modified mosquitos into the wild. It’s the right move – doing the same in Africa could save millions of lives – but you can expect a lot of backlash.
Meanwhile, a new virus appears to break the known ‘rules’ of viral infections by breaking itself into multiple pieces; the virus, which infects mosquitos (seriously, fuck them already), only works in the bugs if several parts of it are present.
A teenager charged with multiple rapes and suspected of being a serial rapist was given probation by a Judge Thomas Estes because reasons. There’s another movement afoot to remove the judge from the bench, which I support because no one convicted of rape should avoid jail.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl in Cleveland is in jail and may be charged as an adult for killing her abusive father. The system failed to protect her and her mother, and now she may pay the price for their failures.
The Canadian Medical Association has called for an end to nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccinations, which is excellent because there is no good fucking reason on earth not to vaccinate your kids.
Dr. Donald Henderson, who helped lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox, died last week at 87. Despite the end of smallpox, he thought efforts to eradicate more quickly-mutating viruses like polio might be futile.
Tom Scocca’s post mortem on Gawker makes the key point that only money can protect any journalistic outlet from the likes of Peter Thiel. Not the truth, just money.
Daniel Vaughn reviewed a legit barbecue joint in southern Sweden.
This New Yorker piece on a very exclusive restaurant in upstate New York is fascinating because it’s a portrait of food, a restaurant, and a chef who might be delusional.
Some Idaho hot-taker decided to take a few shots at Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Tyson responded with a huge mic-drop in the comments.
Amateurism is a word fart expelled after wolfing down a nothingburger, says Patrick Hruby in a piece for Vice on the gigantic farce that is the NCAA.
Also at Vice, on the unconscionable human disaster that was the 2016 Olympics. Everything described therein, including the massive wealth transfers from poor to rich, will continue until cities stop bidding for the games.
If you’re still stuck in the mindset that there are only two sexes, male and female, read about Olympic champion runner Stella Walsh, who was intersex. She lived as a woman, but after her death (she was murdered in a botched robberty) the coroner discovered that she had underdeveloped male gonads and no uterus due to a chromosomal abnormality. So, I ask Republicans in North Carolina and Mississippi, what bathroom would you have required her to use?
Why do just 2% of the counties in the United States account for more than half of its death-row inmates? Why do we even execute people, period? Only two countries in the western hemisphere actively use the death penalty, the U.S. and St. Kitts, which I believe has executed one person this century. The story features prosecutor Angela Corey, profiled in a link I posted here last week as perhaps the cruelest DA in the country.
Two posts on the University of Chicago “no safe spaces/trigger warnings” welcome letter: one that presents the letter with favorable comments, and this dismantling of its words and intent by Grand View University History Professor Kevin Gannon. I don’t think I like the ideas implied by safe spaces, but I speak without experience on that, and, hell, trigger warnings are just common courtesy, aren’t they?
A rather peculiar research study showed (or claimed to show) that reading literary fiction was better than pop fiction for boosting readers’ emotional skills. You’ll have to read the article to see what exactly they thought it proved and to determine whether you think it proves anything. I’ll be reading literary fiction.
We’re definitely an HGTV household, but not particularly fans of Flip or Flop. The stars of that show have loaned their likenesses to a real-estate education “seminar” that sure sounds like an old-fashioned scam to me.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, death penalty, links, olympics, science, vaccines

→ August 13, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/13/16.

I wrote one Insider piece this week, on the decline and fall of Yasiel Puig as a hitter, not as a clubhouse problem or social media superstar. I also held a long Klawchat on Thursday.

I attended GenCon for the first time last week and wrote three pieces about it for Paste, including the top ten new games I saw, the summary of every other interesting title, and an essay on the experience of attending for the first time.

And now, the links:

This piece on Twitter’s ongoing failure to deal with harassment sheds much light on how and why the site has allowed abuse to flourish. Lack of diversity in company leadership has been one major problem.
Vox advances the thesis that NBC’s coverage of the Olympics is terrible because they view the games as entertainment, not sports. I find their broadcasts unwatchable; we record them and fast-forward through maybe 90% of the content, including every recorded feature they’ve prepared on the athletes, because all I’m interested in is certain events.
Deadly bacteria, like the one that causes cholera, are spreading as ocean temperatures rise. Climate-change deniers tend to focus on air temperatures, but I’ve yet to find one who can rationalize away our warming and increasingly acidic oceans.
A woman who was sexually assaulted while a student at Harvard Law School explains why the school needs to apologize, part of the “just say sorry” campaign for schools to at least accept that modicum of responsibility. I’m ashamed to read the details of how HLS mishandled her case, including the subsequent readmission of her rapist and the actions of 19 professors who have defended him and participated in shaming her.
Anita Hill spoke to NPR about progress in workplace since her sexual harassment claim, which became a story in 1991 but never really threatened the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas. If a nominee today were accused of doing what Hill said Thomas did – and I see no reason to disbelieve her – would he sail through to the bench as Thomas did?
Amazon is quietly eliminating list prices in response to a number of complaints, including lawsuits over misleading discounts off prices that never really existed.
Three student-scientists at Stanford believe they’ve developed proteins that will kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They’re seeking investors and aren’t disclosing the details – which I hope isn’t too similar to Elizabeth Holmes’ history – but this could be very good news in what is about to become a huge public-health crisis.
Clay Shirky explains why there’s no such thing as a protest vote. I happen to agree, and I have in fact cast such a vote in the past – but won’t this year.
On the other hand, Reason has an op ed on why Republicans voting for Trump would be wasting their votes, although the author is really just arguing that Trump is not a conservative and that he’d be a disastrous president … but I believe he’s arguing conservatives should vote for Gary Johnson instead.
Texas, which has executed more prisoners since 1976 than 45 other states combined, is about to execute a convict who didn’t kill anybody. He was in the getaway car when his partner in the planned robbery killed the store employee.
So far, the Rio Olympics have not led to any of the disasters predicted for them. That doesn’t mean giving Brazil the Olympics was a good idea; the economic harm done to the country could be long-lasting, such as wasting $62 million on Olympic posters to hide a favela from public view.
The pseudonymous surgeon and scientist Orac weighs in on the latest Medscape survey on vaccine-refusing or hesitant patients, with some prescriptions for the best strategies in dealing with them. He also notes that the media (hi!) have become less tolerant of anti-vax bullshit over the last few years.
The DoJ report excoriating the Baltimore police department included a note where a prosecutor called a woman who reported a rape a “conniving little whore.” Much of the coverage has focused on the department’s problems with racial bias, but the BPD has an abysmal record at investigating rapes, too.
Vanity Fair has a longread on the Bill Cosby rape case(s), explaining how this one particular incident reached a courtroom and opened the gates for fifty-nine other victims to come forward.
A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, has gotten some positive attention on social media for two cases where she showed some human decency. The first case, of a female defendant who appeared to have been seriously mistreated by jailers, is about much more than just a judge showing compassion.
Australia has a large detention center for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru – a functionally insolvent island state that depends on the center and foreign aid for its economic survival – and a Guardian investigative report found widespread abuse of children in the camp.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, links, olympics, rape culture, twitter, vaccines

Stick to baseball, 9/19/20.

Stick to baseball, 8/27/16.

Stick to baseball, 8/13/16.

Tags

Archives