stick to baseball

→ May 4, 2024
→ By keith
→ 7 Comments

Stick to baseball, 5/4/24.

Two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, a breakdown of the Luis Arraez trade and scouting notes on Justin Crawford and other Phillies, Orioles, and Mets prospects. I’ve also got a draft scouting notebook going up on Sunday with notes on J.J. Wetherholt, Hagen Smith, Peyton Stovall, and Ryan Waldschmidt. And I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last Saturday, so I should do another one in a day or two, in theory.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and then for one segment of Unpacked at 2:30 pm. The shows re-air throughout the week, roughly twice a day, as far as I can tell. You can watch via the app or with certain subscriptions to Youtube, Fubo, Roku, etc.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Columbia Spectator, with the help of New York magazine, has a detailed look at the protests, the encampments, the police overreach, and more on campus, through hundreds of interviews with students and faculty across the religious and ideological divides.

In the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper writes of how colleges positioned themselves as activist havens when speaking to prospective students, only to find that those students believed them.

The LA Times has the story of a man who engineered the theft of millions of gallons of water from California’s limited resources, while enriching himself and his friends and lying on his income taxes.

ProPublica reports on the EPA’s decision to ignore its own scientists and approve a plastic fuel additive that is nearly guaranteed to cause cancer in anyone exposed to it regularly over a lifetime. Well, a shortened lifetime, I guess.

The Washington Post ran a long piece on the effects of sea level rise on the coastal U.S., much of it in states whose elected officials have denied climate change and fought efforts to mitigate it.

A research study by the Australian government’s Institute of Criminology examined how anti-COVID protests brought together numerous anti-government forces, including those beholden to conspiracy theories and extremist anti-authority sentiments (like so-called “sovereign citizens”).

Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at Hebrew University, writes about the assault on Gaza: “Yes, it is genocide.”

Sam Thorpe, a Jewish economist who works as a Senior Research Assistant for the Brookings Institute’s Tax Policy Center, wrote in a series of tweets that it is possible to be Jewish and oppose the actions of Israel in Gaza. He argues that it is imperative for believers to do so, as his faith teaches that all humans are made in the image of God.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, after which Haaretz called for his firing.

Of course, the American media are more caught up in covering campus protests, and not even getting the angle right, such as the Indiana State Police’s excessive use of force – including setting up a sniper on a nearby building! – against protesters at IU. This link has an interview with ISP Superintendent Doug Carter, who doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea of what freedom of speech means.

The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik wrote that college presidents who rush to call in the police haven’t learned a damn thing since the 1960s. Today is the anniversary of the police murdering four students at Kent State who were protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam, by the way.

Credit goes to the Philadelphia police, however, who declined Penn’s request that they come clear out student protesters unless the school could provide evidence of imminent danger.

CNN’s Dana Bash went on air and parroted a bunch of pro-Israel talking points while comparing pro-Palestinian protesters to Nazi forces.

Ken Klippenstein resigned from The Intercept and revealed some of how management there sought to spike stories critical of Jeff Bezos and other rich, powerful targets, all while apparently paying themselves more while laying off editors and journalists. I’ve linked to quite a bit of Ken’s work here and will probably sign up for his newsletter now that he’s going solo.

Andrew Huberman’s podcast is one of the most popular in America. It’s also rife with false information.

Florida has removed over 22,000 children from its version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) this year, defying a federal law designed to protect them. I never though the wolves would eat my face!

Meanwhile, Florida’s farmers are suffering from a lack of labor thanks to the state’s draconian law attacking businesses that used undocumented workers, as are construction businesses, restaurants, and hoteliers, all major industries in the state.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) shared a video of white University of Mississippi students making monkey noises and shouting racist chants at a Black protester, saying “Ole Miss taking care of business” (while using the racist-derived nickname for the school). Collins has previously shared posts from neo-Nazis and suggested murdering migrants, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Chicago won’t discipline nine city police officers who were (are?) members of the right-wing extremist Oath Keepers group, after the mayor and CPD superintendent had promised to do so.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina and West Virginia can’t deny gender-affirming medical coverage to transgender people. North Carolina sought to specifically deny it to state employees and their dependents, while West Virginia sought to do so for people enrolled in Medicaid.

Arizona’s Kari Lake, running as a Republican for the seat that Krysten Sinema is vacating, is touting State Sen. Sonny Borrelli’s endorsement of her, even though Borrelli – the Arizona Senate Majority Leader has a history of domestic violence allegations against him and said just this March that women should put an aspirin between their knees as a method of birth control.

A second Boeing whistleblower has died. Joshua Dean, who was 45, died of a MRSA infection this week; John Barnett, 62, died in March in an apparent suicide, although friends and family have raised doubts that he took his own life.

The Guardian looks at how many bands make little to no money, even taking losses, from touring. With record sales in the toilet and tours unprofitable, what career is there in making music if you’re not a superstar?

I thought Netflix’s Baby Reindeer was outstanding, and am pulling for the two stars to earn Emmy nominations for their work, especially Jessica Gunning (who plays Martha). NPR’s Glenn Weldon argued that the series bungled its depiction of queerness; I didn’t interpret it this way, but I’m also straight and perhaps not the right person to answer this question.

Two new studies on the economics of sports and sport stadium financing: One that showed that policing becomes more aggressive where there are public subsidies of sports facilities, apparently to help make up for budget shortfalls; the other showed that sporting events lead to an increase in crime, and thus to an increase in spending on policing, two ways in which public subsidies for sports stadiums negatively impact the local economy.

ProPublica reports on a new effort at the IRS to identify illegal tax avoidance schemes by sports-team owners. It would appear these owners are happy to take taxpayer money, but not to pay back in the legally required portion of their profits.

Paris claimed it was going to use the Olympics as a spur to revitalize one of its poorest districts, Seine-Saint-Denis; instead it appears they’ve evicted impoverished residents and decreased the region’s air quality. The district was the site of the 2005 riots against the police that inspired the Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables.

Antiabortion zealots are trying to force the Amarillo, Texas, city council to pass a ridiculous, unenforceable ordinance forbidding the use of city streets for the purpose of leaving the state for an abortion. Find someone who loves you as much as these people love depriving other people of their rights.

Utah passed a transphobic bathroom law, and in the first week in which the site to report alleged violations was live, they received almost 4000 bogus reports and left a bunch of information unprotected for anyone to access.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, chicago, climate change, colleges, environment, florida, gaza, links, longreads, misinformation, mississippi, Music, olympics, paris, police, stick to baseball, taxes, texas, trans rights, utah, water crisis

→ April 28, 2024
→ By keith
→ 19 Comments

Stick to baseball, 4/28/24.

Nothing this week from me at the Athletic, but I need to write up a couple of minor-league games I’ve been to so there will be something in the next few days.

I reviewed the board game Ancient Knowledge over at Paste; it’s pretty clever, but I found the title and theme didn’t connect to the game play at all.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET on Diamond Dreams and on their new collectibles show at 2:30 for one segment, all to talk about prospects. You can watch via the app or if you subscribe to Roku, Youtube, or some other sites; I have figured out that the shows re-air all week, but you can’t just watch an archived version.

I also sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday, talking about … death. Wait, that’s only the cat.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica explores how a lack of funding and organization at a VA clinic in Chico, California, led to two preventable shootings, including one where a veteran shot and killed her own mother. If you want to support our troops, instead of just standing and clapping at a ballgame, vote for candidates who’ll fully fund the VA and its indispensable resources for our veterans.

Climate change is driving us towards a “coffee apocalypse” as the growing regions for the plant shrink and the plant itself tries to migrate to higher altitudes.

A tech bro wants to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco, in his own words. Balaji Srinivasan has worked at Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and the genetic testing firm Counsyl (which he co-founded). He sounds insane.

A prosecutor in Texas has asked the courts to clear the conviction of a woman he helped put on death row. Melissa Lucio’s two-year-old daughter died after falling down a flight of stairs, but she was convicted of capital murder and spent 16 years behind bars.

The LA Times’s Michael Hiltzik excoriates the cash grab in Nevada, where state legislators are trying to hand hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to the Oakland A’s’ billionaire owner in a climate of increasing voter resistance.

Another relief agency has accused Israel of targeting its vehicles: the International Development and Relief Foundation says that the IDF deliberately bombed its trucks delivering water to Gazans.

Columbia barred a student protester who said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” from its campus. Khymani James was active in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. This seems like a pretty simple case of someone crossing the line and the university responding appropriately – in contrast to the preponderance of stories about protests on campuses across the country.

A Jewish student at Columbia wrote on Mehdi Hasan’s new site Zeteo that the news coverage of antisemitism on campuses is inaccurate and distracts from actual threats, like outside groups that dox Jewish students.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch wrote in praise of the student journalists covering the protests and the university responses at Columbia and beyond.
Will the “cancel culture” pundits say anything about USC’s decision to cancel its Muslim-American valedictorian’s commencement speech? Don’t hold your breath, writes Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian.

Transphobes have latched on to the dubious “Cass Report” as further evidence of … I don’t even know, it’s all just bigotry and trans panic, but the interesting bit here is that Dr. Hilary Cass herself is already distancing herself from the report’s conclusions, saying HRT and puberty blockers should be made available to trans teens. The same newsletter reports on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying that he wants to “end” trans and gender non-conforming teachers in the state.

Tennessee Republicans passed a law arming teachers over loud opposition from parents and students. How long until the first “friendly fire” death in a Tennessee school?

However, the state GOP’s attempt to ram through a school voucher bill and strip funding from the state’s already poor public schools failed.

The risk of cardiomyopathy to young men from mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 actually decreases after the third dose, although the risk is always higher from even a single infection with the virus.

Jay Bhattacharya has been a major purveyor of disinformation around COVID, from masks to vaccines to other public-health efforts, and he’s built a huge following. Now he’s about to get a big cash windfall from a large right-wing foundation. The grift is profitable.

A new firm that includes disinformation reporter Ben Collins as as CEO bought the Onion from the turkey vultures at G/O Media.

Iowa universities are closing their DEI programs after Republicans there passed a bill banning such endeavors.

Measles cases are rising in the U.S. and it’s a big, underreported problem.

The PEN literary awards’ annual ceremony has been cancelled after a large number of authors requested that their works be removed from consideration.

2023 ended with a surge in book bans, according to PEN America, but the children’s publishing world has responded by flooding the market with new titles representing diverse perspectives.

The Atlantic has an appreciation of John Sterling (tied, a bit tenuously, to AI). My confession: Even when I was an ardent Yankees fan, I didn’t care for Sterling’s style, which always seemed to put himself front and center over the game he was calling.

The Guardian interviewed Lauren Mayberry on going solo and the misogyny she experienced online.

Also in the Guardian, a profile of two professors teaching the Gullah language, one of the only creole tongues based on English, including Harvard’s Sunn m’Cheaux (who is a great follow on Threads). Gullah is still spoken on some of the islands off the coast of South Carolina, and you may be familiar with it if you’ve read Pat Conroy’s book The Water is Wide.

There’s finally been some movement to pass legislation banning deepfake nudes, with over 20 states doing so or at least considering bills to do so, and the impetus is teenage girls who often find themselves the targets.

A former model decided to listen to some online wellness influencers rather than her doctors, choosing an all-juice diet to try to treat her stage 3 cancer. She nearly died before doctors convinced her to go the medicine route – but only after she kept refusing for several days while in intensive care.

Time flowed five times slower right after the Big Bang. Imagine all the extra board games you could have played!

Some light reading: Here’s the complete genome for SARS-CoV-2.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, book banning, coffee, death penalty, gaza, iowa, Languages, links, longreads, nevada, physics, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, trans rights, vaccines

→ April 20, 2024
→ By keith
→ 10 Comments

Stick to baseball, 4/20/24.

I updated my ranking of the top prospects for this year’s draft, going to 50 names but not without some difficulty; and posted a scouting notebook covering a half-dozen prospects in the class I saw over the previous ten days. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

As I mentioned in my chat the other day, the Athletic spiked my podcast and cut the daily baseball show to three a week, so I’m no longer doing any regular podcasts for them. I did make a guest appearance on the Windup on Friday, talking draft and prospect stuff.

I am now appearing weekly on the Stadium streaming channel, on the 2 pm show Diamond Dreams, which is entirely about prospects, with occasional appearances on their roundup show The Rally. You can get the app here. Right now, it doesn’t appear that shows are archived, but I’m looking into it.

Once this is done, I’m hoping to get another edition of my free email newsletter out this weekend, before I head back to Chicago for the next show.

Taylor Swift is on Threads now – but I was there first. I’m on Bluesky, too. I ended up re-verified on Twitter, which makes me eligible for a cut of ad revenues around my tweets; I’m going to donate all of it to the Trevor Project. My first and only payout so far was $16.64, which I’ve already donated.

And now, pop an edible (if it’s legal where you are) and enjoy the links…

Before I get to the longreads, this seems like the story of the week: The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal in McKesson v. Doe, which held that authorities may hold a protest’s organizer(s) liable if any attendee of the protest commits an illegal act. The decision effectively ends the right to assembly in at least three states. This should have been front-page news across the country.
An editorial in Haaretz argues that Netanyahu’s policies, from his brutal assault on Gaza and assassination of Iranian leaders, are endangering the long-term survival of Israel.
The billionaire co-founder of Cloudflare wanted to build an 11,000 square foot mansion in Park City over the opposition of residents. First he tried to slip a bill through the state legislature to allow the construction, but it failed. When the local paper ran stories critical of him, he bought it and installed his buddy as editor in chief.
Brandy Zarozny of NBC News reported from the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference, where speakers urged attendees to seize voting machines and investigate absurd conspiracy theories.
The New York Times reports on how Senate candidate Dave McCormick, a Republican running against Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey (D), appears to have fabricated details of his upbringing to downplay his privileged upbringing.
PressWatchers interviewed Chris Quinn of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, who has made waves for his willingness to cover former President Trump accurately and for calling out the blatant bothsidesism happening across so-called mainstream media.
Candace Buckner of the Washington Post had a measured take on the outrage over Gregg Doyel’s odd treatment of Caitlin Clark. I’m with her: the story isn’t a non-troversy, but the level of vitriol here is out of proportion to the infraction.
Former federal prosecutor Terra Morehead will be disbarred in the wake of revelations that she helped a Kansas City cop frame an innocent man who then served 23 years in prison. Morehead was also a Wyandotte County prosecutor, and has been implicated in numerous incidents of prosecutorial misconduct.
USC announced that their valedictorian will not be allowed to speak at commencement this year as the university caved to anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiment, including threats against the ceremony and school.
A St. Louis cop who was working undercover among protesters in the city in 2017 was badly beaten by his own colleagues; a judge just awarded him $23.5 million in compensation, which, ultimately, will be covered by taxpayers.
More fallout from Uri Berliner’s unverified column attacking NPR: The network suspended him, after which he resigned, presumably to start a Substack where he’ll rail against DEI and vaccines; while NPR’s Steve Inskeep wrote a detailed takedown of Berliner’s column, pointing out just how little fire there was behind the smoke. I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: Berliner’s argument that NPR didn’t give enough credence to the failed lab-leak hypothesis was a tell. Slate’s Alicia Montgomery, a former NPR staffer herself, has a much stronger critique of the problems at the network.
Louisiana Republicans voted to end mandatory lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits, and reduce worker’s compensation.
Ocean acidification and climate change are causing a fourth mass bleaching episode in the world’s coral reefs. Coral reefs are essential to the marine ecosystem – including a lot of the fish we eat.
There are 806 billionaires in the United States. Their wealth exceeds that of the lower half of Americans’ total wealth combined, by a lot.
The great Phil Plait wrote about the declining odds that there is a ninth planet in our solar system, given how much of space we’ve checked without finding it. This is the subject of the fantastic deduction board game The Search for Planet X.
The Sundance Film Festival’s organizers are playing the sports stadium handout game, courting bids from cities to host the influential festival starting in 2027.
Kari Lake (R ), running for Senate in Arizona after voters there rejected her in the race for Governor in 2022, called on sheriffs to enforce the state’s 1864 abortion ban. That same territorial law also banned interracial marriage and set the age of consent for girls at 10.
Tennessee Rep. Scott Cepicky (R) confessed in a leaked conversation that his aim with a school-voucher bill is to “throw the whole freaking (public education) system in the trash.”
Dr. Allison Neitzel has become a target of anti-vaxx trolls for her pro-vaccine and pro-science activism; she responded on her newsletter with the wonderfully titled missive “I Will Continue to Piss Off Men.” If you want to read more about what amounts to harassment campaign against her from the soi-disant “journalist” Paul Thacker, you can go here. Thacker seems to focus on women in the pro-science movement, and I think it’s fair to ask if he’s really just a misogynist.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, arizona, astronomy, climate change, colleges, education, gaza, kansas, links, longreads, louisiana, misinformation, missouri, pennsylvania, police, stick to baseball, tennessee, utah, vaccines

→ April 13, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/13/24.

I’ve got some new content coming up this week, with a new draft ranking due to run on Thursday and a draft scouting blog probably running Monday or Tuesday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the collectible card game Star Wars: Unlimited – Spark of Rebellion, which I enjoyed even though I’m not generally a fan of deckbuilders.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter, detailing a rather ridiculous dinner I had at the bar at The Publican, an acclaimed Chicago restaurant where, to say the least, one does not belch as loudly as one can.

I’m going to be on a new TV show, Diamond Dreams starting on Monday, April 15^th, on the streaming channel Stadium. The show is a half-hour look at prospects around the minors and for the draft, and will be followed by a show on collectibles where I’ll also offer some comments on the prospects they’re discussing. You can watch via the app on pretty much any platform.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: How Elon Musk convinced MAGA partisans that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was a treatment for COVID-19 – which it absolutely is not – and set off four years of online misinformation around the pandemic.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in the New York Times about how “colorblindness” has been hijacked by the white-grievance movement, in direct opposition to the original intent of the term, which meant ending racial discrimination against people of color.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about how the Key Bridge disaster demonstrated the importance of immigrants to our society.

A hardcore conservative group is making it harder for Idaho school districts to renovate or upgrade their facilities.

There’s a big scam going around that has tricked a number of content creators into ceding control of their Facebook pages. It starts with what seems to be an invitation to appear on a big podcast, which of course is very appealing to most people trying to build their online audience.

Over half a million Arizonans signed a petition to put codifying abortion rights on the ballot this November. It’s part of a Democratic strategy to drive voters to the polls in purple states – and also, by the way, a basic human right. This comes on the heels of the GOP-packed Arizona Supreme Court reinstating the state’s 1864 abortion ban – yes, a law that predates Arizona’s statehood by almost 50 years.

The Guardian revealed that Boise State Professor Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, an extreme right-wing site that attacked LGBTQ+ rights and accused Republicans of being insufficiently conservative. Yenor now also works for the Claremont Institute and just a month ago wrote a piece for the Federalist that said DEI had to die for Western civilization to survive.

ProPublica explains how authorities are trying to crack down on gift-card crime rings, where consumers often end up buying gift cards that appear new but that have already been drained of value by crooks.

Maria Bustillos writes in The Nation about the rise of journalist-owned news outlets amidst the ongoing bloodletting in the industry.

David Chang’s Momofuku company is trying to trademark the generic term “chili crunch” to describe a staple Chinese condiment best known as chili crisp – and they’re suing smaller firms to try to have their way.

Why is Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R – and not the former pitcher) doing the bidding of Elon Musk by suing Media Matters for reporting on Twitter’s failure to police hate on their site?

Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, removed Judd Blevins (R) from the city council after his ties to white supremacist groups were exposed.

The BBC has a first-person narrative from a woman who found deepfakes of herself online – and eventually learned it was a close friend of hers who made them.

This Twitter thread has some solid details on the IDF’s attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza that killed seven WCK volunteers. I don’t know why those seven deaths should lead to more calls for a cease-fire when the 30,000+ Palestinian deaths before that haven’t … of course I do, let’s not kid ourselves.

Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reposted a piece from the Kansas Reflector critical of Meta’s ad policy around climate change, and moments later, Meta removed all links to both sites from Facebook and Threads. After an outcry, Meta reversed the decision and blamed a “security error,” but, come on.

Landfills emit far more methane than previously believed, more bad news for the planet as methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Before voters wisely rejected a stadium tax proposal to replace the two perfectly fine sports facilities outside of Kansas City, the KC Studio had a sensible op ed on what a waste tearing down Kaufmann Stadium would be.

Former SCOTUS justice Steven Breyer wants everyone to get along, like his former colleagues on the high court, even though some of those colleagues are busy destroying Americans’ basic civil rights, writes Elie Mystal of The Nation.

The BBC reports on exploitation of workers in Brazil who harvest the common ingredient carnauba wax, bordering on slavery.

Cleveland Plain-Dealer editor Chris Quinn explains why the paper treats Donald Trump differently from other politicians & candidates. Hint: It’s because he lies.

The Atlantic’s David Graham describes the “Trump two-step:” say something outrageous, claim that’s not really what he said or meant, and then quietly embrace the original statement.

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent details just how entrenched election denial, January 6^th denialism, and other insane conspiracy theories are within the Republican party right now.

Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian that Justice Sonja Sotomayor needs to retire from the Supreme Court so President Biden can appoint a replacement, avoiding the possibility that Trump would get to appoint a fourth justice and give the court a 7-2 majority that would likely last decades. I’m not sure if I agree, but he at least offers a solid argument.

Fox News and several right-wing podcasters, including beanie-wearing Tim Pool, are now facing a lawsuit from a man they all falsely identified as a mass shooter. The man’s lawyer previously represented two Sandy Hook parents in their lawsuit against Alex Jones for his false claims that that mass shooting didn’t happen. Fuck ’em up, Socrates.

The Tampa Bay Times published a rare editorial pointing out that public subsidies for sports stadiums don’t work out for taxpayers, as the Rays try once again to soak Floridians for a new facility.

Here’s a great summary and index of economic research showing how consistently these sports stadium deals fail to live up to economic promises. If you’re writing about the topic, or know a journalist who is, this is invaluable, because the pro-stadium forces will always trot out fabricated numbers from consultants who give them what they want.

The PEN America awards are in a bit of a shambles after a number of high-profile authors withdrew their works from consideration or declined prizes in protest of the organization’s perceived bias towards Israel. The authors include Lorrie Moore, who just won the National Book Critics Circle’s Fiction award for I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.

A senior editor at NPR wrote a bad-faith, error-filled critique of the public radio outlet on Bari Weiss’s blog. NPR responded, defending its hiring practices and its philosophy. You can find many takedowns of Uri Berliner’s original piece, but one fact that got me was that he accused NPR of downplaying or ignoring the lab-leak theory behind COVID-19’s origins, even when the evidence in favor of a zoonotic spillover kept mounting.

WFLA has the story of a young boy with autism who can no longer receive health services because Florida kicked him off Medicaid. We need more stories like this, showing everyday people getting badly hurt by state policies that cut funding for essential services like health care, education, and even school lunches for underprivileged people.

A former youth minister at a Baptist church in Bixby, Oklahoma, has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor as well as possession and distribution of child pornography. No drag queens were involved.

Chicago police killed Dexter Reed during a traffic stop where he fired first, injuring one officer, after which the cops fired 96 rounds in less than a minute. The Sun-Times reports that the five officers involved in the incident have been investigated a total of 41 times since 2019, and that the area where they stopped Reed has a disproportionate number of traffic stops. The cops have said they pulled Reed over because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

The brightest cosmic explosion scientists have ever seen has now led to new questions about how some of the universe’s heaviest metals are formed. The supernova occurred about 2.4 billion years ago in a galaxy far, far away, producing a huge burst of gamma rays but none of the elements like gold or platinum that scientists expected to find.

Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride is running to be our at-large Representative, vying to become the first trans person elected to Congress. She’s one of at least three Democrats hoping to win the primary, which is tantamount to winning the election in our very blue state. Full disclosure: I’ve met Sen. McBride and we often see each other at our local Brew Haha coffee shop.

Is social media really driving a surge in mental illness among teenagers, as Jonathan Haidt claims in his new book? The evidence is mixed at best, according to this review in Nature.

Eric Hovde, who is running for Senate in Wisconsin as a Republican, is now facing backlash over his comments from a previous campaign where he called for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, attacked single mothers, said alcohol should never have been legalized, questioned whether farmers work hard, and lots of other great stuff.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, chicago, climate change, delaware, Economics, election denial, florida, gaza, idaho, links, longreads, Media, mental illness, misinformation, missouri, physics, police, scotus, social media, stick to baseball, wisconsin

→ March 30, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/30/24.

I had two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week, my annual season predictions post and scouting notes on the Nationals’ Futures Game at Nats Park. I wanted to do a chat, but about 20 minutes before I was going to do it, our Internet went down for four hours. Good times.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Wyrmspan, the new standalone sequel/spinoff to Wingspan, adding a few rules changes to make it more complex while also replacing the birds with dragons.

I spoke to my friend Tim Grierson this week for RogerEbert.com about baseball movies, good, bad, and horrendous. I also appeared on WGN-TV to talk Cubs/White Sox.

I did indeed send around another issue of my free email newsletter, which you should definitely subscribe to if you enjoy my ramblings.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This Atlantic piece on the campus climate shift around the Israel-Hamas war by Stanford student Theo Baker, who wrote the story on former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s role in faked research that led to his resignation, is one of the best things I’ve read this year. Baker takes a stance while maintaining balance throughout the piece, and this quote sums up the situation in Palo Alto and many other campuses that are caught between protecting freedom of expression and ensuring a safe environment for students: “The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong.”
New York looks at the toxic personal history of pop-neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who seems to have a history of psychological manipulation of the women in his life.
New York also has a story from John Herrman on how the pornbots all over Twitter actually try to scam users.
The American Prospect’s Maureen Tkacik looks at how Boeing drove its best engineers out of the company, leading to the small problem of its planes falling apart or crashing. They had the help of the federal government, which has increasingly outsourced regulation of private companies to the companies themselves. It’s wrapped within the story of longtime Boeing employee turned whistleblower John Barnett, who was found dead recently of a gunshot wound to the temple – between days of his deposition in his case against Boeing.
Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb has been investigating whether Leonard Leo’s nonprofits violated their tax status by paying his for-profit companies for various services. Republicans aligned with Leo, who helped Trump pack the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary with extreme conservatives, are now attacking Schwalb for doing his job.
The same is happening to people trying to combat online disinformation around vaccines and COVID-19, as this Atlantic story on the mostly futile efforts to get state medical boards to sanction doctors who spread false information explains.
Billionaire Republican donor Jeff Yass now owns a sizable share of Donald Trump’s Truth Social after it merged with a shell company in which Yass’s investment firm owned about 2%.
Remember how a number of kids who caught COVID-19 pre-vaccines ended up near death with MIS-C, a major inflammatory reaction to the virus? Vaccination significantly reduces the risk that kids will get it.
Long COVID is becoming less common thanks to the vaccines, but many people are still dealing with its long-term effects.
Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, raided the wrong house in April 2021, confusing one Arab family with another in the same neighborhood. Now the cops are refusing to share bodycam footage in the family’s lawsuit, claiming it might “damage officers’ reputations.” Duh.
Author Vernor Vinge, who won three Hugo Awards for Best Novel, died this week at 79. I didn’t love his writing, but he ranks among the best sci-fi authors for his ability to foresee the growth of technology and its rising role in the social order.
Elon Musk tried to use the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting fairly on Twitter’s failure to police antisemitic content, and he lost the case in embarrassing fashion. This wasn’t the only bad news for Twitter, as the site has seen its user base collapse in the last six months.
New research found increasing numbers of Americans leaving their religions and citing anti-LGBTQ+ policies and doctrines as well as the endless cycle of sex-abuse scandals in churches as the main reasons.
A study published in JAMA says that Texas leads the U.S. in rapes and rape-related pregnancies in the wake of the overturning of Roe and that state’s mad rush to ~~control women~~ enact an abortion ban.
The wife of the judge in the mifepristone case now before the Supreme Court was herself paid by the anti-abortion group suing to subvert the FDA’s authority.
New Hampshire Public Radio spoke to a 15-year-old trans girl in New Hampshire whose ability to play soccer is now under attack, as House Republicans in the Live Free or Die state just passed a bill to ban trans girls from playing middle or high school sports. These bills & laws “solve” a problem that doesn’t exist while ruining the lives of a very small number of vulnerable children.
The Republican assault on higher education continues in red states across the south and west: Tennessee Republicans wiped out the HBCU Tennessee State’s board so the Governor can stock it with his appointees, over the objections of Black legislators. South Carolina Republicans passed a ban on DEI initiatives at public universities. The University of Kentucky’s President is moving to dissolve the faculty senate and move its policy-making power to the Board of Trustees. Meanwhile, the NAACP’s CEO Derrick Johnson is urging Black student-athletes to reconsider their college choices in the face of these attacks on higher ed, explicitly targeting Florida schools in a statement earlier this month.
Tabletopper Games has a crowdfunding effort for a new semi-cooperative game, Under Our Sun, with an interesting world-building theme.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, colleges, coronavirus, kentucky, links, longreads, misinformation, north carolina, police, science fiction, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, the swamp, trans rights, vaccines

→ March 23, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

At the Athletic, I wrote about a bunch of prospects I saw in the Cactus League, including two Breakout games; plus a list of six breakout candidates for 2024; as well as a Q&A with our fantasy expert Nando di Fino.

At Vulture, I wrote about the surge in cooperative tabletop games that started with Pandemic and then picked up during the … pandemic, really, along with a list of 14 of the best.

Now that this post is up I’ll begin the next edition of my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Scientific American looks at the extensive harm done to LGBTQ+ kids and their parents by the anti-LGBTQ+ bills pushed by religious zealots and right-wingers across the country. One key quote: “Every major medical association in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the Endocrine Society, endorses gender-affirming care for trans kids.” The fear and ignorance of a small number of bigots should never outweigh the unanimous view of the medical community.
34^th Street, the arts & culture magazine of the University of Pennsylvania’s Daily Pennsylvanian, offers an incisive look at how big-money donors are trying to stifle free expression on campuses across the country – including at their own school. This goes beyond the attacks on the school’s President, who resigned in December, to demands for mass disciplining of students who participate in certain assemblies or protests, for the right to approve faculty hires, and more. Don Moynihan wrote about a similar topic, including Christopher Rufo’s bad-faith “plagiarism” claims against researchers into race-related topics, in his newsletter.
ProPublica found an “expert” who has testified in Colorado adoption cases for over forty years, typically arguing that foster parents should be allowed to keep the children in their care rather than the biological parents, whose self-described “protocol” is based on no evidence or research at all. It’s a way of conning the system that, according to the authors, is spreading across the country – and taking babies and young children away from their (financially) poor parents.
Abortion bans affect more than just the women who might want or need abortions: Standard pregnancy care in Louisiana has been severely curtailed by the state’s abortion ban.
A scientist and a medical doctor wrote in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice that regulatory bodies should take action against medical professionals who spread disinformation about vaccines.
NPR looks at the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary, indigenous student in Owasso, Oklahoma, who died after bullies attacked them at their school, and whose death has been ruled a suicide on what appears to be insufficient evidence. The article here at least entertains the possibility that the Owasso School District and local authorities are trying to cover up a case of manslaughter, perhaps because the victim was queer.
A Bronx high school English teacher emailed author Tommy Orange (There There, The Wandering Stars) with an unsolicited request to come speak to his class about his work. Orange rearranged his schedule to make it happen.
Killing Joke founder/singer Jaz Coleman spoke to The Guardian in his first interview since the death this winter of guitarist Geordie Walker.
The Republican Party is making immigration a major issue in this year’s elections, tying it to crime rates. However, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.
North Carolina’s Republican candidate for the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction post, which offers all public education in the state, has called for the execution of President Biden and former President Obama, along with a host of other Democrats and public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Michelle Morrow also participated in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6^th and has the endorsement of Moms for Liberty. She is opposed by Democrat Mo Green.
Haiti has now fallen into anarchy after the Prime Minister resigned and armed gangs have taken control of large parts of the country. This was the inevitable consequence of two hundred-plus years of exploitation and corruption, according to the Guardian’s Kenan Malik. One enormous factor is the billions of dollars Haiti had to pay France as “reparations” for lost property (primarily slaves) after the Caribbean nation declared its independence in 1804; another is incessant meddling by the U.S. government, including at least one actual invasion, as well as our support of anti-communist dictators who drained the country’s limited coffers without building an actual state apparatus.
Also in Scientific American: There is no evidence supporting the use of the death penalty. It is not a deterrent; it is state-sponsored vengeance. The United States is the only NATO member that still has it.
The Arizona legislature held yet another hearing where they allowed witnesses to expound on various bogus COVID-19 hoaxes and myths.
A Lancaster, PA, library had to cancel a drag-queen story hour after employees found a suspicious package and the library received bomb threats.
Floyd County (VA) Public Schools cancelled a community reading of the YA novel Wishtree after complaints that its protagonist was nonbinary and uses any pronouns. The protagonist is a tree. One of the complaining parents doesn’t even send her kids to the public schools – they go to a fundamentalist Christian school nearby.
Alabama consistently ranks near the bottom of all U.S. states in the quality of its education, so rather than address that issue, the Governor just signed a bill banning all DEI efforts in public education in the state. We’ve already seen some migration from states that have passed anti-LGBTQ+ laws (see above); will we see something similar for non-white families, and for people who work in academia?
A prisoner in Illinois who was teaching a peer-led civics class about voting rights that the state requires inmates to take before they can leave prison was fired for teaching that literacy tests were a racist way to suppress the Black vote. Anthony McNeal, who is Black, has sued the counselor who fired him and the prison warden, claiming his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated. Also, he spoke the truth.
Missouri’s Attorney General beclowned himself by claiming that DEI programs were somehow responsible for a fight between two students that left one, a white girl, critically injured, while her Black 15-year-old assailant is facing assault charges.
I didn’t get to longtime Phoenix restaurant El Portal on my recent trip there, but President Biden went there on Tuesday to kick off a new part of his Presidential campaign aimed at Latino voters. I’m more interested in whether the food’s any good.
Front Office Sports publishes a lot of content, but their editorial standards can be … well, they ran an article claiming that the San Franciso 49ers’ publicly-funded stadium has been a good investment for taxpayers, when the study they cite actually doesn’t show that at all. If you’re a journalist, or trying to be one, and you don’t understand a research paper, find someone who can help you do so.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: academia, alabama, book banning, colorado, death penalty, haiti, illinois, lgbt rights, links, longreads, louisiana, misinformation, missouri, north carolina, oklahoma, pennsylvania, phoenix, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ March 16, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/16/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I wrote up the players I saw in the Reds-Rangers Breakout Game plus a few other notes from Arizona, broke down the Dylan Cease trade, and posted a ranking of the top 20 prospects for likely impact in 2024, and offered a draft scouting notebook from the Wake Forest-Duke series. I’ll have some more Breakout game reports after the weekend, but unfortunately the two games I hoped to hit on Friday were both washed out by rain.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Judd Blevins is a white nationalist. The town of Enid, Oklahoma, voted him on to their city council, but there’s a fight brewing now to remove him. Blevins refuses to address his history with Identity Evropa, a major white nationalist organization, instead hiding behind “God” and religion.

One of the leaders at Charis Bible College ran a cult at Messiah College in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, an unreported story until some of the survivors saw that the cult leader, Andrew Wertz, is now a Senior VP at that school and Andrew Wommack Ministries.

Awful Announcing broke down all of the utterly insane things Aaron Rodgers espoused in that recent podcast appearance where he claimed that the Sandy Hook mass shooting didn’t happen (which, to be absolutely clear, is false). He’s just gone at this point.

Michelle Morrow, the Republican candidate for Superintendent of Schools in North Carolina, has called for the execution of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and publicly tweeted QAnon slogans. This is on top of the North Carolina GOP nominating a gay-bashing Holocaust denier as candidate for Governor.

A new study found that participants exposed to many false or misleading headlines were then more likely to believe ambiguous or less implausible ones.
The federal case against former Deadspin writer Tim Burke, who stands accused of exercising his First Amendment rights by accessing unprotected video streams online, appeared in court again last week. The charges claim he “hacked” into those video streams, which Burke says were not protected by passwords or other encryption. It’s an extremely important case for everyone in the press, as this appears to be a direct assault on our freedom to do our jobs under 1A. You can donate to support his legal fund here.

Tim Grierson wrote how the Oscars were just mid despite a great movie year, although I enjoyed the show more than he did.

TIME‘s Stephanie Zacharek looks at the post-Oscars storm brewing in Hollywood, where risk-taking remains rare and studios seem to be as conservative as ever.

Oregon moved to recriminalize possession of hard drugs, notably fentanyl and heroin, three years after decriminalizing it. Note that several quotes here are from Republican representatives talking about fentanyl (a popular GOP talking point) and Portland (which they do not represent).

A school board member in Butler, Pennsylvania, who is also the founder of the faith-based Grace Youth & Family Foundation is facing new charges for an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a teenager in his outreach program and for continuing to contact the victim while he’s been on probation. No drag queens were involved in this story.

This year’s FAFSA roll-out and the new rules that led to the changes in the federal student-aid forms have all been a huge disaster that may force some schools to delay enrollment deadlines.

Allowing kids to get the measles, the mumps, or rubella just to satisfy some lunatic’s political goals is needlessly cruel, but the cruelty is the point, isn’t it?

Ashwin Ramaswami is running for state senator in Georgia against an election denier, Shawn Still, who served as a fraudulent elector for disgraced ex-President Trump in 2021. Ramaswami is a 24-year-old Stanford alum who, if elected, would become the first Indian-American to serve in Georgia’s senate.

Medici is one of Reiner Knizia’s most acclaimed games, part of his so-called Auction Trilogy with Ra and Modern Art, but it’s been out of print for several years now. Steamforged announced they’re taking pre-orders for a new edition coming out this year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, drugs, first amendment, florida, georgia, links, longreads, misinformation, north carolina, oklahoma, oregon, oscars, pennsylvania, stick to baseball, vaccines, white nationalism

→ March 9, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 03/09/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I published a ranking of the top 30 prospects for this year’s MLB Draft, after which my #1 guy, Charlie Condon, hit two more homers for Georgia. I also posted a draft scouting notebook, covering Braden Montgomery, Brody Brecht, Anthony Silva, and P.J. Morlando. And I held a Klawchat to take your draft questions.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the cooperative game Stranger Things: Upside Down, a way better tie-in title than the Stranger Things game published in 2022. It’s by Rob Daviau, the co-founder of Restoration Games and inventor of the legacy game concept.

I’m working on getting back to weekly editions of my free email newsletter. This last one was about my trip to Texas and the way Republican candidates there are weaponizing hate against one of the most vulnerable minorities in the U.S. to try to earn a few more votes. Please clap.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Why is Primary Children’s Care Hospital in Utah performing unnecessary surgeries on children? No, not that kind, but an actual problem, as they’re taking needless risks to repair cleft palates.
Road and Track posted and then deleted this longread on Formula 1 and the massive amounts of cash running through it, reportedly because F1 powers-that-be objected to it.
NPR looks at the return of crossover thrash band Power Trip three years after the death (by fentanyl overdose) of their lead singer Riley Gale. I like their music but didn’t care for Gale’s vocal style. The piece does a wonderful job of explaining his legacy and appeal to fans, and the challenges for a band trying to continue without their voice and their leader.
Israeli “protesters” blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stood by and watched. This would not appear to have anything to do with fighting terrorists but it is a good way to ensure more civilians die.
The U.S. Embassy in Israel sent a cable on Monday warning of “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” if Israel invades Rafah. Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept received a copy of the cable; he and his colleagues have been among the best outlets at covering Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, U.S. policy towards Israel, and AIPAC’s influence on the latter.
The BBC looks at how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., became a soi-disant “truth-teller” who spreads lies and conspiracy theories around vaccines.
Have you read the Chicago Chronicle or the New York News Daily? They’re new fake-news sites backed by the Kremlin to spread disinformation and try to influence our elections.
The executive director of Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs was assaulted by a traffic cop who then threatened to tase her. Celena Morrison, a Black trans woman, was pulled over for allegedly tailgating another car, after which her husband, Darius McLean, pulled his own car over to assist. Morrison began filming the encounter with McLean already on the ground, after which the cop slaps him and then goes after her.
A Christian pastor in South Florida was arrested for getting a 15-year-old girl drunk and sexually battering her at his church. No drag queens or trans people were involved.
The owners of a Christian boarding school for boys in Missouri are now facing kidnapping charges for holding students there (including girls when the school was coed) against their will. Other former students have alleged they were abused, raped, or forced into physical labor. Again, no drag queens or trans people are involved.
Prosecutors in North Dakota recovered 2000 emails from the state’s former Attorney General, since deceased, many of which relate to the case against former state representative Ray Holmberg (R) for allegedly traveling to Europe with the intent of paying for sex with a minor and for receiving child pornography.
New York City is the new home of endangered languages, with hundreds of them spoken throughout and just outside the metropolis. Preserving them isn’t just a curiosity, but a way to maintain hundreds of years of culture and art for populations from around the world.
Beaufort, South Carolina, removed 97 books from school shelves after challenges from just two people … but they’re returning 92 of them to circulation. What a colossal waste of time and public resources. If your book challenge fails, you should have to pay the equivalent of legal fees.
Utah approved $2 billion in public funding for MLB and NHL facilities, without teams to play in them. If the state has that much money, they should just lower their tax rates!
Scott Simon of NPR wrote an op ed about the need to stop giving public funds to sports team owners. Let them build their own factories.
From January: Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of major Kenyan cities to march against violence against women in the East African nation, in the wake of multiple murders of women and commentary that blamed the victims for their own deaths. The AP has an update from Friday, noting that at least 60 women have been killed in Kenya so far this year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book banning, florida, gaza, kenya, Languages, links, longreads, misinformation, north dakota, philadelphia, stick to baseball, thrash, utah, vaccines

→ March 2, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/24.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have two draft-related pieces coming up next week.

At Paste, I reviewed Dragonkeepers, a new family-level game that I found really disappointing, with the wrong mixture of complexity and randomness.

I’ll have a new newsletter out in the next day or two, but you can sign up here – it’s free and always includes links to everything I write.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Color me shocked, but self-help ‘guru’ Jay Shetty has fabricated or embellished much of his background, according to this investigative piece by The Guardian.
Slate’s Chris Molanphy breaks down what the country chart success of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” does and does not mean in actual impact on radio and with country listeners.
Will Leitch wrote about the culture-war takeover of the murder of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia student who was killed on the same running trail Will and his wife often take in Athens. Because her alleged killer entered the U.S. illegally, the case is now part of the yelling about the so-called “crisis” at the U.S-Mexico border – even though immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born people.
Florida’s measles outbreak is due to the state’s active campaigning against childhood vaccinations, so, of course, Fox News is blaming it on migrants.
The state of Indiana has blocked funding to the Kinsey Institute, the world’s top sex-research center, as part of that state’s war on LGBTQ+ rights.
Texas executed Ivan Cantu even though the foreman of the jury that convicted him wrote that he believed the sentence was unjust, as the prosecution hid key evidence that may have bolstered Cantu’s claims of innocence. Just another day in the Lone Star State.
What do you expect from a state where the party that controls all branches of government keeps cozying up to a prominent white supremacist?
A Dallas-area high school canceled a student production of The Laramie Project, about the killing of Matthew Shepard by two bigots because he was gay, after the district passed anti-LGBTQ+ rules last year.
Climate change is driving a surge in cholera cases in central Africa.
An unvaccinated nine-year-old boy in Singapore contracted COVID-19, developed myocarditis from it, and suffered a stroke. His mother says she declined the vaccine for her son because she was worried it would cause myocarditis, a good example of the harm that unfettered disinformation is doing to public health.
Some good medical news: An mRNA ‘vaccine’ to fight pancreatic cancer has entered stage 2 trials. I put the word vaccine in quotes because it’s not a preventative vaccine, but is tailored to specific recipients’ cancers to help train the immune system to fight the rogue cells, particularly those that remain after surgery or chemo.
You would think Arizona, the sunniest state in the U.S., would encourage residents to add solar panels, but the state is bowing to one of its major energy utility companies and adding a “punitive” charge to customers with solar panels. The Arizona Corporation Commission approved a request from utility APS despite failing to evaluate the full impact of these price hikes on consumers.
Missouri’s Attorney General is suing Planned Parenthood for “trafficking” minors to get abortions outside of Gilead.
The death of nonbinary teen Nex Benedict in Owasso, Oklahoma, after several girls beat them to the point where they blacked out, has received a lot of unclear and I think contradictory coverage from major outlets so far. Assigned Media has a solid summary of what we do and don’t know so far and a piece criticizing traditional media for accepting the police & school’s narratives without questioning them.
A married couple in Oregon who taught at Damascus Christian School have been charged with sexually abusing a child there. No drag queens or trans people were involved.
The BBC spoke to several Iranian women who are still protesting the theocratic regime’s requirement that they wear hijabs in public.
Mehdi Hasan announced his new media venture, Zeteo News, which sounds promising, although we’ve certainly seen and heard similar pitches before that haven’t panned out. His work with MSNBC was excellent and I expect him to continue to challenge disinformation and bigotry. I hope there’s enough support to allow him to build the news organization he envisions.
A Beverly Hills middle school is grappling with the spread of AI-generated nudes of students. This issue isn’t going anywhere and I doubt passing laws against the practice is going to do much at this level.
I know you’re shocked, but the construction of Elon Musk’s long-promised Hyperloop in Las Vegas is rife with safety violations.
Two twins from the country of Georgia were sold at birth and separated; they found each other as teenagers thanks to a TV talent show and to TikTok. Amy and Ano are two of thousands of babies who were stolen from hospitals in the Caucasus nation, their mothers told their babies had died, and sold to new families who were often unaware the adoptions were illegal.
Board game news: An expansion for the Restoration Games title Thunder Road is now on Kickstarter and has already cleared $1 million.
A roll-and-write game based on the wonderful board game Cascadia is also on Kickstarter and fully funded already.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, board game news, climate change, country music, death penalty, frauds, las vegas, links, longreads, missouri, oklahoma, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ February 24, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/24/24.

My entire prospect rankings for 2024 are now up for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

I held a Klawchat earlier this week to take questions on the lists and more.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Apiary, the latest game from publisher Stonemaier Games (Wingspan, Scythe, Tapestry); The Search for Lost Species, a deduction game and sequel to my #1 game of 2020, The Search for Planet X; and The White Castle, my #1 game of 2023, designed by the folks behind The Red Cathedral.

I also sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, about how we had to put our cat, Hexie, down when a blood clot traveled to his descending aorta and paralyzed his hind quarters. It’s been tough.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Religious zealot and billionaire Tim Dunn is behind the Texas GOP’s hard shift to the right as he tries to remake the state into a Christian theocracy. Imagine if a Muslim billionaire used his money in a similar way. It’s certainly not about following the teachings of Jesus – as does this Catholic charity in El Paso, which is now facing closure at the hands of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
I’ll also just mention here that religious ‘nones’ are now the largest single group in the U.S. The term refers to anyone who does not identify themselves as affiliated with a church or religion, including atheists, agnostics, ‘spiritual but not religious’ people, deists, and others.
The New York Times had an excellent story on the athletes recruited to The New School in Florida, as the state pours money into the once-liberal institution to try to turn it into a southern version of Hillsdale College. The kids are going to be all right, despite the adults’ best efforts.
Gary, Indiana, has an ongoing lawsuit against gun manufacturers over their tacit allowance of illegal gun sales. The Indiana Republican Party is trying to pass a bill that would invalidate the suit and protect gun manufacturers from liability.
A former minister in the Christian cult The Truth admitted to molesting a young boy through his role in the ‘church,’ part of a decades-long pattern of abuse and cover-ups in the home-based movement, also known as Two by Twos.
A doctor who went to Gaza to help victims of Israel’s ongoing assault wrote in the LA Times that what he saw “wasn’t war – it was annihilation.”
In the face of growing hate towards Palestinians, some chefs and restaurant owners who come from or trace their ancestry to Palestine are choosing to emphasize their identity
The 76ers’ proposed downtown arena is likely to cost the city millions in lost tax revenue while also risking Philly’s vibrant Chinatown neighborhood. Let the owners pay for it themselves.
There’s a huge measles outbreak in Florida thanks to parents rejecting universal medical advice and skipping the MMR vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General is telling parents they can still send their unvaccinated kids to school. Measles is the most contagious virus that infects humans, and it can kill children and adults, either during the infection itself or up to a decade later due to an incurable neurological condition called SSPE. This is abject insanity. The MMR vaccine is safe, effective, and led to the (temporary) eradication of measles from the Americas, until Andrew Wakefield and the fucking idiots who follow him brought it back.
KFF Health News looks at how these fringe anti-science views became so dominant in American politics, and what it might mean this November.
Meanwhile, vaccine denialists are everywhere, downplaying the severity of measles. I see it every day on the disinformation hellhole of Twitter. Measles kills, maims, deafens, and more. It can lead to weeks of hospitalizations. I would love to see health insurers insist on vaccinations for coverage, because why should my premiums go up just because someone else was too dumb or misinformed to make the right choice?
West Virginia Republicans saw this outbreak and decided to exempt private schools from the state’s strict vaccination requirements, because I guess having the nation’s highest death rate from opioids wasn’t good enough!
Timor-Leste (formerly known as East Timor) is battling simultaneous outbreaks of three mosquito-borne diseases: Zike, dengue, and chikungunya. We need more releases of genetically modified mosquitoes and mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria to reduce their numbers before these diseases spread further.
Tim Burke, formerly of Deadspin, was indicted in Florida for allegedly hacking Fox News video streams of Kanye West and Tucker Carlson … that Burke says were unprotected by passwords or other encryption. This is a freedom of the press issue. You could contact your Representative or Senator, especially if any serve on their respective Judiciary Committees, as I’ve done. An attack on any journalist is an attack on all of us.
A Texas attorney poisoned his pregnant then-wife with abortion pills, which didn’t cause the pregnancy to terminate but caused enough damage to the fetus that their daughter has developmental delays. He was sentenced to merely 180 days in jail, because abortion bans are not about saving babies (or fetuses), but about subjugating and controlling women.
Abortion rights are a consistent, winning issue for Democrats, writes Ilyse Hogue in the New Republic, and the party needs to lean into that more.
We got an answer, belatedly, on the Hugo Awards’ exclusion of certain works, notably those by Chinese or Chinese-American authors, and it was craven submission to Chinese government involvement. Dave McCarty, a sci-fi fan who was head of the Hugo Committee for 2023, and others resigned and/or were censured. One of the winners, Adrian Tchaikovsky, has already said he will no longer cite or list the award among his honors.
This satirical column from The Crimson mocks national reporters’ obsession with campus life at Harvard.
Posts from the transphobic ‘activist’ LibsOfTikTok led to at least 21 bomb threats against schools, libraries, small businesses, and more. Twitter has done nothing to shut Chaya Raichik down, despite the real-world consequences to her actions.
Pamela Paul wrote an anti-trans editorial in The New York Times. It was riddled with inaccuracies.
The co-founder of the anti-LGBTQ, book-banning advocacy group Moms for Liberty engaged in threesomes with her husband and another woman. Bridget Ziegler is on the school board in Sarasota County, Florida, and her husband Christian (heh) was the former head of the Florida Republican Party. MfL’s influence appears to be waning as more people catch on to their radical agenda.
Seattle cops raided several LGBTQ+ bars in the city, taking photos of patrons, citing regulations banning “lewd conduct.” Owners and patrons fought back, and the state’s liquor board, which oversees such businesses, agreed to knock it off and end this collaboration with the police.
New York’s Nassau County issued an order banning teams with trans athletes from using public fields or arenas, yet another pointless, cruel rule pandering to bigots, a solution in search of a problem.
Republicans smeared Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over comments she made – but they used a bogus translation to do so.
An old indie blog called The Hairpin that closed in 2018 has come back to life as a zombie clickbait farm.
A mother of four was shot and killed while driving to work in Philadelphia in November, and her family says the police aren’t doing enough to try to solve the case.
There’s a Kickstarter open for Conservas, a new solo bag-building game from designer Scott Almes (Tiny Epic Galaxes, Beer & Bread).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, florida, guns, harvard, hugo awards, indiana, lgbt rights, links, longreads, new york, philadelphia, religion, seattle, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, west virginia

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