stick to baseball

→ February 26, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/26/22.

No new content directly from me this week for subscribers to the Athletic, but if I can shake this cold I have right now – the first time I’ve been sick since we all started masking just under two years ago – I’ll have a draft piece this upcoming week. I have done Q&As with our beat writers who cover the Orioles, Dbacks, Pirates, Red Sox, Twins, and Royals, and subscribers can also see all parts of my prospects ranking package here.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Matthew Murphy, lead singer and songwriter of the Wombats, talking about their latest album Fix Yourself, Not the World; his unusual lyrics; and mental health. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. My free email newsletter returned last week as well, catching those of you who subscribe up on various things from my life from the last month as well as links to all the things I have written since the start of 2022.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The wife of a Supreme Court justice was active in the efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election. Ginni Thomas is also active in the fight to ban abortion in the United States, while her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, has been flouting ethics guidelines for decades by attending events for her pet causes.
Forbes writer Laura Shin identifies the man likely behind a 2016 crypto hack that stole abouto $11 billion in Ethereum.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the head of the state’s power grid to keep wholesale power prices at their maximum level, tossing billions in extra revenue to power companies, during the state’s deep freeze last winter.
Two separate research teams used machine-learning tools to identify the same two men as the likely initiators of the QAnon hoax. Ron Watkins, one of the two men, has been identified by previous efforts as well.
Reuters explains how a glitch in software used to hack a Saudi activist’s iPhone revealed how the Israeli company NSO Group was helping governments spy on their own citizens across the world.
Even a mild case of COVID-19 can lead to much higher heart disease risk after the infection is over.
Another grifter has emerged in the COVID-19 denial world – Marc Girardot, who wants you to subscribe to his substack even though he evinces ignorance of basic chemistry.
China employed thousands of fake Twitter accounts to push propaganda around the recent Winter Olympics.
Tucker Carlson started backpedaling after years of his praise for Vladimir Putin showed up on state-run TV in Russia this past week. Then the Fox News host said putting Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court would make the U.S. like Rwanda, his go-to country for white nationalist commentary even though Rwanda has a lower homicide rate than the United States.
A California couple faces charges of bilking $2.8 million from Grand Rapids School District using some pretty basic phishing techniques.
The Baltimore Museum of Art hired some of its security guards to curate special exhibitions of artworks the guards selected from the collection.
Singer Isobel Campbell offered her tribute to former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, who died this week at age 57.
The Lord of the Rings series has sparked ridiculous criticism over its casting of nonwhite actors as (checks notes) dwarves and elves and such.
My editor at Paste got to check out the new Disney hotel/LARP experience the Galactic Starcruiser, writing about the juxtaposition of being in a fictional war setting while an actual war was going on; as did a writer for Gizmodo, who noted that a two-day stay for a family of four will run you $6000.
The cooperative board game The Warriors: Come Out and Play, based on the cult classic film from 1979, is now on sale.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, cryptocurrencies, disneyworld, hoaxes, links, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ February 19, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/19/22.

My prospects ranking package is now all posted for subscribers to the Athletic. Here’s the complete rundown of everything that ran:

The top 100 prospects
The prospects who just missed the top 100
The ranking of all 30 farm systems
The org top 20s:

Baltimore	Houston	Chicago Cubs
Boston	LA Angels	Cincinnati
NY Yankees	Oakland	Milwaukee
Tampa Bay	Seattle	Pittsburgh
Toronto	Texas	St. Louis
Chicago White Sox	Atlanta	Arizona
Cleveland	Miami	Colorado
Detroit	NY Mets	LA Dodgers
Kansas City	Philadelphia	San Diego
Minnesota	Washington	San Francisco

I also did two Q&As over at the Athletic, one the day the farm rankings went up and one the day the top 100 went up.

Since my last stick to baseball post, I’ve reviewed several board games over at Paste as well, including Nidavellir, one of my favorite games from 2021; Equinox, a new version of Reiner Knizia’s game Colossal Arena; The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future, a two-player game based on the 1991 cult classic; and Wilson & Shep, a cute bluffing game for players as young as five.

I’ve done a bunch of podcasts and radio things related to the top 100, including the Seattle Sports Union; the Update with Adam Copeland (talking Giants prospects); Press Box Online (Orioles); Sox Machine (White Sox); and Karraker & Smallmon (Cardinals).

My own podcast returned in late January, with three episodes since my last roundup: Michael Schur, author of How to Be Perfect and creator of the show The Good Place; the post-punk band Geese, an episode where I answered a bunch of reader questions on the top 100 too; and union labor lawyer Eugene Freedman, who gave his thoughts on the MLB lockout. You can subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: There is no evidence that wearing masks in school harms children’s mental health or educational development. None. I’ll repeat: There is no fucking evidence, people. Every one of those anti-mask grifters you see on Twitter hawking their $80 a year substack is full of shit.
In 2003, a woman in Australia was convicted of smothering all four of her babies to death. Several researchers believe she is innocent, and that a mutant gene was the real cause of the tragedy.
MIT Technology Review has a very long piece on the scientist at the center of the lab-leak conspiracy theory.
The scourge of private equity is now causing rapid inflation in housing prices, with PE firms buying up apartment buildings, hiking rents, and skimping on or even forgoing basic services to tenants.
WIRED looks at how personal finance apps are making phone scams even easier.
The Harvard Gazette ran an excerpt from Kevin Birmingham’s 2014 book on Ulysses’ long and tortuous road to publication. I reviewed The Most Dangerous Book back in 2016.
MEL gives us the subterfuge behind the surprise pop hit “Tubthumping,” and how the anarcho-communist band Chumbawamba used its success for their own ends.
Are you getting cardboard shipping boxes from U-Line? Not only does the family that owns U-Line fund the far-right site The Federalist, they’ve given millions to other right-wing extremists, including some of January 6^th terrorists. If you use U-Line in your business, find another vendor. If you get a package in a U-Line box, contact the shipper and ask them to use someone else for their boxes.
Space elevators are a staple of hard science fiction novels and stories, but if one breaks, it’s a massive and potentially fatal disaster. The plot of Green Mars includes the sabotage of a space elevator, and while I don’t care for the novel, Kim Stanley Robinson does a reasonable job of getting the science right on what happens when the broken cable hits the ground.
REI sent this union-busting email to all of its employees, then published a podcast full of dubious rationalizations for its anti-union efforts.
The Washington Post profiled the woman who led the first successful effort to unionize a Starbucks store.
COVID-19 becoming “endemic” doesn’t mean it’s becoming harmless.
In fact, there’s evidence that the claims that the omicron variant is less severe than prior ones are due to greater population immunity, not to any reduced ability of the virus to cause serious illness. Also, there’s a subvariant of concern, too, although once again, vaccination confers substantial benefits.
COVID denialists on the right seem to think the virus is actually a person – at least in the language they use to minimize it.
Right-wing pundits, including Jordan Peterson, were up in arms because a Boston hospital denied a heart transplant to a man who refused the COVID-19 vaccines – but such rules are routine to increase the likelihood of the patient’s survival.
Anti-vaccine loon Christiane Northrup has become a major donor to Maine Republican candidates, including former Governor Paul LePage.
Two Long Island nurses have been charged with selling fake vaccine cards and entering the false information into vaccination databases, taking home $1.5 million in the process. But what happens to the people who bought them?
An inevitable consequence of all of this anti-vaccine misinformation is that now measles vaccination rates are falling in the UK.
Meanwhile, Republicans in 14 states are pushing bills that would block medical boards from censuring doctors who spread misinformation; in Tennessee, the Know-Nothings in the state legislature even pressured the medical board into removing language from its website discouraging such doctors.
Speaking of foundations of misinformation, Fox News was happy to talk to an anti-vax state trooper … until he died of COVID-19.
A New Jersey police officer was driving drunk when he struck a pedestrian … and then put the body in his car and drove home with it. He didn’t call 911. He now faces a dozen felony charges.
The story about the Los Angeles train robbery a few weeks ago, which made news across the country and even in Europe, is really about how Union Pacific laid off 4/5 of its security force – and how the mainstream media increasingly just buys whatever corporations are selling.
This is horrifying: San Francisco police used DNA from a woman’s rape kit to identify her as a suspect in another crime. And we wonder why women don’t come forward to report their assaults. I’ve already reached out to two state Senators in Delaware, and to the Attorney General, to see what can be done to make sure this does not occur here.
Over 650 Philly cops who claim they’re too sick or injured to work are fine holding down other jobs.
A tax cheat and father of a child murderer has bankrolled a right-wing streaming network that has given Steve Bannon a platform again. It’s available through most major streaming platforms, too.
A tremendous piece of local journalism led to the resignation of the police chief of Brookside, Alabama, who had set up a racket that scammed drivers out of over $500,000 a year in fines and forfeitures – often when they were no closer to the town than the local interstate.
A Republican state senator in Texas has sworn in a declaration that the state’s Republicans violated federal voting rights laws in a recent redistricting.
Minneapolis police insisted on a no-knock warrant in a predawn raid – raid, a word that should be reserved for war, or perhaps when there’s a lost ark involved – on an apartment in the city. They ended up murdering an innocent civilian sleeping in that apartment.
Spokane district attorney Larry Haskell is under fire, again, for his wife’s long history of racist and white nationalist comments online. It’s more disturbing that voters keep electing him.
Families in West Virginia are suing a school that held a Christian revival on campus during school hours, with some teachers forcing students to attend. This isn’t the first such incident in this school district.
I liked Encanto, and assume it’s going to win the Oscar for best animated film, but I noticed the script glossed over the weird power dynamic between the Madrigals and the townsfolk. Jim Vorel wrote about that very topic for Paste.
Hannah Keyser has a great piece at Yahoo! Sports asking why people get so mad over Hall of Fame voting. The abuse was worse than ever this year.
Ohio’s extreme gerrymandering leads to more extreme laws from legislators who don’t have to worry about re-election, even though the laws are often opposed by a majority of Ohio voters.
The mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi, a suburb of Jackson, decided to order the city’s libraries to remove all LGBTQ+ materials before he’d release their funding. The city’s leaders are denying this is what’s happening, but a local nonprofit group has raised all of the missing funds from donations.
This feels like old news now, but McMinn County, Tennessee, banned Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its school curricula because there are naked mice in it.
Who’s behind all the book-banning movements? Major conservative dark-money donors, of course.
And they’re also pushing educational gag orders across the country, with over 120 such bills introduced in the last 13 months.
Like the one in Florida, supported by the death-loving governor there, that wants to force LGBTQ+ kids back in the closet. (DeSantis can’t even bring himself to condemn a neo-Nazi rally in Orlando.)
Or the laws targeting the chimera of critical race theory in schools, which threatens teachers’ livelihoods and even their freedom.
LZ Granderson writes about the extreme illogic of Michelle Tafoya leaving the media to campaign against racism education, when she herself lives in a town that has become majority white thanks to racial covenants in housing contracts.
The British government recently moved to make something called “virginity repair” surgery illegal. I didn’t know this was a thing, but it is clearly founded in some seriously deranged religious beliefs.
Matt Walsh, espouser of misogynistic and homophobic views under the guise of Christianity, tried to trick a bunch of trans people into participating in a documentary attacking trans rights.
This is from before the Oscar nominations were announced, but the LA Times‘ Justin Chang implored the Academy to nominate Drive My Car for Best Picture – which they did.
Craig Calcaterra continues to expose New Albany, Ohio, school board member Philip Derrow as a science-denying history-ignorant turnip.
Is a building at Florida State University causing cancer in the people who work there? Cancer clusters are often matters of chance, but in this case, there’s evidence of actual carcinogens in the air ducts, and the school has closed the building to investigate.
Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt courted snitches among parents opposed to mask mandates, setting off a series of pointless, expensive battles that probably did way more to harm kids than wearing a mask ever could.
Instagram is doing nothing to suspend or block accounts promoting hate speech.
I don’t often agree with Jennifer Rubin’s editorials in the Washington Post, but I think her take here is correct: The only way Democrats can hope to fight Republican voter-suppression efforts is to change the venue to local elections and referenda, taking the message directly to voters – and even that may not be enough.
I can’t love this tweet enough.
Board game news: I saw a prototype of Earth, a tableau- and engine-building game from Inside Up Games, at PAX Unplugged, and from what I saw it looks right up my alley. It’s on Kickstarter now.
So is Trekking Through History, the third Trekking game (following Trekking the National Parks and Trekking the World) from Underdog Games.
And so is Rolling Heights, the new roll-and-write game from the designer of Mystic Vale.
Tiwanaku, the game previously known as Pachamama, will relaunch on Kickstarter on March 9^th.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, coronavirus, dark money, florida, free speech, links, mississippi, missouri, movies, Music, philadelphia, police, san francisco, science, stick to baseball, texas, unions, vaccines, voter suppression, washington state, west virginia

→ January 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/22/22.

I’m still grinding away on the top 100, with more than half of the player capsules written so far. It’ll run on January 31^st, followed later that week by the column of guys who just missed. The team-by-team reports will run the week after. I have a podcast episode ready to roll that should be up any day now.

My latest review at Paste covers The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future, a two-player game from Funko based on the cult classic Disney film, which is itself about to get a reboot.

And now, the links…

Before the longreads: Richard Uihlein has been a major dark-money contributor to the GOP and various right-wing endeavors (including anti-LGBT rights groups) for years, but a new report found that he helped fund groups trying to overturn the 2020 election. His company, U-Line, is one of the major sellers of shipping boxes in the country. If you run a company where you use cardboard boxes, please consider using another manufacturer. If you get a package and the box was made by U-Line, contact the shipper and ask them to consider using another manufacturer. Here’s another call for a boycott of U-Line.
Longreads: Brookside, Alabama, has created a machine for hitting travelers with bogus traffic violations and generating fines for it, according to this outstanding investigative piece from John Archibald on AL.com.
Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni, is a right-wing activist with what appears to be undue influence at the Supreme Court, according to this report from the great Jane Mayer (author of Dark Money). Judge Thomas has not recused himself from cases in which his wife his involved.
Texas Monthly looks at the stalled investigation of an abusive gymnastics coach in Texas, and how it parallels a dysfunctional process across the gymnastics community.
The Washington Post has the story of an alleged thief who lived with a wealthy woman for the last few years of her life and then started selling off her art and jewelry when she died – and may have stolen from many other people as well.
Joss Whedon gave a long interview to New York that I don’t think went the way he planned it. Tim Grierson broke it down for MEL.
A Vanderbilt student who was raped by another student there writes about how the university declined to expel her rapist, despite a finding that he had committed the most serious violation in the student code.
Input looks at Instagram “petfluencer” account owners who clone their pets. Just because you can does not mean you should.
I didn’t know Cincinnati had an unused subway tunnel network for a train system that was never built.
Maybe Cincinnati would have a subway if they hadn’t pissed away $920 million to pay for the Bengals’ stadium in the last twenty years – with more costs to come.
The University of Michigan fired its President after learning he may have had an affair with a subordinate, about two years after they first moved to fire their provost for his own sexual misconduct allegations.
Senate Republicans’ move to block the John Lewis Act puts more than just voting rights in grave peril.
DirecTV announced, finally, they will drop the misinformation-spreading OANN later this year. Do you have Verizon FiOS? CenturyLink? Prism? AT&T U-Verse? Call them and ask them to do the same.
The seven Chicago-based AV Club employees who were told to move to Los Angeles, only to find their jobs had already been listed online for new hires, have all chosen to take their CBA-protected severance.
The COVID-19 vaccines are safer than aspirin or acetominaphen.
Arkansas is so in the thrall of anti-science forces that they gave ivermectin to prisoners who caught COVID-19, despite a lack of any evidence that the deworming paste is effective against the virus. Some of those prisoners are now suing the state.
Florida Republicans may pass a bill that would prohibit schools from teaching anything about the racism of white people that would make white students feel “discomfort.”
Many major media outlets have been reporting on a “rise” in thefts that isn’t actually happening. Stories about cargo thefts against Union Pacific have omitted the fact that UP laid off most of its security employees during the pandemic.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni – who has been in power since 1986, and once spent foreign aid to buy himself a private jet – has imprisoned and tortured a writer for insulting him and his son in a tweet.
Paste profiled Yard Act, one of my favorite new rock bands of the last two years, a Gang of Four-influenced post-punk act with lyrics that are spoken as often as they’re sung.
Board game news: The Kickstarter for Skate Summer, a route-building and set collection game from Pandasaurus, opened up this week.
Keymaster Games, publisher of Parks and Trails, opened pre-orders for Caper: Europe, an upcoming two-player heist-themed game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arkansas, cincinnati, dark money, heists, links, longreads, michigan, Music, stick to baseball, texas, uganda, vaccines, vanderbilt

→ January 16, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/16/22.

Still working on the prospect rankings – I started the actual writing this week, after several weeks of prep – which will run starting January 31^st at the Athletic. I appreciate your patience. My podcast and my Paste reviews will return this week.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This New York Times story by Maggie Jones on the realities of sex after age 70 is one of the best pieces of longform journalism I’ve ever read. It is quite long, but it’s thorough, clear, and highly empathetic, all while discussing a topic that remains largely taboo even as other areas of human sexuality have become more acceptable in mainstream media.
Guitar World interviewed Mastodon’s guitarists about their writing and playing styles, including the writing of their massive new album Hushed and Grim.
Have we forgotten how to read critically? I’d counter: Did we ever know?
From last March: Smithsonian goes long on the history of Neapolitan pizza, the world’s “first” fast food. (Maybe.)
Philadelphia magazine has updated its list of the metro area’s top 50 restaurants for the first time since the start of the pandemic, but without ranking them this time. The new list has two of our favorites right here in Wilmington, Bardea and Le Cavalier, and some wonderful places in Philly, including High Street (in its new location!), Stina, Suraya, and Friday Saturday Sunday.
A study widely shared by anti-vaxxers has been revised to reflect new data showing vaccine boosters are more effective against the Omicron variant than previously believed. I’m sure the anti-vaxxers will correct themselves as soon as possible, without anyone else pointing this out to them.
That said, Omicron is still putting incredible pressure on our overtaxed hospital system, in large part due to the number of people who have refused to get vaccinated.
Here’s a study showing that COVID-19 vaccines nearly eliminated hospitalization and life support requirements for teenagers who were infected with the virus. No vaccinated teens in the study group died of COVID-19, compared to seven deaths in unvaccinated teens. Here’s the Washington Post article on the study.
CORBEVAX, the open-source COVID-19 vaccine that represents our best chance so far to vaccinate the developing world, has received more funding from the company that makes Tito’s Vodka than from the U.S. government. Wealthy countries are busy buying Pfizer and Moderna vaccines while failing to fund a vaccine that would reduce the odds of new variants emerging in less wealthy nations.
A Canadian ~~hero~~ judge ruled that an unvaccinated father may not see his kids until he gets vaccinated. Imagine being so caught up in anti-vax conspiracy theories that you would rather refuse to see your own kids than get a safe, effective shot.
Maine’s medical licensing board has temporarily suspended the license of a doctor who spread anti-vaccine and other COVID-19 misinformation. She has also prescribed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, two drugs that are ineffective against COVID-19, by falsely claiming her patients had other illnesses.
There was a huge brouhaha over on the forums for Tabletop Simulator after it came out that a moderator was banning users just for saying the words “gay” and “trans.” Kotaku has the whole breakdown, including the culture wars in TS’s Steam reviews now.
The L.A. Times has more on the battle between G/O Media and the Writers Guild, with the union arguing that the AV Club’s private equity owners have treated the site’s Chicago-based employees unfairly.
Baltimore’s top prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby (D), has been indicted on charges of perjury related to a series of financial transactions where she claimed hardship so she could buy multiple properties in Florida.
Michigan’s Attorney General has referred her investigation of GOP electors who signed a document that falsely claimed Trump had won the state’s electoral votes to federal prosecutors. The electors may have committed forgery of a public record and election law forgery, each of which would lead to jail times.
Also in Michigan, a woman filed a criminal complaint accusing former state House Speaker Lee Chatfield (R) of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. Chatfield is the woman’s brother-in-law, and he claims they had an “affair” that began after she turned 18. It’s very Clemens-esque.
A Chicago alderman and community organizers are urging the feds to investigate how Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) may have misused federal COVID-19 relief funds.
Two LA cops ignored a robbery in progress to try to ‘catch’ a Pokemon Go creature. They were fired, sued to get their jobs back, and lost their appeal.
Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama, will get a second chance to vote on unionizing after the company was found to have engaged in unfair anti-labor practices during the first election.
Also in Alabama, an especially loony anti-vaxxer who was recently arrested for refusing to wear a mask in a Whole Foods is now saying drinking your own urine cures COVID-19 (it doesn’t).
This story on bokit, a fried-dough sandwich native to Guadeloupe, will make you want to visit the Caribbean island and French overseas department.
Invasive species from around the world are threatening Antarctica’s ecosystems by hitching rides on the increasing number of ships that visit the continent.
Board game news: There’s a video trailer for a new board game based on the hit series The Queen’s Gambit, a show about an existing board game called … chess.
All we have so far is this tweet, but the publisher of the great two-player game Riftforce has announced their second title, a deck management game for up to 8 players called Underdogs, as well as an upcoming expansion to Riftforce.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, board game news, caribbean, chicago, coronavirus, delaware, environment, links, longreads, misinformation, Music, philadelphia, pizza, police, stick to baseball, unions, vaccines

→ January 8, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/8/22.

My latest game review for Paste covers the great, easy-to-learn Super Mega Lucky Box, from the designer of Silver & Gold and Sushi Go! It has elements of both games, and will remind non-gamers of bingo enough to get them started. We played this over the holidays with my family, and everyone liked it, from my 9-year-old niece to my mother, who generally does not like games.

My prospect rankings are still on track to start running on The Athletic on January 31^st, leading off with the top 100, with team-by-team rankings following afterwards. My podcast will also return this upcoming week.

And now, the links…

The New Yorker has a piece from Ryan Katz on the decades-long aftermath of a murder in Texas, one of the victims of the so-called Donut Shop Murders.

The Guardian hasan excerpt of Michael Pollan’s most recent book, This is Your Mind on Plants, asking whether we should be giving up caffeine. (The answer is “no,” whether Pollan knows it or not.)

This Hidden Brain episode titled “Both Things Can Be True,” about dealing with the apparent contradictions we find in other people, is a remarkable and compelling story in its own right, and also feels especially apposite in the wake of the recent Hall of Fame vote. You can also find it on iTunes.

Is there really enough taste difference among different varieties of rice to justify an annual rice-tasting competition? The mere question would be heretical in Japan.

Climate change is coming for everyone and every industry, including pro sports. Hannah Keyser asks if MLB is ready for it.

“America’s Frontline Doctors” are a giant fraud, as its members haven’t worked on the front lines against COVID-19 and profit off quack treatments like hydroxychloroquine.

I wasn’t familiar with the company FeedFeed, but the Washington Post has an exposé on the company’s toxic workplace environment.

A neuroscientist facing a terminal diagnosis discusses preparing for his impending death.

A Deputy DA in California who was expected to run for the state Assembly this year has died of COVID-19 at age 46, just weeks after speaking an anti-vax/anti-mandate rally.

The BBC spoke to QAnon adherents a year after the 1/6 terrorist attack on the Capitol.

The AV Club has told Chicago-based staffers to move to Los Angeles or lose their jobs, without offering even a cost-of-living increase to their salaries. They also listed at least one of those writers’ jobs before their decisions were even due.

Bodycam video shows a Houston cop speeding up to 100 mph and driving with one hand at the time that he hit and killed a 62-year-old pedestrian with his car.

I don’t especially care that an Australian writer doesn’t like board game nights, but what possible aim is there to writing a piece that does nothing but shit on something thousands of people enjoy?

The New York Times‘ David Streitfeld has a post mortem of sorts on the Theranos trial, with an eye on the people who failed to ask Elizabeth Holmes the obvious questions about her technology that didn’t work. John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood has quite a bit more on this in its history of the con.

Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps, has been critical of mainstream media outlets’ slanted coverage of police shootings. He had a Twitter thread this week calling out the New York Times for its framing and for use of biased sources when covering a recent shooting in LA, pointing out that police unions and departments spend a lot of money to try to get this kind of positive coverage.

What appeared to be a simple kidnapping case helped French authorities uncover a right-wing plot to overthrow France’s government.

A new paper in Hepatology says that we should expect 8000 additional deaths in the U.S. due to increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic.

Some board game news: Blazon, a card-drafting, tableau-building game is up on Kickstarter.

As is Dom Pierre, a game of wine-making in 17^th century France.

Asmodee’s Unexpected Games division announced a new title, Voices in My Head, where players try to play aspects of a suspected thief’s persona against the one player who plays the prosecutor.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, food writing, france, frauds, links, stick to baseball

→ January 1, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/1/22.

Happy New Year, everyone. I had one new piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week, breaking down my Hall of Fame ballot, which went about as well as you might expect. I held a Klawchat on the 23^rd.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Iberian Gauge, an 18xx game that’s on the shorter side for that genre, and wrote up everything I saw and played at PAX Unplugged this year.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, talking about music and how we consume and categorize it has changed since I first became a big fan of pop music about 40 years ago.

I also appeared on my friend Elliott Garstin’s podcast, Twenty Eyes Radio, to talk about my favorite songs and albums of 2021.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Dr. Irene Bosch, a molecular biologist currently at MIT, created a rapid test for COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, and had arranged for its manufacture. Thanks to the FDA, you still can’t get it.
Dr. Robert Malone is a real scientist who has falsely claimed credit for inventing mRNA vaccines. That’s led him down a path of straight-up vaccine denialism, enough to get him suspended from Twitter this past week.
COVID-19 denialists like to claim that deaths from the virus are overcounter, but the truth is that they’re significantly undercounted in many counties, based on large spikes in excess deaths that aren’t attributed to the virus for mostly innocuous reasons.
Did the 76ers just announce a big partnership with a fake company? Defector was unable to find any evidence that the CEO of Color Star is even a real person.
Wichita juvenile detention center employees murdered a Black teenager in their custody in September by restraining him in the prone position – which police also used to restrain George Floyd when they killed him.
The Associated Press has the story of an Army veteran who spent a decade working for the FBI by infiltrating KKK groups to identify law enforcement officers who were members.
Buzzfeed investigates two agencies that have exploited content creators on OnlyFans, and now face lawsuits claiming extortionary practices, failure to pay creators, failure to pay overtime, and more. Workers’ rights are workers’ rights, regardless of the industry.
A “terrible” book called Viral that pushes lab-leak conspiracy theories shows why people won’t let that idea go. Indeed, there’s new evidence further supporting the hypothesis that COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon.
One thing, and only one thing, has worked to get unvaccinated people to get the jab: Employer mandates.
In the “it’s about fucking time” department, California revoked the license of a doctor who gave out fake vaccine exemptions.
Meanwhile, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a vaccine, CORBEVAX, that they’re allowing countries around the world to use without patent restrictions. It’s just been approved for use in India, with more countries to follow. This might be the best weapon we have for slowing the pandemic.
An Oklahoma lawmaker (guess the party!) wants to give parents the right to demand that a school remove any book from its library, and would reward such parents a bounty of $10,000 per day if the school doesn’t remove the book. It’s really about targeting LGBTQ+ books (and, by extension, LGBTQ+ kids), of course.
One small thing anyone can do to help fight climate change: Eat less red meat.
Georgia Republicans are trying to eliminate six of the seven polling stations in Lincoln County, a move activists see as targeting minority voters.
“Christmas Wrapping” is unavoidable at this time of year; I’ve grown to hate the song thanks to a job in retail in the fall of 1989. Yahoo! has a look at the song’s complex history.
The discourse, if you can even call it that, over critics’ disdain for Don’t Look Up is a symptom of society’s growing anti-intellectualism.
Asmodee purchased Miniature Market, one of the biggest board game & miniatures retailers in the country, at some point in 2021, without any announcement.
McSweeney’s offers An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush. Is it bad that I know all of the songs mentioned? My wife says that’s bad.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, california, climate change, frauds, labor rights, links, longreads, oklahoma, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ December 18, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/17/21.

My big item this week was my annual ranking of the top board games of the year for Paste, which runs 15 titles deep (plus a bonus for the best reissue). My music rankings will go up here next week, and I’ll have a PAX Unplugged recap at Paste next week too.

Nothing new at the Athletic from me, as I work on prospect rankings and there are no transactions to cover. I’ll do a chat next week, though, even if it’s mostly non-baseball stuff.

On The Keith Law Show, I spoke with Nik Sharma, author of the great cookbooks Season and The Flavor Equation, about those books, underused ingredients, and his unusual career arc. You can subscribe and listen on iTunes and Spotify.

I will also send out another edition of my free email newsletter this week, although I have a feeling with baking plans and the kids home I am already setting myself up for failure. And one last time, here’s another reminder that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has emerged as one of the most dangerous anti-vaccine propagandists in the world, and it’s made his “charity” a ton of money. He also gave a slightly unhinged interview to Gawker, in which he refuses to admit he invoked the Holocaust as a comparison to vaccine mandates in his book. (He already did this back in 2015, and apologized. He’s just back on his bullshit.) He’s also suing a blogger who wrote that he spoke at a rally with German far-right figures back in August – which he did, at a rally heavily attended by neo-Nazis.
Utah is the second-driest state in the country, but rejects water-conservation efforts, thanks to lobbyists and Republican politicians. (Insert joke about it being a dry state here.)
The Atlantic looks at the actual harm done by the right-wing’s fake child-sex-ring panics of the last few years (think Wayfair). Sex trafficking is real. You don’t need to buy into a conspiracy theory for that.
You probably already saw the Atlantic’s extremely long piece on how Trump and his acolytes are well on their way to stealing the 2024 election.
The New Yorker has the crazy story of a Welshman who threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin keys – and the bitcoin would now be worth a half a billion dollars, except that the town that controls the dump where his hard drive is located won’t let him dig for it.
Geraldine DeRuiter, who writes as The Everywhereist, has an incredible takedown of a horrendous meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce, Italy.
Police officers in Torrance, California, have jeopardized hundreds of cases through their practice of sending each other racist and homophobic texts. Decades of television, like the returning Law & Order, have indoctrinated viewers to believe that the police are always the good guys.
Scammers in India targeted several high-profile female journalists who were critical of the government with an elaborate scam that promised trips to or jobs at Harvard. The university knew about these scams, at least at some point, and did not appear to take any action to stop them.
There’s a lot of media coverage of retailers claiming theft is at an all-time high, but the data do not back this up.
A Tennessee high school teacher tried to teach his students about white privilege, and ended up losing his job. Meanwhile, Tennessee is banning the teaching of words and concepts that are tangentially related to critical race theory, because there is no racism in Tennessee any more, obviously. Oh, and the state’s medical board posted and then deleted rules against spreading misinformation after pressure from the Republican Party. Nice state y’all have down there.
Some states are moving against doctors and nurses who spread misinformation, at least.
Some large, early vaccination surveys fell prey to the big data paradox.
Andrew Cuomo appointed a crony of his to run the SUNY system of public universities in New York. Turns out the guy is a bully and a creep. Are you shocked? I’m shocked.
A judge is preventing the New York Times from reporting on Project Veritas, which would set a horrible precedent by allowing subjects to sue to stop negative coverage.
Kellogg is hiring scabs to replace striking workers. Don’t buy Frosted Flakes, folks.
Kickstarter is moving its crowdfunding platform to blockchain. Ryan Reynolds But Why dot gif?
Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa correctly described social media as “toxic sludge.”
A school district in Utah had two students wear racist costumes, so they showed students a diversity video. White parents in Utah called it an attack on them. I mean, it was, but not in the way they think.
Author and essayist bell hooks died this week at 69.
Board game news: A Swedish video game company is buying board game behemoth Asmodee from the private equity firm that owned it, which I see as very good news for Asmodee itself and the tabletop space in general.
Pachamama is heading back to Kickstarter soon after its first go-round didn’t get much traction.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bitcoin, board game news, food writing, frauds, italy, links, longreads, misinformation, new york, police, stick to baseball, unions, utah

→ December 6, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/6/21.

We had a busy weekend of decorating the house, including acquiring the largest tree I’ve ever owned (since we have one room with exceptionally high ceilings, it seemed irresponsible to fail to take advantage of it), which means this post is late. I had a whole slew of posts for subscribers to The Athletic last week, however, including

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, the sequel to the 2019 Kennerspiel winner, and I think a small but significant improvement over the original. At Ars Technica, I contributed twenty new entries to their Ars Technica’s ultimate board game gift guide.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, with a story about being too judgmental and learning to get past it. And finally, with Christmas just three weeks away, here’s another reminder that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This Columbia Journalism Review report on the hazards of social media for journalists is spot-on, and I wish the people running major social-media outlets would read and internalize its lessons. I can also say that ESPN’s ill-conceived, ambiguous, and inconsistently enforced social media policy ranks as the #1 reason I left the company. The straw that broke the camel’s back isn’t even public, but it related to this.
Utah, a state run by conservatives at all levels, makes it so hard to get public aid that some people join the Mormon Church to qualify, even if they don’t believe in the tenets of that sect.
This August piece in Science on how variants emerge and change the way the pandemic goes seems just as important now.
The longrunning debate over whether you can plagiarize a recipe has reared its head again, after a published recently pulled a book from circulation after discovering that the author had copied recipes and stories from another book. (The short answer here is that you can’t plagiarize – or copyright – a recipe, but you can plagiarize or copyright the text around it.)
The BBC Three spoke to multiple victims of sexual assalt about rape culture in British schools and authorities failing to do enough about it.
We are witnessing the end of “Roe v. Wade,” writes Elie Mystal in the Nation. Elections have consequences.
The New York Times ran two powerful editorials about abortion this week: one from a woman who was raped by her father and had an abortion, and another from a woman who didn’t have an abortion but “erased” the future she’d planned for herself, speaking very plainly about a life-altering decision from when she was 19.
Once again, for the people in the pack: Pregnancy is not a riskless, health-neutral event.
Anti-mask lunatics outed the trans child of the local school board chair, so now the family is moving out of the district.
Men who get COVID-19 have a sixfold risk of experiencing erectile dysfunction after the infection.
Many self-styled “experts” who minimize or deny the effects of COVID-19, or who soft-deny the vaccines’ efficacy, or push fake treatments, are now trying to brand themselves as “medical conservatives.”
With the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor coming up tomorrow, it’s good to remember that army leaders rejected evidence that the naval base was vulnerable to just such an attack, demonstrated during a simulation (that sure sounds like a board game) by one of its own officers. It’s a cool blend of cognitive dissonance and old-fashioned racism.
A county judge told the Alabama coal miners union currently on strike against Warrior Met Coal they can’t protest outside the company’s offices. I am not a lawyer, but this seems questionable on First Amendment grounds, no?
Scientific American explains how the brain switches between languages.
Is there simply too much culture – film, TV, music, video games, podcasts, and more – for us to consume?
Former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes (D) now faces charges of misusing her office for political and personal gain from the state ethics commission.
A defense industry worker says we need to cut the defense budget.
Cleveland is asking taxpayers to pony up for improvements to the Guardians’ statement. Don’t fall for their nonsense about “economic impact.”
There’s a fight brewing in St. Louis over who gets how much of the $500 million payday from their lawsuit against the Rams and the NFL.
The same government ding-dongs in Missouri who accused the Post-Dispatch of hacking for discovering a huge security flaw in a state website were originally going to thank the paper for it.
The media treats President Biden worse than it treated Trump, and that’s a huge problem.
Longtime Montréal chef and co-founder of Joe Beef David McMillan has retired from cooking at age 50.
I enjoyed this comic video explanation of how the west allowed omicron to happen (even if he does misspell it in his caption).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, baseball, coronavirus, Economics, longreads, missouri, rape culture, social media, Sports, stick to baseball, utah, world war ii

→ November 28, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/28/21.

I had two columns this week for subscribers to the Athletic – one on the Puerto Rican Winter League, and how MLB needs to support the league more; and one on the Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Steven Matz signings.

My guest this week on the Keith Law Show was Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. You can subscribe and listen on iTunes and Spotify.

I appeared on the Five Games for Doomsday podcast, talking mostly about boardgames – my favorites, my interest in them, writing about games and about baseball, and more.

I’ll send out a new edition of my free email newsletter Monday or Tuesday this week. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: An investigation by local TV channel 11-WXIA in Atlanta revealed corruption and sexual harassment among Johns Creek police officers, leading to the termination of three of the department’s officers – although others involved haven’t been sanctioned and remain on the force.
This seems especially vile, preying on truly vulnerable people: scammers are using fake job ads to defraud would-be applicants.
Over 200 American academics, researchers in history and political science in related fields, signed an open letter in support of the Freedom to Vote Act.
Two conservative commentators quit lucrative roles at Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s program that pushed false narratives and outright misinformation about the January 6^th insurrection. One of them, Jonah Goldberg, explained his decision in an editorial for the L.A. Times.
The QAnon JFK Cult in Dallas is tearing families apart. Did you know “Q” hasn’t posted in a year? Yet the hoax’s adherents still can’t let it go. The cognitive dissonance is strong with them.
The Kenosha protests were not violent or deadly until Kyle Rittenhouse showed up. Media coverage of his acquittal is revising history.
One of the co-creators of the game Oregon Trail says he never made any money off the game, but that was never his goal anyway.
The USFL is coming back! I’ll believe it when we get the first kickoff, but I’ll wash my Tampa Bay Bandits jersey just in case.
An epidemiologist wrote a lengthy overview of what the omicron variant of COVID-19 might mean. Dr. Peter Hotez says it’s a concern, but “the sky isn’t falling.” Our bodies aren’t helpless against new variants, though. The emergence of new variants is an inevitable outcome of rich countries hoarding vaccines (or destroying them).
COVID denialists like to say that Japan used ivermectin to stop the virus’s spread there. They are wrong.
It’s better than nothing, I guess: A St. Louis cop who assaulted an undercover colleague posing as a protestor was sentenced to a year in jail.
The superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools in Florida wrote an op ed in the Washington Post saying that the state’s new ban on any future mask mandates or quarantines robs schools of critical tools to fight the virus and keep kids in school. DeSantis’s pandering is going to kill people.
South Carolina Republicans are trying to cancel tenure, replacing it with five-year contracts and requiring at least a 2/2 course load, which will go a long way towards killing research at universities there.
Civil Liberties International added the United States to its list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time.
A Tory MP in the UK claims that having a woman play the main character in Doctor Who is hurting boys by removing a role model for them, and contributing to young boys turning to crime, never mind that the Doctor is a genderless alien who takes human form. He obviously doesn’t even watch the show, since the main character is not named “Doctor Who.”
Jared Leto is unrecognizable in House of Gucci under prosthetics and a bald cap, part of a growing trend toward physical verisimilitude on screen. Is that a good thing for actors or viewers?
A new paper published in Nature describes superionic ice, a newly-discovered phase of water that might resemble what’s found deep inside outer planets like Neptune.
A “good guy with a gun” took down a mass shooter, and then was shot and killed by a cop who mistook him for the bad guy. That cop will not face charges.
There will also be no charges for the man who “accidentally discharged” his gun and killed a 10-year-old boy the other day.
Ark Nova, an upcoming heavy game from Capstone, is available for pre-order. The description and images make me think it’s at least inspired by Wingspan but more complex.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coronavirus, democracy, football, frauds, guns, links, longreads, physics, south carolina, stick to baseball, vaccines, video games

→ November 20, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/20/21.

I had two new posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on the Noah Syndergaard signing and one on the Eduardo Rodriguez signing.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Genotype, the latest boardgame from Genius Games, a company that creates games that incorporate real math/science concepts into its titles so they’re educational as well as fun. I think this is their best effort yet.

No podcasts this week, but my show will return next week. I did send out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists

And now, the links…

Longreads first: New York has the inside story of reporter Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit against her employer, the Washington Post, with some damning details about the now-retired executive editor Marty Baron, one of the heroes of Spotlight.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) pardoned Dontae Sharpe, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and served 26 years for it, even though a key witness recanted her testimony just months after his trial.

Sugar companies burn the fields as part of the harvest, which may be causing respiratory ailments in the south Florida communities around the sugar fields.

The New Yorker looks at how little the Southern District of Georgia does for indigent people charged with federal crimes, and where judges have undue influence over the public defender’s office.

Coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, is a Yemeni product, but the Yemeni people have not benefited from its explosion into a high-end product consumed around the world. Some Yemeni entrepreneurs in Brooklyn are trying to change that, with coffee shops that use Yemen-grown coffee – no mean feat given the chaos and devastation of seven years of civil war there.

A Latino police officer in Joliet, Illinois, leaked official video that showed a colleague choking and slapping a suspect who was dying of a drug overdose. The police union’s response was to kick him out, and the DA has filed criminal charges against him.

Law professor Dorit Reiss breaks down the Court of Appeals’ stay of President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, saying the decision is based on dubious legal arguments.

Could Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) lose in 2022, either in the primary or to independent challenger Evan McMullin?

Cry me a river: People buying fake vaccine cards are getting scammed by fraudsters. What if, instead, they just got the safe, effective vaccine?

Masks are the most effective non-pharmaceutical intervention at preventing the spread of COVID-19, according to a new meta-analysis published in the BMJ.

Conspiracy theorists are moving from COVID-19 denialism to climate denialism. Once you’ve decided that evidence doesn’t matter, you can be convinced of anything.

Wisconsin Republicans are trying to decertify the 2020 election and take over the state’s elections infrastructure. If you live there, are you okay with this?

Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans in the state House have passed a ban on vaccine mandates. I thought Republicans opposed excessive government interference? I must be thinking of some other brand of Republicans.

How should we deal with racism in popular children’s books?

Remember that NYU economics prof who claimed only 500 Americans would die of COVID-19?

Science fiction writers rejoice as a new study claims it might be possible to traverse great distances through space via wormholes.

Board game news: iello, publisher of King of Tokyo, Decrypto, and this year’s Khôra, suddenly cut ties with its U.S. distributor iello USA.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, denialism, environment, georgia, longreads, metoo, north carolina, physics, stick to baseball, utah, vaccines, wisconsin

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