the swamp

→ March 30, 2024
→ By keith
→ 12 Comments

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

→ May 27, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/27/23.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I posted my first mock draft of 2023, and answered a slew of questions from readers.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Motor City, from the brains behind Fleet: the Dice Game and Three Sisters.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Scott McCaughey, founding member of the Young Fresh Fellows, the Minus Five, and the Baseball Project, the last of which are about to release a new album, Grand Salami Time! and tour in support of it.You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I owe everyone a fresh newsletter, which I’ve already started writing so I suppose I can at least share the link to sign up.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: New York profiles Nebraska legislator Michaela Cavanaugh, part of the filibuster against that state’s transphobic bill, who said on the floor “I want the bloody hands recorded” because the bill, now a law, will lead to the deaths of trans kids.

The New Yorker examines whether Planned Parenthood is doing enough to fight for abortion rights and the dwindling number of providers who offer this essential health care.

ProPublica looks at a man who believed his local school board was pushing “transgender bullshit,” got arrested for trespassing at a meeting, and was only further encouraged when the charges were dropped and he faced no consequences. Much of the rhetoric attributed to him in this article sounds like the same nonsense that so-called “sovereign citizens” have used to avoid paying taxes.

ProPublica also exposed the use of “family reunification camps,” which often force children to attend with parents who may have been neglectful or even abusive. After the article ran, Colorado became the first state to limit courts’ ability to use them.

Will Leitch wrote an op ed for the New York Times about how Trump running for President again means that families will be back to fighting again.

Who’s footing the bills for Ron DeSantis’s Presidential campaign? The Michigan nonprofit funding him won’t say where the money is coming from.

And who’s footing the bills for Kyrsten Sinema? Turns out the dark-money group behind her is funded a long of extreme right-wingers, like Harlan Crow, James Rupert Murdoch, and Nelson Peltz.

An Illinois state investigation found the Catholic Church lied about how many children its clergy abused, putting the actual number at nearly two thousand since 1950. These are actual groomers, people who have harmed kids and a tax-exempt organization that allowed it to continue.

If you live in Florida and want to restore reproductive rights, here’s a petition you can print out and sign to try to get abortion on the ballot there.

Meanwhile, Florida is going to arrest people in bathrooms regardless of their legal gender status. How anyone can miss the parallels to Germany under the Nazis is beyond me.

Ohio’s Senate passed a bill that will gut diversity initiatives in higher education in the state while curtailing academic freedom

The Washington Post examined book-banning requests across the country and found that the majority came from just eleven ~~cranks~~ people.

Lauren Boebert, she of good Christian family values and whatnot, is getting a divorce. It says a lot about why Republican men are pushing as hard as ever on their misogynistic policy goals.

Exavier Pope wrote about how Ja Morant was wrong, but the reaction to him says more about America’s fear of Black gun owners.

With a little sodium citrate, you can make any cheese into a silky-smooth cheese sauce, even cheeses that don’t ordinarily melt.

I actually backed Filler, a new storage system for small-box board games, on Kickstarter. When I first got the pitch, I thought it was silly, but then I realized how many of these games I own and how sloppy they tend to look on the shelves.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board games, florida, food science, guns, illinois, links, longreads, nebraska, ohio, stick to baseball, the swamp, trans rights

→ May 20, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/20/23.

I had two new posts this week for subscribers to the Athletic – a minor league scouting notebook on prospects with the Brewers, Pirates, and Phillies; and a draft scouting notebook looking at Max Clark, Dillon Head, Mac Horvath, and more.

My guests on the Keith Law Show the last two weeks have been Max Bazerman, discussing his new book Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop; and Russell Carleton, talking about his upcoming second book The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Baseball. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Just a reminder you can also find me on Spoutible and Bluesky as @keithlaw.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This (extremely long) piece from the New York Times Magazine on a woman whose dementia led to a long battle between her daughters and her second husband, whom the daughters accused of abusing and manipulating her, is sad and sobering for all of us with parents getting into that age range.

Three pieces from ProPublica: How South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn (D) conspired with Republicans to gerrymander his way into a safer seat, and how a former NFL player has sold “child ID kits” to eleven states despite no evidence they work and free alternatives already available, and how NYPD investigators never even asked for footage showing that one officer tried to stop his partner from killing an unarmed Black man. The investigators cleared both officers of any wrongdoing.

A new research paper found, once again, that sports stadiums/facilities do not generate enough ancillary economic activity to justify their costs to taxpayers when subsidized by the government. This Boston Business Journal piece covers the paper’s examination of Polar Park in Worcester.

NBC News has a longread on how conservatives took over the school board in Woodland Park, Colorado, ushering in a right-wing curriculum, forcing out employees who spoke out, and engaging in apparent self-dealing.

The Guardian spoke to a number of Florida teachers about their experiences under the state’s draconian new laws restricting their speech and lesson content, with several saying they’re considering leaving the state and/or the profession. Florida already has a severe teacher shortage, by the way.

The science behind reverse osmosis filtering was unclear, until a paper published in April upended the previous model and opened up the possibility of new membranes that make filtration, including desalination, more energy-efficient.

A conservative “foundation” recruited fifteen men at a Poughkeepsie homeless shelter to pretend they were veterans kicked out of a hotel to make room for migrants coming up from New York City. The plan fooled state Assemblyman Brian Maher (R), who fed the outrage machine until he had to admit he’d been had.

The Philly Inquirer has a story on a victim of the romance scam known as ‘pig butchering’ who ended up out $450,000 to a con artist she met on Hinge.

An invasive weed known as stinknet has taken over Arizona’s Sonoran desert, fueling wildfires, crowding out native species, and causing lung problems for nearby residents. And it’s spreading.

The executive director of the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana wrote in the Washington Post about the Republican-controlled state government’s attack on the institute, which prohibits the university from using any state funds to support the institute. It’s culture-war bullshit that impedes important research.

Bryan Slaton has resigned his post in the Texas legislature after it emerged that he’d behaved inappropriately with an intern. The Republican once introduced legislation to ban children from attending drag shows, claiming it was some form of grooming.

Meanwhile, doctors at Austin’s Dell Clinic who were treating trans kids there are leaving after the state’s under-indictment AG Ken Paxton announced an investigation into the facility after the duplicitous far-right Project Veritas claimed it was conducting surgery on kids as young as eight. The Texas Observer found documents from the also right-wing American College of Pediatricians setting out a playbook for how to defund trans care in Texas.

The current moral panic over trans kids is part of a larger effort to control the lives of American youths, argues researcher Dr. Chris Pepin-Neff in Scientific American.

Richard Uilhein, the right-wing billionaire owner of U-Line, is one of the chief backers of the proposed Ohio amendment that will make it harder for future amendments to pass by raising the threshold from 50% to 60%. Don’t buy from U-Line!

Ohio Republicans are trying to follow Florida’s lead in banning DEI programs at state universities and mandating their sort of indoctrination in the classroom, along with the definitely not problematic proposal to base tenure on whether a professor taught with “bias.”

I know you’re shocked, but Iowa’s new law allowing residents to use school vouchers for private and even religious schools has led many of those schools to raise tuition in response. You’d think they might have learned from the national student loan fiasco.

Nebraska legislator Megan Hunt is the hero we need. Just don’t call her a Democrat.

I agree with everything in this Mary Sue post about the disappointing S3 of Ted Lasso, which has none of the things that made the show good in its first two seasons. But at least the episodes are longer!

A woman in Utah who wrote a children’s book about how to deal with grief after her husband died has now been charged with his murder.

Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has no problem with white nationalists serving in the U.S. military.

The Arab League has quietly reinstated Syria, more than a decade after the nation and its murderous dictator President Bashad al-Assad were expelled for violent reprisals against protestors leading up to the country’s 12-year civil war.

Two mass shootings in Serbia have led to public demonstrations and a wave of people turning in their guns. Must be nice.

Jasper Fforde ffans like me have waited thirteen years for a sequel to his novel Shades of Grey. It’s finally coming, as Red Side Story will be released in the UK in February of 2024. No word yet on a U.S. release; the fourth Dragonslayer novel didn’t get one, which is not a great sign.

Ben Collins wrote at NBC News about how Twitter has disabled some key content-moderation controls, allowing things like animal torture videos to spread across the site. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has been busy spreading misinformation about the Texas mall shooter.

The best piece I read on CNN’s Trump Town Hall faceplant was, in fact, this one on Teen Vogue.

This post from WBUR’s Here and Now recommending some modern board games for families is actually very good.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, arizona, baseball, board game news, Economics, florida, frauds, iowa, links, longreads, nebraska, ohio, police, science, social media, stick to baseball, syria, texas, the swamp, trans rights, tv, voter suppression

→ February 25, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/24/23.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I’ve had several new posts, including a ranking of the top 20 prospects for impact in the majors in 2023 and a draft blog post on the Globe Life College Baseball Showdown, which featured TCU (Brayden Taylor), Vanderbilt (Enrique Bradfield Jr.), and more. I chatted with three of our beat writers about prospects – Dan Connolly about the Orioles’ farm system, Jen McCaffrey about the Red Sox’ farm system, and Dave O’Brien about Atlanta’s farm system.

I’ve done a bunch of podcasts and other interviews in the last few weeks, including the East Village Times’ podcast (Padres), the Seattle Sports Union podcast, the Phillies Nation podcast, WTMJ Milwaukee’s Extra Innings podcast, the Locked on Dodgers podcast, and the Sox Machine podcast (White Sox).

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Quacks & Co., the kids’ version of the great push-your-luck game The Quacks of Quedlinburg.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke with Fangraphs’ lead prospect writer Eric Longenhagen as we compared some of our rankings on our top 100s (here’s his top 100) and discussed the top of this year’s draft class. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter on Friday, which marks my sixth so far this year, a better pace than I had in 2022, something I hope to keep up now that I’ll be writing something pretty much every week for the Athletic.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times Magazine has a long feature on Ghibli Park, a sort-of theme park built around the works of animation legend Hayao Miyazaki.

Ninety-four women allege a Utah doctor sexually assaulted them, but a judge said Utah law makes this medical malpractice and threw their cases out. Utah legislators could just change the law, but they’re too busy trying to kill trans kids.

Air pollution might be causing us to lose our sense of smell.

The Appeal has stories of pregnant people who’ve been shackled and abused while in custody in Harris County, Texas, jails, the same jail system that saw 28 prisoners die last year and four already in 2023.

De la Soul’s catalog is supposed to come to streaming platforms in March. OkayPlayer spoke to the attorney who helped clear most of the samples on their earliest work and made this possible.

Funds from two programs created by then-President Trump’s Department of Agriculture to provide disaster relief to farmers flowed to wealthy landowners instead, such as a $983 payment to the owner of a $23 million mansion right near Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago resort. Over $5.5 million in total funds from those programs went to residents of the 75 wealthiest ZIP codes in the U.S.

The New Republic is one of the few outlets doing real reporting on the effects of the train derailment and chemical release in East Palestine, Ohio, such as this article on dying animals and residents’ respiratory distress, and this editorial on the fake conspiracy theories around it and the real corruption that allowed it all to happen.

There’s a network of neo-Nazi home-schoolers operating in Ohio, and the state says they can’t do anything about it. Maybe if they were teaching critical race theory and trans rights?

Biden’s EPA has streamlined a program to approve alternatives to fossil fuels that originally covered biofuels but also includes fuels made from recycled plastics – even though one such process is likely to release a highly carcinogenic byproduct into the atmosphere. And the EPA won’t release details of the process, right down to the names of the chemicals involved.

The majority-Black city of Jackson, Mississippi, is likely to end up with a separate, state-run court district with judges appointed entirely by white politicians, thanks to a Republican-authored bill that already passed the state’s lower chamber.

A police officer in Pueblo County, Colorado, shot and killed an unarmed man in the car line outside a school because the man got into the wrong car by mistake. Video shows the officer gave no warning and neither he nor his partner gave the victim, 32-year-old Richard Ward, any assistance as he bled to death on the ground. The DA declined to charge the officers, saying they “justifiably feared for their lives.”

A publisher planned to revise several of Roald Dahl’s books to remove potentially offensive language, but after criticism it appears they relented. I have a lot of thoughts on this, most of them opposing the effort. You can’t undo history, and art is a comment and reflection of its time. With a children’s book, you always have the choice not to read the book to your kids, or to read it in full and explain why some language or imagery is inappropriate or offensive. I’m also not sure what good this does for books with millions of copies in print.

New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker has a history of activism through his work and his social media commentary. He also criticized journalists who argued that the paper’s coverage of trans issues has been slanted when he co-signed a letter calling them “activists.”

From the Onion: It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible.

The chaos and breakdowns within Twitter hampered rescue efforts after this month’s earthquake that killed thousands in Turkey and Syria.

Russia used state media to support Canada’s so-called “Freedom Convoy” that protested the country’s attempts to limit the spread of COVID-19.

I grew up in Smithtown, New York, and from kindergarten through twelfth grade I attended public schools in that district, which is now further embarrassing itself by adding armed guards at its schools despite no actual evidence that these prevent mass shootings.

Board game news: The small publisher Holy Grail Games announced they’re shutting down.

25^th Century Games has a Kickstarter up for three new tile-laying games: Agueda, Color Field, and Donut Shop. As of Friday morning it’s less than $2000 away from its funding goal.

The Search for Lost Species is over 11x funded already on Kickstarter; it’s the sequel to The Search for Planet X, my #1 game of 2020.

The Kickstarter for the last standalone expansion for Set a Watch is also fully funded, with just five days to go.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, children's literature, environment, hip-hop, japan, links, longreads, mississippi, miyazaki, ohio, police, russia, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, utah

→ January 14, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/14/23.

My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30^th.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).

I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.

Patrick Burleigh wrote about growing up with testotoxicosis, an extremely rare condition that causes boys to begin puberty as young as age two.

The Denver Post tells how a consultant to the Denver Art Museum used her position and imprimatur to help an art smuggler move looted items from holy sites in southeast Asia. The consultant, Emma Bunker, died last year.

The New York Times, which was also guilty of the sins described in this article, looks at how biased polls that implied there would be a ‘red wave’ this November screwed up the narrative and led Democrats to commit resources to many of the wrong races.

The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.

You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.

Dr. Céline Gounder, Grant Wahl’s widow, wrote about how anti-vaxxers also pounced on her husband’s death to spread misinformation and outright lies. Fucking ghouls.

A romance novelist faked her own death, and has now returned like nothing ever happened.

The cousin of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter flagged down a police car after an accident. One of the officers Tased the man so extensively that he died of cardiac arrest. Keenan Anderson was unarmed. The LAPD is already blaming the victim, saying he had cocaine in his system, which, last I checked, is not a capital crime.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is weaponizing Florida’s public schools, using political appointees to try to stifle any future dissent coming from its students. Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin explains just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be.

Damar Hamlin’s tragedy has been fodder for anti-vaxxer lies. The BBC also looked at how the conspiracy theorists pounced. So did WBUR, while Forbes looked at the backlash to the anti-vaxxers, including a tweet from yours truly.

A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.

Meanwhile, public confidence in the MMR vaccine, which fights measles, mumps, and rubella, is waning after two years of attacks from denialists and grifters against COVID-19 vaccines.

The BBC invited a cardiologist turned anti-vax grifter (he charges $10K-$20K per speaking appearance now) on air to discuss a cholesterol medication, but he hijacked the interview to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Germany has warned Twitter that it’s running afoul of EU laws against misinformation.

An adjunct professor at Hamline University in Minnesota followed multiple steps before showing a painting of Muhammad in an art class, and was still fired after a Muslim student complained.

Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.

Writer Hilary de Vries described her struggle getting effective treatment for her sister, who has schizoaffective disorder and has trouble holding on to housing.

New York City is paying $135,000 to a homeless man its cops beat and dragged off the subway. The cops lied about him hitting them first, but body-camera footage proved them wrong.

One recent poll found that two-thirds of Britons now want a referendum to rejoin the EU. So it was Leave, Remain, or Regret?

The Times continues to uncover lies and inconsistencies in Rep. George Santos’ background, including possible campaign finance violations.

CNBC joins the parade of investigations into Santos, this time showing his campaign may have committed fraud when a staffer allegedly posed as a member of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s team on fundraising calls.

Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.

For example, Central Bucks schools in Bucks County, which I think is where Deliverance was filmed, have banned teachers from displaying Pride flags or other inclusive materials in classrooms, thanks to a school board dominated by right-wingers.

Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.

Texas’ Department of Agriculture issued a report stating that climate change threatens the state’s food supply. Of course, Gov. Greg Abbott, when he’s not busy spending Texas citizens’ money on busing migrants to northern cities, has blocked local attempts to fight climate change.

In other performative political stunts, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) banned state officials from using the gender-inclusive term “Latinx.” She also signed an order banned state schools from teaching critical race theory, which I hope some Arkansas journalist asks her to define.

Alabama, fighting for the title of America’s biggest backwater, is now claiming (via its Attorney General) that women there who use abortion pills obtained from out of state will be prosecuted, which I don’t think is constitutional but I’m not a lawyer.

A deputy campaign manager for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent an email to teachers asking them to encourage students to volunteer for her re-election campaign in exchange for class credit.

A baseball player for Northwestern has filed a defamation suit against multiple women who accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, even one who did not make those accusations public, according to this Deadspin story.

Scientists have observed quantum interference between two different kinds of particles – similar to entanglement, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” which occurs between two related particles – for the first time.

Why is cutting the U.S. defense budget such a forbidden concept?

Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal explains why passing gun control laws is futile with an archconservative judiciary in place.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, academia, alabama, florida, guns, links, longreads, new york, pennsylvania, philadelphia, physics, police, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

→ November 12, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/12/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote a piece on the folly of the five-year deal for Edwin Díaz, based on the dismal history of deals of four years or longer for free-agent relievers. This was on the heels of last week’s ranking of the top 50 free agents this winter.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Spill, a Pandemic-like cooperative game where players work to contain the damage from a Deepwater Horizon-like oil spill.

My free email newsletter returned last weekend, and with Twitter possibly on its way out, that’s one good way to keep up with everything I write. I’ve also set up accounts on counter.social and cohost, in case either of those proves a worthy alternative (the former is actually okay, if a bit quiet). Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Fiji is among the countries most at risk from the negative effects of climate change, so the country has begun moving entire villages before they end up drowned by rising sea levels. Meanwhile, Egypt is trying to discourage families from having more than two children because climate change is threatening its water supply.
Intelligencer has a long profile of Axel Springer CEO Matthias Döpfner, whose empire includes Politico, Business Insider, and the highly influential German tabloid Bild, calling him part Murdoch and park Musk.
Jane Gross was a pioneer among sportswriters, becoming the first woman allowed to enter an NBA clubhouse (to do her actual job) in 1975, paving the way for generations of women sportswriters who asked for nothing more than the same rights afforded to their male counterparts. Gross died this week at 75.
Four conservative Supreme Court Justices attended a party held by the arch-right Federalist Society this week. Charles S. Pierce calls the four “lackeys” of the group that helped former President Trump shove the entire federal judiciary to the right.
Molly Jong-Fast wrote about Twitter’s implosion and why she’s not leaving it (yet), while one of Twitter’s own lawyers warned that Elon Musk is putting the company at risk of incurring millions of dollars in fines.
The Washington Post has a story on how Twitter & Facebook gave a free pass to GOP election deniers this year.
Dr. Jen Gunter, author of The Vagina Bible, wrote about medical misinformation, social media, and the illusory truth effect, concluding with some advice on how to spot and deal with misinformation when you see it.
60 Minutes ran a segment last Sunday on how social media algorithms further polarize the electorate.
It doesn’t help when Fox News “sources” a bogus story from the misinformation-purveying Twitter account LibsOfTikTok. The claim attacked Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and ran the night before the election.
The midterm results were far better for Democrats than any polls or pundits indicated. Elie Mystal says that taking this as good news is the wrong response, given how Republican gerrymandering continued to artificially boost their results in the House and in state legislatures.
Indeed, four states used gerrymandered maps that courts had deemed illegal in this election, including Ohio, where Republicans have flat-out ignored multiple rulings saying that their map violated federal law.
Meanwhile, Tennessee has made it harder for people convicted of felonies to vote, resulting in over a fifth of its Black citizens losing this constitutional right. That’s on top of gerrymandering the shit out of Nashville to create a red district in a heavily blue city.
I’m sure most of you have already seen this, but the plaintiff in the suit to stop President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program themselves took a $50,000 PPP loan and accepted forgiveness for it rather than paying it back.
The lack of a response from fellow NBA players to Kyrie Irving spreading antisemitic propaganda on social media is disappointing, writes Candace Buckner for the Washington Post.
If you can get past the clickbait tone, there’s a good parenting tip in this article from the mother of the CEO of Youtube and the co-founder/CEO of 23AndMe.
Claims of an “immunity debt” from several years of masking and isolation are unsupported by science. Your immune system doesn’t just forget everything it learned because you weren’t exposed to more pathogens.
The Dragonfly 44 Galaxy appears to comprise 99% dark matter, which would challenge existing ideas of how galaxies evolve.
Board game news: Fit to Print, a new game from the publishers of Cascadia/Calico and the designer of Wormholes & Tiny Towns, is already over $100K raised on Kickstarter in just a few days. I just played Verdant, the newest game from Flatout (the publisher), last night, and it’s excellent.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-semitism, astronomy, board game news, climate change, gerrymandering, links, longreads, ohio, scotus, social media, stick to baseball, tennessee, the swamp

→ October 29, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/29/22.

One new post for subscribers to the Athletic this week – a fairly quickly-written post on what the Yankees could do this winter to fix their club, notably their offense. I’m about ¾ of the way through the top 50 free agents rankings, which will run the day after the World Series ends.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the trick-taking game Cat in the Box, which takes the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment as its inspiration. Cards have numbers but no suits until they’re played – as in, when they’re observed. Apparently my review was so positive the game has sold out everywhere!

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Joe Posnanski, who helped me preview the World Series, talk a little about the highs and lows of the playoffs so far, and talk a little about free agency. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and at some point I’ll send another one out. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the best story yet on how the couplpe that owns the shipping materials behemoth U-Line uses their profits to fund all kinds of extreme right-wing causes, from election denial to anti-LGBTQ+ laws to anti-abortion laws and more. They oppose anything that might improve workers’ rights or raise taxes on the ultra-rich, too. If you get a box made by U-Line, contact the shipper and ask them to use someone else. I’ve done this many times and only once have I gotten a negative reply – and I won’t do business with that company again.

This Atlantic story about a realtor in Michigan who was convinced he’d cracked the state lottery’s algorithm is a great illustration of our innate tendencies to see patterns in randomness – and how we can convince ourselves of almost anything.

Music journalist and author Caryn Rose ranked all 234 U2 songs for Rolling Stone. I found myself agreeing with most of the top of the list, although as someone who first encountered the band through MTV’s heavy rotation of “New Year’s Day,” I think that one is too low.

MLB.com writer Matthew Monaghan wrote a lovely piece for Travel + Leisure on revisiting his late wife’s favorite vacation spot, Bermuda. It’s a tough but beautiful read.

Texas no longer requires a permit for handguns, leading to more spontaneous shootings. It sounds like police – the blue we’re supposed to back – don’t seem to like this new lawless reality.

The massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, again, a state that decided that anyone can carry a gun without a permit, has made an activist out of one of the 10-year-old survivors.

Why didn’t St. Louis police take the gun from the kid who killed a teacher and another student in a school there last week, since he failed a background check?

At The Verge, Nilay Patel writes how Elon Musk can’t possibly adhere to his stated “free speech” goals and run what was already a “disaster clown car company” profitably. It’s not hard to agree – Twitter hasn’t been growing, its ad revenues lag behind any competitors, it faces a tangle of regulations and pressure from markets where Musk’s Tesla wants to grow, and the site has never figured out how to deal with harassment and abuse. I’m not leaving, but I’ve already been engaging less on the site, and if a viable alternative emerges I’ll gladly check it out.

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories spreading on the farcical social media app Truth Social have led to actual armed idiots “patrolling” around ballot boxes to try to spot voter fraud.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to three scientists for their work on quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein once derided as “spooky action at a distance.” Author John Horgan writes of the beauty of this work and how it seems to defy common sense for Scientific American.

Physicist Peter Fisher gave a talk at my alma mater about the search for dark matter and the theory that WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are what make up this missing mass.

The Washington Post reports on the network of people helping direct pills to terminate pregnancies to people in states where abortion is now illegal.

Disinformation dealer Dinesh D’Souza’s publisher deleted defamatory details after recalling his new book 2000 Mules, even though he’d promised to name names. What a ding-dong.

As President, Trump had his hotels charge the Secret Service – and thus, all of us who pay taxes – five times the maximum room rate allowed by federal law, and then he lied about it.

I don’t link to the Federalist, a disinformation-spewing site funded by the owners of U-Line, very often, but this piece arguing that conservatives should fight for stronger government and more intervention in all areas of society certainly seems to remove the mask from the extreme right, because that is not conservatism – it’s fascism.

In good Administration news that seems to be flying under the radar, President Biden is moving to cancel a program to develop a new submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile, which wouldn’t have been ready until 2035 and which the administration says is redundant with existing weapons. Some anti-nuclear weapon groups say Biden hasn’t gone far enough. The military, meanwhile, wants all the weapons.

As the parent of a teenager, I often feel like part of my job is try to reduce the stresses she faces in school and life, because we hear so much about how much stress our kids are under and I have a natural instinct to want to protect her. Psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues instead that we should teach our teenagers to embrace stress so they’re better equipped to handle it throughout their lives.

Longtime Philly Inquirer writer Stephanie Farr wrote a fun piece on Philadelphia sports fandom.

Over 250 writers signed a letter to Penguin Random House protesting the publisher’s $2 million book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, given her pivotal role in removing a fundamental right from tens of millions of Americans.

Board game news: Aegean Sea, the newest game from Glory to Rome co-designer Carl Chudyk, is up on Backerkit with 12 days to go.

Oh My Brain!, a new game from Bruno Cathala and Theo Riviere, is now up for pre-order at $5 off on 25^th Century’s website.

The Queen’s Dilemma, a standalone sequel game to the Spiel-nominated King’s Dilemma, is closing in on $400K raised on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, guns, links, longreads, misinformation, missouri, parenting, philadelphia, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ March 13, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/13/22.

I released my first ranking of draft prospects for 2022 over on The Athletic, and held a live Q&A to take questions about it. I also wrote up the two trades from Saturday night, involving Chris Bassitt and Isiah Kiner-Falefa/Mitch Garver.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Adventures of Robin Hood, a narrative game from the designer of the Legends of Andor, but with simpler mechanics and a clever encounter system with a two-layered board.

I spoke with the Locked On Dodgers podcast in a two-part interview you can watch here and here. I also sent a new issue of my free email newsletter, talking about Monty Python and the development of my sense of humor.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times asks what it means that even Americans are consuming less beef.
Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on Grimes, talking about her persona, her upcoming concept album, and that guy.
Kathryn Schulz, who appeared on my podcast a few weeks ago, wrote about the complicated history of Bambi, the book, as it enters the public domain.
ProPublica reports on barbaric conditions in Louisiana’s largest juvenile detention facility in Louisiana, part of the race in the Deep South to see which state can get to the 19^th century fastest.
Conservative billionaires pushing fake news are becoming a major US export, as now a single South Korean oligarch is pushing conspiracy theories to keep the two Koreas at war.
Vulture has a wonderful interview with Murderville showrunner Krister Johnson on the “treasure chest” of in-jokes, Easter eggs, and other small gags on Homestar Runner.
Melissa Rodriguez, the former executive chef at Del Posto, is now opening three new restaurants in that space, including a high-end pizzeria. Resy interviewed her about the venture, the pandemic, and the end of Del Posto (which was good, but wildly overpriced).
Several research papers still in the pre-print stage have put more nails in the coffin of the lab-leak hypothesis have appeared in the last two weeks. The New Republic looks at how we can learn from this to try to prevent the next zoonotic pandemic.
The best path forward now is for institutions to work to improve mitigation efforts, including encouraging further vaccinations.
Cobb County is taking a big loss on its public funding of Truist Park. This Axios piece has a quick summary of the same.
Stop acting like pediatric deaths from COVID-19 don’t matter because of their numbers. Those children had names.
Mask requirements in schools reduced COVID-19 cases. We’re going to see increases in cases again now that schools everywhere are lifting mask mandates.
I don’t understand how asking people to harass a journal editor to try to short-circuit the peer review process is remotely ethical, but Alina Chan, who wrote a book that pushes the lab-leak hypothesis, is long gone around the bend at this point.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had a long article on where to eat and what to do in Wilmington, hitting our big 3 fine-dining restaurants (Le Cavalier, La Fia, and Bardea), and several other favorite spots of ours (Swigg, Wilma’s, De.co Food Hall, The Queen), although they whiffed badly with some of their inclusions (Mrs. Robino’s, Wilmington Country Store).
ABC News ran a long segment (about 12 minutes) on the lack of any evidence to support the use of ivermectin against COVID-19.
Now bot accounts are using false fact-checks to spread fake news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee appointed an arms dealer who sold ammunition to the Aurora mass shooter to the state’s board of education, not long after appointing a 9/11 hoaxer to the state’s “textbook commission.” What a shitshow.
Brandon Tensley writes at CNN about how and why the GOP is targeting LGBTQ+ rights across the south and far west. I think the answer is simple: They’re pandering to their evangelical base. This is why the raving lunatics running Idaho want life in prison for anyone providing gender-affirming care to trans kids.
And in Texas, a family that once invited Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife to dinner found themselves the target of one of the state’s witch-hunt investigations into families with trans kids. Shame on anyone who votes Republican in Texas this year. This policy is going to lead to more suicides and grievous harm to vulnerable people, all to satisfy a small population of bigots.
Disney has been censoring same-sex affection in Pixar’s films, according to several employees, who wrote a letter also demanding that the company stop donating to Florida legislators who voted for the state’s “don’t say gay” bill.
A Georgia man took an $85,000 SBA loan for his business, and then spent two-thirds of it on a rare Pokémon card.
An American man wanted on rape and sexual assault charges in Utah is accused of faking his own death and pretending to be someone else in a COVID ward in Scotland, where he’s since married a British woman. The man, suspected of being George Rossi, has been identified by his tattoos, and his adoptive father also says that it’s him.
A Trump-appointed judge dismissed a complaint against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, alleging that his support of the January 6^th insurrection made him ineligible to run for office, because people might take up arms otherwise.
Apparently Trump has been holding “contests” where small-donor dollars would win trips to meet him, but then they never award the prizes, according to a report from the Washington Post.
Board game news: Former Z-Man Games employees have founded a new publisher, Moon Crab Games, and announced their first game, Leviathan Wilds, a cooperative, tactical game of movement on various boards representing massive creatures the players try to climb.
Hamlet, a cute town-building game from the designer of the lovely game Petrichor, is fully funded already on Kickstarter.
So is Tiwanaku (formerly known as Pachamama), a Minesweeper-inspired board game from the publishers of Magic Maze.
And so is Envelopes of Cash, a game about corrupt recruiting in college football (so, you know, reality), designed by a reader of mine.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, coronavirus, delaware, Economics, frauds, idaho, lgbt rights, links, longreads, louisiana, pizza, russia, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, the swamp

→ March 5, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/5/22.

I answered some questions on the Blue Jays’ farm system this week, which was a transcription of my appearance on our Spin Rates podcast. The Klawchats returned this week. I’m planning to start written draft coverage this upcoming week with a top 30.

On my own podcast, my guest was author and journalist Kathryn Schulz, talking about her wonderful new memoir Lost and Found, about the death of her father and how she met and married her wife, the author Casey Cep. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. I appeared on the Romantic About Baseball podcast as well.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Why are Wisconsin judges charging women who accuse their husbands of abuse? ProPublica documents the case of one woman who did just that and lost custody of her four kids because the judge charged her with contempt four times and ordered her arrest.
The New Yorker has a tremendous interview with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, conducted by Helen Rosner, as his new book The Wok hits shelves on Tuesday.
My friend Tim Grierson wrote about Tears for Fears’ enduring hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
I don’t know if this New York Times piece, on how RFK Jr.’s family friends feel about his descent into anti-vaxx grifting, is helpful or not.
Two new pre-prints show more evidence for a zoonotic origin for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. There’s also a follow-up thread that underscores one of the findings that wasn’t well-covered in that article. Needless to say, the lab-leak grifters were quick to attack – the author of a book that depends on the lab-leak hypothesis asked her followers on twitter to harass one of the journal’s editors to try to stop publication, and is trying increasingly desperate attacks on the pre-prints.
Also, a new journal article found that gender-affirming care improved mental health outcomes in transgender children. Just in case you weren’t clear on what was going on in Texas and anywhere the Republican Party is in charge. Oh, Texas Children’s Hospital has paused hormone therapies for trans kids, thanks to the state’s directive. These could be your kids. We should all be outraged.
Of course, now pro-Putin propaganda is flooding anti-vax groups online, along with the usual anti-science and anti-Semitic nonsense.
There’s no evidence that wearing a mask leads to physical or psychological harm for kids. They don’t cause carbon dioxide poisoning, don’t lead to developmental delays, and help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Biden Administration’s most recent moves have killed our collective approach to slowing the pandemic, by taking measures designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society and making them into personal decisions.
Now anti-vaxxers are trying to convince parents not to take their kids to the pediatrician.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and state Sen. Wendy Rogers are both directly connected to white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The connection may be part of why Ducey declined to run for the U.S. Senate this week.
Supreme Court nominations have become a farce because of a Supreme Court ruling, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
While nobody was paying much attention, Trump endorsed a right-wing plan to take over the GOP – and steal an election or two.
The newly-elected government of Honduras is going to ban open-pit mining, a profitable but environmentally disastrous practice.
A small bit of good environmental news: the scourge of purple sea urchins that has devastated the California coast’s kelp forests has led to a new industry that harvests and farms the urchins to sell uni, the roe of sea urchins often found at sushi restaurants, in turn easing some of the pressure on the kelp forests.
Missouri lawmakers are rushing to legalize sports betting, but only in casinos and sports stadiums. So who’s funding them?
Legendary video game designer Sid Meier (Civilization, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon) warned of the dangers of the industry’s shift towards in-game purchases.
My friend Zabe Bent was quoted in a brief NY Times piece on how best to design bike lanes in cities.
Board game news: Capstone Games opened pre-orders for the Terra Mystica: Big Box, including the base game, two expansions, and a solo “Automa” mode, for $149.95.
Library Labyrinth, a cooperative library-themed board game from the left-wing publisher Dissent Games, is now on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, environment, links, longreads, missouri, Music, russia, stick to baseball, the swamp, video games

→ 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

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