For ESPN+ subscribers, my annual list of players I was wrong about went up on Thursday, including Matt Chapman and Harrison Bader. I also held a Klawchat this week.
Over at Ars Technica, I reviewed the new digital adaptation of the complex board game Scythe, available now on Steam. I don’t love the underlying game of Scythe but the implementation here is spectacular.
Here on the dish, I’ve set up a new index page for all my board game reviews in alphabetical order; there are 160 there now and I’ll continue to update it as I post new reviews here or on other sites. I reviewed two more games here this week: Mesozooic and Founders of Gloomhaven.
I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter earlier this week; it’s irregular in timing and content, but hey, it’s free.
And now, the links. I do want to warn anyone who might be triggered by such stories that there are quite a few links here relating to sexual assault.
- Longreads first: Molly Ringwald writes in the New Yorker about John Hughes’ problematic treatment of women in his movies, notably The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles.
- The Washington Post‘s Elizabeth Bruenig has a very long, devastating read on a clearcut rape case in Texas that prosecutors dismissed as he-said/she-said, even though there was concrete evidence to support her claims, she reported right away (another #WhyIDidntReport case), and statements from her assailants that were quickly proven false. The rapists were never charged.
- Mari Uyehara writes for GQ on the unending apologia for bad men.
- Craig Calcaterra exposes how UNC Chapel Hill’s football stadium is named for a man who led a white supremacist massacre in 1898. The school didn’t answer his requests for comment, probably while they came up with bullshit excuses for the name.
- Writer-author Joe Moran writes for the Guardian about the pleasures of ‘slow reading’, which I get, although I am still a very fast reader.
- Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system (and part of its name – Linux is a portmanteau of Linus and Unix, on which Linux was based), has stepped aside as head of the Linux Foundation after years of abusive behavior aimed at his colleagues.
- Alyssa Leader sued Harvard over its mishandling over the sexual assault case where she was the victim and has since become an advocate for victims, especially those on campus. She responded to one of the women defending Brett Kavanaugh with a thread that dismantles that so-called defense.
- Deborah Copaken was raped at Harvard in 1988. In the wake of the Kavanaugh revelations, she reached out to her attacker this week – and got an apology. Her sisters were in my college class, but I don’t know the author. (This article may contain triggers for victims of sexual assault.)
- The Washington Post asked a former sex crimes prosecutor to look at the victim’s claims against Kavanaugh; the former prosecutor deems the accusations credible, and explains why, answering questions like why the victim didn’t report sooner.
- Whitney McIntosh wrote for SBNation why Melisa Reidy had every right to publish her accusations against Addison Russell now, rather than right away or on anyone’s timeline but her own.
- A white man in Washington is suing the state, claiming that a DNA test shows he’s (slightly) black and thus should be treated as such. For what it’s worth, one of those tests said I’m 1% Nigerian.
- Minor league baseball players are exporing unionization in response to the clause in the Republicans’ (very unpopular) tax law from last year that exempted MLB and MiLB from minimum wage laws.
- The Senate passed the Music Modernization Act this week, fixing the salmagundi of state copyright laws for songs written before 1972 while making it easier for artists to get paid by streaming services.
- The NRA and their Russian allies on social media often copied each other’s tweets and commentary, according to this NPR article.
- Arizona’s State Superintendent of schools appointed a young-earth creationist to review the state’s science education standards, and he already pushed word changes into the curriculum. The dingbat in question, Joseph Kezele, claims that there is “scientific evidence” to support creationism. Call your state reps, Arizonans.
- Cornell professor Brian Wansink’s research on eating habits and obesity led the USDA to tab him to lead a $22 million program to improve school lunches. This week, JAMA announced they were retracting six of his articles, the culmination of a year-long look into Wansink’s history of p-hacking, manipulating data, and even plagiarism. Wansink resigned from Cornell effective June of 2019.
- Two pieces of note for subscribers to The Athletic: Meredith Wills looks at the thicker laces on MLB baseballs, which explains much of the home run surge; and Jamey Newberg remembers the late Don Welke, who passed away this week at age 76. I knew Don from seeing him at games over the years and truly enjoyed talking to him.
- Lee Zeldin, a Republican Congressman from Long Island whose seat is in jeopardy in this year’s elections, used a picture of an Estonian lighthouse in an ad that was supposed to show the Montauk lighthouse. He’s being challenged by Democrat Perry Gershon.
- Deadspin’s Albert Burnenko tears apart a terrible New Yorker piece that asks, disingenuously, whether we should keep politics out of sports.
- More than a dozen people who were injured by the police “kettle” action during protests and riots last year in St. Louis are suing the city over their injuries. Many of the tactics the police used have since been prohibited by a preliminary injunction.
- Arizona Republican Paul Gosar is a conspiracy theory-spouting Congressman who has accused the FBI and DOJ of “treason,” so now, in a new political ad, his siblings are endorsing his opponent.
- My friend Tim Grierson writes for am New York about Paul Simon’s return to New York for his final concerts.
- Reason looks at the truth behind the TIME cover about teachers not getting by. It turns out that the initial TIME story omitted mention of the teacher’s base salary of $55,000.
- The Atlantic looks at the chicken industry as it enters an antibiotic-free era.
- Patrick Hruby writes in the Washington Post how ridiculous the NCAA’s claim that paying athletes would ruin their educations is.
- Women’s March Minnesota assembled a poster of Republican politicians’ quotes on rape.
- An ‘international pizza consultant’ claims that Portland, Oregon, is America’s best pizza city. I haven’t been to Portland since 1999, but I’m going to try to get there in the spring to check some of these places out.
- Board games: Greater than Games opened a Kickstarter for a new game called Homebrewers.
- Asmodee Digital quietly released a free-to-play (with in-app purchases) version of the abstract strategy game Onitama.
The gosar ad is the most amazing political ad I’ve seen. But I’m no expert cause political ads mostly suck and I avoid them. Either way he should coast into reelection as he is in a very safe seat. But wow. What’s a reunion like like that family?
Also I’m proud that Diane Douglas is out of office shortly in Arizona. The bad news is that many R candidates are kind of similar idiots to her
Make sure your vaccinations are in order before you go to Portland. Sigh. I love that place but they’re working hard to make me hate it.
Against my better judgment, I went and looked at the description of Clay Travis’s book, and it starts with this: “Have you ever tuned into your favorite sports highlights show, only to find the talking heads yammering about the newest Trump tweets or what an athlete thinks about the second amendment?” Well, no, actually when I watch highlights, I find SVP talking about the latest bad beats or Michael Irvin hyperventilating about momentum or something. Sure, “the Left” is ruining sports and we should keep politics out of it, except when politics wants to inject itself into the fray like when Trump had Pence pull that stunt at the Colts game last year. Really, it’s people like Travis and Skip Bayless who are doing their best to ruin sports. Fortunately, they only have so much of an audience.
I’ve been interested in the whole issue over teacher pay. My wife and I are both public high school teachers in Oregon, and both make over 50K per year. Are we underpaid compared to our education levels? Data would suggest so, but we are solidly middle class and can hardly cry poverty. There are some states where teacher pay, especially are the lower ends of the scale, are very low, and most lay people don’t give credit to how difficult being good at the job truly is, but let’s not act like every teacher in America is living in poverty or working multiple jobs. I’m much more interested in hiring more teachers (and thus reducing class sizes) than I am increasing my own salary.
In my life sciences field, graduate students receive a $20K-$30K stipend. Does the NCAA believe that those stipends are subverting graduate education?
The Kenan honored by UNC’s stadium is not actually as guilty as the man whose name is on the UNC-CH Student Union, Josephus Daniels, who was the racist editor of the Raleigh paper that helped *cause* the massacre/coup by starring up fear and resentment of black/white cooperation in Wilmington
https://civics.sites.unc.edu/files/2012/05/WilmingtonRaceRiotPPT.pdf :
“• Newspaper stories and public speeches of white supremacists were used to create fear of blacks in white citizens.
• White society was cautioned of “black beasts” who would harm white women and white society if not stopped.
• With the support of the racist editor of the News and Observer at the time, Josephus Daniels, who continually supported and printed such propaganda, white citizens were convinced that black equality would mean the end of society as they knew it.”
I admire the hell outta Ms. Ringwald’s attempt to revisit John Hughes’ legacy, but, wow is that piece all over the place. I agree with her primary points on how women were characterized and /or treated in Hughes’ films, but her words on Hughes’ other works seem…I dunno…superfluous?
My guess is that the piece was lightly edited, if at all, because of who the author is. It’s longer than it needs to be, and I thought Ringwald was trying to reconcile her own thoughts on Hughes’ legacy in front of us, rather than reaching a conclusion and writing a piece that explained it.
There were three follow-ups at the Washington Post for anyone who wanted more on the original story.
A survivor’s truth, hiding in plain sight
Amber Wyatt’s story of sexual assault needed only to be excavated and pieced together.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-survivors-truth-hiding-in-plain-sight/2018/09/19/c45d3ffa-bc25-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html
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Amber Wyatt told her story of rape. This is how the world responded.
An epilogue of hope and haunt.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/amber-wyatt-told-her-story-of-rape-this-is-how-the-world-responded/2018/09/21/ff11300a-bdda-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html
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After Amber Wyatt’s story of rape, readers had questions. Here are the answers.
A Q&A with columnist Elizabeth Bruenig.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/21/after-amber-wyatts-story-of-rape-readers-had-questions-here-are-the-answers/
RE: Chicken and antibiotics…I wonder if people are slowly becoming more accustomed to paying more money for better meat with better education about food. A friend of mine thinks that we pay too little for meat as it is and I agree. I’m fine with paying a little more if the animals aren’t treated with as many hormones or aren’t cooped up to their necks in their own filth. If the workers at these slaughterhouses get a little more in wages then all the better.
Also, check out Bon Appetit’s “Handcrafted” series. It’s amazing watching those chefs, butchers, and fishmongers display their craft. I definitely got caught in a Youtube rabbit hole with those videos.
The other issue with meat being so cheap is that it’s terrible for the environment and the climate, yet cheap meat encourages us to eat far more than we should. I’m not advocating everyone being vegetarian (and I’m not one), but the idea that we should be eating meat in every meal is just not sustainable.
If meat were more expensive, people would eat less. That’s probably a good thing at a societal level (improves the environment, reduces health care costs & lost productivity due to poor health), but not good for individual liberty, and opens up the question of whether eating meat will once again become a privilege of those with higher incomes.
We can make meat more expensive by banning the hazardous and/or cruel practices behind factory farming, including the growth-promotion use of antibiotics that has led to this boom in antibiotic resistance. I’d love to see that, as well as prohibiting the use of meat as a loss leader by grocery stores (such as selling turkeys below cost at Thanksgiving). But I’m not holding my breath.
At least for the poultry industry, IMO the curtailing of antibiotic use is due to FDA regulatory action more than consumer preference. Anecdotally, at my Flyover U there are several research groups collaborating with industry on pre/probiotics to encourage bird growth and curtail pathogen spread (Salmonella in particular). I’m personally quite skeptical about pre/probiotics actually doing anything at all, but that’s irrelevant to the broader goal of eliminating irresponsible antibiotic use.
Similar to UNC having a horribly named football stadium, so does The Citadel. Their stadium is named after Confederate general Johnson Hagood, who later served as South Carolina’s governor. Hagood is probably best well known as the commanding officer of Fort Wagner, which was famously attacked by the 54th Massachusetts regiment. He refused to allow the body of Robert Gould Shaw to be returned to the Union forces and may or may not have said, “We threw him in with his n***ers.” Tremendous guy, obviously.
coming to Portland? Would be happy to buy you a beverage or something.
I’m not convinced the pizza rankings are accurate, among the various spots, but we’ve only been here two years, so I haven’t been to all of them, or to all of them more than one time……
I do love this part of the site, I find things I otherwise wouldn’t. Thanks,
There’s a first round possibility up in Seattle, and if I fly all that way to see him, I’m going to take some time to come down to Portland too.
Keith, probably a mistake but your comment about the Don Welke piece in The Athletic seems to imply it was written by Dr. Wills. It’s a Jamey Newberg opus.
Thanks, I fixed that. I must have deleted his name by mistake when adding the link.