My second mock draft went up this week for
subscribers to the Athletic; I think it was a lot better than my first one,
which went up two weeks ago, based on the feedback I got from sources after it
was posted. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday to take your questions
about it. I’ll do another mock plus a draft ranking this upcoming week, then a
final mock on June 10th, the morning of the draft.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Azul: Summer Pavilions, the third game
in the Azul series (Azul and Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra). If you liked
either of the first two Azul games, you’ll probably like this one as well,
which offers the same tile-selection mechanic but new ways to place and score.
Here on the dish, I reviewed La Isla, a midweight game from the designer of
Castles of Burgundy and Carpe Diem.
My podcast this week featured Dr. Claude Steele, a psychology professor at Stanford and the author of Whistling Vivaldi, who spoke to me about stereotype threat and how players and evaluators might cope with it in sports. You can also listen on Apple, Stitcher, or Spotify. I also appeared on the Romantic About Baseball podcast to discuss my new book The Inside Game, the draft, and other issues in baseball.
The Inside Game has garnered several recommendations from major publications as a Father’s Day gift or for summer reading, including from Forbes, The New York Times, and Raise. My thanks to all of you who’ve already bought it; if you’re looking to pick up a copy, you can get it at bookshop.org or perhaps at a local bookstore if they’re reopening near you.
And now, the links … many of which are from the Washington Post this week, which wasn’t deliberate.
- Longreads first: The Daily Beast looks at the questionable fundraising efforts of Shaun King, sometimes known to his detractors as “Talcum X,” who has a history of not really accounting for funds he’s raised.
- The Salt Lake Tribune has a very useful, practical guide to how the coronavirus spreads in various public spaces, so you can assess the risk of various activities.
- We haven’t heard much about “draining the swamp” recently, have we? Trump is now appointing watchdogs beset by ‘preposterous’ conflicts of interest, like the one who is now responsible for investigating his own actions.
- Why do people often support or vote for narcissists in times of trouble? Professor Charles O’Reilly at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business explains that and how narcissistic leaders destroy from within.
- Meanwhile, Twitter finally took a very modest step to rein in Trump’s lies on their site, and Trump had a tantrum over it.
- Many African nations have had more progressive – and, to date, more successful – approaches to slowing the spread of coronavirus than the U.S. has, including aggressive lockdowns and bans on international travel.
- My colleague at the Athletic Marcus Thompson wrote about the murder of George Floyd and what it means to be in a rage all the time.
- NPR reviewed federal records showing that the Trump administration killed a federal rule that would have protected health workers in case of a pandemic.
- I found the maps on the COVID Policy Responses tracker site to be both useful and mesmerizing.
- COVID-19 may become endemic, even with a vaccine, and we need to prepare for that possibility (but we aren’t).
- North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) pleaded with anti-mask twits to act reasonably and stop this stupid culture war.
- A trio of Penn professors suggest three things we can do to persuade more people to wear masks.
- The Washington Post‘s Max Boot writes about the three reasons why conspiracy theories are especially dangerous right now: social media, higher stakes, and a President who spreads them like they’re butter.
- Also from the Post, a new study tries to explain why some kids are experiencing massive, Kawasaki disease-like reactions to COVID-19 – a cytokine storm.
- Here are five things those of us not in underrepresented groups can do to help those who are in our workplaces.
- Board games: Asmodee has issued a bunch of print-and-play expansions and modules for existing games you own, such as the one that lets you play 7 Wonders Duel as a solo game.
I wonder if Twitter now becomes a bit more aggressive in enforcing it’s rules with regards to Trump. They followed the fact check by blocking Trump’s “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweets. The White House account promptly re-tweeted it and received the same treatment. Trump isn’t going to anywhere else. All he can do is complain about it, ironically on the platform. His executive order was nothing. At this point, Twitter has doesn’t have a lot to lose. Facebook will continue to allow it, though.
One baseball related effect of the Coronavirus is some colleges are dropping the sport, mostly the small D-1 schools. Bowling Green State and Furman are two examples. With almost certainly no minor leagues this summer and less colleges offering the sport next year, it creates a lot less supply for players. Where do graduating college seniors go? Where do players with eligibility from the dropped programs go? What about incoming freshman, especially considering the condensed draft? MLB should be helping this by contributing to more scholarships, but enough owners view that as an unnecessary expense.
https://www.espn.com/blog/chicago-bears/post/_/id/4709912/ripple-effect-of-the-coronavirus-college-baseball-programs-canceled
Like I mentioned in Thursday’s chat, I just find it so deliciously ironic that it took for Trump himself to be mildly fact-checked for him to get on board with a type of regulation.
Here’s the thing that annoys the shit out of me about “modern conservatives,” if you will. They don’t actually understand what free speech means. The guy in Kentucky who hung the effigy of their governor was fired from his job and claimed that his First Amendment rights were being violated while he performed a First Amendment act. He worked for a car dealership, which last time I checked wasn’t a government job, so, no, his First Amendment rights were not violated when his employer decided to terminate him. They just wanted to avoid the bad publicity.
Conservatives are also all about free enterprise, supposedly. So if Trump isn’t happy about being mildly regulated by one platform, just go find another. Or start your own. That’s what free enterprise is all about.
But, no, let the bully play the victim card and whine about it and have all his cultists just follow right along with their cries of “bias” and “censorship.” I can’t with these people.
Keith, the first link seems to be missing…well, the link.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/23/861325631/from-camping-to-dining-out-heres-how-experts-rate-the-risks-of-14-summer-activit
Similar to the SLC link, a look at typical summer activities and the associated risks of transmission.
The maps are interesting but I wonder how accurate they are. They note that they can’t account for regional differences within a country. But I was surprised to learn that in NJ — one of the hardest hot states — many of the rules/restrictions are actually worded as recommendations. That may be for legal reasons and they’re largely being interpreted as enforceable laws but they aren’t actually. Even the mask order (at least on the state level; some counties like mine have gone further) actually stops short of fully requiring masks in all stores. Again, that’s not how they’re being presented or interpreted, but a reading of the governor’s EO shows what the actual “rule” is.
The conspiracy piece is unserious at best and incredibly dishonest at worst. It appears to completely ignore the fact that actual conspiracies exist. What’s more is that it uses a bunch of obviously ludicrous examples of conspiracy theories to undermine the whole concept.
I suspect he uses those “obviously ludicrous examples of conspiracy theories” specifically because the president has pushed most/all of them at some point. And given that roughly 40-45% of the country goes along with everything Trump says, that’s a very serious problem.
The fact that conspiracies exist is not negative proof of the severity of conspiracy theories.
To wit, Wikipedia has a list of conspiracy theories Trump has promoted. No one else has one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories_promoted_by_Donald_Trump
What made you choose to amplify the racist nickname used by Shaun King’s detractors?
I second this question. Really surprised you’re giving any credence to the idea he’s not “black enough”
Just so we’re clear, the “detractors” here are frequently other black activists who have seen their efforts screwed over by his continued fraudulent actions. And yeah, I get that there’s an ownership issue with the use of nicknames such as Talcum X, W.E.B. DeFraud, and Phony Morrison, and that should leave those to his black critics, but we’re also talking about a man whose claim to bi-racial identity rests on accusing his white parents of lying on his birth certificate and that his real biological father is a black man his mom had an affair with. He gets no benefit of the doubt.
For non-conspiracy theorists, most conspiracy theories seem pretty obviously ludicrous. Almost all of them fall apart with even a modicum of scrutiny, while only tiny minority have any plausibility. And some conspiracy theories lead to truly dangerous behaviors. So what’s the value in pointing out the rare cases where conspiracy theories are right? It’s like discouraging people from wearing seatbelts because they can (rarely) trap people inside a burning car.
The value in pointing out legitimate conspiracies is to reveal the government’s actions that have lead directly to violence against people both domestic and foreign.
Also interesting you mentioned a “burning car” since that’s what happened to one of the people who helped to expose the Panama Papers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia
Actual whistleblowing and investigative journalism is different than trafficking in wild and unsubstantiated conjecture (i.e. what is commonly understood as being a conspiracy theorist). The article was about the latter, and how those are dangerous. There are a bunch of ridiculous COVID-19 conspiracy theories right now, some of which are actually dangerous, so this is quite topical.
The point is that his whole argument is a misdirection. He glosses over it so it’s hard to catch, but make no mistake that the author is a coincidence theorist. He spells it out here: “These are attempts to suggest that inexplicable and random events, terrible in their import, are the product of hidden human forces.” And then he makes his case using almost exclusively ridiculous examples of conspiracy theories (which you don’t need an op-ed in wapo to address) in order to whitewash the many actual conspiracies perpetrated by governments and other powerful people.
Even granting that the author is a coincidence theorist (I am not convinced based on one line), those mongering in wild conspiracy theories do far more damage than those who are unwilling to “connect the dots.”
And perhaps I’m guilty of connecting too many dots right now, but I’m now wondering if one of the author’s conspiracy theory examples touched a nerve.
We had a president whose administration invented a cause for war out of whole cloth that killed at least 400,000 people. And then enough people went along with it to get him re-elected. So no I don’t think a few loons on the internet are worse than our hegemonic state.
And the only thing that touched a nerve from the article is that Max Boot is a massive hack that no one should listen to.
The Iraq War is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, Mike. The President is pushing dangerous and patently false conspiracy theories in a climate that makes it easier for them to spread and harder for those of us interested in the truth to combat. You don’t get to bothsides this.
I was responding to “those mongering in wild conspiracy theories do far more damage than those who are unwilling to “connect the dots.”” ….sorry if that wasn’t clear. To that affect, I absolutely stand by the assertion that the negative effects of real covert actions and/or lying from our government are far worse than that of people pushing obviously untrue conspiracy theories. I chose the Iraq War as the most egregious example from recent memory.
It’s this blurring of the lines that’s really the point of the article, whether Boot purposefully meant it to be or not. The article identifies that people are (rightly) disillusioned, but then paints the idea that there might actually be sinister forces at play as hogwash by highlighting only things that are clearly untrue. I mean, he literally tries to drum up sympathy for Bill Gates of all people. In short, his article reduces the systemic problems of our country to a lark, and paints Trump spreading conspiracies as of utmost importance.
And to the “bothsides” comment, I am not sure what you mean by that. Bush and Trump have their differences, but there’s no way you can say they’re not on the same side.
FFS Mike, the Bush administration was the manufacturer and monger of Iraqi conspiracy theories that led to the war. Trump has tried and is currently trying to spread conspiracies about China, and we’ll see what the effects are. That the alleged profession failed to actually do their job re: Iraq does not mean that they were more dangerous than the Iraqi conspiracy mongers. And to be clear, their job is to investigate suspicions and then report, not wildly conjecture and engage in muckraking.
And those loons on the internet touting “ridiculous” conspiracies (including Trump) are not harmless. As just one example, there are tens of thousands of vaccine-preventable deaths in the US every year, and we spend tens of billions of dollars every year on vaccine-preventable diseases. I fail to see how calling that out somehow means that one is pro-corruption or anti-investigative journalism.
Here’s one for the future. If a vaccine for COVID-19 arrives next year and Trump loses the election, I fully expect him to spread conspiracy theories about it.
“modules for existing games you own, such as the one that lets you play 7 Wonders Duel as a solo game.”
WHAT!?!? If only I had known of this at the beginning of march – I got duel as a gift this christmas and my fiancee has yet to play the game more than once with me.
Saving the best for last