Nothing new at the Athletic this week, although I should have 2-3 coming up this week as my travels continue. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.
For Paste, I reviewed the game Gartenbau, which combines very simple rules with tight decisions that make it a real challenge to play it well.
On The Keith Law Show this week, I had my annual Oscars preview episode with Chris Crawford. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I was going to send another issue of my free email newsletter this week but got tied up with some other writing (board game stuff, actually), so it’s still on my to-do list.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: WIRED has the story of the takedown of a former Iraqi translator who became a major fentanyl dealer in the U.S. and is now serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is trying to strip the press of its First Amendment rights.
- The rash of anti-trans bills across the south and Midwest are the work of a network of religious-right groups that operated in secret while pushing their bigoted agenda, according to emails between those groups and South Dakota state Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) obtained by Mother Jones.
- ProPublica has more information on billionaire Leonard Leo’s new plan to try to “crush liberal dominance” in American politics and culture. He’s considered the main architect of the strategy that gave conservatives a 6-3 Supreme Court majority and control of much of the federal judiciary.
- My wife and I watched the Oscar-nominated animated short My Year of Dicks, which is very funny and sweet, which led us down the rabbit hole of its writer Pamela Ribon, including this hilarious 2011 post from her now-defunct blog about how she might have become a new urban legend.
- Walgreens won’t sell abortion pills in states that merely threatened legal action, even though the medication is still legal in those locations.
- Failed actor turned conservative talking head Michael Knowles, called for transgender people to be “eradicated” in a speech at the far-right convention CPAC this week.
- All of the rhetoric you’re seeing against trans people right now was previously used against gays/lesbians by the same sort of Christianist activists.
- A girls basketball team in Hoover, Alabama, the host city for the SEC baseball tournament, was forced to play in a boys’ rec league if they wanted to continue to use city facilities. When they subsequently won the league’s tournament, they were denied the trophy, which was then given to the boys’ team that finished second, because they are a ‘competitive’ team playing in a recreational league.
- An anti-vaxxer nurse in Spain is in court, accused of faking vaccinations of children.
- After a woman went on a racist tirade in a pizzeria near Philly, TikTok vigilantes tried to identify her, and instead targeted three innocent women instead, leading to widespread harassment.
- From January 2022: Ashli Babbitt, who some right-wingers want you to believe was a martyr, had a history of violent behavior prior to her participation in the January 6th insurrection.
- Witnesses at Guantanamo Bay recalled Ron DeSantis laughing while prisoners there were tortured.
- Utah legislators have voted to change the law that made it nearly impossible for victims of sexual assault by doctors to sue their attackers.
- The Tennessee House passed a bill gutting marriage equality, possibly allowing elected officials to decline to issue a license to a couple for any reason. The state’s Republicans also passed a law banning drag shows, which is nothing more than performative bigotry