baseball — Page 2

→ January 22, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/21/23.

No new content for subscribers to the Athletic as I’ve continued writing capsules for the top 100 prospects ranking, which will run on January 30^th. Please stand by.

My podcast did return this week, with guest Seth Reiss, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film The Menu. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’m planning to send out another issue of my free email newsletter on Sunday, now that I’m back on track with the prospect stuff. I was fairly stressed about it as recently a few days ago, but I’ve caught up enough that I can finish everything with a reasonable daily output of words.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A 17-year-old woman in Texas wanted an abortion. A judge decided she wasn’t “mature” enough to make that choice. ProPublica looks at the ramifications of that decision.

The BBC looks at the revolutionary TV show Homicide: Life on the Street on the 30^th anniversary of its debut. I can remember seeing it for the first time and being riveted. I’d never seen a TV show like that before.

The Ringer looks back at the Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail” on the 30^th anniversary of its first airing.

An epidemiologist and an emergency medicine physician debunk the whole “died suddenly” myth around COVID-19 vaccines. No, people are not dying suddenly of cardiac events from vaccines; we did see a jump in such cardiac deaths, but it came in 2020 and early 2021, due to COVID-19 infections.

New York’s Intelligencer explains how the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary might take down Project Veritas – but that the case is creating some surprising bedfellows for the right-wing hoaxers.

Also from Intelligencer, a longread on what it’s like right now at Twitter.

The San Francisco Chronicle has the heartbreaking story of a mother’s attempts to help her daughter, a 35-year-old opioid addict living on the San Francisco streets, touching on the city’s lack of services for addicts and for homeless people. There’s a sad baseball connection: The daughter’s boyfriend, Abdul Cole, was a Marlins minor leaguer for three years, but died last April.

A new research paper looks at decision fatigue in the context of baseball umpires.

The COVID misinformation-spreading Brownstone Institute is mostly funded by a small number of large, anonymous donations, and is led by a neo-Confederate advocate who has previously written for white nationalist sites.

LitHub has an excerpt from Dr. Henry Marsh’s new book, And Finally: Matters of Life and Death, as the 70-year-old neurosurgeon faces his own likely terminal cancer diagnosis.

Quanta looks at a 17-year-old who helped prove part of a theorem on the pseudoprimes known as Carmichael numbers, which are related to Fermat’s Little Theorem (not the more famous Last Theorem).

The School Board of Madison County, Virginia, voted to ban 21 books from its libraries, including The Handmaid’s Tale and four books by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, because Christian groups complained.

Meanwhile, two Christian activists in Crawford County, Arkansas, are trying to remove the library director and defund the system over the display of LGBTQ+ books, calling it an “alternative lifestyle.” Sexual orientation is not a lifestyle, or a choice. Gender identity is not a lifestyle, or a choice. Religion is a lifestyle, and a choice.

How does this shit happen? Because right-wing zealots have been pushing to take over school and library boards. The Christian nationalist group FlashPoint is even holding an event to train people to run for these positions.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) says that schools there cannot teach AP African-American History because of the state’s anti-anti-racism law.

And that same law has professors at universities across the state scrambling to avoid any possibility that their courses would be found to violate it. So a law that is supposed to prohibit “indoctrination” is increasing the likelihood students will receive indoctrination, but from the other side.

Iowa Republicans are trying to defund public schools by allowing parents to use vouchers for private schools, including religious schools, which would seem to violate the principle of separation of church and state. You can send your kids to a parochial school, but only without my tax dollars.

The City of Pittsburgh passed an ordinance prohibiting police from using secondary infractions as a reason to make traffic stops. The Chief of Police has told officers to ignore it.

Idaho Republicans are trying to “fix” the state’s anti-abortion law to avoid prosecuting women who have ectopic pregnancies, but within the article, you can see quotes from a legislator who wants to remove exemptions for cases of rape or incest and said that a woman who became pregnant after she was raped by a family member would view it “as the opportunity to have a child.” He also invoked Martin Luther King, Jr., of course.

Texas’s Supreme Court declined to block the state’s attempted takeover of the publicly elected school board in Houston.

Gregg Doyel says Tony Dungy should stick to sports and stop spreading anti-LGBTQ+ nonsense.

A couple of Eagles players recorded a Christmas album for charity, hoping to raise about $30,000. It raised $250,000 and will help fund two toy drives and a summer camp for Philly kids with serious behavioral problems. (We have a copy.)

Utah police investigated and then ignored complaints about child abuse from the daughter of the Mormon man who killed his wife, kids, and himself earlier this month. His 14-year-old daughter described serious physical abuse at her father’s hands less than three years ago, but no charges were filed.

Scottsdale has cut off a nearby town, Rio Verde Foothills, from its city water supply, leaving the residents to use rain water to flush their toilets. The subtext here is that the whole state is going to run out of water sooner rather than later.
A Republican candidate for the House in New Mexico was arrested for shooting at the homes of multiple Democratic legislators.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, arkansas, baseball, drugs, florida, guns, iowa, links, math, new mexico, pittsburgh, san francisco, social media, stick to baseball, texas, tv, utah, vaccines

→ October 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/22/22.

My second and much longer notebook on guys I saw in the Arizona Fall League went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Craig Calcaterra, writer of the excellent Cup of Coffee newsletter and author of the book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. 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 maybe I’ll send another edition out this week. 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.

My friend and former colleague at ESPN Sarah Langs announced a few weeks ago on Twitter that she has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mandy Bell of MLB.com set up a GoFundMe for Sarah, if you’d like to join me in contributing.

And now, the links…

Climate change could cause the collapse of Antarctica’s ice shelves even sooner than forecasted, in case you were feeling too good about anything this week.
Two stories of women who nearly died because anti-abortion laws denied them access to medical care, one in Texas who suffered a miscarriage and had to wait so long she developed sepsis before doctors would intervene, and one in Missouri whose own state Senator referred her to an anti-abortion clinic. The latter woman had to go to Illinois to get medical care to save her life.
Parker Molloy wrote about how the English press, buoyed by transphobic parents, bullied a schoolteacher who came out as trans into suicide. One of the main writers who attacked Lucy Meadows was Richard Littlejohn, who is still alive and writing twice a week for the Daily Mail, which ignored calls to fire him for his role.
WIRED has an excerpt from Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow’s new book Chokepoint Capitalism on how streaming services control what we hear and what music gets made, abrogating the promise that the technology would democratize music.
A Supreme Court case around copyright law, fair use, and an Andy Warhol piece may permanently alter the landscape of American art.
Florida’s state Surgeon General issued new guidance around COVID vaccines based on research that produced howls of derisive laughter from actual experts. Here’s one takedown of its many, many flaws. Charles Pierce put it well when he wrote that Florida will just keep “asking questions” until it gets the answer it wants ($).
Dr. Mehmet Oz, currently running for Senate, met a gun-violence victim at a campaign stop, but failed to disclose that she works for him and has received over $2100 from the campaign. The Associated Press reported on the encounter without noting the conflict. Do your fucking jobs, AP.
While on TV, Dr. Oz also promoted Joseph Mercola, long one of the biggest purveyors of anti-vaccine and other forms of medical misinformation online. Mercola has been selling supplements by denigrating evidence-based treatments since at least the 1990s, when I first came across his site’s claims that aspartame caused multiple sclerosis and all sorts of other health problems that it doesn’t cause at all.
Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, accused the super PAC Democratic Coalition, run by Scott Dworkin, of misleading donors into thinking their money is going to support candidates like him.
Will Leitch wrote about the abysmal media response to Tua Tagovalioa’s second head injury in five days.
Slate’s Evan Urquhart defended Jon Stewart’s interview with and humiliation of Arkansas’s bigoted Attorney General, where he makes it clear she’s either ignorant of the facts on the issue of gender affirming care or just denying them.
How did social media content moderation become such an issue in the culture war?
This is sort of old news by now, but if you haven’t heard the racist comments by members of the Los Angeles City Council, you should check it out. Only one of the three people making those comments, Nury Martinez, has resigned, as calls mount for the other two to do the same.
Wildfire smoke doesn’t just pollute the air, but it can carry bacteria and fungal spores across long distances, thus potentially expanding the area where Valley fever and other diseases of rural/desert areas into more population regions.
Research published in Polymers showed microplastics in human breast milk.
Many artists are pushing for more student debt relief, as the $10,000 offered is a “drop in the bucket” compared to their debt loads.
An Oklahoma teacher encouraged students to call a special-needs student in the class the f-slur. The school district dragged its feet, so the state is investigating while many parents are calling for the teacher’s removal. This is the lowest bar, really.
Is hip-hop’s dominance in American popular music finally slipping? Billboard spoke to industry executives who believe it is, and I would point to the lack of innovation in the space as a reason – and streaming may be the cause, as seen above.
A terrorist group calling itself a branch of ISIS is attacking villages in northern Mozambique, killing men and raping women, while threatening one of the most important natural gas supply lines in Africa.
Amidst news of ethnic cleansing in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the Economist called for sanctions against Eritrean dictator Issaias Afwerki ($), calling him “equally malign” as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Randy Kaufman, running for the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board and who said he wanted to “protect our children from the progressive left,” suspended his campaign after he was arrested for masturbating in his car near a preschool. Always be wary of those who doth protest too much.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) refused to say whether she would accept the election results if she loses.
Republicans in Congress have introduced a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit schools, libraries, and other institutions that receive federal money from teaching children about, well, anything related to sex, gender, gender identity, and so on, and would allow parents to sue if they did. The Human Rights Campaign has denounced it. The end result of bills and laws like this is more youth suicides, and if that’s your goal, we’re not going to agree.
George M. Johnson wrote about his experiences seeing his book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir of growing up Black and queer in America, become the second-most banned book in the country.
Michigan Republicans introduced an anti-trans bill that would jail parents for life if they sought gender-affirming care for their kids. This is the totalitarian playbook: demonize a small, vulnerable minority to rally your adherents and get them to the polls.
Florida Times-Union columnist called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ closed-door selection of Sen. Ben Sasse, both Republicans, as the new President of the University of Florida, the “crowning achievement of the DeSantis-led effort to defile” the college, questioning Sasse’s qualifications and his intentions.
A Texas sheriff certified that the nearly 50 migrants DeSantis trafficked to Massachusetts are “crime victims,” creating the possibility they could receive special visas to stay in the U.S. Unintended consequences FTW!
In the wake of Hurricane Ian, DeSantis relaxed voting restrictions in three heavily Republican counties, but not in heavily Democratic Orange County.
Police body camera footage shows officers arresting people for so-called voter fraud, as DeSantis proudly announced a sweep and emphasized the criminal records of the arrestees, who were overwhelmingly Black.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist James Causey called Sen. Ron Johnson’s comment that his opponent this year, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), has “turned on America” and “finds America awful” a “cheap shot,” saying that you can love America and still criticize it. Johnson’s campaign has also run ads that darkened Barnes’s skin tone and claimed he’ll be soft on crime.
South Carolina’s medical licensing board has yet to discipline any physicians for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 or the vaccines that help prevent it, apparently for fear of backlash from the conservatives who run the state government.
Marin County in northern California was once a haven for highly educated anti-vaxxer parents. COVID-19 vaccines changed that, and the county now has one of the highest uptake rates in the country at 91%.
Jazz Chisholm was impressive in his brief stint on MLB Network’s studio coverage of the first round of the playoffs.
A new property, the Hotel Lyra, is trying to revive a nearly-abandoned town in Croatia called Licko Petrovo Selo. The town, which is near the country’s scenic Plitvice Lakes National Park, was destroyed during World War II, rebuilt by the Yugoslav government, and then heavily damaged during the Balkan wars, with most of the population, especially its Serbs, driven out.
The white nationalist teenager who opened fire outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia had posted anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and white replacement views on Twitter and 4chan. The Anti-Defamation League says in response that Twitter and similar sites don’t do enough to moderate hate speech.
Board game news: Rock Manor Games, run by my friend Mike Gnade, has a Kickstarter up for its new role-playing game The Few and the Cursed.
BoardGameTables, who make tables for board games (!) and have also published titles like On Tour and Sequoia, have a Kickstarter up for three small-box games, including Pollen, a re-theming of Reiner Knizia’s Samurai: The Card Game.
Rising Waters, the historical co-op game about the 1927 Mississippi Flood and the racial disparities it exposed, just funded in the last few days, with about a week and a half to go in its Kickstarter.
Race to the Raft, a cooperative game from Isle of Cats designer Frank West, is already about 8x funded on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, africa, arizona, arkansas, art, baseball, board game news, california, climate change, croatia, florida, football, frauds, hip-hop, lgbt rights, links, los angeles, missouri, Music, oklahoma, pennsylvania, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, wisconsin

→ October 1, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/1/22.

Since my last weekend post, I’ve had three few posts up for subscribers to the Athletic, including my annual column on players I was wrong about, my annual Prospect of the Year column, and a quick scouting take on last weekend’s Future Stars Main Event showcase for the 2023 draft.

For Paste I reviewed the board game Cellulose, from Genius Games, which produces science-themed games that try to be both accurate and educational. It’s definitely the former, but I’m not sure about the latter, as it’s a good worker-placement game that you can play well without getting into a lot of the technical stuff.

On the Keith Law Show this week, my guest was author and sportswriter Will Leitch, who wrote the wonderful 2021 novel How Lucky and who has a new novel coming out in May that you can pre-order here. We discussed his writing, his beloved Cardinals, and the upcoming slate of movies for this fall and winter. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My free email newsletter should return next week. COVID and some travel and other stuff just knocked me for a loop.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This story has gone beyond this one subtopic, but it’s worth reading about how Brett Favre took $6 million in welfare funds and gave it to Southern Miss to build a volleyball stadium.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won a Nobel Peace Prize by ending the decades-long conflict with Eritrea, a former Ethiopian province that took Ethiopia’s only coastline when it became independent. Now Ahmed stands accused of starting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the minority Tigrayans and fomenting a civil war less than a year after earning the honor.
Vigilante “predator catchers,” using techniques similar to those from To Catch a Predator, are infiltrating and often interfering with the criminal justice system.
Yet another author thinks he’s identified the Zodiac killer – although this time, the suspect’s daughter thinks it might be true.
Fifth Circuit judge Andy Oldham ruled that internet companies no longer have any right to moderate content on their sites, which doesn’t jibe well with the First Amendment. The Atlantic’s Charlie Wurzel asks if this is the end of the internet. The subreddit r/PoliticalHumor is protesting the ruling and the Texas law in question in a rather clever way.
Virginia is trying to enact a set of policies to deny trans kids’ rights in schools, such as prohibiting the use of their preferred pronouns or their use of bathrooms that match their gender identities. It’s cruel, and it solves no problem other than catering to transphobic voters. If you live in Virginia, the public comment period is open and you can comment here.
An editorial in Nature argues that we need to let science and data determine transgender policy, not anti-trans politicians. “The current spate of anti-trans positions has little to do with evidence-based research, science or data,” such as bogus claims of sexual assaults by trans people (or people pretending to be trans) in bathrooms.
Meanwhile, right-wing trolls are targeting children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, going after facilities in Akron and at Vanderbilt just weeks after a similar misinformation campaign led to bomb threats against Boston Children’s Hospital. And, as usual, Twitter does nothing.
Libraries under attack: A dozen public libraries across the country received bomb or active shooter threats in the last two weeks, which might be part of a coordinated effort targeted at LGBTQ+ communities. Last week was Banned Books Week, and yet schools across the country continue to target LGBTQ+-themed books. A librarian in a St. Louis-area school received two visits from a police officer because parents complained about “pornographic” books on the shelves. In Greenville, South Carolina, Republicans have stolen several LGBTQ+ books from the library and are trying to get the system to remove any such books from the kids’ sections (where, say, a child questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity might find them). Cory Doctorow points out that vast majorities of Americans oppose book-banning efforts, but the other side is louder.
A French scientist who pushed the thoroughly discredited notion that hydroxychloroquinone could treat COVID-19 now faces a criminal investigation and possible retraction of six of his published papers.
A measles outbreak in Zimbabwe has killed 700 children.
ProPublica explains how “pig-butchering” scams work. If you’ve been getting texts from random numbers or similar messages on Whatsapp/Instagram, sometimes saying “hi” or “your number is in my phone” or something, that’s often the first step in the scam.
In a new documentary about Mario Batali, a former employee alleges that he sexually assaulted her.
Fentanyl is the new bugaboo for Republican politicians and a lot of MAGA accounts on Twitter. The problem is it’s arrant nonsense: You can’t overdose from touching it, and it’s not in random Halloween candy.
I loved this MLB.com story and video about a lovely new ballpark in Bavaria, built to house a Bundesliga (the German professional league) team in Füssen.
The Danish island of Bornholm is trying to go trash-free, reusing or recycling all waste, as their waste-incineration plant is nearing the end of its life and officials there chose not to replace it.
A number of Trump’s phony electors from 2020 still hold powerful positions in their states, are on the ballot this November for the same, or are working for major campaigns like those of Blake Masters (Arizona) or Sen. Ron Johnson (Wisconsin).
Speaking of Sen. Johnson, he flip-flopped on the bill to protect marriage equality, pandering to a small but vocal minority of voters.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) hired a company tied to one of his closest advisers to fly migrants from Texas to Massachusetts, and his office has refused to explain how the company won this contract.
John Fetterman responds to the strange attacks against his tattoos, including a rant from Tucker Carlson. Are we really still worried about people with tattoos in the year 2022?
Can “brown noise” help your brain relax? There isn’t much research on this, and the research on “pink noise,” which allegedly helps with deep sleep, is limited to one real study.
Board game news: Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game is already 10x funded on Kickstarter with 12 days to go.
Daybreak, the new cooperative game about fighting climate change co-designed by Matt Leacock (Pandemic), is over $300,000 already with 20 days to go on Kickstarter.
LX News has a story on Dungeons & Dragons players who tout mental health benefits from playing, which isn’t exactly backed by research but does talk up some of the benefits of gaming in general. The article does note the actual research on how reading fiction increases your empathy, though.
NPR’s Code Switch looks at race in Dungeons & Dragons – how the game’s fictional races bring in real-world stereotypes, and how some players are trying to rewrite some of the rules to eliminate or confront those issues.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, baseball, board game news, book banning, books, ethiopia, first amendment, frauds, lgbt rights, links, longreads, metoo, science, stick to baseball, trans rights, true crime

→ August 28, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/28/22.

I jumped right back into the minor league thing this week, and have a new scouting notebook for subscribers to the Athletic, with notes on Anthony Volpe, Ricky Tiedeman, Orelvis Martinez, Everson Pereira, Quinn Priester, Jackson Holliday, and many more players.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres finalist Lost Ruins of Arnak, a great midweight game that looks like it’s going to be complex but plays simpler than that, combining a lot of common mechanics for a game that’s more than the sum of its parts.

My podcast will return on Monday, and my newsletter will return this week as well.

And now, the links..

Longreads first: I know you’re shocked, but a former Twitter exec revealed the company’s security policies are so lax that not only is the personal information of users at risk, but there are even broader national security concerns as a result.
A growing theocratic movement that includes disgraced General Michael Flynn and disgraced political operative Roger Stone called the New Apostolic Reformation is pushing to place more members or adherents in government roles, including Pennsylvania gubernational candidate Doug Mastriano.
When a private investment firm, Portopiccolo Group, bought a nursing home, the quality of care began to drop as they cut costs, leading to a COVID-19 outbreak and an increase in deaths.
Three longreads from ProPublica this week that are worth reading: The Colorado River is drying up and it threatens our nation’s food supply; billionaire Barre Seid has donated $1.6 billion to a new archconservative advocacy group led by the architect of the Republicans’ takeover of the Supreme Court and national judiciary; and Republican officials in Florida may have entrapped Floridians with felony convictions by helping them register to vote, which led to the men facing voter fraud charges.
The Guardian looks at the two men who have helped expose how England and Wales allowed their rivers to become polluted with sewage, devastating marine life, thanks to privatization and reduced regulations from the British government.
The global food crisis this summer was years in the making, and evident to many people whose attempts to sound the alarm went for naught.
High school students in southern states that refuse to offer basic sex education are now organizing groups to teach themselves and their peers. Sex education doesn’t increase sexual activity, but it does decrease pregnancy and STI rates, while so called “abstinence-only” education doesn’t work at all.
The famous political magazine … uh, Science published an editorial calling out Tucker Carlson for his misleading comments and outright falsehoods about Anthony Fauci. What’s next? IEEE Spectrum goes after Jordan Peterson?
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a member of a fringe religious group that preaches women’s subservience to their husbands.
This summer, Germany offered a 9 euro all-you-can-ride monthly train ticket. People used it, a lot, and air pollution went down.
The Nepalese language Kusunda is down to just one native speaker, leading to a rush to try to save this language isolate, meaning it has no known linguistic relatives, before it dies out. The BBC also had a post last month about what happens in the brains of people speak multiple languages.
The mother of a nonbinary child explains why they moved from Arizona to New York, citing the former’s hostility to anyone who isn’t straight and cisgender.
The Chicago Tribune’s Shakeia Taylor looks at minor league players’ fight to end MLB’s antitrust exemption. (A subscription might be required.)
Facebook and Instagram finally, years after the horse left the barn, kicked RFK Jr’s false information factory Children’s Health Defense off their sites, citing the group’s history of spreading anti-vaccine lies. I have no idea why it took this long. Well, I can offer a gue$$.
Susan Demas, a longtime political journalist in Michigan, wrote about how normalcy bias has led us to believe things aren’t that bad when, in face, they’re terrible. It’s a real cognitive bias that leads people to dismiss or diminish the odds of disasters, such as the global food crisis I mentioned above.
Board game news: A fellow Gen Con attendee wrote an editorial for the Washington Post because he’s mad that the convention might move in response to Indiana’s abortion ban. It’s the least self-aware thing you’ll read all week. Abortion bans, same-sex marriage bans, “bathroom bills,” laws that target LGBTQ+ people … he doesn’t have to worry about these, because he’s a straight cis white guy. He’s ten pounds of privilege in a five-pound bag, but the worst part is that he doesn’t realize it.
Sea of Legends: Vengeance of the Empires, a narrative game for 1-4 players, has fully funded on Kickstarter with about two and a half weeks to go.
Two big crowdfunding efforts are coming up: The Fox Experiment, a game about the Russian experiment to domesticate the silver fox, co-designed by Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave; and Daybreak, a cooperative game about fighting climate change co-designed by Pandemic creator Matt Leacock.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, great britain, Languages, links, longreads, misinformation, religion, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 20, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/21/22.

I’m returning from a long vacation to England and Wales, one in which I was barely online and enjoyed this tremendously. A couple of folks reached out to see if my absence from the internet was due to something unfortunate, and I appreciate that you checked in.

Before I started this break, I had a slew of articles for subscribers to The Athletic, including a ranking of the top 60 prospects in the minors that included recent draftees; some thoughts on which teams did best and worst at the trade deadline; and breakdowns of the Juan Soto trade, the Frankie Montas trade; the Josh Hader trade; and some smaller deals from that final day. I held a Q&A at the Athletic on August 1st.

Before this vacation, I took a few days to head to Indianapolis to go to Gen Con, the largest board game convention in North or South America, and wrote about it in two posts for Paste – one ranking the ten best games I played there, and another discussing everything else I tried or saw. I also reviewed the very disappointing new Stranger Things game, Attack of the Mind Flayer.

My podcast will return this upcoming week, as will my newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times details the numerous allegations against former Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price, who had become a media darling for his decision to raise his company’s minimum salary to $70K a year (which, to be clear, is still good!) and his tweets about excessive CEO pay and living wages.
Bob Nutting, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, bought the Aspen Times newspaper, and in what appears to be a concerted effort with a Russian oligarch, suppressed negative coverage in the 140-year-old paper, according to a former editor.
Climate change is causing a mass movement of people from the worst-hit areas, and we need to prepare for it.
NBC News has the story of a Texas mom campaigning to ban LGBTQ+ themed books from school libraries – even though her own son is gay.
Texas’ abortion law made one woman’s wanted pregnancy a medical nightmare. Republicans trying to ban abortion are worse at failing to anticipate consequences than Bud Selig was.
The BBC looks back at the failure of Disney and Miramax to sell Hayao Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke to American audiences.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, one of the authors of the recent studies that showed that COVID-19 almost certainly had a natural origin, discussed the toxic “lab-leak” discource on social media, one pushed by bad actors, including people with books to sell.
Dan Szymborski wrote about how the Fernando Tatis suspension is a loss for baseball, not just for Padres fans.
Two billionaires, Jeff Yass and Dick Uihlein, are funding a far-right election denier in Nevada’s Senate race. Uihlein’s money comes from U-Line, his closely held packaging company. If I get a package in an U-Line box, I ask the shipper or vendor to use someone else for their packaging needs.
A Nigerian doctor tried to warn the world about monkeypox back in 2016, but nobody listened.
President Biden has almost completely stopped drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria, compared not just to his immediate predecessor but to President Obama as well.
This was inevitable: some sore-loser parents used Utah’s anti-trans law to question the gender of the girl who beat their daughters in a track event.
Meanwhile, far-right transphobes are harassing Boston Children’s Hospital employees over false claims that the hospital is conducting gender-affirming surgeries on trans kids.
Reader Dr. Paul Sax wrote a personal piece about why abortions are medical care.
The Washington Post wrote about how Indy Star reporters showed that the story of a pregnant 10-year-old who had to travel out of Ohio to Indiana for an abortion was, in fact, not a hoax. (And then Indiana banned all abortions, because that state is also a theocracy.)
Board game news: The Kickstarter for Trailblazers, a short, portable family game about hiking and kayaking, funded in less than two hours.
Level Up Dice made custom polyhedral dice from metal melted down from a German WWII tank, and then had to apologize for it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, baseball, board game news, censorship, coronavirus, links, longreads, metoo, stick to baseball, trans rights, utah

→ June 11, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/11/22.

I had one post for subscribers to the Athletic this past week, on Kumar Rocker’s 2022 debut for the independent Tri-City Valley Cats. (I tried to go see Reading/Altoona this week, but got rained out after I parked but before I even got into the stadium.) My current writing schedule has one more draft blog post coming after I see Carson Whisenhunt’s official 2022 debut on Sunday night, and then an updated Big Board on Thursday, June 16^th.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was film critic (and Cardinals fan) Tim Grierson, talking about the logistics of film festivals and their similarities to scouting showcases, plus our thoughts on The Godfather trilogy as the first film marks its 50^th anniversary. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I do send out a free email newsletter about twice a month. My two books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, are both available in paperback, and you can buy them at your local independent book store or at Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kathryn Schulz, author of the wonderful memoir Lost & Found, writes about the world of sunken shipping containers and the detritus that washes up on shore from them. I would guess the occasional meeple shows up among the flotsam and jetsam.

Land in the Chicago area promised for public housing, undeveloped for twenty years, is now going to house a practice facility for the MLS’s Chicago Fire.

LA Eater looks at the changing of the guard in southern California’s doughnut shops, as the children of the mostly Cambodian immigrants who founded those stores take over from their parents.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in support of reading challenging books and against removing them from school libraries and curricula.

Steve Kirsch, one of the inventors of the optical mouse and a serial entrepreneur, has become a massive proponent of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and false cures. McGill University’s Jonathan Jarry looks at how Kirsch got from A to B.

The Daily Beast reports on two twins who are college students in Texas and who are “pushing transphobic campaigns” at their respective schools, the University of North Texas and Baylor.

The Tampa Bay Rays’ account tweeted several facts about gun violence in the United States, after which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked state funding for a new player development facility in Pasco County.

Writing for DAME, attorney & counsel to the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center Madiba Kennie asks if Supreme Court reform is even possible.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg writes about the complexity and contradictions of the investigation into the release of the Supreme Court draft opinion that will overturn Roe v. Wade. Speaking of the Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers to urge them to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in that state.

A 13-year-old Baltimore middle school student died suddenly on a school field trip in Cecil County, Maryland. There’s still no indication why he died or details on what happened, five days later. What a nightmare for his family.

More families are suing Texas over the state’s investigations into parents who provide gender-affirming care to their trans kids. A district court judge ruled on Friday that the state must suspend these investigations.

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh tweeted this week that gender reassignment surgery should be illegal for everyone, regardless of age.

A Baptist preacher in Texas said to his congregation that all gay people “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head … That’s what the Bible says.” (The Bible does not say that.)

Sen. Rick Scott’s “plan to save America” denies the existence of trans people. In her newsletter, Parker Molloy explains how his proposed policies, and existing policies in places like Ohio, just make life more difficult for trans and intersex people.

Belgium’s King Philippe spoke about the damage his great-great-uncle, Léopold II, did to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo through colonization and exploitation of its people and natural resources. For a harrowing but essential read on the topic, I recommend King Léopold’s Ghost, recommended to me a decade ago by one of you, which details the awful period where Africa’s largest country was a personal colony of the Belgian king, and explains why the DRC has been unstable for its entire history since independence.

An 8-year-old boy who was on vacation with his family in South Carolina was shot and killed by a resident who was shooting at passing cars.

An Uvalde pediatrician who treated victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary testified before Congress about the state of the bodies he saw.

The Washington Post has fired writer Felicia Sonmez. I won’t even attempt to summarize this in a sentence or two – the article (from The New York Times) has the details.

A Catholic group is urging followers to “hide the pride” by going to libraries and hiding books with LGBTQ+ content.

The Missouri Library Association is urging the Wentzville, Missouri, school board to stop removing LGBTQ+ books from school libraries.

The Guardian explains “greenwashing,” when companies contributing to climate change run ads, such as on podcasts that tell stories about climate change and the fight against it, implying that those companies are aligned with the show’s aims.

The Kickstarter for Bark Avenue, a quick pickup-and-delivery game from a new publisher in New York, ends in just two days.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, environment, florida, guns, lgbt rights, links, longreads, misinformation, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ 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

→ 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

→ 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

→ October 30, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/30/21.

Nothing new at the Athletic this week as I finished writing up the top 50 free agents ranking, which will run shortly after the World Series ends.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Happy City, a light city-building card game that’s ideal for younger players, ages 8 and up, who aren’t quite ready for Splendor. If you’ve played Machi Koro, this has a similar vibe, but without the dice or the unbalanced cards.

My guest on my podcast this week was Christina Kahrl, who helped me preview the World Series and some of this winter’s free agent market. You can listen and subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes.

The latest issue of my email newsletter was about a hat – one that’s very important to me, though. 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: ProPublica has the story of how Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell and run for years by his ethically challenged son, discourages and dismisses students’ reports of rape and sexual assaults.
Why is the idea of gender provoking such a backlash around the world? It’s an unholy alliance of religion, misogyny, and homophobia/transphobia, and feminists should not ally themselves with those trying to roll back progress on human rights.
Steph Apstein spoke to multiple Native American leaders in asking why MLB still allows the “synchronized, team-sanctioned racism” of the tomahawk chop? Meanwhile, Rob Manfred totally whiffed when asked about the chop, lying about Native Americans’ views on it and landing on the wrong side of the issue.
The Columbia Journalism Review published the second part of its series on paid advocacy groups writing content for local news outlets.
The Posies broke up this week as multiple women accused lead singer Ken Stringfellow of sexual misconduct.
That SEPTA (Philadelphia transit) rape incident where people watched and filmed the assault without calling the police? Yeah, the cops made that part up. The lesson here is to not take authorities at their word.
Bobcat Goldthwait has some thoughts on the hoax that is “cancel culture.”
A white man in Texas killed a Moroccan man who was sitting in a car in his own driveway. It took 11 days for authorities to arrest him.
My colleague Levi Weaver called out the Rangers for their refusal to acknowledge LGBTQ+ fans. It’s outdated, it’s exclusionary, and it’s pandering to the wrong element.
Meanwhile, the NAACP urged pro athletes to avoid signing with teams in Texas over the state’s rollbacks of reproductive, voting, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Oh, and a Texas state rep who’s running for attorney general is trying to start a book-banning investigation of public schools in the state, demanding that schools disclose if they have any of eight hundred and fifty books – not in their curricula, but just in the buildings.
Ohio isn’t that much better, as the Republican Governor forced out the Board of Education President who authored an anti-racism resolution that has since been repealed, because in Ohio, racism is good!
Chevron’s ten-year vendetta against an environmental activist who exposed the company’s extensive pollution in Ecuador has led to the activist’s jailing on contempt charges. Steven Donziger has been under house arrest for over two years, all part of the company’s revenge against him for his exposé and the $9.5 billion judgment against them in Ecuador.
Vaccinated people are 63% less likely to spread the delta variant of COVID-19 than unvaccinated people are.
The bizarre backlash against critical race theory in elementary schools – where it’s never taught – was in reality an astroturfing campaign by conservative dark-money titan Charles Koch.
Jim Squires, a Democrat running for the U.S. House in Texas’ 22^nd district, held up a “The ‘Chop’ is Racist” sign at Game 2 of the World Series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, coronavirus, links, metoo, ohio, philadelphia, religion, science, stick to baseball, texas

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