board game news — Page 12

→ July 11, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/11/20.

I had one solo post for The Athletic subscribers this week, something out of the ordinary: To participate in the site’s Book Blitz, I gave 25 recommendations for non-sports books, five apiece in literary novels, sci-fi/fantasy, detective/mystery, non-fiction, and short story collections. I also joined the site’s Authors Roundtable, answering some questions on the book-writing process.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Floor Plan, a new roll-and-write from Deep Water (publishers of Welcome To…) that is quite easy to learn, but where the theme and the strategy don’t work together.

My second book, The Inside Game, is out now, and you can buy it on bookshop.org through that link, or find it at your local independent bookstore.

And now, the links…

Vulture‘s interview with Thandie Newton is a must-read for her unbelievable candor, speaking about racism and sexism on set as well as some lousy experiences with Tom Cruise.
Patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 and recover can face weeks or months of delirium, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and physical and cognitive deficits.
The Washington Post looks at how the pandemic has made the struggle working moms face impossible for employers to ignore, as we’ve seen with the recent backlash to bizarre decisions by Florida State and Georgia Tech.
The new invite-only audio app Clubhouse is paying a price for omitting any protections for users against harassment. Given what this Verge article says about the app I’d have zero interest in participating in it.
The Paris Review explains how Neapolitan cuisine became synonymous with Italian food.
Human rights lawyer Derecka Purnell explains why she became a police abolitionist, the first of three links this week from the Atlantic. The crux of her argument is the lack of accountability for officers who commit violence against civilians.
Ed Yong continues his tremendous work for the Atlantic on the pandemic, writing about how the experts trying to help hospitals and policymakers are getting burned out, while the pandemic is exacerbating issues of gender equity in the field, and charlatans from outside of epidemiology are trying to make names for themselves with shoddy research.
Also in the Atlantic, why death rates haven’t risen even as cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. Hint: it’s not necessarily good news.
A new study published in The Lancet found that antibody levels were extremely low in populations in COVID-19 hotspots, meaning that herd immunity isn’t coming any time soon.
Axios explains how public health efforts have to step up their efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation.
This tweet showing average new cases per day of COVID-19 along with Trump’s comments on the pandemic is rather damning.
NPR looks at how crowdfunding has changed the board game industry in the wake of the RPG Frosthaven, the sequel to Gloomhaven, taking in $12.9 million in its Kickstarter run.
A Minnesota State Senator, who is also a physician, is now under investigation after spouting nonsense conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media. He has a history of voicing anti-vaccine sentiment too.
This isn’t exactly news, but a new study showed that anti-vaxxer parents are fraudulently using state religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their kids. With no penalty for doing so – and minimal enforcement – they’re not going to stop until this loophole is closed.
Mental Floss has nine possible uses for sourdough starter discard.
I included this last week as well: There’s a petition online to demand the removal of the Conferederate flag and monument to Confederate soldiers at the Nutter Marvel Carriage Museum in Georgetown, Delaware. It’s a private institution, so unlike the statues and flags coming down in public spaces, the state and local governments can’t just remove the offensive objects.
Meanwhile, everything is fine in Poland, where the state TV station is warning that the opposition candidate for President will “fulfil Jewish demands” if he wins.
Board game news: Marvel Villainous, a new standalone game in the Disney Villainous series that introduces some new rules and five new villains to play, is available for pre-order at Target.
Bézier Games has announced an upcoming Kickstarter for Ultimate Werewolf Extreme, an expanded and upgraded version of their popular Ultimate Werewolf game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baking, board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ June 20, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/20/20.

My one piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week looked at which MLB teams just drafted their new #1 or #2 prospects. No chat this week as I was busy with work calls or family commitments every afternoon.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the Kennerspiel des Jahres-nominated game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, a cooperative trick-taking game that plays out over a series of 50 missions, like a legacy game but without asking you to change or destroy any components.

The Boston Globe just named my second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, one of its recommended sports reads for the summer. The book has garnered similar plaudits 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.

I’m sending out my free email newsletter a bit more regularly lately, which is a good sign for my mental health, I think. You can sign up for free here.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: USA Today has the story of the late scout Rudy Santin’s attempts to expose MLB’s broken system for signing international amateur free agents, which can include verbal (and thus unenforceable) agreements between teams and 12-year-old players. The system doesn’t really work for either side – players can, and do, walk away from these agreements as late as the day before the signing period opens – but the likely alternative, a draft, will just result in less money flowing to players from teams.
Vanity Fair‘s Jeff Sharlet goes deep inside the cult of Trump, talking to his diehard supporters and their beliefs in some of the most bizarre, antifactual conspiracy theories you could ever imagine. These are people who think Q is real, that leading Democrats are literal demons who eat children, and that Trump was sent by God to save us all.
One way to craft a response to a pandemic is to look at successful responses to past pandemics. STAT News explains how the pornography industry dealt with the HIV epidemic, successfully, and what lessons countries might take away from their strategy.
The New York Times looks at two major failures in the peer-review process this year, asking why this happened and if the process itself is flawed (or, as some of the quoted sources say, simply overtaxed).
Also in the Times, what exactly is a Twitter bot, and are they as numerous as many recent headlines have claimed? I shared a story a few weeks ago about research at Carnegie Mellon that claimed as many as half of the tweets about COVID-19 in the study sample were from bots, but multiple sources here say that conclusion was not supported by the data.
My friend Alex Speier looked at unconscious racial bias in baseball scouting, including the language used in scouting reports. I’m quoted in the article.
Arizona’s COVID-19 pandemic might be even worse than the official data indicate. The state’s Rt remains well above 1, there’s barely any contact tracing, and the current trend has the state on its way to running out of ICU beds. This is what happens when you elect anti-science people to run your state.
Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has told counties that if they require citizens to wear masks in county buildings, they will not receive any of the state’s COVID-19 relief funds. This is what happens when you elect anti-science people to run your state.
Stefan Fatsis, author of the entertaining Word Freak, writes about the debate within the competitive Scrabble world over whether to prohibit racial and other hateful slurs.
Expecting college students to behave prudently if they return to campus this fall is a fantasy, because people in that age range tend to engage in more risky and impulsive behaviors.
Troy Amen, who is entering his fifth year of a joint MD-MBA program at Harvard Medical School (and, I assume, Harvard Business School), writes about systemic racism at HMS and the school’s apparent refusal to hire a more diverse faculty.
Prosecutors allege that 18-year-old Chicago man murdered a trans woman after going home with her and learning she was transgender. According to the prosecution, he left, got a gun, returned to shoot her, left, and then went back to shoot her again.
Facebook Groups are fountains of disinformation and crackpot conspiracy theories, according to this editorial in WIRED by two authors who research disinformation and fake news. This isn’t shocking to anyone who follows anti-vaccine activity online, as Facebook is ground zero for so much of their bullshit.
Civil rights groups are asking big advertisers to pause spending on Facebook ads for the month of July, citing the platform’s failure to police hate groups on the site, as part of the #StopHateforProfit campaign.
Two Virginia lawyers pleaded guilty to attempting to extort $200 million from Monsanto by threatening to file false legal claims around Roundup (glyphosate). This is notable because the two lawyers work with scaremonger Carey Gilliam and her anti-GMO organization U.S. Right to Know.
Plenty of bad actors are spreading bogus stories of service workers tampering with the food ordered by police officers, but now the police unions are doing the same, disparaging Shake Shack with a false claim that workers there had “poisoned” several cops’ milkshakes. The NYC Detectives’ Endowment Association didn’t admit their error or apologize for spreading the lie.
Writer and book critic Carolyn Kellogg revealed on Twitter why she quit the National Book Critics Circle’s board – the group’s refusal to issue a statement on Black Lives Matter and the verbal abuse directed at another board member who led the working group trying to craft a statement.
Zimbabwe may be on the verge of collapse yet again, and they’ve resumed arresting and torturing opposition activists.
Board game news: roll20 announced the upcoming release and pre-order availability for Burn Bryte, a new tabletop RPG that’s been three years in the making.
Asmodee Digital announced an upcoming port of the Game of Thrones board game, a big, complex, long game that might really benefit from a digital adaptation.
Bézier Games announced pre-orders for Maglev Metro, the newest game from the designer of Suburbia and the Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, anti-science, arizona, board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, nebraska, social media, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ May 30, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/30/20.

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 10^th, 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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board game news, boardgames, coronavirus, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ May 23, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/23/20.

This week I had two related columns for subscribers to the Athletic – my 2010 redraft and my list of the 2010 first-rounders who didn’t pan out. A few people got particularly unpleasant over the redraft, which is quite unusual, mostly because they didn’t read the intro. I held another Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I had Cubs’ superutilityman Ian Happ as a guest to talk about coffee, especially his collaboration with Connect Roasters to sell a specific blend of Guatemalan beans, with $3 from every bag going to COVID-19 relief charities. You can buy the coffee at coffeeforcovid.com, and you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes or Spotify.

My second book, The Inside Game, made the New York Times‘ list of six recommended summer reads in the sports category, which is incredibly flattering. You can buy The Inside Game or Smart Baseball on bookshop.org or at any local stores if they’re opening back up near you.

I’ve been better about sending out my newsletter lately – feel free to sign up here to get weekly-ish musings and links to everything I write.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Ed Yong continues his outstanding coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic with a sobering look at the “patchwork” pandemic, including the lack of a peak and rolling outbreaks still going on across the country. Note how many instances he documents of the federal government abdicating its responsibilities to state and local authorities, and his statement that Arizona reopened “while cases were still rising” – bad news for MLB teams with training sites there.
Former NHL player Akim Aliu’s essay “Hockey is Not For Everyone” is a damning look at racism in North American hockey.
Serious Eats explains the science behind sourdough starters.
Drowned out by some dubious news about a commercial COVID-19 vaccine venture was the news from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center about two studies showing another vaccine protected primates against the same virus.
Quarantine fatigue is real, but policymakers can learn from HIV-prevention efforts who realized abstinence-only efforts don’t work and instead focused on risk reduction strategies.
The shutdown has forced many LGBT kids to return home to families that have rejected them or parts of their identities.
Nearly half of the accounts on Twitter tweeting about the pandemic are bots, according to new research from Professor Kathleen Carley and others at Carnegie Mellon.
VICE looks at the disturbing AF world of COVID-19 “truther” groups on Facebook, which promulgate bullshit conspiracy theories and engender anti-lockdown protests.
BuzzFeed runs through some of the quacks and fake experts pushing pseudoscience and conspiracy theories about the pandemic, including Judy Mikovits, the disgraced researcher behind the bogus documentary “Plandemic.”
Some COVID-19 patients show severely depleted levels of T cells, which may be a clue to potential treatments.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about from the pandemic, it has interrupted inoculation efforts around the world to the point that measles and polio outbreaks are becoming more likely.
Iowa’s efforts at testing for COVID-19 and sharing that data with local officials appear to be a disaster.
Dr. Dannagal Young, a Professor at the University of Delaware, describes how her late husband’s brain tumor led her to chase numerous conspiracy theories in a quest to regain control of their lives.
White people’s “unreasonable fear,” which is itself unjustified, is killing black Americans, writes conservative journalist David French for TIME.
I knew this was likely coming, but I’m still so disappointed that Gen Con 2020 has been cancelled.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, bread, coronavirus, hockey, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 16, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/16/20.

I posted my first mock draft of 2020 on Wednesday for subscribers to The Athletic, since we are now just 26 days away from the first night of the draft, which will only be five rounds. I wrote last week about the impact of the shorter draft on players and the sport as a whole, and also did a “what-if” lookback at the Padres’ decision to take Matt Bush over Justin Verlander in 2004. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, my first in ages.

My new book, The Inside Game, is now out and you can buy it everywhere fine books are sold, including here on bookshop.org; I’m donating my affiliate commissions from sales of my book through the site to my local food bank. The Eugene Register-Guard has a nice review of both The Inside Game and Brad Balukjian’s The Wax Pack.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea, whose book 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, co-authored with Willie Mays, was released on Tuesday. I’m scheduled to have Cubs infielder/outfielder Ian Happ on the show this upcoming week to talk about his charitable endeavors with artisanal coffee. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

At Paste, I reviewed The Sherlock Files: Elementary Edition, a new card-based deduction game that played better than I expected, although the Sherlock character isn’t remotely involved in the game’s story or mechanics. My review of the excellent digital adaptation of Sagrada is up over at Ars Technica.

I sent out another edition of my email newsletter on Friday night to subscribers; it’s free and you can sign up here.

And now, the links…

Longreads … well, medium-reads first: The New Yorker has a look at the secret world of fungi, the botanical kingdom that goes way beyond the mushrooms you likely pictured when you read that.
ProPublica has a piece explaining how climate change is pushing up infectious disease rates, and making pandemics more likely in the future.
The Guardian looks at former US army sergeant’s abortive plot to overthrow Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“For conservative zealots and media figures, the pandemic is quickly becoming just another culture war battleground — an axis of postmodern symbolic conflict, another vent for bottomless grievance, and fuel for a screeching victimhood complex.” This from The Week’s Ryan Cooper, who also points out that the United States’ response to COVID-19 has been the worst of any developed nation and argues that the problem of conservative victimhood has made governing the U.S. impossible.
Some countries are easing restrictions on movement and gatherings, but other nations are restoring such isolation measures because of increases in new cases.
Get ready for a massive disinformation effort against a COVID-19 vaccine; it has started online even though such a vaccine doesn’t actually exist.
A commentary in CalMatters, authored by two professors in the University of California system, gives helpful tips for journalists asked to cover anti-vaccine or anti-lockdown “protests,” most of which are very small and may be astroturfed events.
For example, Creative Loafing Tampa revealed that a “reopen Florida” rally was, in fact, organized by an anti-vaccine group – which multiple mainstream Tampa media outlets failed to mention in their coverage of the protest.
Various states’ lockdown efforts have led anti-vaccine groups to team up with pro-Trump agitators in some of these protests, the strangest of bedfellows other than their shared denial of science.
Many red states are now seeing cases surge even as Trump claims (falsely) the pandemic is subsiding.
GOP-controlled legislatures are up to some shit while we’re distracted by the pandemic, such as Missouri Republicans attempting to gut gerrymandering reform.
An interesting topic for debate: Do works by authors accused of sexual harassment belong in the classroom? I think the answer at the university level would mostly be “yes,” but what about high school? Junior high school? Can you have a serious discussion about separating artist from art, or about the specifics of any accusations, with 16-year-olds or 12-year-olds or younger kids?
Tribune Publishing is furloughing workers and cutting pay to save about $550,000 just months after distributing $9 million in cash to shareholders.
Nik Sharma, author of the wonderful cookbook Season, writes in the Washington Post on how to make a flavorful vegetable stock that contains just five ingredients other than water.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent warns that, as in 2016, too many media members lend credence to bullshit conspiracies and outright lies from the Trump camp through weasel wording.
From a few weeks ago: McSweeney’s hits rather close to home with “Emails from My Children’s School Before 8:00 AM During the COVID-19 Crisis.”
Jess Grose’s latest parenting column for the New York Times, on dealing with home-schooling burnout, has a note at the end from a name familiar to board game fans.
Renegade Game Studios are holding a virtual game convention on June 5-7 where they’ll announce a bunch of upcoming new games as well.
Cranio Creations has a Kickstarter up for their planned reissue of the 2004 Wolfgang Kramer/Michael Kiesling game Maharaja, reimagined by Simone Luciani (Tzolk’in, Grand Austria Hotel).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, Cooking, coronavirus, links, longreads, metoo, missouri, mushrooms, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 9, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/9/20.

I was back writing this week, with three new pieces for The Athletic: how MLB’s decision to cut the draft to five rounds hurts players and the sport; a look back at the 2004 draft and what might have happened had the Padres taken Justin Verlander at #1 overall; and a profile of Dodgers prospect Brandon Lewis, who changed his diet and conditioning habits to transform his body and become a fourth-round pick .

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is now out, and you can buy it anywhere you buy books, like here via bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores directly or by providing logistics and delivery for them. I’m donating my proceeds from sales of my book through my affiliate account there to charity, sending $100 this week to the Food Bank of Delaware, our local food pantry.

WIRED excerpted part of the first chapter of The Inside Game, on anchoring bias and why it tells us to move to an automated strike zone; the link made Pocket’s Best Of list this week. I also spoke to Inside Science about the book.

I appeared on the Poscast this week with Joe Posnanski and Ellen Adair, which you can listen to on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher; and on the Inquiring Minds podcast, which you can get on Apple or Stitcher. On The Keith Law Show, I had Meghan Montemurro, our Phillies writer, on to talk about that team and the Athletic’s ongoing OOTP simulation of the 2020 season; you can listen on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, or Stitcher.

I sent out another edition of my email newsletter this week to subscribers – it’s free, and easy to sign up, and no one has ever complained that I send it too often.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Donald Trump has long claimed he was a top high school baseball player who was scouted by a couple of MLB teams. Leander Schaerlaeckens looked into this at length for Slate, and found the answer is “not bloody likely.” The piece includes a quote from me in reaction to hearing some of the stats Schaerlaeckens was able to unearth.
ExplainCOVID.org is a new site, launched by Emily Oster, Professor of Economics at Brown, and Galit Alter, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, designed to answer common questions about the virus, how to protect yourself, and what you should (or shouldn’t) believe in the news.
The LA Times ran with a story last week about how SARS-CoV-2 had already mutated into a new, more dangerous strain … but that report was wildly premature, says Ed Yong, author of We Contain Multitudes and an essential writer on anything COVID-19 right now.
Coronavirus cases continue to spike in Arizona, but the state is already reopening as if everything were fine. This could have a huge impact on MLB’s schedule – it’s hard to imagine the season restarting if Arizona is in an unplayable state.
This is after the state government in Arizona told university researchers to stop modeling COVID-19 outcomes and limited the researchers’ access to data, presumably because the models showed the Arizona government to be making reckless policy decisions that will lead to more deaths and serious illnesses.
If you’re pushing to reopen the economy, you probably don’t need or care about child care.
Texas is also reopening, too soon, and the governor even admitted in a private phone call that the reopening will lead to a new surge in cases. They don’t care how many people die, as long as they’re okay financially.
Anti-vaxxers are trying to use COVID-19 to recruit more people to their delusional cause.
Why do Republicans keep comparing COVID-19 public health policies to the Nazis? Pennsylvania State Rep. Chris Dush (R) did it, and now multiple Ohio legislators have done the same.
A Native American health center in Seattle asked the federal government for COVID-19 medical supplies. The Trump Administration sent them body bags.
Mosquitos infected with the fungal parasite Microsporidia MB may have total immunity to the genus of parasites that causes malaria, Plasmodium, notably P. Falciparum, which is the most common and lethal agent of transmission. It’s an early study but notable in that Microsporidia MB has many biological and ‘lifestyle’ similarities to Wolbachia, a gram-negative bacterium that protects mosquitos from many viruses and has potential to limit their ability to spread malarial agents as well.
Six people were killed in March 2019 when a flawed pedestrian bridge built by FIU in Sweetwater, Florida, collapsed just five days after it had been raised. FIU just announced plans to replace it, although nobody has actually been held accountable for what appear to be multiple failures in the design and construction process last time around.
I felt personally attacked by this (parody) column called “No One Wants to Play Your Weird German Game About Trains, Dude.” Russian Railroads is a fine game and I don’t care what you say.
Days of Wonder announced Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam, the third mini-TtR game after New York and London.
Two Kickstarters of note: High Noon, a tactical card game that promises to be easy to learn but takes 1-2 hours to play, already passed its goal this week; while the narrative board game Sea of Legends funded in just six hours after launching the same day.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, coronavirus, links, science, stick to baseball

→ April 25, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/25/20.

The Inside Game is out! You can buy the physical book on Bookshop.org to support independent bookstores or get the Kindle version on amazon. (Some of my biggest fans have already left one-star reviews!) Audible named it one of their top picks in History/Nonfiction for the spring of 2020 too.

To promote the book, I did a live ‘virtual’ bookstore event with help from Nats reliever and voracious reader Sean Doolittle, which you can watch if you registered and bought the book through Politics and Prose. I also appeared on several podcasts:

Grierson & Leitch: Conversations (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher)
Baseball by the Book (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher)
Birds All Day (Athletic, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher)
Creative Nonfiction (Apple, Stitcher)
The Good Phight’s Hittin’ Season (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher)

There are also some very positive reviews for The Inside Game out already on Throneberry Fields, Farther Off the Wall, and Porchlight Books. It also made a Wall Street Journal roundup of three recommended baseball books for the spring and was recommended by Inside Hook.

I did a Q&A at the Athletic on Thursday, and part two of my diptych on scouting, covering pitcher grades, with Eno Sarris is also up for subscribers. The Athletic ran an excerpt from The Inside Game on base-rate neglect and why teams draft too many high school pitchers in the first round.

My own podcast this week featured Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital, talking about COVID-19 and baseball fandom. You can listen to it on The Athletic, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher.

I did send out a new edition of my newsletter last week, and I’ll be back on it more often now, I think; you can sign up for free here.

And now, the links…

Those of us in the United States are living in a failed state.
This editorial on Eater London explains how restaurants have to adapt to survive what could be another year and a half of “corona time,” with two important takeaways for us: Doing what you can to support restaurants still operating during the shutdown is critical to their survival, and we are not going to see fans in ballparks any time soon.
Scientists are tired of explaining that COVID-19 was not made in a Chinese lab.
Are you having stranger dreams during the pandemic than you usually would? National Geographic looks at reasons why that is happening to so many of us.
Governors talking about reopening their states – or actually doing it, in the case of Georgia – are being way too cavalier, as the pandemic is not under control yet, according to this New York Times editorial by Professor Aaron E. Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine.
Nationalist groups are using COVID-19 to push their agendas to reduce civil liberties, consolidate power, and spread hate and distrust of marginalized populations.
Why did Nikola Motor, whose CEO just bought a $32 million ranch, get a $4 million payout from the COVID-19 small business fund?
Those Facebook groups pushing anti-lockdown protests are largely just astroturfing by the Dorr brothers, a family of conservative pro-gun activists whom Republican lawmakers have called “scam artists.”
Are COVID-19 mortality rates higher than they need to be because so many developed nations’ citizens are fundamentally unhealthy?
The New York Times looked athow children’s shows are responding to kids’ needs during the shutdown, such as Sesame Street’s episode with a virtual playdate for Elmo and various real and Muppet friends. (I especially enjoyed Cookie Monster’s appearance.)
A few German citizens are protesting lockdown measures under the guise of liberty or some nonsense.
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) failed to disclose stock sales in 2019 while she was serving in Congress, violating federal law.
Board game news: Renegade is now taking pre-orders for Viscounts of the West Kingdom, the third game in the West Kingdom trilogy, for delivery at Gen Con (if the convention takes place).
I don’t know much about the upcoming game Sea of Legends other than that it’s narrative-based and looks like it has a great theme.
Boardgamegeek’s annual Golden Geek Awards balloting has now opened. I do wonder if Wingspan will suffer any backlash to its crossover success in the voting. I’d vote for it for Game of the Year, Innovative Game, Strategy Game, and Family Game of the Year; Watergate for two-player game of the year; and either Res Arcana or Point Salad for Card Game; plus Evolution for best app.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, links, podcasts, stick to baseball

→ April 4, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/4/20.

I had two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, one on the great 1980s video game Earl Weaver Baseball (for which I spoke to one of its lead developers), and one with the latest on MLB’s plans for minor league realignment and contraction.

On the gaming front, I had nothing new this week but have a few more pieces filed. Last week, I reviewed ClipCut Parks, a new “flip-and-cut” game that is great for younger kids who love using scissors but not much of a game for older players, for Paste. For Vulture, I updated my ranking of the top 25 board game apps available on mobile platforms. For Ars Technica, I reviewed the new app version of the legacy game Charterstone.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21^st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it. To be perfectly honest, I just haven’t felt up to writing that lately.

And now, the links…

The most distressing this I read this week was the Washington Post‘s story on how attempts to re-open Wuhan after two weeks of no new (reported) cases of coronavirus failed miserably as new infections came back immediately. The Chinese government was able to enforce much more draconian measures than we’ll ever see here, and yet they couldn’t corral the virus; what does that imply about what June and July will be like here in the U.S.?
A Guardian longread asks how our world will change permanently in the wake of the pandemic, highlighting decreasing civil liberties and the potential of a new response to climate change as two possible outcomes.
A column in Foreign Policy calls the COVID-19 pandemic the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history. Ken Klippenstein wrote in the Nation that the U.S. military knew years ago that a pandemic caused by a “novel respiratory disease” was likely on the horizon, so was the failure of intelligence or of the President’s response to it?
This New York Times longread investigates how a failure to test early in the U.S. – again, due to the Administration’s choice to ignore information it received – led to the pandemic and probably thousands of needless deaths.
The right-wing dark money group Americans for Prosperity, founded by neoconservative billionaire Charles Koch, pushed a $1 billion cut to the Centers Disease Control’s funding and is now attacking shelter-in-place orders for harming businesses.
Social distancing can’t last forever, and we need a comprehensive testing-and-tracing plan in place when the restrictions are inevitably eased.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey finally issued a stay-at-home order on Monday, after weeks of dithering and dismissing the concerns about COVID-19’s risks. Senior citizens make up 17.5% of the state’s population.
On the other side of the coin, Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) have both earned praise for their fast, definitive moves to try to slow the virus’s spread in their states.
Kentucky, South Dakota, and West Virginia have used the cover of COVID-19 restrictions to criminalize mass protests, including those against fossil-fuel projects like Dakota Access.
Senator Kelly Loeffler (GA-guess) sold millions of dollars in shares after receiving a confidential briefing on COVID-19 in early February, and bought shares in a company that makes protective equipment.
Kara Swisher at the New York Times delineates how Fox News spread disinformation and downplayed the threat of COVID-19 to its viewers, even though they were taking significant precautions behind the scenes.
We have it bad here in the U.S., but the impact of the pandemic and attempts to stop it will lead to massive suffering in the developing world, such as a lack of shelter or food for millions in India.
A charity run by Franklin Graham, who has a long history of anti-gay commentary, has refused to allow LGBT people to volunteer in its tent hospital in New York’s Central Park.
Meanwhile, the President is going to go golfing again.
And he’s allowing a reporter from OANN – an extreme right-wing ‘news’ outlet that openly supports the Administration – to flaunt the White House Correspondents’ Association’s rules on social distancing. OANN didn’t belong in the press room in the first place.
LitHub ranked 75 different covers of The Master & Margarita from around the world, and commented on them. I’ve had #25, #8, and #3 over the years.
Hackers or pranksters have been breaking into random Zoom meetings and defacing peoples’ screens. The FBI has warned that the platform isn’t secure.
Powell’s, one of the best independent bookstores in the United States, had laid off 100+ workers when the shutdown first hit Oregon, but has rehired them to meet a surge in online orders – one of which was from me, buying The Mirror and the Light as a birthday gift for my girlfriend’s mother. You can pre-order The Inside Game from them as well.
Progressive/instrumental metal band Town Portal and post-metal act Kowloon Walled City worked together on a live mashup of Solange’s “Rise” and Kaki King’s “Jessica” when the bands met up last summer, and just released it on YouTube to support Town Portal’s record label Small Pond.
Rock Manor Games’ two-player game Lawyer Up is in its last few days on Kickstarter. I’ve actually played this game with co-designer Mike Gnade, who lives near me, and would definitely recommend it based on that one play of a finished prototype.
And finally, some tweets of note from the week:

Fauci just admitted that if the Trump Administration had not fumbled the ball so badly on testing many fewer Americans would die from coronavirus.
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) March 31, 2020

Friends, I learned last night over Zoom drinks that ya'll're baking so much that there's a shortage of yeast?! I, your local frumpy yeast geneticist have come here to tell you this: THERE IS NEVER A SHORTAGE OF YEAST. Here's where I'm a viking. Instructions below.
— Sudeep Agarwala (@shoelaces3) March 29, 2020

powerful https://t.co/QuwBc7G42J
— Daniel Uhlfelder (@DWUhlfelderLaw) March 31, 2020

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baking, board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, stick to baseball

→ March 21, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/21/20.

My one new piece at The Athletic this week looked at the top 30 prospects for this year’s MLB draft, which is itself up in the air, although I am inclined to doubt that the draft would be completely cancelled because I think there’d be a flurry of lawsuits from players (and their advisors).

In response to many reader requests, I posted a ranking of my favorite board games for two players – some are just two-player games, some play more but work quite well for two. I have more board game content in the works for Paste, Vulture, and Ars Technica in the next few weeks as well.

And now, the links…

Coronavirus stories first … Here’s the most aggravating thing you’ll read this week: Texas Monthly looks at anti-vaxxers so deranged they’re already trying to avoid a COVID-19 vaccine, even with mortality rates thousands of times higher for the virus than for any vaccine we have.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) voted against the coronavirus relief bill because it provided sick leave to same-sex domestic partners.
The Washington Post details how the federal government fouled up the coronavirus testing situation so badly, allowing the virus to spread much faster than it might have otherwise. The Post‘s Jennifer Rubin calls Trump’s response to the pandemic the biggest blunder in Presidential history.
Trump said this week he didn’t know about the White House Pandemic Response Team but there’s video of him bragging about dismantling it.
The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast looked at how the USA failed in our initial response to the virus. The short answer: Incompetence.
STAT looks at how some other countries have been successful at beating back the pandemic.
At least five Senators appear to have dumped stocks after a confidential hearing about how unprepared the U.S. was for the COVID-19 pandemic. Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) sold up to $1.7 million in stock even as he reassured the public we were prepared. Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of shares as well, and bought shares in Citrix, which makes software used by employees working from home.
Italian author Igiaba Scebo writes from Rome “Dear Americans, Please Stay Inside.”
As the Administration discusses bailing out airlines and cruise ship operators, the restaurant industry has received no response to its own pleas for financial assistance, despite employing more people and lacking the airlines’ history of massive stock buybacks and seven-figure CEO salaries.
J. Kenji López-Alt posted a lengthy guide to food safety and coronavirus.
Longreads: This New York Times story about fabricated sexual harassment claims against a professor at Arizona State is both fascinating and infuriating. The worst part is that the author, one of the targets of the scheme, can’t name the perpetrator, who is now free to do this again to someone else.
The BBC has the story of a reporter who worked with an English man to try to reunite an Afghan mother with the daughter taken from her by the father when he fled to the UK as a migrant.
An editorial in Scientific American discusses the growing problem of harassment of scientists and others who promote knowledge on social media, on topics as diverse as vaccines, climate change, evolution, and mental health treatment.
The Trump Administration overruled the EPA and other scientists who used evidence to show that the widely-used chemical trichloroethylene is linked to fetal heart defects.
ChefsFeed offers six tips on how you can help local restaurants try to survive the shutdown. Many are opening fundraising pages to help employees who need emergency assistance, like the wonderful 5&10 in Athens, Georgia, has.
A member of the far-right hate group the Proud Boys ended up appointed to the city commission in Latinx-majority Fennville, Michigan, because he didn’t disclose his affiliation and the commissioners didn’t do their due diligence on his social media accounts.
Board game news: Two Kickstarters of note this week. The first is for Holi, an area control game coming soon from Floodgate games.
The second is for Ark: Awakening, an engine-builder with a modular board where each player has a unique faction (which sounds a bit like Root).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, environment, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ March 14, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/14/20.

I have one new post for The Athletic subscribers this week, looking at what might happen to the draft when there are no games to scout. I will have a ranking of the top 30 prospects for the draft on Monday; I’m not sure what my draft coverage might look like from here on out, as it depends on whether anyone’s playing and if the draft date moves.

Over at Paste, I reviewed PARKS, one of the most popular new games of 2019, featuring artwork from the Fifty-Nine Parks series.

And now, the links…

Coronavirus first, unfortunately: The White House has repeatedly sought to minimize the facts about the virus’ spread, and even ordered federal health officials to make their deliberations classified, which just further slowed the response … The Singapore government’s strategy in response to the virus has won praise from the WHO while the United States’ strategy has been insufficient … The former head of the White House pandemic office explains what the department did before Trump closed it for no apparent reason at all. He won’t answer questions about the decision, of course.
Two longer reads on the virus: How the Chinese scientist known to colleagues as the “bat woman” has identified dozens of virii in that family (similar to the ones that cause COVID-19 and SARS) by searching in bat caves … James Hamblin, whose work for the Atlantic has been some of the best writing on the pandemic, points out that staying home if you start coughing is not a sufficient plan.
Longreads: The BBC had three great longreads this week. The first is on the twenty-year quest to solve a murder in Idaho Falls, one for which an innocent man spent nearly all that time in prison because he was railroaded by police interrogators.
The second is by a woman who tried to get investigators to track down a child abused in a pedophilia video.
And the third is about efforts by victims of sexual assault to get videos of their attacks removed from porn sites.
ProPublica found that the Republican National Committee has handed out big contracts to companies linked to Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s husband and her political bankers.
The media needs to stop treating Trump’s inaccurate and often incoherent statements as normal political copy.
While we’re all distracted by the growing pandemic, Congress is considering a bill that would give law enforcement a back door into encrypted communications, giving the government far greater surveillance powers.
The National Labor Relations Board is trying to remove non-discrimination language from its contract with professional attorneys, eliminating protections against discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and sexual orientation.
NPR’s Short Wave has a 12-minute audio clip on anti-matter and attempts to create it.
Worsening relations between Estonia and Russia have split the Seto ethnic minority with an increasingly impassable border.
Board game news: Capstone Games announced a new game, New York Zoo, from designer Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola, Patchwork, Cottage Garden).
Viscounts of the West Kingdom, the third game in the second trilogy from designer Shem Phillips (Architects of the West Kingdom, Raiders of the North Sea), is at nearly $600,000 as it ends its Kickstarter run.
Dire Wolf Digital’s port of Sagrada is now in Early Access on Steam; I’ve played it a few times and it’s very strong, as all of DWD’s adaptations have been.
Finally, this is just … special.

Seeing some incredible takes about Public Enemy today pic.twitter.com/ag2zk7DhHg
— Wild Geerters (@steinkobbe) March 2, 2020

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, physics, science, stick to baseball, the swamp

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