board game news

→ August 9, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/9/25.

At the trade deadline, I broke down the following trades for subscribers to The Athletic:

I also posted a midseason ranking of the top 60 prospects in the minors, held a Q&A about it, and wrote up a scouting notebook on Travis Bazzana, Braylon Doughty, and some other Cleveland and Baltimore prospects.

At Endless Mode, I ranked the ten best new games I saw at Gen Con and also ran through everything else I saw or played at the convention this year. Prior to that, I reviewed the game Big Sur, and wrote a feature story on the effects of the Trump tariffs and economic uncertainty on the board gaming space.

I appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition to discuss the brief callup of Jen Pawol to become the first woman to umpire an MLB game.

Now that this post is done, my next writing assignment is my free email newsletter, followed by a pair of reviews for this site.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: New York’s Intelligencer has the story of the one-man takeover of the Anti-Defamation League, where CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has hijacked the organization to back Donald Trump and attack anyone who criticizes Israel as antisemitic, while abandoning the organization’s storied history of standing up for the rights of all minorities and oppressed people.
Gizmodo wrote about the “end of work as we know it” due to the rising use of AI, even with serious deficiencies in the technology. Whether we’re ready or not, the workforce is about to be hit hard by the fever dreams of a small number of tech bros.
The Huffington Post spoke to Jerce Reyes Barrios about the abuse and torture he suffered in five months in El Salvador’s CECOT, where the U.S. is sending people suspected of entering the U.S. illegally. We are all complicit.
Guards at the ICE detention center in Miami made migrants there kneel like dogs to eat, with their hands shackled. Abu Ghraib taught us nothing.
Phil Williams of WTVF/NewsChannel 5, one of the best investigative reporters in the country, exposes the investors backing the construction of a Christian nationalist community near Gainesboro, Tennessee.
Remember all the stories last summer about Joe Biden’s mental status? Donald Trump “has trouble completing a thought” and has rambled on in nonsensical answers, often entirely off topic, reports Adam Gabbatt for the Guardian, quoting several experts who say the President is showing signs of dementia.
Brown caved to the Trump Administration, and now the university is “functionally inaccessible” to trans students.
NPR ran a series of stories on the problems posed by defunct oil wells across the southern and western United States, starting with one about how we don’t even know where they all are.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) introduced a measure to set cognitive standards for members of Congress, which, of course, was quickly rejected. There are more members of Congress aged 70 or older now than there have ever been.
The Forward explains that the starvation in Gaza is indeed Israel’s fault.
Some Senate Democrats finally took a stand by calling for the U.S. to stop supporting Israel’s ineffective Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which Israel created after kicking the UN out of Gaza, due to the mass starvation happening in the territory.
Israel is taking over Gaza City and has announced plans to occupy the entire Palestinian territory. It’s an invasion and an illegal annexation, no different than Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia invading Bosnia.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has devoted more articles to attacking mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani than it has to the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza, including the mass starvation and the war’s creation of over 5000 new child amputees in the territory.
An Israeli “settler” in the West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian activist who was involved in the production of last year’s film No Other Land. The Israeli military claims that the shooter was a civilian who responded with gunfire when a group of Palestinians threw rocks.
A far-right Israeli politician said Israel needed to take a cue from Adolf Hitler and wipe out all Gazans.
In June, the publisher of the Harvard Educational Review abruptly cancelled the release of an upcoming issue dedicated entirely to Palestine.
Israel has held an American teenager in prison for five months on charges he threw rocks.
The walkout by Texas Democrats isn’t going to work. It may pay some dividends for the party locally and nationally, but it’s not going to stop the gerrymandering.
Luzerne County, Pennsyltucky, cancelled the scheduled appearance of Philly band Low Cut Connie at a festival because they claimed the band’s music contained “politics and propaganda.” I thought cancel culture was bad?
Jess Grose writes in the New York Times about how social media has further corrupted the already commercialized American childhood, spurred by the Benson Boone Crumbl cookie, which is an actual phrase that unfortunately makes sense to me.
Jacksonville police used deadly force in a routine traffic stop of a Black man, including repeatedly punching him and smashing in his window, despite the fact that he never fought back in any way – and local prosecutors cleared the cops of wrongdoing.
The Spotify catalogs for some dead artists have seen “new” songs that are AI-generated added in recent months; the Futurism story blames Spotify for creating them although it’s unclear who’s actually doing it.
The President of the Utah Senate, Republican J. Stuart Adams, pushed fellow Republicans to lower the state’s age of consent to help out a family acquaintance charged with statutory rape. I don’t see why Democrats would ignore this: The Utah Republican Party is actively helping pedophiles evade punishment.
The wife of Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) wrote a racist romance novel. Apparently it’s quite bad, on multiple levels.
RFK Jr. cut a $500 million federal program to continue developing mRNA vaccines, the technology behind two of the main vaccines against COVID-19, offering the potential for vaccines against some cancers and many other diseases. His explanation was full of pseudoscientific bullshit.
Some countries still believe in science: Brazil is about to release swarms of mosquitos infected with a Wolbachia bacterium that prevents the virus that causes dengue fever from multiplying – and that then gets passed down to the mosquito’s offspring.
People who find their minds wander during simple tasks may be better at pattern recognition.
Misgendering and deadnaming are no longer considered hate or harassment on LinkedIn. Why would any site ever make an active choice to permit hateful behavior?
Philadelphia city schools found a way to keep students learning even when federal funding evaporated this summer.
Dan Pelzer kept a log of every book he read for over 60 years, and when he died last month at age 92, his tally was at least 3,599 books read in that span. For comparison’s sake, I’m 52, my list goes back at least to high school, and I’m at 1,988 books read. At my current pace, it’ll still take me at least 20 years to catch up to Pelzer’s total, assuming … a lot of things.
The India Board Game Designers Collective has a Kickstarter up where you can get three print-and-play games for $9, delivering in September. I backed it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-semitism, artificial intelligence, board game news, colorado, florida, gaza, harvard, immigration, links, longreads, pennsylvania, police, science, social media, stick to baseball, tennessee, utah, vaccines, war crimes

→ July 13, 2025
→ By keith

I had a fourth mock draft go up Saturday morning for subscribers to The Athletic and then updated it on Sunday (same URL), following one I published just this past Tuesday. I also wrote up short capsules on fifty more players who might be drafted this week, beyond those on my top 100. I recapped Saturday’s Futures Game with notes on the standouts and a couple of disappointments. And I wrote up a scouting notebook on some guys I saw in triple A and high A games the previous week, including Cam Schlittler and Konnor Griffin.

At Endless Mode (formerly Paste Games), I reviewed the light tile-laying game Flower Fields, which reminded me a bit of Patchwork, but less tense and for up to four players rather than just two.

I really meant to get a newsletter out last week but never had time enough to write up the first half (the part that matters). Anyway, sign up here for free and I’ll try to do one after the draft dust settles.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Hollywood Reporter describes the celebrity-impersonation scams that proliferate on social media, and how those celebrities may be the best hope for fighting back against this scourge.

Anas Baba, NPR’s producer in the Gaza Strip, described the horrendous conditions there in a story on how difficult it is for Gazans to secure food from one of the few distribution centers. Meanwhile, the IDF bombed a queue of mothers and children lining up to receive nutritional supplements in Gaza, and it appears that Israeli ‘settlers’ in the West Bank beat an American citizen visiting family there to death. I’ve seen no comment or demand from our federal government about his murder yet.

The New York Times has an in-depth story on a woman who kidnapped her daughter after her divorce, because in the 1970s courts would not award custody to mothers if they were gay. The piece focuses on the child, who has very mixed feelings about what her mother did and how it altered the course of her life forever.

The family of a Northwestern University Professor who killed herself during a (dubious) federal investigation into whether she was some kind of spy for China is suing the school for contributing to her declining mental state.

The author Gary Shteyngart visited the country of Georgia and wrote about its food and sights for Condé Nast Traveler.

A few months ago, Texas Republicans voted down a bill to improve local disaster warning systems, such as tornado and flood sirens.

The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan asks why The New York Times appears to be trying to take down Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, focusing on the paper’s recent story about what she calls a “made-up scandal.”

I included a link on John Wilson, who was running for executive of King County (WA), getting arrested for stalking and violating a restraining order, in the links a week or two ago; this week, charges were dropped, but he also ended his campaign.

Rare good news on the vaccine front, as NBC News reports on some states, mostly blue ones, trying to end the fake ‘religious exemptions’ to school vaccination requirements.

That’s important because, as this BMJ piece notes, the vaccine-denial movement is threatening global health.

Texas AG Ken Paxton (R) loves to talk about what a strong Christian he is, and has attempted to bring religion into government since he took office a decade ago. His wife announced this week she’s filed for divorce because he keeps cheating on her. Thou shalt not, or something like that.

Paste explores how AI-generated content is drowning the publishing industry in slop.

The Intelligencer explains how a combination of changes at Google, Twitter’s self-destruction, and AI have led to a traffic apocalypse for media companies.

The Guardian has a story on just how dangerous choking during sex is, even as the practice seems to be becoming more prevalent – and it’s almost always women being choked, of course. The whole story made me feel very old and creeped out.

Libraries in Kent, England, have been instructed by the Reform-led council there to remove any trans books from their shelves if they might be seen by children. There are many problems here, but the most fundamental one is the idea that books about trans people – or other LBGTQ+ people, or Black people, or Jewish people – are inherently inappropriate for children. They’re not.

Some board game Kickstarters of note: Allplay has one for Sail Legacy, a legacy version of the cooperative two-player trick-taking game; and Restoration Games has one for a storage solution for players of their Unmatched card-game series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: artificial intelligence, board game news, book banning, gaza, georgian cuisine, links, longreads, new york city, scams, sex, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ June 28, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/28/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I had a scouting notebook on Jesus Made, Luis Peña, Trey Yesavage, and some Orioles and Brewers low-A prospects, and a post on the 2025 draft prospects who might be the first to reach the majors.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Conservas, a solitaire push-your-luck game that brings environmental sustainability into its victory conditions.

I also sent out another edition of my free email newsletter on Monday.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The fast-fashion craze is a huge drain on the planet’s resources, although this Scientific American feature also examines some entrepreneurs fighting to make clothing more sustainable.

In the New Yorker, Rivka Galchen examines the enormous cost we’re about to face from rising vaccine denialism (or “skepticism”).

The New York Times tells the stories of people caught up in measles outbreaks from Texas to North Dakota, all preventable, all the result of scam artists and lunatics spreading lies about vaccines.

Kate Shemirani was a nurse in Britain who lost her license for spreading false information about COVID-19. Her anti-medicine insanity ran so deep that her 23-year-old daughter just died of a treatable cancer because her mother opposed her getting chemotherapy. Shemirani’s two sons blame their mother and are urging social media sites to crack down on misinformation.

Gregg Gonsalves writes in The Nation about the cowardice of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician who voted to confirm RFK, Jr., knowing full well what the noted anti-vaccine crank would do as head of the HHS.

A presentation for this week’s meeting of CDC vaccine “advisers” cited a study on thimerosal in vaccines and autism that does not exist. (There is no link between thimerosal and autism.)

Vanity Fair profiles Iowa state Rep. J.D. Scholten (D), who is running to unseat Sen. Joni “We all die some day!” Ernst (R) while also pitching for the independent Sioux Falls Explorers.

Haaretz spoke to IDF soldiers who say they were ordered to shoot at unarmed Palestinians trying to get food and other aid.

The University of Florida’s law school gave an award to a paper written white-nationalist student in which he argued that Constitutional rights only apply to white Americans.

Harvard hired a researcher to examine the school’s historical ties to slavery … but when he found too many, they fired him.

Everything is bad – it’s just as terrible as you imagined and probably worse – but a three-judge panel struck down a Louisiana law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments. Your religion is yours; don’t force it on me or my kids or anyone but your own.

Your energy bill may be going up because of the AI bubble as energy companies rush to build more infrastructure to support these greedy tech companies.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R, of course) refused $450 million in federal funds that would have provided food to school-aged children over the summer. Just like Jesus intended.

Roll20-owned site DriveThruRPG, a major store to download new and classic role-playing games, removed a game called Rebel Scum from its catalog because the anti-fascist game is “too political.”

I really hesitate to share anything made by AI, but this satirical newscast is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in months.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, environment, gaza, harvard, iowa, links, longreads, louisiana, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ June 21, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/21/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my annual ten-year redraft column, looking back at the 2015 class, along with the companion piece on the first-rounders who didn’t pan out. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I have a free email newsletter and more people should sign up for it.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: GroundUp has the first part of a series on the Mozambican children that President Trump has left to die by decimating USAID. No one who claims to be pro-life, or Christian, or even remotely human can support this atrocity. It is a genocide in slow motion.

That Brevard County sheriff who threatened to kill protesters just a day or so because the Minnesota assassinations has a long history of racial profiling and corruption.

This piece is from 2022, but I found it while looking into the band Tulip, whose latest single popped up on a Spotify playlist. Turns out their origin story is fascinating – the two leads were married to other people and members of a conservative evangelical church, then fell in love and were excommunicated. They left the church and formed a symphonic metal band.

North Dakota voters voted to create an ethics commission that could hold officials accountable for violations. Some of the state’s Republican leaders are trying to emasculate it. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, Texas wasted $2 billion in taxpayer money building part of a border wall, which is about as useful as part of a wall tends to be, at least at keeping something out.

ICE is trying to deport a Texas woman who is married to a U.S. citizen, arresting her when she returned to the mainland U.S. from her honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. Ward Sakeik is considered ‘stateless,’ as she was born a refugee and arrived in the U.S. on a refugee visa when she was 8. The federal government wants to deport her to Israel, even though she has never been there or in Palestine. This is not someone who arrived here illegally, or overstayed a visa, or committed a crime.

A flag that’s popular among Christian nationalists flew over the Small Business Administration building this past week, in case you’re still confused about what’s really happening.

Two Michigan parents let their baby girl die of jaundice because they believed God would heal her. They’re going to prison, in part because they’ve said they’d do the same thing all over again. They belong to a Pentecostal church that preaches faith healing, but the church apparently doesn’t proscribe seeing doctors.

Delaware’s Senate, which is currently controlled by a Democratic supermajority, is really getting down to the key issues confronting us today, as they passed a resolution that they should look and see if public schools are at a disadvantage in athletics.

Harvard Magazine explains the university’s conflict with the Administration and what’s at stake in the fight. One of my classmates, Joanna Weiss, is the magazine’s new editor.

This column from the Seattle Times (syndicated from the Washington Post) claims that there’s a simple fitness test that’s highly correlated to your future life expectancy. I can do it but definitely wobble a little on the jump back up. I think that’s still a 9.
Rex Huppke writes that we need to take healthy policy-making away from RFK Jr., as his plans are going to kill people. My Representative, Lisa Blunt Rochester (D), issued a statement decrying his decision to fire all of the smart people on the ACIP vaccine-advisory committee and replace them with a group of Minions.

Congressional Republicans are about to kill the Grad PLUS loan program for graduate studies, further trying to wipe out the U.S.’s substantial advantage in higher education and eventually driving shortages in important fields like engineering.

JK Rowling called the Scottish newspaper The National “anti-woman,” so the editor of the paper, Laura Webster, responded.

Astronomers at CalTech and Harvard may have found the answer to where all the missing matter in the universe is. Turns out it was just behind the couch.

Stonemaier Games announced the summer release of their newest title, Vantage, an open-world, cooperative, exploration game where players have all crash-landed on a planet and can communicate with each other but can’t see anyone else’s locations or views.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: astronomy, board game news, delaware, florida, harvard, immigration, links, longreads, north dakota, physics, police, religion, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, usaid

→ June 7, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/7/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote about three prospects who’ve really seen their stock rise this year and three who’ve seen theirs fall as a follow-up to last week’s top 50 ranking. I also wrote a news story (which I think is free to read) on Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter using a homophobic slur during a game, and his weak apology after he got caught on camera. And I held a Klawchat here on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Zenith, an outstanding new two-player game where you fight your opponent for control of five planets, playing cards from your hand to three different areas to try to pull planets your way. You win by getting the same planet to your end of the table three times, or four different planets to your side, or five planets in any combination at all.

I sent out another issue of my free email newsletter on Friday, my third in four weeks, which for me constitutes some sort of hot streak.

I appeared on Marty Caswell’s Youtube channel to talk about the Padres’ farm system, potential trades if they stay in the race, and what to do with Xander Bogaerts; and on 92.3 the Fan in Cleveland to talk about Travis Bazzana and Cleveland’s struggling offense.

And now, the links:

Longreads first: This undated story on the main suspect in the Tylenol poisonings and how he slipped through multiple murder investigations is the best thing I read all week. At least part of the basis of a new Netflix documentary series, this story is at least two years old, as James Lewis, the suspect in that case and at least one other murder, died in July 2023.

Federal and Texas state law enforcement officers arrested 47 people at a house party, claiming they were members of a gang called Tren de Aragua. Months later, they’ve found and offered no evidence of any gang connections, according to a Texas Tribune investigation.

The AP reports on how Trump’s slashing of public health budgets is destroying our national infrastructure of preventative health services, which will cost us billions more in lost lives and years while further eroding trust in those same authorities.

Oklahoma Republicans passed a law allowing parents to opt their children out of any class subjects they believe to be “harmful.” Rational-minded parents there are now using the law to withdraw their kids from classes pushing election conspiracy theories and Christian theology. If you live in Oklahoma, the form you can use is here.

WIRED has the story of a study on the keto diet and arterial plaque that keto proponents claim validates their position – but one of the study’s authors left the project and has called for its retraction, due to conflicts of interest and shoddy work. There’s an underlying theme here on how peer review can break down and how bad actors are increasingly trying to exploit the academic-research system.

“Israeli gunfire” targeted Gazan civilians outside an aid distribution center, according to the Red Cross. The Guardian had a later update that raised the death toll to over 30. Israel first denied anything happened, then denied firing at civilians, then later admitted to firing “warning shots.”

The Trump Administration has ended an NIH program that was working towards a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS – a program that also had potential in many other areas, including possible therapies for autoimmune disorders.

NBC News interviewed several families who are leaving the U.S. because of the increasingly anti-transgender climate. I’ve assumed we’ll see, or even already are seeing, migration out of red states for LGBTQ+ families because of hate laws passed there, but adding this to the brain drain from the Administration’s war on academia is going to further erode our economic position for decades to come.

Indeed, even in red states where voters have passed progressive ballot initiatives on subjects like abortion and cannabis, Republican lawmakers are trying to subvert the will of the voters, usually in the name of religion.

MIT banned one of its scheduled student speakers from graduation because she gave a pro-Palestinian speech the day before.

The GENIUS Act looks like it will prioritize crypto holders over depositors if a bank becomes insolvent.

The New York Times reports on WelcomeFest, a gathering of so-called “centrist” Democrats who are mad that we’re all yelling at them online. The story notes on politicians taking shots at Indivisible, an important voter mobilization group with hard-left ideas like “don’t cut aid to the poor.” These people are only centrist if you ignore how much the Overton window has lurched to the right in the last decade.

Talking Heads enlisted director Mike Mills (the C’mon C’mon guy, not the REM bassist) to film a music video for “Psycho Killer,” starring Saoirse Ronan. It’s excellent, and Ronan is both hilarious and unsettlingly weird in it.

The Spanish publisher Salt & Pepper Games has a new crowdfunding campaign up for Battle of the Divas, a two-player game that casts the players as Maria Callas and Renata Tibaldi, fighting to be the greatest singer of their era.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, gaza, links, longreads, nutrition, oklahoma, science, stick to baseball, the swamp, true crime, vaccines

→ May 31, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/31/25.

For subscribers to The Athletic this week, I re-ranked the top 50 prospects still in the minors, updating the list to reflect various graduations and some of the new information from the small sample of 2025 so far. I also did a Q&A on the site to answer questions about it.

I’m due for another newsletter but got a little caught up with the top 50; you can subscribe here for whenever I send the next one out, hopefully over the weekend.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Seattle Times does a deep dive (pun intended) on how humans have pushed the Columbia River to its limit through overfishing, hydroelectric power projects, irrigation projects, and mismanagement.

A sheriff’s deputy in King County, Washington, has been arrested and charged with raping a teenaged girl in the department’s Police Explorer program – at least the second such incident I’ve read about in a program of that sort, along with another cop in Massachusetts who killed the girl he raped and staged it as a suicide.

A Mississippi man left his citizenship hearing only to have ICE arrest him and threaten to deport him. Kasper Eriksen is a Danish national, married to an American woman with four kids and another on the way. He’s still in custody, but the family has no money coming in because he’s their sole source of income. Abolish ICE.

Utah Republicans ordered a study on gender-affirming care for trans youth, and it says they’re all full of shit and should leave trans kids alone. Of course, the same politicians are lining up to dismiss the study.

Elon Musk’s legacy in Washington is “disease, starvation, and death,” writes Michelle Goldberg (accurately) in The New York Times. Musk’s decision to unilaterally shut down USAID programs has killed thousands, and may end up killing many more, around the globe.

Trump’s crypto scam – I mean, that’s redundant, all crypto is a scam – is a $4 billion self-enrichment scheme, explains the Philly Inquirer.

Trump pardoned a tax cheat after the man’s mother paid the $1 million to attend one of Trump’s fund-raising dinners. I’ve said this before, but this is the most corrupt Presidency in the history of our country and nobody is doing anything to stop it. Well, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) is trying, at least.

Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa), who is up for re-election next year, responded to a constituent’s question about SNAP and Medicaid cuts by saying “we’re all going to die.” This clip should appear in every Iowa Democrat’s campaign ad from now until November 2026, regardless of what office they’re running for.

A Texas cop searched national license-plate cameras to track a woman who he said “self-administered” an abortion.

Ohio State Rep. Rodney Creech (R) was accused by his own daughter of sexually abusing her, yet his Republican colleagues – who knew of the investigation – backed him for re-election last November. Let me repeat that: Ohio Republicans backed a candidate who may have molested his own daughter.

As a man who often eats alone in restaurants, I loved this Times piece on how weird people get when women dine alone. Some of it was familiar to me, but of course much of this never happens to me because I’m a man. People in restaurants or bars who serve me or sit next to me often just assume I’m traveling for work. Clearly that is not the assumption people make about women. Also, eating alone can be a wonderfully restorative experience.

Zohran Mamdani’s poll numbers are rising and he appears now to only trail the $60 million man Andrew Cuomo – who resigned as Governor after multiple women came forward to say he sexually harassed them in the race to be NYC’s next Mayor.

In The Harvard Crimson, Yona Sperling-Miller ’27 offers to fight our A-1 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a televised cage match, with the winner getting the $2.7 billion in federal grants that the Administration is threatening to cancel. This wonderful piece is simply titled, “Come at Me, Bro.”

This short excerpt from Marcus du Sautoy’s new book Blueprints: How Mathematics Shapes Creativity on how prime numbers have helped create some memorable pieces of music made me add the book to my wishlist … although it’s not out until September.

25^th Century Games has a new Kickstarter up for two space-themed games, Observatory and Star Gazers.

Only two days remain in the Restoration Games Kickstarter for Battle Monsters: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, a remake/update of the 1992 game Battle Masters.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, environment, harvard, immigration, links, longreads, math, mississippi, new york, ohio, stick to baseball, the swamp, trans rights, utah

→ May 24, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/24/25.

My first Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects for this year’s draft, is now up for subscribers to The Athletic; I held a Q&A on Thursday to take questions about it and other prospects. I also posted a minor-league scouting notebook from my recent looks at Andrew Painter, George Lombard, Jr., Jhostynxon “The Password” Garcia, Mikey Romero, and others.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Diatoms, which has some incredible art and high-quality components, and almost plays too quickly – I wanted a few more rounds to keep building patterns.

I’ve now sent out two issues of my free email newsletter in the last two weeks, which I think counts as a streak.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The best thing I’ve read this month is this San Francisco Chronicle story by their food critic, MacKenzie Chung Fegan, about her experience eating at The French Laundry and how chef-owner Thomas Keller treated her. It is nuanced, thoughtful, and ultimately allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

The Columbia Journalism Review has an extensive investigative report on the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against journalist Wesley Lowery.

The Guardian has an excerpt from the new book that their reporter Dom Phillips was writing when he was murdered, along with indigenous Brazilian activist Bruno Pereira. The two were investigating the illicit destruction of the Amazonian rain forest and the threat to indigenous peoples in the region. The book, How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist’s Deadly Quest for Answers, will come out on May 27^th.
The New Republic has the full story of the state-sponsored executions of four American nuns in El Salvador in 1980. The Reagan Administration, by the way, kept gaslighting the public by claiming the nuns were secretly communist sympathizers or activists. Today they’d just claim the nuns were MS-13.

AI’s energy consumption is completely out of control, surpassing cryptocurrency mining and massively increasing carbon emissions from big tech firms.

Trump tried to stop Harvard from taking in any students from outside the U.S., and Harvard sued and immediately got a temporary injunction. Do not comply in advance.

A man shot and killed two Israeli diplomatic staff near the Jewish Museum in DC in an apparent act of terrorism. He later shouted “Free Palestine” after his arrest. Reuters has more on the victims and the suspect.

The Administration is trying to intimidate progressives in Congress with the charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver. Progressives need to stand up and fight for her, writes Elie Mystal in The Nation.
The vaccine denialists running the FDA are saying they won’t approve COVID boosters for healthy people under 65, despite all of the evidence showing those are effective and no evidence showing they’re not safe.

Nathan Fielder’s show The Rehearsal stumbled on a technique used in Europe to help facilitate communication between pilots on commercial flights and prevent accidents … but it’s not used in the U.S.

Matthew Cherry won an Academy Award for his short film Hair Love, which then turned into a book and an animated series on HBO Max. He’s now working on a new short film, an animated musical project called Time Signature, and has a Kickstarter up for it.

An unusual genetic mutation explains the coloring of orange cats, but it doesn’t explain why they are completely bonkers.

My editor at Paste, Garrett Martin, reviewed a new video game called Despelote that is about sports but not specifically a sports video game. It sounds fascinating.

Two new boardgame Kickstarters this week: Tangerine Games has one for Sauros, a dinosaur-themed trick-taking and tile-laying game.

Board & Dice, which specializes in heavy Eurogames, has one for a new edition of Trismegistus, which is very highly rated on BGG but also has a game weight rating of 4.18/5.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, brazil, climate change, harvard, israel, links, longreads, metoo, movies, restaurants, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 10, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/10/25.

I posted my first mock draft of 2025 this week for subscribers to the Athletic, and took questions from readers about that and other prospect matters on Friday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Finspan, the new fish-themed spinoff to Wingspan that features simpler rules and a faster teach.

I’m about to send out the first new issue of my free email newsletter since February, before my travel schedule went nuts; I’ve been to fourteen states to see players, just via air, plus two more around here.

A short list this week, for no particular reason, but here are the links…

Longreads first: Automakers are going back to physical buttons and moving away from touchscreens, like the massive billboard-sized screens in Teslas, as consumers prefer the physical buttons and touchscreens are associated with much-reduced reaction times. I rented a car with physical buttons and no touch screen recently, and it took me all of about 30 seconds to figure it out.

Current Affairs has a detailed takedown of the Douglas Murray, who wrote a book on the Israel-Palestine conflict and self-described expert, but whose writing appears to omit or misrepresent facts that don’t support his (pro-Israel) conclusions. I haven’t read Murray’s book, though, and would be curious to hear from any of you who have.

At Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré spoke with an AI “sloperator” who floods Pinterest with fake recipe links and home décor posts, and who says he’s specifically targeting women over 50 with his content.

The Pulitzer Prize board chose to give the Fiction award to Percival Everett’s James, overriding the selection committee, which recommended three other titles. I just started one of the three, Mice 1961, because I want to see if I agree with the choice. I thought James was incredible.

Trump threatened to withhold $3 million in USDA funding from Maine schools because their Governor, Janet Mills, refused to comply with his extra-legal demand that they ban trans girls from playing girls’ sports. The USDA caved. If you don’t comply in advance, they back down. There’s still an ongoing court case over trans athletes in Maine, but the funding is restored.

Trump’s entire process for finding people to fill out executive branch jobs seems to be picking the worst purveyors of misinformation on Twitter: He made Vinay Prasad, a massive COVID and vaccine denier, in charge of the FDA’s vaccine regulation arm; and now he’s nominated a grifting “wellness influencer” without a medical license to be his Surgeon General.

The Trump family cryptocurrency offering – I’d call it a scam, but I think all crypto is a scam – has enriched them by nearly $3 billion.

ICE agents arrested Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka at their “immigration detention center” in his city, a facility that he says is not properly permitted and should not have been allowed to open.
New Yorkers are about to make a huge mistake if they elect Andrew Cuomo, he of the numerous sexual harassment cases and $60 million use of taxpayer funds, to be their next mayor, writes Alex Shephard in the New Republic. The man is walking ethical disaster.

Côte d’Ivoire had been one of the democratic success stories of Africa in the last decade-plus, but the recent court ruling that the leading candidate to oppose three-term incumbent President Alassane Ouattara is ineligible because of a technicality. The “little-used post-independence law” says that Tidjane Thiam, who was born in Côte d’Ivoire, should have lost his Ivorian citizenship automatically when he accepted French nationality, something he already had had through his father.

Mainstream media outlets seem loath to credit independent journalists for scoops and stories, as happened last week when multiple big-name sites failed to even name Marisa Kabas when she was the first to report on Trump’s deal with Rwanda to deport an Iraqi refugee to the central African nation.

A new preprint argues that it is nearly impossible that we live in a simulation because the energy required to ‘run’ the universe as a simulation is beyond the energy we see anywhere in the universe.
The Guardian has a wonderful interview with my favorite Doctor, David Tennant.

Rock Manor Games, whose owner, Mike Gnade, is a friend and frequent gaming opponent, has a new Kickstarter up for a reprint of Seas of Havoc, their top-rated game on BGG.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, board game news, links, longreads, maine, new jersey, new york, physics, pulitzer prize, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ May 3, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/3/25.

I had one post for subscribers to The Athletic this past week, a draft scouting notebook on Riley Quick, Kyle Lodise, some UVA bats, and three college hitters who could be top ten picks in 2026.

At Paste, I reviewed the two-player game Floristry, which is important as I think it’s the first two-player title to use an auction mechanic that really works, but unfortunately that doesn’t have enough game beyond that.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times has the bonkers story of how a bunch of college-aged and high school kids stole nearly $250 million in crypto from one guy, and then got caught within a month because they were so sloppy about it. It includes a real-world kidnapping story that demonstrates how this stuff can and will spill over into physical danger, even for people not directly involved in the scams. (Also, the victim of the original theft is a ding-dong, falling for some of the most obvious tricks to get him to divulge his passwords.)

Elon Musk’s xAI is operating 35 gas turbines in Tennessee with no permits for all pollution they’re spewing into the air. AI is an environmental disaster as it is, but Musk using his dubious position in Washington to skip any and all regulations is making the problem worse.

The author/owner of Recipe Tin Eats wrote about how influencer and cookbook author Brooki Bellamy copied several of her recipes, and those of other recipe sites, in Bellamy’s best-selling new book. Nagi refers to it as plagiarism, which is probably inapt, but Bellamy at least appears to have swiped the recipes and very slightly reworded the instructions to avoid copyright claims.

A group of religious zealots called My God Votes are trying to turn Texas into a Christian theocracy (they have lots of help, unfortunately), positively pissing on any notion of the separation of church and state in this country.

And Texas is also threatening to go after bookstores that sell whatever it is that the religious right deems “obscene,” allowing a minor to claim damages from such books.

As Trump and Musk ignore Congress by eliminating federal funding and firing workers, Trump’s golf trips are costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. I thought these guys wanted to eliminate government waste. I just found a whole lot of it. Yet food banks across the United States are running desperately short now that Trump/Musk have cut off funding and supplies.

ICE agents raided a house in Oklahoma City … but they had the wrong place. Instead they traumatized a mother and three daughters who had just moved there from Maryland when twenty armed agents broke down the door and seized the family’s computers, phones, and cash. The Philly Inquirer’s Will Bunch writes that people who were called crazy for saying we should abolish ICE were right all along.

AI-generated slop sites are proliferating across the internet; Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré writes about one such site that used an old domain associated with Emerson College’s radio station to appear legitimate while churning out fake ‘news’ stories.

Polygon, the great gaming-news site that was under the Vox umbrella, was decimated after Vox sold it to a content-farming group, with nearly all Polygon staffers laid off. It’s now part of the same company that runs clickbait sites like ScreenRant. I wrote two pieces for Polygon in 2021-22, but if those disappear I’ll repost the reviews here for posterity.

Scientific American reports on the mass-brainwashing effort around measles, spearheaded by the Republican Party and specifically the Trump Administration, pushing the twin lies that the measles vaccine causes autism (again, it does not) and that measles isn’t that harmful (it has already killed two children in the U.S. this year, and can cause the fatal condition SSPE in people who recover from the infection).

The same anti-vaccine lunacy has led to a jump in pertussis cases – over 8400 already in the U.S. this year. Whooping cough kills about 1% of infants under one, children too young to be vaccinated, who contract the bacterial illness.

And bird flu continues to spread, with more people getting infected, raising the specter of another pandemic. If only we had some sort of government agency that could track and respond to this sort of thing.

The NIH has rolled out new rules that prohibit grants to anyone working on programs related to diversity, equity, or inclusion. Like so many other executive orders and federal mandates of the last four months, it’s probably not legal, but it won’t matter. They’ve already caused the chaos they sought.

A mathematician in Australia seems to have solved the problem of finding a generalized solution to polynomial equations of power 5 or greater. I keep seeing the same headline for this one story, but nothing further about the method, or whether other mathematicians agree with what sounds like a controversial approach (among other things, he says he “doesn’t believe in irrational numbers,” which…).

Two board game Kickstarters of note, even as the Trump tariffs threaten the entire industry: Flamecraft Duals, a two-player version of the hit game Flamecraft that promises to be more directly competitive; and Nippon: Zaibatsu, a brand-new edition of a heavy game from 2015 just called Nippon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, crime, cryptocurrencies, first amendment, immigration, links, longreads, math, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ April 26, 2025
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/26/25.

I had two posts for Athletic subscribers this week, a draft scouting notebook on Ethan Holliday, Eli Willits, and JoJo Parker; and a minor league scouting post on some Mets and Orioles prospects in high A. I’m very worried about what I saw from Carson Benge. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I’ve updated the top 50 pizzerias post from yesterday to reflect two places that closed (one just within the last five months).

And now, the links…

Harvard is fighting back, suing the Trump Administration over the latter’s (likely illegal) attempts to cut funding to research programs the school conducts on behalf of the government. The Times has more on the conservative twits on the Harvard Board of Oversees who wanted to make a deal with Trump – even though Columbia tried that and it got them nothing.

Vox has the story of grid-scale batteries and how they might help green energy sources replace more fossil fuels … if the Administration doesn’t stop it.

The damage from President Trump’s irrational and ever-changing tariff … uh, are they even policies? … may be irreparable and will certainly last well beyond his term.

Trump has also deported at least two U.S. citizen children with cancer. This appears to be on top of the illegal deportation of a two-year-old girl, also a citizen, with “no meaningful process” in the words of a federal judge in Louisiana.

It looks like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) may have misappropriated public funds, moving $10 million earmarked for … into his personal campaign fund.

A former Tesla engineer says that when she pointed out a safety issue with the breaks in the company’s cars, Elon Musk threatened to deport members of her team.

Mississippi was on a heater last week in its effort to prove it’s the most backward state in the union. Their Supreme Court ruled that a transgender teen can’t legally change their name until they’re 21, because that’s the age of majority in that state. (For reference, the age of consent in Mississippi is 16. Real consistent there, fellas.) And then their Governor declared April Loser Heritage Month.

The Guardian has a story on former Royals minor leaguer Tarik El-Abour, who played four games in the Arizona Rookie League in 2018, making him the first player in the history of affiliated ball who was known to be autistic. (I don’t know what the best phrasing is for that, but I hope the point is clear.) El-Abour responds to the hateful, ignorant comments from the Secretary of Health and Human Services where he painted autistic people as a burden on society.

A group of scientists have banded together to form the Vaccine Integrity Project with the goal of countering vaccine misinformation coming from our own federal government. It comes as the Administration replaced the official site for information on COVID-19 with a page promoting the debunked lab-leak theory of its origins.

Texas’s House passed a school vouchers bill despite broad opposition from the public, because Trump bullied a number of legislators into voting for Gov. Abbott’s pet project. The program seems very likely to drain funds from public schools that need it and allow wealthy Texans to send their kids to private schools on the taxpayers’ dime.

The six brownshirts who forcibly removed a woman from a town hall in Idaho last month have been charged with various crimes, five of them with battery and four with false imprisonment.

Two German backpackers were handcuffed, held in dirty holding cells, and deported from Hawai’i because customs officers thought they were sneaking into the U.S. to work. Travel into the U.S. from overseas is tumbling. I’m not clear how cutting the billions foreign tourists spend here is supposed to help our economy.

In a largely symbolic move, two Delaware legislators, including my representative Krista Griffith (D), introduced a bill to inhibit local attempts to ban books from school or public libraries.

Thanks to the reader who pointed me to this Times story about the massive monthly board game night in NYC hosted by Richard Ye, which topped 500 people in March.

Greater than Games has effectively shut down as a result of President Trump’s futile tariff war. Their most popular game is Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Bitewing Games has a Kickstarter up for two travel-sized board games, Gingham and Gazebo, the latter of which is from designer Reiner Knizia.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, delaware, Economics, environment, florida, harvard, immigration, links, longreads, mississippi, police, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

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