coronavirus — Page 5

→ September 25, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/24/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I named my Prospect of the Year for 2021, going through a number of the top candidates this year (and there were too many to include), and two weeks ago I profiled Austin Riley’s transformation from a low-OBP hitter with exploitable holes to a downballot MVP candidate. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

I spoke to Joe Posnanski on my podcast this week, talking about his new book, The Baseball 100, which comes out on Tuesday. You can buy it here. And you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I ranked the ten best games that are currently out of print, and my Gen Con wrapup should be up today or maybe on Monday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

Longreads first: The Guardian looks at how outside investors bought into Appalachian coal companies, bled them dry, wiped out pensions, and poisoned the local water supplies.
Jelani Cobb profiles Derrick Bell, one of the … of critical race theory, for the New Yorker.
Why did Comedy Central give Charlamagne tha God, a rapist who said on air that he drugged women and raped them, his own late night show? Because he’s friends with the network’s president. He also has made anti-Semitic comments and peddles conspiracy theories, although that’s secondary here.
Tim Grierson looked back on Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” and the black album as a whole.
Tucker Carlson is overtly preaching white supremacy on his show by espousing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, first delineated by French white nationalist writer Renaud Camus.
The Biden administration has declassified a number of documents related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including one FBI report detailing links between the hijackers and Saudi religious authorities within the U.S.
At the University of Iowa, faculty members can’t even ask students to wear masks, let alone require it. Isaac Chotiner interviewed Prof. Silvia Secchi at that university about the dystopian hellscape in which she works.
Here’s a shocker: The so-called studies that claimed to show a reduction in mortality from COVID-19 after ivermectin use? They’re junk. The main one had faked data. The second most-prominent one’s authors won’t give anyone else their data.
Dr. Jen Gunter explains why “Dr.” Christiane Northrup is the pandemic’s worst woman, a grifter who pushes pseudoscience and vaccine misinformation.
As if wellness influencers weren’t already a scourge on society, now they’re taking the anti-vaccine movement mainstream.
Alaska has joined Idaho and parts of Montana in rationing hospital care due to COVID-19 patients flooding ICUs. This was preventable, if any of those states, which all have Republican governors and Republican control of both houses of their legislatures, had taken evidence-based steps to stop the pandemic, but they didn’t.
Two Black men in Minneapolis wrote an editorial on how they’ve helped reduce violence in their communities simply by sitting down.
Video: A man with 40 compost bins. My wife said I can’t do this.
Dr. Nadia Chaudhri is dying of ovarian cancer at age 44, but her inspirational, life-affirming tweets have earned her a devoted following even as she documents the ravages of the disease.
L’Événement, a French film about abortion, won the top prize in Venice.
The Canadian alt-right site The Post Millennial is losing advertisers because it employs the grifter Andy Ngo. Ngo has enjoyed close ties with groups like the Proud Boys and encouraged followers to dox his critics.
In key battleground states, corporate PAC money goes overwhelmingly to anti-abortion legislators.
The finance chairman of the Nevada Republican Party is hosting a major QAnon conference at his hotel.
The BBC talks to people who’ve lost close family members to the QAnon hoax.
Mark Appel’s twitter thread on lessons he’s learned from his experiences from high school to his current comeback is well worth reading.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is refusing to call these election recount shams “audits.” The Washington Post‘s Margaret Sullivan explains why.
Board game news: Flatout Games, one of the publishers behind Calico and Cascadia, now has a Kickstarter up for a new game, Verdant.
Jeff Bergren, owner of the publisher/game store chain The Gaming Goat, was kicked out of Gen Con last week, and now GAMA, the organizer of the gaming con Origins, has banned him and his company from the event. Bergren has a history of harassing other members of the community, and a recent Kickstarter for one of his company’s games included the white power ‘ok’ symbol in one of the images.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, canada, coronavirus, links, longreads, metoo, minnesota, social media, stick to baseball, tv, vaccines

→ September 4, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/4/21.

My newest column for the Athletic was pushed back to Monday, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, I did hold my first Klawchat in a while on Friday.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke with Dr. Sian Beilock, author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, an intangible that is actually both tangible and mutable. You can train your brain to do better in high-pressure situations. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify. I also appeared on the Athletic Baseball Daily show again on Friday.

We’ve cleared over $800 raised to help Afghan refugees resettle in this area, money I will donate to Jewish Family Services of Delaware when I receive it. You can buy your “I’m just here for the #umpshow” T-shirt here to support the cause.

I’ll resume the email newsletter this weekend, now that things are calmer and less COVID-y around the house. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times Magazine looks at how one Dominion Voting Systems employee became the bogeyman for the election deniers, destroying his life in the process.
A fringe medical group calling itself the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance is the major reason a bunch of American morons have started eating horse dewormer, even in the face of every major scientific and medical body saying it doesn’t work. Marisa Kabas investigated the group for the Huffington Post.
A new paper in Nature Immunology examines better communication techniques to boost vaccine acceptance.
Right-wing dark money groups’ next target? Local school boards, using fears of critical race theory to try to get their puppet candidates elected. Even if you live in an area where you think this couldn’t happen, make sure you pay attention to your next school board election.
Hey, there’s a pre-print out with the results of an RCT that shows that masks are an effective mitigation strategy against COVID-19. They’re best when used with other mitigation strategies, such as vaccines, but they do help. That sound you hear is anti-maskers moving the goalposts.
Ah, Texas, or should we just call you Gilead? NPR and Teen Vogue look at the state’s effort to turn back the clock 50 years, including the deleterious effect the state’s de facto abortion ban will have on women’s health. Plan C is trying to spread the word about how to get abortion pills online. The Nation points out how the right is concern-trolling everyone with bogus eugenics objections, when this is really about making religion into law. An enterprising programmer wrote an iOS shortcut to spam the Texas Right to Life group’s whistleblower site with junk reports, while GoDaddy is telling them to find another hosting service.
The NY Times has an oral history of Y Tu Mamá Tambien, twenty years after the film, directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring a terribly young Gael García Bernal, was first released.
The Alabama coal miners strike continues to get very little mainstream media coverage, but one independent journalist has been on the ground with the strikers for several months.
Why did Louisiana use forced prison labor to fill sandbags before Hurricane Ida hit – and then return those prisoners to their cells rather than evacuate them?
Board game news: First watch this Shut Up & Sit Down review of the game 1819 Singapore, and then read this for more information.
WILD: Serengeti looks like it has incredible artwork, if nothing else, and it’s on Kickstarter now.
Also, The Price of Coal, a game about labor rights, is funded but is still on Kickstarter. I backed this one because I love the theme and concept.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board game news, coronavirus, frauds, labor rights, links, longreads, louisiana, reproductive rights, vaccines

→ August 28, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/28/21.

Nothing new from me at the Athletic this week as I’m still dealing with an illness in the family, but I hope to have my next piece up on Thursday of this upcoming week.

I reviewed the board game adaptation of Red Rising for Paste this week, and also reviewed the book from which the game is derived.

I created a T-shirt celebrating the #umpshow to raise money to help Afghan refugees who are settling in the Wilmington area. Proceeds will go to Jewish Family Services of Delaware – they’re aware a donation is coming – and possibly a second group depending on how best we can help. We’re over $650 raised through T-shirt sales, not counting the handful of you who’ve donated directly to JFSD, so thanks to all of you who’ve bought the shirt or donated.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry about their new album, Screen Violence, which came out yesterday; as well as the toxic environment of social media, working with Robert Smith, and more. You can (and should!) subscribe on iTunes and Spotify. I also appeared as usual on the Friday edition of the Athletic Baseball Daily show.

I’ll be back with an email newsletter and I hope a chat this upcoming week. And don’t forget that my second book The Inside Game is now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: R.J. Anderson reports on the pushback and near-strike that took place after MLB pushed changes on the Atlantic League, particularly the choice to move the pitcher’s mound back a foot.

The New Yorker profiled my colleague Katie Strang, who has become the industry’s leading writer on athletes and coaches accused of domestic violence or sexual assault.

Dr. J. Stacey Klutts, a clinical associate professor of pathology and clinical microbiology at the University of Iowa, wrote a great primer on what we know now about the Delta variant. The Des Moines Register should have asked him to write an editorial, not the unqualified grad student and COVID-19 minimizer they invited instead.

STAT reports on the complete lack of evidence that Ivermectin is effective against COVID-19. It’s all junk studies and anecdotal reports.

Dr. Doreen Dodgen-Magee explains why it’s so hard to get people to back down from their misinformed beliefs: commitment bias.

This April piece from McGill University’s Office for Science and Society exposes RFK Jr. for the dangerous anti-vaccine charlatan he truly is.

Many professors are leaving their jobs rather than teach in-person, especially at schools that won’t require masks or vaccines. Some schools are, of course, prevented from issuing such mandates because of the death cult running their states.

More U.S. police officers died of COVID-19 in 2020 than from all other causes combined. Yet I keep seeing reports of officers and even union chapters fighting vaccine mandates.

A new lawsuit accusing Horatio Sanz of grooming and abusing a teenage girl that names him, Saturday Night Live, and NBC may blow the lid off a bigger story about the culture on that show and impugn other cast members from that time, notably Jimmy Fallon.

Louise Godbold, who identifies herself as a “Harvey Weinstein survivor,” wishes media outlets would stop asking her the same questions about what should happen to the serial rapist and sexual abuser.

The BBC has the story of a former Angolan child soldier who survived a near-fatal shooting to his head and is now a popular restaurant manager in London.

Facebook refused two Representatives’ request for more information on the company’s (minimal) efforts to fight COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. I found multiple groups dedicated to the deworming drug Ivermectin, including at least two that purport to help people get prescriptions for it, active on Facebook just this week. Reporting them has had no apparent effect.

The school board in Waukesha, Wisconsin, hometown of Jarred Kelenic, turned down state funding for free lunches because people might get “spoiled” by it.

Board game news: The Price of Coal, a board game about coal mining and labor rights, is just about to hit its funding goal over at Kickstarter.

Eagle-Gryphon Games has brought us a new(ish) title from the late designer Sid Sackson, combining elements of his games The Great Race and Can’t Stop into Route 66 The Mother Road, now on Kickstarter and already well past its funding goal.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, board game news, coronavirus, good journalism, longreads, metoo, vaccines, wisconsin

→ August 21, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/21/21.

Two new posts since the last roundup for subscribers to the Athletic – my list of the five farm systems that have improved the most since February; and a scouting blog from two weekends ago covering some Rays, O’s, Nats, and Tigers prospects. I’ve been unable to do much this past week due to an illness in the family, but hope to be back on the road this upcoming week.

On the board game front, I had three reviews go up earlier this month. At Paste, I reviewed the great new family game Juicy Fruits and the midweight game CloudAge. For Polygon, I reviewed the upcoming second edition of Great Western Trail, which is still the top-rated complex game on my overall rankings.

On of the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, author of sixteen books, including The Constant Rabbit; and then had old pal Joe Sheehan as a guest this week.. And on The Athletic Baseball Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

My newsletter is getting back on track, although I didn’t send one this week since I didn’t write anything for any other sites beyond my own. You should sign up, though. Or you might consider buying my book, The Inside Game, now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Ed Yong, whose coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic (not my employer) won him a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, writes about how the pandemic is now likely to end: with a long, tapering whimper, rather than a bang. And much of it is our own stupid fault.
A new journal article in Cell looks at all of the evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and concludes that a zoonotic origin is far more likely than a so-called “lab leak.”
ProPublica reveals just how much some high-income donors saved in taxes by helping fund the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a major science denialist, was particularly helpful to his wealthy supporters.
The Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction has released their report, titled What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. Setting aside the question of whether it goes as far as it needs to go, the report doesn’t shy away from blaming U.S. policymakers who believed we could build a nation, threw good money after bad, and had perhaps the most expensive case of the planning fallacy in history.
What can you do in the wake of last week’s apocalyptic report on the climate? Anything at all. Just do something.
A reader contribution: The Guardian profiles the woman who goes through NYC residents’ garbage and highlights their waste and profligacy on social media.
The Washington Post tells the awful story of a Missouri widow who lost her husband to COVID-19 and is now facing financial ruin.
I missed this in June, but a bill to legalize cannabis in Delaware failed over concerns that it wouldn’t create sufficient racial equity in the resulting system. Given how disproportionately cannabis laws have affected Black residents of Delaware (and all states), I think it’s worth crafting a bill that ensures they’ll share in the spoils of the new industry.
College officials are concerned about students showing fake vaccination cards rather than complying with vaccine mandates. The answer to that seems to be simple – use a fake card, get expelled, no refunds.
The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors issued a statement that said that medical professionals who spread COVID-19 misinformation should lose their licenses. I’ll believe it when I see someone actually lose their license, but this is a good warning, at least.
A law professor writes that vaccine mandates are legal as well as based on solid science.
And that’s good, because the Nevada Board of Health just voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for college students in the state.
The anti-vaccine grift might be becoming untenable. The victims of cons are often unwilling to admit that they’ve been conned. A little help from law enforcement wouldn’t hurt, though.
Plenty of COVID deniers and minimizers like to claim that the virus has little effect on children (or did, pre-Delta). That’s highly misleading and takes advantage of a cognitive illusion called the contrast effect.
A spate of fabricated research papers hit certain academic journals this spring, and they were only caught because of certain “tortured phrases” (“colossal information” instead of “big data”) that caught other researchers’ eyes.
That Indiana doctor behind the viral video where he repeats anti-vaccine myths won’t even admit if he’s vaccinated and isn’t board-certified in any specialty. He should lose his license, though, because he’s full of shit.
Wilmington has a great little restaurant scene for such a small city, and for my money, Bardea is the best restaurant we’ve got. It’s improved even more since the pandemic began, as chef-owner Antonio DiMeo has been experimenting with koji and other fermentation techniques to boost flavors and create a more plant-forward menu.
The board game café chain Snakes & Lattes hired decorated chef Aaron McKay as COO as they try to establish the cafés as food destinations, not just board game spots where you get chicken tenders and soggy fries.
Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has long been linked to neurological damage in children, will finally be banned for use on food products after the Trump administration ignored scientists’ pleas to prohibit it.
This seems like it should be bigger news: A U.S. lab claims it has approached the goal of nuclear fusion ignition, using a laser to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen fuel that could become self-sustaining, providing enough heat to keep the fuel mass at a high enough temperature for fusion to continue. In theory, it’s a potential source of clean, limitless energy. It sounds too good to be true.
In a similar vein, did Google Labs really create “time crystals,” an entirely new phase of matter that would be a huge leap forward towards the goal of real quantum computing?
Board game news: Cranio Creations announced a new deluxe edition of the classic worker placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico.
Capstone announced pre-orders for Corrosion , a new game where your machines can rust and become useless, which I love as a concept and which also reminds me of a key plot point in Baldur’s Gate.
Publisher Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) laid off its entire staff last week and appears to be entering bankruptcy.
I don’t remember the 2007 game Get Bit!, but it’s getting a brand-new edition, now on Kickstarter.
And finally, this was highly entertaining. What better way to mock a lunatic than by setting his deranged words to music? (There’s some great guitar work here, too.)

Full video here: https://t.co/xetcKyBuBK
— Christian Nightmares (@ChristnNitemare) August 17, 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, delaware, environment, food science, frauds, links, longreads, science, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ August 8, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/8/21.

My one new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic is a long scouting notebook with my observations on players from the Nats, Rays, Orioles, and Tigers’ systems, including five former first-round picks. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to Dr. Katy Milkman, author of the new book How to Change, about we can use psychology and knowledge of how our brains work to enact real, lasting behavior change in ourselves. You can subscribe via iTunes or Spotify. And on the Athletic Baseball Show, I got back together with my old Baseball Today partner in crime Eric Karabell (also on Spotify).

My email newsletter will return this week, and I’m going to give away a copy of a new board game (the publisher sent me two copies, so I offered to do a giveaway and they were on board, get it?) to one random subscriber.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Columbia Journalism-Review looks at how casinos and other sports-betting entities are taking over sports media. My employer is mentioned in passing.
In the New Yorker, Jane Mayer reveals all the giant dark money groups funding the Big Lie, including the archconservative Bradley Foundation.
People who argue in bad faith that the vaccine isn’t FDA-approved are also ignoring that the FDA itself is no guarantee of anything, as they ignored years of evidence that HeartWare heart pumps were prone to serious defects and allowed the company to continue selling them.
The unvaccinated are not a single, homogenous group that refuses to get the shot because they’re ignorant, selfish, or dumb. (Some of them are, certainly.) Many lack easy access to the vaccine, even now, seven months after the first approvals.
There’s a lot of conflicting information about the COVID-19 vaccines and the Delta variant. One new study from the UK showed that vaccinated people were only 1/3 as likely to contract the Delta variant as unvaccinated people – including asymptomatic infections.
North Carolina’s legislature doesn’t want to vote to end child marriage because too many legislators themselves married as minors or married spouses who were minors. Is that “Dueling Banjos” I hear in the background?
This New York Times Wirecutter guide to cleaning your grill is very thorough and useful. It could even save you from a preventable grease fire.
Phoenix Union High School District is mandating masks for students, flouting the fucking moronic state law banning mask mandates. How Republicans can preach a belief in local government and self-determination while passing state laws that tell cities, counties, and school districts what they can’t do just breaks my brain.
Meanwhile, several attorneys and parents in Florida are suing their wingnut governor over that state’s ban on mask mandates.
QAnon supporters are running for school boards across the country while trying to shed the label associated with that batshit conspiracy theory.
Twitter is taking more steps to try to fight disinformation by working with Reuters and the AP, although the best thing they could do is ban the biggest spreaders of disinformation, like RFK Jr.
A writer for TripOut took two Italians to an Olive Garden. Hilarity ensued, sort of.
The climate change news is about to get a whole lot worse.
Your sunscreen might be killing coral reefs and other marine life, and “reef safe” lotions are not verified as actually safe for the ocean’s ecosystem by anybody. Of course, climate change may kill all the coral off first.
Nancy Pelosi flipped her view on student debt cancellation, opposing it in public, to cater to two of her biggest donors. The Swigs didn’t even learn about the student debt crisis until 2018, according to this piece in the Intercept, but that didn’t stop them from throwing their weight around here.
Journalists need to stop covering anti-democracy efforts as if they were politics as usual. Call voter-suppression efforts, bogus claims of voter fraud, and the like for what they are.
If you subscribe to the Washingtonian, well, its CEO has gone all out to fight a unionization effort at the magazine. Maybe let them know how you feel about that.
Former Welsh rugby star Terry Davies, who also happened to be my mother-in-law’s cousin, died this week at age 88.
Board game news: We have some fresh Kickstarters up, including Cartouche, a light tile-laying game with an ancient Egyptian theme.
Then there’s Mixology, a cocktail-themed game from a publisher based in Bangkok.
I was going to highlight the Kickstarter for Henry’s Feast, a game based around building a menu of Indian cuisine designed by people of Indian descent, and with an emphasis on the vegetarian dishes of the subcontinent … but the organizers cancelled the Kickstarter before I could share the link here. I’ll post it when it goes live again.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, Cooking, coronavirus, italian cuisine, journalism, links, longreads, north carolina, rugby, social media, stick to baseball, the big lie, vaccines

→ June 5, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/5/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I did my annual redraft column, looking back at the best players from the 2011 draft class, as well as the first-rounders who didn’t work out.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Umbra Via, an afterlife-themed game with route-building elements that just did not click for us at all.

My free email newsletter has returned, with my first edition in over a month, where I explain why I just haven’t felt much like writing lately – an unusual feeling for me.

My second book, The Inside Game, is now out in paperback, and I don’t think I’m just being a buy-my-book marketing guy when I suggest that it would make a great Father’s Day gift. Midtown Scholar still has a few signed copies of the paperback available, and you can buy the book via bookshop or amazon or anywhere else you buy books.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: America has a drinking problem. Well, I don’t, but the rest of you do.

There’s growing evidence that UNC’s decision not to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah Jones was driven by the interference and objections of mega-donor Walter Hussman, Jr, for whom their journalism school is named. In one email to a board member, he wrote that “he was concerned about how Hannah-Jones’s work could clash with his vision for the school and what it teaches.”

These “leaked” intelligence stories are often based on dubious sources that the authors fail to explain or even question. Indeed, the now widely-spread claim that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab is still free of actual evidence to support it.

A group of unvaccinated staffers at a Houston hospital have filed a lawsuit against the hospital’s vaccine mandate, aided by a Houston lawyer with a long history of deranged legal actions including homophobic and anti-trans moves. I can’t speak to the legal issues here, but the plaintiff’s claims (e.g., that the vaccine can alter your DNA, which, come the fuck on already) are crazy, and if a hospital can’t mandate vaccinations, we are going to have to live with the pandemic forever.

Sharyl Attkisson, a faux-journalist who has spread anti-vaccine disinformation for years and made the news in 2020 when she tried to air an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claimed COVID-19 was the product of a secret a government plan, is threatening to sue Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, for defamation, a baseless threat aimed at silencing one of the most vocal and erudite advocates of vaccination.

A new editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine explores incentives for increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake, including mandating it in health care settings, requiring it for access to events that “involve close person-to-person contact,” and raising life and health insurance premiums for people who refuse to get the shot. I’m a big fan of the last approach: people respond strongly to financial incentives, and those of us who have gotten vaccinated shouldn’t be subsidizing those who won’t.

We loved Mare of Easttown, especially since we caught many of the local references, living just a mile or two away from the border between Delaware (state) and Delaware County. The show’s depictions of the residents of DelCo, however, isn’t very accurate. That county has historically been quite red, with deep racial tensions going back to the Civil War.

Texas, whose tourism board has adopted the slogan Where The Cruelty Is The Point™, is trying to pass voting restrictions that will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. Because that too is the point.

Arizona has wasted a bunch of taxpayer money “updating” its execution systems, including buying the ingredients to make the same gas the Nazis used to kill Jews, Roma, and other victims in concentration camps. You know what would be cheaper, and also less murdery? Ending capital punishment.

Democrats in the House and Senate are showing no sense of urgency in the face of attempts to undermine our democracy by the January 6^th insurrectionists and their enablers in Congress. Meanwhile, over 100 scholars in political science and the law signed a letter stating their concerns over threats to our democracy and lack of national voting and election standards.

Climate change is an emergency, so why can’t journalists call it one?

The best reaction I saw this week to the French Open telling Naomi Osaka that she can go fuck herself was from the Guardian‘s Jonathan Liew, arguing that we in sports media are not the good guys here, and that press conferences are problematic. Indeed, the day after Osaka withdrew, some asshole reporter asked 17-year-old Coco Gauff an insulting, racist question that should have gotten his credentials yanked. (Apparently that only happens if you dial into a press conference from a supermarket.) Scottish tennis coach Judy Murray, mother of two tennis champions in Andy and Jamie Murray, supported Osaka and talked about the absurd demands of the press on players.

Stanford Law toyed with preventing a student from graduating because he’d distributed a flier mocking the Federalist Society, spawning a complaint from campus snowflakes – er, conservatives. The school eventually dropped its investigation on free speech grounds.

New York Times health writer Tara Parker-Pope writes about four lessons we’ve learned in the last year for your anxious brain. Strengthening your connections seems like an especially valuable one in a year when most connections have become slack (pun intended).

Monster Couch announced that they’re releasing the iOS adaptation of Wingspan on July 21st, with pre-orders now open.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: academia, anti-science, anxiety, arizona, board game news, climate change, coronavirus, links, longreads, pennsyvlania, Sports, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 29, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/29/21.

I had two posts this week for subscribers to the Athletic: my first mock draft of 2021, and a scouting post on high school pitchers Chase Petty and Frank Mozzicato, both of whom will be day-one picks. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste last week, I reviewed Cryo, a really engaging new worker-placement game from the designers of Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, where resources are always limited and you have to build your board to maximize your resource collection.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has a few signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

And now, the links:

Longreads first: This New York Times story on Andrea Smith, a professor at UC Riverside who has been falsely claiming Cherokee ancestry for at least 20 years, is one of the best-reported pieces I’ve read this year – and maddening.
The Berglas Effect, an amazing card trick created by the magician David Berglas, still fascinates and mystifies even other magicians decades after he invented it.
A New York law firm is behind most of the lawsuits against workplace vaccine mandates and other efforts driven by anti-vaccine grifter Del Bigtree.
From April 2019: Matthew Salesses wrote about grief and how it distorts our sense of time after the passing of his wife.
A former employee of the Chaplain’s Office at a small ‘elite’ college writes of the disconnect between progressive values and western religions on campus. I’m not sure the piece led mew to the conclusion the author intended.
Rosella, a NYC restaurant that only serves sustainable fish, might be the future of sushi. I’ve wondered for at least a decade now how there could possibly be enough fish in the oceans to keep all of these sushi places – they’re everywhere in the country, in the suburbs now, far too many for a dwindling supply of fish – in business.
Delaware Democrats have introduced a bill to make it harder for police to use force against citizens, and to make any materials in misconduct complaints and hearings public. The bill would also require that authorities collect data on the races of all people involved when officers use deadly force. No Delaware cop has been charged for shooting a citizen in at least the last 16 years.
The United States has a strong history of ethnic cleansing of its own. Teen Vogue looks at how our government used the 1830 Indian Removal Act to displace hundreds of thousands of Native Americans, with thousands dying as a result.
The Associated Press fired a young writer, Emily Wilder, after conservative trolls complained about her social media activity from when she was in college (before she was hired), but AP employees have mutinied and their leadership is on the defensive.
Texas will allow the unlicensed carrying of handguns. We won’t just see a rise in suicides there if this lasts, but I would bet we’ll see a surge in random shootings in situations like this road rage incident in DC.
Florida Republicans are ripping power away from local authorities to try to keep the state red.
Oklahoma Republicans are pushing a bill that would ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, and one community college has already cancelled such a class before the bill has even become law. If you live in Oklahoma, anywhere, call your state rep and Senator – no matter how right-wing crazy they might be – and tell them you oppose this bill.
Pennsylvania Republicans, meanwhile, have introduced three bills aimed at punishing women who have miscarriages or try to get abortions. The Democratic Governor has promised to veto them.
An Islamophobic ‘vlogger’ in Canada was arrested for punching a store employee and trying to make a citizen’s arrest.
COVID-19 isn’t spread through fomite transmission (by touching a surface that an infected person touched), so it’s time to end the hygiene theater.
A shady advertising agency offered to pay a bunch of French social media influencers to spread fake news against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.
A new coronavirus – not a variant, but a different virus from SARS-CoV-2 – is making people sick in Malaysia, and it appears to have jumped species from dogs.
Seth Rogen had some smart comments on comedians and so-called ‘cancel culture.’
Eric Carle, whose book The Mixed-Up Chameleon was the first book I ever read by myself, died this week at age 91.
Board game news: Heroes of Barcadia, a “pun-tastic” dungeon crawler, is coming soon to Kickstarter.
Capstone Games announced the new Kiesling/Kramer title Savannah Park, available at Gen Con and Origins in September.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, delaware, florida, links, longreads, oklahoma, pennsylvania, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 16, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/16/21.

I’ve had three posts up in the last week for subscribers to the Athletic: my ranking of the top 100 prospects for this year’s MLB Draft; a special Q&A about that ranking; and a post on my trip to see Vanderbilt and Alabama, when Jack Leiter was a very late scratch for his start. He did pitch yesterday and his velocity was completely normal.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Flourish, a new, quick-playing card game from the designers of Everdell.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter, which will return this week (tomorrow, I hope).

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Dyatlov Pass mystery may have a very mundane, anti-climactic solution.
The headline here doesn’t really summarize the article, but musicians are organizing to try to fight the vice grip Spotify has on the industry.
Policymakers ignored the United States’ near-total lack of child care infrastructure until the pandemic exposed this massive economic weakness. If you want to grow the economy, you need affordable child care.
The CDC’s statistic that “less than 10 percent” of COVID-19 transmission occurred outdoors is probably wildly misleading. The actual rate might be 1/100^th of that.
Adolescents can finally get their COVID-19 vaccines! My daughter got her first dose less than 24 hours after the approval came through. Her only complaint afterwards was two days of a sore shoulder. Go get your kids the shot.
Facebook deplatformed an Ohio-based anti-vaccine group, and then did the same to Erin Elizabeth, a major anti-vaccine wacko who is partners with longtime quack Joseph Mercola.
Activists opposed to syringe exchanges are just bizarre, but their work may lead a major success story in Indiana, which helped end an HIV outbreak, to close.
If the West Antarctic Ice Shelf collapses, the rise in sea levels will be 30% higher than originally thought.
The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth may be misusing data from students’ electronic devices to accuse those students of cheating.
Frank Abagnale authored a best-selling memoir that became the movie Catch Me If You Can. It turns out that his story is probably a big hoax.
The cicadas are coming, so of course some folks suggest eating them.
Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s defence against a charge of improper lobbying is that he was undone by autocorrect. The lede here is spectacular.
Bari Weiss really took off her mask in a substack post that justified the killing of Palestinian children.
Two good op eds from the Washington Post this week on our current quaqmire: how two men named Joe (Biden & Manchin) hold the future of our democracy in their hands, and why democracy and cults of personality don’t mix.
I know Jonathan Chait’s reputation is … not great, perhaps, but I agree with him on the subject of Rep. Liz Cheney. She can be wrong on many issues, but she is right on Trumpism and the direction of the GOP, and we can acknowledge or even praise the latter without somehow tacitly supporting the former.
The bloated U.S. military budget isn’t just wasteful – its consequences disproportionately harm people of color.
Board game news: Board & Dice, publisher of some of really heavy Euro titles like Teotihuacan and Tekhenu, explained how and under what terms they’re continuing their relationship with designer Daniele Tascini, who made some insensitive comments on race last year. I think it’s a good blueprint for working with someone who might be too quickly ‘cancelled.’

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, hoaxes, longreads, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 1, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/1/21.

I had two posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on how the Rockies’ next GM might start to turn the franchise around, and a draft scouting notebook looking at several day-one candidates, led by Fordham lefty Matt Mikulski.

On the Keith Law Show this week, my guest was MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis, talking about this year’s MLB draft class. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify. I also appeared on the Athletic Baseball Show on Friday, which will be my regular slot for most of the year.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: One of the many victims of disgraced writer/teacher Blake Bailey came forward to tell how Bailey manipulated and raped her.
Alameda police killed Mario Gonzalez, who was unarmed, by pinning him to the ground for five minutes during an arrest on April 19^th. This is a systemic issue.
CloseCallSports has the best explanation of the obstruction call in Milwaukee that I tried to explain on Twitter, only to have my replies explode with people who didn’t like the call. An umpire can make a call that is technically correct – and Marty Foster’s was, indeed, justified by the rules – but so rarely made that we assume it’s wrong.
Tony LaRussa’s animal welfare nonprofit is plagued by claims of racism and a toxic workplace environment. Between this and his multiple DUIs, LaRussa’s hiring by the White Sox this offseason looks even more suspect. Over at Sox Machine, Jim Margalus talks about some of what LaRussa is doing wrong on the field, too.
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice (R) announced that residents aged 16-35 who get the COVID-19 vaccine will get a $100 savings bond, an ingenious use of the stimulus funding the state has received.
After years of misguided opposition, Florida officials will finally release genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the kind responsible for spreading the Zika virus, dengue fever, chikungunya, and more, to stop the insects’ offspring from surviving into adulthood.
Anti-vaxxers are adopting yellow stars and other symbols of the Holocaust, in case you were wondering how low they would sink in their war against science and rationality.
The official Twitter account for the Auschwitz Museum is pushing revisionist history that absolves Poles of their role in the Holocaust (Haaretz, $ required).
PBS has a new series coming up on May 11^th called Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer, about the extraordinary success of vaccines and other major medical advances that helped double our life expectancy in a century.
Facebook claimed they removed the “Disinformation Dozen,” twelve people responsible for the vast majority of anti-vaccine lies on the internet, but ten of them are still active on the site.
Joe Rogan told his millions of young listeners not to get a COVID-19 vaccine. That is dangerously irresponsible, and he shouldn’t be issuing medical advice.
Julie DiCaro reminds us not to listen to people with obvious conflicts of interest – agents, lawyers, fans – when they try to downplay charges of sexual assault against popular athletes.
Fox News is struggling to “pick a side” when their culture-war takes conflict with the facts, as with two recent manufactured outrage stories that turned out to be false – that Biden would ban or limit meat consumption, and that migrant children were being given Kamala Harris’ book.
The BBC asks why the west neglects a potential superfood source that’s efficient, sustainable, and climate-friendly: insects.
Epicurious revealed that they won’t publish any new beef recipes, part of an effort to encourage more sustainable eating. They stopped publishing those a year ago and they say nobody has noticed.
Conservative writer Gary Abernathy argues that all conservatives should support reparations to Black Americans.
From the National Review, the “Fairness Doctrine” is not the answer to Tucker Carlson’s misinformation.
University researchers appear to have moved and possibly lost the remains of two children killed in Philadelphia’s bombing of its own citizens in 1985, part of a government assault on the MOVE cult.
Deforestation in the amazon has soared under the reactionary Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, devastating native homelands and reducing one of the world’s most important carbon dioxide sinks.
A teacher in Washington State’s Issaquah School District is on administrative leave after parents objected to a poem she used in her anti-racism curriculum
Ashley Feinberg may have found JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s secret Instagram and Twitter accounts. Dimon has been accused of misleading investors in the “London Whale” investment disaster and of overseeing a culture of discrimination at his banks.
Board game news: Capstone Games is reissuing the Uwe Rosenberg worker-placement classic Glass Road, and pre-orders are open now at $10 off.
Renegade has a Kickstarter going for the ‘epic mad scientist’ game My Father’s Work, which they say will only be sold through their website once it’s released.

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

→ April 24, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/24/21.

I had two posts this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I wrote a draft scouting notebook that focused on Louisville catcher Henry Davis, who might be the best prospect in this class. I also collaborated with Britt Ghiroli to look at the MLB Draft League, which sent out its initial rosters this week and earned negative reviews from scouts and executives. I also held a Klawchat this week.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the Princess Bride Adventure Book Game, a slight but fun co-operative game you can play with your kids or just because you love the movie, to which the game is very faithful.

On the Keith Law Show this week, my guest was our White Sox writer James Fegan, talking about Carlos Rodón, the Yerminator, and more. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify. I also appeared on the Athletic Baseball Show on Friday, which will be my regular slot for most of the year; and on the Sports-Casters podcast, talking about the draft and my second book.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has about a dozen signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads: Vietnam has beaten COVID-19, with just 35 deaths in a country of over 96 million people. They did it with strict travel restrictions even as health experts said those were the wrong policy response.
There’s a movie coming out about Tim Ballard, former CEO of the anti-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad, but he and his group have a history of exaggerating their feats as well as their (limited) links with law enforcement.
Cops who break the law in New Jersey often avoid prison, even when the crimes they commit should result in time.
Harvard profiled Professor Sandra Susan Smith and her work on the relationship between urban poverty and the prison-industrial complex.
NPR tells the story of the SolarWinds hack, one of the most extensive corporate hacks in history, which went undiscovered for nearly a year even as the company’s compromised software went out to customers.
With vaccination cards come frauds selling (and buying) fake vaccination cards, a crime made easier by sites like eBay refusing to crack down on their sale.
That “Stanford” study saying masks don’t work? Yeah, it’s not a real study, and the author has nothing to do with Stanford. Anti-mask loons lapped it up, though.
An editorial in Nature argues that social media sites should remove accounts that spread anti-vaccine misinformation or face stricter regulation.
A threatened advertiser boycott over Tucker Carlson’s embrace of white supremacist rhetoric hasn’t cooled Fox’s commitment to him.
Republicans who don’t believe in the First Amendment are introducing and passing bills that limit protestors’ rights and remove sanctions for people who hit protestors with their cars. We had a right to peaceable assembly, once.
Minor Figures, a London-based producer of coffee-related products, plastered ads for its new oat milk product all over existing street art in Philadelphia, spurring a backlash from artists and people in those communities.
Shock G, the main MC of Digital Underground who also played the character of Humpty Hump, died this week at age 57. He might be best known for “The Humpty Dance,” but Digital Underground was responsible for many better songs, including their first single, “Doowutchyalike,” and the track “Same Song,” which introduced the world to a 19-year-old rapper named 2Pac.
Jonathan Capeheart wrote in the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict that being Black in America is exhausting.
President Biden appears to be on the verge of calling the Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915 a genocide. Here’s what that means in practical terms.
A former producer of deceptively edited right-wing videos explains how he gamed the YouTube algorithm to rack up views and followers.
Board game news: Z-Man Games is putting out a new Carcassonne Big Box to celebrate the game’s 20^th anniversary.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, first amendment, hip hop, links, longreads, philadelphia, social media, stick to baseball, vietnam

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