death penalty

→ November 2, 2024
→ By keith
→ 9 Comments

Stick to baseball, 11/2/24.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents available this offseason is now up for subscribers to the Athletic; we’ve updated it now to reflect two players on the list coming off the board as their clubs picked up their options, adding two new players to keep it at 50. I also held a Q&A on the Athletic site on Friday to talk about the list.

For Paste, I reviewed Stamp Swap, a light new game from Stonemaier Games, whose products always have excellent components and art. The game play was meh for me – it was mostly stuff I’ve seen before, and in one case I think a mechanic just makes the game worse/slower.

I need to get another issue of my free email newsletter out soon, but got held up by the FA rankings and the relative lack of sleep I had thanks to the World Series.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has two stories about pregnant women who died because of Texas’s draconian abortion ban, which led hospitals to refuse to treat the women for life-threatening issues. Josseli Barnica died of a bacterial infection, leaving behind a one-year-old daughter. Neveah Crain died of sepsis; she was 18.
A baseball coach in Nyack, New York, abused multiple boys playing on his teams, and the school district that employed him never reported any of the allegations to authorities. Peter Recla has never been arrested or charged with any crime, thanks in large part to the complicity of his bosses. One victim did sue the district and reached a settlement that included a non-disclosure agreement. Some of the survivors have established a scholarship fund to honor one baseball player and one softball player from Nyack High School each year.
The Guardian profiled Gazan journalist Wael al-Dahdouh, whose wife, two children, and grandson were killed by an Israeli strike in October of 2023.
More from ProPublica – Project 2025 co-architect Russell Vought, who ran the OMB under Trump, plans to put civil servants “in trauma” and use the military to quash dissent.
Vogue has a short but powerful story on Gisèle Pelicot, the Frenchwoman whose husband is now on trial for orchestrating serial sexual assaults against her, and how she has become a symbol of hope and strength for victims across France.
A Republican party leader and former Congressional candidate in Indiana has been arrested and charged with stealing ballots during a public test of voting machines. Larry Savage Jr. was caught on camera taking two ballots and slipping them in his pocket. Maybe he saw Election.
The Washington Post’s decision – made by owner Jeff Bezos, CEO & Publisher Will Lewis, or a magic 8-ball – to endorse no candidate for President led over 200,000 people to cancel their subscriptions to the paper. I’m torn on this; yes, it hurts the many people there trying to produce good journalism, whether it’s reporting or opinion, but on the other hand, voting with your wallet is the clearest way to tell any company you don’t agree with something they’re doing. I cancelled my subscription a few years ago because they ran too many anti-science editorials.
The family-owned Seattle Times, however, enthusiastically endorsed VP Kamala Harris for President. I subscribed.
A “tradwife” influencer who has a rare type of ectopic pregnancy intends to carry it to term despite the very high risk that it will kill her, because she opposes abortion. She has seven other kids and has been told that the pregnancy is not viable because the embryo has implanted in scar tissue.
The Israeli Knesset passed a bill that bans the UNRWA from operating in Gaza starting in 90 days. This will cripple aid efforts, as nearly all 2.2 million Gazans have been displaced and many face starvation as a result of Israel’s year-plus war on the territory, with the UNRWA the main conduit for aid.
More on terrible Texas: The city of Odessa passed an ordinance that not only bans trans people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity, but provides a $10,000 bounty for anyone who reports a trans person using the correct bathroom.
Meanwhile, a youth leader at a church in Abilene, Texas, was charged with possessing child pornography, after he solicited nude pictures from girls through social media. There is no bounty in Texas for turning in a pedophile.
South Carolina executed Richard Moore over the objections of the sentencing judge, three trial jurors, and the former director of the state’s corrections department. Moore is Black and was convicted by an all-white jury, because it’s apparently still 1923 there.
The New York Times profiled Robert Smith of The Cure, as the band released its 14^th album, Songs of a Lost World, on Friday.
Board game news: Druid City Games has a Kickstarter up for Madcala, a new game in the same ‘universe’ as their very highly-rated (and hard to find) game Wonderland’s War.
I met Amber Cook at Gen Con a few years before the pandemic hit, while she was freelancing for Asmodee; she was a marketer and publicist and very passionate about games and gaming. She introduced me to Silver & Gold, still one of my favorite games and one of the first games that my wife really loved. Amber died last week, leaving behind her partner and a young son. Game designer and publisher Mike Selinker wrote a short piece in her memory.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2024 in music, abortion, board game news, death penalty, france, gaza, indiana, links, longreads, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas, trans rights

→ April 28, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/28/24.

Nothing this week from me at the Athletic, but I need to write up a couple of minor-league games I’ve been to so there will be something in the next few days.

I reviewed the board game Ancient Knowledge over at Paste; it’s pretty clever, but I found the title and theme didn’t connect to the game play at all.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET on Diamond Dreams and on their new collectibles show at 2:30 for one segment, all to talk about prospects. You can watch via the app or if you subscribe to Roku, Youtube, or some other sites; I have figured out that the shows re-air all week, but you can’t just watch an archived version.

I also sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday, talking about … death. Wait, that’s only the cat.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica explores how a lack of funding and organization at a VA clinic in Chico, California, led to two preventable shootings, including one where a veteran shot and killed her own mother. If you want to support our troops, instead of just standing and clapping at a ballgame, vote for candidates who’ll fully fund the VA and its indispensable resources for our veterans.

Climate change is driving us towards a “coffee apocalypse” as the growing regions for the plant shrink and the plant itself tries to migrate to higher altitudes.

A tech bro wants to “ethnically cleanse” San Francisco, in his own words. Balaji Srinivasan has worked at Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and the genetic testing firm Counsyl (which he co-founded). He sounds insane.

A prosecutor in Texas has asked the courts to clear the conviction of a woman he helped put on death row. Melissa Lucio’s two-year-old daughter died after falling down a flight of stairs, but she was convicted of capital murder and spent 16 years behind bars.

The LA Times’s Michael Hiltzik excoriates the cash grab in Nevada, where state legislators are trying to hand hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to the Oakland A’s’ billionaire owner in a climate of increasing voter resistance.

Another relief agency has accused Israel of targeting its vehicles: the International Development and Relief Foundation says that the IDF deliberately bombed its trucks delivering water to Gazans.

Columbia barred a student protester who said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” from its campus. Khymani James was active in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia. This seems like a pretty simple case of someone crossing the line and the university responding appropriately – in contrast to the preponderance of stories about protests on campuses across the country.

A Jewish student at Columbia wrote on Mehdi Hasan’s new site Zeteo that the news coverage of antisemitism on campuses is inaccurate and distracts from actual threats, like outside groups that dox Jewish students.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch wrote in praise of the student journalists covering the protests and the university responses at Columbia and beyond.
Will the “cancel culture” pundits say anything about USC’s decision to cancel its Muslim-American valedictorian’s commencement speech? Don’t hold your breath, writes Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian.

Transphobes have latched on to the dubious “Cass Report” as further evidence of … I don’t even know, it’s all just bigotry and trans panic, but the interesting bit here is that Dr. Hilary Cass herself is already distancing herself from the report’s conclusions, saying HRT and puberty blockers should be made available to trans teens. The same newsletter reports on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying that he wants to “end” trans and gender non-conforming teachers in the state.

Tennessee Republicans passed a law arming teachers over loud opposition from parents and students. How long until the first “friendly fire” death in a Tennessee school?

However, the state GOP’s attempt to ram through a school voucher bill and strip funding from the state’s already poor public schools failed.

The risk of cardiomyopathy to young men from mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 actually decreases after the third dose, although the risk is always higher from even a single infection with the virus.

Jay Bhattacharya has been a major purveyor of disinformation around COVID, from masks to vaccines to other public-health efforts, and he’s built a huge following. Now he’s about to get a big cash windfall from a large right-wing foundation. The grift is profitable.

A new firm that includes disinformation reporter Ben Collins as as CEO bought the Onion from the turkey vultures at G/O Media.

Iowa universities are closing their DEI programs after Republicans there passed a bill banning such endeavors.

Measles cases are rising in the U.S. and it’s a big, underreported problem.

The PEN literary awards’ annual ceremony has been cancelled after a large number of authors requested that their works be removed from consideration.

2023 ended with a surge in book bans, according to PEN America, but the children’s publishing world has responded by flooding the market with new titles representing diverse perspectives.

The Atlantic has an appreciation of John Sterling (tied, a bit tenuously, to AI). My confession: Even when I was an ardent Yankees fan, I didn’t care for Sterling’s style, which always seemed to put himself front and center over the game he was calling.

The Guardian interviewed Lauren Mayberry on going solo and the misogyny she experienced online.

Also in the Guardian, a profile of two professors teaching the Gullah language, one of the only creole tongues based on English, including Harvard’s Sunn m’Cheaux (who is a great follow on Threads). Gullah is still spoken on some of the islands off the coast of South Carolina, and you may be familiar with it if you’ve read Pat Conroy’s book The Water is Wide.

There’s finally been some movement to pass legislation banning deepfake nudes, with over 20 states doing so or at least considering bills to do so, and the impetus is teenage girls who often find themselves the targets.

A former model decided to listen to some online wellness influencers rather than her doctors, choosing an all-juice diet to try to treat her stage 3 cancer. She nearly died before doctors convinced her to go the medicine route – but only after she kept refusing for several days while in intensive care.

Time flowed five times slower right after the Big Bang. Imagine all the extra board games you could have played!

Some light reading: Here’s the complete genome for SARS-CoV-2.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, book banning, coffee, death penalty, gaza, iowa, Languages, links, longreads, nevada, physics, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, trans rights, vaccines

→ March 23, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

At the Athletic, I wrote about a bunch of prospects I saw in the Cactus League, including two Breakout games; plus a list of six breakout candidates for 2024; as well as a Q&A with our fantasy expert Nando di Fino.

At Vulture, I wrote about the surge in cooperative tabletop games that started with Pandemic and then picked up during the … pandemic, really, along with a list of 14 of the best.

Now that this post is up I’ll begin the next edition of my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Scientific American looks at the extensive harm done to LGBTQ+ kids and their parents by the anti-LGBTQ+ bills pushed by religious zealots and right-wingers across the country. One key quote: “Every major medical association in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the Endocrine Society, endorses gender-affirming care for trans kids.” The fear and ignorance of a small number of bigots should never outweigh the unanimous view of the medical community.
34^th Street, the arts & culture magazine of the University of Pennsylvania’s Daily Pennsylvanian, offers an incisive look at how big-money donors are trying to stifle free expression on campuses across the country – including at their own school. This goes beyond the attacks on the school’s President, who resigned in December, to demands for mass disciplining of students who participate in certain assemblies or protests, for the right to approve faculty hires, and more. Don Moynihan wrote about a similar topic, including Christopher Rufo’s bad-faith “plagiarism” claims against researchers into race-related topics, in his newsletter.
ProPublica found an “expert” who has testified in Colorado adoption cases for over forty years, typically arguing that foster parents should be allowed to keep the children in their care rather than the biological parents, whose self-described “protocol” is based on no evidence or research at all. It’s a way of conning the system that, according to the authors, is spreading across the country – and taking babies and young children away from their (financially) poor parents.
Abortion bans affect more than just the women who might want or need abortions: Standard pregnancy care in Louisiana has been severely curtailed by the state’s abortion ban.
A scientist and a medical doctor wrote in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice that regulatory bodies should take action against medical professionals who spread disinformation about vaccines.
NPR looks at the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary, indigenous student in Owasso, Oklahoma, who died after bullies attacked them at their school, and whose death has been ruled a suicide on what appears to be insufficient evidence. The article here at least entertains the possibility that the Owasso School District and local authorities are trying to cover up a case of manslaughter, perhaps because the victim was queer.
A Bronx high school English teacher emailed author Tommy Orange (There There, The Wandering Stars) with an unsolicited request to come speak to his class about his work. Orange rearranged his schedule to make it happen.
Killing Joke founder/singer Jaz Coleman spoke to The Guardian in his first interview since the death this winter of guitarist Geordie Walker.
The Republican Party is making immigration a major issue in this year’s elections, tying it to crime rates. However, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S.
North Carolina’s Republican candidate for the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction post, which offers all public education in the state, has called for the execution of President Biden and former President Obama, along with a host of other Democrats and public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Michelle Morrow also participated in the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6^th and has the endorsement of Moms for Liberty. She is opposed by Democrat Mo Green.
Haiti has now fallen into anarchy after the Prime Minister resigned and armed gangs have taken control of large parts of the country. This was the inevitable consequence of two hundred-plus years of exploitation and corruption, according to the Guardian’s Kenan Malik. One enormous factor is the billions of dollars Haiti had to pay France as “reparations” for lost property (primarily slaves) after the Caribbean nation declared its independence in 1804; another is incessant meddling by the U.S. government, including at least one actual invasion, as well as our support of anti-communist dictators who drained the country’s limited coffers without building an actual state apparatus.
Also in Scientific American: There is no evidence supporting the use of the death penalty. It is not a deterrent; it is state-sponsored vengeance. The United States is the only NATO member that still has it.
The Arizona legislature held yet another hearing where they allowed witnesses to expound on various bogus COVID-19 hoaxes and myths.
A Lancaster, PA, library had to cancel a drag-queen story hour after employees found a suspicious package and the library received bomb threats.
Floyd County (VA) Public Schools cancelled a community reading of the YA novel Wishtree after complaints that its protagonist was nonbinary and uses any pronouns. The protagonist is a tree. One of the complaining parents doesn’t even send her kids to the public schools – they go to a fundamentalist Christian school nearby.
Alabama consistently ranks near the bottom of all U.S. states in the quality of its education, so rather than address that issue, the Governor just signed a bill banning all DEI efforts in public education in the state. We’ve already seen some migration from states that have passed anti-LGBTQ+ laws (see above); will we see something similar for non-white families, and for people who work in academia?
A prisoner in Illinois who was teaching a peer-led civics class about voting rights that the state requires inmates to take before they can leave prison was fired for teaching that literacy tests were a racist way to suppress the Black vote. Anthony McNeal, who is Black, has sued the counselor who fired him and the prison warden, claiming his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated. Also, he spoke the truth.
Missouri’s Attorney General beclowned himself by claiming that DEI programs were somehow responsible for a fight between two students that left one, a white girl, critically injured, while her Black 15-year-old assailant is facing assault charges.
I didn’t get to longtime Phoenix restaurant El Portal on my recent trip there, but President Biden went there on Tuesday to kick off a new part of his Presidential campaign aimed at Latino voters. I’m more interested in whether the food’s any good.
Front Office Sports publishes a lot of content, but their editorial standards can be … well, they ran an article claiming that the San Franciso 49ers’ publicly-funded stadium has been a good investment for taxpayers, when the study they cite actually doesn’t show that at all. If you’re a journalist, or trying to be one, and you don’t understand a research paper, find someone who can help you do so.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: academia, alabama, book banning, colorado, death penalty, haiti, illinois, lgbt rights, links, longreads, louisiana, misinformation, missouri, north carolina, oklahoma, pennsylvania, phoenix, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ March 2, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/24.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have two draft-related pieces coming up next week.

At Paste, I reviewed Dragonkeepers, a new family-level game that I found really disappointing, with the wrong mixture of complexity and randomness.

I’ll have a new newsletter out in the next day or two, but you can sign up here – it’s free and always includes links to everything I write.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Color me shocked, but self-help ‘guru’ Jay Shetty has fabricated or embellished much of his background, according to this investigative piece by The Guardian.
Slate’s Chris Molanphy breaks down what the country chart success of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” does and does not mean in actual impact on radio and with country listeners.
Will Leitch wrote about the culture-war takeover of the murder of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia student who was killed on the same running trail Will and his wife often take in Athens. Because her alleged killer entered the U.S. illegally, the case is now part of the yelling about the so-called “crisis” at the U.S-Mexico border – even though immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born people.
Florida’s measles outbreak is due to the state’s active campaigning against childhood vaccinations, so, of course, Fox News is blaming it on migrants.
The state of Indiana has blocked funding to the Kinsey Institute, the world’s top sex-research center, as part of that state’s war on LGBTQ+ rights.
Texas executed Ivan Cantu even though the foreman of the jury that convicted him wrote that he believed the sentence was unjust, as the prosecution hid key evidence that may have bolstered Cantu’s claims of innocence. Just another day in the Lone Star State.
What do you expect from a state where the party that controls all branches of government keeps cozying up to a prominent white supremacist?
A Dallas-area high school canceled a student production of The Laramie Project, about the killing of Matthew Shepard by two bigots because he was gay, after the district passed anti-LGBTQ+ rules last year.
Climate change is driving a surge in cholera cases in central Africa.
An unvaccinated nine-year-old boy in Singapore contracted COVID-19, developed myocarditis from it, and suffered a stroke. His mother says she declined the vaccine for her son because she was worried it would cause myocarditis, a good example of the harm that unfettered disinformation is doing to public health.
Some good medical news: An mRNA ‘vaccine’ to fight pancreatic cancer has entered stage 2 trials. I put the word vaccine in quotes because it’s not a preventative vaccine, but is tailored to specific recipients’ cancers to help train the immune system to fight the rogue cells, particularly those that remain after surgery or chemo.
You would think Arizona, the sunniest state in the U.S., would encourage residents to add solar panels, but the state is bowing to one of its major energy utility companies and adding a “punitive” charge to customers with solar panels. The Arizona Corporation Commission approved a request from utility APS despite failing to evaluate the full impact of these price hikes on consumers.
Missouri’s Attorney General is suing Planned Parenthood for “trafficking” minors to get abortions outside of Gilead.
The death of nonbinary teen Nex Benedict in Owasso, Oklahoma, after several girls beat them to the point where they blacked out, has received a lot of unclear and I think contradictory coverage from major outlets so far. Assigned Media has a solid summary of what we do and don’t know so far and a piece criticizing traditional media for accepting the police & school’s narratives without questioning them.
A married couple in Oregon who taught at Damascus Christian School have been charged with sexually abusing a child there. No drag queens or trans people were involved.
The BBC spoke to several Iranian women who are still protesting the theocratic regime’s requirement that they wear hijabs in public.
Mehdi Hasan announced his new media venture, Zeteo News, which sounds promising, although we’ve certainly seen and heard similar pitches before that haven’t panned out. His work with MSNBC was excellent and I expect him to continue to challenge disinformation and bigotry. I hope there’s enough support to allow him to build the news organization he envisions.
A Beverly Hills middle school is grappling with the spread of AI-generated nudes of students. This issue isn’t going anywhere and I doubt passing laws against the practice is going to do much at this level.
I know you’re shocked, but the construction of Elon Musk’s long-promised Hyperloop in Las Vegas is rife with safety violations.
Two twins from the country of Georgia were sold at birth and separated; they found each other as teenagers thanks to a TV talent show and to TikTok. Amy and Ano are two of thousands of babies who were stolen from hospitals in the Caucasus nation, their mothers told their babies had died, and sold to new families who were often unaware the adoptions were illegal.
Board game news: An expansion for the Restoration Games title Thunder Road is now on Kickstarter and has already cleared $1 million.
A roll-and-write game based on the wonderful board game Cascadia is also on Kickstarter and fully funded already.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, board game news, climate change, country music, death penalty, frauds, las vegas, links, longreads, missouri, oklahoma, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ February 6, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/6/21.

I had two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week: a breakdown of the Nolan Arenado trade, and a look at a dozen prospects who just missed my top 100 ranking. That ranking ran the previous Thursday. I did a video chat via the Athletic’s Twitter account on Tuesday. Org rankings will run on February 10^th, and team by team reports begin the next day.

I’ve had two podcasts since my show returned from my holiday break last month, with guests Britt Ghiroli, national baseball writer for the Athletic; and Seattle Mariners prospect Adam Macko, who was born in Slovakia and first learned to play baseball in Bratislava. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Cloud City, by one of my favorite designers (Cacao, Gizmos, Silver & Gold), but it was a huge disappointment.

My last edition of my free email newsletter shared some details of my recent nuptials; I’m overdue for another issue because I’ve been writing the team reports and top 20s. You can still buy The Inside Game and Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: One of the worst and most generally underreported aspects of Trump’s reign of error was the spate of executions of federal inmates while Trump was a lame duck. ProPublica has the inside story of their rush to kill as many people as possible.
Jeff Passan has the incredible story of outfielder Drew Robinson, his improbable survival from a suicide attempt, and his ongoing effort to come back to baseball despite losing an eye. My colleague Levi Weaver shared his own story of depression in the wake of Robinson’s story.
“We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.” This editorial is deeply philosophical but ties into multiple issues of our day, including the erosion of privacy and the velocity of misinformation.
The Guardian looks at the power of Big Lens, the duopoly that controls most of the world’s eyeglasses market.
Josh Miller, a spring training announcer for the Giants, has resigned after an Arizona state Senator revealed that he was sending her vulgar, misogynistic tweets.
Tanzania’s government has rejected the COVID-19 vaccine as part of their ongoing denial that the virus even exists in their country, which appears to be run by MAGA people (MATA?).
Dungeons & Dragons has an anti-Semitism problem, derived from its use of JRR Tolkien’s mythology and non-human races – the dwarves were, by his own admission, a mythical representation of some awful Jewish stereotypes.
Anti-vaccine terrorists put a temporary halt to a mass vaccination setup at Dodgers Stadium. I have no sympathy for these people. This is terrorism and they should be charged as such, and Facebook should be held responsible for their tacit aid in promoting it.
Those same anti-vaxxer nuts are also misusing the federal VAERS database to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. If someone uses VAERS to claim the vaccines are unsafe, just ignore them. That data is not clean or reliable enough to use for that purpose.
That misinformation, combined with systemic inequalities in our health-care system, means that the mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 virus will spell disaster for our Black communities.
Speaking of terrorists, one of the people who has been charged with storming the Capitol on January 6^th has asked a judge to allow her to travel to Mexico for a “work retreat.” I’ve seen a lot of articles saying permission was granted, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Erik Malinowski was right: Never tweet.
Fifty years of cuts to the top marginal tax rates did not result in “trickle-down” benefits for people in lower income strata, according to a recent study out of LSE (which I may have linked previously, but it came up recently when my daughter asked about JFK and Reagan as Presidents).
St. Louis is now paying a $5 million settlement to a (Black) protester beaten by four (white) cops who turned out to be an undercover cop himself. Great use of tax funds, guys.
Rochester police officers pepper-sprayed a suicidal 9-year-old girl, renewing scrutiny of the department’s use of a hood on a Black man who suffocated as a result.
Did a supermassive black hole influence the evolution of life on earth? Something to muse about, at least.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump continued to enrich themselves as a result of their unappointed, unelected positions in the Administration in 2020, with combined income of at least $23.8 million. The grift worked, folks.
Copper and Cotton, one of the most acclaimed new restaurant in the Phoenix area of the last few years, is closing as its head chef is moving to Utah.
Board game news: Jamey Stegmaier, designer and owner of Stonemaier games, asks if the Kickstarter mindset is increasing consumer confusion around things like ‘deluxe’ components and special versions of new games.
Japanese publisher Oink Games has a Kickstarter up for three new titles, one of which is a reimplementation of three previous game Deep Sea Adventure.
Tweet of the week:

pic.twitter.com/Etccw1hPdp
— Jon Adams™ (@citycyclops) February 1, 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, board game news, coronavirus, death penalty, Economics, links, mental health, rochester, social media, st. louis, stick to baseball, suicide, tanzania, the swamp, vaccines

→ October 29, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/29/16.

I wrote one Insider piece this week, a World Series preview, although I also spent some time working on the upcoming free agents ranking. I also held my regular Klawchat on Thursday.

For Paste, my latest boardgame review covers Arcane Academy, a wizard-themed game that isn’t aimed at kids specifically but that I think is a much better game for young players than for adults.

You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, which now shows the correct cover. Also, please sign up for my more-or-less weekly email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Let’s start with the longreads of the week. This Deadspin profile of the late sportswriter Jennifer Frey, a former wunderkind who died this February of long-term alcohol abuse, is on the very short list of the best things I’ve read all year.
Annie Apple, a domestic abuse survivor and mother of a NY Giants player, wrote an emotional piece on why she couldn’t stay silent about Josh Brown.
Harvard magazine covers the quiet fight to end the death penalty in the United States. Californians will vote on whether to keep the death penalty next month.
The Washingtonian looks at how Donald Trump’s comments on Mexicans cost his new DC hotel its main two celebrity chef tenants.
Sid Meier’s Civilization was one of my favorite videogames ever; I spent a good chunk of the fall of 1992 playing it whenever I had time to spare and even when I didn’t. Author Kanishk Tharoor looks back at the game’s impact and its flaws.
Author Emily St. John, who wrote the wonderful, haunting novel Station Eleven, wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight on the rise of books with “girl” in the title, which looks more generally at how books are named and marketed.
The members of the hip-hop duo Black Sheep look back at the making of their debut album, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Here they come, yo.
The NY Times‘ op ed page looks at Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s habit of overreaching on regulatory issues.
Drugmaker Purdue, which is coming under substantial scrutiny lately for its role in pushing oxycontin, helped stop regulations in West Virginia that would have limited prescriptions. West Virginia has been hit particularly hard by the ongoing epidemic of opioid addictions and overdoses, as Last Week Tonight covered in a recent episode.
ESPN ran a great piece by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, a member of the Blackfeet Reservation, on what the debate over the Cleveland baseball mascot misses.
Researchers at Harvard are a new method to search for new antibiotics, building molecules called macrolides from the ground up and then testing them against a spectrum of bacteria to look for the most effective candidates.
SCOTUS agreed to review a case from Virginia on a school that wants to prevent a transgender boy from using the boys’ bathroom. The school’s policy isn’t protecting anyone’s rights, only restricting the plaintiff’s. Also, as I’ve said before, these policies and laws that refer to someone’s sex at birth ignore the existence of intersex people.
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory believe they’ve found conditions where the Second Law of Thermodynamics may break down at a microscopic level – that is, where entropy may temporarily decrease in violation of that law. I’m sure Lisa Simpson would be relieved to hear this.
Fellow Trader Joes fans may enjoy this BBC video on the Canadian store Pirate Joes and the mild-manner man who runs it by smuggling Trader Joes items he purchases in Washington back across the border to sell at huge markups.
The emails, the emails, what what the emails … Kurt Eichenwald provides some clarity on what a non-issue yesterday’s FBI letter was, while Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution offers a memo to the press on what the letter does and doesn’t mean, including the most reasonable defense of FBI director Comey’s actions I’ve seen.
If you want to know what Trump’s economic proposals might do to the U.S. economy, look no further than Kansas, where the economic news is so bad the state isn’t reporting it.
More video from the BBC, this time on Trump’s appeal in Ohio, straight from his supporters’ mouths.
The BBC has also been running a series on online blackmail using sexual images in conservative parts of the world from the Middle East to south Asia, including a video that reenacts the story of a woman jailed in Tunisia for killing the man who raped her repeatedly.
The implosion of Chris Christie has gone largely unnoticed during the Presidential campaign, but for a one-time rising star within the Republican party, it’s been a swift and ugly fall from grace.
Why are rainbow sprinkles suddenly everywhere? I think it’s an odd thing to feel nostalgic over, since they don’t exactly have any taste.
Is a vaccine for the common cold finally within reach? I hate being sick like everyone, but I feel like this is a real First World Problem. There are illnesses that kill people in the developing world that should take priority over the sniffles.
The Saudi Arabian attack on Yemen has caused an enormous humanitarian disaster, including mass starvation. Those are our “friends” the Saudis, you know.
Canada has been holding a 23-year-old native Canadian man without trial, in solitary confinement, for over four years. Under UN definitions, he has been tortured. He was finally moved to a new cell this week after public criticism, but how did this happen in the first place?
NPR looks at whether a 20-something male should still consider getting the HPV vaccine. The short answer is yes.
NPR also has a useful guide to buying and using winter squash. I didn’t know that certain types are better at different points in the winter.
Brazil and Colombia are releasing populations of mosquitos infected with a bacterium that may slow the spread of Zika and dengue.
Paste has a review of a new D&D manual, which I include here because the book is written as if it’s from the perspective of the character Volo. Fellow Baldur’s Gate fans may remember Volo as a sort of amusing ass who kept showing up and telling you stuff you already knew, or just making shit up as he went along.
Finally, Funny or Die has a message for would-be protest voters.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: death penalty, links, rap, rpgs, stick to baseball, vaccines, video games

→ August 27, 2016
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/27/16.

This week, for Insiders, I ranked the MLB players with the best hitting tools, fielding and throwing tools, and pitching tools. I held my weekly Klawchat on Friday.

For Paste, I reviewed the upcoming boardgame Tak, which was designed based on the fictional depiction of the game in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles novels.

My last run at the helm of the BBTN podcast for this year came on Monday’s show, with guests Jerry Crasnick and Joe Sheehan.

And now, the links…

TIME ran a thoughtful piece on how trolls are “ruining” the Internet, looking at why trolls troll and what we might do to combat the inevitable problem.
I linked to this on Twitter earlier in the week: Mylan hiked EpiPen prices when their competitor shut down production. It’s basic economics, and while I’m very pro-free market, we do have protections against certain monopoly conditions. This is one such case. Mylan’s PR team is on the attack, with this semi-sympathetic portrait of their CEO running in the NY Times, which also ran a more analytical look at why our healthcare system enables this kind of price gouging.
We’re preparing to fight Zika in south Florida by releasing genetically modified mosquitos into the wild. It’s the right move – doing the same in Africa could save millions of lives – but you can expect a lot of backlash.
Meanwhile, a new virus appears to break the known ‘rules’ of viral infections by breaking itself into multiple pieces; the virus, which infects mosquitos (seriously, fuck them already), only works in the bugs if several parts of it are present.
A teenager charged with multiple rapes and suspected of being a serial rapist was given probation by a Judge Thomas Estes because reasons. There’s another movement afoot to remove the judge from the bench, which I support because no one convicted of rape should avoid jail.
Meanwhile, a 14-year-old girl in Cleveland is in jail and may be charged as an adult for killing her abusive father. The system failed to protect her and her mother, and now she may pay the price for their failures.
The Canadian Medical Association has called for an end to nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccinations, which is excellent because there is no good fucking reason on earth not to vaccinate your kids.
Dr. Donald Henderson, who helped lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox, died last week at 87. Despite the end of smallpox, he thought efforts to eradicate more quickly-mutating viruses like polio might be futile.
Tom Scocca’s post mortem on Gawker makes the key point that only money can protect any journalistic outlet from the likes of Peter Thiel. Not the truth, just money.
Daniel Vaughn reviewed a legit barbecue joint in southern Sweden.
This New Yorker piece on a very exclusive restaurant in upstate New York is fascinating because it’s a portrait of food, a restaurant, and a chef who might be delusional.
Some Idaho hot-taker decided to take a few shots at Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Tyson responded with a huge mic-drop in the comments.
Amateurism is a word fart expelled after wolfing down a nothingburger, says Patrick Hruby in a piece for Vice on the gigantic farce that is the NCAA.
Also at Vice, on the unconscionable human disaster that was the 2016 Olympics. Everything described therein, including the massive wealth transfers from poor to rich, will continue until cities stop bidding for the games.
If you’re still stuck in the mindset that there are only two sexes, male and female, read about Olympic champion runner Stella Walsh, who was intersex. She lived as a woman, but after her death (she was murdered in a botched robberty) the coroner discovered that she had underdeveloped male gonads and no uterus due to a chromosomal abnormality. So, I ask Republicans in North Carolina and Mississippi, what bathroom would you have required her to use?
Why do just 2% of the counties in the United States account for more than half of its death-row inmates? Why do we even execute people, period? Only two countries in the western hemisphere actively use the death penalty, the U.S. and St. Kitts, which I believe has executed one person this century. The story features prosecutor Angela Corey, profiled in a link I posted here last week as perhaps the cruelest DA in the country.
Two posts on the University of Chicago “no safe spaces/trigger warnings” welcome letter: one that presents the letter with favorable comments, and this dismantling of its words and intent by Grand View University History Professor Kevin Gannon. I don’t think I like the ideas implied by safe spaces, but I speak without experience on that, and, hell, trigger warnings are just common courtesy, aren’t they?
A rather peculiar research study showed (or claimed to show) that reading literary fiction was better than pop fiction for boosting readers’ emotional skills. You’ll have to read the article to see what exactly they thought it proved and to determine whether you think it proves anything. I’ll be reading literary fiction.
We’re definitely an HGTV household, but not particularly fans of Flip or Flop. The stars of that show have loaned their likenesses to a real-estate education “seminar” that sure sounds like an old-fashioned scam to me.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, death penalty, links, olympics, science, vaccines

Stick to baseball, 11/2/24.

Stick to baseball, 4/28/24.

Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

Stick to baseball, 3/2/24.

Stick to baseball, 2/6/21.

Stick to baseball, 10/29/16.

Stick to baseball, 8/27/16.

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