ethiopia

→ October 1, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/1/22.

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

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

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

→ February 14, 2021
→ By keith

The Shadow King.

Maaza Mengiste’s 2020 novel The Shadow King was nominated for the Booker Prize last year, making the shortlist before losing to the Scottish novel Shuggie Bain. An epic war novel that also comes across as deeply personal – which, it turns out, it is – The Shadow King also tells a forgotten story of the roles women play in wartime, roles that are not limited to staying home waiting for the men.

Set in Ethiopia in 1935, the main narrative revolves around Hirut, an orphaned girl taken in as a servant by a neighboring couple, Kidane and his wife Aster, as well as the nameless cook who also works for them. Kidane was friendly with Hirut’s parents and agreed to care for her, but Aster sees her as a romantic rival, and becomes increasingly abusive to Hirut through the novel’s first section. The cook has her own complicated, longtime relationship with Aster, and now tries to protect Hirut, as the two share cramped quarters while the vain Aster appears to live in relative luxury, demanding material rewards from Kidane and clutching them like heirlooms.

Then war arrives, in the person of the Italian fascisti, as the Italian tyrant Benito Mussolini attempted to annex the kingdom of Ethiopia, which they had tried previously to control via two prior wars and a disputed treaty. Their arrival leads Kidane to head off to war, but rather than waiting behind, Aster also grabs a gun and departs separately, also intending to fight, bringing Hirut and the cook with her. While at the front, they meet Minim, a poor man who happens to bear a strong resemblance to the Emperor, Haile Selassie, who ruled from 1930 to 1974 and was the last in a dynasty of rules that dated back to the 13^th century. Selassie had fled to England, where he was ruling in exile (and comfort), so the leaders of the Ethiopians’ untrained army, with simple weapons and no armored vehicles (compared to the Italians’ modern weapons and tanks and highly trained soldiers), realize that seeing their king would help motivate the soldiers, so they use Minim as a stand-in so the fighters would believe Selassie had come to join them at the front.

Mengiste sets you up to think Hirut will be the downtrodden heroine with whom you should sympathize, with Aster the antagonist, but the novel isn’t that linear in plot or purpose. Aster takes on a new role when the war begins, while Hirut also just becomes less central, and Kidane turns out to be less a protector than Hirut originally thought. Mengiste also introduces a second subplot around the Italian photographer Ettore, a Jewish man who is serving a government he knows may choose to end his liberty or his life at any time, and that he learns has likely killed his parents, even as he continues to document the war and the army’s killings by photographing every Ethiopian they execute in their final moments. His story and that of the women will, of course, intersect before Ethiopia falls and the novel ends.

This is a war novel, and a feminist one too, but in no way does Mengiste let the latter mitigate or soften any part of the former – her women are strong, and unwilling to be limited by any social customs that keep women from fighting when the country’s existence is at stake. The Shadow King is brutal and violent. Her descriptions invoke the dry, hot, dusty climate where the soldiers gathered to plan guerrilla attacks and futile defenses – the Ethiopians fought for about 16 months, but succumbed in 1937 – and where Minim takes on the role of body double. They also add to the sense of desperation around Ettore, a noncombatant in the service of a country that views him as less than human and that will, soon enough, be willing to send him to his death, but who is every bit the stranger in a strange land in Ethiopia and visibly an intruder and enemy to the native population. The juxtaposition of the stories can be jarring, certainly incongruous, but their intersection is one of the novel’s most powerful moments, combined with the return of Haile Selassie from exile and the aftermath of the Italian occupation. I haven’t read Shuggie Bain and can’t comment on whether this is better, but I easily understand its nomination.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: american literature, contemporary novels, ethiopia, ethiopian literature, highly recommended, historical fiction

→ November 22, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/22/20.

I had one post this week for subscribers to The Athletic, about what lessons we can learn from MLB, the NBA, and the NHL (and other pro leagues) after they completed seasons during the pandemic. I spoke to numerous epidemiologists about the leagues’ approaches, from the full bubble of the NBA to MLB’s more open approach with all US-based teams playing at home, and of course the hoaxers were in the comments before the electrons were dry on the article.

Over at Vulture, I wrote about eleven board games you can play over Zoom while you can’t (or shouldn’t) see your friends and family, which seems more relevant with potential lockdowns looming in most of the country.

My first book, Smart Baseball, got a glowing review from SIAM News, a publication of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. You can buy Smart Baseball and my second book, The Inside Game, at any bookstore, including bookshop.org via those links, although Smart Baseball has been backordered there for a while. You can check your local indie bookstore or buy it on amazon.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was Bill Baer, talking with me about the state of baseball and what he hopes the Phillies will do with their front office openings. My podcast is now available on Amazon podcasts as well as iTunes and Spotify.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Monday, and hope to send another one before the holiday.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Cal Newport, the author of the superb book Deep Work, writes in the New Yorker about the problems with personal productivity in the age of the knowledge worker. Our business world is very poorly built for the current environment of remote work and associated challenges like child care and remote schooling.
Also from the New Yorker, Shane Bauer looks at how a violent police force ruled Vallejo, California, killing residents (usually people of color) with impunity.
The Guardian describes how the Colombian army killed thousands of innocent civilians and claimed they were insurgents, a scandal known as falsos positivos (false positives) that have turned a former military hero into a villain.
Rebecca Solnit argues that Democrats should not meet those who advocate racism, misogyny, homophobia, and authoritarianism halfway. When the LA Times turned its editorial page over to letters from Trump supporters – under the disingenuous claim that we hadn’t been “listening” to those voices – Fox News and the Federalist did not and were not pressured to give time to Biden supporters.
Jezebel looks at how the online wellness community, already pushing various forms of woo, has latched on to the hoax conspiracy theory QAnon.
There’s a new study out of Denmark that deniers and other anti-mask loons have been citing as evidence that masks don’t work against COVID-19, but they’re completely – and deliberately – misinterpreting that study’s methods and conclusions. Among other things, the study didn’t even look at whether wearing a mask prevented transmission to other people, which has long been the main reason cited for mask recommendations.
Sen. David Perdue (R), fighting Jon Ossoff for re-election in a January 4^th runoff, made tens of thousands of dollars by helping a defense contractor in which he owned shares via a bill that directed Navy funds to the contractor.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is accused of multiple abuses of power, including an ongoing indictment for securities fraud charges that is now five years old, but impeachment is very rare in the Lone Star State.
Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State says fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, have been pressuring him to exclude legal ballots. The whole party appears to have gone down the same bottomless pit.
Christian nationalists are becoming a more important voting bloc, backing Donald Trump and Republicans in huge numbers in 2016 and 2020. My own hypothesis is that as overall religiosity continues its decades-long decline, the percentage of religious Americans who identify with these authoritarian beliefs will increase.
Trump’s foreign policy people are reportedly trying to set as many “fires” as possible so that Biden’s Administration is hamstrung the moment they take office, unable to push new initiatives because they’re trying to put those fires out.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs tweeted about death threats she and others in her office have received in the wake of this year’s election, where Joe Biden and Mark Kelly, both Democrats, won the majority of ballots in her state.
Raw Story spoke to a neuroscientist about how Americans can recover from the harm four years of Trump has caused. I think he said something along the lines of “Lock him up.”
Ian Millhiser points out just how undemocratic the United States Senate is, where a minority of the population controls a majority of seats.
LA Times food critic Patricia Escárcega tweeted about how she lost a grievance over the fact that she’s paid less than her male colleague who does the same job that she does. Both were hired in the wake of the death of their legendary food critic Jonathan Gold. UPDATE: she just tweeted another thread in response to the LA Times‘s public statements about the case.
A new marine sanctuary around the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha in the southern Atlantic will be the world’s largest.
A peer in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords referred to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris as “the Indian” in a tweet, but won’t be sanctioned for it.
Defector has the dope on Bill Simmons’s efforts to thwart the Ringer’s union, while the New York Times looks at how the Ringer is using contractors to reduce the importance of full-time employees.
Donald Clarke of The Irish Times asks why all these terrible films are being called classics, citing Hocus Pocus and The Family Stone.
McSweeney’s presents Olivia, the COVID-19 era American Girl doll.
BBC Radio 1 announced they will no longer play the original version of the Pogues’ Christmas song “Fairytale of New York,” which includes a homophobic slur.
Morrissey claims he was dropped from his record label due to “diversity,” not because he’s a racist, Islamophobic asshole.
Zach Hayes explains the case against Curt Schilling for the Hall of Fame on PitcherList.
The Chicago Public Library eliminated fines for overdue books last year, and saw missing materials return while patronage increased.
The BBC has a primer on the brewing civil war in Ethiopia, where Tigrayan and Oromian people have been at odds since the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
A wrongful death lawsuit claims that managers at a Tyson Foods plant in Iowa placed bets on how many workers would contract COVID-19 after those employees were ordered to report for work even in unsafe conditions.
My former employers at Disney have been accused of withholding royalty payments to author Alan Dean Foster for books he’s written in the Star Wars universe.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, baseball, colombia, coronavirus, disney, ethiopia, georgia, links, longreads, religion, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

Stick to baseball, 10/1/22.

The Shadow King.

Stick to baseball, 11/22/20.

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