florida — Page 2

→ September 7, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/7/24.

Two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week – one just on Red Sox prospects I saw recently, including their top 3 prospects plus 18-year-old Franklin Arias; and another on prospects from several other orgs, including Jarlin Susana (Nats), Vance Honeycutt (O’s), and Parker Messick/C.J. Kayfus (Guardians). This past week’s schedule really did me no favors, unfortunately, and nearly all of the teams close to me missed the playoffs.

At Paste, right at the end of August I had a review of the game Rock Hard 1977, designed by former Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs (Fox); and a related ranking of the five best thematic games I’ve played.

And now, the links…

Louisiana hospitals are pulling misoprostol, a life-saving medication used in cases of post-partum hemorrhaging, off emergency response carts because of evangelicals’ control of the state’s government. A new law in the state reclassified the drug as a Schedule IV controlled dangerous substance, which is not even remotely backed by evidence.

The public interest group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, along with a retired federal judge and two constitutional lawyers, filed a brief arguing that Judge Aileen Cannon should be reversed and removed from the case involving criminal charges against Donald Trump. I doubt this goes anywhere in any time to matter, though.

After the 2020 election and the January 6^th insurrection, several big tech firms kicked Trump off their platforms and major media outlets appeared at least to push back on his constant falsehoods, but those guardrails are largely gone as those for-profit entities see dollars in a competitive race.

Michael Hiltzik isn’t in that camp: he calls out Trump’s blatant lying and pandering to transphobes after the convicted felon lied in an interview with a co-founder of the hate group Moms for Liberty about schools essentially kidnapping kids and turning them trans.

By now you’ve probably seen that right-wing media platform Tenet Media was funded by the Russian-owned media firm RT to spread pro-Russian propaganda and interfere with U.S. elections. Tenet’s podcast/video hosts include(d) Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Benny Johnson, and Dave Rubin. Here’s the BBC with more, and Matt Gertz offering commentary where he points out that the hosts who claim they were unwitting “victims” have no one to blame but themselves, citing Pool’s video rant on how Ukraine was “the enemy of” the United States.

Donald Trump shared a post from a Twitter account that has denied the Holocaust and said that Hitler was right, as well as routinely using the n-word and claiming that Jews were behind 9/11.

Trump is now losing ground in states where he was competitive or safely in the lead, including New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Florida.

Trump’s rants, online and in rare interviews, are growing increasingly incoherent, so why does the mainstream media “sanewash” them for him? Use his own words and let readers or viewers judge, rather than making these irrational comments sound normal.
Haaretz called out Tucker Carlson for hosting a Holocaust denier on his Twitter video show, and Elon Musk for amplifying him.

Vaccine opt-outs continue to climb in Florida schools, including life-saving vaccines like MMR and TDaP. The inevitable outcome of this is kids hospitalized or killed by ignorance, made possible by the state’s governor and surgeon general coming out strongly against vaccinations.

A Minnesota police officer with a long history of driving misconduct, including causing four crashes while on duty and driving 135 mph in a 55 mph zone without using his siren or lights, hit another car while driving 83 mph, killing an 18-year-old passenger. Shane Roper had been suspended twice for his driving but was still on the force and allowed to drive a police car.

Author Kurt Anderson wrote that while they were in college together, RFK Jr. sold him cocaine, which doesn’t exactly dovetail with Trump’s sort-of policy intention to execute drug dealers.

Stanford has gutted its creative writing program, which was founded in 1946 by Wallace Stegner, terminating the current positions of 23 of its lecturers and moving them to short-term contracts.

25^th Century Games has a new Kickstarter up for a fresh printing of their new edition of the Reiner Knizia game Ra, along with a new game from Knizia called Ratzia.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2024 election, abortion, anti-semitism, disinformation, florida, links, louisiana, minnesota, police, russia, stanford, stick to baseball, trans rights, vaccines

→ August 10, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/10/24.

I’ve been tied up the last few Saturdays with other things, so here’s a quick rundown of what you might have missed.

I wrote 14 different trade-deadline reaction pieces at the Athletic but there isn’t a single link to all of them beyond my author page, so if you missed anything that’s the place to start.

You can see my annual Gen Con recap post, which covers every game I saw at the convention plus my top ten games from the show and which this year ran over 10,000 words, over at Paste. I also reviewed the light family game Biomos, which I kind of liked when I first played it but eventually decided had too much randomness for me.

Stadium has changed its programming schedule and I’ll no longer be going to Chicago, but instead will be doing remote video work for them that will appear before their broadcasts of minor-league games (it’s all AAA games this month) or will show up on Amazon Echo devices and MSN. Unfortunately, I know several people lost their jobs in the changeover there, with some resources moving to the new Chicago Sports Network.

And now, the links – just some of the ones I saved over the last three weeks:

Longreads first: ProPublica obtained several training videos from Project 2025, the Trump-linked plan from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to largely dismantle the federal government, advising people on how to skirt judicial review, to remove any references to climate change, and to avoid creating any kind of evidence through open records. You can read more about the details of the GOP’s plans in the Boston Review. The Atlantic dove into the Project 2025 plan to end free weather information by shutting down the NOAA.
A massive new study published in Nature found that COVID-19 vaccinations reduced the incidence of common cardiovascular events.
A study published in the BMJ showed that wearing surgical face masks reduced the incidence of respiratory symptoms consistent with infection.
New York City gave a subsidy running to the hundreds of millions to the Yankees and to the UAE’s Prime Minister for the Willets Point soccer stadium project.
Also from ProPublica: Washington state’s policy of giving tax breaks to data centers is now conflicting with the state’s attempt to shift towards green energy. First it was crypto; now it’s AI. Regardless of the reason, we need to make tech companies pay for this kind of excessive energy usage – and if that means I don’t get AI-generated summaries and search results that I didn’t ask for, oh well.
Two rational explanations for the non-troversy over the Olympic women’s boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Y-ting: The BBC goes into the scientific differences between genotype and phenotype, and why chromosomes aren’t the final answer on gender; and RTÉ points out that the so-called “controversy” all stems from a discredited source whose test results were never explained. I’d add to this that the whole thing reeks of transphobia, and somehow trans folks were roped into the attacks despite actually having nothing to do with the matter, because the right sees them as popular scapegoats.
A dozen scientists authored a letter to Rutgers asking them to open a formal investigation into two professors who have been harassing and attacking researchers who have studied SARS-CoV-2’s zoonotic origins, comparing them to Pol Pot and referring to some as “murderers.” Richard Ebright is a lab-leak conspiracy theorist who has been particularly virulent (pun intended) on Twitter for years now, and the university has appeared to do nothing whatsoever about his behavior.
The Journal of Virology published an editorial that points out the harms that come from continuing to promote the debunked lab-leak theory. In the spirit of full disclosure, my employer published an editorial that pushed this failed hypothesis two months ago.
Why is there so little coverage of Egypt’s attempt to bribe President-elect Donald Trump in 2016 with a $10 million ‘donation’? The Philly Inquirer’s Will Bunch argues that a large part of it is that bribery has become tacitly accepted in America, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
J.D. Vance endorsed a book authored by one of the main pushers of the insane Pizzagate conspiracy theory, far-right influencer Jack Posobiec, that argues that anyone who doesn’t agree with their right-wing views is “unhuman” and “vermin,” mirroring the language Adolf Hitler used to demonize Jews before the Holocaust.
The Bulwark dove into Vance’s dog-whistling comments about “cat ladies.”
Pro-school voucher groups dumped $4.5 million into primaries in Tennessee last week, some backed by Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos, both strong opponents of public education.
Through the end of July, the U.S. had seen three times as many measles cases in 2024 as it did in all of 2023, thanks entirely to anti-vaxxers and the credulous fools who listen to them.
I’m not sure how this didn’t get get more coverage – far-right protesters in Israel stormed military bases hosting Hamas militants and the IDF’s military court. Meanwhile, just yesterday video emerged of IDF forces raping a Palestinian detainee, and Israel’s National Security Minister and Finance Minister both appeared to defend the accused rapists.
Gojira’s awesome performance at the Olympics’ Opening Ceremonies earned them a brief writeup in the New York Times.
A pastor in Florida who is the father of nine children was arrested on charges of raping his 15-year-old niece. No trans people or drag queens were involved.
Elon Musk shared a deepfake of Kamala Harris through his Twitter account, which violates the policies of his own site.
The Hugo Awards almost had a second huge scandal in as many years, but this time they got in front of it, revealing that someone had spent thousands of dollars to try to buy 377 votes for a particular finalist in one of its categories. Last year’s Hugos were undermined by the revelation that the organizing committee disqualified several nominees that ran afoul of the Chinese government’s preferences.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, florida, gaza, gender issues, hugo award, israel, links, longreads, olympics, project 2025, social media, stadium scams, stick to baseball, tennessee, vaccines

→ May 18, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/18/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my first mock draft for 2024. I also held a free Klawchat on Wednesday to take questions on that and a few on some minor-league prospects.

I swear I’ll send out a new version of my email newsletter in the next day or two. It’s just been very hectic here lately. It’s not exactly slowing down – I may not go to any conference tournaments because my daughter’s birthday is this week and the Delaware state tennis tournament was delayed until Monday due to (a teeny tiny threat of) rain.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the story of a mom in Texas who won election to her school board in Granbury on a platform of stopping left-wing indoctrination, only to find that none of that was happening. When she went public with her change of views, however, she found herself attacked by her former allies.

Defector’s Nick Zarzycki interviewed Richard Garfield about the creation of Magic: the Gathering and his disenchantment with how the game has developed and (in his view) devolved in its 30-year history.

This excerpt from Jacob Kushner’s new book Look Away: A True Story of Murder, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants hooked me into adding it to my to-read list.It’s about a trio of white supremacist killers in Germany who robbed banks when they weren’t murdering immigrants, and also about the new rise of such racist violence across the west in the last decade.

Author Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies, Florida) has opened a bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, with a focus on banned and challenged books because of the state’s war on literature.

An unvaccinated child, under the age of 5, died of measles in the Canadian province of Ontario. There is no reason whatsoever to allow parents to neglect their child’s welfare like this.

RFK Jr. had quite a week, as reports found that in his divorce filing in 2012, he claimed a worm had eaten away part of his brain, leading to half-serious jokes that it explains how completely batshit his views have become. Slate has a short piece arguing that it’s just more evidence of how RFK Jr. is happy to lie his way through any situation. Scientific American explained that such “brain worms” are an actual global health problem, which you’d think the vaccine-denialist candidate would embrace since he claims to be so concerned with public health. Meanwhile, a new hire for his campaign appears to have been at the insurrection on January 6^th. And his VP candidate Nicole Shanahan just dumped $8 million of her own money into his flailing campaign effort.

The Beverly Hills billionaires who own the companies behind Wonderful pistachios and Fiji water are trying to kill a California law that helps unions bring farmworkers under their umbrella. The Resnicks donate millions to mostly liberal and Democratic causes, but would rather destroy workers’ rights than deal with unions at their Wonderful agricultural firm.

Saudi Arabia’s quixotic Neom project includes a 170 kilometer-long linear city called The Line, but the BBC reports that the autocratic nation has destroyed villages and murdered residents of the area to clear the path for the city’s construction.

Is Mexico City about to run out of fresh water? Maybe not yet, but the situation is dire there and in many other large cities that have overdeveloped and/or relied too much on a single water source, with climate change exacerbating the situation on multiple continents.

David R. Boyd, the outgoing United Nations special rapporteur for the environment and human rights, excoriated our reliance on exploitation of both humans and nature to run our global economy, citing climate change, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity as critical issues that most people and governments are ignoring.

David Tennant remains my favorite Doctor, although I have yet to see any of Ncuti Gatwa’s episodes; I’m not surprised that Tennant has also come out clearly in favor of trans rights as well.

Tiffany Haddish, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite actors, and it turns out she used the United States’ lack of data privacy laws to dox people who criticized her online. There’s way too much personal information about us available to anyone willing to cough up a few bucks. Also, Haddish really needs to log off.

I tweeted this link when the story ran, but it’s worth reposting: Jackson County legislator DaRon McGee (D) helped put the Chiefs/Royals stadium tax initiative on the ballot. He also hit up the Royals for free suite tickets last year while he was involved in negotiations with the club.

The Supreme Court ruled that people whose property is seized in civil asset forfeiture cases have no right to a preliminary hearing to determine if the forfeiture was legal or justified, instead favoring the police’s so-called “right” to continue their “important law-enforcement activities.”

North Carolina’s far-right legislature passed a bill banning the wearing of masks in public, which likely violates both the First Amendment and federal disability rights statutes. The ostensible targets are pro-Palestine protesters, but even so, they also have free speech and free assembly rights.

Chad recently held the first free election in its 64-year history, although observers have said the election was not fair and at least two opponents have alleged fraud. The winner was Mahamat Idriss Déby, son of the strongman Idriss Déby who ruled the country from 1991 until he was killed in a coup in 2021.

The parliament of the European country of Georgia passed a Russian-backed bill requiring organizations receiving at least 20% of their funding from outside of the country to register as “agents of foreign influence”, over objections from the country’s western allies and protests from Georgians that have lasted for weeks.

ProPublica also explores Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s dubious claim that Israel has done enough to address serious rights violations by its military, such as the Israeli soldier who murdered an unarmed Palestinian and was sentenced only to community service.

Evan Urquhart at Assigned Media points out how many other anti-trans voices have found J.K. Rowling too toxic to defend, coming in the wake of Rowling bullying a trans woman who became the first openly trans referee in a major soccer league.

St. Petersburg, Florida, is banking on 7% annual growth to help pay for the stadium they want to build for the Rays, which is wildly optimistic in any circumstances, but I’d say even more so for a city right on the water in an era of rising sea levels.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, banned books, baseball, climate change, first amendment, florida, gaza, germany, labor rights, links, longreads, mexico, north carolina, saudi arabia, scotus, texas, trans rights, vaccines

→ May 4, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/4/24.

Two new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, a breakdown of the Luis Arraez trade and scouting notes on Justin Crawford and other Phillies, Orioles, and Mets prospects. I’ve also got a draft scouting notebook going up on Sunday with notes on J.J. Wetherholt, Hagen Smith, Peyton Stovall, and Ryan Waldschmidt. And I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last Saturday, so I should do another one in a day or two, in theory.

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday at 2 pm ET for Diamond Dreams and then for one segment of Unpacked at 2:30 pm. The shows re-air throughout the week, roughly twice a day, as far as I can tell. You can watch via the app or with certain subscriptions to Youtube, Fubo, Roku, etc.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Columbia Spectator, with the help of New York magazine, has a detailed look at the protests, the encampments, the police overreach, and more on campus, through hundreds of interviews with students and faculty across the religious and ideological divides.

In the Atlantic, Tyler Austin Harper writes of how colleges positioned themselves as activist havens when speaking to prospective students, only to find that those students believed them.

The LA Times has the story of a man who engineered the theft of millions of gallons of water from California’s limited resources, while enriching himself and his friends and lying on his income taxes.

ProPublica reports on the EPA’s decision to ignore its own scientists and approve a plastic fuel additive that is nearly guaranteed to cause cancer in anyone exposed to it regularly over a lifetime. Well, a shortened lifetime, I guess.

The Washington Post ran a long piece on the effects of sea level rise on the coastal U.S., much of it in states whose elected officials have denied climate change and fought efforts to mitigate it.

A research study by the Australian government’s Institute of Criminology examined how anti-COVID protests brought together numerous anti-government forces, including those beholden to conspiracy theories and extremist anti-authority sentiments (like so-called “sovereign citizens”).

Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at Hebrew University, writes about the assault on Gaza: “Yes, it is genocide.”

Sam Thorpe, a Jewish economist who works as a Senior Research Assistant for the Brookings Institute’s Tax Policy Center, wrote in a series of tweets that it is possible to be Jewish and oppose the actions of Israel in Gaza. He argues that it is imperative for believers to do so, as his faith teaches that all humans are made in the image of God.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “total annihilation” of Gaza, after which Haaretz called for his firing.

Of course, the American media are more caught up in covering campus protests, and not even getting the angle right, such as the Indiana State Police’s excessive use of force – including setting up a sniper on a nearby building! – against protesters at IU. This link has an interview with ISP Superintendent Doug Carter, who doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea of what freedom of speech means.

The LA Times’ Michael Hiltzik wrote that college presidents who rush to call in the police haven’t learned a damn thing since the 1960s. Today is the anniversary of the police murdering four students at Kent State who were protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam, by the way.

Credit goes to the Philadelphia police, however, who declined Penn’s request that they come clear out student protesters unless the school could provide evidence of imminent danger.

CNN’s Dana Bash went on air and parroted a bunch of pro-Israel talking points while comparing pro-Palestinian protesters to Nazi forces.

Ken Klippenstein resigned from The Intercept and revealed some of how management there sought to spike stories critical of Jeff Bezos and other rich, powerful targets, all while apparently paying themselves more while laying off editors and journalists. I’ve linked to quite a bit of Ken’s work here and will probably sign up for his newsletter now that he’s going solo.

Andrew Huberman’s podcast is one of the most popular in America. It’s also rife with false information.

Florida has removed over 22,000 children from its version of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) this year, defying a federal law designed to protect them. I never though the wolves would eat my face!

Meanwhile, Florida’s farmers are suffering from a lack of labor thanks to the state’s draconian law attacking businesses that used undocumented workers, as are construction businesses, restaurants, and hoteliers, all major industries in the state.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) shared a video of white University of Mississippi students making monkey noises and shouting racist chants at a Black protester, saying “Ole Miss taking care of business” (while using the racist-derived nickname for the school). Collins has previously shared posts from neo-Nazis and suggested murdering migrants, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Chicago won’t discipline nine city police officers who were (are?) members of the right-wing extremist Oath Keepers group, after the mayor and CPD superintendent had promised to do so.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina and West Virginia can’t deny gender-affirming medical coverage to transgender people. North Carolina sought to specifically deny it to state employees and their dependents, while West Virginia sought to do so for people enrolled in Medicaid.

Arizona’s Kari Lake, running as a Republican for the seat that Krysten Sinema is vacating, is touting State Sen. Sonny Borrelli’s endorsement of her, even though Borrelli – the Arizona Senate Majority Leader has a history of domestic violence allegations against him and said just this March that women should put an aspirin between their knees as a method of birth control.

A second Boeing whistleblower has died. Joshua Dean, who was 45, died of a MRSA infection this week; John Barnett, 62, died in March in an apparent suicide, although friends and family have raised doubts that he took his own life.

The Guardian looks at how many bands make little to no money, even taking losses, from touring. With record sales in the toilet and tours unprofitable, what career is there in making music if you’re not a superstar?

I thought Netflix’s Baby Reindeer was outstanding, and am pulling for the two stars to earn Emmy nominations for their work, especially Jessica Gunning (who plays Martha). NPR’s Glenn Weldon argued that the series bungled its depiction of queerness; I didn’t interpret it this way, but I’m also straight and perhaps not the right person to answer this question.

Two new studies on the economics of sports and sport stadium financing: One that showed that policing becomes more aggressive where there are public subsidies of sports facilities, apparently to help make up for budget shortfalls; the other showed that sporting events lead to an increase in crime, and thus to an increase in spending on policing, two ways in which public subsidies for sports stadiums negatively impact the local economy.

ProPublica reports on a new effort at the IRS to identify illegal tax avoidance schemes by sports-team owners. It would appear these owners are happy to take taxpayer money, but not to pay back in the legally required portion of their profits.

Paris claimed it was going to use the Olympics as a spur to revitalize one of its poorest districts, Seine-Saint-Denis; instead it appears they’ve evicted impoverished residents and decreased the region’s air quality. The district was the site of the 2005 riots against the police that inspired the Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables.

Antiabortion zealots are trying to force the Amarillo, Texas, city council to pass a ridiculous, unenforceable ordinance forbidding the use of city streets for the purpose of leaving the state for an abortion. Find someone who loves you as much as these people love depriving other people of their rights.

Utah passed a transphobic bathroom law, and in the first week in which the site to report alleged violations was live, they received almost 4000 bogus reports and left a bunch of information unprotected for anyone to access.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, chicago, climate change, colleges, environment, florida, gaza, links, longreads, misinformation, mississippi, Music, olympics, paris, police, stick to baseball, taxes, texas, trans rights, utah, water crisis

→ April 13, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/13/24.

I’ve got some new content coming up this week, with a new draft ranking due to run on Thursday and a draft scouting blog probably running Monday or Tuesday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the collectible card game Star Wars: Unlimited – Spark of Rebellion, which I enjoyed even though I’m not generally a fan of deckbuilders.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter, detailing a rather ridiculous dinner I had at the bar at The Publican, an acclaimed Chicago restaurant where, to say the least, one does not belch as loudly as one can.

I’m going to be on a new TV show, Diamond Dreams starting on Monday, April 15^th, on the streaming channel Stadium. The show is a half-hour look at prospects around the minors and for the draft, and will be followed by a show on collectibles where I’ll also offer some comments on the prospects they’re discussing. You can watch via the app on pretty much any platform.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: How Elon Musk convinced MAGA partisans that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was a treatment for COVID-19 – which it absolutely is not – and set off four years of online misinformation around the pandemic.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in the New York Times about how “colorblindness” has been hijacked by the white-grievance movement, in direct opposition to the original intent of the term, which meant ending racial discrimination against people of color.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about how the Key Bridge disaster demonstrated the importance of immigrants to our society.

A hardcore conservative group is making it harder for Idaho school districts to renovate or upgrade their facilities.

There’s a big scam going around that has tricked a number of content creators into ceding control of their Facebook pages. It starts with what seems to be an invitation to appear on a big podcast, which of course is very appealing to most people trying to build their online audience.

Over half a million Arizonans signed a petition to put codifying abortion rights on the ballot this November. It’s part of a Democratic strategy to drive voters to the polls in purple states – and also, by the way, a basic human right. This comes on the heels of the GOP-packed Arizona Supreme Court reinstating the state’s 1864 abortion ban – yes, a law that predates Arizona’s statehood by almost 50 years.

The Guardian revealed that Boise State Professor Scott Yenor ran Action Idaho, an extreme right-wing site that attacked LGBTQ+ rights and accused Republicans of being insufficiently conservative. Yenor now also works for the Claremont Institute and just a month ago wrote a piece for the Federalist that said DEI had to die for Western civilization to survive.

ProPublica explains how authorities are trying to crack down on gift-card crime rings, where consumers often end up buying gift cards that appear new but that have already been drained of value by crooks.

Maria Bustillos writes in The Nation about the rise of journalist-owned news outlets amidst the ongoing bloodletting in the industry.

David Chang’s Momofuku company is trying to trademark the generic term “chili crunch” to describe a staple Chinese condiment best known as chili crisp – and they’re suing smaller firms to try to have their way.

Why is Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R – and not the former pitcher) doing the bidding of Elon Musk by suing Media Matters for reporting on Twitter’s failure to police hate on their site?

Voters in Enid, Oklahoma, removed Judd Blevins (R) from the city council after his ties to white supremacist groups were exposed.

The BBC has a first-person narrative from a woman who found deepfakes of herself online – and eventually learned it was a close friend of hers who made them.

This Twitter thread has some solid details on the IDF’s attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza that killed seven WCK volunteers. I don’t know why those seven deaths should lead to more calls for a cease-fire when the 30,000+ Palestinian deaths before that haven’t … of course I do, let’s not kid ourselves.

Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reposted a piece from the Kansas Reflector critical of Meta’s ad policy around climate change, and moments later, Meta removed all links to both sites from Facebook and Threads. After an outcry, Meta reversed the decision and blamed a “security error,” but, come on.

Landfills emit far more methane than previously believed, more bad news for the planet as methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Before voters wisely rejected a stadium tax proposal to replace the two perfectly fine sports facilities outside of Kansas City, the KC Studio had a sensible op ed on what a waste tearing down Kaufmann Stadium would be.

Former SCOTUS justice Steven Breyer wants everyone to get along, like his former colleagues on the high court, even though some of those colleagues are busy destroying Americans’ basic civil rights, writes Elie Mystal of The Nation.

The BBC reports on exploitation of workers in Brazil who harvest the common ingredient carnauba wax, bordering on slavery.

Cleveland Plain-Dealer editor Chris Quinn explains why the paper treats Donald Trump differently from other politicians & candidates. Hint: It’s because he lies.

The Atlantic’s David Graham describes the “Trump two-step:” say something outrageous, claim that’s not really what he said or meant, and then quietly embrace the original statement.

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent details just how entrenched election denial, January 6^th denialism, and other insane conspiracy theories are within the Republican party right now.

Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian that Justice Sonja Sotomayor needs to retire from the Supreme Court so President Biden can appoint a replacement, avoiding the possibility that Trump would get to appoint a fourth justice and give the court a 7-2 majority that would likely last decades. I’m not sure if I agree, but he at least offers a solid argument.

Fox News and several right-wing podcasters, including beanie-wearing Tim Pool, are now facing a lawsuit from a man they all falsely identified as a mass shooter. The man’s lawyer previously represented two Sandy Hook parents in their lawsuit against Alex Jones for his false claims that that mass shooting didn’t happen. Fuck ’em up, Socrates.

The Tampa Bay Times published a rare editorial pointing out that public subsidies for sports stadiums don’t work out for taxpayers, as the Rays try once again to soak Floridians for a new facility.

Here’s a great summary and index of economic research showing how consistently these sports stadium deals fail to live up to economic promises. If you’re writing about the topic, or know a journalist who is, this is invaluable, because the pro-stadium forces will always trot out fabricated numbers from consultants who give them what they want.

The PEN America awards are in a bit of a shambles after a number of high-profile authors withdrew their works from consideration or declined prizes in protest of the organization’s perceived bias towards Israel. The authors include Lorrie Moore, who just won the National Book Critics Circle’s Fiction award for I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.

A senior editor at NPR wrote a bad-faith, error-filled critique of the public radio outlet on Bari Weiss’s blog. NPR responded, defending its hiring practices and its philosophy. You can find many takedowns of Uri Berliner’s original piece, but one fact that got me was that he accused NPR of downplaying or ignoring the lab-leak theory behind COVID-19’s origins, even when the evidence in favor of a zoonotic spillover kept mounting.

WFLA has the story of a young boy with autism who can no longer receive health services because Florida kicked him off Medicaid. We need more stories like this, showing everyday people getting badly hurt by state policies that cut funding for essential services like health care, education, and even school lunches for underprivileged people.

A former youth minister at a Baptist church in Bixby, Oklahoma, has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor as well as possession and distribution of child pornography. No drag queens were involved.

Chicago police killed Dexter Reed during a traffic stop where he fired first, injuring one officer, after which the cops fired 96 rounds in less than a minute. The Sun-Times reports that the five officers involved in the incident have been investigated a total of 41 times since 2019, and that the area where they stopped Reed has a disproportionate number of traffic stops. The cops have said they pulled Reed over because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

The brightest cosmic explosion scientists have ever seen has now led to new questions about how some of the universe’s heaviest metals are formed. The supernova occurred about 2.4 billion years ago in a galaxy far, far away, producing a huge burst of gamma rays but none of the elements like gold or platinum that scientists expected to find.

Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride is running to be our at-large Representative, vying to become the first trans person elected to Congress. She’s one of at least three Democrats hoping to win the primary, which is tantamount to winning the election in our very blue state. Full disclosure: I’ve met Sen. McBride and we often see each other at our local Brew Haha coffee shop.

Is social media really driving a surge in mental illness among teenagers, as Jonathan Haidt claims in his new book? The evidence is mixed at best, according to this review in Nature.

Eric Hovde, who is running for Senate in Wisconsin as a Republican, is now facing backlash over his comments from a previous campaign where he called for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, attacked single mothers, said alcohol should never have been legalized, questioned whether farmers work hard, and lots of other great stuff.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, chicago, climate change, delaware, Economics, election denial, florida, gaza, idaho, links, longreads, Media, mental illness, misinformation, missouri, physics, police, scotus, social media, stick to baseball, wisconsin

→ March 16, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/16/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I wrote up the players I saw in the Reds-Rangers Breakout Game plus a few other notes from Arizona, broke down the Dylan Cease trade, and posted a ranking of the top 20 prospects for likely impact in 2024, and offered a draft scouting notebook from the Wake Forest-Duke series. I’ll have some more Breakout game reports after the weekend, but unfortunately the two games I hoped to hit on Friday were both washed out by rain.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Judd Blevins is a white nationalist. The town of Enid, Oklahoma, voted him on to their city council, but there’s a fight brewing now to remove him. Blevins refuses to address his history with Identity Evropa, a major white nationalist organization, instead hiding behind “God” and religion.

One of the leaders at Charis Bible College ran a cult at Messiah College in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, an unreported story until some of the survivors saw that the cult leader, Andrew Wertz, is now a Senior VP at that school and Andrew Wommack Ministries.

Awful Announcing broke down all of the utterly insane things Aaron Rodgers espoused in that recent podcast appearance where he claimed that the Sandy Hook mass shooting didn’t happen (which, to be absolutely clear, is false). He’s just gone at this point.

Michelle Morrow, the Republican candidate for Superintendent of Schools in North Carolina, has called for the execution of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and publicly tweeted QAnon slogans. This is on top of the North Carolina GOP nominating a gay-bashing Holocaust denier as candidate for Governor.

A new study found that participants exposed to many false or misleading headlines were then more likely to believe ambiguous or less implausible ones.
The federal case against former Deadspin writer Tim Burke, who stands accused of exercising his First Amendment rights by accessing unprotected video streams online, appeared in court again last week. The charges claim he “hacked” into those video streams, which Burke says were not protected by passwords or other encryption. It’s an extremely important case for everyone in the press, as this appears to be a direct assault on our freedom to do our jobs under 1A. You can donate to support his legal fund here.

Tim Grierson wrote how the Oscars were just mid despite a great movie year, although I enjoyed the show more than he did.

TIME‘s Stephanie Zacharek looks at the post-Oscars storm brewing in Hollywood, where risk-taking remains rare and studios seem to be as conservative as ever.

Oregon moved to recriminalize possession of hard drugs, notably fentanyl and heroin, three years after decriminalizing it. Note that several quotes here are from Republican representatives talking about fentanyl (a popular GOP talking point) and Portland (which they do not represent).

A school board member in Butler, Pennsylvania, who is also the founder of the faith-based Grace Youth & Family Foundation is facing new charges for an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with a teenager in his outreach program and for continuing to contact the victim while he’s been on probation. No drag queens were involved in this story.

This year’s FAFSA roll-out and the new rules that led to the changes in the federal student-aid forms have all been a huge disaster that may force some schools to delay enrollment deadlines.

Allowing kids to get the measles, the mumps, or rubella just to satisfy some lunatic’s political goals is needlessly cruel, but the cruelty is the point, isn’t it?

Ashwin Ramaswami is running for state senator in Georgia against an election denier, Shawn Still, who served as a fraudulent elector for disgraced ex-President Trump in 2021. Ramaswami is a 24-year-old Stanford alum who, if elected, would become the first Indian-American to serve in Georgia’s senate.

Medici is one of Reiner Knizia’s most acclaimed games, part of his so-called Auction Trilogy with Ra and Modern Art, but it’s been out of print for several years now. Steamforged announced they’re taking pre-orders for a new edition coming out this year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, drugs, first amendment, florida, georgia, links, longreads, misinformation, north carolina, oklahoma, oregon, oscars, pennsylvania, stick to baseball, vaccines, white nationalism

→ March 9, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 03/09/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I published a ranking of the top 30 prospects for this year’s MLB Draft, after which my #1 guy, Charlie Condon, hit two more homers for Georgia. I also posted a draft scouting notebook, covering Braden Montgomery, Brody Brecht, Anthony Silva, and P.J. Morlando. And I held a Klawchat to take your draft questions.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the cooperative game Stranger Things: Upside Down, a way better tie-in title than the Stranger Things game published in 2022. It’s by Rob Daviau, the co-founder of Restoration Games and inventor of the legacy game concept.

I’m working on getting back to weekly editions of my free email newsletter. This last one was about my trip to Texas and the way Republican candidates there are weaponizing hate against one of the most vulnerable minorities in the U.S. to try to earn a few more votes. Please clap.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Why is Primary Children’s Care Hospital in Utah performing unnecessary surgeries on children? No, not that kind, but an actual problem, as they’re taking needless risks to repair cleft palates.
Road and Track posted and then deleted this longread on Formula 1 and the massive amounts of cash running through it, reportedly because F1 powers-that-be objected to it.
NPR looks at the return of crossover thrash band Power Trip three years after the death (by fentanyl overdose) of their lead singer Riley Gale. I like their music but didn’t care for Gale’s vocal style. The piece does a wonderful job of explaining his legacy and appeal to fans, and the challenges for a band trying to continue without their voice and their leader.
Israeli “protesters” blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stood by and watched. This would not appear to have anything to do with fighting terrorists but it is a good way to ensure more civilians die.
The U.S. Embassy in Israel sent a cable on Monday warning of “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” if Israel invades Rafah. Ken Klippenstein of the Intercept received a copy of the cable; he and his colleagues have been among the best outlets at covering Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, U.S. policy towards Israel, and AIPAC’s influence on the latter.
The BBC looks at how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., became a soi-disant “truth-teller” who spreads lies and conspiracy theories around vaccines.
Have you read the Chicago Chronicle or the New York News Daily? They’re new fake-news sites backed by the Kremlin to spread disinformation and try to influence our elections.
The executive director of Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs was assaulted by a traffic cop who then threatened to tase her. Celena Morrison, a Black trans woman, was pulled over for allegedly tailgating another car, after which her husband, Darius McLean, pulled his own car over to assist. Morrison began filming the encounter with McLean already on the ground, after which the cop slaps him and then goes after her.
A Christian pastor in South Florida was arrested for getting a 15-year-old girl drunk and sexually battering her at his church. No drag queens or trans people were involved.
The owners of a Christian boarding school for boys in Missouri are now facing kidnapping charges for holding students there (including girls when the school was coed) against their will. Other former students have alleged they were abused, raped, or forced into physical labor. Again, no drag queens or trans people are involved.
Prosecutors in North Dakota recovered 2000 emails from the state’s former Attorney General, since deceased, many of which relate to the case against former state representative Ray Holmberg (R) for allegedly traveling to Europe with the intent of paying for sex with a minor and for receiving child pornography.
New York City is the new home of endangered languages, with hundreds of them spoken throughout and just outside the metropolis. Preserving them isn’t just a curiosity, but a way to maintain hundreds of years of culture and art for populations from around the world.
Beaufort, South Carolina, removed 97 books from school shelves after challenges from just two people … but they’re returning 92 of them to circulation. What a colossal waste of time and public resources. If your book challenge fails, you should have to pay the equivalent of legal fees.
Utah approved $2 billion in public funding for MLB and NHL facilities, without teams to play in them. If the state has that much money, they should just lower their tax rates!
Scott Simon of NPR wrote an op ed about the need to stop giving public funds to sports team owners. Let them build their own factories.
From January: Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of major Kenyan cities to march against violence against women in the East African nation, in the wake of multiple murders of women and commentary that blamed the victims for their own deaths. The AP has an update from Friday, noting that at least 60 women have been killed in Kenya so far this year.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book banning, florida, gaza, kenya, Languages, links, longreads, misinformation, north dakota, philadelphia, stick to baseball, thrash, utah, vaccines

→ February 24, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/24/24.

My entire prospect rankings for 2024 are now up for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

I held a Klawchat earlier this week to take questions on the lists and more.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Apiary, the latest game from publisher Stonemaier Games (Wingspan, Scythe, Tapestry); The Search for Lost Species, a deduction game and sequel to my #1 game of 2020, The Search for Planet X; and The White Castle, my #1 game of 2023, designed by the folks behind The Red Cathedral.

I also sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, about how we had to put our cat, Hexie, down when a blood clot traveled to his descending aorta and paralyzed his hind quarters. It’s been tough.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Religious zealot and billionaire Tim Dunn is behind the Texas GOP’s hard shift to the right as he tries to remake the state into a Christian theocracy. Imagine if a Muslim billionaire used his money in a similar way. It’s certainly not about following the teachings of Jesus – as does this Catholic charity in El Paso, which is now facing closure at the hands of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
I’ll also just mention here that religious ‘nones’ are now the largest single group in the U.S. The term refers to anyone who does not identify themselves as affiliated with a church or religion, including atheists, agnostics, ‘spiritual but not religious’ people, deists, and others.
The New York Times had an excellent story on the athletes recruited to The New School in Florida, as the state pours money into the once-liberal institution to try to turn it into a southern version of Hillsdale College. The kids are going to be all right, despite the adults’ best efforts.
Gary, Indiana, has an ongoing lawsuit against gun manufacturers over their tacit allowance of illegal gun sales. The Indiana Republican Party is trying to pass a bill that would invalidate the suit and protect gun manufacturers from liability.
A former minister in the Christian cult The Truth admitted to molesting a young boy through his role in the ‘church,’ part of a decades-long pattern of abuse and cover-ups in the home-based movement, also known as Two by Twos.
A doctor who went to Gaza to help victims of Israel’s ongoing assault wrote in the LA Times that what he saw “wasn’t war – it was annihilation.”
In the face of growing hate towards Palestinians, some chefs and restaurant owners who come from or trace their ancestry to Palestine are choosing to emphasize their identity
The 76ers’ proposed downtown arena is likely to cost the city millions in lost tax revenue while also risking Philly’s vibrant Chinatown neighborhood. Let the owners pay for it themselves.
There’s a huge measles outbreak in Florida thanks to parents rejecting universal medical advice and skipping the MMR vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General is telling parents they can still send their unvaccinated kids to school. Measles is the most contagious virus that infects humans, and it can kill children and adults, either during the infection itself or up to a decade later due to an incurable neurological condition called SSPE. This is abject insanity. The MMR vaccine is safe, effective, and led to the (temporary) eradication of measles from the Americas, until Andrew Wakefield and the fucking idiots who follow him brought it back.
KFF Health News looks at how these fringe anti-science views became so dominant in American politics, and what it might mean this November.
Meanwhile, vaccine denialists are everywhere, downplaying the severity of measles. I see it every day on the disinformation hellhole of Twitter. Measles kills, maims, deafens, and more. It can lead to weeks of hospitalizations. I would love to see health insurers insist on vaccinations for coverage, because why should my premiums go up just because someone else was too dumb or misinformed to make the right choice?
West Virginia Republicans saw this outbreak and decided to exempt private schools from the state’s strict vaccination requirements, because I guess having the nation’s highest death rate from opioids wasn’t good enough!
Timor-Leste (formerly known as East Timor) is battling simultaneous outbreaks of three mosquito-borne diseases: Zike, dengue, and chikungunya. We need more releases of genetically modified mosquitoes and mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria to reduce their numbers before these diseases spread further.
Tim Burke, formerly of Deadspin, was indicted in Florida for allegedly hacking Fox News video streams of Kanye West and Tucker Carlson … that Burke says were unprotected by passwords or other encryption. This is a freedom of the press issue. You could contact your Representative or Senator, especially if any serve on their respective Judiciary Committees, as I’ve done. An attack on any journalist is an attack on all of us.
A Texas attorney poisoned his pregnant then-wife with abortion pills, which didn’t cause the pregnancy to terminate but caused enough damage to the fetus that their daughter has developmental delays. He was sentenced to merely 180 days in jail, because abortion bans are not about saving babies (or fetuses), but about subjugating and controlling women.
Abortion rights are a consistent, winning issue for Democrats, writes Ilyse Hogue in the New Republic, and the party needs to lean into that more.
We got an answer, belatedly, on the Hugo Awards’ exclusion of certain works, notably those by Chinese or Chinese-American authors, and it was craven submission to Chinese government involvement. Dave McCarty, a sci-fi fan who was head of the Hugo Committee for 2023, and others resigned and/or were censured. One of the winners, Adrian Tchaikovsky, has already said he will no longer cite or list the award among his honors.
This satirical column from The Crimson mocks national reporters’ obsession with campus life at Harvard.
Posts from the transphobic ‘activist’ LibsOfTikTok led to at least 21 bomb threats against schools, libraries, small businesses, and more. Twitter has done nothing to shut Chaya Raichik down, despite the real-world consequences to her actions.
Pamela Paul wrote an anti-trans editorial in The New York Times. It was riddled with inaccuracies.
The co-founder of the anti-LGBTQ, book-banning advocacy group Moms for Liberty engaged in threesomes with her husband and another woman. Bridget Ziegler is on the school board in Sarasota County, Florida, and her husband Christian (heh) was the former head of the Florida Republican Party. MfL’s influence appears to be waning as more people catch on to their radical agenda.
Seattle cops raided several LGBTQ+ bars in the city, taking photos of patrons, citing regulations banning “lewd conduct.” Owners and patrons fought back, and the state’s liquor board, which oversees such businesses, agreed to knock it off and end this collaboration with the police.
New York’s Nassau County issued an order banning teams with trans athletes from using public fields or arenas, yet another pointless, cruel rule pandering to bigots, a solution in search of a problem.
Republicans smeared Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over comments she made – but they used a bogus translation to do so.
An old indie blog called The Hairpin that closed in 2018 has come back to life as a zombie clickbait farm.
A mother of four was shot and killed while driving to work in Philadelphia in November, and her family says the police aren’t doing enough to try to solve the case.
There’s a Kickstarter open for Conservas, a new solo bag-building game from designer Scott Almes (Tiny Epic Galaxes, Beer & Bread).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, florida, guns, harvard, hugo awards, indiana, lgbt rights, links, longreads, new york, philadelphia, religion, seattle, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, west virginia

→ January 13, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/13/24.

I had two posts this week for subscribers to The Athletic – a breakdown of the Michael Busch trade for prospects and another of the Cubs signing Shota Imanaga. Somehow, this brought the Matt Mervis stans back out off hiding.

At Paste, I published a full review of the game The White Castle, my top new game of 2023. Fries are extra.

I also sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter earlier in the week. You should sign up, as I’m posting less to Twitter these days, although you can also find me on Threads, Bluesky, and Spoutible.

A light week for links, probably because I was on the phone so much working on prospect stuff that I was offline more than usual (at least twice because my eyes hurt from so much screen time)…

This fantastic episode of The Hidden Brain talks about persistence and uses R.A. Dickey as one of its core examples – and gets his story right.

In Nyack, New York, sex abuse claims against a former high school baseball coach have resurfaced in an attempt to get the name of the head coach (who is not the accused abuser) removed from the school’s field. Several former players have accused assistant coach Peter Recla, who coached at Nyack High School in the late 1990s and early 2000s, of grooming and sexual abuse. The district settled a lawsuit with some of the victims in November.

Nigerian megachurch leader TB Joshua, who was not a drag queen, tortured, raped, and abused many of his worshippers until his death in 2021. A BBC investigation found cases of all of the above as well as forced abortions and cult-like control spanning twenty years.

Now Florida schools are pulling dictionaries and encyclopedias from shelves because they may have “objectionable” content like … facts.

Following the lead of Iowa, Mississippi has withdrawn from a free federal program providing funds to states to feed underprivileged schoolchildren over the summer, part of a new Republican drive against the “welfare state.” I don’t understand why this is minor news, but a rat-shaped hole in Chicago gets coverage in national papers.

Meanwhile, a third of the current Representatives and Senators are election deniers. This just isn’t compatible with democracy as a going concern. It’s one or the other.

Are fast-food prices really going up, and if so, is it because of rising wages? It’s not that simple, according to this story on Vox. Input prices have gone up substantially in the last few years as well. Also, the $18 Big Mac story that went viral was about a McDonald’s at a rest stop with a captive audience.

This NY Times story explains a new type of streaming fraud, where copycats steal obscure artists’ songs and repackage them under fake artist names. What’s interesting here is that Warner ended up distributing some of the bogus tracks.
Birmingham Children’s Hospital in England is inundated with measles cases because anti-vaxxers convinced enough parents not to vaccinate their children against the incredibly contagious and dangerous virus.

Paste profiled SPRINTS as the Irish punk band released their first full-length album Letter to Self.

If you live in Ohio and are concerned about the recent anti-trans law passed by the state’s heavily gerrymandered legislature over Gov. Mike DeWine (R)’s veto, here are some things you can do to help the cause.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: book banning, election denial, florida, links, mississippi, Music, ohio, psychology, religion, stick to baseball, trans rights

→ January 6, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/6/24.

I took a few weeks off from these posts around the holidays, but I did write one piece for subscribers to The Athletic over the break, looking at the Chris Sale trade and Lucas Giolito signing.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the games Daybreak, a cooperative game about fighting climate change; and Wandering Towers, the best new family game of last year. Both games were on my ranking of the ten best new board games of 2023.

My free email newsletter will return today (most likely). Several of you have pledged to support me if the newsletter were to go paid; I have no immediate plans to do so, but if that happens 1) I’ll give everyone a ton of notice and 2) I’ll move it off Substack.

And now, the links…

Writer Tom Scocca’s piece in New York about his sudden, unsolved medical mystery is the best thing you’ll read all week. It’s well-written, of course, and combines the deeply personal with an inherent attack on our broken health-care system.

President Biden won’t just be facing Donald Trump or another GOP opponent in the 2024 election – he’ll be opposed by the News Corp misinformation machine, too. (Related: The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote of how journalism needs to defend itself in the face of bad-faith actors. He might start with his own paper’s opinion section.)

The New Yorker looks at board games with serious themes, profiling Amabel Holland, a trans woman who co-owns the publisher Hollandspiele and designed the Iron Rails series of games.

Parenting is hard. It’s been harder thanks to the pandemic. That and other factors have led to the rise of the “accidentally permissive” parent, especially in my age cohort.

Stuart Thompson of the New York Times looks at how anti-vaxx ghouls latched on to the death of a 24-year-old man, who showed no symptoms of myocarditis after his COVID-19 vaccination but whose parents think the vaccine gave him myocarditis anyway. George Watts, Jr., had an enlarged spleen – over six times the normal size for that organ – which is a sign of long-term heart failure, chronic inflammation in his brain, and signs of late-stage pneumonia in his lungs.

mRNA vaccines do not cause cancer, and there is no such thing as “turbo cancer.”

Measles is on the rise around the world thanks to vaccine denialists and misinformation peddlers like RFK, Jr.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D) has introduced two bills to block military aid to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates due to both nations’ atrocious human rights records. Omar is Muslim, and Islam is the official religion of both nations. Just imagine a similar scenario with Judaism or Christianity instead of Islam.

Meanwhile, Israel has censored its press on eight topics relating to the war on Gaza.

On the coordinated attacks against now former Harvard President Claudine Gay: It was never about plagiarism, but about DEI (from Don Moynihan); American Jews’ moral panic over Gay’s and two other college Presidents’ answers to Congress is misplaced (from The Forward); and Gay’s own editorial in the New York Times on what happened, which I thought was far too reticent.

Why do pundits like Jonathan Chait and Nate Silver say outrageous things? Because it’s effective, at least when you consider that attention is their goal.

The science is clear: Masks work to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and similar viruses, no matter what the misinformation merchants tell you.

The Guardian looks at the unfunny punching-down comedy specials from Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais. Chapelle was so groundbreaking at his peak that it’s sad to see him pitching with an 80 mph fastball now.

A list of all 673 books removed from classrooms in Orange County, Florida. I don’t know how anyone with the means to move could still live there. Even if you send your kids to a quality alternative school, your tax dollars are supporting this anti-education.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) declined federal food aid to provide lunch to schoolchildren over the summer, making a specious argument about obesity. This is free money for the state, and they would rather turn it down than feed poor children in Iowa.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) has drained the city payroll of over $24 million to pay for 293 “special assistants,” many of them major donors to his campaign.

Adams (still D) also tried to kill a bill that requires police to report when they stop anyone on the street to ask for identification, promising to restore budget cuts to other programs if council members voted against it. The bill passed anyway.

Overtime pay for NYPD officers working the city’s subway stations went from $4 million to $155 million between 2022 and 2023, reducing “major crimes” by 2% but primarily leading to more arrests and fines for fare-jumping. That’s a lot of money to fight a handful of skipped $2.90 charges.

New York bookstore Bluestockings is facing eviction for providing Narcan to save people who have overdosed on opioids.

Amanda Todd was 15 when she killed herself in 2012 after three years of cyberstalking by a Dutch man who blackmailed her with threats to send nude images of her to her friends and family. He was sentenced to 13 years by a Canadian court, but a Dutch court cut the sentence in half to match that country’s legal standards.

The Las Vegas Business Journal announced a new editorial policy that it will not publish economic impact estimates for stadium projects and other events unless they can see the methodology and criteria used to reach those estimates (which, in my view, are usually bullshit).

Francis Howell School District in St. Charles, Missouri, has seen white conservatives take over its school board; the board recently backed off a plan to eliminate all Black History and Black Literature courses after massive opposition, including from the NAACP. The same white conservatives are trying to ban trans students from using the appropriate bathrooms. School board elections matter, folks.

Speaking of Missourah, a St. Louis cop crashed his car into an LGBT bar, Bar:PM, and then cuffed one of the owners, who was later charged with a felony. The police didn’t do a toxicology test on their colleague, and now they’re trying to hush up any investigation and refusing to release body cam footage to the public.

Shoegaze had its moment in the early 1990s as a subgenre of alternative music, mostly heard from British acts like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive. It’s had a huge comeback thanks to TikTok.

The data from Insomniac Games released by hackers shows that big-game video game development is not sustainable, per Nathan Grayson of Aftermath, a great new site covering video and tabletop gaming.

I own a fantastic sweater and very warm hat from Quince, specialists in inexpensive cashmere clothing items. It turns out that cheap cashmere has a stark environmental cost.

The seams on a baseball have a higher-than-expected effect on the trajectory of the ball in flight.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, board games, Economics, environment, florida, harvard, iowa, journalism, links, longreads, misinformation, missouri, Music, new york, new york city, parenting, police, science, shoegaze, stick to baseball, vaccines, video games

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