frauds — Page 2

→ December 31, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/31/22.

I skipped last Saturday’s post, since it was Christmas Eve (iiin the drunk tank…), but since the last roundup I’ve written up the Daulton Varsho/Gabriel Moreno trade and the still in-limbo Carlos Correa signing with the Mets.

Over at Paste, I ranked the ten best new board games of 2022, and posted reviews of two of them – Kites, a real-time cooperative game; and Lacrimosa, a heavier game based on the life of Mozart. For those of you interested in my board game content, I’m going to do some small giveaways of promos and small expansions via my Instagram account starting this week, so feel free to follow me there if you’re interested.

I’ve got a bunch of non-work writing to do this weekend before I get back to prospect calls on Monday, with a new issue of my free email newsletter next up once this post is done.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This is about two weeks old, but the New York Times had an extremely in-depth investigative report on the toll of Putin’s war on Ukraine.
This week in “anti-abortion laws are going to kill women,” a woman in Louisiana was having a miscarriage and two ERs turned her away because they were afraid of prosecution under the state’s draconian anti-abortion law.
Meanwhile, an Arizona anti-abortion law has allowed a man to sue the clinic that gave his ex-wife an abortion, claiming wrongful death.
I know there was A Discourse around this article, but you should read the actual piece about the so-called “nepo babies” that ran in Vulture, as it’s more nuanced and thoughtful than the title or cover might imply.
Also from the New York Times’ investigative unit, this December 19^th story started the flood of revelations about Representative-Elect George Santos’s fictional resume.
Rolling Stone talked to Dave Coutts, the singer of the 1990s band Talk Show, which was Stone Temple Pilots without singer Scott Weiland, about his experience in that one-album band and his post-music career.
The hoax about computerized voting machines that flipped votes from Trump to Biden comes from a longtime fraudster named Dennis Montgomery, who sold a bunch of his so-called evidence to Mike Lindell and also has a history of selling bogus information to the federal government.
Des Moines, Iowa, removed police “school resource officers” from schools and tried restorative practices instead. In These Times looks at some of the results from the first year, where arrests dropped by about 80% but police calls only increased from 9 to 13. Not really mentioned is that this system, in addition to improving outcomes and keeping more kids in school and out of prison, is how much less it costs taxpayers, too.
Slate’s Justin Peters wrote about the finale of the “great Internet grievance wars” and what the so-called Twitter files actually say, even as some loud right-wing accounts on the site are still complaining about “shadowbanning” as we speak.
Aaron Rupar wrote about his experiences getting suspended from Twitter by a petulant Elon Musk. This came as the billionaire claimed an Internet account was responsible for a stalker trying to find him, even though police found no link.
Two journalists for the Bend Bulletin were reporting on the impact of a severe cold snap on the city’s homeless, and decided to get involved to try to help one such woman despite the dictum that journalists shouldn’t become part of any story they cover.
Texas hired a man to train school board members, even though he’d been convicted twice of defrauding federal agencies. Of course, this training was supposed to be an alternative to so-called “woke” agendas. Grifters have realized how easy it is to target these people.
Vox has a list of seven reasons why the planet might not actually be doomed, based on the proceedings at this month’s COP15 summit in Montréal.
This New York Times story on a South Korean tour group that was stranded in Buffalo by the snow, only to find themselves taken in by a local couple who just happened to have a bunch of Korean ingredients in their kitchen, is both a rare bit of good news and a testament to the power of food to bring people together.
The anti-vaxxers and other COVID denialists who’ve sown distrust and ignorance around COVID vaccine have led to rises in chicken pox, measles, and other vaccine-preventable diseases as the dupes fooled by their misinformation are now skipping other critical vaccines.
The Atlantic points out that Republicans’ anti-vaccine policies have killed more Republicans than Democrats, although the article doesn’t try to pinpoint a death toll from this.
Meanwhile, Florida’s hyperpartisan Supreme Court has impaneled a grand jury to “investigate” COVID-19 vaccines. I assume they’ll find whatever Gov. DeSantis tells them to find.
DeSantis also reached out to Chaya Raichik, the hatemonger behind the anti-LGBTQ LibsOfTikTok account, after her identity became public, offering to hide her at his Governor’s Mansion even though she is a California resident. I don’t understand why Florida taxpayers are okay with this sort of use of their money, but it appears they are.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, environment, florida, frauds, iowa, lgbt rights, links, longreads, Music, police, russia, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ October 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/22/22.

My second and much longer notebook on guys I saw in the Arizona Fall League went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Craig Calcaterra, writer of the excellent Cup of Coffee newsletter and author of the book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and maybe I’ll send another edition out this week. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

My friend and former colleague at ESPN Sarah Langs announced a few weeks ago on Twitter that she has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mandy Bell of MLB.com set up a GoFundMe for Sarah, if you’d like to join me in contributing.

And now, the links…

Climate change could cause the collapse of Antarctica’s ice shelves even sooner than forecasted, in case you were feeling too good about anything this week.
Two stories of women who nearly died because anti-abortion laws denied them access to medical care, one in Texas who suffered a miscarriage and had to wait so long she developed sepsis before doctors would intervene, and one in Missouri whose own state Senator referred her to an anti-abortion clinic. The latter woman had to go to Illinois to get medical care to save her life.
Parker Molloy wrote about how the English press, buoyed by transphobic parents, bullied a schoolteacher who came out as trans into suicide. One of the main writers who attacked Lucy Meadows was Richard Littlejohn, who is still alive and writing twice a week for the Daily Mail, which ignored calls to fire him for his role.
WIRED has an excerpt from Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow’s new book Chokepoint Capitalism on how streaming services control what we hear and what music gets made, abrogating the promise that the technology would democratize music.
A Supreme Court case around copyright law, fair use, and an Andy Warhol piece may permanently alter the landscape of American art.
Florida’s state Surgeon General issued new guidance around COVID vaccines based on research that produced howls of derisive laughter from actual experts. Here’s one takedown of its many, many flaws. Charles Pierce put it well when he wrote that Florida will just keep “asking questions” until it gets the answer it wants ($).
Dr. Mehmet Oz, currently running for Senate, met a gun-violence victim at a campaign stop, but failed to disclose that she works for him and has received over $2100 from the campaign. The Associated Press reported on the encounter without noting the conflict. Do your fucking jobs, AP.
While on TV, Dr. Oz also promoted Joseph Mercola, long one of the biggest purveyors of anti-vaccine and other forms of medical misinformation online. Mercola has been selling supplements by denigrating evidence-based treatments since at least the 1990s, when I first came across his site’s claims that aspartame caused multiple sclerosis and all sorts of other health problems that it doesn’t cause at all.
Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, accused the super PAC Democratic Coalition, run by Scott Dworkin, of misleading donors into thinking their money is going to support candidates like him.
Will Leitch wrote about the abysmal media response to Tua Tagovalioa’s second head injury in five days.
Slate’s Evan Urquhart defended Jon Stewart’s interview with and humiliation of Arkansas’s bigoted Attorney General, where he makes it clear she’s either ignorant of the facts on the issue of gender affirming care or just denying them.
How did social media content moderation become such an issue in the culture war?
This is sort of old news by now, but if you haven’t heard the racist comments by members of the Los Angeles City Council, you should check it out. Only one of the three people making those comments, Nury Martinez, has resigned, as calls mount for the other two to do the same.
Wildfire smoke doesn’t just pollute the air, but it can carry bacteria and fungal spores across long distances, thus potentially expanding the area where Valley fever and other diseases of rural/desert areas into more population regions.
Research published in Polymers showed microplastics in human breast milk.
Many artists are pushing for more student debt relief, as the $10,000 offered is a “drop in the bucket” compared to their debt loads.
An Oklahoma teacher encouraged students to call a special-needs student in the class the f-slur. The school district dragged its feet, so the state is investigating while many parents are calling for the teacher’s removal. This is the lowest bar, really.
Is hip-hop’s dominance in American popular music finally slipping? Billboard spoke to industry executives who believe it is, and I would point to the lack of innovation in the space as a reason – and streaming may be the cause, as seen above.
A terrorist group calling itself a branch of ISIS is attacking villages in northern Mozambique, killing men and raping women, while threatening one of the most important natural gas supply lines in Africa.
Amidst news of ethnic cleansing in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the Economist called for sanctions against Eritrean dictator Issaias Afwerki ($), calling him “equally malign” as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Randy Kaufman, running for the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board and who said he wanted to “protect our children from the progressive left,” suspended his campaign after he was arrested for masturbating in his car near a preschool. Always be wary of those who doth protest too much.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) refused to say whether she would accept the election results if she loses.
Republicans in Congress have introduced a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit schools, libraries, and other institutions that receive federal money from teaching children about, well, anything related to sex, gender, gender identity, and so on, and would allow parents to sue if they did. The Human Rights Campaign has denounced it. The end result of bills and laws like this is more youth suicides, and if that’s your goal, we’re not going to agree.
George M. Johnson wrote about his experiences seeing his book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir of growing up Black and queer in America, become the second-most banned book in the country.
Michigan Republicans introduced an anti-trans bill that would jail parents for life if they sought gender-affirming care for their kids. This is the totalitarian playbook: demonize a small, vulnerable minority to rally your adherents and get them to the polls.
Florida Times-Union columnist called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ closed-door selection of Sen. Ben Sasse, both Republicans, as the new President of the University of Florida, the “crowning achievement of the DeSantis-led effort to defile” the college, questioning Sasse’s qualifications and his intentions.
A Texas sheriff certified that the nearly 50 migrants DeSantis trafficked to Massachusetts are “crime victims,” creating the possibility they could receive special visas to stay in the U.S. Unintended consequences FTW!
In the wake of Hurricane Ian, DeSantis relaxed voting restrictions in three heavily Republican counties, but not in heavily Democratic Orange County.
Police body camera footage shows officers arresting people for so-called voter fraud, as DeSantis proudly announced a sweep and emphasized the criminal records of the arrestees, who were overwhelmingly Black.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist James Causey called Sen. Ron Johnson’s comment that his opponent this year, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), has “turned on America” and “finds America awful” a “cheap shot,” saying that you can love America and still criticize it. Johnson’s campaign has also run ads that darkened Barnes’s skin tone and claimed he’ll be soft on crime.
South Carolina’s medical licensing board has yet to discipline any physicians for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 or the vaccines that help prevent it, apparently for fear of backlash from the conservatives who run the state government.
Marin County in northern California was once a haven for highly educated anti-vaxxer parents. COVID-19 vaccines changed that, and the county now has one of the highest uptake rates in the country at 91%.
Jazz Chisholm was impressive in his brief stint on MLB Network’s studio coverage of the first round of the playoffs.
A new property, the Hotel Lyra, is trying to revive a nearly-abandoned town in Croatia called Licko Petrovo Selo. The town, which is near the country’s scenic Plitvice Lakes National Park, was destroyed during World War II, rebuilt by the Yugoslav government, and then heavily damaged during the Balkan wars, with most of the population, especially its Serbs, driven out.
The white nationalist teenager who opened fire outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia had posted anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and white replacement views on Twitter and 4chan. The Anti-Defamation League says in response that Twitter and similar sites don’t do enough to moderate hate speech.
Board game news: Rock Manor Games, run by my friend Mike Gnade, has a Kickstarter up for its new role-playing game The Few and the Cursed.
BoardGameTables, who make tables for board games (!) and have also published titles like On Tour and Sequoia, have a Kickstarter up for three small-box games, including Pollen, a re-theming of Reiner Knizia’s Samurai: The Card Game.
Rising Waters, the historical co-op game about the 1927 Mississippi Flood and the racial disparities it exposed, just funded in the last few days, with about a week and a half to go in its Kickstarter.
Race to the Raft, a cooperative game from Isle of Cats designer Frank West, is already about 8x funded on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, africa, arizona, arkansas, art, baseball, board game news, california, climate change, croatia, florida, football, frauds, hip-hop, lgbt rights, links, los angeles, missouri, Music, oklahoma, pennsylvania, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, wisconsin

→ 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

→ July 9, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/9/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote another scouting blog, looking at some Phillies, Orioles, Nats, and White Sox prospects, including the four big arms the Phillies had at Jersey Shore; and did a quick breakdown of some of the highlights and omissions from the Futures Game rosters. I’ll have an updated, final Big Board for the draft on Sunday, and then a new mock draft on Monday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Ouch!, a fun, silly game for kids as young as five, and pointed out why it works where games like Candyland, my bête noire among children’s board games, fail.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Eric Longenhagen, for an extensive conversation about this month’s MLB draft. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I found my voice again and sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week. Also, my two books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, are both available in paperback, and you can buy them at your local independent book store or at Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New England Journal of Medicine has a long story on vaccine hesitancy and how we might combat it.
Inside Higher Ed looks at the Great Resignation in academia, as even tenured professors leave their universities due to burnout, lack of institutional support, or greater financial opportunities elsewhere.
New York talks about how NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) has shown no evidence of a clear philosophy of governing.
Jessica Luther, co-author of Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, wrote for Vox about the myth of “fairness” in sports and how transphobes are using it to further their anti-trans agenda.
Two law professors wrote on LawFareBlog that Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony changed their minds on whether former President Trump should be indicted.
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik reviews Daniel Levin Becker’s new book on rap and rhyme, called What’s Good, and writes in praise of the variety of forms and styles of rhyming.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic that we have stopped caring about the pandemic, and that leads to our inevitable defeat, where SARS-CoV-2 will kill hundreds of thousands of people a year and nobody will do anything to stop it.
Vanity Fair has the story of the great video game heist of 2019, where a collection estimated to be worth over $1 million was stolen and eventually recovered, but where many of these extremely rare Nintendo games were badly damaged by the incompetent thief.
The Washington Post ran an excerpt from the new book American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry, detailing parts of the lobbying campaign to keep the DEA from shutting down opioid suppliers.
The Verge’s Nilay Patel interviewed the TSA’s Chief Innovation Officer, asking some insightful questions about PreCheck and the relationship between data privacy and increased security. Patel also used one of my favorite phrases, security theater, which also applies to the metal detectors that are ubiquitous now at major sporting events.
U.S. road fatality rates are rising. One big reason is the increase in distractions in your car, or as this article puts it, “The problem is asking the brain to do too many things at once.”
What is the point of Sunday political news shows? They’re little more than propaganda vehicles, putting profit over accuracy.
The Internal Revenue Service didn’t notice that 76 registered charities all shared the same mailbox. Needless to say, it was all a scam.
An evangelical pastor who used to lead a religious right organization has bragged about wining and dining three current SCOTUS justices, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia, to try to sway their views on issues like LBGTQ+ rights and abortion. Above The Law has more on this story, pointing out that the same group that prays with these justices also files amicus briefs with the court.
Jonathan Chait wrote about Blake Masters, who is running against Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for the latter’s Senate seat, calling Masters “Nazi-adjacent” and another sign of the GOP’s trend toward extremism.
The New Republic called Pamela Paul’s latest op ed for the New York Times her version of Great Replacement Theory, with an amalgam of anti-trans talking points common to the right and to gender-critical feminists.
Brynn Tannehill, author of American Fascism, called Paul’s column and those like it part of the right’s plan to demonize trans people the way the Nazi Party demonized Jews.
At the Raw Story, Thom Hartmann writes that the SCOTUS majority is planning to “pre-rig” the 2024 election.
Herschel Walker hid his two secret kids from his own campaign staff.
The Harvard Business School’s site posted a breakdown of the implosion of artisan ice cream maker Ample Hills. The founders expanded too soon, both in scale and geography, and didn’t pay attention to short-term cash flow.
Leon County School District near Tallahassee passed its own don’t-say-gay “guide” for teachers, which requires parental notification if a student who is “open about their gender identity” is in their child’s PE class or on an overnight field trip. So the school will be outing kids to the entire community.
Also in Florida, the state’s Florida Healthy Kids Board kicked off a pediatrician for taking a public pro-vaccine view, which puts her in line with (checks notes) every major medical and scientific body in the world.
A Detroit police officer was shot and killed in the line of duty, and the Police Chief said there is too much gun violence in the city.
Texas’s soi-disant “Freedom Caucus” is threatening companies that help employees travel out of state for medical procedures.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Brashear released emails about President Biden’s plan to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a lifetime district court appointment in that state.
My editor at Paste wrote about the Hyperspace Lounge, a cocktail bar on a Disney cruise ship with a $5000 drink on the menu.
You do not, in fact, have a constitutional right to have dinner.
A particle physicist wrote about the possible discoveries in Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider.
I haven’t seen a good link on this yet, but Alea/Ravensburger have announced a new version of the board game Puerto Rico called Puerto Rico 1897, which tries to eliminate the rather questionable elements of the original game, not least the use of “colonists” who, in historical terms, were slaves, and who in the game were unfortunately represented by dark brown discs.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: academia, detroit, disney, drugs, florida, frauds, heists, kentucky, links, longreads, physics, scotus, stick to baseball, texas, trans rights, vaccines, video games

→ June 18, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/18/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I updated my Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects in this year’s draft class. I also held a Q&A on the site to answer questions about it, in which I was accused of “not doing my homework,” of course. Look for a mock draft this upcoming week, most likely Tuesday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Fantastic Factories, a fun engine-builder very similar to the great game Gizmos, but with the added twist of dice-rolling.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last weekend, talking about going back to the Cape League for the first time in years, only to have a travel fiasco in multiple parts keep me from getting there. Also, my two books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, are both available in paperback, and you can buy them at your local independent book store or at Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A Black educator was hired by a Georgia school district to be its first DEI officer. White parents decided she was implementing critical race theory, forced her out of the job, and then harassed her out of her next job elsewhere. This ties into efforts by anti-CRT people to run for school boards across the country (as detailed in the article).
The Southern Poverty Law Center has added Jack Posobiec, the primary source for the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, to its list of extremists.
The federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, is one of the deadliest such facilities in the country – after the feds moved it from Pennsylvania, where similar violence against inmates occurred.
A 1977 memo to President Jimmy Carter outlined the risk of climate change from CO₂ emissions. Its predictions have largely come true so far.
Former NFL and USFL star Herschel Walker, who is now running against Sen. Rafael Warnock in Georgia for that state’s Senate seat, has acknowledged having two ‘secret’ sons, even though he has made criticizing absentee fathers a core point in his platform.
Meghan Stabile, a music promoter who was known for her work in both the jazz and hip-hop genres (and bringing the two together), died by suicide this week at age 39.
The New Republic documents the rise in Pizzagate-like conspiracies, mostly targeting LGBTQ+ people, across the United States, with the threat of violence to follow. One example occurred in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, this past week, at a Pride event that the Patriot Front targeted. Ben Collins has a story on several such threats to LGBTQ+ events over at NBCNews.com.
Texas agencies are fighting records release requests related to the mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school. They’re also refusing to release bodycam footage because it “could expose law enforcement weakness.”
A police detective in Miami stole $1300 during a drug bust, and wasn’t sentenced to any jail time.
Simone Gold has been spreading COVID-19 misinformation for two years, and founded the group America’s Frontline Doctors, which has pushed HCQ and ivermectin despite the complete lack of any evidence that they do anything against the virus. She also was in the Capitol on January 6^th, and after pleading guilty, argued that her medical credentials should exempt her from prison. The judge didn’t buy it; he gave her 60 days.
A Wisconsin school district investigated a Title IX complaint that several middle school students were harassing a nonbinary classmate by using the wrong pronouns, which led to national coverage of the investigation by right-wing outlets and a bomb threat that led the district to move to virtual learning for the last two months of its school year.
Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Times that the complacency of the Democratic “gerontocracy” is alienating younger, more progressive voters.
The governing commission in Otero County, New Mexico, refused to certify local election results, citing the disproven claims about Dominion voting machines from the 2020 election.
The Washington Post profiles a woman in Georgia also pushing claims of electoral fraud, known online as “Burnitdown.”
An Alaska salmon processor has been fined nearly half a million dollars for repeated environmental violations.
USA Today retracted 23 articles written by Gabriela Miranda after finding she misattributed quotes and might have fabricated sources. She has also resigned from the paper.
A Pennsylvania court vacated a murder charge from 1931. Alexander McClay Williams, a Black teenager in Glen Mills, was convicted by an all-white jury of stabbing his teacher, and was executed six months later.
Michele Catalano, whose now-defunct blog asmallvictory was one of the first I ever read regularly, wrote on her Substack about her current experiences with depression.
Board game news: Cheese Factory, a quirky, light engine-builder, is already funded on Kickstarter.
Bot Factory, a midweight game from designer Vital Lacerda (known for long, complex games like Lisboa and Kanban), is about halfway to its $100,000 goal.
Return to Dark Tower was a huge success on Kickstarter and has been met with acclaim on its release. There’s now a licensed RPG based on the game that’s already 400 funded.
Board game designer (Continuo) and “eccentric bridge player” Maureen Hiron died this week at age 80.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, conspiracy theories, frauds, georgia, links, longreads, mental illness, misinformation, new mexico, police, stick to baseball

→ April 16, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/16/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I had one new post this week, a roundup of top 2022 draft prospects I’ve seen, including Druw Jones, Termarr Johnson, and the now-injured Dylan Lesko.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Cascadia, one of the best new games of 2021, from the same publisher as Calico. It’s another hex tile-laying game but simpler to learn and play, with variable rules you can fine-tune to allow kids to join.

My own podcast returned with the Productive Outs guys – Ian Miller of Kowloon Walled City and Riley Breckenridge of Thrice – as guests. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’m due for another issue my free email newsletter this upcoming week. You can find both of my books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, in paperback anywhere books are sold, including Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Child welfare workers in Texas are resigning rather than enforce the state’s hateful law denying medical treatment to trans kids.

Vanity Fair has a long investigative piece on EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that has been at the center of the discredited lab-leak hypothesis, showing how EHA’s leader, Peter Daszak, made the situation worse both before the pandemic began and after the search for SARS-CoV-2’s origins began.

Firearms have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of deaths for U.S. children and adolescents.

Writing in the New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Kolbert writes about how two Florida lakes are suing to stop a development that would destroy nearly 2000 acres of wetlands. The lawsuit includes one actual human, as well as a marsh and a stream, and is the first of its kind in the U.S.

The CEO of Flutterwave, a Nigerian online payments and financial services company with a $3 billion valuation, may have engaged in fraud and insider trading to enrich himself at the expense of shareholders and employees with stock options.

The Texas Observer, a progressive investigative journalism magazine that had a particular focus on Indigenous affairs, lost most of its staff in the last six months due to a series of bungled situations and a divide over the periodical’s mission.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) worked to try to overturn the 2020 Presidential election, according to texts he sent to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Biologist David Sabatini resigned his tenured professorship at MIT after three senior officials at the school recommended revoking it in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against him and concerns over his behavior towards other members of his lab. He is still, however, suing one of the women who has accused him of harassment.

David French writes in The Atlantic that the American right has “lost the plot” on free speech.

The British national who killed MP Sir David Amess was a “textbook example of radicalization” who started reading extremist propaganda online during the Syria conflict.

The cops who shoved a 75-year-old man to the ground for protesting were cleared of all wrongdoing. Because of course they were.

Meanwhile, a panel on the Fifth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals ruled that police who tortured a teenage girl in custody didn’t violate her rights.

Former St. Louis police officer Luther Hall, who was beaten by his fellow officers while working undercover during protests in the city in 2017, spoke out about his desire to leave the city and the lack of justice for his attackers.

There’s very strong evidence that the Epstein-Barr virus causes multiple sclerosis, although why some infected people develop the autoimmune disorder and others don’t isn’t clear.

Why aren’t Democrats doing anything to combat the GOP’s deranged claims that Democrats are all pedophiles and groomers?

South Dakota AG Jason Ravsnborg, who killed a man in a hit-and-run accident, may face consequences after all as the Republican-led legislature has voted to impeach him.

Texas is a shitshow in so many ways. Gov. Greg Abbott’s political stunt at the border has led truckers to demand that he stop inspections of every truck, a move he put in place due to baseless claims about border security. For a party that claims to be pro-business, this is a hell of a way to show it.

Climate change is contributing to the spread of Japanese encephalitis in Australia.

Techdirt decries major newspapers’ continuing failure to grasp social media.

Opinion journalism is beset by structural problems and bad actors. There are ways to fix both of these issues, from better labeling of opinion vs. news pieces to proper editing (in a world where most publications have reduced editorial staff substantiall).

Ukrainian hackers have published a tremendous amount of personal data on Russian troopse fighting in the current war, as have other activists seeking additional ways to fight back against Russia’s pointless invasion of its neighbor.

The Titans’ new state-funded stadium will cost about $2 billion, and the economic impact figures the team has given the legislature appear to have been created out of thin air. Great use of public funds in a state that offers below-average education to its citizens.

A Toronto man amassed a huge cache of guns and killed two men at random before his arrest, which may have prevented a mass shooting given the arsenal he had in his apartment.

Board game news: Birds of a Feather is back on Kickstarter, and while it’s clearly meant to capitalize on Wingspan’s runaway success, it’s also a much lighter game aimed at a different audience.

The newest game from publishers Lucky Duck Games (Chronicles of Crime) to hit Kickstarter is The Dark Quarter, a co-op narrative game set in New Orleans.

Postmark Games has a print-and-play game called Voyages that just requires you to bring your own dice.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, environment, frauds, health, links, longreads, metoo, police, south dakota, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas

→ April 2, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/2/22.

I had three posts for subscribers to the Athletic in the last ten days, two scouting notebooks from the Cactus League (here’s one, here’s the other), and my annual breakout candidates post. That last one is shorter than usual because I just couldn’t confidently back any other names for it.

I’m working on the next edition of my free email newsletter. You can find both of my books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, in paperback anywhere books are sold, including Bookshop.org.

And now, the links…

This is an extremely long read, even by longread standards, but if you want to understand why the vast majority of scientists accept a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 as the most likely explanation, read Philip Markolin’s post.
The University of Pennsylvania engaged in an unconscionable witch hunt against one of its own students, a victim of physical and sexual abuse whose mother appears to have told the school her daughter lied on her applications there and to the Rhodes Scholarship program. She is suing the school, which has not responded publicly to this article.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott loves to brag about his so-called “border initiative,” but the evidence doesn’t support his claims.
The Guardian has a look inside online cryptocurrency communities (although I suppose an offline one would be a bit weird), examining the sorts of people involved in that world, many of whom don’t fit the stereotypes.
Leonard Leo is stepping down as head of the arch-right, Uihlein-funded opinion site The Federalist to found a new conservative advocacy group, probably funded by more dark money. Leo had disproportionate influence in the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary.
The “CHEST” protocol supposedly used large doses of vitamin C to fight sepsis. It appears that the protocol’s creator, Dr. Paul Marik, fabricated his results.
The editorial board of Nature argues that this is a terrible time to stop tracking COVID-19.
Bitcoin is a disaster for our environment. Can we stop it?
With scientists under attack for nothing more than doing their jobs, who will step in to defend and protect them?
It’s no longer the main story from the awards, but Justin Chang pointed out that the improvement in the quality of Oscar nominees has come with the telecast’s increasing disdain for those same movies.
Don’t Look Up was terrible, and director/co-writer Adam McKay really doesn’t get why.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter published commentary from an Oscar voter who remained anonymous but was willing to show himself as a racist, retrograde asshole. I’m not sure why the Academy wouldn’t sift through the ballots to identify the voter and ban him from voting.
The Governor of Utah vetoed the state’s bill against trans athletes, and his letter explaining why is worth reading. The transphobic theocrats in the state legislature overrode his veto, though. This was all over one athlete, by the way.

South Dakota Republicans declined to impeach their attorney general even though he killed a man in a hit-and-run accident. He’s going to get off with zero consequences for the homicide.
The University of Texas-Austin denied tenure to a pregnant professor and now has to pay her $3 million after losing a lawsuit. That’s good, but will it discourage them or any other university from doing it again?
A Tennessee nurse made a medication error that killed a patient, admitted it immediately, and was still found guilty of homicide by a jury. I’m not sure how this helps medical safety. I do think it might deter people from becoming nurses in Tennessee.
There’s a new wave of specialty coffee shops in India, a country that would traditionally export its best coffee to developed countries.
Children are bearing the brunt of Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.
A Wilmington, Delaware, teacher who mentored dozens of kids and became a popular advocate for students from the city died in a motorcycle accident last month.
NEON announced that its film Memoria will go on permanent tour in cinemas around the country, which is incredibly ableist – many people can’t go to movie theaters for COVID-19 or other reasons.
Board game news: The legacy game Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isle Nublar has one more week on Kickstarter.
Nightmare Cathedral, what appears to a midweight area control and worker-placement game from the publishers of Teotihuacan and Tekhenu, is on Gamefound for another 11 days.
Stefan Fatsis has a fun story about a ridiculous coincidence in competitive Scrabble.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, cryptocurrencies, dark money, delaware, frauds, links, longreads, oscars, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, utah

→ March 13, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/13/22.

I released my first ranking of draft prospects for 2022 over on The Athletic, and held a live Q&A to take questions about it. I also wrote up the two trades from Saturday night, involving Chris Bassitt and Isiah Kiner-Falefa/Mitch Garver.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Adventures of Robin Hood, a narrative game from the designer of the Legends of Andor, but with simpler mechanics and a clever encounter system with a two-layered board.

I spoke with the Locked On Dodgers podcast in a two-part interview you can watch here and here. I also sent a new issue of my free email newsletter, talking about Monty Python and the development of my sense of humor.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times asks what it means that even Americans are consuming less beef.
Vanity Fair has a fascinating article on Grimes, talking about her persona, her upcoming concept album, and that guy.
Kathryn Schulz, who appeared on my podcast a few weeks ago, wrote about the complicated history of Bambi, the book, as it enters the public domain.
ProPublica reports on barbaric conditions in Louisiana’s largest juvenile detention facility in Louisiana, part of the race in the Deep South to see which state can get to the 19^th century fastest.
Conservative billionaires pushing fake news are becoming a major US export, as now a single South Korean oligarch is pushing conspiracy theories to keep the two Koreas at war.
Vulture has a wonderful interview with Murderville showrunner Krister Johnson on the “treasure chest” of in-jokes, Easter eggs, and other small gags on Homestar Runner.
Melissa Rodriguez, the former executive chef at Del Posto, is now opening three new restaurants in that space, including a high-end pizzeria. Resy interviewed her about the venture, the pandemic, and the end of Del Posto (which was good, but wildly overpriced).
Several research papers still in the pre-print stage have put more nails in the coffin of the lab-leak hypothesis have appeared in the last two weeks. The New Republic looks at how we can learn from this to try to prevent the next zoonotic pandemic.
The best path forward now is for institutions to work to improve mitigation efforts, including encouraging further vaccinations.
Cobb County is taking a big loss on its public funding of Truist Park. This Axios piece has a quick summary of the same.
Stop acting like pediatric deaths from COVID-19 don’t matter because of their numbers. Those children had names.
Mask requirements in schools reduced COVID-19 cases. We’re going to see increases in cases again now that schools everywhere are lifting mask mandates.
I don’t understand how asking people to harass a journal editor to try to short-circuit the peer review process is remotely ethical, but Alina Chan, who wrote a book that pushes the lab-leak hypothesis, is long gone around the bend at this point.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had a long article on where to eat and what to do in Wilmington, hitting our big 3 fine-dining restaurants (Le Cavalier, La Fia, and Bardea), and several other favorite spots of ours (Swigg, Wilma’s, De.co Food Hall, The Queen), although they whiffed badly with some of their inclusions (Mrs. Robino’s, Wilmington Country Store).
ABC News ran a long segment (about 12 minutes) on the lack of any evidence to support the use of ivermectin against COVID-19.
Now bot accounts are using false fact-checks to spread fake news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee appointed an arms dealer who sold ammunition to the Aurora mass shooter to the state’s board of education, not long after appointing a 9/11 hoaxer to the state’s “textbook commission.” What a shitshow.
Brandon Tensley writes at CNN about how and why the GOP is targeting LGBTQ+ rights across the south and far west. I think the answer is simple: They’re pandering to their evangelical base. This is why the raving lunatics running Idaho want life in prison for anyone providing gender-affirming care to trans kids.
And in Texas, a family that once invited Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife to dinner found themselves the target of one of the state’s witch-hunt investigations into families with trans kids. Shame on anyone who votes Republican in Texas this year. This policy is going to lead to more suicides and grievous harm to vulnerable people, all to satisfy a small population of bigots.
Disney has been censoring same-sex affection in Pixar’s films, according to several employees, who wrote a letter also demanding that the company stop donating to Florida legislators who voted for the state’s “don’t say gay” bill.
A Georgia man took an $85,000 SBA loan for his business, and then spent two-thirds of it on a rare Pokémon card.
An American man wanted on rape and sexual assault charges in Utah is accused of faking his own death and pretending to be someone else in a COVID ward in Scotland, where he’s since married a British woman. The man, suspected of being George Rossi, has been identified by his tattoos, and his adoptive father also says that it’s him.
A Trump-appointed judge dismissed a complaint against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, alleging that his support of the January 6^th insurrection made him ineligible to run for office, because people might take up arms otherwise.
Apparently Trump has been holding “contests” where small-donor dollars would win trips to meet him, but then they never award the prizes, according to a report from the Washington Post.
Board game news: Former Z-Man Games employees have founded a new publisher, Moon Crab Games, and announced their first game, Leviathan Wilds, a cooperative, tactical game of movement on various boards representing massive creatures the players try to climb.
Hamlet, a cute town-building game from the designer of the lovely game Petrichor, is fully funded already on Kickstarter.
So is Tiwanaku (formerly known as Pachamama), a Minesweeper-inspired board game from the publishers of Magic Maze.
And so is Envelopes of Cash, a game about corrupt recruiting in college football (so, you know, reality), designed by a reader of mine.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, coronavirus, delaware, Economics, frauds, idaho, lgbt rights, links, longreads, louisiana, pizza, russia, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, the swamp

→ January 8, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/8/22.

My latest game review for Paste covers the great, easy-to-learn Super Mega Lucky Box, from the designer of Silver & Gold and Sushi Go! It has elements of both games, and will remind non-gamers of bingo enough to get them started. We played this over the holidays with my family, and everyone liked it, from my 9-year-old niece to my mother, who generally does not like games.

My prospect rankings are still on track to start running on The Athletic on January 31^st, leading off with the top 100, with team-by-team rankings following afterwards. My podcast will also return this upcoming week.

And now, the links…

The New Yorker has a piece from Ryan Katz on the decades-long aftermath of a murder in Texas, one of the victims of the so-called Donut Shop Murders.

The Guardian hasan excerpt of Michael Pollan’s most recent book, This is Your Mind on Plants, asking whether we should be giving up caffeine. (The answer is “no,” whether Pollan knows it or not.)

This Hidden Brain episode titled “Both Things Can Be True,” about dealing with the apparent contradictions we find in other people, is a remarkable and compelling story in its own right, and also feels especially apposite in the wake of the recent Hall of Fame vote. You can also find it on iTunes.

Is there really enough taste difference among different varieties of rice to justify an annual rice-tasting competition? The mere question would be heretical in Japan.

Climate change is coming for everyone and every industry, including pro sports. Hannah Keyser asks if MLB is ready for it.

“America’s Frontline Doctors” are a giant fraud, as its members haven’t worked on the front lines against COVID-19 and profit off quack treatments like hydroxychloroquine.

I wasn’t familiar with the company FeedFeed, but the Washington Post has an exposé on the company’s toxic workplace environment.

A neuroscientist facing a terminal diagnosis discusses preparing for his impending death.

A Deputy DA in California who was expected to run for the state Assembly this year has died of COVID-19 at age 46, just weeks after speaking an anti-vax/anti-mandate rally.

The BBC spoke to QAnon adherents a year after the 1/6 terrorist attack on the Capitol.

The AV Club has told Chicago-based staffers to move to Los Angeles or lose their jobs, without offering even a cost-of-living increase to their salaries. They also listed at least one of those writers’ jobs before their decisions were even due.

Bodycam video shows a Houston cop speeding up to 100 mph and driving with one hand at the time that he hit and killed a 62-year-old pedestrian with his car.

I don’t especially care that an Australian writer doesn’t like board game nights, but what possible aim is there to writing a piece that does nothing but shit on something thousands of people enjoy?

The New York Times‘ David Streitfeld has a post mortem of sorts on the Theranos trial, with an eye on the people who failed to ask Elizabeth Holmes the obvious questions about her technology that didn’t work. John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood has quite a bit more on this in its history of the con.

Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps, has been critical of mainstream media outlets’ slanted coverage of police shootings. He had a Twitter thread this week calling out the New York Times for its framing and for use of biased sources when covering a recent shooting in LA, pointing out that police unions and departments spend a lot of money to try to get this kind of positive coverage.

What appeared to be a simple kidnapping case helped French authorities uncover a right-wing plot to overthrow France’s government.

A new paper in Hepatology says that we should expect 8000 additional deaths in the U.S. due to increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic.

Some board game news: Blazon, a card-drafting, tableau-building game is up on Kickstarter.

As is Dom Pierre, a game of wine-making in 17^th century France.

Asmodee’s Unexpected Games division announced a new title, Voices in My Head, where players try to play aspects of a suspected thief’s persona against the one player who plays the prosecutor.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, food writing, france, frauds, links, stick to baseball

→ January 1, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/1/22.

Happy New Year, everyone. I had one new piece for subscribers to the Athletic this week, breaking down my Hall of Fame ballot, which went about as well as you might expect. I held a Klawchat on the 23^rd.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the game Iberian Gauge, an 18xx game that’s on the shorter side for that genre, and wrote up everything I saw and played at PAX Unplugged this year.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, talking about music and how we consume and categorize it has changed since I first became a big fan of pop music about 40 years ago.

I also appeared on my friend Elliott Garstin’s podcast, Twenty Eyes Radio, to talk about my favorite songs and albums of 2021.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Dr. Irene Bosch, a molecular biologist currently at MIT, created a rapid test for COVID-19 in the spring of 2020, and had arranged for its manufacture. Thanks to the FDA, you still can’t get it.
Dr. Robert Malone is a real scientist who has falsely claimed credit for inventing mRNA vaccines. That’s led him down a path of straight-up vaccine denialism, enough to get him suspended from Twitter this past week.
COVID-19 denialists like to claim that deaths from the virus are overcounter, but the truth is that they’re significantly undercounted in many counties, based on large spikes in excess deaths that aren’t attributed to the virus for mostly innocuous reasons.
Did the 76ers just announce a big partnership with a fake company? Defector was unable to find any evidence that the CEO of Color Star is even a real person.
Wichita juvenile detention center employees murdered a Black teenager in their custody in September by restraining him in the prone position – which police also used to restrain George Floyd when they killed him.
The Associated Press has the story of an Army veteran who spent a decade working for the FBI by infiltrating KKK groups to identify law enforcement officers who were members.
Buzzfeed investigates two agencies that have exploited content creators on OnlyFans, and now face lawsuits claiming extortionary practices, failure to pay creators, failure to pay overtime, and more. Workers’ rights are workers’ rights, regardless of the industry.
A “terrible” book called Viral that pushes lab-leak conspiracy theories shows why people won’t let that idea go. Indeed, there’s new evidence further supporting the hypothesis that COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon.
One thing, and only one thing, has worked to get unvaccinated people to get the jab: Employer mandates.
In the “it’s about fucking time” department, California revoked the license of a doctor who gave out fake vaccine exemptions.
Meanwhile, Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have developed a vaccine, CORBEVAX, that they’re allowing countries around the world to use without patent restrictions. It’s just been approved for use in India, with more countries to follow. This might be the best weapon we have for slowing the pandemic.
An Oklahoma lawmaker (guess the party!) wants to give parents the right to demand that a school remove any book from its library, and would reward such parents a bounty of $10,000 per day if the school doesn’t remove the book. It’s really about targeting LGBTQ+ books (and, by extension, LGBTQ+ kids), of course.
One small thing anyone can do to help fight climate change: Eat less red meat.
Georgia Republicans are trying to eliminate six of the seven polling stations in Lincoln County, a move activists see as targeting minority voters.
“Christmas Wrapping” is unavoidable at this time of year; I’ve grown to hate the song thanks to a job in retail in the fall of 1989. Yahoo! has a look at the song’s complex history.
The discourse, if you can even call it that, over critics’ disdain for Don’t Look Up is a symptom of society’s growing anti-intellectualism.
Asmodee purchased Miniature Market, one of the biggest board game & miniatures retailers in the country, at some point in 2021, without any announcement.
McSweeney’s offers An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush. Is it bad that I know all of the songs mentioned? My wife says that’s bad.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, california, climate change, frauds, labor rights, links, longreads, oklahoma, stick to baseball, vaccines

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