longreads — Page 9

→ August 28, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/28/22.

I jumped right back into the minor league thing this week, and have a new scouting notebook for subscribers to the Athletic, with notes on Anthony Volpe, Ricky Tiedeman, Orelvis Martinez, Everson Pereira, Quinn Priester, Jackson Holliday, and many more players.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres finalist Lost Ruins of Arnak, a great midweight game that looks like it’s going to be complex but plays simpler than that, combining a lot of common mechanics for a game that’s more than the sum of its parts.

My podcast will return on Monday, and my newsletter will return this week as well.

And now, the links..

Longreads first: I know you’re shocked, but a former Twitter exec revealed the company’s security policies are so lax that not only is the personal information of users at risk, but there are even broader national security concerns as a result.
A growing theocratic movement that includes disgraced General Michael Flynn and disgraced political operative Roger Stone called the New Apostolic Reformation is pushing to place more members or adherents in government roles, including Pennsylvania gubernational candidate Doug Mastriano.
When a private investment firm, Portopiccolo Group, bought a nursing home, the quality of care began to drop as they cut costs, leading to a COVID-19 outbreak and an increase in deaths.
Three longreads from ProPublica this week that are worth reading: The Colorado River is drying up and it threatens our nation’s food supply; billionaire Barre Seid has donated $1.6 billion to a new archconservative advocacy group led by the architect of the Republicans’ takeover of the Supreme Court and national judiciary; and Republican officials in Florida may have entrapped Floridians with felony convictions by helping them register to vote, which led to the men facing voter fraud charges.
The Guardian looks at the two men who have helped expose how England and Wales allowed their rivers to become polluted with sewage, devastating marine life, thanks to privatization and reduced regulations from the British government.
The global food crisis this summer was years in the making, and evident to many people whose attempts to sound the alarm went for naught.
High school students in southern states that refuse to offer basic sex education are now organizing groups to teach themselves and their peers. Sex education doesn’t increase sexual activity, but it does decrease pregnancy and STI rates, while so called “abstinence-only” education doesn’t work at all.
The famous political magazine … uh, Science published an editorial calling out Tucker Carlson for his misleading comments and outright falsehoods about Anthony Fauci. What’s next? IEEE Spectrum goes after Jordan Peterson?
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a member of a fringe religious group that preaches women’s subservience to their husbands.
This summer, Germany offered a 9 euro all-you-can-ride monthly train ticket. People used it, a lot, and air pollution went down.
The Nepalese language Kusunda is down to just one native speaker, leading to a rush to try to save this language isolate, meaning it has no known linguistic relatives, before it dies out. The BBC also had a post last month about what happens in the brains of people speak multiple languages.
The mother of a nonbinary child explains why they moved from Arizona to New York, citing the former’s hostility to anyone who isn’t straight and cisgender.
The Chicago Tribune’s Shakeia Taylor looks at minor league players’ fight to end MLB’s antitrust exemption. (A subscription might be required.)
Facebook and Instagram finally, years after the horse left the barn, kicked RFK Jr’s false information factory Children’s Health Defense off their sites, citing the group’s history of spreading anti-vaccine lies. I have no idea why it took this long. Well, I can offer a gue$$.
Susan Demas, a longtime political journalist in Michigan, wrote about how normalcy bias has led us to believe things aren’t that bad when, in face, they’re terrible. It’s a real cognitive bias that leads people to dismiss or diminish the odds of disasters, such as the global food crisis I mentioned above.
Board game news: A fellow Gen Con attendee wrote an editorial for the Washington Post because he’s mad that the convention might move in response to Indiana’s abortion ban. It’s the least self-aware thing you’ll read all week. Abortion bans, same-sex marriage bans, “bathroom bills,” laws that target LGBTQ+ people … he doesn’t have to worry about these, because he’s a straight cis white guy. He’s ten pounds of privilege in a five-pound bag, but the worst part is that he doesn’t realize it.
Sea of Legends: Vengeance of the Empires, a narrative game for 1-4 players, has fully funded on Kickstarter with about two and a half weeks to go.
Two big crowdfunding efforts are coming up: The Fox Experiment, a game about the Russian experiment to domesticate the silver fox, co-designed by Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave; and Daybreak, a cooperative game about fighting climate change co-designed by Pandemic creator Matt Leacock.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, great britain, Languages, links, longreads, misinformation, religion, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 20, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/21/22.

I’m returning from a long vacation to England and Wales, one in which I was barely online and enjoyed this tremendously. A couple of folks reached out to see if my absence from the internet was due to something unfortunate, and I appreciate that you checked in.

Before I started this break, I had a slew of articles for subscribers to The Athletic, including a ranking of the top 60 prospects in the minors that included recent draftees; some thoughts on which teams did best and worst at the trade deadline; and breakdowns of the Juan Soto trade, the Frankie Montas trade; the Josh Hader trade; and some smaller deals from that final day. I held a Q&A at the Athletic on August 1st.

Before this vacation, I took a few days to head to Indianapolis to go to Gen Con, the largest board game convention in North or South America, and wrote about it in two posts for Paste – one ranking the ten best games I played there, and another discussing everything else I tried or saw. I also reviewed the very disappointing new Stranger Things game, Attack of the Mind Flayer.

My podcast will return this upcoming week, as will my newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times details the numerous allegations against former Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price, who had become a media darling for his decision to raise his company’s minimum salary to $70K a year (which, to be clear, is still good!) and his tweets about excessive CEO pay and living wages.
Bob Nutting, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, bought the Aspen Times newspaper, and in what appears to be a concerted effort with a Russian oligarch, suppressed negative coverage in the 140-year-old paper, according to a former editor.
Climate change is causing a mass movement of people from the worst-hit areas, and we need to prepare for it.
NBC News has the story of a Texas mom campaigning to ban LGBTQ+ themed books from school libraries – even though her own son is gay.
Texas’ abortion law made one woman’s wanted pregnancy a medical nightmare. Republicans trying to ban abortion are worse at failing to anticipate consequences than Bud Selig was.
The BBC looks back at the failure of Disney and Miramax to sell Hayao Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke to American audiences.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, one of the authors of the recent studies that showed that COVID-19 almost certainly had a natural origin, discussed the toxic “lab-leak” discource on social media, one pushed by bad actors, including people with books to sell.
Dan Szymborski wrote about how the Fernando Tatis suspension is a loss for baseball, not just for Padres fans.
Two billionaires, Jeff Yass and Dick Uihlein, are funding a far-right election denier in Nevada’s Senate race. Uihlein’s money comes from U-Line, his closely held packaging company. If I get a package in an U-Line box, I ask the shipper or vendor to use someone else for their packaging needs.
A Nigerian doctor tried to warn the world about monkeypox back in 2016, but nobody listened.
President Biden has almost completely stopped drone attacks in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria, compared not just to his immediate predecessor but to President Obama as well.
This was inevitable: some sore-loser parents used Utah’s anti-trans law to question the gender of the girl who beat their daughters in a track event.
Meanwhile, far-right transphobes are harassing Boston Children’s Hospital employees over false claims that the hospital is conducting gender-affirming surgeries on trans kids.
Reader Dr. Paul Sax wrote a personal piece about why abortions are medical care.
The Washington Post wrote about how Indy Star reporters showed that the story of a pregnant 10-year-old who had to travel out of Ohio to Indiana for an abortion was, in fact, not a hoax. (And then Indiana banned all abortions, because that state is also a theocracy.)
Board game news: The Kickstarter for Trailblazers, a short, portable family game about hiking and kayaking, funded in less than two hours.
Level Up Dice made custom polyhedral dice from metal melted down from a German WWII tank, and then had to apologize for it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, baseball, board game news, censorship, coronavirus, links, longreads, metoo, stick to baseball, trans rights, utah

→ 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

→ July 2, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/2/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I had a minor league scouting blog post on the Giants’ Kyle Harrison and several other Giants, Red Sox, and Pirates prospects. I’ll have another one on Monday on some Phillies, White Sox, and Orioles prospects. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest this week on The Keith Law Show was Jason Kander, author of the new book Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’ve been holding off on sending out my free email newsletter because the bad news hasn’t stopped and I’m not really sure what to say at this point, but I’ll do it soon. 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: “It is unconscionable that politicians would label it as child abuse,” says Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper about gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary minors. The cover story in the latest issue of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology looks at the importance of such care and the role that psychologists should play in it.
In the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz asks if Hungary under its tyrannical leader Viktor Orbán gives us an idea of what our authoritarian future might look like.
Also in the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino writes that we are not going back to pre-Roe, but to some place much worse.
After the SCOTUS ruling dismantling women’s reproductive rights came down, right-wing influencers spread rumors of impending violence from those angered by the ruling, including the supposed activist group Jane’s Revenge. The violence never occurred, and I still can’t find hard evidence Jane’s Revenge is an actual group.
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post writes of the Supreme Court’s “radicals” sowing maximum chaos with their inconsistent use of precedent and selective applications of history.
Adam Serwer of the Atlantic writes that the Constitution is whatever the right-wing says it is, regardless of the document’s text or judicial precedent, calling it “undead constitutionalism.”
Vox’s Ian Millhiser says Neil Gorsuch lied about the facts of the Kennedy v. Bremerton case to gift a victory to the religious right.
The New York Times’s Paul Krugman tweeted his disdain for the recent run of SCOTUS decisions.
CNN’s Jill Filipovic wrote that “the Republican Party has a rape problem” about the spate of abortion bans that don’t even try to make an exception for victims of rape or incest.
The arrest of Lizelle Herrera in Texas for having a miscarriage is far from unique and likely to become more common in the wake of the SCOTUS ruling.
Mexican abortion clinics are preparing for an influx of patients from the United States, especially with two border states trying to completely ban the medical procedure.
A ten-year-old girl in Ohio who was six weeks and three days pregnant had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion because Ohio banned the procedure for anyone, for any reason, after six weeks. I just want to restate that the pregnant person here was a ten-year-old girl.
A major Kansas City area health system has stopped providing Plan B contraception in its Missouri facilities after the state banned all abortions, even for victims of sexual assault.
Marcus Stroman was one of many MLB players to criticize the SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
President Biden appears to have struck a deal with Sen. Mitch McConnell to put an anti-abortion judge on the federal bench in Kentucky
On the Athletic, Hockey Canada is losing sponsors after it came out that they covered up an incident where eight of their players sexually assaulted a woman, who sued the organization and signed an NDA when they settled.
Mental Floss writes of the 600-year history of the singular ‘they.’
Angeli Rose Gomez, the Uvalde mother who rushed into the elementary school to save her two boys during the massacre there, has been harassed by police and had to move out from her sons to protect them. She’s suing the department now.
Police in New Haven, Connecticut, put a Black man in handcuffs, threw him in a van without a seatbelt, and then made an abrupt stop while driving, which threw him within the van and made him a quadriplegic. He’s on a respirator, eating through a feeding tube, and is suing the department.
Two Virginia politicians, both Republicans, filed a lawsuit seeking to have a graphic memoir called Gender Queer declared obscene. The ACLU, PEN America, the Virginia Library Association, the Authors Guild, Barnes & Noble, and several other groups all signed a letter opposing the suit.
Alan Henry, author of the new book Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized, spoke to Objective Journalism about his career as a Black man in traditional journalism, including some negative experiences at the New York Times.
California is considering a bill that would give their state medical board more power to discipline doctors who spread medical misinformation, and of course anti-vaxxers are unhappy about it.
I regret to inform you that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is once again feuding with a Muppet.
This video of highlights from the Wyoming Republican House primary debate is … something.
The price of Turkey agreeing to admit Sweden and Finland into NATO is Turkey’s demand now that those two nations extradite 33 opponents of the Turkish regime, including members of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party and followers of an exiled cleric whom Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup attempt.
The group Check My Ads is targeting Fox News’ advertisers as the network’s hosts have been downplaying the January 6^th insurrection.
It’s rare, but we have our first confirmed case of a human getting SARS-CoV-2 from a cat.
Board game news: NPR’s Throughline podcast does a deep dive on the history of Monopoly, from its disputed origins to its flawed depiction of the American dream. (Not discussed is why the game is actually terrible.)
Stonewall Uprising, a two-player game about the watershed moment in gay rights in the United States, is on Kickstarter and already almost 400% funded.
Stonemaier Games teased the next expansion, Asia, for Wingspan, although it won’t be available for several more months.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, coronavirus, hockey, hungary, links, longreads, metoo, police, scotus, stick to baseball, trans rights, turkey, vaccines, wyoming

→ June 25, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/25/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my second mock draft for 2022, with a change right at the top – and a key note on what we don’t know about Baltimore’s plans; and scouting reports on five draft-eligible players in the CWS finals, which pits Oklahoma (which hasn’t won since 1994) against Ole Miss (which has never won the whole shebang).

On my podcast this week, I spoke with Sarah Langs of MLB.com about several rookies’ performances so far this season, with a deeper dive into some of the Statcast data. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My free email newsletter will return in a day or two once I gather my thoughts and can translate my anger into words. 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…

First: The New York Times’ editorial board called Friday’s SCOTUS decision overruling Roe v. Wade “an insult to women and the judicial system.”

“The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half-century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care.” Read the AMA’s full statement here.

Also condemning the SCOTUS ruling: The American Psychological Association and the World Health Organization.

Longreads: Billionaire Jeff Yass, the founder of quantitative trading company Susquehanna International Group, has been avoiding paying taxes on his hundreds of millions of dollars in income, and is using his savings to fund right-wing political candidates and movements, according to ProPublica.

A new Indian film inadvertently highlights the growing racial/religious tensions in the country, which is ruled by a Hindu nationalist Prime Minister. The Kashmir Files is an unsubtly pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim, and its director parrots dubious claims about terrorism by the minority Muslim population in this interview with Isaac Chotiner of the New Yorker.

The Texas Tribune continues to provide some of the best reporting on the failed police response to the mass shooting in Uvalde, including the officers’ failure to even open the doors to the classroom where the killer was.

Amy Kaufman, the ex-wife of convicted abuser Jonah Keri, spoke to the LA Times’ Bill Shaikin about her ordeal with Keri, including his pattern of manipulative & controlling behavior as well as graphic descriptions of domestic abuse.

A Black high school student in Illinois was ticketed for a theft she says she didn’t commit. She’s still fighting to get the ticket overturned several years later.

Writing for Andscape (formerly The Undefeated), Clinton Yates writes about the side of Omaha you don’t see during the College World series – the city’s Black neighborhoods, overlooked in a city that is 75% white.

The Anti-Defamation League issued its report on hate and harassment online, finding a huge increase in targeting of LGBTQ+ and Asian-American people.

SCOTUS revoked the reproductive rights that had been secured for 50 years by Roe v. Wade; in his assenting opinion, Clarence Thomas argued that the court should also overturn its rulings on gay marriage, contraception, and “sodomy” laws. Meanwhile, if you want to know what a strict abortion ban does to women’s health, read this story of a U.S. citizen in Malta (where abortion is almost compleptely banned) whose nonviable pregnancy is now threatening her life. And STAT News reports on the threat to the right to contraception included in the ruling.

The FX/Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven seems likely to win a few Emmys in the next awards cycle, especially for Andrew Garfield as the series’ star, but the sister of Brenda Lafferty, whose murder forms the basis of the series and the Jon Krakauer book from which it’s adapted, says the seven-part show does not represent her sister fairly.

The owners of Prince Street Pizza in New York City have stepped down as managers – but not as owners – after their own racist comments to customers resurfaced online this week. There are plenty of great pizzerias in New York City that are owned by people who do not have a history of racist behavior.

Franklin Graham, the Trump-supporting son of Rev. Billy Graham, told a woman who was the victim of spousal abuse to return to her abusive husband.

Texas AG Ken Paxton said of the massacre in Uvalde that “God always has a plan.” Ignoring, for a moment, the question of God’s existence, does anyone truly believe that a benevolent God’s plan involved the parents of 19 children burying the partial remains of their kids?

The Texas Republican Party’s official platform refers to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” which contradicts several decades of science on same-sex attraction.

The anti-vaccine grift has moved on to bogus treatments for long COVID.

A Saskatchewan judge who ruled in favor of a doctor accused of assaulting five women patients because he found them too emotional during their testimony now faces several complaints about his conduct.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) wants to block a bill renewing federal funding for school lunches because the USDA could withhold those funds from schools that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.

Presswatchers offers thoughts on the New York Times’ coverage of the ongoing threat to our democracy posed by supporters of former President Trump.

Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City certainly looks like a Warriors/Escape from New York sort of board game, which isn’t a bad thing, and CMON has a great reputation for high-quality components and heavier games. This new title is already funded on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: india, lgbt rights, links, longreads, omaha, pizza, stick to baseball, tv, vaccines

→ 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

→ June 11, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/11/22.

I had one post for subscribers to the Athletic this past week, on Kumar Rocker’s 2022 debut for the independent Tri-City Valley Cats. (I tried to go see Reading/Altoona this week, but got rained out after I parked but before I even got into the stadium.) My current writing schedule has one more draft blog post coming after I see Carson Whisenhunt’s official 2022 debut on Sunday night, and then an updated Big Board on Thursday, June 16^th.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was film critic (and Cardinals fan) Tim Grierson, talking about the logistics of film festivals and their similarities to scouting showcases, plus our thoughts on The Godfather trilogy as the first film marks its 50^th anniversary. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I do send out a free email newsletter about twice a month. 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: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kathryn Schulz, author of the wonderful memoir Lost & Found, writes about the world of sunken shipping containers and the detritus that washes up on shore from them. I would guess the occasional meeple shows up among the flotsam and jetsam.

Land in the Chicago area promised for public housing, undeveloped for twenty years, is now going to house a practice facility for the MLS’s Chicago Fire.

LA Eater looks at the changing of the guard in southern California’s doughnut shops, as the children of the mostly Cambodian immigrants who founded those stores take over from their parents.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen writes in support of reading challenging books and against removing them from school libraries and curricula.

Steve Kirsch, one of the inventors of the optical mouse and a serial entrepreneur, has become a massive proponent of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and false cures. McGill University’s Jonathan Jarry looks at how Kirsch got from A to B.

The Daily Beast reports on two twins who are college students in Texas and who are “pushing transphobic campaigns” at their respective schools, the University of North Texas and Baylor.

The Tampa Bay Rays’ account tweeted several facts about gun violence in the United States, after which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked state funding for a new player development facility in Pasco County.

Writing for DAME, attorney & counsel to the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center Madiba Kennie asks if Supreme Court reform is even possible.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg writes about the complexity and contradictions of the investigation into the release of the Supreme Court draft opinion that will overturn Roe v. Wade. Speaking of the Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers to urge them to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in that state.

A 13-year-old Baltimore middle school student died suddenly on a school field trip in Cecil County, Maryland. There’s still no indication why he died or details on what happened, five days later. What a nightmare for his family.

More families are suing Texas over the state’s investigations into parents who provide gender-affirming care to their trans kids. A district court judge ruled on Friday that the state must suspend these investigations.

Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh tweeted this week that gender reassignment surgery should be illegal for everyone, regardless of age.

A Baptist preacher in Texas said to his congregation that all gay people “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head … That’s what the Bible says.” (The Bible does not say that.)

Sen. Rick Scott’s “plan to save America” denies the existence of trans people. In her newsletter, Parker Molloy explains how his proposed policies, and existing policies in places like Ohio, just make life more difficult for trans and intersex people.

Belgium’s King Philippe spoke about the damage his great-great-uncle, Léopold II, did to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo through colonization and exploitation of its people and natural resources. For a harrowing but essential read on the topic, I recommend King Léopold’s Ghost, recommended to me a decade ago by one of you, which details the awful period where Africa’s largest country was a personal colony of the Belgian king, and explains why the DRC has been unstable for its entire history since independence.

An 8-year-old boy who was on vacation with his family in South Carolina was shot and killed by a resident who was shooting at passing cars.

An Uvalde pediatrician who treated victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary testified before Congress about the state of the bodies he saw.

The Washington Post has fired writer Felicia Sonmez. I won’t even attempt to summarize this in a sentence or two – the article (from The New York Times) has the details.

A Catholic group is urging followers to “hide the pride” by going to libraries and hiding books with LGBTQ+ content.

The Missouri Library Association is urging the Wentzville, Missouri, school board to stop removing LGBTQ+ books from school libraries.

The Guardian explains “greenwashing,” when companies contributing to climate change run ads, such as on podcasts that tell stories about climate change and the fight against it, implying that those companies are aligned with the show’s aims.

The Kickstarter for Bark Avenue, a quick pickup-and-delivery game from a new publisher in New York, ends in just two days.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, environment, florida, guns, lgbt rights, links, longreads, misinformation, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ June 4, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/4/22.

No new articles from me this week at The Athletic, but that will change over the weekend after I see Kumar Rocker on Saturday night.

On my podcast, I spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Emma Baccellieri about the “sweeper” slider, Brett Phillips, the Mets, and being Italian-American. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Three Sisters, a fantastic new roll-and-write game from the designers of Fleet: The Dice Game.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A fake story about an Illinois high school supposedly using “race-based” grading went viral even though it was generated by a pink-slime news site, getting shared by Josh Kraushaar of National Journal, Andrew Sullivan (who doesn’t seem to have admitted his error), and the abhorrent Libs of TikTok account. This is what the death of local news gives us: planted news stories, just credible enough to fool people who’ll gladly spread them around, and once they’re out of the can you’re never getting them back in.
My friend Zabe Bent wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books imploring Americans, especially those of us who are white, to fight more to change the pattern of police murders of unarmed Black people.
Emily Oster was named to the TIME 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, but her writing to the COVID-19 pandemic has not been evidence-based – and has earned her financial support from Charles Koch and Peter Thiel.
Two great retrospectives on The Wire on the twentieth anniversary of its premiere, from Alan Sepinwall at Rolling Stone and from James Poniewozik at The New York Times.
Also in Rolling Stone, how director Cary Fukunaga used his power to pursue and harass young women on his film sets.
Tim Grierson wrote about Al Pacino’s breakout performance in The Godfather for the fiftieth anniversary of that film’s premiere. It’s quite something to see an understated Pacino before his woo-ah! days.
BBC Food profiles the Kigali, Rwanda restaurant Meza Malonga, whose chef-owner Dieuveil Malonga owns two farms and traveled to 48 African countries to learn about the continent’s many regional cuisines.
Vladimir Putin is increasingly relying on private mercenaries from The Wagner Group, and the U.S. has had little luck in stopping the company’s spread even after reports of human rights violations in Syria, Ukraine, and the Central African Republic.
The New Yorker looks at how Uvalde’s local newspaper covered the massacre at their elementary school, where the victims included the daughter of the paper’s receptionist.
Meanwhile, the town’s police chief, who was sworn in as a city council member in a secret (and probably unconstitutional) ceremony, is refusing to talk to investigators about the cops’ failure to stop the killer.
If you’re unsure about the need for reforming our gun laws, I strongly recommend you watch this two-minute video.
Russia has already set up disinformation outlets in Ukraine to push its propaganda, including false claims of Nazi supporters and Ukrainian atrocities.
The executive producer of the revival of Queer as Folk wrote for Variety about Republicans’ use of trans panic and the need for greater queer representation in media.
A peer-reviewed journal chose to publish a falsehood-filled editorial written by a COVID-19 denialist. Skeptical Raptor debunks the piece, but we don’t know why the journal’s editors would let such nonsense pass.
Florida threatened to fine the Special Olympics over $27 millionfor imposing a vaccine requirement on its events this weekend. The organizers backed down.
Ohio Republicans passed a bill that calls for genital examinations of “suspected” trans athletes. Mad your kid lost in the hurdles? Embarrass the winner by demanding the officials check their gonads!
The Atlantic’s Katherine Wu writes that we are all likely to get COVID-19 repeatedly now that the virus has become endemic and we’ve pretty much all given up on mitigation methods.
Reynolds American, the giant tobacco company owned by British American Tobacco, donated nearly $6 million to political candidates, PACs, and ballot initiative committees during 2021, 80% of it to Republicans or conservatives.
A right-wing militia member shot and killed a retired judge in Wisconsin and had a hit list that included the names of other politicians, including Governor Tony Evers (D).
Christian nationalism is on the rise, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R) making it explicit in comments this week (if you oppose Christian nationalism, in her words, you’re a “domestic terrorist”), and the media has been very late to cover and call out these seditionists, even though the movement has been building for decades.
The Council for Economic Accountability is trying to mobilize to fight public funding for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders.
The BBC profiled Jessica Cisneros, who may be about to lose her primary challenge to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). Cisneros should be part of the future of the party – she’s a woman of color, pro-union, pro-choice, pro-immigrant – but the Democratic powers that be chose to back Cuellar, who opposes abortion rights, labor rights, and immigration reform.
Board game news: BGG’s Designer Diaries series has an entry from Tom Lehmann, designer of Res Arcana, on his latest game, Dice Realms, which just came out last month from Rio Grande. It clocks in at $120 due to the customizable dice at the heart of the game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, christian nationalism, florida, guns, hoaxes, lgbt rights, links, longreads, metoo, movies, ohio, police, stick to baseball, texas

→ May 28, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/28/22.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I published my redraft of the 2012 draft class, as well as the associated look at the first-rounders who didn’t make the cut for the redraft.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Azul: Queen’s Garden, the fourth game in the Azul series, which is solid on its own but also has no real mechanical connection to the original, and has a fiddly placement rule that really bothered me.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to my friend Jonathan Mayo about this year’s draft, including our different mocks that went up on May 19^th. (Here’s mine, for subscribers to the Athletic, and here’s Jonathan’s.) You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I do send out a free email newsletter about twice a month, and now I realize I’m due for another one. 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…

The federal government has spent over $2 billion on what should have been an effort to save wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, but instead the money mostly went to prop up failing hatcheries, while the wild salmon population keeps dropping.

The hunt for nonexistent election fraud in Wisconsin has been powered by a hypnotherapist and failed politician running what appears to be a grift, whether or not he actually believes in the Bie Lie.

People who fight new development in their areas (often referred to as NIMBYs,” for “Not In My Backyard,”) under the guise of opposing overpopulation or fighting climate change are motivated by racism, xenophobia, or just outright misanthropy. We’re threatened less with overpopulation than with an aging global population, declining fertility, and too many people spread over too much space.

If we can’t listen to ‘imperfect’ victims like Amber Heard, it will be the death of the #MeToo movement, writes Martha Gill in the Guardian.

Speaking of which, here’s a twitter thread on men who were supposedly “canceled” for sexual harassments or assaults, and how successful they’ve been since. I don’t think every tweet here is accurate, as some of these men clearly have been worse off, but the gist is accurate.

San Francisco Pride Parade organizers asked police, who typically march in the event, to do so in plainclothes. So the cops withdrew from the event, and now the Mayor has, too.

Gabe Kapler wrote on his personal site about his decision to stop coming out on the field for the national anthem, calling the performative exercise “participating in a self congratulatory glorification of the ONLY country where these mass shootings take place.” I haven’t stood for the anthem in several years now, in accordance with my own conscience. That’s all the anthem is – performative patriotism.

You want one specific reason why? How about Oklahoma rushing to ban trans students from using the proper bathrooms, a law designed to hurt some of the most vulnerable people in our society while solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

Republicans’ favorite answer to calls for gun control – that a “good guy with a gun” would prevent these massacres – was thoroughly eviscerated this week in Uvalde, as the so-called good guys, with guns and badges, did nothing. Except, of course, pinning parents to the ground.

Here’s a list of all the laws Texas passed last year that made it easier for the Uvalde shooter to get an assault rifle the minute he turned 18.

The real reason we don’t have gun control in the U.S.? It’s the tyranny of the minority provided by the structure of the U.S. Senate.

Republicans love to talk about “pedophiles” and “groomers” when referring to LGBTQ+ people, or just anyone they don’t like, which is some serious projection considering how many prominent Republican politicians have been accused or convicted of sex crimes.

Or how about the Oregon Republican Congressional candidate who is anti-abortion, but who paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion (according to her)?

Meanwhile, the party’s hero appeared at CPAC along with a Hungarian talkshow host who has called Jews “stinking excrement” and the same clown who pushed the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory several years ago.

Scientific American weighs in on the rise in monkeypox cases around the world with some facts and lukewarm takes.

Big Oil has already given a million dollars to fuel Republican candidates who back(ed) the January 6^th insurrection efforts.

Certain hotels are considering using NFTs to create a secondary market for reservations – which would mean you’re buying your reservation, and would have no way to cancel it. You’d have to sell it to the next sucker.

Paste‘s Clare Martin writes about John Mulaney’s decision to bring Dave Chappelle on stage, unannounced, at his comedy show, and the myth of the “good ones.”

Dr. Paul Sax wrote a post in praise of ophthalmologist Dr. Will Flanary, whom you may know as Dr. Glaucomflecken, the very popular TikTok account where he skewers America’s dysfunctional health care system, the journal review process, and orthopedic surgeons. Dr. Flanary was the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony for the Yale School of Medicine this past week.

Consequence of Sound offered one tribute (among many) to the late Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode, who died at age 60 this week.

A new research paper argues that early RNA molecules may have allowed peptides to grow on them, which then helped the RNA molecules become more complex, which would be a key finding in explaining the origins of life.

Board game news: Arcs, the latest game from Leder Games (Root, Fort, Oath), is now on Kickstarter.

I missed this Kickstarter, but Fliptown looks like a pretty solid roll-and-write, due out next March. I’ll post this link again if they allow late pledges at some point.

Offline Editions announced a new game, Kyudo, from designer Bruno Cathala, who also designed Kingdomino and Five Tribes. (Link in French, but there’s a video teaser.)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, guns, links, longreads, metoo, oklahoma, police, stick to baseball, texas

→ May 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/22/22.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I posted my first mock draft for 2022, and took reader questions in a Q&A on the site that afternoon.

On the Keith Law Show, I spoke with Jonathan Higgs of the band Everything Everything about their new album Raw Data Feel, which came out on Friday. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I do send out a free email newsletter about twice a month, and for those of you who said you would attend an in-person event with me in London, it’s in the works now, so thank you all for responding. Speaking of 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 new “war on terror” is the wrong approach to fighting domestic terrorism, but would just further curtail our civil liberties withot making us any safer.
A politically connected testing lab earned contract after contract for COVID testing in Nevada, but its tests didn’t work.
In an extra from her memoir, Selma Blair talks about first learning she had multiple sclerosis.
Miami’s mayor is a crypto advocate, and got the city involved with one such scheme – and the coin’s value has since dropped 95%. The article doesn’t even mention the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining, which would seem especially important to a city like Miami.
Texas’s General Land Officer, led by Commissioner George P. Bush, diverted federal hurricane relief funds away from coastal communities to inland ones that are whiter and more likely to vote Republican.
The New York Times ran a story commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Dr. John Fryer’s speech to the American Psychiatric Association, where he revealed he was gay, doing so while wearing a disguise and without revealing his real name. The speech led to the removal of homosexuality from the APA’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The excellent documentary Cured covers this story at greater length.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong points out that modest hospitalization numbers don’t tell the whole story about how much stress COVID-19 has put on our health care system.
Why are there gigantic blobs of molten rock and water in the Earth’s lower mantle?
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the inside story on how the Rams’ ownership worked the NFL to secure the team’s move back to Los Angeles.
Pennsylvania Republicans who helped pass a mail-in voting law are now trying to get it thrown out.
The deaths of two Ohio State students due to fake Adderall that contained fentanyl gave rise, once again, to the myth that there’s fentanyl-laced cannabis in the wild.
Police in Highland Park, Michigan, seized a privately-owned building on dubious grounds, and then demanded that the owners buy the department two new police cars for its return. The department did give the building back to its owners without the ransom, but what are the consequences for the officials involved in this extortion?
Now right-wing politicians and media figures are targeting comedians who mock them, sending a torrent of threats and abuse their way.
A Twitter exec posted some thoughts on how much spam there actually is on the site, and what the company is doing to combat it.
The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine held its annual convention in New Orleans, and they posted (and deleted) a tweet from there showing members unmasked at an indoor concert.
A couple of right-wing nutjobs who also happen to hold office in the Virginia Beach area are suing Barnes and Noble to get specific LGBTQ+ books removed. I’m sure the party of laissez-faire capitalism will put a stop to its own people doing this any minute now!
These ridiculous laws in the American South that prohibit teachers from discussing racism are now making it very difficult for them to discuss the white nationalist who shot up a grocery store in a majority-Black Buffalo neighborhood.
The assaults on voting rights and abortion rights are inextricably linked, writes Brandon Tensley at CNN. It’s clear that the theocratic minority is more than happy to subvert the will of the majority if it suits their superstitious purposes.
The highly polarized public debate over abortion does not accurately reflect the nuanced views of the public, writes Christine Emba at the Washington Post.
Board game news: I didn’t know that a new version of Can’t Stop!, Sid Sackson’s addictive push-your-luck game, had come out from Eagle-Gryphon.
I backed the campaign for a new solitaire game called Resist!, based on the rebels who fought the fascist regime in Spain after the Spanish Civil War.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, coronavirus, first amendment, football, health, links, longreads, nevada, police, racism, science, social media, stick to baseball, texas

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