science — Page 3

→ October 30, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/30/21.

Nothing new at the Athletic this week as I finished writing up the top 50 free agents ranking, which will run shortly after the World Series ends.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Happy City, a light city-building card game that’s ideal for younger players, ages 8 and up, who aren’t quite ready for Splendor. If you’ve played Machi Koro, this has a similar vibe, but without the dice or the unbalanced cards.

My guest on my podcast this week was Christina Kahrl, who helped me preview the World Series and some of this winter’s free agent market. You can listen and subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes.

The latest issue of my email newsletter was about a hat – one that’s very important to me, though. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the story of how Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell and run for years by his ethically challenged son, discourages and dismisses students’ reports of rape and sexual assaults.
Why is the idea of gender provoking such a backlash around the world? It’s an unholy alliance of religion, misogyny, and homophobia/transphobia, and feminists should not ally themselves with those trying to roll back progress on human rights.
Steph Apstein spoke to multiple Native American leaders in asking why MLB still allows the “synchronized, team-sanctioned racism” of the tomahawk chop? Meanwhile, Rob Manfred totally whiffed when asked about the chop, lying about Native Americans’ views on it and landing on the wrong side of the issue.
The Columbia Journalism Review published the second part of its series on paid advocacy groups writing content for local news outlets.
The Posies broke up this week as multiple women accused lead singer Ken Stringfellow of sexual misconduct.
That SEPTA (Philadelphia transit) rape incident where people watched and filmed the assault without calling the police? Yeah, the cops made that part up. The lesson here is to not take authorities at their word.
Bobcat Goldthwait has some thoughts on the hoax that is “cancel culture.”
A white man in Texas killed a Moroccan man who was sitting in a car in his own driveway. It took 11 days for authorities to arrest him.
My colleague Levi Weaver called out the Rangers for their refusal to acknowledge LGBTQ+ fans. It’s outdated, it’s exclusionary, and it’s pandering to the wrong element.
Meanwhile, the NAACP urged pro athletes to avoid signing with teams in Texas over the state’s rollbacks of reproductive, voting, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Oh, and a Texas state rep who’s running for attorney general is trying to start a book-banning investigation of public schools in the state, demanding that schools disclose if they have any of eight hundred and fifty books – not in their curricula, but just in the buildings.
Ohio isn’t that much better, as the Republican Governor forced out the Board of Education President who authored an anti-racism resolution that has since been repealed, because in Ohio, racism is good!
Chevron’s ten-year vendetta against an environmental activist who exposed the company’s extensive pollution in Ecuador has led to the activist’s jailing on contempt charges. Steven Donziger has been under house arrest for over two years, all part of the company’s revenge against him for his exposé and the $9.5 billion judgment against them in Ecuador.
Vaccinated people are 63% less likely to spread the delta variant of COVID-19 than unvaccinated people are.
The bizarre backlash against critical race theory in elementary schools – where it’s never taught – was in reality an astroturfing campaign by conservative dark-money titan Charles Koch.
Jim Squires, a Democrat running for the U.S. House in Texas’ 22^nd district, held up a “The ‘Chop’ is Racist” sign at Game 2 of the World Series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, coronavirus, links, metoo, ohio, philadelphia, religion, science, stick to baseball, texas

→ October 23, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/23/21.

My second (and final) Arizona Fall League notebook went up for subscribers to the Athletic on Monday; the prior one, with notes on MacKenzie Gore, Zach Thompson, and more, went up last Thursday. I held a Klawchat on Friday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Hunger, the newest game from designer Richard Garfield (King of Tokyo, Magic: the Gathering).

On my podcast this week, I spoke to Trevor Strunk (@hegelbon) about his new book Story Mode: Blah Video Games and the Interplay Between Consoles and Culture, which you can pre-order here. And you can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes.

As the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

Longreads first: Nature spoke to scientists who say they’ve been subjected to the most vicious attacks ever during the pandemic, including death wishes and death threats.
A con artist scammed would-be adoptive families out of over a million dollars before she was finally caught. She preyed on their desire to have children, often taking thousands of dollars in “expenses” for pregnant women who placed their babies with other families or who never actually existed at all.
Tara Smith wrote about how to eradicate diseases back in December of 2019, just as SARS-CoV-2 was emerging. She tweeted this link this week to say that we’re not eradicating this virus as long as it has numerous, unknown animal reservoirs.
My colleague Adam Crafton wrote about the horrendous treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Saudi Arabia, the government of which now owns 80% of Newcastle United.
If we want to stop climate change, we have to stop burning things.
Normalize quitting, says Lindsay Crouse in a New York Times video.
There’s a real debate to be had over how powerful natural immunity from a COVID-19 infection is, but politics is derailing it. People screaming that it means they don’t need a vaccine cause those on the other side to dismiss the point entirely.
OK, Joy Pullman. You go first.
Why is Judge William Pryor advancing the career of a law student who has made blatantly racist statements?
Trump supporters in a north Texas county that TFG won by a 4-1 ratio still hounded an election administrator out of office, accusing her of having a liberal agenda.
The Trump Administration used its food aid program to give millions to connected firms and to promote the then-President. No one will ever be held accountable for this.
Netflix fired the organizer of the employee walkout to protest the transphobic content in the recent Dave Chappelle comedy special, claiming the employee leaked confidential data.
A white cop in Louisiana grabbed a Black woman by her hair and slammed her to the ground multiple times. ProPublica also has the story. The incident, of which there is video, occurred five weeks ago, and the officer has not been identified or, as far as anyone has reported, disciplined in any way.
Minneapolis schools using online survelliance software called Gaggle are outing LGBTQ+ students to their parents.
Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote an op ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, calling out fellow Democrat Joe Manchin’s obstructionism and refusal to support climate-change mitigation policies that would benefit his constituents.
Paris Hilton (!) wrote an op ed in the Washington Post calling for regulation and reform of the “troubled teen” industry, which she says generates $50 billion in revenue per year.
St. Helena, one of the few places in the world that has yet to report a single COVID-19 case, is hoping to use that status to lure more tourists to the remote South Atlantic island.
Something’s rotten in Dover: Two Democratic state Senators here in Delaware are facing calls for their resignation, but the party is treating them differently. Gerald Brady used a horrible ethnic slur referring to people of east Asian descent in an email, while Darius Brown was arrested and charged with “offensive touching” and disorderly conduct after allegedly punching a woman in the face during an argument. Both need to go.
Evolution in action: Elephants in Africa evolved tusklessness when poachers targeted them for their ivory.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, coronavirus, cults, delaware, evolution, lgbt rights, links, longreads, louisiana, minnesota, science, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ August 21, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/21/21.

Two new posts since the last roundup for subscribers to the Athletic – my list of the five farm systems that have improved the most since February; and a scouting blog from two weekends ago covering some Rays, O’s, Nats, and Tigers prospects. I’ve been unable to do much this past week due to an illness in the family, but hope to be back on the road this upcoming week.

On the board game front, I had three reviews go up earlier this month. At Paste, I reviewed the great new family game Juicy Fruits and the midweight game CloudAge. For Polygon, I reviewed the upcoming second edition of Great Western Trail, which is still the top-rated complex game on my overall rankings.

On of the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, author of sixteen books, including The Constant Rabbit; and then had old pal Joe Sheehan as a guest this week.. And on The Athletic Baseball Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

My newsletter is getting back on track, although I didn’t send one this week since I didn’t write anything for any other sites beyond my own. You should sign up, though. Or you might consider buying my book, The Inside Game, now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Ed Yong, whose coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic (not my employer) won him a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, writes about how the pandemic is now likely to end: with a long, tapering whimper, rather than a bang. And much of it is our own stupid fault.
A new journal article in Cell looks at all of the evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and concludes that a zoonotic origin is far more likely than a so-called “lab leak.”
ProPublica reveals just how much some high-income donors saved in taxes by helping fund the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a major science denialist, was particularly helpful to his wealthy supporters.
The Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction has released their report, titled What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. Setting aside the question of whether it goes as far as it needs to go, the report doesn’t shy away from blaming U.S. policymakers who believed we could build a nation, threw good money after bad, and had perhaps the most expensive case of the planning fallacy in history.
What can you do in the wake of last week’s apocalyptic report on the climate? Anything at all. Just do something.
A reader contribution: The Guardian profiles the woman who goes through NYC residents’ garbage and highlights their waste and profligacy on social media.
The Washington Post tells the awful story of a Missouri widow who lost her husband to COVID-19 and is now facing financial ruin.
I missed this in June, but a bill to legalize cannabis in Delaware failed over concerns that it wouldn’t create sufficient racial equity in the resulting system. Given how disproportionately cannabis laws have affected Black residents of Delaware (and all states), I think it’s worth crafting a bill that ensures they’ll share in the spoils of the new industry.
College officials are concerned about students showing fake vaccination cards rather than complying with vaccine mandates. The answer to that seems to be simple – use a fake card, get expelled, no refunds.
The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors issued a statement that said that medical professionals who spread COVID-19 misinformation should lose their licenses. I’ll believe it when I see someone actually lose their license, but this is a good warning, at least.
A law professor writes that vaccine mandates are legal as well as based on solid science.
And that’s good, because the Nevada Board of Health just voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for college students in the state.
The anti-vaccine grift might be becoming untenable. The victims of cons are often unwilling to admit that they’ve been conned. A little help from law enforcement wouldn’t hurt, though.
Plenty of COVID deniers and minimizers like to claim that the virus has little effect on children (or did, pre-Delta). That’s highly misleading and takes advantage of a cognitive illusion called the contrast effect.
A spate of fabricated research papers hit certain academic journals this spring, and they were only caught because of certain “tortured phrases” (“colossal information” instead of “big data”) that caught other researchers’ eyes.
That Indiana doctor behind the viral video where he repeats anti-vaccine myths won’t even admit if he’s vaccinated and isn’t board-certified in any specialty. He should lose his license, though, because he’s full of shit.
Wilmington has a great little restaurant scene for such a small city, and for my money, Bardea is the best restaurant we’ve got. It’s improved even more since the pandemic began, as chef-owner Antonio DiMeo has been experimenting with koji and other fermentation techniques to boost flavors and create a more plant-forward menu.
The board game café chain Snakes & Lattes hired decorated chef Aaron McKay as COO as they try to establish the cafés as food destinations, not just board game spots where you get chicken tenders and soggy fries.
Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has long been linked to neurological damage in children, will finally be banned for use on food products after the Trump administration ignored scientists’ pleas to prohibit it.
This seems like it should be bigger news: A U.S. lab claims it has approached the goal of nuclear fusion ignition, using a laser to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen fuel that could become self-sustaining, providing enough heat to keep the fuel mass at a high enough temperature for fusion to continue. In theory, it’s a potential source of clean, limitless energy. It sounds too good to be true.
In a similar vein, did Google Labs really create “time crystals,” an entirely new phase of matter that would be a huge leap forward towards the goal of real quantum computing?
Board game news: Cranio Creations announced a new deluxe edition of the classic worker placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico.
Capstone announced pre-orders for Corrosion , a new game where your machines can rust and become useless, which I love as a concept and which also reminds me of a key plot point in Baldur’s Gate.
Publisher Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) laid off its entire staff last week and appears to be entering bankruptcy.
I don’t remember the 2007 game Get Bit!, but it’s getting a brand-new edition, now on Kickstarter.
And finally, this was highly entertaining. What better way to mock a lunatic than by setting his deranged words to music? (There’s some great guitar work here, too.)

Full video here: https://t.co/xetcKyBuBK
— Christian Nightmares (@ChristnNitemare) August 17, 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, delaware, environment, food science, frauds, links, longreads, science, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ July 31, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/31/21.

I had a lot of content this week around the trade deadline for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

The Cubs’ four main deals on Friday (Báez, Bryant, Kimbrel, Marisnick)
The Phillies/Rangers trade
The Toronto trade for José Bérrios
The Max Scherzer/Trea Turner trade
The Yankees’ trade for Anthony Rizzo
The Yankees’ trade for Joey Gallo
The Starling Marte/Jesús Luzardo trade (also includes three Pirates trades and the Andrew Chafin deal)

I also wrote up my notes from a game between the Yankees’ and Pirates’ AA affiliates. I was planning to do a chat but the pace of trades made that impossible.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Slate‘s Josh Levin, talking about his One Year: 1977 podcast episode about baseball broadcaster Mary Shane and his book The Queen. You can subscribe on iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Whistle Mountain, a medium-heavy worker placement game from the designer of the train game Whistle Stop.

I returned to my email newsletter, with a note on why I’ve been absent from there and largely from here over the last six weeks. Also, my second book The Inside Game is out in paperback and available from bookshop.org or wherever you buy books.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Olympian Emily Infeld’s three-year nightmare with a stalker highlights just how poorly our society handles this kind of threat.
An anti-trans Instagram account posted a fabricated story about a spa in Los Angeles, leading to weeks of death threats and real violence.
Ed Yong detailed the incredible results of an experiment to make mosquitoes immune to the dengue virus by using the Wolbachia bacterium.
The critical race theory non-troversy has caused a huge schism in a Michigan town where high school students conducted a “slave auction” of their Black classmates.
The preprint that COVID deniers like to tout that claims that ivermectin is effective against the virus? It’s been withdrawn due to a major data integrity issue.
The home of a fraudster who has been pushing a bleach “cure” for autism has been raided by German authorities.
A marketing agency tried to pay YouTubers to spread anti-vaccine propaganda, but the influencers wouldn’t play ball. No one knows who was actually behind the plot.
I know you’re shocked, but the Trump Administration handed out big federal contracts to its political allies during the pandemic, often breaching the rules to do so.
The man who owned the @tennessee Twitter handle refused to sell it, so a 20-year-old who wanted the handle ‘swatted’ the man, who then had a fatal heart attack during the incident.
A survivor of the Parkland high school shooting wrote about how his own father thinks the massacre was a hoax, thanks to the QAnon community.
A state inquiry ruled that the Maltese government was responsible for the death of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who exposed corruption in the island nation that went all the way up to the Prime Minister. Galizia was murdered in 2017 when someone set off a bomb in her car.
Why is the Biden Administration allowing a pilot program where federal prisoners would only receive scans of personal mail, rather than the originals? Several states use this program and also charge prisoners a fee for each scan.
Missouri has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country right now, and the effects of the right-wing disinformation campaign are evident in area hospitals.
A Houston Chronicle editorial said aspects of a new Texas anti-abortion law “are what we might expect from the lowest intellects in the Taliban.”
Virginia’s pro-Trump Republican party has gone after a University of Virginia professor for his tweets criticizing Trump.
The BBC explains how Hall & Oates’ 1980 pop song “You Make My Dreams” became a streaming hit.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: conspiracy theories, links, longreads, missouri, racism, science, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, virginia

→ March 27, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/26/21.

I had one filler post for subscribers to the Athletic this past week to tide us over until we get to my predictions this upcoming week, looking at some possible trends in player development to watch for as games begin next week. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

At Paste, I reviewed Renature, the latest collaborative design from Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, who’ve worked together before on Torres and Tikal. This game has a good bit more oomph to it – it’s less abstract and definitely more fun.

On the Keith Law Show this week I spoke to Julie DiCaro about her new book Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America and how sports leagues can do better on matters of gender, race, harassment, and domestic violence. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter. Also, you can still buy The Inside Gameand Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out on April 6^th, just 10 days from now.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A professor in the United Kingdom who has spent about a decade trying to defend the Assad regime in the western media thought he was corresponding with a Russian spy, but was actually talking to someone at the very group he was trying to discredit. Prof. Paul McKeigue is also a COVID-19 hoaxer, signatory to the Great Barrington anti-lockdown manifesto, and close pal of a 9/11 hoaxer.
ProPublica looks at the disastrous state of Maine’s public defense system; the state has no public defenders and farms the work out to private attorneys, many of whom are ineligible to try the cases they’re assigned.
Just twelve people are responsible for two-thirds of the anti-vaccine content found on social media. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has issued a report on the dirty dozen and is urging social media platforms to crack down before it’s too late. Just days before they released, a dozen state attorney generals told Facebook and Twitter to do a better job against this misinformation. I’m pleased to see our Attorney General here in Delaware, Kathy Jennings, was one of the signatories.
It’s been lost in the news for understandable reasons, but Aurora, Colorado, police forced an innocent Black family, including a six-year-old girl, to lie on the pavement while the cops had guns drawn – and they’re upset at the angry response to their actions.
Eric Garcia writes in the Washington Post of the rightward shift of some Latino men, including his father, an avid Trump supporter. It’s the most vulnerable demographic in the Democratic coalition right now.
Also in the Post, a principal in Indio, California, has had to go looking for students missing since the city’s high school closed to in-person instruction last March.
USA Today, the same newspaper that rushed to have Bob Nightengale provide a fresh coat of whitewash to Thom Brennaman after the latter uttered a vile homophobic slur on air, fired For the Win’s Hemal Jhaveri for tweeting about mass shooters mostly being white men.
The story of cascatelli, a new pasta shape designed by podcast host Dan Pashman, is an amazing only-in-2021 kind of tale where a guy who thinks (correctly) that spaghetti (the shape) is boring and nonfunctional can end up engineering a brand new shape and partnering with a manufacturer to produce it.
The great Dr. Peter Hotez debunks five myths about coronavirus vaccines in a piece he co-wrote with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi in the Washington Post.
Zoom earned $660 million in pre-tax profits in 2020 and paid $0 in taxes on it. It might be cheaper to eliminate the corporate income tax entirely – saving the costs to collect it and freeing up productive capacity dedicated to it – than to perpetuate a system where this happens over and over.
North Carolina sends six-year-olds to court, as in the case of a boy who faced a hearing for picking a tulip from a neighbor’s yard.
Arkansas passed a law that would allow doctors to deny medical care to LGBTQ+ patients. The absolute obsession many Republicans have with gay and trans Americans is pathological.
West Virginia is trying to ban needle exchanges in the midst of the country’s worst HIV outbreak.
Here in Delaware, a former police officer who shot an unarmed teen and escaped criminal charges has been indicted for lying about the incident and tampering with evidence.
Illinois State Rep. LaShawn Ford resigned from the board of Loretto Hospital to protest the board’s decision not to suspend or fire the CEO and COO who distributed vaccines to ineligible recipients at Trump Tower and other wealthy enclaves.
A Missouri Republican state senator has been charged with fraudulently billing the government for over $900,000 in COVID-19 claims, including some services that were never provided.
Dr. Emily Oster caused a stir recently with a column that had a headline saying your unvaccinated kids were comparable to their vaccinated grandparents. Dr. Tara C. Smith explained why this is misleading and possibly dangerous, one of the critiques that led Dr. Oster to correct herself a day or two later.
Naia Cucukov, the Executive Producer of the acclaimed 2020 Netflix adaptation of The Babysitter’s Club, wrote a powerful thread in the wake of the shootings of Asians by a deranged white man in Atlanta last week. (Naia is also a personal friend.)
Matt Leacock, designer of Pandemic and its various offshoots (as well as Era: Medieval Age), is working on a new game about combating climate change.
A 25-year-old mystery about the sudden deaths of bald eagles in some parts of the south has now been solved. Humans were responsible, of course, but perhaps not in a way you’d expect.
GQ interviews the priceless Sir Ian McKellen on his remarkable career, including an upcoming film shot entirely on iPhones in London’s mostly empty streets.
The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, known for so many things but especially (to me) for his climate change denialism, is the editor of a new journal focusing on “Jews and social justice.”
The BBC profiles Jang Yeong-Jin, the only openly gay North Korean defector. Jang crawled across the DMZ to reach South Korea in 1997, and now, at 62, is about to get married.
The New Republic argues that the media are manufacturing a crisis at the border to try to prove that they’re balanced in their coverage of President Biden.
Cymru am byth.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, arkansas, coronavirus, links, longreads, maine, north carolina, racism, science, social media, vaccines, west virginia

→ February 27, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/27/21.

Nothing new for subscribers to the Athletic this week now that my entire offseason prospects package has run. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Canvas, a new card-drafting and card-crafting game with some of the best artwork I’ve ever seen on a board game. It’s so visually appealing that you’ll want to play it more.

On this week’s episode of the Keith Law Show, I spoke with Blue Jays VP of International Scouting Andrew Tinnish about their loaded farm system and what it’s like to scout players in Latin America, including ones as young as 13. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter. Also, you can still buy The Inside Game and Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: BuzzFeed has the inside story of how Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook execs enable and encourage right-wing demagogues who push misinformation and hate on their site. Facebook is really trash.
Texas regulators served electricity providers rather than Texas, leaving the state’s grid vulnerable to the type of disaster that left most of the state in darkness and freezing temperatures last week.
An LA Times investigation reveals corruption and self-dealing inside the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that runs and votes for the Golden Globes (coming up tomorrow night). Of note is that more than half of the electorate was flown to visit the set of Emily in Paris at the studio’s expense, and the frivolous show ended up with two nominations. Speaking of which, my friend Tim Grierson, whose new book This is How You Make a Movie comes out on March 9^th, listed the worst Golden Globe nomination in each of the last twenty years.
Sports Illustrated‘s Steph Apstein examines whether the baseball was juiced in 2020.
Also from BuzzFeed, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) has a long history of sexually and verbally harassing women. Here’s my prediction: It won’t matter. His party will close ranks around him.
This 2009 piece from author Simon Winchester, “Take Nothing, Leave Nothing,” the story of how and why he has been banned for life from returning to the island of Tristan da Cunha, is weird and lovely and speaks to a certain type of wanderlust that I feel like I truly understand.
I discussed optimism bias in The Inside Game, and ProPublica has a piece on why it impeded pandemic response plans.
If you live in Delaware, please consider signing this petition asking our state government to enact paid medical and family leave.
The Washington Post profiles the doctors and nurses who spend their limited non-work time fighting coronavirus and anti-vaccine disinformation online.
The Republican Party has started a fresh round of voter suppression efforts across the country.
The opposition leader in Georgia was arrested in a “violent raid” on his party’s headquarters. I’m referring to the small nation in the Caucasus, but would you be surprised if Gov. Brian Kemp authorized this?
Judas and the Black Messiah is getting some well-deserved Oscar buzz. The film adheres to the true story of how the FBI and the Chicago Police assassinated Fred Hampton, including how Hampton rallied a group of white southerners who carried the Confederate flag to work with the Black Panthers.
A Pennsylvania bird-watcher snapped a now-viral photo of a cardinal that is intersex, meaning that it has physical characteristics of both male and female birds. The condition, called bilateral gynandromorphism, means that the cardinal is male on one side of its body, from red feathers to one testis, and female on the other. I wonder which bathroom Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks it should use.
My editor at Paste, Garrett Martin, ranked the five best episodes of the Muppet Show. I’d agree with three (Moreno, Martin, and Burnett), and don’t remember the other two that well, but would include John Cleese and Zero Mostel.
I linked to this in chat this week but it’s worth reposting: The reopening of a detention center for migrant children is not a return to Trump’s xenophobic, inhuman immigration policies. We still shouldn’t be bombing in the Middle East, though.
The IceCube neutrino detector in Antarctica picked up a neutrino from a star that was destroyed 700 million years ago.
Illinois became the first state to eliminate cash bail.
CPAC, with a slate full of voter-fraud charlatans and seditionists, cancelled a scheduled appearance by the anti-Semitic QAnon adherent Young Pharaoh. The convention’s actual theme this year is “America Uncancelled.”
Smith College found itself embroiled in a conservative-fueled nontroversy last week, but they issued a scathing, evidence-based response that their critics, like Bari Weiss, have ignored.
George Will wrote of the tough choices facing Pres. Biden as he tries to hold a hard line with China, including continuing the policy that began under Trump of labeling the Chinese genocide of Uighur Muslims as such.
Board game news: Cryptozoic has a Kickstarter up for a board game based on Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
Another Kickstarter is up for a second edition of Orconomics, itself a reimplementation of an earlier, self-published game called Economicus.
I don’t know much about the game itself but Brew, coming in June from Pandasaurus, looks amazing.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, science, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ January 31, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/31/21.

My ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball ran this Thursday for subscribers to the Athletic; the column of guys who just missed the list will run on Monday. Subscribers can also read my breakdown of the Jameson Taillon trade. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday afternoon.

Over at Paste, my review of the game Cloud City, a disappointing game from a designer whose work I really love, is now up.

I joined my friend Eric Longenhagen on the Fangraphs Audio podcast this week to talk top 100s and the process of assembling them, especially in this weird year.

My most recent edition of my free email newsletter shared some details of my recent nuptials, and I’ll send another issue at some point this week. You can still buy The Inside Gameand Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.

And now, the links…

David Sirota weighs in on the New York Times‘ publication of what amounted to a GOP press release and other media nonsense in the wake of the terror attack on the Capitol.
The Times fired a reporter earlier this month for saying she got “chills” during Biden’s inauguration, but when reporter Don McNeil used the n-word and other offensive terms on a trip with students, they promoted him.
Scientific American looks at the most worrying mutations in five COVID-19 variants.
The BBC looks at the twenty-year search for the billions of dollars stolen by former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha.
A former KGB agent alleges in a new book that the Russian agency cultivated Trump as an asset for nearly 40 years.
A white Ohio state Senator named Stephen Huffman (guess) questioned whether “the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups,” and now he’s leading the Ohio Senate Health Committee.
Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, wrote that Biden’s new vaccine goal is good, but not ambitious enough.
Sen. Josh Hawley’s “ludicrous clean-up act,” to try to undo the damage done to his reputation earlier this month, is already underway.
A new study showed that some bacteria adapt to antibiotics by changing their shape, which can reduce the surface area for antibiotics to penetrate.
Delaware’s Senate passed our version of the CROWN Act, banning discrimination against people based on their hair or hairstyle. It has to pass the House and be signed by Gov. Carney, but both are extremely likely.
A Magic: the Gathering card sold for over $500,000 at auction last week.
Asmodee and Game in Lab announced a clinical study that showed that playing board games might help Alzheimer’s sufferers.
I haven’t seen or played the game Coffee Talk, but this one-year lookback makes it sound kind of weirdly fun. Then again, I bought Necrobarista two months ago and still haven’t played it, so maybe I won’t.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, delaware, links, ohio, science, stick to baseball, the grey lady

→ November 29, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/29/20.

I had one piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic, on the Reds-Rockies trade and Atlanta’s two free agent signings, as well as a piece last week on what we can learn from the various pro leagues’ approaches to the pandemic. I held a Periscope video chat on Thanksgiving day while I spatchcocked the turkey.

Over at Paste, I ranked the ten best deduction board games, including Coup and this year’s The Search for Planet X.

I held off on sending the next issue of my free email newsletter until after the holiday so I could write up the trade and signings, but I’ll get one out in the next 48 hours. You can sign up for free here.

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

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This GQ article, about the author’s parents and a promise each made to never put the other spouse in a nursing home, is just heartbreaking.
The New Yorker details the underground network (with many Korean-Americans) trying to topple the North Korean government.
NiemanLab details the moral and business cases for increasing diversity in the newsroom, although with newspapers dying it may be a bit of a lost cause.
The Justice Department is now looking into the questionable stock trades by Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) that I mentioned in a link last week. If you’re still voting for this crook – who still refuses to debate Jon Ossoff, his Democrat opponent – I really don’t know what to tell you.
The logic of COVID-19 restrictions is falling apart, because they’re determined by economic factors, not by science.
SCOTUS’ decision last week on COVID-19 restrictions, written by “scientifically illiterate judges,” will cost Americans’ lives, writes economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.
YouTube finally suspended the feed of the nationalist One American News Network for spreading bogus information on the pandemic – not for spreading bullshit about the election.
A coffee brand that had capitalized on its conservative political leanings ran into trouble when it (rightfully) declined to support accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse.
Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist, discussed how to make higher education less overtly racist in an online talk with Radcliffe and Harvard College Everywhere.
From 2010, Ed Yong, who has written some essential pieces on the COVID-19 pandemic for The Atlantic this year, wrote about a woman whose amygdala was so damaged that she can no longer experience fear.
The Wall Street Journal profiled the conservative social media network Parler, but the real revelation here is that it’s backed by the Mercer family, whose views are about as neo-Nazi and white nationalist as it gets.
Anti-lockdown twits like to point to Sweden as some sort of success story, but so far there’s no evidence herd immunity is working there – and they’re faring much worse than their Nordic neighbors.
Greg Burton writes for the Arizona Republic about how the modern environment has made it more dangerous for journalists to do the most routine tasks for their jobs.
On Tuesday, December 1^st, the Welsh Rugby Union is hosting a free community talk on autism and the autism community in Wales. (I’m friends with one of the scheduled speakers.)
Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff locked students out of remote class sessions if they failed to get required COVID-19 tests. Getting tested isn’t just about you, but it’s a responsibility to your community.
Several board game publishers have Black Friday sales going on right now, including Renegade, Capstone, Floodgate, and Japanime.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, autism, board game news, coronavirus, georgia, longreads, science, stick to baseball, sweden

→ August 22, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/22/20.

I had three posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week, one column on what’s going on each day over at teams’ alternate sites; and two scouting notebooks, one on Casey Mize, Dane Dunning, and Alec Bohm, and the other on Tarik Skubal, Dylan Carlson, and the Nats’ Luis García.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was my friend Craig Calcaterra, late of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk and now the author of his own subscription newsletter Cup of Coffee. I also appeared on Blue Jays broadcaster Dan Shulman’s podcast Swingand a Belt, talking about what this lost minor league season means for prospects and the teams that employ them; and on the U.S. Army’s Mad Scientist program podcast The Convergence, talking about my new book, The Inside Game, and what might help people become better analysts in a world awash in data.

For Paste, I previewed many of the major board game titles due out for the rest of 2020, including the follow-up to Wingspan from Elizabeth Hargrave and a new game inspired by New Jersey’s infamous Action Park.

My free email newsletter returned this week, with thoughts on just how exhausting this science-denying, homophobic slur-using world has become.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: One reason why many of us feel so awful is that our cognitive ‘surge capacity’ is depleted, writes science journalist Tara Haelle, who provides suggestions to help us rebuild it.
The Washington Post profiles Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, although in some ways I think it still let him off the hook for his decision to support a party and President that have both acted strongly against racial equality and justice in the last four years.
One reason so many people still fail to understand the seriousness of the pandemic’s spread is exponential growth bias, where we have a hard time intuitively understanding how that mathematical function works.
COVID deniers love to point to Sweden as a success story, since the country didn’t lock down yet seemed to have the pandemic under control. Sweden just reported its highest death toll for the first six months of a year since 1869. Their case fatality rate is also double that of neighboring Norway.
The rush to reopen bars and restaurants is a major reason why we can’t get this pandemic under control.
The CDC said we could likely control it in 12 weeks if most Americans wore masks and adhered to physical distancing guidelines.
Dr. Jen Gunter wrote in praise of “WAP” while criticizing longstanding, misogynistic taboos on the subjects of female sexuality and, er, natural lubrication.
Writing for Slate, Ray Suarez says that the NRA might not survive the New York state’s lawsuit to dissolve it. We should only be so lucky, after the NRA was a major reason the Violence Against Women Act was allowed to lapse in 2019.
Rush Limbaugh’s descent continued this week as he mocked Joe Biden for having lost multiple family members to tragic, early deaths, and then referred to Kamala Harris as a ‘ho’ and claimed she slept her way to various political offices.
The Atlantic‘s John Hendrickson looks at how 13-year-old Brayden delivered the best speech of this week’s Democratic National Convention. You can see the video of when Brayden first met Joe Biden, and how Biden encouraged Brayden not to let his stutter define or limit him.
A pilot project to release genetically modified mosquitoes that produce female eggs that die as larvae in the Florida Keys has received final approval. It could be a major step in controlling mosquito-borne diseases from malaria to Zika to dengue.
Writer Shakeia Taylor told the CBC that MLB isn’t doing enough to combat the structural racism within the industry.
Two Detroit police officers who coerced a 14-year-old boy into confessing to two murders who didn’t commit and who fabricated evidence in that case are still on the job and aren’t on the county’s do-not-call list of police officers who’ve committed crimes or other forms of misconduct.
Board game news: A few games were announced in the days after I filed my second-half preview, including Anno 1800, an adaptation of an Ubisoft video game by longtime designer Martin Wallace (Steam, Brass).
Meeple Mountain is giving away a copy of Fairy Trails, the new two-player game from Uwe Rosenberg.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, board game news, coronavirus, longreads, science, stick to baseball

→ August 8, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/8/20.

I wrote another scouting notebook column for subscribers to The Athletic this week, looking at Jo Adell, Jesus Luzardo, Touki Toussaint, Nate Pearson, Nick Madrigal, and more. On The Keith Law Show this week, I got together with my old friend Joe Sheehan to talk about this teetering disaster of a season so far.

For Paste, I reviewed Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power, the newest entry in the Villainous game series, this one with five new villains from the MCU, adding some new rules that mean these villains aren’t playable with any of the previous 15. I also ranked all twenty of the villains in the Villainous games so far.

I participated in a panel at Gen Con Online on using social media in tumultuous times, and whether there’s an obligation to use your social media accounts to support causes like BLM or other social justice endeavors.

My partner and I are among the co-hosts for a virtual event and fundraiser for Kyle Evans Gay, a Democratic candidate for the Delaware Senate, who is trying to flip our district blue. If you’d like to help us out and perhaps join the event on August 15th, you can buy tickets to the virtual event or just make a donation here. If you happen to live nearby, the full tickets also include dinner from V&M, an Italian restaurant in the district that has also been a takeout machine since the state first locked down in March.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Ed Yong continues his peerless coverage of the pandemic for the Atlantic with this massive look at the United States’ epic failure this year, from a federal government “denuded” of experts to a social safety net sewn out of dental floss to one of the least efficient health-care systems in the developed world. This article is a list of failures, a maddening series of decisions not to fund basic initiatives that might have slowed the spread of COVID-19. Instead, we have 4% of the world’s population but a quarter of its cases and deaths.
Reason looks at the emerging political philosophy of Peter Thiel, who claimed to be a libertarian but now supports nationalistic policies more commonly associated with fascism. Note that Thiel and his proxies supported travel bans to fight COVID-19; the link above this from Ed Yong explains why travel bans can actually exacerbate the spread of a new pathogen.
The Guardian Long Read has a mournful look at the last of the Zoroastrians, as one of the world’s extant religions is slowly dying out.
Politico explores how xenophobic activist David Horowitz helped mentor and create Stephen Miller, architect of this Administration’s worst anti-immigrant policies.
Iowa’s state epidemiologist medical director got a 45% raise plus $55,000 in overtime pay this year despite leading one of the nation’s most ineffective responses to the pandemic, which including blocking school districts from closing unless they met state standards for virus spread and refusing to implement a complete shutdown. I’m all for paying scientists what they’re worth, but Iowa is still seeing 14+ new cases a day per 100,000 residents.
You should not “do your own research” when it comes to science. People who say that are inevitably going to be wrong, because they lack the experience or knowledge to evaluate what they find in that “research,” and the results are dangerous to us all.
A Utah woman is facing life in prison for buying red paint that was used at a protest. Really – not Zimbabwe, or Saudi Arabia, or China, but Utah.
My friend Will Leitch wrote for New York about how watching sports simultaneously now feels meaningless and yet extremely powerful.
Jeff Gregorich, superintendent of schools for a district in the hinterlands of southeastern Arizona, told Eli Saslow of the Washington Post that there is no good plan to reopen schools, and that “it’s a fantasy” to think it can be done without people in the community getting sick and dying from COVID-19.
Colleges are reopening faster and more fully than primary schools, but that’s the reverse of how things should be, given how much better college-aged students can handle online learning.
NPR published this helpful pocket guide to COVID-19 etiquette, with tips like talking to people about ground rules when you’re going to see them later at a physically distanced gathering.
The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan wrote that this was the week American lost the war on misinformation, thanks to the President’s promotion of raging quack Stella Immanuel, although I’m pretty sure we lost this war a long time ago and it’s going to take state and national vaccine mandates to stop it.
Board game news: Starling Games will release Flourish, a lightweight game from the creators of the amazing Everdell, some time before the end of 2020.
An update to Ultimate Werewolf Extreme is now on Kickstarter, funding in just 18 hours.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, links, longreads, science, stick to baseball

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