stick to baseball

→ October 13, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/13/18.

No Insider content this week, but I’ll have at least two posts next week from the Arizona Fall League. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday, and did a Periscope video chat Friday (in which I played a little guitar too).

I’m hoping to get another edition of my free email newsletter out before I fly to Arizona on Sunday, so feel free to sign up for my most random and disconnected thoughts.

If you live in east-central Pennsylvania, I’ll be at the Manheim Library in Manheim, PA, on October 22nd at 6:30 pm to talk Smart Baseball and whatever else you desire.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The best and strangest thing I read this week is this account of Bir Tawil, a tiny patch of land in northeast Africa claimed by no country, which several westerners have tried to thus claim as their own. The author is one of those people, and describes the bizarre effort by an American father to claim the land so his daughter can be a princess.
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is pouring tens of millions of dollars into the midterms to protect the GOP majority and thus further advance his economic plans in east Asia, such as building a casino in Japan. Consider the odds of this billionaire’s personal agenda aligning with your own economic interests before voting. Meanwhile, President Trump appears to have done Adelson’s bidding by bringing up the latter’s plans in a recent meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Politico also documented Adelson’s massive cash layout, which is heading to PACs that will likely flood airwaves and mailboxes with attack ads in the next few weeks.
I’ve written about this a few times before, but there’s another piece, this one in WIRED, about how the Cavendish banana is threatened with extinction and only genetic modification might save it. All banana plants are genetically identical, clones of the original from decades ago (when the Gros Michel encountered a similar fate), and thus they are extremely vulnerable to disease because they lack the mechanisms of evolution to survive. I reviewed a book on the topic back in 2013.
Georgetown Professor Greg Afinogenov (an assistant professor, but I’m not sure how that would affect the honorific) writes in N Plus One about the bad faith practiced by the so-called Sokal Squared hoaxers, who claimed to have uncovered blind orthodoxy in so-called “grievance studies.”
I’m still not sure what to make of this BREAKER piece on the bitcoin industry’s many roots in Hungary, which has in turn failed to convert this tech base into meaningful economic growth.
The BBC World Service’s In the Studio podcast spoke to Pandemic/Forbidden Desert game creator Matt Leacock about season 3 of Pandemic Legacy, which Leacock tested at Gen Con this past August. Friend of the dish and onetime BBTN podcast guest Rob Daviau makes an appearance as well.
The American Conservative criticizes Ted Cruz for his ‘sellout’ on criminal justice reform and his attacks on opponent Beto O’Rourke over this issue.
The New York Times reports how the FBI “investigation” into Brett Kavanaugh’s history of sexual misconduct was always limited. People who say the FBI “cleared” Judge Beer are being more than a little disingenuous. One of Kavanaugh’s classmates at Yale Law writes that the investigation was “a joke” in the Indianapolis Star, after he contacted the FBI but his offer of information was rebuffed. The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin argues that the GOP’s “spin” on Kavanaugh isn’t working with voters, but I’m not convinced. I think their supporters heard exactly what they wanted to hear.
Rewire.news looks at research that might explain why white women don’t believe Dr. Blasey Ford, just as they didn’t believe the women who accused Roy Moore of assaulting them.
Think the Kavanaugh fight was just over believing men? The Supreme Court just upheld a ruling that de facto disenfranchised hundreds or thousands of native Americans in North Dakota. That state has a voter-suppression law requiring voters to have a street address to register, but many native Americans living on reservations there only have P.O. Boxes for their addresses. I’m surprised SCOTUS didn’t also order Bismarck to deliver blankets full of smallpox to those residents.
George Will describes the United States’ hard and dangerous shift toward protectionism, which will ultimately harm and possibly even shrink our economy. It’s also not working: Our trade deficit with China hit a record high last month.
Georgia’s Republican nominee for governor, Brian Kemp, is currently its Secretary of State, which means he oversees elections and voter registration, so it’s a problem that his office is refusing to process over 53,000 registrations right now in the most blatant attempt at voter suppression we’ve seen from the GOP so far. His office has cancelled over 1.4 million registrations since 2012, and nearly 670,000 just last year, when Kemp knew he’d be running for the governor’s seat. The New York Times‘s Michelle Goldberg also called out Kemp’s fraudulent tactics. All that matters to the modern GOP is winning, regardless of whether the method is fair, free, or ethical.
For example, in Illinois, the Republican incumbent in Illinois’ 14th district is running a new ad accusing his opponent, Lauren Underwood, of holding policy positions she doesn’t support, such as a plan that would double some voters’ income tax liabilities. (In an ironic twist, the GOP candidate himself voted for the GOP tax bill last winter.)
A story from April reveals that Nevada Senator Dean Heller told supporters that suppressing Democratic turnout was key to holding his seat, allowing him to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Ted Cruz’s national security adviser previously worked for murderous Côte d’Ivoire dictator Lawrence Gbagbo, currently on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity.
Ah, West Virginia, you ask not to be the butt of our jokes, and then a Supreme Court justice there won’t recuse himself from a case where his personal lawyer is representing one side.
Of course, Tennessee got jealous, so a highway patrol officer working security on the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s campaign leaked info to his opponent claiming the candidate was at “a Muslim event” that turned out to be a meet-and-greet at a falafel restaurant.
Raleigh, North Carolina’s News and Observer endorsed Anita Earls for the state Supreme Court, who has been targeted by a series of laws passed by the GOP-controlled, gerrymandered-AF state legislature.
Thirsty Dice, a long-promised board game café in Philadelphia, is (probably) scheduled to open this upcoming week. If there’s interest, perhaps we can do an offseason gaming meetup there for dish readers.
Was the supposed comet ‘Oumuamua not actually a comet, and if not, what exactly was the interstellar visitor to our solar system?
I’m assuming everyone here saw the IPCC report on how bad climate change already is and how limited our chance is to slow or stop it; if not, Scientific American has a quick overview of the dire warnings it laid out.
Some videos: If you’re not on Twitter, you might have missed this wonderful little song from Texas singer-dancer-choreographer-artist Lynzy Lab called “A Scary Time.” Within days, she performed the same song on Jimmy Kimmel Live with a small chorus of women and young girls.
Riz Ahmed explained why he fights for representation rather than diversity.
And finally, director Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Everybody Wants Some!!, and the Before Sunrise trilogy) lent his skills to this ad against Ted Cruz in Texas:

NEW tonight: @fire_ted_cruz PAC ad, directed by Richard Linklater https://t.co/FebBWcegbd

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) October 9, 2018

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, climate change, gmo, links, metoo, north carolina, stick to baseball, tennessee, texas, the swamp, voter suppression, west virginia

→ September 29, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/29/18.

My awards ballots for the six major postseason player honors went up this week for ESPN+ subscribers, and I held a Klawchat Thursday to discuss them.

My latest board game review for Paste covers Reiner Knizia’s Blue Lagoon, a light/midweight game that plays very quickly but adds some strategy with complex scoring, and has a cover that might remind you of a certain Disney movie.

And now, the links…

Long reads first: This Politico piece on on the rise, fall, and change of heart of former hard-right Iowa state rep Kent Sorensen is the best thing I read this week. It speaks once again to the power of exposing bigots to the very people they profess to hate.
A Boston University doctor and researcher has made a career of testifying that cases of suspected child abuse are actually rare genetic disorders or vitamin deficiencies; in over ten years he’s never examined an abuse case and determined it was the result of actual abuse. This ProPublica piece highlights inaccuracies and inconsistencies in his statements, and details a case where Holick’s testimony resulted in a baby going back to an abusive parent who subsequently put her back in the hospital with a broken leg and bleeding in the brain. Why BU employs a child abuse enabler, or courts and juries find him credible, is not explained.
A UPenn professor and director of that school’s Annenberg Public Policy Center argues that Russian interference online gave Donald Trump the 2016 election – but she bases her assertion on data, not conjecture, laying out the case in greater length in her upcoming book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President.
The Daily Beast looked at Barstool Sports’ history of bullying opponents and encouraging sexual harassment. Founder Dave Portnoy often doxxes critics, such as posting this piece’s author’s phone number on Twitter, a clear violation of their ToS, but was never suspended for doing so.
Methane trapped in Arctic ice is starting to leak out as the climate warms. A similar event at the end of the Triassic era warmed the planet so much it led to a mass extinction event that wiped out 76% of all species on earth.
I’ve written before here about how trauma affects the brain, including my review of the seminal book The Body Keeps the Score. In the wake of multiple women stating that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted them, NPR talked to scientists about how trauma affects memory, something that everyone should be taught in schools. We tend to think of memories the way we think of data storage – that we record the information, accurately, and have it there to be recalled when we run the appropriate mental script – but memories are fallible and malleable, with trauma a major reason why our memories of significant events are often wrong or incomplete.
Arizona Senator Jeff Flake asked for a vote delay after previously signaling his support for the nominee, and the link there implies it was the result of assault victims confronting him in an elevator just hours before his announcement. I’d like to think this is true, and that Flake, who says lots of good things and then does nothing to back them up, has decided to take a stand, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
This Twitter thread from a researcher who studies sexual violence includes information, with links to published research, on why we should believe women, including Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who allege they’ve been assaulted.
Padma Lakshmi explained why she didn’t report her rape at age 16 in the NY Times.
ThinkProgress’ Lindsay Gibbs writes about Dr. Ford’s bravery, and watching the hearings as a sexual assault survivor herself.
We excuse young men who assault women because they’re young and their brains are still developing and we don’t want to ruin their lives. We excuse older men who’ve done it because that’s all in the past and they’ve changed since then, of course. Where in this framework do women matter?
America’s crumbling social infrastructure of libraries, schools, playgrounds, and fields is is hurting our democracy, writes sociologist Eric Klinenberg for The Atlantic.
In Texas, a state where most politicians think The Handmaid’s Tale is a utopian novel, the state’s attorney general is supporting a school district that expelled a student for refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance, a clear violation of the student’s First Amendment rights, in a case of blatant pandering for votes before November.
Professor of English and Cultural History Joe Moran writes in the Guardian about the difficult of writing a ‘perfect’ sentence, or even deciding what a perfect sentence is.
A new book called Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity argues that there have always been anti-vaxxers, according to this NPR interview with author Michael Kinch.
ProPublica also looks at the so-called “Jobs Alliance” in West Virginia where a coal baron is trying to block natural gas expansion that would actually help a growing industry with a viable future.
A Trump Administration analysis concluded that the planet will warm by 7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 so climate change regulations are pointless, bringing a whole new level of cynicism to public discourse.
Trump’s EPA immediately rolled back rules on coal plant pollution into waterways, raising the risk of heavy metal pollution during flooding like that caused by Hurricane Florence.
This long-ish excerpt from Michael Lewis’ upcoming book The Fifth Risk covers the tragicomic inside of Trump’s transition team and shows him as a man who didn’t believe he had any chance to be President.
One new board game Kickstarter of note – Fabio Lopiano’s Ragusa, co-published by Capstone Games, a company that focuses on heavy Euro titles it can translate and import to the U.S.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, environment, first amendment, kavanaugh, links, mental illness, metoo, russia, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, trauma, vaccines, west virginia

→ September 22, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/22/18.

For ESPN+ subscribers, my annual list of players I was wrong about went up on Thursday, including Matt Chapman and Harrison Bader. I also held a Klawchat this week.

Over at Ars Technica, I reviewed the new digital adaptation of the complex board game Scythe, available now on Steam. I don’t love the underlying game of Scythe but the implementation here is spectacular.

Here on the dish, I’ve set up a new index page for all my board game reviews in alphabetical order; there are 160 there now and I’ll continue to update it as I post new reviews here or on other sites. I reviewed two more games here this week: Mesozooic and Founders of Gloomhaven.

I sent out a new issue of my free email newsletter earlier this week; it’s irregular in timing and content, but hey, it’s free.

And now, the links. I do want to warn anyone who might be triggered by such stories that there are quite a few links here relating to sexual assault.

Longreads first: Molly Ringwald writes in the New Yorker about John Hughes’ problematic treatment of women in his movies, notably The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles.
The Washington Post‘s Elizabeth Bruenig has a very long, devastating read on a clearcut rape case in Texas that prosecutors dismissed as he-said/she-said, even though there was concrete evidence to support her claims, she reported right away (another #WhyIDidntReport case), and statements from her assailants that were quickly proven false. The rapists were never charged.
Mari Uyehara writes for GQ on the unending apologia for bad men.
Craig Calcaterra exposes how UNC Chapel Hill’s football stadium is named for a man who led a white supremacist massacre in 1898. The school didn’t answer his requests for comment, probably while they came up with bullshit excuses for the name.
Writer-author Joe Moran writes for the Guardian about the pleasures of ‘slow reading’, which I get, although I am still a very fast reader.
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system (and part of its name – Linux is a portmanteau of Linus and Unix, on which Linux was based), has stepped aside as head of the Linux Foundation after years of abusive behavior aimed at his colleagues.
Alyssa Leader sued Harvard over its mishandling over the sexual assault case where she was the victim and has since become an advocate for victims, especially those on campus. She responded to one of the women defending Brett Kavanaugh with a thread that dismantles that so-called defense.
Deborah Copaken was raped at Harvard in 1988. In the wake of the Kavanaugh revelations, she reached out to her attacker this week – and got an apology. Her sisters were in my college class, but I don’t know the author. (This article may contain triggers for victims of sexual assault.)
The Washington Post asked a former sex crimes prosecutor to look at the victim’s claims against Kavanaugh; the former prosecutor deems the accusations credible, and explains why, answering questions like why the victim didn’t report sooner.
Whitney McIntosh wrote for SBNation why Melisa Reidy had every right to publish her accusations against Addison Russell now, rather than right away or on anyone’s timeline but her own.
A white man in Washington is suing the state, claiming that a DNA test shows he’s (slightly) black and thus should be treated as such. For what it’s worth, one of those tests said I’m 1% Nigerian.
Minor league baseball players are exporing unionization in response to the clause in the Republicans’ (very unpopular) tax law from last year that exempted MLB and MiLB from minimum wage laws.
The Senate passed the Music Modernization Act this week, fixing the salmagundi of state copyright laws for songs written before 1972 while making it easier for artists to get paid by streaming services.
The NRA and their Russian allies on social media often copied each other’s tweets and commentary, according to this NPR article.
Arizona’s State Superintendent of schools appointed a young-earth creationist to review the state’s science education standards, and he already pushed word changes into the curriculum. The dingbat in question, Joseph Kezele, claims that there is “scientific evidence” to support creationism. Call your state reps, Arizonans.
Cornell professor Brian Wansink’s research on eating habits and obesity led the USDA to tab him to lead a $22 million program to improve school lunches. This week, JAMA announced they were retracting six of his articles, the culmination of a year-long look into Wansink’s history of p-hacking, manipulating data, and even plagiarism. Wansink resigned from Cornell effective June of 2019.
Two pieces of note for subscribers to The Athletic: Meredith Wills looks at the thicker laces on MLB baseballs, which explains much of the home run surge; and Jamey Newberg remembers the late Don Welke, who passed away this week at age 76. I knew Don from seeing him at games over the years and truly enjoyed talking to him.
Lee Zeldin, a Republican Congressman from Long Island whose seat is in jeopardy in this year’s elections, used a picture of an Estonian lighthouse in an ad that was supposed to show the Montauk lighthouse. He’s being challenged by Democrat Perry Gershon.
Deadspin’s Albert Burnenko tears apart a terrible New Yorker piece that asks, disingenuously, whether we should keep politics out of sports.
More than a dozen people who were injured by the police “kettle” action during protests and riots last year in St. Louis are suing the city over their injuries. Many of the tactics the police used have since been prohibited by a preliminary injunction.
Arizona Republican Paul Gosar is a conspiracy theory-spouting Congressman who has accused the FBI and DOJ of “treason,” so now, in a new political ad, his siblings are endorsing his opponent.
My friend Tim Grierson writes for am New York about Paul Simon’s return to New York for his final concerts.
Reason looks at the truth behind the TIME cover about teachers not getting by. It turns out that the initial TIME story omitted mention of the teacher’s base salary of $55,000.
The Atlantic looks at the chicken industry as it enters an antibiotic-free era.
Patrick Hruby writes in the Washington Post how ridiculous the NCAA’s claim that paying athletes would ruin their educations is.
Women’s March Minnesota assembled a poster of Republican politicians’ quotes on rape.
An ‘international pizza consultant’ claims that Portland, Oregon, is America’s best pizza city. I haven’t been to Portland since 1999, but I’m going to try to get there in the spring to check some of these places out.
Board games: Greater than Games opened a Kickstarter for a new game called Homebrewers.
Asmodee Digital quietly released a free-to-play (with in-app purchases) version of the abstract strategy game Onitama.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, baseball, board games, chicken, food safety, food science, links, metoo, new york, north carolina, pizza, sexual assault, stick to baseball

→ September 15, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/15/18.

My one ESPN+/Insider piece this week named my Prospect of the Year for 2018, with a number of other players who were worthy of the title but couldn’t unseat the incumbent. I answered questions on that and other topics in a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new game Disney’s Villainous, a card game that resembles deckbuilders (like Dominion) in mechanics, but gives you your entire deck at the start of the game. Each player plays as a specific villain, with a unique deck and victory conditions, so you learn each deck’s intricacies as you play.

And now, the links…

The best thing you’ll read this week is my friend Anthony del Broccolo’s letter to his late wife, who died unexpectedly in childbirth in June.
Now some longreads: Bleacher Report’s Mina Fader looks at whether concussions from playing football contributed to a 13-year-old’s suicide.
One of Osama bin Laden’s goals was to mire the west in endless, unwinnable wars in the Middle East. The Nation‘s Tom Engelhardt argues that we have given bin Laden his wish.
The use of WhatsApp to spread false rumors led to five killings of innocent men in India when those stories told users that there were child murderers on the loose.
The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast asks is women’s sport in ‘trouble’ as the divide between men’s and women’s sports becomes blurred by scientific advances showing that the split isn’t binary. The podcast rather deftly considers the science of intersex individuals and testosterone production as well as the moral and philosophical questions of fairness and identity, and the ethics of so-called ‘sex verification.’ Castor Semenya, who appears in a new Nike ad just released last month, appears prominently in these discussions, as the IAAF has introduced rule changes that seem to specifically target her.
The New York Review of Books chose to run a self-exonerating essay by Jian Ghomeshi, a Canadian commentator who has been accused by more than 20 women of sexually assaulting and/or physically abusing them. Their editor spoke to Slate about the decision and, in my opinion, absolutely embarrassed himself in the process.
Matthew Desmond, author of the incredible Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, writes in the New York Times that Americans’ belief that jobs are the solution to poverty is wrong. There are structural obstacles to escaping poverty that we must address at the state and federal levels.
Economist Andrew Zimbalist was a longtime opponent of public funding for sports stadiums, but he changed his tune when he was paid $225 an hour by the city of Worcester for its funding efforts for a stadium to house the Pawtucket Red Sox.
I reviewed Maryn McKenna’s new book Big Chicken in July, and she wrote on the same topic – the connection between factory-farming of chickens and the rise of antibiotic resistance – in a long read for WIRED.
Probiotic products – those containing bacteria believed to be beneficial to our digestive systems – are everywhere in the supermarket, the drugstore, the health food store, and more, but they’re probably useless when it comes to boosting your microbiome.
Salon/Rolling Stone looks at how Jimmy Page assembled the original Led Zeppelin lineup.
The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky asks why Sen. Dianne Feinstein sat on the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations for two months.
Brian Buelter writes that Kavanaugh’s repeated attempts to mislead Congress, now and in the early 2000s, are reason enough to reject his nomination.
The Wall Street Journal keeps misreporting the facts and research on gender dysphoria.
Arizona lawmaker Eddie Farnsworth (guess which party) is about to land a $30 million windfall thanks to a state board of education ruling allowing him to profit off converting his state-funded charter schools to nonprofit status. He’s running for the state Senate this November, and I guess he’ll have lots of cash for more campaign ads now.
The Guardian looks at how the Koch Brothers support laws like Arizona’s as part of their effort to undermine public education across the country.
South Carolina did not evacuate prisons in the path of Hurricane Florence, and you can draw your own conclusions why.
The mayor of a South Carolina town just outside of the state capital of Columbia posted anti-Islam memes and comments on Facebook, but then he met Muslim residents of his town and changed his views. Nothing beats intolerance and bigotry like exposure to members of the targeted groups.
A Texas school district is pushing ‘Judeo-Christian values’ in a new curriculum that omits Hillary Clinton but remembers the Alamo. I doubt any single-year curriculum could ever satisfy everyone on what is included or excluded, but no public school district should be pushing religious values in its classrooms.
The Rio Grande, America’s second-longest river, is drying up, and nobody is doing a whole lot to protect it.
Facebook’s “fact-checking” protocols led a right-wing outlet to censor content from ThinkProgress.
Iowa’s favorite white nationalist Congressperson Steve King once again retweeted something from another white nationalist.
The Fix, a site dedicated to stories of addiction and recovery, interviewed comedian and former radio host Jake Fogelnest about his 12 years of sobriety.
The Athletic has a subscriber-only piece on Dustin Ackley, the #2 pick in the 2009 draft whose career may be over at age 30, with some great comments from Ackley on his own raging against the dying of the baseball light. If this is it for Ackley, who was the consensus #2 prospect in the draft after Stephen Strasburg, he’ll probably end up outside of the top 30 players in that draft class by WAR – he’s at #26 now and I see several guys behind him who will probably pass him within five years.
If you have the dungeon-crawl board game Clank! In Space!, the Apocalypse! Expansion is now available at retail.
Asmodee Digital announced they’re porting several popular board game adaptations to Nintendo Switch, including Catan, Carcassonne, and Pandemic.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: addiction, arizona, baseball, board games, cte, environment, gender issues, health, iowa, links, metoo, science, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas

→ September 9, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/8/18.

My one piece for ESPN+/Insider this week looked at the top prospects at last weekend’s Future Stars Series, including Daniel Espino, the top RHP for the 2019 draft, and Glenallen Hill, Jr. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My annual minor league player of the year column is supposed to run this upcoming week, which means I need to write it (it’s not like the winner is a tough choice, but I like to highlight a few other dudes who had great years too), and I am hoping to get a new edition of my email newsletter out as well.

And now, the links…

Slate looks at the sustainability of The Athletic’s business model while raising critical questions about whether their content is actually as unique as they claim it is. (I’m an Athletic subscriber and happy to pay for good content, but I would say I read a very small number of writers on that site.)
Two longreads from the great investigative journalism site ProPublica this week. First, how Oregon keeps releasing violent criminals who were judged criminally insane, with several such convicts eventually reoffending for violent crimes.
Also, José Bacelga, a cancer researcher and the Chief Medical Officer at Sloan Kettering, failed on several occasions to disclose financial conflicts of interest when publishing cancer research in major journals. He was even editor-in-chief of one such journal that published his research yet broke its rules on disclosure.
I loved Will Leitch’s take on Nike choosing to ally itself with Colin Kaepernick despite the entirely expected outcry from the right. I also think they got more publicity value out of the announcement than they could possibly have bought. (Will is a friend of mine.)
Ars Technica, for whom I have written one freelance piece, has a short column asking BBQ pit masters for basic tips on pork butts and briskets. I’ve used the foil trick to get around the stall problem with pork shoulders, but prefer not to use it because it softens the bark that forms on the meat’s exterior.
The President’s increasingly overt racism shouldn’t be a surprise – he’s been attacking Elizabeth Warren for years by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a sort of racial slur to question her integrity. The Washington Post debunks Trump’s claims that she used her heritage to obtain promotions or admission to schools.
A trans woman of color was murdered in Philadelphia this week, and 2018 is shaping up to be an especially deadly year for trans people in the US, although it seems like hard data on the subject is hard to come by. I think it’s fair to say the trend isn’t good – such killings should be going down and they’re probably not.
Passengers on four Southwest Airlines flights may have been exposed to measles thanks to a sick passenger who traveled on those planes. The measles virus is extremely contagious and can be fatal at the time of infection or later in life. I would entirely favor a law criminalizing the woman’s actions: flying with a contagious, vaccine-preventable disease, thus putting hundreds of people at risk.
Ride-sharing services like Uber may be exacerbating traffic problems because riders choose them over public transportation, not over driving themselves. I do use these services from time to time, but not when public transit is available (and safe).
Twitter banned Alex Jones and InfoWars this week after months of pressure to rid the site of the hoax-peddling arch-right conspiracy theory factory and its corpulent founder. Jane Coaston covered these bans last month for Vox, looking at why YouTube, Apple, and Facebook took the same action.
Board games! Z-Man Games, an imprint of Asmodee, announced the latest extension to the Pandemic brand with Pandemic: Fall of Rome, which sounds a lot like last winter’s Pandemic: Rising Tide, another game that took the framework of the original Pandemic, added some clever twists to the rules, and shifted the theme away from fighting global epidemics.
Floodgate Games announced the Kickstarter for Bad Maps, a light family-level strategy game they demoed at Gen Con. It’s about 2/3 to its goal with 18 days to go. Floodgate also released the 5-6 player Sagrada expansion, which includes a private dice board to tweak the original’s dice-drafting mechanic, to retail this past week. It’s $25 on amazon via that link.
Starling Games announced a Kickstarter, opening to backers on September 10th, for Pearlbrook, the first expansion for Everdell, itself in the running for my #1 new game of 2018.
It seems like each week brings one great new(ish) comic on vaccine denialism, so here’s the latest.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bbq, board games, links, media criticism, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ September 1, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/1/18.

My one Insider/ESPN+ piece this week ranked the best tools among MLB players, which is probably my least favorite piece to write each year. And I held a Klawchat this week.

I reviewed the incredible new board game Everdell for Paste this week. It’s got a Stone Age vibe, but adds so much more to that worker placement framework, and the artwork is some of the best I have ever seen.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: There’s a new health scam out there, targeting desperate people like cancer patients, that claims that food-grade hydrogen peroxide can cure many ailments. There is no such thing as food grade hydrogen peroxide, which has never been proven to treat any disease and is very, very dangerous to consume at even moderate doses.
Esquire looks at the imminent global water crisis, caused by overuse, pollution, climate change, and unwise or even deleterious government policies. This, not Islamist terrorism, is the greatest threat to global stability for this century.
Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, has a new book coming out titled Breaking News, on how the business of news has broken the concept of news; his old paper has a lengthy excerpt that focuses on a major phone-hacking scandal within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Recode’s Kara Swisher interviewed OB/GYN and GOOP debunker Dr. Jen Gunter, which you listen to as a podcast or read in a transcript. It’s funny and also very telling about how patients use “Dr. Google,” and how people like Gwyneth Paltrow take advantage of the gullible and the desperate to line their own pockets.
Mother Jones investigates the broken federal student loan forgiveness program, which has had problems for years but has taken a bigger dive off a cliff under Betsy DeVos.
A few weeks ago I posted a story about a female NYU professor accused of harassing a male graduate student, after which many women stood up for her, the predator, not the victim. A graduate student who studied with that professor writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that she believes the accuser, saying that Professor Avital Ronell is a bully while questioning her academic and feminist bona fides.
Conservative writer, evangelical Christian, and Iraq War veteran David French and his wife adopted a two-year old girl from Ethiopia in 2010. He writes for the Atlantic how he has seen attitudes of Americans shift towards hate against his daughter, his wife, and himself for daring to cross racial lines in the name of love. He also covers some policy changes from the current and previous Administrations that have discouraged such adoptions from outside of the United States.
BlacKkKlansman includes a line from David Duke where he mentions being a friend of technology pioneer and Nobel laureate William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor (from which the Traitorous Eight left to found Fairchild Semiconductor). I had no idea that Shockley became an inveterate racist shitstain and eugenics proponent.
The “age of privacy nihilism” is upon us, although I’d argue nothing has really changed – we’ve given away our data for decades, in exchange for the occasional coupon for 50 cents off Nutter Butters.
Mollie Tibbetts was murdered by a man because she dared to say no; that man was Latino, possibly in the U.S. illegally, so within hours of her murder, the white supremacists in power chose to politicize her death (which, I was told, we’re not supposed to do when a white man shoots up a school or a church). Her family is having none of it, and her father came out to show his gratitude for and support of the Iowan Latino community.
The Nordic countries’ economies are often held up, with good reason, as exemplars of Western democracies that use broad social safety nets and other progressive policies to produce high employment rates with low rates of poverty, homelessness, and crime. They also tend to score very high on economic “happiness indices,” but the BBC points out that such rankings obscure increasing mental health issues in those countries, especially among younger citizens.
The collapse of the Venezuelan state and economy has led to a growing refugee crisis in neighboring countries, with this Washington Post article focusing on the Brazilian town of Boa Vista.
The ongoing European measles epidemic has killed 37 people and sickened 41,000 – and remember, children can survive measles only to die of the virus a decade later due to an incurable condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE).
Roland’s Market, the new Phoenix restaurant and collaboration of Chris Bianco and the Holguins (Tacos Chiwas), earned a very positive review from the Arizona Republic.
The Arizona Republican Party packed its Supreme Court, and just got a big win from their efforts, as the Court blocked a ballot measure that could have funded state schools with an extra $690 million. The proposed question had over a quarter of a million signatures. The governor who stuffed the Supreme Court is facing a challenge this November from David Garcia, a Democrat, a veteran, and an education professor at Arizona State. If he wins, he’ll be the first Latinx governor of Arizona in 44 years.
A neuroscientist discusses how skimming rather than deep reading can alter our brains for the worse.
This is simply perfect.

Give Him a Shot pic.twitter.com/RVtd7tVY3L

— Light Roast Comics (@lr_comics) August 27, 2018

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, history of science, links, metoo, phoenix, privacy, pseudoscience, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, Venezuela, water crisis

→ August 25, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/25/18.

I had one Insider/ESPN+ piece this week, scouting notes on Tampa wunderkind Wander Franco and some Yankees & Rangers prospects, and held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I reviewed the gladiator-themed deckbuilding game Carthage for Paste this week. That’s the last of my pre-Gen Con reviews; I believe everything I review the rest of the year will either be from games I got/saw at Gen Con or that were released afterwards.

I’m about due for a fresh edition of my free email newsletter, to which you may wish to subscribe if you enjoy my ramblings.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ESPN’s Jackie McMullen has an excellent piece on the NBA’s progressive efforts to help players battle mental health issues, interspersed with insights from Kevin Love, Paul Pierce, and other players who’ve dealt with anxiety, depression, and panic disorder.
The Guardian looks at TripAdvisor at a crossroads, beset by fake reviews and dealing with many of the same questions of responsibility for content that affect larger tech outfits.
Ten billion dollars a year goes to ‘charities’ who aim to shape public policy, which can both alter public discussion and political votes on topics while also depriving the U.S. Treasury of tax revenue from the associated income. That’s just one revelation in Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker piece on the new era of philanthropy, where the wealthy have more power than ever and often wield it through their foundations.
Radiolab looked at Facebook’s own problems with regulating hate speech in a recent podcast episode that I found very thorough – it doesn’t let Facebook off the hook, but does a solid job of explaining some of the difficulties they face in making decisions on what content to allow and what to delete.
The BBC’s The Inquiry podcast asks if we might see another AIDS pandemic as global health initiatives slow and major aid donors (notably the U.S.) reduce their funding. If our government continues its lurch towards theocracy, you can bet AIDS research and international aid for AIDS treatment will drop.
Russian trolls/bots may have been spreading vaccine denialist views on social media, although Dr. David “Orac” Gorski argues that the media coverage has overstated its prevalence.
Orac was busy this week, with another post on how the Australian edition of 60 Minutes ran a puff piece on a quack stem cell clinic. So-called stem cell therapy has become the next big thing in separating gullible or desperate patients from their money, but the science itself is unproven and very much in its infancy.
Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith writes in the conservative Weekly Standard that there is sufficient grounds for impeachment, and that may lead Trump to try to fire Mueller and any other investigators working on the collusion case.
How do microscopic plastic particles end up in our food chain? Researchers have found so-called microplastics in water supplies, in beer, and even in aquatic creatures we consume, with unknown consequences for the ecosystem and our bodies.
The multi-level marketing scheme known as Herbalife has been around, and been accused of being a scam, for decades now, but somehow they always skate by. (They’re a major sponsor of the LA Galaxy soccer team, and as good an argument as you’ll see for not putting corporate sponsor names on jerseys.) A new lawsuit alleges that Herbalife’s system of paid seminars misleads attendees by promising wealth while siphoning off their money.
Uganda, one of the few African countries where baseball has a presence, may be about to descend into chaos as a popular singer turned rising opposition politician has been jailed and beaten by agents of dictator Yoweri Museveni. Protests against the detention and Museveni’s oppressive rule continue to grow.
Corruption in Louisiana: The state’s Senate President, John Alario, has twice spiked a bill legalizing ride-sharing services to help his friend, who sells insurance to cab companies. This story appeared on ProPublica two days ago; it hasn’t been picked up by any local Louisiana news outlet since.
New EPA rules, relaxing regulations on clean, beautiful coal, will lead to 1400 more deaths per year and up to 15,000 additional cases of respiratory problems, including asthma, due to the fine particulate matter emitted by coal mining and production.
Brooklyn-based pizzaiolo Paulie Gee has been talking about opening a New York-style slice shop for years now, but it appears it will finally open at Franklin & Noble this month.
N.K. Jemisin won her third straight Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Stone Sky, and her five-minute acceptance speech is well worth your time, as it’s by turns funny and inspiring.
My Twitter friend Parker Molloy wrote for the Guardian how she can’t root for the Cubs after their decision to acquire Daniel Murphy, who has expressed anti-gay views without ever retracting or revising them.
Asia Argento, a prominent victim of Harvey Weinstein’s predations, now stands accused herself of statutory rape of a 17-year-old boy; we can believe her claims on Weinstein but still hold her accountable for her own transgressions.
Kelli Ward is running for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat in Arizona on a platform of pro-Trump, white nationalist talking points; she’s even been campaigning with Weird Mike Cernovich, the conspiracy theorist who gained an audience by pushing the bullshit Pizzagate story.
Blake Fahrenthold resigned from Congress over a sexual harassment scandal that U.S. taxpayers helped clear up for him, but blames everyone except himself for his career’s demise.
Georgia’s GOP is trying to suppress the black vote in November by closing polling stations, using the Americans with Disabilities Act as its justification. Majority-black Randolph County did reverse its plans to close seven of nine polling stations after the public outcry. If you live in Georgia, make sure your elected officials know you support voting rights and oppose any attempts to suppress the vote. And voters in other areas should know this is part of a broader, national vote-suppression effort using the same flanking maneuver.
The Washington Post‘s Elizabeth Bruenig argues that it’s time to stop thinking of ‘socialism’ as a dirty word in a piece that argues largely for ‘democratic socialism,’ which is a poorly-named platform of social welfare policies that by and large doesn’t actually require socialism. Socialism has a specific historical meaning: government ownership of major means of production and distribution. It’s been tried all over the world, and it has failed, as it wipes out many of the incentives that drive human decisions in the marketplace. If you want to argue for a stronger social safety net and for policies that strive to reduce structural discrimination and inequality, that’s a debate worth having, but it’s not ‘socialism.’
The New Republic‘s Sarah Jones writes (in a piece from April) that the real campus free speech problem is on the right, not on the left, highlighting cases of punishment for views handed down by evangelical Christian colleges.
A Kansas City TV station suspended a reporter for sharing an article on white privilege on her Facebook page. The incident may also have led to her termination; a KC Star editorial argues that the station was in the wrong. The reporter’s lawsuit against KSHB is still pending.
Amazon appears to have set up a slew of astroturfing Twitter accounts to fight news coverage of poor working conditions at its warehouses.
Researchers at MIT and Harvard have developed a genome test that may help identify patients at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer, and a few other common, often deadly diseases.
The longstanding hypothesis on the cause of age-related cognitive decline has been neuron death and insufficient replacement of those cells to make up for the loss. New research may counter that, showing that the cause might be lost neuron plasticity, which was reversed in mice using the drug fluoxetine, better known as Prozac.
Hua Hsu writes in the New Yorker about the ‘end point’ of representation and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians, the success of which has brought the term representation (back) into the mainstream conversation. Representation matters to the people who haven’t been represented, and if that inconveniences you as someone who has never had to think twice about seeing people who look and sound like you on the big or small screens, well, tough.
Red Raven Games has a Kickstarter running for the second edition of their game The Ancient World.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, arizona, charity, environment, hugo award, links, medicine, pizza, pseudoscience, representation, science fiction, social media, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, voter suppression

→ August 18, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/18/18.

My biggest piece this week was my annual Gen Con wrap-up for Paste, covering the 20 best games I got to play, demo, or just watch at the convention, and discussing pretty much everything else I saw too.

For Insiders, I wrote up what Shane Baz’s inclusion means for the Chris Archer trade, with scouting notes on Adam Haseley, Nolan Jones, and some pitching prospects. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday. Feel free to sign up for more of my ramblings, plus links to all of my content.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times profiles the privacy activists who fought Google, Facebook, & other tech giants over how they used customers’ data.
This research paper from May finds that hospitals’ leverage results in large price swings (PDF) even across “undifferentiated” services between different facilities, one possible contributor to the rising cost of health care that any reform proposal will need to address. Directing patients to lower-cost providers for such basic services could save patients and insurers a significant amount of money.
Food writer Michael Twitty visits his ancestral homeland of Ghana for the first time, in the company of four African-American chefs, to eat traditional Ghanaian food and reconnect with his roots.
Dan Gillmoor, director of the Knight Center at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, calls on all journalists to work together to defend the freedom of the press and expose the degradation of key cultural norms that underpin our society, including voting rights, free speech, and opposition to corruption.
Dr. David Glosser, the uncle of White House policy adviser and xenophobic reactionary Stephen Miller, argues that Miller’s anti-immigration stance is ‘hypocritical’ because Miller wouldn’t be in the U.S. were it not for the same immigration laws Miller is trying to roll back. That’s not a perfect argument – I don’t think it makes Miller a hypocrite for arguing for tighter borders, but it makes his beliefs about the borders inconsistent with his own history.
The Philadelphia Citizen and its partners launched a series of related pieces on the high cost of being ‘broke’ in Philadelphia. For example, WHYY looks at how the cost and limitations of public transit reduce job options for poor Philadelphians.
At the Athletic, Melissa Lockard wrote about her husband’s passing this month at age 41 of a rare cancer. The piece is free for all readers, and is every bit as gutting as you’d expect.
This Royals Review post’s title makes it sound like a mere hit job on the team, but “It is possible that the Royals do not understand how numbers work” makes a smart, broader point that the team’s fealty towards Alcides Escobar is irrational based strictly on the math, without involving emotions at all.
Our jury system is not well built to adjudicate questions of science, a fact demonstrated yet again when a jury decided in favor of a man who claimed Monsanto’s Roundup gave him cancer. The main problem here is that you can pretty much never say what caused someone’s cancer; we can make educated guesses, of course, but cancer is aberrant cell division, and can happen without any apparent external cause.
Then the Environmental Working Group (EWG) opportunistically put out a press release claiming that they found excessive quantities of glyphosate (Roundup) in breakfast cereals, without putting their claims through peer review or explaining why they used a standard of 1/10,000th that of the EPA tolerance for glyphosate. Slate explained why the EWG piece and credulous media reports on it are all bunkum.
An ongoing measles epidemic has sickened over 100 people in 21 states already. And if people try to tell you measles isn’t that bad, ask them if they know about the fatal brain-wasting complication that shows up ten years later.
An 11-month-old boy had a stroke from catching the chicken pox from unvaccinated older siblings. (He was too young for the vaccination.) I don’t understand how this isn’t child neglect. The boy will likely have permanent neurological damage and is at increased risk of another cerebrovascular incident.
I linked to the #MeToo stories on Four Barrel Coffee over the winter, when the scandal first broke. Eight months later, the business is recovering but the owners haven’t divested to employees as they promised. Their reasons aren’t invalid, but when you state to the public and to your workers that you’re going to do something, failing to do so is a serious abdication of responsibility.
This New York Times story asks what happens to #MeToo when the harasser is a feminist professor? The answer, entirely predictably, is that other academics closed ranks around her, rather than believing her accuser.
Neo-Confederates – Christ, how is this even a thing – are now openly courting Russian assistance, which has to be a joke, not that I think these people are smart enough to punk the mainstream media, but white supremacists making friends with our main geopolitical adversary, today and from the last 70 years, is too ridiculous to be real. Of course, these neo-Nazi types ain’t the brightest bulbs.
First We Feast’s Hot Ones videos can be kind of amusing for the guests’ reactions to the spiciest hot sauces they consume as the interview nears its end, but most of the time, that’s been the only appeal for me. Their latest episode with Michael Cera is the best pure interview I’ve seen from the show – and he takes the million-Scoville hot sauce like a damn veteran.
KUOW looks at how Ohio used technology to help clear its rape kit backlog and asks why other states, like Washington, aren’t doing the same.
West Virginia’s Republican Party just pulled an end run around voters to pack its Supreme Court before this fall’s elections.
Joe Scarborough asks why the GOP has abnegated its responsibilities on Russia despite clear evidence that the country interfered in our elections and continues to do so, even trying to stop ongoing investigations into Russia’s efforts.
Georgia leaders are trying to close polling places in heavily Democractic precincts, citing ADA requirements to justify their attempts at voter suppression. The ACLU is fighting it, but the real problem is the 2013 Supreme Court ruling Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
BuzzFeed profiled Parkland shooting survivor Jaclyn Corin, who is less famous than some of her classmates but is more instrumental in organizing the students’ movement for greater gun control.
Entertainment Weekly interviewed Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar on LGBTQ representation in animation and children’s series.
I’m not sure if this Vox piece on why adults find it hard to make and maintain friendships is all that accurate, but its points, especially about being a reliable friend, are worth considering.
Board games: If you’re familiar with the very fun One Night Ultimate Werewolf – which, I recently discovered, my six-year-old niece is shockingly good at playing – there’s a spinoff title, One Night Ultimate Super Villains, on Kickstarter now. It’s a little more kid-oriented in theme and language.
Starling Games has a Kickstarter going for a new expansion to its Alien Frontiers game.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, baseball, board games, environment, first amendment, health, links, privacy, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ August 11, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/11/18.

Just one Insider post this week, with scouting notes on some Yankees, Pirates, and Orioles prospects. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My Gen Con wrap-up is filed to Paste and I’ll update this post with the link when I get it.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter, which I’ve been sending out every ten days or so. And my book, Smart Baseball, is now just $9 on Kindle.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Eater exposes the toxic workplace culture at Estela and other restaurants operated by chef Thomas Carter.
ProPublica exposes the unelected officials who are running the VA from the shadows of Mar-a-Lago.
Dale Murphy, former Atlanta Braves superstar and near-Hall of Famer, wrote the best piece I have seen to date on players’ social media gaffes, such as the extremely bigoted tweets from Josh Hader and Trea Turner. Murphy gets it, and speaks with the gravitas folks like me simply can’t muster. Over at Medium, Justin Megahan asked about the baseball culture that produces young men who think this shit is funny, although I think it’s not specific to baseball, but a function of societal views of masculinity.
A major investigation by liberal rag … um Forbes found that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may have stolen over $120 million from investors, and lied about his assets and business activities on ethics disclosure forms when he was nominated. He’s still employed as of Saturday afternoon. Drain the swamp, indeed.
Twitter’s attempt to remain apolitical by refusing to ban conspiracy theorist and snake oil salesman Alex Jones is in itself a political choice. Parker Malloy writes here that Twitter still can’t figure out what kind of platform it wants to be; I don’t like the platform it has become.
WIRED‘s Issie Lapowsky writes that tech companies can’t win their war against Jones. That may be true, but doesn’t excuse inaction.
Also writing for WIRED, Clive Thompson offers thoughts on how to slow the spread of online hate. Doing nothing or disengaging are not good options.
Slate examines four hypotheses on why Twitter hasn’t moved against Jones yet, none of which is terribly satisfying.
Laura Ingraham went full white nationalist on Fox News this week; the Atlantic called her out on it, both in that her love of “country” seems to ignore this country’s founding principles, and that the population as a whole doesn’t agree with her.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the darling of the progressive left, but her increased media presence has just led to her producing a lot of bullshit answers, including the same kind of myth-repeating that characterizes the alt-right. Her policy proposals are at least interesting enough to discuss, but her sound bytes don’t reveal any depth to her ideas.
The Italian Senate is trying to delay the country’s new mandatory vaccination rules that arose in response to an ongoing measles epidemic in the supposedly developed country.
I’ve never had any use for PETA, and they reminded me why when they attacked Impossible Foods for testing its burgers on rats to satisfy federal safety requirements. If PETA’s interest is in improving the lives and welfare of animals … well, it’s not, as evidenced here. Their interest is in generating headlines. I guess they got their wish.
A couple in New Mexico appear to have stolen a $100 million painting just to keep it in their apartment, and perhaps stolen and sold other art works to finance a lifestyle beyond their apparent means. None of this was discovered until after their deaths, and family members still can’t believe it’s true.
The FDA has approved the first new malarial preventive drug in over 18 years.
One of my Senators, Tom Carper, wrote an editorial assailing the Trump administration’s plans to end emissions standards for cars. It’s going to take years to undo the environmental damage wrought by this regime.
Attorney General Jeff helped block an EPA action against Drummond Coal, one of his biggest donors, while he was still in the Senate, according to testimony in a recent bribery trial of a Drummond executive and a prominent Alabama law firm, both of whom had close ties to .
The sugar industry in Florida is under attack now for its role in pollution that is feeding toxic algae blooms; they’ve also got a long history of labor rights abuses and using tariffs to restrict sugar imports and raise consumer prices. The Florida GOP has historical ties to Big Sugar, and one leading gubernatorial candidate, Adam Putnam, has taken over $8 million in contributions from Big Sugar and its PACS.
Mike Salk, program director for ESPN Seattle 710 and longtime host of the Brock & Salk show, as well as a friend of mine, wrote about how Jim Abbott helped inspire him after an accident damaged his hand at age 12.
The online editorial comics site The Nib has a Kickstarter for them to start a print version of the publication. Some of the best editorial cartoonists online have appeared in the Nib or will appear in the magazine, including Matt “We Should Improve Society Somewhat” Bors.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, baseball, environment, florida, health, links, science, social media, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ August 5, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/4/18.

For Insiders this week, I had a slew of trade writeups:

I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday before I headed off to Gen Con 2018. You can see some of the photos I took there, the country’s biggest board gaming convention, on my Instagram. The writeup will come later this week.

I’ve been better about sending out my free email newsletter lately after slacking a bit during the spring (in large part because I can’t use the site’s editing function on an iPad), so, you know, do that signup.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The hard-to-believe true story of how an ex-cop led a conspiracy to rig the McDonald’s Monopoly game.

The Guardian rank a lengthy excerpt from a new book on denial and denialism, Keith Kahn-Harris’ Denial: The Unspeakable Truth. The excerpt covers a lot of ground, describing why denialism is more than just the denial of truth, why facts tend not to stop or change denialists’ minds, and the dangerous new phase of denialism before us.

The Verge has a longread on the gaming of Amazon’s listings and sales system by self-published romance authors. It’s just a bizarre subculture, and has led to a lawsuit over two authors’ use of the word “cocky” in their books titles. The journalist who wrote this piece, Sarah Jeong, just joined the New York Times editorial board; Vox, which owns the Verge, has a great piece on the non-troversy that alt-right trolls used to try to get her fired.

The Rumpus’ editor Lyz Lenz writes that writing still matters in the age of despair. Write like a motherfucker, as Cheryl Strayed (Wild) once wrote.

Why would the University of Michigan allow the presentation of “research” on homeopathy? Homeopathy is woo. After you dilute the substance in question that many times, all that remains is bullshit.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial board called on the state to crack down on doctors who spread anti-vaccine lies, as California is trying to do.

There’s a huge Dunning-Kruger epidemic in the anti-vaccine community, which has also managed to diverted time and funds away from more important vaccine research towards needless studies debunking claims like the nonexistent vaccine/autism link.

Spike Lee accused the President of giving the green light to the KKK and other hate groups during a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian about his upcoming film Black Klansman.

Gizmodo details how two strangers tried to wreck an Alabama realtor’s life by spreading a false story about the realtor sleeping with someone else’s husband.

The Washington Post looks at the board game Twilight Struggle’s new relevance in this political environment. I happen to find the game wildly overrated; it’s long, hard to set up, and requires intimate knowledge of the two player decks to play it well.

This Psychology Today essay assailing the ‘lack of resiliency’ of today’s college students seems to me to paint with an excessively broad brush, and contradicts the message we give our kids today to reach out when they need help. I’m also a little skeptical of the veracity of some of the stories – they sound like they were crafted for viral tweets – but even if they’re true, I’d rather too many kids ask for help than too few.

The anti-LGBT group Alliance Defending Freedom has been working to undermine basic protections for LGBT citizens, especially trans youth, using disingenuous and even dangerous language.

Former big leaguer Adam Greenberg, whose MLB career consisted of two PA, one in 2005 and one in 2012, is now running for Congress in Connecticut as a Republican. The fact that he’s turning to politics is interesting in itself, but the NY Times author here, John Altavilla, spends almost no time on Greenberg’s policy positions.

Would-be populist – and clear Islamophobe and race troll – Ben Shapiro is backed by a wide network of billionaire conservatives, many of whom also support more reviled figures like Ann Coulter and the Breitbart site.

Turning Point USA, the hard-right conservative group founding by diaper-clad college students, has been courting and praising anti-Semitic troll Bryan Sharpe, who has denied the Holocaust occurred and uses the triple-parentheses notation favored by white supremacists to identify or out Jewish people.

These QAnon people are batshit insane.

The Pennsylvania gun rights lobby watered down a bill aimed at keeping domestic abusers from obtaining guns.

The Washington Post profiled New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, although the piece doesn’t question him enough about their opinion pages.

An Astros fan wrote an open letter to the team’s GM, criticizing the decision to acquire Roberto Osuna.

There’s a new shape in town – really, totally new to mathematicians and physicists, but something that appears in nature: the scutoid.

An “Instagram star” – seriously, how the fuck is this a thing – is in hot water after her cookbook included ‘recipes’ likely to sicken or kill people who try to eat those dishes. One example that would be obvious to anyone who knows food is the advice to forage for and eat raw morels. A good editor is important; a bad one can lead to a PR disaster. Also, maybe don’t give someone who just takes nice pictures a cookbook deal.

Jack White (ex-White Stripes) is now the co-owner of a baseball bat manufacturer.

And finally, a video, as comedian Aamer Rahman explains why there isn’t any such thing as “reverse racism:”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, boardgames, denialism, links, longreads, racism, stick to baseball, vaccines, writing

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