the swamp — Page 2

→ January 14, 2023
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/14/23.

My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30^th.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).

I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.

Patrick Burleigh wrote about growing up with testotoxicosis, an extremely rare condition that causes boys to begin puberty as young as age two.

The Denver Post tells how a consultant to the Denver Art Museum used her position and imprimatur to help an art smuggler move looted items from holy sites in southeast Asia. The consultant, Emma Bunker, died last year.

The New York Times, which was also guilty of the sins described in this article, looks at how biased polls that implied there would be a ‘red wave’ this November screwed up the narrative and led Democrats to commit resources to many of the wrong races.

The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.

You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.

Dr. Céline Gounder, Grant Wahl’s widow, wrote about how anti-vaxxers also pounced on her husband’s death to spread misinformation and outright lies. Fucking ghouls.

A romance novelist faked her own death, and has now returned like nothing ever happened.

The cousin of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter flagged down a police car after an accident. One of the officers Tased the man so extensively that he died of cardiac arrest. Keenan Anderson was unarmed. The LAPD is already blaming the victim, saying he had cocaine in his system, which, last I checked, is not a capital crime.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is weaponizing Florida’s public schools, using political appointees to try to stifle any future dissent coming from its students. Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin explains just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be.

Damar Hamlin’s tragedy has been fodder for anti-vaxxer lies. The BBC also looked at how the conspiracy theorists pounced. So did WBUR, while Forbes looked at the backlash to the anti-vaxxers, including a tweet from yours truly.

A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.

Meanwhile, public confidence in the MMR vaccine, which fights measles, mumps, and rubella, is waning after two years of attacks from denialists and grifters against COVID-19 vaccines.

The BBC invited a cardiologist turned anti-vax grifter (he charges $10K-$20K per speaking appearance now) on air to discuss a cholesterol medication, but he hijacked the interview to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Germany has warned Twitter that it’s running afoul of EU laws against misinformation.

An adjunct professor at Hamline University in Minnesota followed multiple steps before showing a painting of Muhammad in an art class, and was still fired after a Muslim student complained.

Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.

Writer Hilary de Vries described her struggle getting effective treatment for her sister, who has schizoaffective disorder and has trouble holding on to housing.

New York City is paying $135,000 to a homeless man its cops beat and dragged off the subway. The cops lied about him hitting them first, but body-camera footage proved them wrong.

One recent poll found that two-thirds of Britons now want a referendum to rejoin the EU. So it was Leave, Remain, or Regret?

The Times continues to uncover lies and inconsistencies in Rep. George Santos’ background, including possible campaign finance violations.

CNBC joins the parade of investigations into Santos, this time showing his campaign may have committed fraud when a staffer allegedly posed as a member of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s team on fundraising calls.

Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.

For example, Central Bucks schools in Bucks County, which I think is where Deliverance was filmed, have banned teachers from displaying Pride flags or other inclusive materials in classrooms, thanks to a school board dominated by right-wingers.

Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.

Texas’ Department of Agriculture issued a report stating that climate change threatens the state’s food supply. Of course, Gov. Greg Abbott, when he’s not busy spending Texas citizens’ money on busing migrants to northern cities, has blocked local attempts to fight climate change.

In other performative political stunts, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) banned state officials from using the gender-inclusive term “Latinx.” She also signed an order banned state schools from teaching critical race theory, which I hope some Arkansas journalist asks her to define.

Alabama, fighting for the title of America’s biggest backwater, is now claiming (via its Attorney General) that women there who use abortion pills obtained from out of state will be prosecuted, which I don’t think is constitutional but I’m not a lawyer.

A deputy campaign manager for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent an email to teachers asking them to encourage students to volunteer for her re-election campaign in exchange for class credit.

A baseball player for Northwestern has filed a defamation suit against multiple women who accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, even one who did not make those accusations public, according to this Deadspin story.

Scientists have observed quantum interference between two different kinds of particles – similar to entanglement, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” which occurs between two related particles – for the first time.

Why is cutting the U.S. defense budget such a forbidden concept?

Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal explains why passing gun control laws is futile with an archconservative judiciary in place.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, academia, alabama, florida, guns, links, longreads, new york, pennsylvania, philadelphia, physics, police, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp, vaccines

→ November 12, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/12/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote a piece on the folly of the five-year deal for Edwin Díaz, based on the dismal history of deals of four years or longer for free-agent relievers. This was on the heels of last week’s ranking of the top 50 free agents this winter.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Spill, a Pandemic-like cooperative game where players work to contain the damage from a Deepwater Horizon-like oil spill.

My free email newsletter returned last weekend, and with Twitter possibly on its way out, that’s one good way to keep up with everything I write. I’ve also set up accounts on counter.social and cohost, in case either of those proves a worthy alternative (the former is actually okay, if a bit quiet). Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Fiji is among the countries most at risk from the negative effects of climate change, so the country has begun moving entire villages before they end up drowned by rising sea levels. Meanwhile, Egypt is trying to discourage families from having more than two children because climate change is threatening its water supply.
Intelligencer has a long profile of Axel Springer CEO Matthias Döpfner, whose empire includes Politico, Business Insider, and the highly influential German tabloid Bild, calling him part Murdoch and park Musk.
Jane Gross was a pioneer among sportswriters, becoming the first woman allowed to enter an NBA clubhouse (to do her actual job) in 1975, paving the way for generations of women sportswriters who asked for nothing more than the same rights afforded to their male counterparts. Gross died this week at 75.
Four conservative Supreme Court Justices attended a party held by the arch-right Federalist Society this week. Charles S. Pierce calls the four “lackeys” of the group that helped former President Trump shove the entire federal judiciary to the right.
Molly Jong-Fast wrote about Twitter’s implosion and why she’s not leaving it (yet), while one of Twitter’s own lawyers warned that Elon Musk is putting the company at risk of incurring millions of dollars in fines.
The Washington Post has a story on how Twitter & Facebook gave a free pass to GOP election deniers this year.
Dr. Jen Gunter, author of The Vagina Bible, wrote about medical misinformation, social media, and the illusory truth effect, concluding with some advice on how to spot and deal with misinformation when you see it.
60 Minutes ran a segment last Sunday on how social media algorithms further polarize the electorate.
It doesn’t help when Fox News “sources” a bogus story from the misinformation-purveying Twitter account LibsOfTikTok. The claim attacked Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and ran the night before the election.
The midterm results were far better for Democrats than any polls or pundits indicated. Elie Mystal says that taking this as good news is the wrong response, given how Republican gerrymandering continued to artificially boost their results in the House and in state legislatures.
Indeed, four states used gerrymandered maps that courts had deemed illegal in this election, including Ohio, where Republicans have flat-out ignored multiple rulings saying that their map violated federal law.
Meanwhile, Tennessee has made it harder for people convicted of felonies to vote, resulting in over a fifth of its Black citizens losing this constitutional right. That’s on top of gerrymandering the shit out of Nashville to create a red district in a heavily blue city.
I’m sure most of you have already seen this, but the plaintiff in the suit to stop President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program themselves took a $50,000 PPP loan and accepted forgiveness for it rather than paying it back.
The lack of a response from fellow NBA players to Kyrie Irving spreading antisemitic propaganda on social media is disappointing, writes Candace Buckner for the Washington Post.
If you can get past the clickbait tone, there’s a good parenting tip in this article from the mother of the CEO of Youtube and the co-founder/CEO of 23AndMe.
Claims of an “immunity debt” from several years of masking and isolation are unsupported by science. Your immune system doesn’t just forget everything it learned because you weren’t exposed to more pathogens.
The Dragonfly 44 Galaxy appears to comprise 99% dark matter, which would challenge existing ideas of how galaxies evolve.
Board game news: Fit to Print, a new game from the publishers of Cascadia/Calico and the designer of Wormholes & Tiny Towns, is already over $100K raised on Kickstarter in just a few days. I just played Verdant, the newest game from Flatout (the publisher), last night, and it’s excellent.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-semitism, astronomy, board game news, climate change, gerrymandering, links, longreads, ohio, scotus, social media, stick to baseball, tennessee, the swamp

→ October 29, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/29/22.

One new post for subscribers to the Athletic this week – a fairly quickly-written post on what the Yankees could do this winter to fix their club, notably their offense. I’m about ¾ of the way through the top 50 free agents rankings, which will run the day after the World Series ends.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the trick-taking game Cat in the Box, which takes the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment as its inspiration. Cards have numbers but no suits until they’re played – as in, when they’re observed. Apparently my review was so positive the game has sold out everywhere!

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Joe Posnanski, who helped me preview the World Series, talk a little about the highs and lows of the playoffs so far, and talk a little about free agency. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the best story yet on how the couplpe that owns the shipping materials behemoth U-Line uses their profits to fund all kinds of extreme right-wing causes, from election denial to anti-LGBTQ+ laws to anti-abortion laws and more. They oppose anything that might improve workers’ rights or raise taxes on the ultra-rich, too. If you get a box made by U-Line, contact the shipper and ask them to use someone else. I’ve done this many times and only once have I gotten a negative reply – and I won’t do business with that company again.

This Atlantic story about a realtor in Michigan who was convinced he’d cracked the state lottery’s algorithm is a great illustration of our innate tendencies to see patterns in randomness – and how we can convince ourselves of almost anything.

Music journalist and author Caryn Rose ranked all 234 U2 songs for Rolling Stone. I found myself agreeing with most of the top of the list, although as someone who first encountered the band through MTV’s heavy rotation of “New Year’s Day,” I think that one is too low.

MLB.com writer Matthew Monaghan wrote a lovely piece for Travel + Leisure on revisiting his late wife’s favorite vacation spot, Bermuda. It’s a tough but beautiful read.

Texas no longer requires a permit for handguns, leading to more spontaneous shootings. It sounds like police – the blue we’re supposed to back – don’t seem to like this new lawless reality.

The massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, again, a state that decided that anyone can carry a gun without a permit, has made an activist out of one of the 10-year-old survivors.

Why didn’t St. Louis police take the gun from the kid who killed a teacher and another student in a school there last week, since he failed a background check?

At The Verge, Nilay Patel writes how Elon Musk can’t possibly adhere to his stated “free speech” goals and run what was already a “disaster clown car company” profitably. It’s not hard to agree – Twitter hasn’t been growing, its ad revenues lag behind any competitors, it faces a tangle of regulations and pressure from markets where Musk’s Tesla wants to grow, and the site has never figured out how to deal with harassment and abuse. I’m not leaving, but I’ve already been engaging less on the site, and if a viable alternative emerges I’ll gladly check it out.

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories spreading on the farcical social media app Truth Social have led to actual armed idiots “patrolling” around ballot boxes to try to spot voter fraud.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to three scientists for their work on quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein once derided as “spooky action at a distance.” Author John Horgan writes of the beauty of this work and how it seems to defy common sense for Scientific American.

Physicist Peter Fisher gave a talk at my alma mater about the search for dark matter and the theory that WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are what make up this missing mass.

The Washington Post reports on the network of people helping direct pills to terminate pregnancies to people in states where abortion is now illegal.

Disinformation dealer Dinesh D’Souza’s publisher deleted defamatory details after recalling his new book 2000 Mules, even though he’d promised to name names. What a ding-dong.

As President, Trump had his hotels charge the Secret Service – and thus, all of us who pay taxes – five times the maximum room rate allowed by federal law, and then he lied about it.

I don’t link to the Federalist, a disinformation-spewing site funded by the owners of U-Line, very often, but this piece arguing that conservatives should fight for stronger government and more intervention in all areas of society certainly seems to remove the mask from the extreme right, because that is not conservatism – it’s fascism.

In good Administration news that seems to be flying under the radar, President Biden is moving to cancel a program to develop a new submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile, which wouldn’t have been ready until 2035 and which the administration says is redundant with existing weapons. Some anti-nuclear weapon groups say Biden hasn’t gone far enough. The military, meanwhile, wants all the weapons.

As the parent of a teenager, I often feel like part of my job is try to reduce the stresses she faces in school and life, because we hear so much about how much stress our kids are under and I have a natural instinct to want to protect her. Psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues instead that we should teach our teenagers to embrace stress so they’re better equipped to handle it throughout their lives.

Longtime Philly Inquirer writer Stephanie Farr wrote a fun piece on Philadelphia sports fandom.

Over 250 writers signed a letter to Penguin Random House protesting the publisher’s $2 million book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, given her pivotal role in removing a fundamental right from tens of millions of Americans.

Board game news: Aegean Sea, the newest game from Glory to Rome co-designer Carl Chudyk, is up on Backerkit with 12 days to go.

Oh My Brain!, a new game from Bruno Cathala and Theo Riviere, is now up for pre-order at $5 off on 25^th Century’s website.

The Queen’s Dilemma, a standalone sequel game to the Spiel-nominated King’s Dilemma, is closing in on $400K raised on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, guns, links, longreads, misinformation, missouri, parenting, philadelphia, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ March 13, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/13/22.

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

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

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

And now, the links…

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

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

→ March 5, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/5/22.

I answered some questions on the Blue Jays’ farm system this week, which was a transcription of my appearance on our Spin Rates podcast. The Klawchats returned this week. I’m planning to start written draft coverage this upcoming week with a top 30.

On my own podcast, my guest was author and journalist Kathryn Schulz, talking about her wonderful new memoir Lost and Found, about the death of her father and how she met and married her wife, the author Casey Cep. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. I appeared on the Romantic About Baseball podcast as well.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Why are Wisconsin judges charging women who accuse their husbands of abuse? ProPublica documents the case of one woman who did just that and lost custody of her four kids because the judge charged her with contempt four times and ordered her arrest.
The New Yorker has a tremendous interview with J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, conducted by Helen Rosner, as his new book The Wok hits shelves on Tuesday.
My friend Tim Grierson wrote about Tears for Fears’ enduring hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
I don’t know if this New York Times piece, on how RFK Jr.’s family friends feel about his descent into anti-vaxx grifting, is helpful or not.
Two new pre-prints show more evidence for a zoonotic origin for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. There’s also a follow-up thread that underscores one of the findings that wasn’t well-covered in that article. Needless to say, the lab-leak grifters were quick to attack – the author of a book that depends on the lab-leak hypothesis asked her followers on twitter to harass one of the journal’s editors to try to stop publication, and is trying increasingly desperate attacks on the pre-prints.
Also, a new journal article found that gender-affirming care improved mental health outcomes in transgender children. Just in case you weren’t clear on what was going on in Texas and anywhere the Republican Party is in charge. Oh, Texas Children’s Hospital has paused hormone therapies for trans kids, thanks to the state’s directive. These could be your kids. We should all be outraged.
Of course, now pro-Putin propaganda is flooding anti-vax groups online, along with the usual anti-science and anti-Semitic nonsense.
There’s no evidence that wearing a mask leads to physical or psychological harm for kids. They don’t cause carbon dioxide poisoning, don’t lead to developmental delays, and help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
The Biden Administration’s most recent moves have killed our collective approach to slowing the pandemic, by taking measures designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society and making them into personal decisions.
Now anti-vaxxers are trying to convince parents not to take their kids to the pediatrician.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and state Sen. Wendy Rogers are both directly connected to white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The connection may be part of why Ducey declined to run for the U.S. Senate this week.
Supreme Court nominations have become a farce because of a Supreme Court ruling, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
While nobody was paying much attention, Trump endorsed a right-wing plan to take over the GOP – and steal an election or two.
The newly-elected government of Honduras is going to ban open-pit mining, a profitable but environmentally disastrous practice.
A small bit of good environmental news: the scourge of purple sea urchins that has devastated the California coast’s kelp forests has led to a new industry that harvests and farms the urchins to sell uni, the roe of sea urchins often found at sushi restaurants, in turn easing some of the pressure on the kelp forests.
Missouri lawmakers are rushing to legalize sports betting, but only in casinos and sports stadiums. So who’s funding them?
Legendary video game designer Sid Meier (Civilization, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon) warned of the dangers of the industry’s shift towards in-game purchases.
My friend Zabe Bent was quoted in a brief NY Times piece on how best to design bike lanes in cities.
Board game news: Capstone Games opened pre-orders for the Terra Mystica: Big Box, including the base game, two expansions, and a solo “Automa” mode, for $149.95.
Library Labyrinth, a cooperative library-themed board game from the left-wing publisher Dissent Games, is now on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, environment, links, longreads, missouri, Music, russia, stick to baseball, the swamp, video games

→ February 26, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/26/22.

No new content directly from me this week for subscribers to the Athletic, but if I can shake this cold I have right now – the first time I’ve been sick since we all started masking just under two years ago – I’ll have a draft piece this upcoming week. I have done Q&As with our beat writers who cover the Orioles, Dbacks, Pirates, Red Sox, Twins, and Royals, and subscribers can also see all parts of my prospects ranking package here.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Matthew Murphy, lead singer and songwriter of the Wombats, talking about their latest album Fix Yourself, Not the World; his unusual lyrics; and mental health. Listen via The Athletic or subscribe on iTunes, Amazon, that other site, or wherever you get your podcasts. My free email newsletter returned last week as well, catching those of you who subscribe up on various things from my life from the last month as well as links to all the things I have written since the start of 2022.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The wife of a Supreme Court justice was active in the efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election. Ginni Thomas is also active in the fight to ban abortion in the United States, while her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, has been flouting ethics guidelines for decades by attending events for her pet causes.
Forbes writer Laura Shin identifies the man likely behind a 2016 crypto hack that stole abouto $11 billion in Ethereum.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the head of the state’s power grid to keep wholesale power prices at their maximum level, tossing billions in extra revenue to power companies, during the state’s deep freeze last winter.
Two separate research teams used machine-learning tools to identify the same two men as the likely initiators of the QAnon hoax. Ron Watkins, one of the two men, has been identified by previous efforts as well.
Reuters explains how a glitch in software used to hack a Saudi activist’s iPhone revealed how the Israeli company NSO Group was helping governments spy on their own citizens across the world.
Even a mild case of COVID-19 can lead to much higher heart disease risk after the infection is over.
Another grifter has emerged in the COVID-19 denial world – Marc Girardot, who wants you to subscribe to his substack even though he evinces ignorance of basic chemistry.
China employed thousands of fake Twitter accounts to push propaganda around the recent Winter Olympics.
Tucker Carlson started backpedaling after years of his praise for Vladimir Putin showed up on state-run TV in Russia this past week. Then the Fox News host said putting Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court would make the U.S. like Rwanda, his go-to country for white nationalist commentary even though Rwanda has a lower homicide rate than the United States.
A California couple faces charges of bilking $2.8 million from Grand Rapids School District using some pretty basic phishing techniques.
The Baltimore Museum of Art hired some of its security guards to curate special exhibitions of artworks the guards selected from the collection.
Singer Isobel Campbell offered her tribute to former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan, who died this week at age 57.
The Lord of the Rings series has sparked ridiculous criticism over its casting of nonwhite actors as (checks notes) dwarves and elves and such.
My editor at Paste got to check out the new Disney hotel/LARP experience the Galactic Starcruiser, writing about the juxtaposition of being in a fictional war setting while an actual war was going on; as did a writer for Gizmodo, who noted that a two-day stay for a family of four will run you $6000.
The cooperative board game The Warriors: Come Out and Play, based on the cult classic film from 1979, is now on sale.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, cryptocurrencies, disneyworld, hoaxes, links, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ November 6, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/6/21.

My one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic ranks the top 50 free agents in this winter’s class. I also held a Zoom Q&A via The Athletic’s Twitter account. I feel like those don’t get as many questions as my old Periscopes did, so please let me know how I can make it easier for you to ask questions when I do them.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition, the shorter, streamlined version of the massive Terraforming Mars board game. I think it’s better than the original, which is a heavy (physically and in terms of complexity) two-hour affair that just doesn’t benefit enough from the difficulty or length it entails.

My podcast was off this past week, but will return this Tuesday with a new episode. I was on the Athletic Baseball Show again on Friday, which you can catch on Apple or Spotify.

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: How two BBC journalists risked their careers to expose Jimmy Savile’s decades-long history of child molestation, and how various people in power tried to squash the story.
Insider’s Julia Black has a damning exposé of Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, with multiple women accusing him of engaging in nonconsensual violent behavor during sex. Much of the subsequent coverage focused on the stock price of Penn National Gaming, which owns 36% of Barstool, rather than the actual substance of the allegations. The Cut has a summary if you’re not an Insider subscriber.
A cheating scandal rocked the bridge world, leading to mass forfeits at a recent European championship.
In 1994, Rodney Wilson, a high school teacher in Mehlville, Missouri, came out to his students, and nearly lost his job. Things in Missouri aren’t really much better 27 years later, as a gay teacher in Neosho was forced to resign because parents said he was going to “teach their kids to be gay.”
ProPublica exposes how Gov. Jim Justice (R), Gov. Jared Polis (D), former Secretary of Edumucation Betsy DeVos (R), Sen. Rick Scott (R), and other wealthy Americans avoid paying most or all income taxes, using loopholes around philanthropy, family trusts, the SALT deduction, and other forms of chicanery.
Via Craig Calcaterra, who posted this link in his newsletter this week, a story from Bitter Southerner on what exactly is “Braves Country,” and the lies Atlanta fans are telling themselves about the team’s name, imagery, and chop.
Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the developer of cognitive behavioral therapy (itself a rejoinder to Freudian analysis), died this week at age 100.
There’s been some real-world fallout at GrubStreet from the Bad Art Friend story.
Whether the non-troversy over Critical Race Theory caused the Virginia gubernatorial race outcome or not, it is a non-troversy and the guy stoking it admitted as much on Twitter. He’s funded by dark-money titan Charles Koch, of the Koch Brothers. Don’t fall for it.
The HPV vaccine is cutting cervical cancer cases by nearly 90%. Can your horse deworming paste do that?
A new wave of COVID-19 cases, mostly among unvaccinated people, has overwhelmed Colorado ICUs. Gov. Polis (D), mentioned above, has refused to reinstate any sort of mask mandates or restrictions on capacity.
The Harvard Gazette asked a pediatrician about vaccinations for 5- to 11-year-olds.
Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, the quack who testified before the Ohio legislature that COVID-19 vaccines would make you magnetic, bragged about traveling on airplanes while sick with COVID-like symptoms. Ohio still hasn’t yanked her medical license.
The so-called ivermectin meta-analysis preprint that claimed to show evidence the anti-parasitic drug worked against COVID-19 has completely fallen apart now that three of the studies it used have been retracted (or otherwise shown to be bogus).
A great thread on the value of mentorship, in this case in academia, but applicable to all fields.
Senator Tom Carper (D), one of our two Senators from Delaware, wrote an editorial in the Delaware News-Journal indicating that he has finally come around to supporting ending the filibuster. Here’s hoping he can convince Sen. Chris Coons (D) of the same.
And the grift goes on till the break of dawn: Trump’s DC hotel cashed in big-time on the January 6^th insurrection.
Do you want to be better at recycling? And sometimes you put stuff in the yellow (or green) bin that belongs in the trash? You’re wishcycling, and might actually be making the situation worse. Here’s a guide to doing recycling better. Did you know you can recycle pizza boxes after all? I had always read that the grease stains on them made them unsuitable for recycling, but it turns out that that is incorrect.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coronavirus, delaware, environment, links, longreads, missouri, psychology, the swamp

→ 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.

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

→ October 10, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/10/21.

My only content for subscribers to The Athletic this week was my contribution to our playoff predictions, where I pointed out that the evidence says playoff predictions by humans are probably no better those by than a dart-throwing monkey. I only got one of the wild-card winners right, and at the moment one of my four LDS picks is down 0 games to 2. Anyway, I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the semi-cooperative horror-themed board game Deranged, which I found too derivative of games like Arkham Horror without offering enough new ideas or mechanics.

On my podcast, I spoke with Jeremy Booth, founder of Program 15 and the Future Stars Series, talking about the 2022 draft’s deep high school class, player development in the majors, and more. You can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I will not have a new episode this week due to travel, but will return on the 18^th.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, although I held off sending one this week with nothing immediate to promote. 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: The best thing I read this week was this Guardian longread on how the Booker Prize works – how judges are chosen, and how in turn they choose the shortlist and the ultimate winner. The UK’s rough equivalent to our Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Booker confers financial success on nearly all of its winners, often changing the courses of their careers.
Ed Yong writes that we are unprepared for the next pandemic as we refuse to learn lessons from our mishandling of this one.
A “dead” oil tanker that has been moored at a Yemeni port for 45 years is in danger of falling apart, sinking, or blowing up, all of which would lead to a massive humanitarian and environmental disaster, with minimal plans to prevent this catastrophe and no help from the Houthi forces that control western Yemen and its Red Sea ports.
Students who were victims of sexual assault at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical Christian college, found themselves blamed and punished while their abusers often escaped consequences. The same school fired a professor who helped students file a Title IX complaint a few years ago. Just like Jesus told his followers to do!
You read about the bad art friend, right? You should read about the bad art friend.
Kellogg workers are on strike, after months of being forced to work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day, and now threats to outsource their jobs. You may choose to join me in avoiding buying their products while their workers are fighting for basic rights.
Case reports continue to show the risk of death and severe illness in children who contract COVID-19, such as the 8-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who died of cerebral edemas due to COVID infections.
Yet another ivermectin/COVID-19 study that claimed to show a benefit has serious problems with its data.
Writing in The Cancer Letter, the newsletter of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Arthur Caplan, who has written several books on the policies of Nazi Germany called out the non-virologist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s recent comparison of COVID-19 mitigation measures to fascism, calling them “fundamentally racist.”
Moderna is prioritizing profits over public health, keeping prices for its COVID-19 vaccines out of reach of many poorer countries. Is the global benefit of curtailing the pandemic enough that wealthy nations should subsidize vaccinations in poorer ones?
“Pro-life” Missouri Governor Mike Parson (R) declined to stay the execution of a man with the mental capacity of a small child, because nothing says you believe in the sanctity of life like signing off on a state-sponsored murder.
The vice-chair at the Fed shifted his portfolio towards stock ahead of a big announcement last year, as did two other Fed officials, which should make you ask why people in those positions are allowed to trade in equities at all.
The “Evolved Apes” NFTs turned out to be a scam. Color me shocked that a new, unregulated market is rife with fraud and con artists.
The Biden Administration says they want science advisers, but they haven’t been listening to them when it comes to policy choices.
I know very, very little about this topic, but thought this piece from Matt Yglesias on the “mobilization delusion” of progressives was well argued.
Literary Hub has a piece on how Rush’s lyricist/drummer Neil Peart helped lure young listeners over to the “dark side” of Ayn Rand, the terrible novelist.
Board game news: Asmodee imprint Space Cowboys announced a new edition of the out-of-print game Jamaica, a popular family game
The Kickstarter for Mythwind, a cooperative, asymmetrical game, is over $666,000 as I type this, and keeps going up, with 21 days to go.
Board & Dice announced Tabannusi: Builders of Ur, a heavy worker placement game co-designed by Daniele Tascini (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan).
The Kickstarter for North Star Games’ new Alice in Wonderland-themed game Paint the Roses will open up on October 12^th.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coronavirus, environment, links, longreads, man booker prize, missouri, stick to baseball, the swamp

→ October 2, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/2/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my hypothetical ballots for the six major postseason awards. Fans are taking it extremely well, as you might imagine.

On my podcast, I spoke with Conor Murphy of the band Foxing, talking about their new album Draw Down the Moon and our mutual interest in games – he’s particularly into D&D and Magic: the Gathering, but we talk a lot about tabletop games we both enjoy. They’re hitting the road next week with Manchester Orchestra and I’m bummed I’ll be in Arizona for Fall League when they come through my area. You can hear their newest album on Spotify, and you can subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes. I was also on the Athletic Baseball Show again on Friday, where you can hear me say Dylan Carlson might be a breakout candidate for 2022, which I recorded a few hours before he hit 2 homers against the Brewers.

Over at Paste, I recapped my experience at Gen Con, running through every game I saw or played at the convention, and ranked the ten best games I tried.

I’ve been better about sending out my email newsletter this past month, with this week’s edition talking about how challenging I’ve found my role as an adjunct at a local university. 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: The Guardian profiles Prof. Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author who has emerged as a major celebrity in the culture wars while allying himself with some disreputable figures, including the white supremacist blogger Steve Sailer. Pinkerite, a blog dedicated to exposing Pinker’s links to bogus “race science” proponents, asks if this column is “the end of the gentlemen’s agreement” to avoid asking Pinker about his history of defending and working with white supremacists.
Zach Helfand writes in The New Yorker about the imminent arrival of the automated strike zone and the loss of the human element. I disagree with the basic premise here – as you might have guessed – but there’s one point worth bearing in mind: The actual strike zone is probably a lot smaller than the de facto one umpires call, and that might mean more walks and longer games.
From October of 2020, WIRED looks at the cultural problems that have bedeviled Amazon’s attempts to buy its way into the gaming market.
My colleague Meg Linehan wrote a powerful investigative report on NWSL coach Paul Riley’s history of abusive behavior towards his players, including rape, after which his employers, the North Carolina Courage, terminated him within hours.
A 2019 book called The Psychology of Pandemics presaged much of our country’s reaction to this current one.
Pitcher Kieran Lovegrove came out as bisexual, making him just the second player ever in affiliated baseball to do so and the closest player to the majors as well.
A 10-year-old girl in Virginia died of COVID-19 after she was told to walk sick kids in her class to the nurse.
As more evidence emerges against the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory, why does the mainstream media continue to push it?
Youtube appears to be finally moving to ban all anti-vaccine content.
The New York Times did what it too often does, highlighting the views of the deranged few, here talking to New York state health care workers who said they’d choose job loss over vaccination, but I think there’s a subtle message here: These people will use any loophole they can find to avoid the consequences of their choices, like claiming a religious exemption they don’t merit.
Yale historian Dr. Beverly Gage resigned as head of the school’s Program in Grand Strategy, citing the school’s unwillingness to fend off influence from conservative donors, including San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson, whom you might remember from his donations to Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn.
UNC officials met with an Israeli diplomat who pressured them to remove a teacher who criticized Israeli policy while teaching a class on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) used her office to pressure a subordinate to issue Noem’s daughter a real estate appraiser’s license, according to the Argus-Leader.
Toxic microbial blooms on freshwater lakes and rivers may be a harbinger of a coming mass extinction event.
The New York Times’ Pete Wells offered an unflattering review of Eleven Madison Park’s new $335 vegan tasting menu.
Board game news: Days of Wonder is selling pink train sets for Ticket to Ride, with $2 from each $4.95 going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
The massive 4X game Voidfall, from European publisher Mindclash, is nearing $1MM raised already on Kickstarter.
Queen Games is publishing four Stefan Feld “city collection” games, three of which are reimplementations of older games of his (Bruges, Macao, and Rialto) and one of which is new, with a deluxe edition bundle that costs $695. (Not a typo.) I’m not linking to that nonsense, but I am linking to this video critique of Feld’s cultural appropriation in the game Marrakesh, including an embarrassing photo of him in a fez holding some sort of chain to an invisible camel. That this is still happening in 2021 – seven years after Bruno Cathala put actual slave cards in Five Tribes, which is the first major outcry to result in a change to a game that I can remember – boggles my mind. Whether you agree that this is cultural appropriation, or merely harmless appreciation, it was completely unnecessary, and says to me that no one around Feld or Queen thought to say, “hey, maybe this is a bad idea.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, board game news, environment, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, vegan

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