utah — Page 2

→ December 6, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/6/21.

We had a busy weekend of decorating the house, including acquiring the largest tree I’ve ever owned (since we have one room with exceptionally high ceilings, it seemed irresponsible to fail to take advantage of it), which means this post is late. I had a whole slew of posts for subscribers to The Athletic last week, however, including

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, the sequel to the 2019 Kennerspiel winner, and I think a small but significant improvement over the original. At Ars Technica, I contributed twenty new entries to their Ars Technica’s ultimate board game gift guide.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, with a story about being too judgmental and learning to get past it. And finally, with Christmas just three weeks away, here’s another reminder 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: This Columbia Journalism Review report on the hazards of social media for journalists is spot-on, and I wish the people running major social-media outlets would read and internalize its lessons. I can also say that ESPN’s ill-conceived, ambiguous, and inconsistently enforced social media policy ranks as the #1 reason I left the company. The straw that broke the camel’s back isn’t even public, but it related to this.
Utah, a state run by conservatives at all levels, makes it so hard to get public aid that some people join the Mormon Church to qualify, even if they don’t believe in the tenets of that sect.
This August piece in Science on how variants emerge and change the way the pandemic goes seems just as important now.
The longrunning debate over whether you can plagiarize a recipe has reared its head again, after a published recently pulled a book from circulation after discovering that the author had copied recipes and stories from another book. (The short answer here is that you can’t plagiarize – or copyright – a recipe, but you can plagiarize or copyright the text around it.)
The BBC Three spoke to multiple victims of sexual assalt about rape culture in British schools and authorities failing to do enough about it.
We are witnessing the end of “Roe v. Wade,” writes Elie Mystal in the Nation. Elections have consequences.
The New York Times ran two powerful editorials about abortion this week: one from a woman who was raped by her father and had an abortion, and another from a woman who didn’t have an abortion but “erased” the future she’d planned for herself, speaking very plainly about a life-altering decision from when she was 19.
Once again, for the people in the pack: Pregnancy is not a riskless, health-neutral event.
Anti-mask lunatics outed the trans child of the local school board chair, so now the family is moving out of the district.
Men who get COVID-19 have a sixfold risk of experiencing erectile dysfunction after the infection.
Many self-styled “experts” who minimize or deny the effects of COVID-19, or who soft-deny the vaccines’ efficacy, or push fake treatments, are now trying to brand themselves as “medical conservatives.”
With the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor coming up tomorrow, it’s good to remember that army leaders rejected evidence that the naval base was vulnerable to just such an attack, demonstrated during a simulation (that sure sounds like a board game) by one of its own officers. It’s a cool blend of cognitive dissonance and old-fashioned racism.
A county judge told the Alabama coal miners union currently on strike against Warrior Met Coal they can’t protest outside the company’s offices. I am not a lawyer, but this seems questionable on First Amendment grounds, no?
Scientific American explains how the brain switches between languages.
Is there simply too much culture – film, TV, music, video games, podcasts, and more – for us to consume?
Former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes (D) now faces charges of misusing her office for political and personal gain from the state ethics commission.
A defense industry worker says we need to cut the defense budget.
Cleveland is asking taxpayers to pony up for improvements to the Guardians’ statement. Don’t fall for their nonsense about “economic impact.”
There’s a fight brewing in St. Louis over who gets how much of the $500 million payday from their lawsuit against the Rams and the NFL.
The same government ding-dongs in Missouri who accused the Post-Dispatch of hacking for discovering a huge security flaw in a state website were originally going to thank the paper for it.
The media treats President Biden worse than it treated Trump, and that’s a huge problem.
Longtime Montréal chef and co-founder of Joe Beef David McMillan has retired from cooking at age 50.
I enjoyed this comic video explanation of how the west allowed omicron to happen (even if he does misspell it in his caption).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, baseball, coronavirus, Economics, longreads, missouri, rape culture, social media, Sports, stick to baseball, utah, world war ii

→ November 20, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/20/21.

I had two new posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on the Noah Syndergaard signing and one on the Eduardo Rodriguez signing.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Genotype, the latest boardgame from Genius Games, a company that creates games that incorporate real math/science concepts into its titles so they’re educational as well as fun. I think this is their best effort yet.

No podcasts this week, but my show will return next week. I did send out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. 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: New York has the inside story of reporter Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit against her employer, the Washington Post, with some damning details about the now-retired executive editor Marty Baron, one of the heroes of Spotlight.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) pardoned Dontae Sharpe, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and served 26 years for it, even though a key witness recanted her testimony just months after his trial.

Sugar companies burn the fields as part of the harvest, which may be causing respiratory ailments in the south Florida communities around the sugar fields.

The New Yorker looks at how little the Southern District of Georgia does for indigent people charged with federal crimes, and where judges have undue influence over the public defender’s office.

Coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, is a Yemeni product, but the Yemeni people have not benefited from its explosion into a high-end product consumed around the world. Some Yemeni entrepreneurs in Brooklyn are trying to change that, with coffee shops that use Yemen-grown coffee – no mean feat given the chaos and devastation of seven years of civil war there.

A Latino police officer in Joliet, Illinois, leaked official video that showed a colleague choking and slapping a suspect who was dying of a drug overdose. The police union’s response was to kick him out, and the DA has filed criminal charges against him.

Law professor Dorit Reiss breaks down the Court of Appeals’ stay of President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, saying the decision is based on dubious legal arguments.

Could Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) lose in 2022, either in the primary or to independent challenger Evan McMullin?

Cry me a river: People buying fake vaccine cards are getting scammed by fraudsters. What if, instead, they just got the safe, effective vaccine?

Masks are the most effective non-pharmaceutical intervention at preventing the spread of COVID-19, according to a new meta-analysis published in the BMJ.

Conspiracy theorists are moving from COVID-19 denialism to climate denialism. Once you’ve decided that evidence doesn’t matter, you can be convinced of anything.

Wisconsin Republicans are trying to decertify the 2020 election and take over the state’s elections infrastructure. If you live there, are you okay with this?

Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans in the state House have passed a ban on vaccine mandates. I thought Republicans opposed excessive government interference? I must be thinking of some other brand of Republicans.

How should we deal with racism in popular children’s books?

Remember that NYU economics prof who claimed only 500 Americans would die of COVID-19?

Science fiction writers rejoice as a new study claims it might be possible to traverse great distances through space via wormholes.

Board game news: iello, publisher of King of Tokyo, Decrypto, and this year’s Khôra, suddenly cut ties with its U.S. distributor iello USA.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, coronavirus, denialism, environment, georgia, longreads, metoo, north carolina, physics, stick to baseball, utah, vaccines, wisconsin

→ November 14, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/14/20.

For subscribers to The Athletic, I wrote about the major rule changes in MLB in 2020 that might stick around, and which ones might be worth keeping. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed The Search for Planet X, a deduction game that is one of the best board games I’ve played all year.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was Fangraphs managing editor Meg Rowley, talking with me about the state of baseball, free agency, and some recent managerial hires. My podcast is now available on Amazon podcasts as well as iTunes and Spotify.

I’m due for another edition of my free email newsletter, this weekend, I hope.

As the holiday season approaches, I’ll remind you every week that my books The Inside Game and Smart Baseball make excellent gifts for the baseball fan or avid reader in your life.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: In Arkansas, tenants who fall behind on their rent can end up in jail, because apparently that state is still operating like the setting of a Dickens novel. The law dates back to the turn of the last century and even prosecutors say it’s probably unconstitutional. ProPublica examines the law and cases where people, often women and people of color, have been further victimized by it. Arkansas voted overwhelmingly red this month, giving Trump, his sycophant Sen. Tom Cotton, and three of their four Representatives at least 60% of the vote, while elections in the two chambers of their state legislature went more than 3 to 1 for Republicans.
An extensive disinformation campaign run by Russian and Syrian intelligence agencies led to the suicide of the founder of Mayday Rescue, best known as the group that helped create Syria’s White Helmets.
Scientists may have solved the information paradox of black holes, which was first described by Stephen Hawking. Black holes appear to be able to ‘shed’ information, rather than simply absorbing (and thus destroying) all information that enter them. This goes against Einstein’s theory of general relativity, instead relying on quantum gravity.
From September of 2019, this Washington Monthly story profiles a far-right Youtube hatemonger whose rise in popularity has been a nightmare for establishment conservatives – yet they have no problem courting that audience’s votes come elections.
Protocol has a brief history of Discord, the popular social media app for gamers (which I’ve used several times to demo board games with publishers), although it’s still not really clear how the company can monetize this large audience.
Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Revolution led to a change in how its democracy works, powered by a new platform called vTaiwan that facilitates discussion of policy matters and encourages consensus rather than the chaos typical of social media.
Rev. Raphael Warnock is a Democrat running against Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of the two runoff elections in Georgia in January, and Republicans are attacking him for a 2002 arrest for obstruction of justice … which was for objecting to police interrogating minors without a lawyer or guardians present. The investigators later apologized.
Meanwhile, multi-millionaire Sen. David Perdue (R), facing Jon Ossoff (D) in the other runoff, is a climate change denier who owns a beachfront mansion in a neighborhood that has taken extensive steps to protect itself from rising sea levels.
And major GOP donors are pouring money into the state to try to preserve the GOP’s advantage in the Senate.
Several State Senate candidates in Florida were fake candidates funded by dark money to confuse voters into not voting for Democrats – such as an Alex Rodriguez running against the Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez in a district the Republican won by just 31 votes.
This was published the day before the election, but Vox described some activist groups’ plans to fight back when Trump refused to concede the election, some of which we’ve seen already in action.
A Republican firm run by a top aide on Trump’s campaign sent out mass, unmarked tests to Philly supporters urging them to protest vote-counting in the city.
From Nate Silver: Joe Biden won pretty convincingly in the end.
Jennifer Rubin (writing in the Washington Post) writes that changing demographics spell trouble for the Republican Party going forward as their path to the Presidency gets narrower.
The same paper reports on the shift of Latinx voters in the Rio Grande valley towards Trump, even as the state as a whole moved towards Biden, underscoring the diversity of the Latinx population, especially when it comes to what issues and policies matter to each voter, and the Democrats’ messaging failure in that region.
Roxane Gay wrote for the New York Times that the continued support for Trump is a disgrace, but that she’s energized and ready to fight for a better future. I don’t understand how 70 million Americans can see (gestures wildly around self) this and say they want four more years of it.
This Twitter thread undercuts any arguments in favor of the Electoral College, asking whether its defenders even understand what they’re defending.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito went on a steeply partisan rant while speaking at the Federalist Society. Not for nothing, but the house impeached SCOTUS Justice Samuel Chase in 1804 on grounds that he was too partisan.
Public health experts and scientists say Utah’s government is ignoring their calls for action to stop the state’s COVID-19 surge, with an infection rate of 1.17, 81.3 daily new cases per 100,000 residents, and less than 25% of their ICU beds available.
Meanwhile, Florida hired an unqualified, conspiracy theory-touting sports blogger for its COVID-19 task force. He showed up in my mentions one time with some bullshit about masks being ineffective (fun fact – they are, and the CDC just updated their recommendations to say that masks offer the wearer more protection than previously believed).
WHYY’s The Pulse podcast looks at the ongoing efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and the upcoming battle to get people to trust it.
Have you seen the claim that suicides are up 200% due to the lockdown, often cited as an argument against a second closing of the economy? It’s false, and it’s gross to try to use suicide, a very real problem, to fight policies designed to reduce the spread the coronavirus.
The Cut looks at several youngish Americans who are ignoring the pandemic and guidelines for limiting its spread by traveling around the world without regard to the consequences of their selfish actions.
High Street on Market, my favorite restaurant in Philadelphia, has closed temporarily but plans to relocate and open again in 2021. Their sibling restaurant Fork is still open, with outdoor seating, as they had a different lease and landlord.
Geneva now has the world’s highest minimum wage, about US$25 an hour, to allow the many service workers in its city to pay their rent and feed themselves without having to rely on public assistance or food pantries. It’s the same problem facing low-wage earners in many U.S. cities like San Francisco – they can’t afford to live in or near the city where they work.
Chris Archer wrote on the Players Coalition site about how absurdly hard it was for him to vote.
Vogue offered a quick appreciation of Stacey Abrams’ role in turning Georgia blue – which may matter even more in those upcoming runoffs. You can volunteer to help the Democrats try to win those seats or donate to Abrams’ Fair Fight.
VICE explores the history of the Great Barrier Hotel, once floating near the reef of that name but now moored and disused on the coast of North Korea.
Sarah McBride became the highest-ranking trans elected official in the U.S. when she won election to the state Senate here in Delaware this month.
This Inside Hook article on The Strand bookstore is the most balanced look I’ve seen at the controversy around the store’s actions this year with its workforce and PPP loan. (The owner’s purchase of shares in Amazon is a red herring, mentioned to get an emotional reaction but logical for any high net worth investor during a pandemic.)
The New York Times‘ nepotista Maggie Haberman has made a career out of normalizing and excusing Donald Trump and many of his supporters; Drew Magary skewers her, the Times, and the paper’s bizarre decision to run a profile of her in its own pages.
The Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas has failed in its response to dozens of claims from women that they were manipulated or sexually abused by men on that certification body, which certifies Sommeliers and Master Sommeliers in the U.S. and Canada. They’re on their second apology already.
Philadelphia was prepared for post-election violence, but street protests turned into dance parties. That was no accident, but was the result of planning efforts by the Working Families Party, a pro-labor, semi-progressive political party mostly active in the northeast.
Board game news: Asmodee introduced Connect and Play, guides for playing some of its games over Zoom or other remote communication services, including Just One and Dixit.
Satish Pillalamarri, one of the co-founders of North Star Games (publishers of Evolution and the Quacks of Quedlinburg), passed away this month at the age of 42 due to cancer.
Quined Games, a European publisher of primarily mid-weight to heavy games like Agra and Keyflower, announced that the new game Carnegie will hit Kickstarter on November 23^rd. It’s from the designer of Carson City and co-designer of Troyes.
Z-Man Games has released Pandemic Legacy: Season 0, the final installment in this trilogy, this one a prequel to the other two games and thus not a continuation of that storyline.
Evolution, which has been out for Steam and tablets since late 2019, is coming to Nintendo Switch in December.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, florida, georgia, links, longreads, philadelphia, physics, social media, stick to baseball, syria, taiwan, utah, voter suppression

→ July 18, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/18/20.

I didn’t write anything this week other than the review here of Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing and my review of the lovely little light strategy game Walking in Burano. I will do a season preview with some picks for breakout candidates this week for subscribers to The Athletic, as well as a new game review for Paste, and a Zoom Q&A session on The Athletic’s site on Thursday at 3 pm ET. I answered reader questions on a mailbag episode of my podcast last week.

My book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is out now, just in time for Opening Day (okay, three months before, but who’s counting). You can order it anywhere you buy books, and I recommend bookshop.org. I’ll also resume my email newsletter this week once I have some new content.

I’ll be speaking at the U.S. Army Mad Scientist Weaponized Information Virtual Conference on Tuesday at 9:30 am ET, talking about topics from The Inside Game. You can register to watch the event here.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Data scientist David Shor, fired for tweeting that nonviolent protests tend to push public opinion leftward (a conclusion based on data), spoke at length to New York about what the data say about the Democrats’ chances in 2020 and beyond. It’s sobering, but comes with evidence-based recommendations that start with not taking any swing states for granted in October.
The Guardian looks at the rise and fall of Nespresso, which faces low-price competition, criticism of environmental impact, and growing consumer awareness.
Politico has a long profile on Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D), a first-term representative from Michigan running for re-election in her purple district, and what lessons she may have to offer Democrats nationwide.
The inspiration for the original text-based adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure (often just abbreviated as Adventure) was Patricia Crowther, ex-wife of the game’s co-creator, who didn’t credit her with the cave mapping that he used to design the game.
Orac looks at the controversy over airborne transmission of COVID-19. His conclusions: the virus can be spread via respiratory aerosols, but we already guessed that, and mandating masks and physical distancing is part of the solution.
Cases have been rising, but deaths weren’t, which isn’t the good news it might appear to be, writes Alexis Madrigal for the Atlantic. The death rate has begun to rise since Madrigal’s piece went up, though.
The CDC’s longtime status as an agency beyond the reach of partisan politics has left it defenseless against attacks from the science-deniers in the White House.
Vox looks at why Arizona has the nation’s worst outbreak of COVID-19, and may be undercounting cases since they have so little testing. They closed too late, reopened too soon, people didn’t take the masks and distancing guidelines seriously.
The New Yorker looks at how Texas Republicans politicized the coronavirus pandemic, leading to an ongoing outbreak, and over 600 deaths in just the last four days.
An Alabama jail refused to give masks to prisoners because, jail officials claimed, the prisoners would eat them.
There’s a threat to American democracy beyond that posed by the President and his sycophants – the ongoing disappearance of local news outlets. When nobody watches local officials, they can get away with a whole lot more.
Why are federal law enforcement agents arresting protestors in Oregon, using unmarked vehicles? When did the feds start looking at the Sicherheitsdienst as a model?
Multiple employees of color at ESPN spoke to the New York Times about racism behind the camera at the company, from limited career opportunities to a lack of diversity in leadership. I can’t say I ever witnessed any of this, or heard about it from people affected, but given the ways you get into leadership positions at ESPN, a lack of diversity is a feature rather than a bug.
Authorities in Selah, Washington, including the city leaders, are trying to criminalize speech in the form of chalk writing of “Black Lives Matter.”
Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler (guess!) is running against Black Lives Matter, opposing the WNBA’s use of the term (she owns part of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream) and claiming that BLM harbors anti-Semitic and anti-Christian views (they don’t, as BLM is not a single, coherent organization). Here’s a list of some major companies that donated to her while proclaiming support for Black Lives Matter and efforts to fight structural racism.
Three articles on the additional challenges working mothers are facing during the pandemic: “They Go to Mommy First,” from Jess Grose in the New York Times; Parents Can’t Wait Around Forever, by author/economist Emily Oster in the Atlantic; and how a lack of childcare options is keeping women unemployed, in Politico.
A woman who had been tested for COVID-19 but didn’t self-isolate while she waited to get her results dropped off her child at a day care facility in upstate New York. She tested positive and gave it to 16 other adults and children.
A meeting in Utah to discuss requiring students to wear masks in schools was postponed because dingbats without masks filled the room, some carrying signs opposing the mask requirement. Their ‘arguments’ mirror those of anti-vaxxers’, which should be reason enough to overrule them.
An activist couple who support Palestinian causes found themselves attacked online in columns appearing in the Jerusalem Post and The Algemeiner by a student at the University of Birmingham named Oliver Taylor … except that Oliver Taylor doesn’t exist, and seemingly accurate photos of him are just well-made deepfakes.
A Toronto health official has the right to intervene in the case of two children whose dipshit mother doesn’t want to get them vaccinated. Vaccines work. They are safe and effective, and it turns out that the MMR vaccine may even protect you against some of the worst symptoms of COVID-19.
Walt Disneyworld is permanently closing three attractions, two rides and a show, none of which will be particularly missed.
Board game news: Renegade Game Studios announced a new line of puzzles based on art from four popular board games, including Raiders of the North Sea and Arboretum, with pre-orders now open.
Grail Games has a Kickstarter up for Whale Riders, a new game from Reiner Knizia, which is always of interest to me. I’m not sure about this theme, though; those look like Inuit people, and there’s no reason to use them in the artwork.
Marvel Villainous, the new standalone game in the Villainous line from Ravensburger, is available for pre-order exclusively through Target. I have a review copy and have played it once; it’s quite good, with five new villains from the MCU, but can’t be played with any of the 15 villains from the previous four boxes in the series.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, arizona, board game news, coffee, coronavirus, disneyworld, frauds, links, longreads, michigan, stick to baseball, utah, vaccines, video games

→ February 15, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/15/20.

My only new content this week at the Athletic was a breakdown of the final Mookie Betts trade, as I continue to work on the prospect rankings, which will run the week of February 24^th. I’ll be working through the weekend to stay on schedule for that release date.

I do have a new game review up at Paste, covering Genius Games’ new title Ecosystem, a card-drafting, tableau-building game that moves very quickly but has intricate interactions among the cards you place. The deck has cards for two habitats and nine different species of animals, birds, fish, and insects, and where and how you place those cards in your 4×5 grid affects your ultimate scoring.

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, is due out on April 21^st from Harper Collins, and you can pre-order it now via their site or wherever fine books are sold. Also, check out my free email newsletter, which I say I’ll write more often than I actually write it.

I’ve also got at least five signings scheduled at independent bookstores already, with two announced on the stores’ pages: April 24^th at Politics & Prose in DC and April 25^th at Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New Yorker has a giant profile of N.K. Jemisin on the eve of the release of her first novel since her Broken Earth trilogy won three straight Hugo awards.
The Guardian has an excerpt from Andrew Marantz’s forthcoming book Antisocial that looks at how far-right trolls took over social media, with a lot of help from Silicon Valley execs who view news as merely another commodity to be sold.
Melissa Clark has a buyer’s guide to chocolate, including explanations of some key terms and a discussion of the ethics of buying chocolate, in the New York Times.
A new federal lawsuit alleges that children held at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital were drugged and/or sexually abused while Cook County officials covered it up, according to ProPublica.
Shipt, the home-delivery company now owned by Target, has taken on some strongly anti-worker practices and encouraged its delivery folks to spend their own money to try to butter up customers.
From last March, Quinnipiac women’s rugby coach Becky Carlson looks at how colleges get rid of female coaches who dare to speak out against systemic sexism and other abuses of power.
A pediatrician in Illinois left a suicide note that implied that he’d been faking vaccination records, either to help anti-vaccine parents, or because he himself was anti-vaccine and simply lied to parents about vaccinating their kids.
If you live in Connecticut, call your state rep and your state Senator to tell them you support the bill eliminating all non-medical exemptions to childhood vaccination requirements. The claim that such a bill violates “religious liberties” is bullshit; no major religion opposes vaccinations, and anti-vaxxers use this as a cover story for their own ignorance.
MIT Technology Review looks at how the ‘manosphere’ of angry men, including so-called ‘incels,’ is become more radicalized on sites like Reddit and Gab. The Texas Department of Public Safety called incels “an emerging domestic terrorism threat.” Maybe we should ban men from immigrating out of Texas?
Also in Texas, a 16-year-old boy who came to the aid of another student who was being bullied was himself shot to death by the bully, who was no older than 15 but still somehow had a handgun.
In 2018, Rep. Jim Jordan (guess) begged a former Ohio State wrestler to deny reports of sexual abuse while Jordan was an assistant coach on the team.
Islamophobe Laura Loomer is probably going to be the Republican nominee for Florida’s 21^st district.
An abnormality in cells that produce myelin may be connected to how and why autism spectrum disorder affects so many parts of the brain’s functioning.
A Utah legislator has introduced a bill to stop usurious lenders from jailing borrowers and seizing their bail money. Does Utah send these people to Newgate?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: connecticut, hugo award, links, longreads, social media, stick to baseball, texas, utah, vaccines

→ December 29, 2018
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/29/18.

I’ve had several ESPN+ pieces in the last two weeks, including my Hall of Fame ballot and explanation, my analyses of the Jurickson Profar trade and that huge Reds-Dodgers trade, and a post that covered the Michael Brantley and Wilson Ramos signings. I held a Klawchat here on the 20th.

On the board game front, my year-end articles went up two weeks ago – my top ten games of 2018 for Paste and my best games by category for Vulture.

Here on the dish, I posted my top 100 songs of 2018 and top 18 albums of 2018 that same week.

My free email newsletter will resume next week. Join the five thousand other satisfied customers who’ve already signed up for occasional goodness.

And now, the links…

Longreads first, as always: Marc Randazza, a lawyer who represents or has represented several major neo-Nazi and white nationalist figures in lawsuits, has a very long history of legal misconduct, much of it dating from his time working for gay porn producers, but has only received a slap on the wrist from the Nevada Bar for his misdeeds, detailed in this lengthy Huffington Post piece.

Former U.S. Marine Lyle Jeremy Rubin writes in the Guardian about what he learned about America while serving in Afghanistan. “For me the empire is rooted in the barbarism it pretends to oppose.”
Amazon’s Marketplace is enormous and part of why the company controls half of the U.S. retail market, but The Verge reports on the byzantine process of suspensions and how sellers use it to attack rivals on the site.
The Athletic looks at the disastrous two-year reign of Mike Piazza in Reggio Emilia, where he bought a Serie C soccer club and ran it into the ground (subscription required).
Katie Prout writes about her brother’s longtime alcoholism and her own mental health struggles over at Longreads.
ProPublica investigates the banana republic that is Louisiana, where former legislators turn into lobbyists or take jobs in the executive branch and continue to wield outsized power to line their own pockets, often in ways that harm the populace.
A study published in the Journal of Science Communication found that scientists who engage in debates with deniers may do more harm than good (PDF link) to the causes they support, such as climate change or evolution, because such beliefs are immovable especially when founded in religious beliefs.
Natalie Wood’s final film, Brainstorm, deserves a better legacy than it’s received, according to Popular Mechanics. I’d never heard of the movie before this piece, and I am old enough to remember Wood’s death and thus the time this film hit theaters.
Shirley Wang’s piece on her late father’s surprising friendship with Charles Barkley went viral last week for good reason.
This unrolled Twitter thread highlights one investigative journalism piece from each of the 50 states this year, including an item in the Delaware News-Journal about courts banning people from entering the city of Wilmington for trivial infractions like loitering or panhandling.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found that Bryan Kemp (guess) used a real warning of voting database vulnerability into a political attack against Stacey Abrams that may have tipped the Georgia gubernatorial election into his favor.
Detained migrants are being used as slave labor in private prisons funded by taxpayer dollars.
Texas is one of many states that has ignored the First Amendment and passed laws prohibiting state employees from supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) efforts against Israel – similar to efforts used, perhaps with some success, against the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1970s to early 1990s. A Palestinian-American speech pathologist in Texas lost her job for refusing to sign a pro-Israel oath, which, if I may say so, is utterly fucking terrifying: You should never have to sign an oath to hold a job in the United States. She’s suing, and I hope Texans realize they’ll foot the bill for this lawsuit with their taxes.
The University of Utah and local police were warned six times in ten days by Lauren McCluskey that her ex-boyfriend was threatening her, but they did nothing. He killed her on October 22nd.
Eater has an excerpt from the forthcoming book You and I Eat the Same on how just about all of us love fried chicken.
New York‘s Intelligencer has two great pieces on the awful state of online right now: how so much of what happens on the Internet is fake, and why Youtube star PewDiePie can make anti-Semitic/pro-Nazi jokes and still thrive. It’s all generally bad news for society in general, and for those of us who make our livings online in particular.
The Obama Administration tried to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, exposure to which leads to serious neuromuscular problems in humans and may lead to cancer over time, but former EPA head Scott Pruitt denied the application to ban it; the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the EPA must ban all sales of the chemical within 60 days of its ruling. In the interim, however, millions of pounds of chlorpyrifos were dumped on U.S. crops, one of many examples of how the Trump Administration’s rollbacks of environmental regulations have harmed U.S. workers.
OUT looks at Ruth Coker Burks, who helped care for hundreds of gay men dying of AIDS in a piece from 2016.
The Cut points out that the attacks on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez derive from fear that women of color might start to wield real power, the kind only white men have had in our country’s history to date.
New Jersey Democrats tried to gerrymander the state to protect incumbents and thus the party’s control of the legislature, but pressure from their own supporters led them to drop the plan. It’s funny how that hasn’t happened in other states, like Wisconsin or Michigan, where Republicans have similarly tried anti-democratic efforts to retain power.
You’ve likely seen by now that Michael Cohen’s cell phone was in Prague around the time of a meeting with the Russians, yet more circumstantial evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin government – plus more hard evidence Cohen lied. But what I found most notable is who broke the story: McClatchy Washington Bureau, the DC arm of former Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy’s publishing empire.
An award-winning German reporter who garnered praise and hardware for his dispatches from Trump-voting areas of the United States fabricated nearly all of his stories.
The news that a federal judge in Texas ruled the ACA’s mandate unconstitutional, a ruling widely criticized by legal experts across the political spectrum, was symptomatic of a larger problem: Our federal judiciary has been packed with arch-conservative judges, and removing or replacing them will be difficult if not impossible.
An Australian woman whose 32-day-old infant died of pertussis has some things to say to anti-vaccine lunatics. Australia cracked down on vaccine denialists with its “No Jab, No Play” policy, ending all non-medical exemptions for schoolchildren; it’s high time the United States does the same.
Scientists may have discovered the brain circuit that causes seasonal depression in 20% of people, a discovery that also supports the use of light therapy as a treatment.
The Atlantic‘s Amanda Mull looks at the rising popularity of “anxiety baking,” although I tend to think of it as just “baking,” where the anxiety dictates how much I eat afterwards.
The Washington Post‘s media columnist Margaret Sullivan writes that news outlets need to stop booking Kellyanne Conway.
Sinclair Broadcast Group fired a reporter who was on sick leave with bone cancer, although the company disputes that version of events.
The cold season in Arizona has warmed by 3.5 degrees in 50 years due to climate change, one of many facts in this Arizona Republic wrapup that should disturb residents of the state. Phoenix experienced a 119-day dry spell this year, and in mid-July 97% of the state was experiencing “severe drought” conditions.
The New York Times investigates claims that Planned Parenthood has discriminated against pregnant employees. The headline likely overstates the case, since one issue is failing to offer benefits that the company says they can’t afford, but other aspects are definitely troubling.
Former Runaways bassist and sexual assault survivor Jackie Fuchs (f.k.a. Jackie Fox) recently had a five-day winning streak as a Jeopardy! contestant. She’s also a fan of heavy Eurogames.
Your 30-day trial with Black Patience has expired.
Deepwater Gaming announced the early 2019 release of Claim, a two-player trick-taking game that is already out in Europe.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, delaware, denialism, environment, fried chicken, georgia, italy, links, louisiana, mental health, new jersey, soccer, stick to baseball, texas, utah, vaccines

→ March 22, 2010
→ By keith

Las Vegas and Utah eats.

I had a quick run through Vegas and Utah last week to see Kris Bryant and Marcus Littlewood and ate pretty well overall, with only one bad meal and a few gems in Utah.

First meal in Vegas was west of the Strip at Yassou Greek Grill on West Charleston, serving gyros, hummus, and other basic Greek items at very reasonable prices. Their lemon-herb chicken is heavily marinated and has a strong flavor without any compromise in the texture, and the pitas they use in their gyros are soft and thick, nothing like the dry pitas you get at the grocery store. The gyro passed my tzatziki test – when I held it perpendicular to the table, I didn’t get any glops of tzatziki, which means they sauced it properly. That gyro plus a side Greek salad and rice pilaf (just rice prepared pilaf-style, with no other ingredients) ran about $8.30 before tax and drink.

I’ve been to the original Mesa Grill location in Manhattan but haven’t had a chance to get back in nearly two years, so I dropped into the Caesar’s Palace location on this trip and decided to branch out, trying two appetizers and a dessert, for research purposes, of course. The blue corn pancake with barbecued duck was dominated by the flavor of the hoisin sauce on the duck; hoisin’s sticky-sweet flavor and texture make it the elephant on the plate, and in this case it wiped out the flavor of the duck itself. I liked the presentation and am certainly a fan of shredded meat in a crepe or pancake, but all I tasted here was hoisin. The creamy wild Mushroom Grits with poached egg, charred serrano sauce, cotija cheese, and blue corn tortilla were better, very creamy as advertised, with only the serrano sauce (which tasted largely of burn) failing to add something to the dish. For dessert, the bartender recommended the churros with chocolate dipping sauce, which were the second-best I’ve had, behind only the version at Toro in Boston.

One bad meal on the trip was at the highly-touted Hash House a Go-Go in Imperial Palace, one of two locations in Vegas. I went for breakfast and ordered the top hash on the menu, a roasted chicken hash with rosemary and asparagus. The dish was incredibly dry, especially the chicken, all white meat and often inedibly tough. Great concept – who doesn’t love a good hash? – but horrid execution.

I made a day trip to St. George, Utah, from Vegas – just under two hours each way, including a very cool drive through the Virgin River Gorge – and had an unbelievable lunch at the Painted Pony, which I would say is in “downtown St. George” except that there doesn’t seem to be much to it besides downtown. The Painted Pony is the sort of local restaurant of which Gordon Ramsay would approve, at least for lunch, with simple dishes focusing on fresh, vibrant flavors. Their torta ahogada sandwich comes on this absolutely perfect ciabatta-style roll and features roasted beef tenderloin, caramelized onions, bell peppers, and cotija cheese, with a rich red sauce on the side, so the sandwich becomes a sort of New Mexican take on French Dip. The side salad was also fresh, with walnuts and julienned apples, and none of the wilted leaves that often plague mixed greens.

I skipped their opulent desserts to hit up Croshaw’s Pies on the, um, west side of town, which was a good call. Their “very berry” pie is sweet-tart with its mix of raspberries and blackberries, and the crust was soft and butter, more tender than flaky, which is how I prefer my pie crusts anyway. It didn’t have great structure, since the filling wept slightly on to the plate, but the compensation was that it didn’t have the slightly gluey texture that comes from using too much cornstarch. Croshaw’s recently opened a second location in Mesa, Arizona, on Brown Road well east of the Cubs’ facilities.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: breakfast, celebrity chefs, dessert, flay, greek cuisine, hash, las vegas, pie, st george, utah

Stick to baseball, 12/6/21.

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Stick to baseball, 7/18/20.

Stick to baseball, 2/15/20.

Stick to baseball, 12/29/18.

Las Vegas and Utah eats.

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