vaccines — Page 10

→ December 12, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/12/20.

I wrote one piece this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the Lance Lynn and Carlos Santana signings and the Angels’ trades for two guys named Iglesias.

For Paste, I ranked the top fifteen new board games of 2020, which range from a game suitable for kids as young as 4-5 to a crunchy two-hour dice-drafter.

My guest on this week’s episode of the Keith Law Show was Tony Paul, who’s covered the Tigers for ages for the Detroit News, talking about the Tigers, what it’s like to cover a bad team, and how baseball can improve its efforts on diversity.

I have two books out for the readers on your holiday shopping lists. The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, available in hardcover; and Smart Baseball, available in paperback.

You can also sign up for my free email newsletter for more essays from me and summaries of everything I’ve written between issues of the newsletter.

And now, the links…

Before I get to the longreads, two stories relevant to the Georgia runoffs: Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s husband bought stock in companies likely to benefit from the CARES bill while she was working on it, while Sen. David Purdue took $1.8 million from a board member of FINRA while they lobbied the Senate on a bill relevant to their industry by selling his house to her privately for above its market value. Both have a history of profiteering from their positions, in levels of corruption that should lead to criminal charges, not re-elections.
Now the longreads: The Hollywood Reporter‘s chronicle of Johnny Depp’s fall from grace is shocking in just how much Depp was the architect of his own demise.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein needs to resign if this article on her cognitive decline is even remotely accurate.
A new journal article in Science shows how fast COVID-19 spread in an unmitigated setting in the Brazilian Amazon. It’s not good.
The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the pandemic, as this Nature article states, so why are people, like this half-witted Texas congressman, still fighting them?
A community in South Dakota that ignored the pandemic is now getting destroyed by it … and they couldn’t do more than pass a defanged mask mandate because of the idiotic opposition.
“What kind of country is this?” asked a woman looking at a lengthy food bank line in Orlando, one devastating line of many from this Washington Post look at theme park employees laid off by Disney, Universal, and other operators. Of note: Disney restored pay cuts to its senior executives just a few weeks before laying off 28,000 low-wage workers.
The scientist who came up with the idea for the polymerase chain reaction technique was also a serial harasser of women, making any attempts to grapple with his legacy complicated.
The Oregon Medical Board finally suspended the license of a Portland anti-vaxxer pediatrician who had thousands of patients (and whose antics I’ve highlighted here before).
What comes next for evangelicals who sold their souls to make a deal with the devil in the White House?
We need better advice than telling people not to see family at the holidays, because it’s not working.
Now we finally know who funds the Federalist. It’s the Uihleins, major conservative donors in Wisconsin who run the shipping and business supply company Uline and who contracted COVID-19 while attending a Trump party in November; and DonorsTrust, a fund that allows donors to give anonymously to conservative candidates and causes – like the $1.5 million they gave the white nationalist, anti-immigrant group VDARE.
An investigation by an independent government watchdog group found that Rep. Dan Crenshaw smeared a fellow veteran who alleged she was sexually assaulted at a VA facility. The Texas Congressman, who backed the failed attempt to get the Supreme Court to nullify the 2020 Presidential election, also refused to cooperate with the OIG’s investigation.
Florida whistleblower Rebakah Jones found herself the subject of a warrant and early-morning raid, as the state accused her of unauthorized access to an internal emergency alert system. Several legal experts have said the evidence to support the warrant was flimsy, and the warrant was the judge’s first act since he was sworn in by Gov. De Santis.
WIRED looks at the strange case of Google firing a researcher for her work on an uncontroversial paper about bias in AI algorithms.
Speaking of Florida, the Orlando Sentinel apologized for endorsing Rep. Michael Waltz, who also signed on to that abortive effort to subvert our democracy. Apparently his efforts to replace the progressive income tax with a regressive sales tax wasn’t enough reason not to endorse him before the election.
This New York Times article on Wilmington, Delaware, having a ‘moment’ because of Biden is actually pretty good except for the top photo of the Charcoal Pit, which is like a poor man’s Friendly’s.
A writer who has autism writes about the harm of Sia casting a neurotypical actor as a character with autism in her new movie.
Cris Collinsworth put his foot in his mouth by acting surprised that women might actually like and know about football, and later issued a half-assed apology.
The photos of the new underwater tunnel in the Faroe Islands are quite stunning.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coronavirus, delaware, florida, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ December 5, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/5/20.

I had two pieces this week for subscribers to The Athletic, one on six non-tendered players who would make my rankings of the top free agents, and another on what this week’s news of realignment and contraction in the minors might mean. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the unique new game Pendulum, which is turnless – players move simultaneously, but when and where you can move, and what you can do, is dictated by three sand timers, each of which has a different duration.

My podcast will return on Monday, with two episodes scheduled before we break for the holidays. You can also get more of me by subscribing to my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: It’s the 19^th century in Kansas, where debtor’s prison is still a thing. In Coffeyville, a judge without a law degree issues bench warrants for a debt-collecting attorney who gets a cut of bail payments. In the backwater swirling, there are some things that will never change.
Outside looks at plant-based imitation fish, and why it could be a game-changer for our depleted oceans.
I reviewed the new documentary The Donut King here earlier this week, and the BBC has a longread on the same man, Cambodian refugee turned donut-shop entrepreneur Ted Ngoy.
In 2018, Gatwick Airport had to close for two days after multiple people reported seeing a drone flying in its airspace. Yet a long police investigation has found no evidence any drone was ever there.
This 2018 piece from the Washington Post is a strange sort of apologia for Chevy Chase, a white man who’s said and done some lousy things, and made some bad choices, and doesn’t seem to understand why nobody wants to work with him.
Stereogum explains why an obscure Pavement song became their most-streamed track on Spotify, and how the service is trying to convince artists to take an even lower royalty rate than they already do.
One of Joe Biden’s top advisers lobbied for the 2017 GOP tax cut, which also gave a boon to MLB owners by allowing them to continue to pay minor leaguers less than minimum wage. Cynthia Hogan also lobbied for the NFL while the league was dealing with bad publicity after several domestic violence incidents, and played a pivotal role in Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991.
Anti-vax communities have proliferated on social media for years, despite the evidence harm they cause, but now they’ve become recruiting grounds for people pushing the bullshit conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
A new article published in Microbes and Infection looks at how anti-vaccine activists are courting people thirsty for information on COVID-19, identifying six specific tactics one such show has been using to convince people that the virus is a hoax and the vaccines won’t be safe.
The media needs to stop reporting on people’s intent to get (or not get) a COVID-19 vaccine, because it’s helping erode already shaky public trust.
The English rapper Digga D has to notify police any time he uploads or releases new material, potentially giving them the chance to censor him, as part of the terms of his probation for a conviction for conspiracy to commit violent disorder.
The editors at the National Review called Trump’s ongoing attempts to claim widespread election fraud cost him the Presidency a “disgraceful endgame.”
Trump’s ‘vaccine czar’ Moncef Slaoui owns $10 million in stock in GlaxoSmithKline, one of the companies that has worked with the Administration’s Warp Speed effort to develop a vaccine, and refuses to sell it. The Administration’s position is that Slaoui is technically a contractor and thus isn’t bound by the same ethics rules as employees.
Jess Grose, the New York Times‘ parenting editor, writes about why most kids hate to lose and what parents can do about it.
A school superintendent in Weatherford, in North Texas, refuses to enforce a state mask mandate … and nobody is stopping him.
Mental Floss gives us the controversial history of fry bread, sometimes called Indian fry bread, a traditional food borne out of the oppression of Native Americans by white authorities.
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen writes about how an obsession with “smart politics” left the press unprepared to do its job when Donald Trump began his run for President.
Tweet of the week:

Cartoon repost. And edited. #CovidVaccine #COVID #covid19 pic.twitter.com/Fpcm8W4xKm
— Michael de Adder (@deAdder) November 29, 2020

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: biden, conspiracy theories, fish, food history, food science, kansas, links, longreads, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ September 5, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 9/5/20.

I had three pieces for subscribers to The Athletic around the trade deadline, wrapping up the Padres’ three moves, the Blue Jays’ and Mets’ moves, and five other trades in separate columns. I also had two new episodes of The Keith Law Show this week, one featuring Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson, authors of the new book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back (which you can buy here), and another one with Will Leitch, which we posted Friday morning so you’d have it before the holiday weekend.

On Friday night, September 11^th, I’ll be hosting a live talk with author Chuck Palahniuk about his new book The Invention of Sound through Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg. It’s a ticketed event, and with your purchase you’ll get a signed copy of the book as well as a link to the talk. (I just started reading the book about an hour ago.)

At Paste, I reviewed the tile-laying and set-collection game Succulent, and then ranked the five best tile-laying games I’ve played, which should include a few titles familiar to longtime readers.

I sent out a fresh edition of my free email newsletter on Friday, describing how I went from someone who hadn’t run in any meaningful way since 1985 to running 5 km without interruption in about four months.

And now, the links…

In a story since confirmed by other outlets, including Fox News, the Atlantic reported that President Trump referred to soldiers killed in action as “losers” and “suckers,” which, in a rational world, would end any support he received from current or former members of the U.S. military.

We will need a vast, coordinated effort to convince Americans of the safety of an eventual COVID-19 vaccine, or we will have too few people getting it to stop the pandemic. This assumes that Trump doesn’t coerce regulators into approving one before it’s adequately tested, and that very possibility is why we are where we are.

Kuli Kohli was born with cerebral palsy, and in the village in India where she was born her parents were encouraged to drown her. They eventually moved with her to the UK, where she’s now a poet, a mother, and a mentor to other women writers.

Daniel Thompson, the only full-time Black journalist at The Kenosha News, resigned his position to protest the paper’s use of an incendiary quote that cast protesters in an inaccurate light.

Larry Flynt wrote a “final farewell to the Falwells,” and it’s a more nuanced and thoughtful note than you might expect, with kind words about Jerry Falwell, Sr., with whom Flynt waged a very public battle over his First Amendment rights, and damning words about Falwell’s hypocritical son.

How did T. Denny Sanford, the richest man in South Dakota and a major Republican donor, get out of an investigation into his alleged possession of child pornography? ProPublica is asking for possible sources to come forward.

Online hoaxes, like the myriad ones about COVID-19, are making doctors’ jobs harder – and the blame falls primarily on Facebook and other sites that have let this misinformation fester.

Ars Technica reports that Facebook’s “plan” to combat election misinformation is the same as its plan for pretty much everything else that goes wrong on its site – doing nothing at all.

Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch says that Trump’s “reelection scheme of a civil war” is kicking into high gear as the election approaches. I was always skeptical of those who said Trump wouldn’t leave office willingly, but my view is shifting as his rhetoric changes, and the rest of his party continues to enable him.

Jean Guerrero, author of the new book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, writes about how writers and critics have questioned whether she, as a Latina journalist, is ‘qualified’ to write a book about a white man. It’s another example of the longstanding white-centric and male-centric views of mainstream publishing.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine called for the elimination of Daylight Savings Time, citing a large body of evidence showing that DST is harmful to our health.

If you’re looking for an alternative to dairy milk, but are also concerned about the environmental damage wrought by almond production, the Guardian says oat milk is your best choice.

Three mathematicians have solved a longstanding question about straight paths on the dodecahedron, one of the five Platonic solids and the only one for which this question remained unsolved.

Board game news: Climate Crisis, a cooperative game with an educational goal, is about to end its Kickstarter run tomorrow.

The Days of Wonder crossover game Small World of Warcraft is now out in stores and online.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, coronavirus, environment, links, math, social media, south dakota, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ August 15, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 8/15/20.

I had one column this week for subscribers to The Athletic, looking at the demotion calculus in a short season with no minor leagues, plus notes on Spencer Howard, Ryan Castellani, and Luis Basabe. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My podcast guest this week was Dr. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, discussing concepts from her book and how baseball scouts and executives might apply them – and how to avoid the pitfalls of using “intangibles” as a cover for more insidious biases. You can buy Grit here via bookshop.org.

You can also buy my new book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us about Ourselves, which came out this April, via the same site. I’ll send out the next issue of my free email newsletter as soon as my fall board game preview comes out over at Paste.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Carina Chocano spent hours taking MasterClass sessions and wrote about the product for The Atlantic, asking what it is they’re really selling since they’re not selling actual education.

At Slate, William Saletan lays out the timeline of how Trump’s bad decisions have led to over 171,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19.

Current Affairs’ Nathan J. Robinson points how, increasingly, verifiable information is behind paywalls while alt-right bullshit is free, and looks at the consequences of that dichotomy.

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie suffered a concussion earlier this year, and wrote about the experience, including the introspection that came with the temporary loss of part of her brain function.

The World Health Organization has created a one-stop shop for correct answers to common myths about COVID-19.

The Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association made the correct decision to delay fall sports until February. Some parents are pushing a petition to demand they reverse this, and the comments from parents in that article drip with ignorance and privilege.

A Florida church leader has been arrested for pushing the fake cure known as “miracle mineral solution” (MMS), which is really just bleach.

Mom influencers on Instagram are spreading anti-mask propaganda. Instagram is owned by Facebook and neither site seems willing to clean up their own shit.

Almost a third of elite sportswomen reported harassment or trolling on social media according to a survey by BBC Sport.

The opposition to masks is beyond belief at this point. You probably read about the sheriff in Marion County, Florida, who banned masks in his offices, and banned his deputies from wearing them. He eased those restrictions slightly after the backlash, but really, why is anyone objecting to mask mandates at this point other than ignorance or selfishness?

Putting more healthful, nutritious foods into school lunches appears to have improved health outcomes like obesity for children who receive them – so of course the Trump Administration’s USDA has rolled back those changes.

A major Iowa Republican donor who ‘somehow’ won a no-bid contract to provide PPE from China to the state is now under investigation for prostitution and possession of child pornography.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party helped a college group orchestrate a campaign to entrap and smear a local Democratic candidate for the state’s 1^st Congressional District.

That Georgia high school that suspended a student for taking a picture of all of the maskless kids packed in the halls as they resumed classes? They had to shut down for several days due to an outbreak.

Reproductive rights took a huge hit this week at the Supreme Court thanks to John Roberts’ conservative majority and their decision to allow several anti-abortion and outright misogynistic laws in Arkansas to stand.

There’s a massive oil spill in progress on the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius.

A telling comparison of the different speaker lists at anti-vaxx and pro-vaccine conferences.

We watched season one of Perry Mason on HBO and I agree with everything Alan Sepinwall said about it.

Board game news: There’s an Umbrella Academy card game in the works, for fans of that Netflix series.

I’ve never played Arkwright given its length and complexity, although it’s pretty highly regarded. Now there’s a simpler version coming as a card game, on Kickstarter this week.

I enjoyed Elizabeth Hargrave’s Designer Diaries around her newest game, Mariposas, due out later this month.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arkansas, board game news, coronavirus, florida, georgia, iowa, links, longreads, massachusetts, reproductive rights, stick to baseball, tv, vaccines

→ 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

→ July 11, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 7/11/20.

I had one solo post for The Athletic subscribers this week, something out of the ordinary: To participate in the site’s Book Blitz, I gave 25 recommendations for non-sports books, five apiece in literary novels, sci-fi/fantasy, detective/mystery, non-fiction, and short story collections. I also joined the site’s Authors Roundtable, answering some questions on the book-writing process.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Floor Plan, a new roll-and-write from Deep Water (publishers of Welcome To…) that is quite easy to learn, but where the theme and the strategy don’t work together.

My second book, The Inside Game, is out now, and you can buy it on bookshop.org through that link, or find it at your local independent bookstore.

And now, the links…

Vulture‘s interview with Thandie Newton is a must-read for her unbelievable candor, speaking about racism and sexism on set as well as some lousy experiences with Tom Cruise.
Patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 and recover can face weeks or months of delirium, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and physical and cognitive deficits.
The Washington Post looks at how the pandemic has made the struggle working moms face impossible for employers to ignore, as we’ve seen with the recent backlash to bizarre decisions by Florida State and Georgia Tech.
The new invite-only audio app Clubhouse is paying a price for omitting any protections for users against harassment. Given what this Verge article says about the app I’d have zero interest in participating in it.
The Paris Review explains how Neapolitan cuisine became synonymous with Italian food.
Human rights lawyer Derecka Purnell explains why she became a police abolitionist, the first of three links this week from the Atlantic. The crux of her argument is the lack of accountability for officers who commit violence against civilians.
Ed Yong continues his tremendous work for the Atlantic on the pandemic, writing about how the experts trying to help hospitals and policymakers are getting burned out, while the pandemic is exacerbating issues of gender equity in the field, and charlatans from outside of epidemiology are trying to make names for themselves with shoddy research.
Also in the Atlantic, why death rates haven’t risen even as cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. Hint: it’s not necessarily good news.
A new study published in The Lancet found that antibody levels were extremely low in populations in COVID-19 hotspots, meaning that herd immunity isn’t coming any time soon.
Axios explains how public health efforts have to step up their efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation.
This tweet showing average new cases per day of COVID-19 along with Trump’s comments on the pandemic is rather damning.
NPR looks at how crowdfunding has changed the board game industry in the wake of the RPG Frosthaven, the sequel to Gloomhaven, taking in $12.9 million in its Kickstarter run.
A Minnesota State Senator, who is also a physician, is now under investigation after spouting nonsense conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media. He has a history of voicing anti-vaccine sentiment too.
This isn’t exactly news, but a new study showed that anti-vaxxer parents are fraudulently using state religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their kids. With no penalty for doing so – and minimal enforcement – they’re not going to stop until this loophole is closed.
Mental Floss has nine possible uses for sourdough starter discard.
I included this last week as well: There’s a petition online to demand the removal of the Conferederate flag and monument to Confederate soldiers at the Nutter Marvel Carriage Museum in Georgetown, Delaware. It’s a private institution, so unlike the statues and flags coming down in public spaces, the state and local governments can’t just remove the offensive objects.
Meanwhile, everything is fine in Poland, where the state TV station is warning that the opposition candidate for President will “fulfil Jewish demands” if he wins.
Board game news: Marvel Villainous, a new standalone game in the Disney Villainous series that introduces some new rules and five new villains to play, is available for pre-order at Target.
Bézier Games has announced an upcoming Kickstarter for Ultimate Werewolf Extreme, an expanded and upgraded version of their popular Ultimate Werewolf game.

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

→ June 6, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/6/20.

I had two columns up this week for subscribers to the Athletic: my third stab at projecting the first round for next week’s MLB draft, and my ranking of the top 100 prospects in the draft class. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My podcast this week featured my colleague Evan Drellich, talking about the state of negotiations between MLB and the union when we spoke on Monday. You can also listen on Apple, Stitcher, or Spotify.

The Inside Game has garnered several recommendations from major publications as a Father’s Day gift or for summer reading, including from Forbes, The New York Times, and Raise. My thanks to all of you who’ve already bought it; if you’re looking to pick up a copy, you can get it at bookshop.org or perhaps at a local bookstore if they’re reopening near you.

My free email newsletter continues to not write itself, yet I keep sending it out anyway. Feel free to sign up for more words from me.

And now, the links…

Writer Jake Lawler asks “What more can we do to show you that we deserve to live?”
Nylah Burton writes in The Independent that Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 is just a continuation of our government’s ongoing war on black Americans.
The media become complicit in Trump’s plans by dismissing the protests as “chaos” – they’re not.
The same white, wealthy Americans who preach libertarianism have no problem with authoritarian rule for those on the other side of the income gap.
As of Friday morning, there had been at least 140 incidents of U.S. police attacking journalists. It’s as good an argument as many for those saying it’s time to defund the police.
Alex Pareene writes in The New Republic that the police have sided with white vigilantes in cities across the United States.
From July 2019: Tear gas has been banned in warfare, so why do police still use it?
Tear gas may have led to the death of a protester in Columbus, Ohio, who had asthma.
The National Guard occupied my adopted home city of Wilmington, Delaware, for nine months in 1968. The city has never recovered, including economically.
Breonna Taylor’s family spoke to NPR about grieving her loss and the life ‘robbed’ by police.
The Washington Post has a guide to deleting old Facebook activity, if you’d like to reduce your presence on the service (for any reason) but aren’t ready to delete your account entirely.
The U.S. unemployment rate probably didn’t decline in May after all – it was a “misclassification error.”
Coronavirus appears to attack the lining of blood vessels, leading to a spiral of inflammation that culminates in a cytokine storm that has proven fatal for many patients with underlying cardiovascular conditions.
Anti-vaxxers are already mobilizing against the coronavirus vaccine that doesn’t yet exist.
Without a vaccine, herd immunity against COVID-19 may not be possible.
Poland’s ruling right-wing party is taking advantage of the pandemic to tighten its authoritarian grip on the country, including making abortions almost impossible for women to get.
BBC film critic Nicholas Barber pays tribute to the light comedic touch of author P.G. Wodehouse, the “crafter of perfect sentences.”
Board game news: Maztec, a jigsaw puzzle that plays like a competitive board game, is now up on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, blm, coronavirus, links, social media, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 23, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/23/20.

This week I had two related columns for subscribers to the Athletic – my 2010 redraft and my list of the 2010 first-rounders who didn’t pan out. A few people got particularly unpleasant over the redraft, which is quite unusual, mostly because they didn’t read the intro. I held another Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I had Cubs’ superutilityman Ian Happ as a guest to talk about coffee, especially his collaboration with Connect Roasters to sell a specific blend of Guatemalan beans, with $3 from every bag going to COVID-19 relief charities. You can buy the coffee at coffeeforcovid.com, and you can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes or Spotify.

My second book, The Inside Game, made the New York Times‘ list of six recommended summer reads in the sports category, which is incredibly flattering. You can buy The Inside Game or Smart Baseball on bookshop.org or at any local stores if they’re opening back up near you.

I’ve been better about sending out my newsletter lately – feel free to sign up here to get weekly-ish musings and links to everything I write.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Ed Yong continues his outstanding coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic with a sobering look at the “patchwork” pandemic, including the lack of a peak and rolling outbreaks still going on across the country. Note how many instances he documents of the federal government abdicating its responsibilities to state and local authorities, and his statement that Arizona reopened “while cases were still rising” – bad news for MLB teams with training sites there.
Former NHL player Akim Aliu’s essay “Hockey is Not For Everyone” is a damning look at racism in North American hockey.
Serious Eats explains the science behind sourdough starters.
Drowned out by some dubious news about a commercial COVID-19 vaccine venture was the news from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center about two studies showing another vaccine protected primates against the same virus.
Quarantine fatigue is real, but policymakers can learn from HIV-prevention efforts who realized abstinence-only efforts don’t work and instead focused on risk reduction strategies.
The shutdown has forced many LGBT kids to return home to families that have rejected them or parts of their identities.
Nearly half of the accounts on Twitter tweeting about the pandemic are bots, according to new research from Professor Kathleen Carley and others at Carnegie Mellon.
VICE looks at the disturbing AF world of COVID-19 “truther” groups on Facebook, which promulgate bullshit conspiracy theories and engender anti-lockdown protests.
BuzzFeed runs through some of the quacks and fake experts pushing pseudoscience and conspiracy theories about the pandemic, including Judy Mikovits, the disgraced researcher behind the bogus documentary “Plandemic.”
Some COVID-19 patients show severely depleted levels of T cells, which may be a clue to potential treatments.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about from the pandemic, it has interrupted inoculation efforts around the world to the point that measles and polio outbreaks are becoming more likely.
Iowa’s efforts at testing for COVID-19 and sharing that data with local officials appear to be a disaster.
Dr. Dannagal Young, a Professor at the University of Delaware, describes how her late husband’s brain tumor led her to chase numerous conspiracy theories in a quest to regain control of their lives.
White people’s “unreasonable fear,” which is itself unjustified, is killing black Americans, writes conservative journalist David French for TIME.
I knew this was likely coming, but I’m still so disappointed that Gen Con 2020 has been cancelled.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, bread, coronavirus, hockey, links, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ May 16, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/16/20.

I posted my first mock draft of 2020 on Wednesday for subscribers to The Athletic, since we are now just 26 days away from the first night of the draft, which will only be five rounds. I wrote last week about the impact of the shorter draft on players and the sport as a whole, and also did a “what-if” lookback at the Padres’ decision to take Matt Bush over Justin Verlander in 2004. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday, my first in ages.

My new book, The Inside Game, is now out and you can buy it everywhere fine books are sold, including here on bookshop.org; I’m donating my affiliate commissions from sales of my book through the site to my local food bank. The Eugene Register-Guard has a nice review of both The Inside Game and Brad Balukjian’s The Wax Pack.

My guest on this week’s episode of The Keith Law Show was San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea, whose book 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid, co-authored with Willie Mays, was released on Tuesday. I’m scheduled to have Cubs infielder/outfielder Ian Happ on the show this upcoming week to talk about his charitable endeavors with artisanal coffee. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.

At Paste, I reviewed The Sherlock Files: Elementary Edition, a new card-based deduction game that played better than I expected, although the Sherlock character isn’t remotely involved in the game’s story or mechanics. My review of the excellent digital adaptation of Sagrada is up over at Ars Technica.

I sent out another edition of my email newsletter on Friday night to subscribers; it’s free and you can sign up here.

And now, the links…

Longreads … well, medium-reads first: The New Yorker has a look at the secret world of fungi, the botanical kingdom that goes way beyond the mushrooms you likely pictured when you read that.
ProPublica has a piece explaining how climate change is pushing up infectious disease rates, and making pandemics more likely in the future.
The Guardian looks at former US army sergeant’s abortive plot to overthrow Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“For conservative zealots and media figures, the pandemic is quickly becoming just another culture war battleground — an axis of postmodern symbolic conflict, another vent for bottomless grievance, and fuel for a screeching victimhood complex.” This from The Week’s Ryan Cooper, who also points out that the United States’ response to COVID-19 has been the worst of any developed nation and argues that the problem of conservative victimhood has made governing the U.S. impossible.
Some countries are easing restrictions on movement and gatherings, but other nations are restoring such isolation measures because of increases in new cases.
Get ready for a massive disinformation effort against a COVID-19 vaccine; it has started online even though such a vaccine doesn’t actually exist.
A commentary in CalMatters, authored by two professors in the University of California system, gives helpful tips for journalists asked to cover anti-vaccine or anti-lockdown “protests,” most of which are very small and may be astroturfed events.
For example, Creative Loafing Tampa revealed that a “reopen Florida” rally was, in fact, organized by an anti-vaccine group – which multiple mainstream Tampa media outlets failed to mention in their coverage of the protest.
Various states’ lockdown efforts have led anti-vaccine groups to team up with pro-Trump agitators in some of these protests, the strangest of bedfellows other than their shared denial of science.
Many red states are now seeing cases surge even as Trump claims (falsely) the pandemic is subsiding.
GOP-controlled legislatures are up to some shit while we’re distracted by the pandemic, such as Missouri Republicans attempting to gut gerrymandering reform.
An interesting topic for debate: Do works by authors accused of sexual harassment belong in the classroom? I think the answer at the university level would mostly be “yes,” but what about high school? Junior high school? Can you have a serious discussion about separating artist from art, or about the specifics of any accusations, with 16-year-olds or 12-year-olds or younger kids?
Tribune Publishing is furloughing workers and cutting pay to save about $550,000 just months after distributing $9 million in cash to shareholders.
Nik Sharma, author of the wonderful cookbook Season, writes in the Washington Post on how to make a flavorful vegetable stock that contains just five ingredients other than water.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent warns that, as in 2016, too many media members lend credence to bullshit conspiracies and outright lies from the Trump camp through weasel wording.
From a few weeks ago: McSweeney’s hits rather close to home with “Emails from My Children’s School Before 8:00 AM During the COVID-19 Crisis.”
Jess Grose’s latest parenting column for the New York Times, on dealing with home-schooling burnout, has a note at the end from a name familiar to board game fans.
Renegade Game Studios are holding a virtual game convention on June 5-7 where they’ll announce a bunch of upcoming new games as well.
Cranio Creations has a Kickstarter up for their planned reissue of the 2004 Wolfgang Kramer/Michael Kiesling game Maharaja, reimagined by Simone Luciani (Tzolk’in, Grand Austria Hotel).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, Cooking, coronavirus, links, longreads, metoo, missouri, mushrooms, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 18, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/18/20.

My book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, will be out in three days! You can buy it wherever you can buy books right now, but allow me to recommend bookshop.org, which sources books from independent bookstores or just gives some of their proceeds from direct sales to indie stores.

For The Athletic subscribers this week, Eno Sarris and I examined the five tools for position players from both scouting and analytical perspectives. There will be another piece for pitchers, which I hope to get done this week (I think Eno’s well ahead of me for his part). On my own podcast, I spoke with former Angels scouting director Eddie Bane about Mike Trout, all-time draft busts Bill Bene and Kiki Jones, and more. You can subscribe here on Apple and Spotify.

On the board game front, I reviewed Oceans, the new standalone sequel to the game Evolution, over at Paste this week. For Vulture, I looked at pandemic-themed games, including the one by that name, with thoughts on why diseases are such a popular theme.

I did a virtual bookstore event with Harrisburg’s Midtown Scholar on Thursday, which you can watch here if you missed it. I’ll do another such event on Friday, April 24th, with Sean Doolittle via DC’s Politics & Prose; you can sign up by buying a copy of The Inside Game here.

I spoke to Ryan Phillips of The Big Lead about The Inside Game and my move to the Athletic, among other topics, appeared on the Sports Information Solutions podcast with my former ESPN colleague Mark Simon to talk about the book, and talked about boardgames during quarantine on the Just Not Sports podcast.

And now the links…

Longreads first: This WIRED piece on the neurological decline of a brilliant young coder is devastating and kind of hopeless, yet so well-written.
John Horton Conway died this week of complications from COVID-19; this Guardian profile of the master mathematician from 2015 gives you a sense of his works and his persona. Conway invented the zero-player game The Game of Life, which proceeds according to fixed rules from whatever starting position you create. It’s famous in mathematical and computer science circles, at least.
The economic pain from the pandemic will be unfairly distributed. This piece from the New Yorker makes some strong points, although there’s a bit of a survivorship bias angle to the conversations with an investor who claims he saw the pandemic coming and profited heavily from investments around it.
Republicans are trying to use the pandemic as cover to remove thousands of voters from the registration rolls, with Wisconsin a prominent example of how they’re targeting voters of color too.
Anti-vaxxers are already spreading disinformation about COVID-19 and preparing to fight vaccinations if and when a vaccine is developed for it – but there are also signs that some vaccine hesitant people are reconsidering their views.
Dr. Grace Farris, the chief of medicine at Mount Sinai West in New York and author of some very clever cartoons on her Instagram account @coupdegracefarris, wrote a bittersweet piece in the New York Times about how she hasn’t seen her kids in four weeks to try to keep them away from the coronavirus while she’s working at the hospital.
No matter what Fox News tells you, there is no evidence that COVID-19 came out of a laboratory in China or anywhere else.
South Dakota’s Republican governor is one of five who’ve resisted issuing stay-at-home orders, and now the state has one of the nation’s worst hotspots for COVID-19.
Ohio Republicans are trying to get the state’s governor, Mike DeWine (R), to reopen the state’s economy. This is becoming a trend across the Midwest and south, despite public health experts’ recommendations that the states remain closed.
And we may not be able to reopen at all until we start testing a lot more people – especially those who aren’t visibly sick.
An email chain involving experts inside and outside the government shows just how far behind the curve Trump and even the CDC were in preparing for the pandemic here.
Why did a company with no employees and no history of producing medical equipment get a $55 million contract to make N95 masks for the federal government?
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) has had to arrange covert shipments of protective masks from China to avoid the federal government seizing them, since the feds haven’t provided enough masks to the state in the first place.
Molly Roberts, writing in the Washington Post, looks at the problems the Tara Reade allegations pose for Democrats looking to support Joe Biden (or who simply want to defeat Trump in November).
Bill Simmons bought a $16 million home outside L.A., and Variety reported on it but took the story down within hours.
There’s a GoFundMe open to support Oakland’s Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest black-owned independent bookstore.
CMON’s Kickstarter for Ankh: Gods of Egypt, the newest game from designer Eric Lang (Blood Rage, Rising Sun), has already crossed $1.25 million.
Jupiter Disco, a Brooklyn cocktail bar owned by a friend of my partner, has a Kickstarter out (already funded) for a new cocktail zine called PRESERVATION! to help keep the bar afloat during the shutdown.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, bookstores, coronavirus, links, longreads, south dakota, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, voter suppression

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