vaccines — Page 13

→ June 29, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/29/19.

I had two ESPN+ pieces this week, my annual look at the top 25 players under 25 (which has an error in it around German Marquez’s contract status, sorry) and a scouting blog post on Grayson Rodriguez, Deivi Garcia, Alec Bohm and more. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

This piece went up a little while ago but I waited to post it until some small editing mistakes were corrected: I listed eight of my favorite noir and neo-noir films for Caavo and my friend Desi Jedeikin.

I’ll be at the MLB Futures Game in Cleveland on July 7th, and I’m staying in the area Monday night to give a talk and sign books at the Hudson Library and Historical Society at 7 pm. I hope to see many of you there.

I’ll send out the next copy of my free email newsletter this weekend, so feel free to sign up for more of my words.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Deadspin had a peculiar story on a man in 19th century England who became a professional pedestrian.
Grub Street has an oral history of Serious Eats, a site that went from a collection of very niche blogs to the go-to destination for dedicated chefs interested in a science-based approach to cooking.
The President of the United States was credibly accused of rape – again – and his response was that his accuser was not his “type.”
Why is it always Alabama? Well, an Alabama woman who was shot has been charged with manslaughter for the death of the fetus she was carrying, while the shooter was not charged at all.
Why is it always Alabama? Well, after a Covington County Sheriff lost a bid for re-election, he went on a spending spree with public funds, with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment or cash now missing – on top of the over $100,000 of military equipment that went missing during his tenure. (And why the fuck does a rural county sheriff need a hundred grand worth of military equipment?) ProPublica found nine incoming sheriffs across Alabama who reported similar experiences with their predecessors looting public funds.
The argument over whether to call the active concentration camps on our southern borders “concentration camps” is a counterproductive distraction from the actual harm being done in the concentration camps.
Four scientists tried to replicate a frequently-cited research result from a paper published in Science in 2008, but failed to achieve the same results. Science refused to publish their new paper, arguing that the “field had moved on,” rather than accepting that, hey, sometimes a single study turns out to be wrong.
An app appeared briefly this week that allowed users to create fake nudes of nearly any woman by using a type of neural-networking algorithm that works similarly to that behind “deepfake” videos.
Above the Law points out that the proposed two-city solution for the Rays is a legal impossibility, based in part on this piece Sheryl Ring wrote for Fangraphs about the Rays’ obligations to St. Petersburg.
“Vaccine skeptic” just means anti-vaccine. So does “pro-safe-vaccine.” Don’t let denialists’ obfuscations confuse you: These people are pushing dangerous misinformation that will worsen the health of the general public.
A four-day workweek would go a long way to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more so than popular but low-value solutions like banning plastic straws. (Also, banning plastic straws hurts people with certain disabilities; encouraging people to use them less often is a better idea.)
I had no idea that sand mining was a thing, or that sand, critical to much of the world’s construction industry, was a scarce resource, but in India, it’s a corrupt industry rife with labor abuses, causing massive environmental damage.
Employees at one location of Seattle third-wave coffee purveyors Slate Coffee resigned en masse in response to a “toxic” work environment. The owners of Slate responded to the story on Instagram (included in the link).
Maine Senator Susan Collins (R) now has a challenger in Democrat Sara Gideon, currently speaker of the Maine House. Gideon appears to be explicitly targeting Collins over her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh after the justice was accused of sexual assault.
I didn’t watch the debates among the ninety-four candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for President in 2020, for the same reason I almost never watch debates: They reward the pithy and superficial, and they treat political discourse as if it were a sporting event. Jeb Lund argues much the same, and says this structure and mindset helped put Trump in the White House in the first place.
Board game news: Dire Wolf has two new titles out – the social deduction game Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker and the expansion Clank! Upper Management Acquisitions Incorporated pack, which comes with four characters from the Penny Arcade universe that you can use in the dungeon crawl board game Clank!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, coffee, india, links, longreads, science, vaccines

→ June 22, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/21/19.

No new ESPN+ content this week, although that will change next week after I get to a few more minor league games. I did hold a Klawchat on Friday.

On the board game front, I had two pieces up at Paste this week. One is a straight review of Corinth, a new roll-and-write game from Days of Wonder that is sort of Yspahan: the Dice Game, but with a new theme and much altered rules. The other recaps the day and a half I spent at the Origins Game Fair, running through all the new games I saw or played.

On July 8th, the night after the Futures Game, I’ll be at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, Ohio, talking baseball, taking questions, and signing copies of my book Smart Baseball.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Atlantic‘s William Langewiesche examines the unsolved disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, and the uncomfortable but almost certain conclusion of who was responsible. EDIT: A rejoinder from the Daily Beast.
E. Jean Carroll says Donald Trump raped her in 1996. The party of family values will ignore her.
Conditions at the contractors’ offices where Facebook moderators work are dismal. I have become almost totally convinced that user-generated content sites can’t police themselves. People will say and post the worst things, but the sites have little incentive to remove anything that isn’t outright illegal, and the sheer volume of bad content (and reports) makes policing it infeasible.
A mapping error gave Under Armour billionaire Kevin Plank a huge tax break, with a boost from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R).
Noted left-wing publication (checks notes) Scientific American ran an editorial demanding that transphobes stop using phony science to defend their deviant beliefs. Sex and gender aren’t binary, scientists have known this for at least a half-century, and yet we still have troglodytes trying to uphold the two-bathroom paradigm.
A couple of Harvard alums have started a firm dedicated to growing high-quality shiitake mushrooms, viewing them as a sustainable, more healthful alternative to meat. I guess it’s unsurprising, but I never considered how the growth medium would affect the flavor and nutrition of mushrooms, just as soil quality affects that of vegetables.
Islanders goalie Robin Lehner won the Bill Masterson Trophy for his public discussion of his bipolar disorder and substance abuse.
Writing for Forbes, Bruce Y. Lee asks why actress Jessica Biel, who has no medical background, is fighting a pro-vaccination law that will crack down on doctors who give out bogus medical exemptions to existing vaccination mandates.
You know, like California Dr. Bob Sears, who is accused of giving out bogus medical exemptions while already on probation for giving out bogus medical exemptions. He should lose his medical license, permanently. He should probably be in jail.
New York millionaires Bernand and Lisa Selz are funding the anti-vaccine movement, donating over $3 million to groups that fight vaccination laws and spread misinformation about vaccines. I hope other outfits that have taken donations from the Selzes, like the Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection, turn them away.
An adult with autism, writing only as Max, explains how the anti-vaccine movement offends him and others with autism spectrum disorders.
The anti-vaccine movement is also fueled by Russian operations on social media, according to former DHS official and current Kennedy School lecturer Juliette Kayyem, speaking in this Q&A on the current measles outbreak and anti-vaccine sentiment.
An LA police officer, while off duty, used his service weapon to shoot a developmentally disabled, non-verbal man who pushed him in a local Costco, killing the man and hitting both the man’s parents, with the mother still in a coma.
The University of Michigan’s baseball team is headed to the CWS finals; Tony Paul wrote about Wolverine player Joe Donovan and his late brother, Charlie, who was also a Michigan recruit but died before reaching Ann Arbor.
Martin Feldstein, one-time chair of the President’s Council of Economics Advisers – Reagan fired him for opposing the supply-side strategy of deficit spending – and my Economics 10 professor at you-know-where died last week at age 79. There’s really no party or even subgroup of either party pushing for the policies he espoused.
Tens of thousands of Indian villages are facing water shortages, with no end in sight. Climate change and overpopulation are leading us down a death spiral when it comes to the global supply of clean water.
I’ve included songs from YONAKA on multiple playlists the last two years, including three songs on my top 100s of 2017/2018; NME profiled the band and their debut album’s focus on toxic masculinity and mental health topics.
This is an older post but I found it this week while googling something unrelated: a former member of the extremist Christian sect that also counts the Duggars as members writes of growing up “Quiverfull” and escaping the cult.
Speaking of cults, the folks proselytizing about the evils of wheat – not celiacs, mind you, but people who avoid wheat by choice – will often claim modern wheat varieties are worse for the environment, but a new study debunks that myth, showing that modern wheat requires less everything, including fertilizers, water, and fungicides.
In Alaba … no, wait, this time it’s Indiana, where the school district did the right thing but one teacher couldn’t handle it. An Indiana teacher resigned rather than accept a school policy to refer to trans students by their desired names and pronouns, but now he’s suing for his job back, backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a hate group that wants to criminalize homosexuality and transgenderism.
The New York Times took a break from profiling Trump supporters to … actually, to profile more Trump supporters, but this time it’s to shine a light on racist whites in Minnesota, angry at Somali refugees for being black, Muslim, and nearby.
Ryan Thomore writes for Cubs Insider about how Pride Days at the ballpark matter to LGBTQ+ fans.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alternative, baseball, food science, harvard, lgbt rights, links, longreads, minnesota, racism, stick to baseball, vaccines, water crisis

→ June 8, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/8/19.

Of course, most of my content this week was around this year’s MLB draft, but my biggest piece is actually free for everyone to read – my oral history of the drafting of Mike Trout, as told by the people who were there. For ESPN+ subscribers, you can read my draft recaps for all 15 AL teams and all 15 NL teams. I also held a Klawchat during day two of the draft and a live Periscope chat on Friday.

I really am trying to take time off this weekend, but I still plan to send out a new email newsletter to subscribers (it’s free, you just have to sign up) by Monday.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: That mass-market chocolate product you bought was probably the product of child labor, according to an extensive Washington Post report that documents the chocolate industry’s attempts to avoid accountability for sourcing its raw material. Desperate poverty in Burkina Faso and near-zero enforcement in Côte d’Ivoire have also contributed, and third-party certifications like FairTrade aren’t as reliable as they claim to be. The ultimate solution lies with consumers: Don’t buy cheap chocolate. Buy from companies that can identify their cacao sources.
Just four companies control 60% of global seed sales. This is bad news for our planet and our plates, writes chef Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate and now a seed activist of sorts. We’re reducing biodiversity at a time when we need plants to evolve to cope with our destruction of the environment; we’re reducing the nutrition and flavor of the plants we eat (or the meat we eat, which feeds on those plants).
The New York Times‘ editorial writers Bret Stephens (an Islamophobe and a climate change denier) and Bari Weiss have taken to extreme concern trolling over restrictions on free speech on campus, repeating the same tired (and misleading) talking points the paper has pushed for over a century.
It’s a shame the Times runs such drivel on its editorial page, because its investigative work remains top-notch, as in this piece on former alt-right devotee Caleb Cain and how Youtube helped indoctrinate him into that movement of hate.
We often hear about the mass extinction caused by anthropogenic climate change and other activities of man, but the death of one species can be a boon for another. Bullhead City, Arizona, has been overrun by caddisflies because man has gutted the populations of its predators by damming the Colorado River.
Joe Biden’s first Presidential run in 1988 was sunk in part by the revelation that he’d plagiarized parts of campaign speeches, as well as his habit of embellishing past accomplishments. The New York Times looks back at that disastrous campaign as Biden has begun to repeat his mistakes, such as plagiarizing parts of his climate change policy plan from other outlets.
Arizona cancer quack Colleen Huber, who tells patients she can cure cancer with baking soda and vitamin C, has lost her defamation suit against activist Britt Marie Hermes, a former naturopath who now works to expose the inherent fraud of ‘naturopathic medicine,’ which isn’t actually medicine at all. If you live in Arizona, perhaps consider asking your state attorney general to look into Ms. Huber’s business?
An exclusive Guardian report found that at least 200 quacks in the U.S. are using a sham therapy called ‘Cease’ on children, claiming it can prevent the measles and cure autism.
The Chicago journalist who has investigated R. Kelly’s sexual misconduct for nearly 20 years spoke to the BBC about his work and his new book on the singer, Soulless.
The S&P has performed much worse under Trump than it did under his predecessor. Populism and protectionism are not sound economic policies.
Sudan’s military toppled the country’s dictator this spring, but they’ve since cracked down on pro-democracy groups, arresting three opposition leaders this week and killing dozens of protesters in Khartoum. The coup leaders are relying on the same paramilitary forces that led the genocide in Darfur. Instability here is bad news for the region – and could make the country safe for Islamic terror groups again.
A Delaware man (originally from Queens) and former Army veteran went to York County, Pennsylvania, to try to clear up an outstanding warrant on a DUI charge. He ended up dead in a York jail, and his body was returned to the family missing several organs, including parts of his throat. The County tried to bury its response to the article by releasing a statement late on Friday afternoon.
The University of Alabama returned a $21.5 million gift from a donor who opposes the state’s anti-abortion law, even removing his name from the university’s law school. In the backwater swirling, there are some things that will never change.
The Guardian announced it will stop using inaccurate language to describe anti-abortion bills that supporters label, incorrectly, “heartbeat” bills. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says this term is inaccurate; a fetus of six weeks has no heart or cardiovascular system.
I’ve noticed in a few hotels this year that the little plastic toiletry bottles have been replaced by larger refillable containers affixed to the shower walls. It’s part of a larger movement including legislation in California that banned them in hotels of more than 50 rooms.
California’s Assembly passed a bill that would make some workers for companies like Lyft and Uber employees, rather than independent contractors, giving them greater protection from labor abuses.
The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple urged media outlets not to fall for Carlson’s bad-faith “praise” of part of Elizabeth Warren’s economic platform. And then Carlson went on air and attacked the “tyranny” of the metric system, the origin of which seems to be foreign to him.
Reading a lot of fiction improves social cognition and makes people more empathetic.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, arizona, chocolate, climate change, cost of food, frauds, links, pennsylvania, vaccines, white nationalism

→ June 1, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 6/1/19.

My second mock first round for Monday’s MLB draft went up this past Tuesday for ESPN+ subscribers; my Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects in the class, went up the previous week. I held a Klawchat on Thursday, and will hold another Monday afternoon, plus a Periscope live chat Monday night after the draft starts.

My latest board game review for Paste covers Aerion, a fun little solo game from the designer of Onirim, but that might be a bit too easy to beat. I won every single time I played; it was often close, but I still could find a way to win even with various included expansions.

I finally got back to my email newsletter yesterday, talking about why this was such a weird draft class to cover.

And now, the links…

One of those viral videos that purported to depict racism against African-Americans, this one involving a Chipotle employee (herself a person of color), turned out to get the story backwards; CNN has a long piece breaking down how the ‘internet mob’ got the story wrong and how it affected the woman targeted by the online outrage.
The BBC relates the history of British colonial authorities trying to erase hijras, India’s “third gender.” India recognized transgender people as an official third gender in 2014.
Jonathan Mayo polled 22 MLB scouts and executives asking who they’d take #1 in this draft class.
Waldorf Schools in California form major clusters of unvaccinated children; parents of these kids interviewed in this Guardian article voice the appeal to nature fallacy or the false conflict of interest claims. As much as anti-science is associated today with fundamentalist religion, you can also find wide swaths of anti-vaccine sentiment on the left in communities like these.
A German father wrote about losing his son to SSPE, a rare but invariably fatal side effect of measles infections. Max caught measles at six months, too young to be vaccinated, and SSPE put him into a vegetative state at the age of 12, after he’d suffered seizures and lost most of his memories. He died at 20.
Maine became the fourth state to eliminate non-medical exemptions to mandatory childhood vaccination rules, with the law passing the state’s Senate by a single vote. State Sen. James Dill (D), who voted for the bill, still raised bogus arguments about genetic conditions that might exempt children from the schedule, despite a total lack of evidence to support the existence of any such conditions. He’s listed as a scientist in that article, but his specialty is pest management, not immunology.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham defended white supremacist Paul Nehlen as a “prominent voice” who was “censored” (not what that word means) by social media.
Elizabeth Warren’s explanation of why she won’t do a town hall on Fox News is perfect (although I have no idea what Whoopi Goldberg is talking about at the end).
Why is the Administration referring to fossil fuels as “molecules of freedom?”
A science professor at Williams College writes about how students are rejecting science that challenges their worldviews, such as discussions of genetic differences between males and females, or across different geographic groups.
This New York Post article asserting that some students are avoiding colleges in states that are trying to outlaw abortion seems incredibly anecdotal, even if it’s sort of plausible. I’d like to see actual data on whether this affects applications or enrollment at any such schools before we claim this is a thing.
The Good Men Project tracks Sean Doolittle’s tour of MLB cities’ independent bookstores.
I loved Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, so I enjoyed this mental floss piece with some facts and trivia about the novel.
A University of Alabama-Birmingham study of spectator injuries at sporting events pointed to the need for more netting to protect fans from “ballistic” injuries – something flying from the field of play into the seats.
There’s a new, micro-game on Kickstarter from Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave called Tussie Mussie.
Tweet of the week:
The people who belittle @AOC for being a former waitress are the same faulting @ewarren for billing out at $675/hr. So how much exactly should world-changing women make?

— Katherine M. Gordon (@katgordon) May 28, 2019

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: anti-science, baseball, india, lgbt rights, links, maine, vaccines, white nationalism

→ May 30, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/25/19.

For ESPN+ subscribers, I posted my 2019 MLB draft Big Board, ranking the top 100 prospects in this year’s draft class. I’ll tweak that before the draft but this is the last complete re-ranking. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

I’m behind on just about everything else these days, but I’ll have a fresh game review up for Paste this upcoming week, and I swear there will be a new email newsletter issue soon. Really. I promise. Mostly.

And now, the links…

I tweeted about this story this week, but the report that set me off was Brandy Zadrozny’s article for NBC News about parents giving their kids bleach as a (fake) autism cure. The so-called MMS “cure” is just a fancy name for a toxic dose of chlorine dioxide, which is used to bleach wood pulp and paper.
The Washington Post examines how one right-wing activist has helped pack the nation’s courts with conservative judges. Why should any one person, regardless of political bent, have this kind of power over this branch of government? It’s likely to take decades to roll back the damage done to the country’s judiciary when it comes to fundamental issues like civil rights.
The Atlantic explores Sesame Street‘s introduction of a Muppet who lives with foster parents, and how the show’s writers try to teach viewers about dealing with traumatic events.
The editorial board of prestigious British medical journal The Lancet wrote this week that all doctors must fight to protect women’s rights and keep abortion safe and legal.
Anti-vaxxer activists are now working to spread their disinformation within communities suffering from measles outbreaks, including encouraging the orthodox to use (bogus) religious exemptions to skip mandatory vaccinations.
ProPublica shines a light on how the family of New Jersey political boss George Norcross benefited from over $1 billion in tax breaks, obtained through pressure on state officials that extended to one family lawyer helping write legislation to specifically benefit the Norcrosses.
Violence against trans people appears to be on the rise, so in response, the Administration is trying to roll back very basic protections for trans people, allowing homeless shelters to turn away people for being transgender and healthcare providers to freely discriminate against them.
Far far-right Arizona Rep. Kelly Townsend is trying again to pass a bill banning political speech in the classroom in a direct attempt to retaliate against teachers who fought last spring for higher pay and better working conditions in the #RedForEd movement.
Other far-right politicians attended a rally in Spokane to create a Christian state called Liberty State out of eastern Washington and northern Idaho. I’m sure the old Aryan Nations folks would be thrilled.
Deadspin’s Albert Burnenko writes that the idea that Trump wants to be impeached is absurd.
Trump entered office with more debt than any President in history, and last year added even more. So many of the core values that underpinned our democracy have died quiet deaths since his election; the failure to require Trump to divest from all his businesses feels like the worst of all the new precedents we’ve set.
Quentin Tarantino did not handle it well when asked a fair question about the limited dialogue for Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The Division 3 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference is kicking out St. Thomas after 100 years of membership for being too good.
Lindsey Adler asked a number of Yankees players about the time each came closest to quitting baseball (subscription required).
Over at Baseball America, J.J. Cooper looks at what happens in pitching-poor drafts like this year’s when you choose to draft a pitcher. The short answer: it’s not good.
Alabama continues to roll back the clock as fast as they can, as Alabama public television refused to air an episode of Arthur that showed a same-sex wedding.
A Methodist pastor in Alabama had some strong words for forced-birth Republicans, but more importantly, doesn’t he look a lot like David Ross?
Britain’s Labour Party made this tremendous video arguing against UKIP’s politics of exclusion as part of its Labour Voices series.
Board game news: Pre-orders are up now for Era, the newest game from designer Matt Leacock (Pandemic, Forbidden Desert).
Asmodee announced a new division, Gamegenic, to design and sell accessories for games, items like card sleeves, playmats, and storage boxes.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, arizona, baseball, board game news, lgbt rights, new jersey, pseudoscience, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines, white nationalism

→ May 11, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/11/19.

I had two ESPN+ posts this week, my first mock draft of 2019 and a draft scouting post on some prospects at Vanderbilt and Louisville. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

At Paste, I reviewed Noctiluca, a fun, light, dice-drafting game from the designer of Raiders of the North Sea. My daughter and I have really enjoyed this one.

Before I get to the regular links, here’s a GoFundMe that might be of interest to many of you. Luis Vasquez, a former Mets farmhand, developed bone cancer in his leg last year; he has survived it, but surgery to replace his knee and tibia has probably ended his career. Jen Wolf, who worked with Luis while she was with the Mets the last few years, has set up a GoFundMe page to help Vasquez move into a safer house in the Dominican Republic, as his family’s current home is falling apart and lacks electricity or indoor plumbing.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: A prominent case of gang rape in Spain that resulted in the five perpetrators only receiving convictions on lesser charges fueled massive nationwide protests – and into a position of power.
This New Yorker longread from a few weeks ago looks at the drive to automate produce picking, which has implications for the kind of food we eat, when we can buy it, how nutritious it is, and for the demand for unskilled laborers.
VICE explains how AirPods are an environmental tragedy; they’re expensive, don’t last long, and then they’re just trash.
You’ve heard plenty about the Alabama bill that would effectively criminalize abortions in the state; it would also criminalize false rape allegations in a way that if you accuse someone of rape and they’re acquitted, you have then committed a crime. Between this and Georgia’s attempt to ban abortion last week, the American South is no country for women.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Ohio, a state with three big cities and apparently Alabama around them, are pushing a bill to ban private insurance from covering abortions and that might also ban coverage of birth control. Theocracy still has its adherents.
The Daily Beast profiles a Hezbollah sleeper agent busted in the US for selling counterfeit Uggs.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has descended into denialism – and has made it a career. His sister and nephew write about how he’s dangerously wrong on vaccines.
Seth Meyers had Meghan McCain on his show and pushed back on her hypocritical comments against Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Republicans across the country are fighting Democrats’ attempts to tighten vaccination laws across the country, yet another example of the GOP aligning itself with anti-science interests.
The city of San Francisco has subpoenaed a doctor suspected of granting fake medical exemptions to parents seeking to avoid vaccinating their children.
Bioethicist Art Caplan wrote about a framework for legal liability for parents who refuse to vaccinate in a Harvard Law blog post in 2013.
Germany’s health minister proposed fining non-vaccinating parents $2700 to further discourage refusers.
The FDA is moving to increase regulations of supplements, a move that is more than overdue given the size of the market and the potential for harm to consumers by misleading labels and lack of manufacturing standards.
Sexual orientation is fluid into our adult years, supported by yet more research led by Virginia Tech scientist Christine Kaestle.
I’m now very interested in Furious Hours by Casey Cep after reading this review of the book, which covers a possible serial killer and an unwritten book by Harper Lee.
This NPR piece explains how hospitals cope when an unidentifiable patient arrives — someone without ID who isn’t conscious or isn’t able to identify themselves.
Nancy Armour writes about the privilege some Cubs fans have shown when defending Addison Russell or the fan who made a racist gesture on camera, saying those of us with that privilege can’t tell other classes that they shouldn’t be offended.
Why is it news when athletes of color decide not to go to the White House, but it’s not news when white athletes decide to go?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baseball, cost of food, links, longreads, nutrition, stick to baseball, vaccines, women's rights

→ May 5, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 5/5/19.

I had two ESPN+ posts last week, my ranking of the top 50 prospects in this year’s draft class and a scouting blog post covering a half-dozen top prep players (five of them on the top 50). My first mock draft of 2019 goes up on Monday. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I sent out the latest edition of my free email newsletter on Friday as well. I’ve been trying to time those to when I’ve got actual content to tell you all about, especially baseball things.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The Cut looks at a small cult that operated within the Sarah Lawrence campus, as the father of a student there ended up crashing in her dorm and taking control of many of her roommates’ lives. The university’s reluctance to act is especially disturbing.
BuzzFeed talked to former white nationalist writer/provocateur Katie McHugh, a piece that tries to exonerate her (and fails, in my opinion) but that is instructive into how the alt-right social media machine works.
The Saudi government has regularly helped its citizens living in the U.S. escape prosecution for crimes by spiriting them out of the country, yet we do nothing about this because we continue to believe that the Saudis are our friends despite forty-plus years of evidence that they are not. First it was oil, now it’s help against terrorism, but there’s always an excuse for treating the Saudis as allies even when their actions say otherwise.
My friend Tim Grierson interviewed director/actor Werner Herzog on the eve of the German film giant’s new documentary Meeting Gorbachev.
Kavitha Davidson wrote in the Guardian about sexual assault in sports and society, focusing on Luke Walton’s attorney is trying to use #MeToo to denigrate the coach’s victim.
The New York Times explores eleven major food crops already affected by climate change, which, as the article notes, is widely denied by elected officials (always Republicans) from many of the states that rely on agriculture for employment and income.
The Washington Post profiles D’Arcy Carden, who plays Janet on The Good Place.
The Post also argues that anti-vaxxers should bear the financial costs of their actions when outbreaks occur.
The anti-vaxxer movement is also turning to increasingly violent rhetoric. We ignored this as a society when anti-abortion activists did it, and then when white nationalists did it, and both movements eventually turned to violence and terrorism.
Those same anti-vaxxers are harassing and threatening a Toronto mother whose son died of the flu as she has been advocating for greater use of the flu vaccine.
Measles had been eradicated in this hemisphere in 2000; it just reached its highest level in the U.S. in twenty years, entirely because of anti-vaxxers.
Meanwhile, science-denier Darryl Metcalfe, Pennsylvania’s representative for its 12th district (guess which party!), introduced a bill making it easier for parents to skip vaccinations by requiring doctors to treat unvaccinated children even if it poses risks to other patients.
Germany’s health minister proposed issuing large fines to families who don’t vaccinate their school-aged children. Add that to liability and you might extinguish enough of the deniers to stop these outbreaks.
Indonesia announced a plan to move the capital away from Jakarta because that city is sinking.
The political science valedictorian at Brigham Young University announced during his speech that he’s gay, a huge move given that the Mormon Church just announced a month ago that homosexuality was no longer considered apostasy.
Adam Serwer argues in the Atlantic that Nazis are and have always been trolls.
A National Geographic editorial argues that we must keep half of all land mass in its natural state to stop climate change. That may be true, but, uh, good luck with that.
A federal court ruled that Ohio Republicans violated Ohioans’ constitutional rights with a 2011 gerrymander. I know New Jersey Democrats did this too, but are all of the remaining gerrymanders this decade by Republicans?
Board game news: Plan B Games opened pre-orders for Century: A New World, the third game in Emerson Matsuuchi’s trilogy that also included Spice Road and Eastern Wonders.
Acram Digital announced that they’re developing a digital port of Charterstone, the tremendous legacy game that was my #2 title of 2018.
Asmodee announced the creation of a new fiction imprint to publish works based on or tied to its wide stable of board game and RPG titles.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, climate change, links, metoo, rape culture, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 27, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/27/19.

No new ESPN+ content this past week, since the NFL draft sort of took center stage, but I’ll have a fresh draft ranking this upcoming week and my first projection for the MLB draft shortly after, either later this week or at the start of the next. Klawchat will also return this week.

My latest board game review for Paste covers Solenia from Pearl Games, a light strategy title that offers more depth of strategy than most gateway games do without sacrificing playability or making turns too long. I also recently reviewed the app version of the game Castles of Burgundy for Ars Technica.

You may also enjoy more of my words by signing up for my free email newsletter, which I send out when the muse speaks to me.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Sterling Jewelers, which operates most of the major mall jewelry store brands you know (Kay, Belden, Jared, Zales, and others), has allowed a culture of wage discrimination, sexual harassment, and outright assault to flourish even as a lawsuit first filed in 2005 continues to crawl through the courts. This lengthy expose by the New York Times‘ Taffy Brodesser-Akner has many triggering details of rape and sexual assaults, and explains how these problems became endemic to the company across brands and regions.
The New Yorker‘s Jia Tolentino explores what it takes to put your phone away and reduce the time we all waste on our devices.
Vox looks at the rise of the online ‘incel’ community and how it has spawned real-world violence. The worship of mass murderers like Elliott Rodger and Marc Lépine should tell you all you need to know about these atavists.
A new paper in the Hofstra Law Review looks at amateur baseball coaches who overuse their pitchers (PDF), exploring why a lawsuit against an offending coach on behalf of an injured pitcher would be extremely unlikely to succeed and thus arguing for a consistent scheme of pitch count regulations. (The piece mentions me in passing and incorrectly identifies my role with the Blue Jays.)
Also in the New Yorker: the story of a Jewish jazz musician who survived the genocide in part by playing in a jazz band for the Nazis.
The Cut interviewed Eula Biss, the author of On Immunity, about how “anti-vaxxers” are too heterogenous a group to be lumped under that single term. That’s one reason I would prefer that we call them ‘deniers,’ because that is something they all have in common – they deny the incontrovertible evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, even though they have diverse rationalizations for doing so.
The United States worked to dilute a UN resolution against the use of rape in war. You read that right: The UN tried to condemn rape as a war crime, and the U.S. fought to water it down.
Several women at Google have accused the company of retaliating against them for organizing a walkout to protest the company’s poor treatment of women.
NPR looks back at the immediate, effusive reaction when Nirvana released “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which became an anthem for disaffected youth of its time despite lyrical content that itself is anti-anthemic.
A 30-year-old man came down with measles … which is how he learned he wasn’t vaccinated. I would never speak to my parents again if I found out they had skipped vaccinating me. (I’ve seen my records, so I know this isn’t the case.)
Meanwhile, measles cases in the U.S. have spiked to nearly 700, even though the disease was eliminated from our hemisphere in 2000. This is entirely the fault of vaccine deniers, and they should be forced to bear the cost of their decisions.
A New York Supreme Court Judge rejected a challenge to a city vaccine mandate, which is good news, if temporary, in the fight against measles. One of the lawyers who brought the challenge? Conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Washington State Representative Matt Shea (guess) was caught discussing violent attacks with far-right figures, according to a Guardian investigation. The Seattle Times‘ editorial board has called for the state GOP to oust him.
A cognitive scientist explains why we are so susceptible to fake news and distorted memories. I definitely thought the Evil Queen’s quote was “Mirror, mirror, on the wall.”
Several Ohio lawmakers (guess) are pushing legislation in response to a mother who let her 9-year-old son dance in drag at a local bar, in a transparent attack on LGBTQ children.
Chely Wright responded to the bigot Franklin Graham’s claims that you can’t be gay and Christian.
President Trump continues to defend white nationalists and the slave-owning general Robert E. Lee in response to attacks from Joe Biden over the very issue of Trump’s support of white nationalism.
McSweeney’s gives us a rough transcript of every interview with Pete Buttigieg.
Bosk, the new game from the co-designer of Sagrada, is available for pre-order on Floodgate’s site.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: longreads, metoo, stick to baseball, vaccines

→ April 13, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/13/19.

I’ve had four ESPN+ posts this week. On the draft blog, I covered last week’s NHSI tournament + Elon RHP George Kirby, then scouted West Virginia RHP Alek Manoah and Texas Tech 3b Josh Jung. I’ve heard Jung’s name pronounced a few ways, but I think it has to be either Josh Jung or Yosh Yung, for consistency’s sake. On the pro side, I looked at the most prospect-laden minor league rosters this year, and finally saw Luis Robert play against the Royals’ high-A squad. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Architects of the West Kingdom, the newest game from Shem Phillips, who got a Spiel nomination for 2015’s Raiders of the North Sea. Architects is a busy worker-placement game, but has a few fun quirks like capturing your opponents’ meeples and selling them to the prison, or trading reputation to steal tax money or go to the black market.

And now, the links:

Longreads first: Anne Boyer writes in the New Yorker about what cancer takes away from you even if you survive it.
Adjunct professors are the minor-league baseball players of academia: overworked, underpaid, and often living on the edge of poverty. The Atlantic looks at one such adjunct who died because she couldn’t afford basic medical care that might have saved her.
Hampshire College has long had a reputation as a ‘hippie’ school, loose on the academics, maybe heavy on the substances. The college may be on the verge of extinction as it seeks a partner or buyer.
Forbes looks at deadbeat billionaire Jim Justice, the current governor of West Virginia, a man who doesn’t pay his bills and ignores state regulations that don’t suit him.
I’ve written quite a bit here about antibiotic resistance and the need for aggressive, science-based policies to combat it. Well, fungi can also make us sick, and now Candida auris has evolved resistance to antifungal drugs, too – and it’s hard to kill even outside the body. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06), an engineer by training, had a tweet thread about this topic after the article ran. Guess her party.
Kyle Korver, who sources tell me is a professional basketball player, wrote in The Player’s Tribune about learning to understand his own privilege.
Isaac Chotiner interviewed writer Bret Easton Ellis for the New Yorker, and Ellis said some things that didn’t play particularly well online, for good reason. I’m not linking this to dunk on Ellis, but to praise Chotiner: Look at how consistently he probes when Ellis dissembles, and how he refuses to let Ellis off the hook for saying something wrong. This is how the media should interview people in power.
ScienceNews has a follow-up piece to a link I posted last week that profiled fossil hunter Robert DePalma and the possible discovery of a fossil record from immediately after the Chicxulub impact.
Chik-Fil-A continues to pour money into nonprofit groups fighting LGBT rights across the country. I haven’t set foot in one of their restaurants in at least a decade, for this precise reason, but J. Kenji Lopez-Alt shows you how to recreate their famous chicken sandwich at home.
WIRED explains why the robocall problem will never truly be fixed.
Elizabeth Warren may not be faring well in early polls or fundraising, but Moira Donegan writes in the Guardian that Warren is the intellectual powerhouse of the Democratic Party, producing practical policy proposals where others purvey platitudes.
This week’s Hidden Brain podcast episode looks at how societal views of gay rights changed so dramatically inside of fifty years.
Stand your white ground: An Alabama woman who shot and killed the man who violently raped her and then assaulted her brother is now facing life in prison. Don’t get mad when people stereotype the south while this shit still happens in your backyard.
In Missouri, two legislators – guess which party! – are pushing anti-vaccine bills and conspiracy theories.
Another WIRED piece argues that our health laws have failed the public good when it comes to vaccines, making it too easy for idiots and the ignorant to opt out.
Amidst the furor over US-Israeli relations, we’re losing track of the various despots Trump is propping up around the world, including the rising dictatorship in Egypt.
Why am I including a link to a press release about a single-malt whiskey’s launch in India? You’ll see if you read it.
The New York Times crossword puzzle Twitter account got into a bizarre beef with another twitterer over what was pretty obviously a joke.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alabama, gay rights, links, missouri, science, vaccines, west virginia

→ April 6, 2019
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 4/6/19.

No ESPN+ content from me this week, although I have a draft blog post to file tonight that will cover what I saw at NHSI this week as well as potential first-rounder George Kirby of Elon. I did hold a Klawchat on Tuesday.

Meredith Wills helped me do some of the research that went into Smart Baseball, and, in addition to being an astrophysicist and general baseball expert (who realized that a change in the thickness of the baseball’s laces likely explains the current home run surge), she’s also a knitter and generally quite crafty. She’s disassembled many baseballs to look into their construction and is now selling crafts made from the leather on these baseballs, repurposing material that would otherwise go to landfills.

And now, the links, with a note. I didn’t get through all the longer reads I’d saved this week, so I may post a bonus roundup tomorrow or Monday. We’ll see how my weekend goes.

The best thing I read this week, one with particular relevance to me and many people close to me, is the New Yorker‘s piece on Laura Delano and the poorly-understood challenges of going off psychiatric drugs. I take one of those drugs, escitalopram (Lexapro), at the lowest ‘therapeutic dose’ of 10 mg/day, to help manage my anxiety.
Irin Carmon, now of New York magazine’s Intelligencer, writes of how the Washington Post, including famed editor-in-chief Marty Baron, spiked her work (with Amy Brittain) revealing that 60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager had a history of sexual harassment. CBS and Fager barraged the Post with threats of lawsuits and implied that they’d leak information to sink the story and some individuals’ careers, so the Post excised Fager’s story from their exposé of Charlie Rose; Ronan Farrow eventually published these allegations last July, leading to Fager’s belated firing.
The BBC looks at the murder of Iraqi Instagram star Tara Fares, part of what appears to be an increasing campaign to silence “liberal” women with significant social media profiles in the country.
Two of the links this week are very difficult reads about the deaths of children. The Washington Post goes deeper on the story of the grieving mother Susan Stevens, whose daughter’s death by overdose been used by Trump as ‘evidence’ we need a border wall, but whose story is far more complicated, with abuse and sexual assault possibly contributing to her daughter’s drug use.
The second is a photo essay on NPR covering the life and death of 12-year-old Lola Muñoz from a brain tumor, documented by photojournalist Moriah Ratner, who spent over a year with Lola and became very close to her subject before Lola’s death one year ago.
Vox asked fifteen experts about what modern practices or beliefs will be “unthinkable” in fifty years; I thought Lux Alptraum’s answer on sex work and its possible decriminalization was particularly insightful. When we turn sex workers into criminals, we are often revictimizing the people we charge with crimes.
The Anti-Defamation League called out anti-vaxxers for misappropriating the Holocaust-era Star of David badge to try to make themselves into some sort of victims.
The HPV vaccine has led to a dramatic drop in cervical disease, referring to the precancerous cells found in cervixes as a result of HPV infections.
I may have included this once before, but Undark’s profile of 18-year-old Ethan Lindberger, who was unvaccinated until he gained his majority and whose mother is still off in cloudcuckooland when it comes to vaccines, is worth your time.
From McSweeney’s: “I’m Vaccinating my Child the Natural Way – With Measles.“
The Administration is draining that swamp by letting pork producers have more control over inspections. Getting food-borne illnesses to own the libs?
Texas billionaire and Trump ally Andrew Beal is trying to get courts and regulators to stop California’s clean energy goals so he can profit, with zero apparent concern for the effects on our environment. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be born without a soul.
The Fifth Circuit Court’s recent ruling in Gibson v. Collier abandons the rule of law so the majority could weigh in against trans rights, according to plaintiff’s attorney Max Kennerly.
Probiotics do little to nothing for your overall health; they may even be bad for your immune system. Want a healthier gut? Eat more fiber.
The Atlantic has a fun interview with songwriters Norm Stiles and Chris Cerf, who wrote many of Sesame Street‘s most famous songs and later co-created Between the Lions. I do dispute the writer’s assertion that Sesame Street‘s best-known tune is “Put Down the Duckie.” That’s not even the show’s best-known song about a rubber duck; “Rubber Ducky” was so popular it hit the top 20 on Billboard‘s pop singles cart in 1970.
In a video essay for the New York Times Venezuelan-American writer Joanna Hausmann says the American Left is wrong to glorify Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro, and that protests against U.S. action in the collapsed South American state seem to ignore the wishes of actual Venezuelans. She also points out that Venezuela’s economy collapsed due to decades of corruption, with Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez looting the state for personal gain.
BuzzFeed writers have unionized, but the company is refusing to even recognize the union. You can see the union’s open letter to management on its Twitter feed.
Political science professor Leah Stokes looks at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that corporate money, not public opinion, is the real opposition to the Green New Deal, and finds evidence to support it.
Wine Enthusiast has a guide to amari, potable bitters, mostly from Italy that I’m seeing more on dessert menus at fine restaurants. The piece mentions my two favorites for drinking straight – Meletti and Montenegro.
Nationals pitching prospect Sterling Sharp is running a pledge drive to benefit youth baseball in Detroit where you can donate a flat amount or do as I did, pinning your donation to the number of groundball outs Sharp records this year.
Renegade Game Studios announced pre-orders for two upcoming titles, Artsee and the trick-taking game Time Chase.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, depression, food safety, links, liquor, longreads, mental health, the swamp, vaccines

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