My ranking of the top 25 prospects for impact in 2016 is up for Insiders. I also held my Klawchat on Thursday.
I updated my Arizona dining guide for those of you heading to the Valley for spring training.
I also joined the boys of Cespedes Family BBQ on their podcast for an hour of silliness and a lot of prospect talk.
And now, the links…
- Folks of a certain age will remember the awful Atari video game E.T., or at least its catastrophic release; the BBC talked to its designer about the entire debacle.
- A former University of Tennessee football player testified that coach Butch Jones called him a “traitor” for helping a woman who said she was raped by other players. He also says he was assaulted by another player on the team for the same reason. If we want problems like this one or the similar issues at Baylor to go away, just cancel the football team’s season for a year or two. Nothing will get a school’s attention like taking away its cash cow.
- School of Seven Bells’ final album, SVIIB, came out yesterday (here’s my review), so here’s yet another interview with Alehandra Deheza – with a detailed history of the band – from the Guardian.
- OpenTable interviewed longtime food critic Ruth Reichl, who received two James Beard awards for her writing. I always found her style a little off-putting, but she explains why she wrote the way she did and offers numerous insights on food criticism and how restaurants should interact with critics.
- Coffee capsules, like Keurig’s K-cups, are an environmental disaster and the BBC tells us why. Not mentioned: the coffee in those pods is months old, so what you’re drinking is swill.
- Matthew Yglesias writes why Marco Rubio is more extreme than Donald Trump. Slate offers a thoughtful defense of Jeb Bush as candidate and person. FiveThirtyEight tackles John Kasich’s war on abortion rights in Ohio, which cuts against the conventional wisdom that he’s a moderate Republican. (I’d argue that he is a moderate on most issues, with many policies I support. He’s just not a moderate on this.)
- A balanced look at the Kesha-Sony lawsuit from Vanity Fair.
- And a less balanced look at the ruling, which forces Kesha to continue to record with the man she says raped her.
- A single study in Finland found that a high-cholesterol diet didn’t raise heart attack risk, even in persons genetically predisposed to the latter. This seems in line with recent research that says it’s much less about diet than we thought in the 1980s, when cholesterol was suddenly public enemy #1.
- The NY Times has an article on how to get more privilege in your coffee, taking a relatively inexpensive process (buy this Hario V60 dripper for $17.50 and some filters and you’re basically there) and making it pricey and complicated for no apparent gain.
- The racist roots of facial hair bans in sports. Well, that was totally unsurprising.
- How the female editor of Buzzfeed Canada was rape-threatened off Twitter when she asked for story pitches from non-white male writers. Twitter’s non-response to the harassment problem is maddening, but other than continuing to talk about it on the site, I don’t see what users can do.
- The Atlantic discusses a study on why we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes.
- Tweet of the week:
— GeekPharm (@geekpharm) February 19, 2016
Jeb Lund had a pretty good semi-counterpoint to the Jeb Bush piece: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jeb-bush-and-dying-with-indignity-20160224?page=3
Interesting piece by a former Jeopardy contestant on how she was sexually harassed online after her appearance on the show, as well as how this has become a common phenomenon. Figured you (and your other readers) may find it worth reading. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/big-tits-for-600-the-ugly-sexist-aftermath-of-appearing-on-jeopardy
Someone (Kasich) who supports a balanced budget Constitutional amendment, a return to the gold standard, and a sizable increase in defense spending while simultaneously cutting taxes for the highest earners is not a moderate on “most issues”. Plus he wins the full throated endorsement of the NRA, supports restrictive abortion policies, and doesn’t actually have a health care proposal (just the conservative dog whistle of “Repeal Obamacare”). Best I can tell he is a moderate on two issues: expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and expanding Medicaid (as a governor–again, it is unclear how he plans to reform Medicare and Medicaid as president).
That NYTimes article absolutely blew my mind. You can get a fine pour over set up for $50 and they’re pushing a $107 pouring kettle? The automated pour over at 570 was real cute too. Just toss down another $80 and buy a Rancilio Silvia espresso machine for F’sake.
Atari: Game Over is a good documentary that came out a couple years ago and chronicles the dig in New Mexico that uncovered the buried E.T. cartridges, as well as other games. It’s also a good history of video games in general and has interviews with Warshaw and others. I believe it’s still on Netflix now.