My Mock Draft 2.0 Is now up for Insiders. You can also see my post from Tuesday ranking the top 25 prospects in pro ball. I’ll expand that list to 50 after the Futures Game in July.
I also held my usual Klawchat, this time on Friday morning on a flight from Birmingham to Baltimore.
And now, the links…
- The wife of one of my readers penned this excellent piece on how protectionism will hurt the United States. With one Presidential candidate pushing a Hawley-Smoot vision of trade, and the other talking about using tariffs as a weapon, we may be on the verge of an entirely preventable hit to our economy.
- Colistin-resistant bacteria have made their first appearance in the U.S. While health officials say there’s no current cause for alarm, this is very, very bad news. The most likely cause? China’s overuse of antibiotics in livestock.
- Best news/opinion piece I saw on the Baylor debacle was this review and takedown from Texas Monthly‘s Jessica Luther and Dan Solomon.
- Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of Paypal and Facebook board member, financed Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker as part of his own personal vendetta. This is a very dangerous precedent for our legal system.
- A Republican judge in Ohio ruled that a GOP-backed law violated the Voting Rights Act because its practical effect would be to suppress the black vote.
- Ah, Mississippi, where gays are second-class citizens and a mentally ill man has been in jail for 11 years without a trial.
- The Washington Post praised a speech in which Elizabeth Warren eviscerated Donald Trump, but does it matter? I feel like his base is impervious to this kind of criticism, and I’m not sure it will sway many of the undecided voters either, so this feels like either wishful thinking or some sort of cheerleading.
- Four WaPo pieces this week. Their in-depth profile of a 13-year-old girl’s online social life disturbed me, the father of a 10-year-old girl who is sitting next to me with her iPad mini right now. Richard Deitsch pointed out online that this girl’s experience isn’t universal, though: she’s financially well off, certainly, and there’s probably a good companion piece to be written on a kid on the other side of the digital divide.
- The best BBQ place in San Antonio has taken the egalitarian cuisine upscale. I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t fit a trip to see Forrest Whitley into my schedule so I could have eaten dinner at the Granary.
- The World Bank issued a report warning of the water shortages that will come with climate change. It’s very cheery stuff.
- A writer at The Mighty shares her story of depression and how we tend to overlook people who appear to be successful in life but may still have depression or anxiety disorder.
- Why was the National Children’s Study cancelled after 14 years, over $1 billion in expenses, and no results? There are many answers, none very satisfying, provided in this look by Undark.
I know you said early on you didn’t think there was an issue with the methodology of the Washington Post poll. I was wondering if you had seen this story and if you had any thoughts on it.
http://www.thenation.com/article/on-the-shameful-and-skewed-redskins-poll/
Fuck SCOTUS for the _Shelby County_ decision, forever
The granary is soo good. Highly recommend
A very dangerous precedent for the legal system? Are you joking? Gawker illegally aired sextapes, outed homosexuals for sport, and even went so disgustingly far as airing tape of a woman being raped over her pleas to avoid being humiliated. NONE of this is journalism, and NONE of it benefits society in any way at all. Thank God Peter Thiel, this jury and court stood up for privacy in a world where it is clearly becoming endangered, and in which the coming proliferation of cheap drone tech will only help to expedite its extinction in the future.
Your take is flat out embarrassing, and basically comes down to hilariously arguing that journalism should be above the laws of our country. If I widely disseminate an illegally obtained a sex tape of you and another individual, you sue me and rightly win, it clearly does nothing to endanger real journalism in any way no matter who is paying my legal bills or if I proclaim my garbage product to be journalism.. It’s clearly NOT a dangerous precedent in any way at all. What a joke!
You obviously don’t get it. Everyone agrees that Gawker is reprehensible, but the issue and precedent here is that a billionaire is using what is–to him–pocket change to create lawsuit headaches for a publisher that cannot match his largesse.
From your remarks, it would seem you are conflating Hulk Hogan (who was legitimately injured, and had a legitimate case) with Peter Thiel (who is a mere interloper here, manipulating both Hogan and the legal system to advance his own ends). It does not seem that you actually read the piece, but if you do you will learn that Thiel actually bankrollled many suits (and an entire legal team), and this just happened to be the suit that did some damage. If you think that no precedent has been set, it means you think that this would only work with Gawker or TMZ, and not the LA Times or Time Magazine or other much more legit publications. And if that is what you think, you are flat out wrong.
Surely you are not so lacking in imagination that you cannot see how such power could be abused by other wealthy types under less morally-clear circumstances? What if Donald Trump does not like the way that Slate covers him, so he files a bunch of lawsuits? Even if the suits are of little/no merit, Slate does not necessarily have millions in spare capital to burn to fight The Donald. Ergo, Trump would be able to silence a legitimate critic solely by flexing his financial muscle. Or, he might be able to use the threat of lawsuit to force them to cover him in a way that is to his liking.
If anyone’s “take” is “flat out embarrassing,” well…let’s just say it’s not Keith’s.
Right. Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner are billionaires, so all media are safe from this kind of thing. Very sound logic.
As to your Greenpeace “point,” you do realize that it actually proves my argument, right? It takes money to wage lawsuits. Those who have it can use that fact against those who do not.
In any case, there are three things about you that are clear to me:
1. You’ve made up your mind
2. You’re not too strong in the reading comprehension department
3. You can’t make an argument without being insulting
These being the case, I shall have to bow out of this discussion. As they say, “You’ve done nothing when you’ve bested a fool.”
Note to all: My second response is targeted at cse’s second response, but apparently he does not quite grasp “reply” either, so the nesting isn’t correct.
A lawyer friend of mine once told me the difference between rich people and non-rich people when it comes to lawsuits. Non-rich people file lawsuits because they’ve been wronged and want to be righted. Rich people file for that reason, but they also file to inflict pain to the other side. They may ultimately lose the legal battle, but they also know they will financially destroy the other side.
But that doesn’t seem to be new here. Hell, Scientology has been employing a similar strategy for years to silence it’s critics. What is new here is that Thiel is bankrolling someone else’s lawsuit. Here, the only downside is he loses money. But he’s really rich dude and doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to worry about depositions, discovery, and testifying under oath. He can watch an enemy die and it only costs him money. This seems to have far reaching effect than just media companies. Big companies could employ this strategy against much smaller rivals. Just look for patent or trademark infringements your rival has made to others, not necessarily against you.
The asinine opinion that this is a problem ALWAYS starts with Peter Thiel’s wealth. That’s the first clue you are not anywhere close to the side of logic and reason. Do you know what other group is predominantly made up of billionaires? The owners of multinational media companies.
Do you know who else regularly uses the funding of billionaires to file suits? Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, and many other environmental groups. THE HORROR!!!
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/environmental-lawsuits-brought-by-non-profits-and-philanthropists.html
Do you know who else primarily uses third party funded lawsuits? The ACLU. MORE HORROR!!
Real journalism is given an enormous amount of leeway in disseminating protected speech and your hypothetical nuisance suits would be laughed out of court, probably with the plaintiff being fined for their behavior and/or forced to pay expenses. Guess what happened when those billionaires filed nuisance suits against industries without the vast protections of our media?
http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2014/09/judge-calls-sierra-club-air-pollution-suit-frivolous.html/
Hi, Ketih – I’m always happy to see links to stories about mental health and recovery. Your sharing of your own struggles and those of others has been a big help to me. This month for Mental Health Awareness, I did a project making comics about my story (about 5.5 years after I started my recovery from anxiety, depression, and OCD). If you or other readers are interested. Thanks again for your openness!
http://www.ken-frets.com/mental-health/
And I’m not going to let something like misspelling “Keith” get me down!
Hi, Keith–thanks for posting the article regarding depression and anxiety–this is something that I deal with. I have a wife, two amazing girls, and am part of the leadership team for a regional non-profit, –and yet I also deal with generalized anxiety disorder. It is exhausting to constantly educate people–including my family–that yes my life is full of great things–but yes, it is still possible to have anxiety. I have bookmarked and will be sharing this article.