Stick to baseball, 11/4/17.

My one ESPN piece this week is not Insider: I spoke to Jharel Cotton and Jabari Blash about the hurricane damage and recovery efforts in their home territory, the US Virgin Islands. It’s bad, yet it’s getting virtually none of the attention here that Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico are getting. If you’d like to help, you can donate to the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands, St John Rescue, or Family Resource Center, all of which are heavily involved on the ground on the islands.

I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Smart Baseball makes a great holiday gift, or at least I think it will, since this is actually the first holiday season since its publication. Also, please sign up for my free email newsletter, which is sort of weekly, and includes some mini-essays that don’t appear elsewhere plus links to all my writing.

And now, the links…

Comments

  1. I went to Okra last year based on your rec. It was excellent. Sorry to hear it closed.

  2. Jeez, Keith. I sometimes wonder why I keep reading this article every week. It’s just induces so much depression. And today I ended my week-long vacation at Disney World, so this week’s edition has ended up doubly depressing.

    But, seriously, thanks again for all of the information.

  3. I had the same reaction as Pat D. Keep coming here every Saturday and throughout the week, so I must value the news/stories you share. Was planning to clean the house next, but what’s the point? Bring on the sixth extinction.

  4. Does the new ESPN rules on “hard news” social media apply to you in general, but specifically this blog?

    • I am absolutely not discussing ESPN internal policies here or anywhere else.

    • Seems like a reasonable question to me. If you don’t to answer, that’s your right, but this response seems needlessly brusque.

    • Not brusque, but I hope very clear. I can’t and won’t discuss company policies.

  5. Keith, I’ve been visiting the site long enough to remember the Saturday Five but had forgotten until you offered the reminder. The collection of links is always appreciated. You work from what’s out there; these are dark times.

  6. A Salty Scientist

    The way the tax plan affects graduate students is particularly mean-spirited. Graduate students on teaching or research assistantships receive stipends that are taxable income (generally around $20,000 – $30,000 per year in the sciences, for example). Tuition is paid for by either the school (for teaching assistantships), or by grants (for research assistantships). Treating this tuition (anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 per year or more) as taxable income for students only making $20,000 per year is awful, and will dissuade less well-to-do students from attending graduate school.

    • The entire thing is a mean-spirited exercise in ‘how can we fuck over people on the coasts?’

  7. The Propublica doxxing article was fascinating. I’m still reeling from the section on Mike “Enoch” Peinovich. He’s a first ballot Hall of Fame piece of shit. The cognitive dissonance there is breathtaking. Thank you as always for the links.

  8. “I understand what the scientist in question is saying – there will be new speciation – but I can’t see how what we gain could possibly make up what we’ll lose.”

    Since probably people will be one of the species going extinct, seems like a largely navel-gazing question to me, anyways.

    Sigh. I never thought I’d live to see the end of the world, but the bit about flying insects in germany changed my mind on that one. Absolutely going to see it.

    • A Salty Scientist

      After reading the article, I think there are reasons to not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that species richness may increase after the dust settles from climate change (Note: this is not an endorsement of a warmer global climate–we very well may be one of the species that goes extinct).

      Tropical climates do have higher species richness, so it is certainly possible that conversion of temperate regions to tropical could increase the number of species as they adapt to new niches. However, there are a lot of moving parts that could confound this–with the main one off the top of my head being precipitation. Deserts are notoriously species poor.