My take on the Evan Gattis trade is up for Insiders, and this week’s Klawchat transcript had some other thoughts on that deal and the Clippard/Escobar swap.
Lots of links this week…
- The Green Bay Packers love to play Settlers of Catan. But can we stop saying “a boardgame called Settlers of Catan?” It’s sold about 20 million copies worldwide. It’s well beyond some fringe obsession.
- Can an exiled, corrupt Russian oligarch take on Putin? This New Yorker longform piece doesn’t exactly make me feel better about the future of one of the world’s largest countries.
- Neither does this: Russia has listed transsexual and transgender people among those who will no longer qualify for driving licences. Remind me again why FIFA hasn’t pulled the 2018 World Cup yet?
- I tweeted this earlier in the week, but this EW story on the final season of Parks and Recreation is magnificent.
- My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward. A difficult read, and not one with which I entirely agree, but I still recommend it for the writer’s ability to capture the partner’s experiences in a situation where we typically hear about the patient’s.
- Another difficult read: A mother’s farewell to her daughter, who died at 36 on Christmas morning. Kate Gross fell to colon cancer, leaving a husband and five-year-old twins behind.
- Cooking dried beans? Don’t soak them. There’s no benefit, regardless of what the old wives tell you.
- Astronomers measured the space-time warp in the gravity of a binary star by using a neutron star just before it winked out of view.
- Why Ava DuVernay’s Oscar Snub Matters, from a decidedly not-left-wing outlet. When good work by people of color gets swept under the rug, we all lose.
- The Accidental Outing of Rwanda’s Most Powerful Troll. A podcast (with transcript) from August that is shocking for its exposure of how the Rwandan government harasses its critics via social media.
- And on a lighter note, Texas actually has a statute, Lauren’s Law, that allows parents to bring in cupcakes or other treats to school for their kids’ birthdays. It’s a sad day in America that such a law is necessary.
While it does not help reduce cooking time, I find that soaking beans and discarding water, helps give me less gas.
What don’t you agree with on the “My Lovely Wife…” article? Not trying to antagonize, just curious.
There’s a strain of anti-psychiatry and anti-medication sentiment in there that I just can’t buy. I don’t think there’s any scientific evidence to indicate that psychosis of his wife’s sort is something other than chemical in nature.
Soaking beans in water to be discarded is one thing, but I soak them in stock and then use it all in the recipe… reduces cook time while maintaining, or even enhancing the flavor.
I enjoyed your article from 2011 best board games. Have you done a more recent rating?
Monica: Yes, this year I ranked my top 60 games. I do a fresh ranking each year, adding at least ten games to the list.
Keith, I missed your chat this week, which is where I intended to send you these questions, so instead I’m posting them here. My wife and I are expecting our first child (a girl) in July, and I’ve been both interested in and inspired by some of your commentary on raising a daughter. So two questions: first, do you have any advice about how best to help one’s partner during her pregnancy? Second, what advice do you have for parents, particularly fathers, on raising a daughter? What works? What’s important to you in how you interact with her and why?
And for a little further down the road, how do you balance letting your daughter find her own interests and passions while being mindful of the inaccurate and often damaging portrayals of women she will inevitably be exposed to in our culture? It’s no small issue, but I also don’t want to go overboard in addressing it.
Many thanks for any time you’re able to take to respond.
@Todd: No easy questions in there. I’d definitely recommend The Happiest Baby on the Block
for the basics, things like working on your baby’s schedule and dealing with sleep issues and not losing your damn mind.
We don’t go overboard in addressing what media she can consume, but we know what she’s watching, and if we see a portrayal we don’t like, we’ll discuss it with her. We’ve cut her off of a few shows – Disney’s Jessie was the latest, because it is insultingly dumb – but we try not to do that for fear we’ll create a greater attraction.
No love for the Drew Magary Oscars rant that featured you? Worth noting that nobody has any shot to beat Linklater in that category, so this all seems like a pointless circlejerk. Also, have you seen Selma?
@Craig: It’s kind of like the Penn State wins issue. Restoring the wins isn’t going to undo any of the abuse inflicted on the victims, but it’s a pretty bad look for the school (and the NCAA, but they always look bad). Too many critics thought Selma deserved nods for the director and for Oyelowo as best actor for the Academy to skate on an all-white actor/actress slate. Magary’s piece seemed pointless to me, BTW.
Or, alternately, a cigar is a cigar.
I don’t know what you mean by that phrase (in this case).
Oyelowo wasn’t nominated because there were 5 better candidates, same for DuVernay. Saying that not nominating them was in some way nefarious seems like you’d be reading way too deeply into it. Especially considering the fact that 3 of the last 5 Best Supporting Actress trophies have gone to black women, last year’s Best Picture was 12 Years A Slave, etc. There’s just not much basis for saying that the Academy has a racial blindspot, given recent voting history. Maybe these snubs were just your run-of-the-mill snubs, which happen every year in every category. Nothing more and nothing less.
I haven’t said any of this was “nefarious,” or racially motivated. I think you’re reading way too deeply into a quip on Twitter. By the way, the consensus of critics seems to be that Oyelowo was a much better candidate than Bradley Cooper.
As for your “recent voting history” point, I think that answers any accusations of overt racism, but not of the kind of subtle racism you’d expect if, say, the electorate were overwhelmingly white and male. It’s not that the Academy doesn’t consider actors or directors of color; it’s that they don’t receive equal consideration to their white counterparts. This phenomenon exists in the BBWAA, especially in the Hall of Fame electorate, which couldn’t be any whiter if you soaked it in bleach, and which has done a terrible job with candidates of color, black and Latino, over its entire history.
I think that when one claims that racial chauvinism is being exhibited by a person or group, the burden of proof is on the one making the accusation. The burden should also be fairly high.
When it comes to the cases of Molitor and Raines, and RJ/Pedro, you have to look at counting stats first and foremost. Molitor amassed 3,000 hits. Johnson is 2nd all time in strikeouts, and got to 300 wins. The only “milestone” reached by either Raines or Pedro is Pedro’s 3,000 strikeouts. I think the “counting stats” argument is much more likely to be the cause of these cases than some kind of racism.
Biggio didn’t make it in his first year, either. I feel like that’s pretty analagous to Alomar missing in his first year. Ferguson Jenkins (drug user) got in much faster than Bert Blyleven, despite Blyleven having a better statistical case. Dale Murphy probably had a better case than Dawson. Etc.
“It’s not that the Academy doesn’t consider actors or directors of color; it’s that they don’t receive equal consideration to their white counterparts.”**
**citation needed
Also, is there an example of a black or Latino player being egregiously snubbed in, say, the past 25 years? Excluding steroid guys, you could look at guys like Raines, Lofton, and Whitaker. Even then, though, it’s pretty extreme to think race has anything to do with it. I’d say it’s mostly just the fact that their skills are being underrated.
Three of the more questionable HoF choices I can recall in my 28 year-old lifetime are Jim Rice, Andre Dawson, and Orlando Cepeda. Not to mention older guys like Lou Brock, and the bizarre love that Lee Smith continues to receive. Are there any actual examples of black/Latino players getting overlooked by the BBWAA? At least, any more than there is of good white players getting overlooked (Alan Trammel, Ron Santo, etc.)
For someone who dropped a straw man on me at the start, then claimed without any support that there were five better candidates than Oyelowo, to drop a “citation needed” shows a rather stunning lack of self-awareness. Or, if that was too subtle: don’t be a dick.
Whitaker is the obvious case; he dropped off in year one, Trammell stuck around, even though Whitaker’s case was stronger. Raines’ omission is another; I compared the treatment of his cocaine use to Molitor’s through the eyes of voters. Bonds polling worse than Clemens is another good example. Brock and Dawson weren’t “questionable” by historical standards – Brock set the career SB record, and Dawson hit 438 HR and won an MVP award.
Alomar missing in his first year was another example – and he’s one of just two Latino inductees in the last 15 elections. It’s not that the electorate snubbed Alomar; it’s that he didn’t get the consideration he deserved. Pedro polling that much worse than Johnson this year seemed pretty telling to me – there were clearly a lot of voters who thought the two players were on opposite sides of the bar. For an electorate that has had (IIRC) twelve African-American members in its entire history, that’s a series of unfortunate events that appear to tell a story even if they don’t actually tell it.
*reply fail above
I think that when one claims that racial chauvinism is being exhibited by a person or group, the burden of proof is on the one making the accusation. The burden should also be fairly high.
When it comes to the cases of Molitor and Raines, and RJ/Pedro, you have to look at counting stats first and foremost. Molitor amassed 3,000 hits. Johnson is 2nd all time in strikeouts, and got to 300 wins. The only “milestone” reached by either Raines or Pedro is Pedro’s 3,000 strikeouts. I think the “counting stats” argument is much more likely to be the cause of these cases than some kind of racism.
Biggio didn’t make it in his first year, either. I feel like that’s pretty analagous to Alomar missing in his first year. Ferguson Jenkins (drug user) got in much faster than Bert Blyleven, despite Blyleven having a better statistical case. Dale Murphy probably had a better case than Dawson. Etc.
“I think that when one claims that racial chauvinism is being exhibited by a person or group, the burden of proof is on the one making the accusation. ”
Bear in mind that, at least regarding the Academy, I never made such an accusation. I joked about the nominees on Twitter, and I posted a thoughtful essay on why this issue might matter. You seem to have inferred a cry of “OMGZ RACISTS!” that I never uttered.
As for the baseball examples you give, you have no more evidence to support your claim (that it’s about counting stats and milestones, which don’t seem to matter as much as they used to anyway, but not race) than I do to support mine (that it’s a little bit of everything, and that a nearly all-white electorate has subtle biases it can’t avoid). The best I could give you is a sort of appeal to authority, that I’ve been in that media room and talked to those people, but I wouldn’t ask you to accept that as any sort of proof.
“Remind me again why FIFA hasn’t pulled the 2018 World Cup yet? ”
Because then they’d have to give back all the bride money.
Keith, let me interrupt your white guilt fest to remind you that if that dumb boardgame gets any more popular, you’ll then have to claim you don’t like it based on your track record of claiming to dislike anything that happens to be widely popular.
Hi Harold/cramer. I find it interesting that you declined to respond to me last time, but now reappear using a different name and trotting out the same tired claims about me disliking what’s popular, even though I’ve said (to pick a few examples) I love Harry Potter (and, indeed, everything by J.K. Rowling), Downton Abbey (one of the most popular TV programs in the world), Guinness, Coldplay, and In-n-Out (and Shake Shack and Five Guys, all for different reasons). So, not only are you a coward, you’re a moron and a fraud.
To bring some levity to a very serious comment section, can we talk about how In N Out is secretly overrated? Fries are just plain bad, even if you get them well done or animal style. Burgers are too greasy. Shakes are meh. I enjoy In N Out, have eaten my share, but this cultural icon that us on the west coast adore just doesn’t measure up to its legendary status.
Oh, I love In-n-Out fries well-done and immediately salted. Don’t even need ketchup at that point. But the burgers are just okay for me – my argument was always that they’re so thin they cook through too fast and you don’t taste them much. I think the appeal is everything around it – the sauce, the bun, the fresh veg. But Shake Shack and Five Guys do that too, and they have thicker burgers.
One of the links I ended up not using this week was this one – Chefs name their favorite fast-food burgers. Half of them said Shake Shack. And, BTW, I get readers yelling at me for choosing them because they’re – wait for it – too popular.
I was happy to see BurgerFi on that list. Their burgers and fries are really good, but their onion rings are excellent.
Sounds like I need to try this. One in downtown Philly and one in Avon near the main campus, so I have no excuses.
A few things about BurgerFi.
* Full disclosure, I have received a free meal there. My finacee is a local food blogger and was asked to review the restaurant. I have also paid for meals there.
* The burger & fries were about Five Guys quality (haven’t been to a Shake Shack yet).
* Their cry and fry (onion rings and fries in one basket) is more than enough for two.
* They do have good custard and serve alcohol.
* It is a bit pricey. If I spend about $10 for a burger, fries, and a soft drink at Five Guys, it is about $12-14 for the same meal at BurgerFi.
RE: FIFA and Russia
It’s because FIFA is corrupt as fuck and only gives a shit when they feel it’ll hurt their pocketbooks.
Also, people misunderstand In N Out when rating it. In N Out is not comparable to Shake Shack or Five Guys because it’s not even the same “kind” of burger. In N Out is fast food in the original 1950s car culture way, like McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr., and other similar chains that started in Southern California around the same time; In N Out just blows the others out of the water. Shake Shack, Five Guys, and their ilk are fast food in the sense that they’re not sit-down places with a table wait staff and you get your food relatively expeditiously, but they’re categorically different from In N Out. Of course they’re better.
Ever since I first ate at Five Guys (maybe three years ago), I’ve been saying the same thing–the comparison between them and In-N-Out makes no sense. In California terms, In-N-Out should be compared to McD’s/Burger King (and, as you observe, it wins that comparison hands down). Five Guys, on the other hand, should be compared to Fatburger (and, more recently, Smash Burger)…
LOL @ Craig for his “**citation needed” comment. Come on man, that’s not the way it works.
I can say (and believe) that if Dale Murphy had Tim Raines’ career then he would be in the HOF but I can’t drop a CITATION NEEDED when someone makes a point to the contrary.