I wrote one Insider piece this week, on how the Mets should handle their rotation, with six capable major-league starters right now, but five of them coming off of some kind of injury last year, from Thor’s bone spurs to Harvey’s TOS repair surgery. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.
My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the worker-placement game Ulm, which works fine mechanically but has a theme that’s just so overdone for me.
You can preorder my upcoming book, Smart Baseball, on amazon, or from other sites via the Harper-Collins page for the book. The book just got its first official positive review, from Kirkus Reviews.
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And now, the links…
- An oral history of Homestar Runner? An oral history of Homestar Runner! Thanks to my longtime friend Pete for finding this Q&A with the Brothers Chaps.
- NPR’s Linda Holmes disagrees with me, saying this season of Top Chef has been especially satisfying. Link doesn’t contain any spoilers for this most recent episode.
- Is I Am Not Your Negro the the target of racist vote brigading on user-generated ratings sites like IMDB? I think the answer is pretty obvious given how hard it is to see that movie in theaters.
- This September 2015 article gives some background on the making of the Oscar-nominated film Tanna, one of my top ten films of last year.
- My former home state of Arizona has decided the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly and speech are no longer valid, as the state Senate has voted for a bill that criminalizes peaceful protests if those protests eventually turn violent. It’s based on a false premise of paid protesters, but really, it’s a sign that the state is run by white-nationalist extremists, as it was when I lived there.
- A Muslim woman who worked for the National Security Council quit after eight days in the Trump White House. A ten-year CIA analyst and NSC spokesman quit after less than a month under the Trump Administration. Neither could stand working for this anti-democratic regime.
- The “Blacks for Trump” guy behind the President at various rallies is a former member of a murderous cult with a more recent history of gay-bashing commentary.
- A good first-person longread from Pacific Standard‘s Laurie Penny, who spent time on the Milo Yiannopoulos tour bus with the clueless alt-right kids who followed him.
- The House Judiciary Committee’s Republican majority plans to bury the Democrats’ resolution to force Trump to reveal his entanglements with Russia, including any conflicts of interest. That Committee includes some of the worst humans in Congress, including outright racist Steve King of Iowa and anti-science Science Committee head Lamar Smith. Check and see if your representative is on the committee and perhaps make a call on Monday about this resolution.
- The vaccine-denial movement in Texas has been energized by the election of Trump and other anti-science politicians. Every day I hear political news out of that state, I’m glad I didn’t take a job I was offered there a few years ago.
- A math professor at Tufts is trying to fight gerrymandering by arming mathematicians to testify against it, using geometry as the alternative.
- I’ve mentioned Universal Basic Income here before, but Finland’s experiment with giving UBI to 2000 citizens is the first I’ve seen of a real-world implementation.
- Most of you saw this, I assume, but I’ll pass it on just in case: Hall of Famer Mike Piazza now owns a professional soccer team in Italy, in the region where Parmiggiano-Reggiano is made.
- Fortune looks at the search for the perfect sugar substitute, and why artificial sweeteners, sugar alcohols, and stevia have all fallen short.
- Speaking of sweeteners, here’s Stella Parks of Serious Eats on why you shouldn’t buy blackstrap molasses unless the recipe specifically calls for it.
- If you want a preview of what’s in store for us, Zimbabwe’s longtime dictator Robert Mugabe is now 92, and his wife said when he dies his corpse would still win re-election.
- I can’t even do “tweet of the week” any more because there are too many good ones, but this was the one I saved to include here:
I wish i could credit the artist on this. pic.twitter.com/Ao2teFan1U
— Greg Britton (@gmbritton) February 20, 2017
The gerrymandering article is really interesting. It would stand that really even districts would be good for democracy and it would make people feel like their votes count. Too bad we have a two party system of self preservation above all else.
I do wonder how a woman who quits a high-ranking job in government because of principle could proudly believe in and defend a religion that oppresses women (and many, many others) and willingly wears a symbol of that oppression. (It goes without saying that she does not deserve any of the abuse she described.)
No religion oppresses women. Men use religions – Christianity as well as Islam – to oppress women.
While I don’t know the woman in question, and in no way want to put words in her mouth, my guess is that it would be something like this.” I follow my religion for my own reasons. My religion says, and people do, a lot of terrible things in the name of my religion. I fully and completely disagree with those things and do not believe that my religion should stand for that. I choose instead to focus on the good parts.” As for the headscarf, that can be a symbol of oppression certainly, but it’s also a head covering, similar to a yarmulke that Jewish males wear. As long as she can freely choose not to wear it with no societal repercussions, it isn’t oppression.
Clothing associated with religion becomes oppression only when a person is forced to wear a hijab, yarmulke, habit, dastaar, or any similar coverings against their will, which is not true in this case. In fact, forcing her to NOT wear a hijab because an outside observer has arbitrarily decided it constitutes unjust treatment of women would be considered oppression since it would be depriving her of her own free choice in favor of imposing another’s will.
Islam is no more inherently oppressive than any religion, but, like any religion, it can be manipulated and used to oppress. The same is true of Christianity.
“No religion oppresses women. Men use religions – Christianity as well as Islam – to oppress women.”
That is sort of like saying guns don’t kill people. How can you separate religion from the abuses (almost exclusively committed by men) of religion? At their core, all mainstream religions are misogynistic, homophobic, anti-science, etc.
“I choose instead to focus on the good parts.”
If she actually said this, I would ask her, “what good parts?” What are the good parts of Islam (or any religion) that cannot be done by a non-believer?
“Clothing associated with religion becomes oppression only when a person is forced to wear a hijab, yarmulke, habit, dastaar, or any similar coverings against their will, which is not true in this case.”
I specifically said the hijab (even worse for the burqa) is a *symbol* of female oppression. That is indisputable. Of course, an American who freely chooses to wear it is not directly being oppressed. But she is choosing to wear something that men in many countries (a lot are on the travel ban she, and I, hate so much) force women to wear for absolutely no good reason. I am surprised that a woman who would walk away from a powerful government position on principle would make that choice.
“Islam is no more inherently oppressive than any religion, but, like any religion, it can be manipulated and used to oppress. The same is true of Christianity.”
I ask you basically the same thing I asked Keith: how do you separate religion from its innate oppression?
From your comments it seems like you’re mainly concerned with what you see as religion’s innate tendency to oppress. I agree that that is an issue that can be debated and addressed, but I also think that’s a much larger debate than the article is addressing.
In the piece, she chose to quit because of the racist and xenophobic attitude she felt confronted with in the current administration, attitudes which she presumably felt were contrary to the principles of this nation. In contrast, her faith hasn’t similarly personally confronted her with those attitudes. As you said, she isn’t oppressed by her head scarf here. Is she expected to “quit” her religion because it has been used oppressively in other contexts? There are many things we engage in within the US that are not oppressive to us in this context, but are used so in other contexts.
Maybe it would be more productive for work to change oppressive attitudes within the religion rather than passing judgement on her for wearing a head scarf. Should she somehow not be free to wear her hijab and practice her religion without being viewed being a part of an oppressive regime? It seems like that’s inherently unfair to dictate that.
That ignores the agency of the woman.
Also that criticism could apply evenly to Judaism, Christianity, Or Islam depending on how one applies text.
I loved Laurie Penny’s piece, gonzo journalism at its best.
The blowback she’s gotten from the left is depressing; the angry need to brand every Trump voter an irredeemable racist, and anyone who says otherwise an enabler, makes me think the left has learned nothing from the way the Democrats’ focus on identity politics has failed at all levels of government. They’re looking as shattered as Labour in the UK.
I don’t know Dave. When you have people who enthusiastically support someone who is a xenophobe, Islamophobe, homophobe, a climate change denier, and an anti-vaxxer, it becomes hard to believe that his supporters don’t identify with at least some of those positions to a degree. Are you suggesting there is a complete disconnect between the voters beliefs and the beliefs of a politician they have lent their support to? Seems more than a little far-fetched to me, but whatever helps you sleep at night.
People with shitty, hopeless lives are vulnerable to scapegoating demagoguery. While not excusing racist etc. views, I’d ask what aspect of this voting block you really prefer to focus on — the easy one where you get to call them names and write them off, or the hard one where you try to solve the endemic economic problems in their communities, not all of which were their own doing?
Actually, Mat, being a liberal, the wretched state of the Democratic party doesn’t help me sleep well at all. But neither writing off everyone who voted for Trump nor living in denial about the Democrats getting hammered is conducive to righting the ship.
In lieu of further comment, I’ll defer to what sansho1 wrote.
Not in the article about the potential of Mugabe’s corpse appearing, and winning, an election is that Mugabe’s wife Grace would likely just take over. And she may be more draconian than the 93 year old.
I liked this article on the 16 year old Canadian girl that publicized the Milo video where he advocated pedophilia, along with a conservative blog.
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/24/14715774/milo-yiannopoulos-cpac-pedophile-video-canada
Sansho, I don’t think it’s quite as binary as you’re making it out to be. Certainly globalization has created economic losers. Unquestionably this needs to be addressed, but economic opportunities are not going to stamp out xenophobia, racism, or homophobia and economic inequality should not be an excuse to cling to these prejudices. There are plenty of seemingly well-educated, wealthy individuals who embrace many of the positions endorsed by Donald Trump. He wasn’t elected solely by Joe Six-Pack.
Oh, those assholes! Sorry, didn’t realize you were talking about them.
The gerrymandering in AZ is so bad, Flagstaff is now a Republican district somehow.
I’ve been reading Keith for roughly five years now, and have never felt compelled to comment – don’t agree with his politics, but LOVE his Baseball. (By the way, Keith, I was at Firefly in Las Vegas on Monday on your previous notes – very hit-or-miss on the dishes – had six – and my cabbie away from there actually asked how they were doing. Perhaps some ownership changes are complicating the food & experience, so much so that cab drivers are asking. Anyhow, the bacon / dates dish is still a knock-out.)
I didn’t vote for the current president, but the statement above is EXACTLY why he won, y’all know that, right? Right?!?
Seriously. EVERYthing in that statement is why the current president won!
The elitist, “imma-help-YOU-po’-dumb-folks” attitude & know-it-all disposition is what (I believe) is such a turn-off to the Center-Right that they voted for a clearly unqualified candidate versus a more-qualified one with issues. You may BE smarter, but until your message softens to be less holier-than-thou you don’t stand a chance with a populist movement.
And, for what it’s worth, I heard someone say something smart the other day… You can cheer against the success of the current president, but that’s about like rooting against the pilot of the plane that you’re on.
I don’t know what statement you mean, Brent.
Shame to hear that about Firefly; I haven’t been in five years, as work hasn’t brought me there since Joey Gallo was drafted.
“You can cheer against the success of the current president, but that’s about like rooting against the pilot of the plane that you’re on.”
The problem is that the president’s definition of “success” is enriching the rich at the expense of the poor, haphazardly antagonizing potential enemies, and enforcing white nationalist policies.
Also, if the pilot of the plane I’m on fails, we probably all die. If the President of my country fails, I might be just fine personally.
Finland’s UBI trial is restricted to those who are unemployed, which I fear will limit the value of any conclusions from the study. While I find the UBI concept highly intriguing, I would hope for any trial to include those already employed to observe changes in their behavior and well being. One of the more common arguments against UBI is simply the potential for chaos in the workforce, and the resultant reduction in the tax base on which it relies. A real world trial including people of varying degrees of employment status would be much more desirable, in my opinion.
So I know I’m just a little late, but there was a story on Marketplace in December about a Minimum Income trial conducted in Manitoba during the 70’s. Unfortunately, the PM that started it (Pierre Trudeau, current PM Justin’s father) lost the election in 1980 so the results weren’t studied until recently.
http://www.marketplace.org/2016/12/20/world/dauphin