For Insiders this week, I wrote two pieces, one on eight top 100 prospects who had disappointing years in 2017, and my last minor-league scouting notebook of the season, covering Yankees, Pirates, Nationals, and Cardinals prospects. I held my regular Klawchat on Thursday. My next column for ESPN will be my annual “players I got wrong” piece; if you have suggestions, throw them in the comments. I try to stick to players who’ve beaten expectations for more than just one season, although sometimes I waive that if there’s a particular story I want to tell.
Over at Paste I reviewed Yamataï, the new boardgame from Days of Wonder, which hasn’t fared that well critically or commercially but which all three members of my family really liked. It’s also a gorgeous game, which never hurts around here.
My book, Smart Baseball, is out and still selling well (or so I’m told); thanks to all of you who’ve already picked up a copy. And please sign up for my free email newsletter, which is back to more or less weekly at this point now that I’m not traveling for a bit.
I have a ton of links from the NY Times this week, which requires a subscription above a certain number of free articles. I normally try to spread my links out across many sources, but the NYT had so much great content this week that I stuck with it. I’ve tagged a few of them as such for those of you who don’t subscribe (I do, obviously). And now, the links…
- I stand with Jemele Hill, absolutely and unequivocally. The coverage of this – and ESPN’s handling of it, with which I do not agree – has been extensive, but Charles Pierce had the best piece I saw, with Dave Zirin’s a close second.
- Professional douchebro “Pewdiepie,” who has a history of anti-Semitic behavior in his videos, dropped the n-word this week, and Garrett Martin explains at Paste why this has nothing to do with free speech. (Garrett is my editor at Paste as well.)
- Meanwhile, the robotic responses of Trump supporters earned mention in the NY Times this week, notably how so-called “evangelicals” are fine forgiving unethical behavior by their President. This may be related to the Administration’s fervor for enacting regulatory policies favored by evangelicals (also NY Times), in spite of claims that they’d be a “hands-off” government.
- Hard to avoid contrasting the Administration’s response to Hill’s criticisms with Canadian politician Jameet Singh showing how to handle a heckler who can’t even figure out that he’s not Muslim.
- Longread: White residents of Alabama towns are seceding from their integrated local school districts, primarily to get their kids away from black students. (NY Times)
- The leader of the DC-based group Smash Racism says Nazis shouldn’t feel safe in public. This is the kind of idiocy that allows neo-Nazis and their friends to talk about how the violence and hatred is “on both sides.” It doesn’t help that Newsweek tabs the founder of one tiny group as “a leader of the antifa.”
- Politico wrote that Democrats’ attacks on Trump aren’t working according to polls and focus groups. Are those the right barometers here? I feel like polls and focus groups led most experts astray in November.
- Meanwhile, a soi-disant Catholic politician in England has argued that abortion should be strictly outlawed, even in cases of rape or incest; the Guardian argues that this has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with the religious right’s obsession with sex. (Ted Cruz almost had this right!)
- The Virgin Islands were hit particularly hard by Hurricane Irma, with St. John, which is mostly covered by a national park, absolutely devastated by the storm.
- My alma mater had a tough week in the news. First, the rescinding of an admissions offer to convicted murderer Michelle Jones (NYT) earned the university criticism, but the coverage seems to dismiss the stated reason for the change – that Jones glossed over the fact that she beat and starved her son to death, focusing instead on the process by which she was accepted and then rejected. I’m not saying Harvard was right or wrong here, but that the story is complicated and opens a lot of questions about what we expect of people who’ve committed violent crimes but served long prison sentences and appear to be rehabilitated.
- Then Harvard disinvited Chelsea Manning to be a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, sparking former CIA director Michael Morell’s resignation as a fellow there. Manning has implied strongly that this is about her being a trans woman, but that’s disingenuous at best; again, it’s complicated, and that papers over the real questions of when someone is truly acting as a whistleblower and when they’re putting their country at risk.
- The least-covered major story of the week was the revelation that Brazilian miners slaughtered ten members of an ‘uncontacted’ Amazonian tribe. The broader issue here is that the Brazilian government has slashed funds and efforts to protect these indigenous groups.
- This old mental floss post resurfaced this week but I think it’s worth sharing – it contains several good, simple tips for making better coffee at home. The one thing I would add, however, is to buy better beans: The time between roasting and grinding can be a matter of days or a matter of months, and there’s a huge difference between the two.
- Nestle is buying a majority share in specialty coffee company Blue Bottle (NYT), which makes my favorite espresso blend ever – the sweetest-tasting coffee (in the literal sense) I have ever had. I feel like this probably isn’t good news.
- And one reason of many is that climate change is hurting global coffee production. So as artisanal coffee roasters expand, the supply of quality beans is shrinking. Also, if you like coffee you should make sure you vote for candidates who accept that climate change is real and plan to do something about it.
- Climate change is also making plants less nutritious for us. This exacerbates an existing trend, where Big Ag has bred plants for higher yields and aesthetic qualities, rather than flavor or nutrition. The article includes a quote from science-denier Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, showing that he couldn’t science his way out of a paper bag. So, we should eat less meat overall because most meat production contributes to climate change, but climate change is making plants less nutritious for us to eat.
- There’s a new type of chocolate called ruby chocolate, developed by Swiss chocolatier Barry Callebaut (NYT), with a different, sweet-tart flavor … and the color of Spam. Really, look at those pictures and tell me that doesn’t look like some sort of extruded raw pork product.
- Chefs love to use sea salt and praise it over ordinary table salt, even though I’d guess 99% of people, chefs included, couldn’t tell the difference in blind taste tests. New tests show that sea salt is contaminated by microplastics too. Since one argument for sea salt over table salt has been the latter’s inclusion of iodine, I’m not sure this is good news for salt snobs.
- Animal feed is helping spread antibiotic-resistant genes around the world.
- Denmark reduced food waste by 25% thanks in part to the efforts of one woman, who emigrated from Russia to Denmark and was appalled at how much food was produced and trashed.
- The failed state of Venezuela tried to tell residents to raise and eat rabbits so they’d have enough food to eat, only to find residents keeping the rabbits as pets. The country is devolving into a western Somalia thanks to the extreme socialist policies of its dictator, who, along with his predecessor, nationalized all industries, fixed the money supply, and pretended that oil prices would never drop (they have).
- This Phoenix New Times editorial, written by a Phoenix native who moved to Portland, Oregon, argues that Phoenix is the better food town of the two.
- Speaking of Phoenix, Motel 6 operators in the area appear to be providing ICE with lists of their guests to aid in arrests and deportations. Do they leave the light on for you after you’ve been sent to Mexico?
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, writes in the New Yorker how looking at how the body may help cancer take root and grow may present a new approach to fighting the disease.
- FiveThirtyEight shows, yet again, that September performance doesn’t matter in baseball any more than performance in any other month does. There is no “momentum” in baseball, there’s no “peaking early,” and there’s no benefit to “finishing hot.” Stop it.
- I missed this when it happened a few weeks ago, but a Brewers minor leaguer, Julio Mendez, suffered a heart attack when he was hit by a pitch.
- Julie DiCaro writes in the Washington Post about saying goodbye to youth football because of the risk of serious brain injury.
- A man whose wife left him because he was abusive killed her and seven of her friends in Plano last week. When you hear someone ask why an abuse victim “doesn’t just leave,” well, here’s one reason.
- Metallica’s Kirk Hammett told The Hub in Boston that Soundgarden’s Louder than Love inspired the “Enter Sandman” riff.
- The Cassini spacecraft ended a successful 13-year mission by crashing into Saturn this week. The craft was originally only supposed to operate for three years, but went a decade longer and sent back over 400,000 photos of the sixth planet, its rings, and its many moons.
- Boardgames! Two big new titles on Kickstarter this week. Cerebria, one of the best new titles I saw at GenCon, hit Kickstarter on Tuesday and surpassed its funding goal in the first 24 hours.
- Greenbrier’s fantasy/tabletop game Champions of Hara has also beaten its funding goal, with 12 days left in the campaign.
- Also, the boardgame Evolution is heading to your computer in videogame form.
- Codito is updating some of its great iOS boardgame apps for the 64-bit OS, and has put their titles on sale for 99 cents each, including Tigris & Euphrates, Le Havre, and Reiner Knizia’s Ra. I recommend all three, especially at that price.
- A Pennsylvania state legislator said he’d be fine killing a protester who was blocking his path on the road.
- Academics claim to have rediscovered thirty “lost” English words, such as quacksalver, rouzy-bouzy, and the very relevant sillytonian.