For Insiders this week, I posted my first batch of scouting notes from the Arizona Fall League, covering prospects from the Cardinals, Yankees, Brewers, Orioles, Padres, Cubs, Rockies, and Twins. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.
Later today (Saturday) I will be at Changing Hands in Phoenix, at 2 pm, to talk about and sign copies of Smart Baseball. I’ll also be signing books at PAX Unplugged, a new boardgaming convention that takes place in Philadelphia the weekend before Thanksgiving.
And now, the links…
- Longread of the week: The New York Times on the rise of severe anxiety among American teenagers. The piece doesn’t really get at the question of why we’re seeing more cases, but does explore various treatment options and explain various signs of anxiety for parents to know.
- As Puerto Rico’s humanitarian crisis deepens, with hospitals still without power and short of medicine and clean water, the President is threatening to pull FEMA and military support from the U.S. territory. Meanwhile, the 100,000 American citizens on the Virgin Islands are also largely without power and water several weeks after Hurricane Maria.
- The New Yorker asks how many Puerto Ricans will move to the mainland given the awful conditions and awful federal response on their island. The money quote, from a Puerto Rican man whose house was destroyed by a Maria-induced mudslide: “All (Trump) brought to Puerto Rico were those napkins. And you know what everyone’s wondering? What we’re expected to wipe with them: our asses, or our tears.”
- And the President, whose own Secretary of State called him “a fucking moron,” may be mentally unraveling, according to Gabriel Sherman for Vanity Fair.
- DeAndre Harris, who was beaten by white supremacists in Charlottesville in August, was himself arrested on a dubious charge, as one of the racists did an end-run around police and convinced a (white) magistrate to issue an arrest warrant for Harris. The Washington Post has more on this story.
- An Indiana lawmaker introduced a bill requiring journalists to be licensed by the state police. If you live there, maybe call your state reps and remind them of the existence of the First Amendment.
- Video: A Connecticut man, angry after the Paris attacks of 2015, shot up a local mosque (after dark, while it was empty). Then he met the Muslims who worshipped there, and everything changed.
- A terrorist tried to blow up the Asheville airport last week, but the media coverage has been virtually nonexistent.
- A new study from the Food Climate Research Network at the University of Oxford found that grass-fed cattle don’t fight or reduce climate change. Previous theories held that grazing cattle would encourage carbon sequestration in the soil, but this study found the cows still … um … toot too much for that to matter. (Of course, grass-fed beef may taste better, may be more healthful for us to eat, and might be nicer to the cows themselves, since they’ve evolved to eat grass, not corn or soybeans or, worst of all, animal flesh.)
- The Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry is retracting a junk-science anti-vaccine study mere weeks after publishing it. The study’s authors are familiar with the retraction process, having submitted a similar pseudoscientific paper to Vaccine in 2016, only to find it pulled back.
- Gene therapy was hailed as the next great advance in medicine in the mid-1990s, but couldn’t delivery on its promises in that timeframe. Now its time might have arrived, as an FDA panel endorsed a gene therapy protocol to treat a rare form of retinal dystrophy, an inherited disorder that causes blindness in children.
- Senate candidate Roy Moore, the Ayatollah of Alabama, claimed for years he wasn’t compensated for his work for a local non-profit when in fact he was receiving $180K a year for part-time work for the organization.
- The University of Wisconsin has passed a new student conduct rule that threatens students who disrupt or interfere with others’ free expression with explusion. In other words, if a UW student group were to invite, say, white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on campus, and a student disrupted his speech, that student could be suspended or expelled for it. The ACLU opposes the policy.
- Shake Shack is introducing automated kiosks to take orders, possibly a response to rising minimum wage laws. I hate seeing low-wage jobs eliminated for automation, but as a fan of Shake Shack, I would say my #1 issue with the chain is the frequency of incorrect orders.
- Bananas have been under threat for decades from a fungus that causes fusarium wilt (also called Panama Disease), which renders entire plantations incapable of producing fruit. Australian scientists might have a new banana that resists the fungus – but it’s genetically modified, which many people believe, incorrectly, is a Very Bad Thing.
- Asmodee Digital just released an app version of the boardgame Smash Up, which is available for iOS devices, Android, and Steam.
- Videogame developers are increasingly including pay-to-play loot boxes in games to try to counteract the industry’s punishing economics. The tabletop industry hasn’t had that problem yet, as consumers in that space seem more willing to pay $40-plus, even $100, months after a game has been released.
- Sony plans to make a Settlers of Catan movie, which sounds like a really terrible idea.
Re: genetically modified bananas, isn’t every banana we eat a clone with the exact same genetics (and the reason populations are so vulnerable to that fungus)? Complaining about GMOs in general is misguided, but with bananas it’s hilariously wrong.
Yup, this is horribly misguided, especially considering the recent history of bananas. We use Cavendish bananas because the previous clone (Gross Michel) was almost completely wiped out in the 1950’s by Fusarium wilt!
Keith, it seems a little disingenuous to post that Indiana bill story without more context. The author of the bill (and the author of the article) make it pretty clear that it’s not a serious proposal, and it hasn’t been introduced, as you say it has been. The bill is to make a point, not to actually end up with such an absurd requirement. You can disagree with the point he’s trying to make (about licensing constitutionally guaranteed rights), but it’s pretty clearly not a serious attempt to license journalists. I hope you’ll amend your post to reflect that, because I know accuracy is important to you, and I think you have missed on this one.
The legislator in question is a serial troll who joked about men locking their wives in the trunks of their cars. Whether such a bill is to “make a point” is immaterial; he’s proposed filing it, at which point, it would become a bill just like any other that is introduced. And it’s trash – on its face, and given the point he says he’s trying to make.
One would assume there are more pressing matters that their state legislature needs to address that would supersede his personal need to “make a point”. Perhaps the issue isn’t so much the point he was awkwardly trying to make but maybe it’s the time and money wasted so that he could go about it that way. I’m thinking a quote to a newspaper or reporter would have sufficed.
Also on the accuracy front, “he was receiving $180K a year for “part-time” work for the organization,” should actually be “he was receiving $180K a year for part-time “work” for the organization.” Putting the “part-time” in quotes, of course, implies he was working harder than he says he was. Putting the “work” in quotes, by contrast, implies he wasn’t really working. I assume the latter is the meaning that was wanted.
For some reason, I thought the quotes were in the original article and I was simply adhering to their standard. I’ve fixed this.
Everyone laughed when Trump said he spoke to the “President of the Virgin Islands”, but I think there is something far more sinister here. He simply doesn’t view them as Americans. He never referred to them as the US Virgin Islands, just the Virgin Islands. I get that with public speaking, it is easy to misspeak. But there are words that could be used other than President. President means they are another country. He said FEMA can’t remain in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands forever, but FEMA is still in New Orleans helping with the recovery from Katrina.
I don’t doubt for a second that he doesn’t view the U.S. Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico as Americans, but in this case I think his words sounded dumb and lazy simply because he’s criminally dumb and lazy.
I noticed a McDonalds near me is already using the order kiosks but also have people at the counter.
Starting to see that at a lot of grocery stores in the NW DC area. There is a Giant about two blocks away from where I live. Two months ago they had maybe 6 self-checkout kiosks and about 12 traditional checkout lanes. Walked in after a two week hiatus and there are now 4-5 traditional checkout lanes and at least a dozen self-checkout kiosks.
” since they’ve evolved to eat grass, not corn or soybeans or, worst of all, animal flesh.)”
You need to take a rudimentary course in animal science. If a domesticated bovine comes across a field of wild grain, it will prefer the wild grain to the grass that’s available. All of the talk about cattle being evolved only for grass and only eating grain because they’re being “force-fed” is simply a myth.
You need to read better. I never said cows evolved ONLY to eat grass, nor did I ever say they shouldn’t eat grain. (Soybeans are legumes, not grains, but they’re fine for adult cattle to consume.) Feeding cattle on grass year-round isn’t practical in most of the world anyway.
Should cows eat grass rather than corn? ““It’s a fact that cattle evolved to eat grass.” “ruminant stomachs evolved to eat grass.” The Canadian Beef Cattle Research Council says wheat and corn increase the risk of rumen acidosis. Cows have extensive microbiomes that help break down and ferment what the cows eat, and those bacteria help provide the cow with up to 50% of its protein intake. Those microbiomes have evolved over thousands or millions of years, with the cows, to become particularly efficient at converting grass into energy the cow can use.
That doesn’t mean that they can never eat anything else, although the results of feeding cows the flesh of animals, including sheep and other cattle, were disastrous. Cows can eat other grains and eat legumes without harm to the animal, as long as it’s moderated (e.g., calves shouldn’t eat raw soybeans). But cows did evolve as grass-eaters.
Don’t forget that “wild donkey” is also a huge jackass.
Ah yes. I forgot about this one. He was the guy who reacted to Keith’s criticism of Trump’s false equivalency between Neo-Nazis and counter-protestors by….doing the same thing. Needless to say, he brings the clownshow pretty hard as you may recall…
““…false equivalence between racist shitheads and those who oppose them. Don’t fall for it.”
Who are you trying to kid?! There are unquestionably hateful, violent thugs representing the Antfia, just as there are hateful, violent thugs representing the neo-Nazis and other related groups.
And ultimately, all hateful, violent thugs should be repudiated and soundly excoriated, regardless of their underlying political/ideological motivations.
This should be very straightforward, and the misinformation and apparent denial that certain ideological camps contain violent, authoritarian extremists just enables them and makes the problem worse.
My message to you then is: there’s a massive chunk of the corporate media and political elite that want us to believe that our only problems with hatred and violence are from the extreme right-wing/neo-Nazi/etc. camp. Don’t fall for it.”
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed that this apologia didn’t even touch upon chemtrails, FEMA death camps, or the hoax shootings at Newtown (false flag???), I’ll just have to learn to cope.
I think the answer to why severe anxiety in teenagers is increasing is right there in the opening paragraph: “while he was taking three Advanced Placement classes, running on his school’s cross-country team and traveling to Model United Nations conferences.”
I teach between 120 and 150 10th graders every year. Here is a typical day for my average student:
-Wake up at 6 AM.
-Catch bus anywhere from 6:30 to 7:15.
-Arrive at school between 7:45 and 8:10 AM (classes start at 8).
-Seven 50 minutes periods broken up by a 40 minute lunch period.
*Note: most teachers do not allow students to eat in class
-At 3 PM, transition to after-school activities, including but not limited to:
+Picking up younger siblings
+Tutoring at school
+Taking bus to offsite tutoring
+Sports practice
+CBO programs (coding, test prep, mentoring of younger kids, etc.)
+Go to work
+Going home to start making dinner for family
Once home, many of my students are responsible for tasks that my parents always took care of, such as laundry, cooking, cleaning, helping siblings with homework, disciplining siblings, getting everyone to bed, etc.
*Note: My best friend and several other people I know were in the same situation when I was in high school. They were far and away the exception to the rule, whereas in my school and district those realities are reversed.
I have not touched on homework yet. A typical class assigns 15-30 minutes of homework. At seven classes, that’s an average of 3+ hours of homework per night. For kids with multiple AP classes like the young man that leads off the article, you can double that.
Add all the other attendant crap teenagers deal with: hormones, pressure to assimilate, constantly being judged by everyone they come into contact with, constantly being suspected of wrongdoing, constantly being derided as a group for how lucky and spoiled they are, worrying about not screwing up for fear that it will derail and ultimately ruin their academic and professional futures, and just the extreme difficulty of negotiating the transition from dependence to independence, and my students have more to deal with in a day than most adults are aware of or give them credit for.
Through it all, they are still the best reason I have for going to work. When I worked in baseball, I worked with a lot of people who lived their lives like everything exciting had already happened to them. That hasn’t been true for even a single day of my teaching career.
Just want to give a shout-out to Todd for pursuing the noble and difficult field of teaching, and for having his students’ backs. Adolescence is brutal.