My org reports and top ten prospect lists for all 30 teams are now up for Insiders, which concludes this year’s prospect rankings package:
• NL East
• NL Central
• NL West
• AL East
• AL Central
• AL West
I also held a Klawchat on Wednesday.
I’ve been selling some of my board game collection and donating the proceeds to charity, including the Food Bank of Delaware and hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
With the prospects project done, I resumed my free email newsletter this past week. Also, the paperback edition of Smart Baseball comes out on March 13th; you can buy any of the editions through HarperCollins’ site.
And now, the links…
- Damon Krukowski, formerly of the band Galaxie 500, has a long (and somewhat rambling) piece on the state of the music industry in the age of streaming, and how only the most popular artists are well served by the emerging model.
- Undark looks at the debate over the debate over cell phone radiation safety, much of which hinges on the understanding of terms like “evidence” or “proof.”
- Climate change is threatening coffee farms around the world; genetic engineering may be our best weapon to fight it, even though it’s a popular bogeyman of the anti-science crowd across the spectrum.
- This piece was everywhere last weekend, but in case anyone missed it, the New York Times piece on the fake Twitter follower industry, in which they outed many heavy Twitter users who have bought followers – including former ESPN employee Britt McHenry, 90% of whose followers are ‘fake.’ (I have never bought any followers on any social media network, but I do have followers that independent sites tag as ‘fake.’)
- Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service are a major reason we know about Russian interference in our elections.
- The Sydney Morning Herald published an extract from an upcoming book about a tattooist at Auschwitz, a Slovakian Jew who becomes the camp’s Tätowierer to survive.
- Stephanie Springer looks at pseudoscientific therapies on the rise in baseball, including “cupping,” which Bryce Harper has adopted.
- The CEO of Oxfam America writes we must pass a real disaster relief package for Puerto Rico, and now. I can’t help wondering if Congress would move faster if Puerto Ricans 1) had actual votes in Congress 2) spoke English as their first or only language or 3) were white.
- I’m a devoted Penzey’s customer because I think their spices and herbs are some of the best around, but it doesn’t hurt that they’ve taken a clear stand against bigotry and intolerance at a time when most companies avoid taking any kind of political stance.
- NYC chef Elise Kornack writes about enforcing decency to make restaurants a better place for everyone.
- Florida Representative Matt Gaetz brought a right-wing troll and Holocaust denier to the SOTU, and still brought him after he was informed of the man’s views.
- The city of Philadelphia now has a daytime service center for the city’s homeless, including medical services for people with opioid addictions.
- BBC Travel has a delightful photo/video essay on Monowi, Nebraska, population 1, the only incorporated municipality in the U.S. with just one resident.
- The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank writes that Republicans have vacated their definitions of morality, accepting whatever Trump does and moving the line to condone it.
- Paul Rosenzweig writes in the The Atlantic that dreams of Mueller indicting Trump are a fantasy, as it won’t be Mueller’s call to make.
- There’s an unfortunate truth in this sarcastic rant: If Larry Nassar had been selling unauthorized T-shirts, Michigan State would have shut him down right away.
- Farhad Manjoo argues in the NY Times that the online advertising model is the real problem with the modern Internet.
- The Republican National Committee voted to define being transgender as “a disqualifying psychological and physical” condition, even though the American Psychological Association is clear that being transgender is not a mental disorder.
- South Dakota Republicans have approved a bill out of a Senate committee to allow concealed carry without a permit.
- Julian Assange is so desperate to help the GOP that he offered dope on Senator Mark Warner to a fake Sean Hannity Twitter account.
- Also from Undark: Zooey Deschanel’s new web series peddles pseudoscience, even discouraging people who can’t afford organic produce – which is no more healthful for consumers than conventional – from buying certain fruits and vegetables at all.
- Acram Digital, developers of the app versions of Eight Minute Empire and Martin Wallace’s Steam, announced that their next board game app will be the outstanding medium-weight strategy game Istanbul.
- Eggerspiele announced their next release, Coimbra, a dice-drafting, heavy strategy game. (The link is in German but you can switch to English by clicking the flag in the upper right.)
We are doomed.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but does it seem like Philadelphia has a very large homeless population? Or, is it that the homeless population is just more visible? I’m not sure what’s correct.
The same is very true of DC, Mike. I’ve volunteered with an organization here in DC called Martha’s Table that runs a couple mobile soup kitchens. I usually volunteer in the winter (grew up in Maine so I don’t find the winter here that terrible) and the lines the first time I went out absolutely blew my mind. It’s everywhere here, but I doubt if it will ever really change in a country in which we blame poverty on the poor.
A decade ago, when I realized how whack the save rule was, I created my own saying for it: “When you create a metric to measure performance, people will perform to the metric.”
It’s come in handy so often since then that it was the first thing I thought of when I saw “influencers” were buying Twitter followers.
For what it’s worth I love Penzey’s And love be them even more now, with their political stance. I think it’s hysterical that my conservative father supports them too!
Elise Kornack was one half of one of my favorite restaurants ever, Take Root in Brooklyn. Whenever she opens a new place, make sure you go even if it’s a hike. Take Root was incredible in all respects. And her and Anna were amazing hosts.
I have 2 things to say, re: cell phone radiation danger.
1) I’m an x-ray tech, so I regularly expose people to ionizing radiation, and this sort of thing figured prominently into my education, particularly safety and minimizing exposure. There is a difference between “radiation,” and “ionizing radiation.” Radio waves (the stuff cell phones emit) are not ionizing, and therefore, don’t affect DNA on an atomic level, which is what causes cancer. Cell phones cause cancer like crossong your eyes can make them get stuck that way.
2) IF radio waves are, in fact, dangerous, then we should avoid hanging out on Earth. That place is lousy with radio waves.