I was busy this week, including posting another first-round mock for next month’s MLB draft (Insider).
For Vulture, I ranked the 25 best board game apps for mobile devices, considering anything available for iOS or Android. Steam-only titles were not eligible.
For Paste, I reviewed the light deduction/puzzle game Automata Noir, a fun filler title that lets you do a little more than most deduction games where you’re just trying to guess who’s the bad guy.
PennLive asked fifty Pennsylvania librarians for their summer beach read recommendations and one kind soul recommended my own Smart Baseball, now available in paperback.
I’ll be appearing at Washington DC’s Politics & Prose on July 14th along with Jay Jaffe to talk baseball & sign our respective books (or I can sign Jay’s and he can sign mine, whatever you fancy).
And now, the links:
- One question I posed near the end of Smart Baseball and in the new afterword is whether we actually know if Statcast metrics actually predict better performance going forward – that is, it sounds great that a pitcher limits exit velocity or has a higher spin rate on his fastball, but does it lead to better results? Jonathan Judge looked at MLB’s x-stats like xwOBA, which are derived from Statcast data and used in much of MLB’s content, and found that they don’t seem to predict future performance well at all.
- This long-ish read from WIRED looks at the myth of purely rational and non-tribalist thinking promulgated by Sam Harris, who likes to tell you he’s not subject to these extremely pervasive, human biases – but falls prey to them all the time, just as you and I do.
- Are SNL cold opens just hackneyed, unfunny pieces of elitist-liberal propaganda? I think that VICE piece asks several separate questions, and they don’t necessarily all have the same answers. I also think the liberal/conservative dichotomy is kind of dead at the moment; this isn’t about liberal positions, but opposition to kakistocracy.
- A Qatari investor and former government official claims that Michael Cohen asked for a million-dollar bribe after the 2016 election in exchange for information on and potential access to the president-elect. Meanwhile, the Middle East blockade of Qatar is about to enter its twelfth month.
- The Basque terrorist group Eta, which waged a nearly five-decade long separatist terror campaign in Spain, claims it has completely dismantled.
- Cape Town’s water crisis never quite reached Day Zero, but there are still important takeaways from the barely-averted catastrophe, including that we can live on just 50 liters of water a day.
- E-books were going to kill off physical books; then we heard that dead-tree editions were making a comeback and e-books were fading. Neither is quite true, as self-published authors are driving strong e-book sales that don’t always show up in industry reporting because Amazon, like Netflix, doesn’t release data on internal content.
- The American Association of University Professors says the University of Nebraska violated a professor’s rights when the school fired her for protesting an alt-right organization’s event on campus.
- An idiot white high school student in Montana is claiming he has a right to wear a Confederate flag shirt (note: isn’t that ‘disrespecting’ it?) to school; the Missoula County school district says they have a clear right to ban such clothing based on court rulings in other states. You couldn’t wear a swastika shirt to any school without repercussions; this is no different, as the Confederate flag has always been a symbol of slavery.
- The Trump Administration is considering a rule banning some doctors from even discussing abortion with some patients. The rule would cover doctors who receive Title X federal funds, which go to low-income patients, which in turn would mean providing worse medical care to poor people – all to satisfy evangelical voters, who make up just a quarter of the American population.
- The White House is very mad about all the leaks, so Axios talked to some of the leakers about why they leak.
- Kickstarters! Paradox Interactive is bringing four popular video game titles to tabletop in partnerships with various board game publishers. The first of them, Crusader Kings, hit Kickstarter yesterday and is already more than fully funded. I played a demo of this on Friday in Stockholm and liked what I saw.
- Greenbrier Games’ Posthuman Saga Kickstarter has already quintupled its original goal in just five days.
Sam Harris may be the most frustrating man alive. (By which I mean frustrating to me.) I used to find his writing compelling, even where I didn’t particularly agree with him. But after his meltdown with Ezra Klein, I’ve had a hard time taking him seriously. He appeared to accuse Klein of arguing in bad faith, yet was evidently unwilling to really explain why he believed as much. Klein, for his part, came across as sincere, if a bit confused by Harris’ reaction. For a man who brands himself as a champion of rational thought, Harris increasingly seems incapable of self-reflection. It’s disappointing.
Other than stating they are going to take down the leakers, the White House has down very little in that regard. I suspect they like having information come out from leaks so they can claim “fake news” and change the narrative to the leakers.
The following article brought a smile to my face. It’s about an Australian man who saved may have saved millions of babies due to his blood plasma and donating blood every two weeks for 60 years. Whatever the actual number is doesn’t matter, it’s a lot.
https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/final-donation-for-man-whose-blood-helped-save-2-4-million-babies-20180511-p4zerp.html
So does this mean that Statcast data is only good for explaining to us why things that have already happened, happened? Or will there be more tweaking or development to find something about its data that is predictive in nature?
I honestly don’t care about the SNL “bias.” I mean, last night’s opening sketch wasn’t exactly timely in any way, since The Sopranos ended, what, a decade ago? But I agree with what you say in that we just need to keep fighting against Trump and those who enable him. I’m never interested in hearing the bullies whine about how they’re not getting a fair shake.
As always, screw the Confederate flag. It is acceptable only in two places: museums and battlefields. I just wish the battlefields would stop selling merchandise with it depicted (at least, the last time I was in Gettysburg five years ago they still were. I haven’t been to another battlefield in close to two decades).
Evangelical voters make up a quarter of the population? Yikes. I was hoping it was much lower than that. Like the NRA, they always seem to have way too much influence. Like, if a candidate came out and said he/she was atheist or agnostic, his/her campaign would probably be dead. Which is why I could never run for office if I ever so desired.
So does this mean that Statcast data is only good for explaining to us why things that have already happened, happened? Or will there be more tweaking or development to find something about its data that is predictive in nature?
The piece I linked just says the x-stats MLB is using don’t do what they’re supposed to do. xwOBA doesn’t predict wOBA, for example. That doesn’t mean Statcast data lack predictive information, though. I bet it’s in there, but perhaps it’s in data that aren’t public.
Evangelicals are 1/4 of the population, but I believe they constitute a higher percentage of the electorate. We are a secular nation by our constitution and longstanding judicial precedent. That is in jeopardy as long as evangelicals have this disproportionate power in government. It is incumbent on all of us who believe in the separation of state and religion – which includes nonreligious people as well as religious people who still appreciate the importance of a secular government – to vote for candidates who pledge to uphold and strengthen this separation.
“as long as evangelicals have this disproportionate power in government”
Is it really disproportionate? A quarter of the population is a pretty big number. I would expect any group of that size with that level of enthusiasm to exert substantial influence. Isn’t that how democracy works? I would prefer a total separation of church and state, but it’s not realistic at all given the U.S.’ current demographics.
I’ll leave this here, without commentary (even in your Onion).
https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-has-finally-read-michael-cohen-s-2013-email-1826197533