No new ESPN+ content this week, although that will change next week after I get to a few more minor league games. I did hold a Klawchat on Friday.
On the board game front, I had two pieces up at Paste this week. One is a straight review of Corinth, a new roll-and-write game from Days of Wonder that is sort of Yspahan: the Dice Game, but with a new theme and much altered rules. The other recaps the day and a half I spent at the Origins Game Fair, running through all the new games I saw or played.
On July 8th, the night after the Futures Game, I’ll be at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, Ohio, talking baseball, taking questions, and signing copies of my book Smart Baseball.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The Atlantic‘s William Langewiesche examines the unsolved disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, and the uncomfortable but almost certain conclusion of who was responsible. EDIT: A rejoinder from the Daily Beast.
- E. Jean Carroll says Donald Trump raped her in 1996. The party of family values will ignore her.
- Conditions at the contractors’ offices where Facebook moderators work are dismal. I have become almost totally convinced that user-generated content sites can’t police themselves. People will say and post the worst things, but the sites have little incentive to remove anything that isn’t outright illegal, and the sheer volume of bad content (and reports) makes policing it infeasible.
- A mapping error gave Under Armour billionaire Kevin Plank a huge tax break, with a boost from Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R).
- Noted left-wing publication (checks notes) Scientific American ran an editorial demanding that transphobes stop using phony science to defend their deviant beliefs. Sex and gender aren’t binary, scientists have known this for at least a half-century, and yet we still have troglodytes trying to uphold the two-bathroom paradigm.
- A couple of Harvard alums have started a firm dedicated to growing high-quality shiitake mushrooms, viewing them as a sustainable, more healthful alternative to meat. I guess it’s unsurprising, but I never considered how the growth medium would affect the flavor and nutrition of mushrooms, just as soil quality affects that of vegetables.
- Islanders goalie Robin Lehner won the Bill Masterson Trophy for his public discussion of his bipolar disorder and substance abuse.
- Writing for Forbes, Bruce Y. Lee asks why actress Jessica Biel, who has no medical background, is fighting a pro-vaccination law that will crack down on doctors who give out bogus medical exemptions to existing vaccination mandates.
- You know, like California Dr. Bob Sears, who is accused of giving out bogus medical exemptions while already on probation for giving out bogus medical exemptions. He should lose his medical license, permanently. He should probably be in jail.
- New York millionaires Bernand and Lisa Selz are funding the anti-vaccine movement, donating over $3 million to groups that fight vaccination laws and spread misinformation about vaccines. I hope other outfits that have taken donations from the Selzes, like the Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection, turn them away.
- An adult with autism, writing only as Max, explains how the anti-vaccine movement offends him and others with autism spectrum disorders.
- The anti-vaccine movement is also fueled by Russian operations on social media, according to former DHS official and current Kennedy School lecturer Juliette Kayyem, speaking in this Q&A on the current measles outbreak and anti-vaccine sentiment.
- An LA police officer, while off duty, used his service weapon to shoot a developmentally disabled, non-verbal man who pushed him in a local Costco, killing the man and hitting both the man’s parents, with the mother still in a coma.
- The University of Michigan’s baseball team is headed to the CWS finals; Tony Paul wrote about Wolverine player Joe Donovan and his late brother, Charlie, who was also a Michigan recruit but died before reaching Ann Arbor.
- Martin Feldstein, one-time chair of the President’s Council of Economics Advisers – Reagan fired him for opposing the supply-side strategy of deficit spending – and my Economics 10 professor at you-know-where died last week at age 79. There’s really no party or even subgroup of either party pushing for the policies he espoused.
- Tens of thousands of Indian villages are facing water shortages, with no end in sight. Climate change and overpopulation are leading us down a death spiral when it comes to the global supply of clean water.
- I’ve included songs from YONAKA on multiple playlists the last two years, including three songs on my top 100s of 2017/2018; NME profiled the band and their debut album’s focus on toxic masculinity and mental health topics.
- This is an older post but I found it this week while googling something unrelated: a former member of the extremist Christian sect that also counts the Duggars as members writes of growing up “Quiverfull” and escaping the cult.
- Speaking of cults, the folks proselytizing about the evils of wheat – not celiacs, mind you, but people who avoid wheat by choice – will often claim modern wheat varieties are worse for the environment, but a new study debunks that myth, showing that modern wheat requires less everything, including fertilizers, water, and fungicides.
- In Alaba … no, wait, this time it’s Indiana, where the school district did the right thing but one teacher couldn’t handle it. An Indiana teacher resigned rather than accept a school policy to refer to trans students by their desired names and pronouns, but now he’s suing for his job back, backed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a hate group that wants to criminalize homosexuality and transgenderism.
- The New York Times took a break from profiling Trump supporters to … actually, to profile more Trump supporters, but this time it’s to shine a light on racist whites in Minnesota, angry at Somali refugees for being black, Muslim, and nearby.
- Ryan Thomore writes for Cubs Insider about how Pride Days at the ballpark matter to LGBTQ+ fans.
Worse than ignoring her, the party of family values will probably attack her.
“”They were just —” she said, searching for the words to describe the offending behavior of the Somali-Americans. “They were just walking around.””
Wow.
I’m really struggling to understand what the NYT is going for these days. It would seem like their reporting is still top-notch, but their editorials are horrid. Now we’ve got Tyler Kepner writing a gloss piece on known douchebag Trevor Bauer praising him for his supposed forward thinking, at least as it pertains to baseball. Yea, I’m not reading that one. When I keep seeing other Yankees fans say that’s who they want Cashman to target in a trade, it makes me want to puke like a woman in Cleveland who saw Jack Parkman’s shimmy in the batter’s box after he’d been traded to Chicago.
Pat D – You should read it, especially since you are commenting on it, since if you’re unwilling to read it, you have no leg to stand on.
It’s a really interesting article. Humans are complex, and this article doesn’t specifically state that, but it seems obvious that that was what the author wanted to be the point of the piece. He’s no saint, but he’s got good qualities as well. Hell, the headline says it all, “baseball’s imperfect evangelist”.
I’m not saying I like him or not – I don’t know the man, nor do I follow the Indians particularly – but it’s an interesting profile.
I do have some familiarity with his baseball ideas, as I’ve read about them in some other places over the last year or so.
But considering the many things I’ve seen him say and do, in interviews and on his Twitter feed, I just find him to be personally distasteful, so I really don’t have any interest in reading more about him.
For what it’s worth, labeling someone, or some thing, a “hate group,” is a completely subjective exercise and not objective fact.
The SPLC calling the ADF – or anyone else, for that matter – a “hate group” carries about as much authority and/or credibility (and even usefulness) as Maxim publishing a list of “the world’s 15 most beautiful athletes.”
If their want is to criminalize homosexuality and sterilize transgender people, then guess what? They’re a hate group.
Again, in case you missed it the first time, it’s entirely subjective.
You’re more than welcome to your opinion. And thanks for sharing it.
Not that it matters one iota in establishing anything remotely close to objective fact.
MW: I don’t see the point of your comments. This is my site and all commentary here is fine. I say they’re a hate group. The SPLC site provides evidence to support that contention. Saying my opinions are subjective is a tautology. If you wish to argue that they’re not a hate group, then feel free to do so and we can discuss it.
I suspect he’s not truly interested in an objective discussion, Keith.
And I don’t care what you say, MW, wanting the criminalize an inherent characteristic of a segment of a population definitely equates to hate. I really don’t know why you would argue that other than you just want to try to trip people up on semantics. To that, I say you’re being extremely disingenuous.
“The SPLC site provides evidence to support that contention.”
Despite your clever wording to suggest otherwise, there’s no such thing as “evidence” supporting what is ultimately only an opinion.
“Saying my opinions are subjective is a tautology.”
Don’t twist my words as that’s not what I said. You can dispute my assertion of what you did, but I didn’t suggest this was your “opinion” and therefore it was “subjective,” so therefore not a tautology. It was actually the opposite, that your statement (that the ADF is a “hate group”) was presented as objective fact, and I was simply pointing out that you could only present that as an opinion, not fact.
“If you wish to argue that they’re not a hate group, then feel free to do so and we can discuss it.”
I think, ultimately, my point is that it’s a complete waste of time to argue/discuss it when it’s so subjective. How do you feel about debating whether Gisele Bundchen is prettier than Alessandra Ambrosio? And discussing the “evidence” in support of each position?
Not to ascribe motives – well, actually I will, because it’s the only logical conclusion – but there’s no point in you glibly calling the ADF a “hate group” except to virtue signal your credentials among the “non-hate” segment of the population. It certainly isn’t to try and make some intellectual point and then have a reasonable and logical discussion about it.
“I suspect he’s not truly interested in an objective discussion, Keith.”
There’s no “objective discussion” to be had about what “hate” is and just how much of it someone (or some group) directs at someone else, you complete nit. That’s the ENTIRE point.
Keith, is this the best you can do for an audience.
I’m terribly disappointed by the pseudo-intellectualism on display here.
Good night.
Take your aura of superiority somewhere else. If you don’t want to acknowledge that the ADF is abhorrent with an evil mission, then you’re just an idiot.
MW: You need to move along now. Do not insult me or my readers.
Yeah, I try and stick to intellectual circles with robust thought and rigorous debate.
This clearly isn’t the place for me.
All the best and take care.
MW: Do you think “hate” is objectively definable?
Kazzy: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “objectively definable.”
Using my best interpretation, though, I’d answer “maybe” to even “probably yes.” I’m no expert in linguistics but can plausibly see how a rough consensus could be reached as to what a word like “hate” means or generally describes (and this goes for most, if not all, other words as well) in terms of feelings and/or actions in a way that could be considered “objective.”
Objectively “measurable,” however? That’s a different story and where I’d be more inclined to answer “no,” or at least, “it’s incredibly difficult to outright impossible the vast majority of the time.” That’s the angle I’m taking here.
Aside from someone unambiguously stating they hold feelings of hatred toward someone or something else and then also acting in a way that appears to outwardly demonstrate that antipathy (and even then, there’s always the small chance where someone could, for whatever reason, declare they are “hateful” of something publicly but hold different feelings and/or emotions privately), then ultimately it’s a complete exercise in outside interpretation and motive attribution, which is a completely subjective exercise.
Think about this example. What’s often considered the most outward expression of hatred we see among humans? Murder, right? The taking of one’s life by another. Most certainly there are countless examples of lives being taken and the murderer, through various means, declaring they felt “hatred” toward their victim(s). But we “know” that not all murders are the result of “hate,” right? Have we not seen many examples, especially of troubled youth who, in many cases, suffer from severe mental issues, of murders taking place simply because the perpetrator was “curious” what it was like to take the life of another human being? And medical professionals saying that these individuals typically just didn’t understand the weight of their actions. So despite committing what might be deemed the ultimate manifestation of hate, it’s inconclusive to even reasonably doubtful that these individuals were actually motivated by that exact emotion.
Now ponder the difficulty in making that determination on so many other fronts.
World: Nazis are bad.
MW: I don’t much care for your glib comment and virtue signaling to the “non-Nazi” crowd.
MW: I prefer robust intellectuals and vigorous debate.
Everyone: Let’s talk about why we think ADF is a hate group and you do not.
MW: Opinion can’t be debated. You are all dumb and I, a ponderous genius, am smart.
Not to mention the fact that MW is conflating personal preferences (who is prettier than who), which obviously cannot be supported by evidence and political opinions, which very much can. I like bananas better than apples? Why? I don’t know, because I like the taste. But I could, for example, give lots of evidence to support my opinion that Donald Trump is a terrible president.
MW’s insistence on objective fact is obviously just a troll tactic, but still. You should be able to do better than “opinions can’t be backed up by evidence.”
ADF appears to advocate via legal means, often the court system. It advocates for a position that I *strongly* disagree with vis a vis gender and sexuality. (Maybe other areas too, but I’m not familiar with those efforts if any.)
But I wouldn’t lump them in with, for example Proud Boys or White Aryan Resistance, organized or unorganized groups that engage in violent acts rather than just speech that I disagree with.
Unfortunately, as I usually find myself aligned with the positions they end up taking, I take conclusions provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center with a huge grain of salt these days. Setting aside the fact that the founder (Morris Dees) pushed out due to pretty well established allegations of decades of sexual harassment and discrimination, more significantly for their findings, there has been a lot of investigative reporting on their tendency to be overly generous in naming ‘hate groups’ in an effort to increase donations. Some of those named are less than 10 people who’ve posted (what I believe to be) neanderthal-like beliefs but without any overt action. This creates a list of hate groups where we are not comparing apples to apples or even apples to oranges but apples to rocking chairs.
I don’t think a group has to advocate extralegal or violent means to be a hate group. They’re trying to legislate people out of existence, figuratively. That’s good (bad) enough for me.
Thanks for the reply Keith. I guess the way I see it can be analogized by saying that both Mike Trout and Chris Davis are professional baseball players. Yes, that is a true statement of fact. But by lumping together things with some similarities and some dramatic differences, it limits analysis and makes determining appropriate responses / reactions more difficult.
I think the response to those engaging in “bad” speech is through more speech – akin to Justice Brennan’s decision in the flag burning case ~30 years back. The response to those engaging in “bad” conduct, however, is not limited to more speech. Our response as a society to ADF should be markedly different than our response to WAR even if, when drilled down, the underlying beliefs of the two are similar. That is why – for me – I wouldn’t use the same term to describe both entities.
I’d be comfortable tagging violent hate groups as such to distinguish them from other groups that push hate through legislative or other means. Perhaps the former are better tagged as domestic terror groups, at least once they’ve acted on those beliefs in a violent manner.
“I think the response to those engaging in “bad” speech is through more speech…”
Labeling a group a ‘hate group’ is speech.
“Not to mention the fact that MW is conflating personal preferences (who is prettier than who), which obviously cannot be supported by evidence”
Either you completely misunderstand me or you really don’t understand this whole realm of where subjectivity meets and crosses into objectivity nearly as well as you think you do. Or some combination of both.
And “personal preference” is still, ultimately, an opinion with a subjective base but something that can be “objectively measured” under certain parameters. (and this can apply to opinions of “prettiness,” which fruit tastes better, or most anything else).
Take this, for example. You could present me with pictures of a woman and ask me, individually, if I thought she was beautiful. Regardless of how I answered (yes or no), it would simply be me stating my opinion, or personal preference. I think we agree there, right? Even if the question was worded a little differently to allow for more than just binary answers (“smoking hot,” “pretty,” “mildly attractive,” etc. or maybe have me rank her “prettiness” with numbers), it’s still just an opinion of my individual preference.
Now, though, let’s say you take pictures (or whatever) of 5 different women (and/or men, as this example doesn’t have to be “sexist” in terms of being only objectifying women as an object of beauty) and then you draw a sample of 1,000 random individuals and ask them to either rank the 5 people from most to least beautiful or assign an “attractiveness rating” using a 1-10 scale or something similar. Then you could tally the results and objectively report how exactly the group ranked the 5 women or maybe report the results as: woman A was given a 6.8 rating, woman B a 7.4 rating, woman C a 5.2 rating, etc. While all based on underlying opinions/preferences, there’s still something objective produced by the collective quantification of those opinions. Now, the extent that information can be gleaned and applied elsewhere to measure the attractiveness of women (or men) not in the study is probably very limited, but you very much can take a collection of opinions/preferences and turn them into something objective.
Equally, you can take 1,000 people and have them consume apples and bananas and ask questions to try and quantify the collective opinion and provide some kind of objective results.
I’m a little surprised you try and insult me over the “intellectual” comment from earlier and then seem to struggle to understand and apply these very basic concepts regarding subjectivity (and opinions) and objectivity. That’s quite the display of cluelessness, if you ask me.
“political opinions, which very much can.”
???? This is just a bizarre statement and sounds like nothing more than a petulant child justifying being able to spout off at the mouth about why they think someone is an “evil poopyhead” and then being able to call that accusation “fact” just because they tossed in a few reasons why they called the person an “evil poopyhead.”
Look, someone can ask if you think Trump is a terrible president, and you can answer “yes, very much so,” and then you can even turn around and produce audio/video evidence of him using the N-word 5 times, making incoherent or inaccurate statements about foreign policy, etc. but none individually objectively makes him a terrible president. Yes, it’s evidence in support of an opinion, but ultimately, it’s just that, your opinion.
Now, like the example above, you can ask 1,000 (or it could be a different-sized sample) people how they would rank Trump’s abilities (or “awfulness,” depending on how you word it) and then take those results to present some objective conclusion. Again, there’d be limitations, but you could certainly present something like, “Out of 1,000 surveyed individuals, 20% rated Trump as the “worst president ever,” 24% as simply a “bad or terrible president,” 28% as a “mediocre president,” etc.” which would, again, be an objective measure taking the collective of those opinions.
“MW’s insistence on objective fact is obviously just a troll tactic”
I’m not “insisting” on anything. And I’m not “trolling.” I’m just pointing out – and judging by the responses I’ve had so far, this seems to be a blind spot for many here, what can truly be presented as objective fact and what’s still ultimately a subjective opinion, even if it’s an informed one supported by evidence.
this seems to be a blind spot for many here
No, it’s not. It’s that everyone else is telling you this is an absurdly pedantic point to make. This is my site and all content here represents my opinion.
I asked you politely to move along if you were going to insult others here. You said you would, which I appreciated, but you came back the moment someone engaged with you, and now you’re doing it again (“petulant child…”). I have one rule for the comments here, and you keep breaking it. I’ll ask you again: Please move along.
“pedantic point to make.”
Not to be a complete pain-in-the-ass, but this is where we have a difference in opinion. What you see as “pedantic,” I see as a very important point buried in nuance that you and most of your readers here are too casually dismissing.
“represents my opinion.”
You’re hiding behind the “my opinion” angle but in the process are clearly obscuring what exactly you did (or, more accurately, what you said and how you said it).
You stated that the Alliance Defending Freedom was a hate group (with the link to the SPLC as “evidence,” though we’ll ignore the appeal to authority here) right in the middle of a declarative sentence with absolutely no other context or qualifiers. That’s not expressing an opinion; it’s presenting something as fact.
It would be no different than if you were to be linking a story about Blake Snell and made the statement, “Blake is a pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, a professional Major League Baseball team,” with maybe a link to mlb.com or espn.com displaying the Rays as an organization affiliated with MLB.
The clear implication there would be as if you also stated, “I’m stating the fact that Tampa is an MLB team, and here’s the link to an authoritative source to substantiate that point.”
Just as, doing what you did above in the style and manner you did, it’d be as if you also said, “I’m stating that ADF is a hate group, and here’s a link to an authoritative source, the SPLC website, to substantiate that point.”
But MLB objectively substantiating the Tampa Bay Rays as one of their organizations isn’t on the same planet as the SPLC objectively substantiating the ADF as an actual “hate group.”
“the moment someone engaged with you”
That’s being very generous, and even a bit disingenuous as to what went down. I wasn’t merely “engaged.” I was insulted and even taunted.
This would be analogous to you hosting a cocktail/inner party at your house, and I’m there along with other guests. You feel I’m saying/doing some things that cross the line and are too obnoxious/rude/etc. in making you and your other guests uncomfortable, angry, or whatever. You ask me to leave, and I oblige. I put down my drink, tip my cap and say “good night,” and get halfway down the steps on the front porch when a couple of your other guests follow me out to the porch, with one dumping their glass of wine on me and another calling me a “loser” and “idiot.”
It’s hardly unreasonable for me to turn around and take a couple parting shots under those circumstances, calling out the ill-mannered person for dumping their wine on me and firing off a “right back at ya, asshole” insulting me.
“I’ll ask you again: Please move along.”
And, ultimately, it’s your “house,” your “party,” etc. so to continue the analogy, if you don’t like me “final” retorts to defend myself when I’m earnestly and honestly trying to “move along,” that’s fine. You can “call the police and have them remove me from the premises (i.e. “ban me from posting”), but it doesn’t change the fact that some of your other guests were clearly uncivil, discourteous, and insulting towards me.
But that’s on you if you want to single me out. I can see where I’m not welcome.
Thanks for the “engagement” you were willing to offer to this point. Good day.
MW: You seem to think you’re making an important or “deep” argument, but from where I sit, you’re not.
In the end, most assertions that we make are really just well-supported opinions. Slavery caused the Civil War. Global warming is real. The New York Mets are a dysfunctional franchise. Species evolve due to natural selection. Five Guys hamburgers taste better than McDonalds hamburgers. That these things are technically opinions does not make them invalid or useless.
Some assertions are more sound than other assertions, and some evidence is stronger than other evidence. When the SPLC declares someone to be a hate group, that is meaningful to me (and most others) because they are in the business of studying this issue and making conclusions. If you don’t respect their opinions, then that is your call, but most folks do because they back their assertions up with strong evidence. Go to their site sometime, and they give specific examples that explain and justify their judgments.
You seem to suggest that the phrase “hate group” has no meaning, but I think that is a weak argument, too. 99% of people are comfortable calling the KKK a hate group. 0% of people are comfortable calling the Mickey Mouse Club a hate group. There is clearly some meaningful distinction between those groups, and that distinction helps us to identify patterns when OTHER groups start veering in the KKK direction. That may even allow us to cut such groups off at the pass, before they can lynch a few people, or interfere with an election, or blow up a federal building somewhere.
Small correction, but important nonetheless: it’s the Masterton Trophy, not Masterson, that is awarded every year for “perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey”. Lehner was the obvious choice this year.
Keith, in case you haven’t seen this yet, Grub Street recently published an oral history of Serious Eats.
http://www.grubstreet.com/2019/06/serious-eats-oral-history.html
I had not seen it – thank you.