My ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball ran this Thursday for subscribers to the Athletic; the column of guys who just missed the list will run on Monday. Subscribers can also read my breakdown of the Jameson Taillon trade. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday afternoon.
Over at Paste, my review of the game Cloud City, a disappointing game from a designer whose work I really love, is now up.
I joined my friend Eric Longenhagen on the Fangraphs Audio podcast this week to talk top 100s and the process of assembling them, especially in this weird year.
My most recent edition of my free email newsletter shared some details of my recent nuptials, and I’ll send another issue at some point this week. You can still buy The Inside Gameand Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.
And now, the links…
- David Sirota weighs in on the New York Times‘ publication of what amounted to a GOP press release and other media nonsense in the wake of the terror attack on the Capitol.
- The Times fired a reporter earlier this month for saying she got “chills” during Biden’s inauguration, but when reporter Don McNeil used the n-word and other offensive terms on a trip with students, they promoted him.
- Scientific American looks at the most worrying mutations in five COVID-19 variants.
- The BBC looks at the twenty-year search for the billions of dollars stolen by former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha.
- A former KGB agent alleges in a new book that the Russian agency cultivated Trump as an asset for nearly 40 years.
- A white Ohio state Senator named Stephen Huffman (guess) questioned whether “the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups,” and now he’s leading the Ohio Senate Health Committee.
- Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, wrote that Biden’s new vaccine goal is good, but not ambitious enough.
- Sen. Josh Hawley’s “ludicrous clean-up act,” to try to undo the damage done to his reputation earlier this month, is already underway.
- A new study showed that some bacteria adapt to antibiotics by changing their shape, which can reduce the surface area for antibiotics to penetrate.
- Delaware’s Senate passed our version of the CROWN Act, banning discrimination against people based on their hair or hairstyle. It has to pass the House and be signed by Gov. Carney, but both are extremely likely.
- A Magic: the Gathering card sold for over $500,000 at auction last week.
- Asmodee and Game in Lab announced a clinical study that showed that playing board games might help Alzheimer’s sufferers.
- I haven’t seen or played the game Coffee Talk, but this one-year lookback makes it sound kind of weirdly fun. Then again, I bought Necrobarista two months ago and still haven’t played it, so maybe I won’t.
Wow, never would have had you pegged as a visual novel fan, especially since I feel like you’ve never shown much interest in comics or graphic novels. Have you played/enjoyed other ones that inspired the Necrobarista purchase, or is this a new frontier for you?
Just a game that sounded interesting in reviews.
I don’t understand the Huffman outcry. Here’s a longer quote:
“I understand African Americans have higher instances of chronic conditions that makes them more susceptible to death from COVID,” Huffman said. “But why does that make them more susceptible just to get COVID?”
“Could it just be that African Americans – or the colored population — do not wash their hands as well as other groups? Or wear masks? Or do not socially distance themselves? Could that just be the explanation of why there’s a higher incidence?”
He’s asking important questions about coronavirus transmission. Rather than mocking him, people should be encouraging this type of conversation. Instead, politicians keep the status quo, and the holier than thou politically correct crowd mock him and put themselves on a pedestal. And minorities keep getting infected and dying at higher rates.
Well, for starters, referring to Black people as “colored” has been offensive for at least 50 years.
The term “people of color” is not considered offensive. A couple years ago it was. There’s essentially no difference between that and “colored”. Arguing over semantics about which terms might be offensive today and not offensive tomorrow is not productive.
The content of his speech was helpful and caring. Those who are ripping on him are neither.
“People of color” has never been considered offensive. There is a world of difference between that term and “colored,” which is associated with Jim Crow laws. It’s not semantics.
His speech was neither “helpful” nor “caring”; it played to longstanding stereotypes that non-white people are dirty and that they are responsible for introducing or spreading diseases.
He brought up completely reasonable questions to theorize why minorities are faring worse with coronavirus cases. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, but let’s study it and see! I don’t understand why people find more utility in not addressing these questions and just screaming racism.
He misspoke, and that’s unfortunate. However, reading the quote, it’s obvious that he first mentions African Americans, then stops and realizes he should include other minorities, and adds “the colored population”. That’s very equivalent in definition to “people of color”. He didn’t say “those colored folks” or something like that. He was actually trying to be more inclusive to make sure no group felt marginalized! It isn’t correct terminology in today’s hyper-offended world, but it’s extremely clear he did not mean it in a negative manner. It was an extemporaneous speech in which it appears he tried, unsuccessfully, to conform to currently acceptable terminology.
His speech absolutely was helpful and caring, unless we’ve suddenly figured out why coronavirus is hitting minorities so hard. Would you prefer he simply ignored the issue? Ohio fired him, so I guess that’s indeed how they feel. The State’s official position apparently has become “It’s ok if minorities die at higher rates, as long as we don’t offend any of them while they’re still alive.”
The guy is taking a well known systemic issue of black people receiving worse social determinants of health than white people and reducing it to a matter of personal responsibility. It’s the opposite of helpful. Come on.
I want to be surprised that this conversation is necessary in 2021, and yet here we are, watching KLAW walk someone through views that could charitably be described as antiquated. Those comments, if they’re being made in good faith, suggest a complete ignorance of public health history in this country. Disappointing, but decidedly not surprising or uncommon.
Hi Keith,
Sorry for putting this here, but I thought that this might be the best way to make sure you saw it without doing a Twitter thread. My high school English class is studying The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and we’re exploring Skloot’s choice to not “polish” the quotes in her novel. Part of what I’m using with my students is the 2016 incident where Carlos Gomez got angry at Brian T Smith for quoting him when he was with the Astros. For some reason, I remember you having a thoughtful response to this, but there’s a very real possibility that I’m mis-remembering. Does this ring any sort of bell?
I like to present this issue to the kids because we can use it as an easy way to discuss the larger issues of representation, translation, code switching (I actually use the Code Switch podcast transcript where they talk about this issue),how we think about and define the “other” and how that fits into Skloot’s book . . . etc etc etc etc. Thanks.
¨He brought up completely reasonable questions to theorize why minorities are faring worse with coronavirus cases.¨
No he didn´t. He brought up old stereotypes about cleanliness. We KNOW why people of color are getting COVID at higher rates. They are more likely to work in jobs that expose them to more people, less likely to be able to take leaves of absences due to finances, more likely to live in places with higher population densities, have less access to outdoor spaces, more likely to work in older and therefore less well maintained buildings, more likely for their children to attend to schools with poor ventilation, more likely to have comorbidities due to financial and health imbalances, etc.
What he did was try to ignore the systemic issues we KNOW about, and throw it back onto personal hygiene, which is an old racist trope.
This is pretty much the Rush Limbaugh playbook for the last three decades. Throw some insane/racist/sexist/homophobic/Q-Anon idea out there and when the inevitable outrage comes he falls back on the old “Hey, I’m just asking questions” tripe.
Yeah, we hear your dog whistle. Loud and clear.
Mike, this was coined the “troll three-step” by Jeet Heer back when Kevin Williamson got canned by The Atlantic in 2018.
One: Say something vile
Two: When challenged, say that wasn’t what you meant, only joking, just asking a question, etc.
Step three: Go back to saying something vile.