My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30th.
Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).
I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.
- Patrick Burleigh wrote about growing up with testotoxicosis, an extremely rare condition that causes boys to begin puberty as young as age two.
- The Denver Post tells how a consultant to the Denver Art Museum used her position and imprimatur to help an art smuggler move looted items from holy sites in southeast Asia. The consultant, Emma Bunker, died last year.
- The New York Times, which was also guilty of the sins described in this article, looks at how biased polls that implied there would be a ‘red wave’ this November screwed up the narrative and led Democrats to commit resources to many of the wrong races.
- The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.
- You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.
- Dr. Céline Gounder, Grant Wahl’s widow, wrote about how anti-vaxxers also pounced on her husband’s death to spread misinformation and outright lies. Fucking ghouls.
- A romance novelist faked her own death, and has now returned like nothing ever happened.
- The cousin of one of the founders of Black Lives Matter flagged down a police car after an accident. One of the officers Tased the man so extensively that he died of cardiac arrest. Keenan Anderson was unarmed. The LAPD is already blaming the victim, saying he had cocaine in his system, which, last I checked, is not a capital crime.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis is weaponizing Florida’s public schools, using political appointees to try to stifle any future dissent coming from its students. Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin explains just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be.
- Damar Hamlin’s tragedy has been fodder for anti-vaxxer lies. The BBC also looked at how the conspiracy theorists pounced. So did WBUR, while Forbes looked at the backlash to the anti-vaxxers, including a tweet from yours truly.
- A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.
- Meanwhile, public confidence in the MMR vaccine, which fights measles, mumps, and rubella, is waning after two years of attacks from denialists and grifters against COVID-19 vaccines.
- The BBC invited a cardiologist turned anti-vax grifter (he charges $10K-$20K per speaking appearance now) on air to discuss a cholesterol medication, but he hijacked the interview to make false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.
- Germany has warned Twitter that it’s running afoul of EU laws against misinformation.
- An adjunct professor at Hamline University in Minnesota followed multiple steps before showing a painting of Muhammad in an art class, and was still fired after a Muslim student complained.
- Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.
- Writer Hilary de Vries described her struggle getting effective treatment for her sister, who has schizoaffective disorder and has trouble holding on to housing.
- New York City is paying $135,000 to a homeless man its cops beat and dragged off the subway. The cops lied about him hitting them first, but body-camera footage proved them wrong.
- One recent poll found that two-thirds of Britons now want a referendum to rejoin the EU. So it was Leave, Remain, or Regret?
- The Times continues to uncover lies and inconsistencies in Rep. George Santos’ background, including possible campaign finance violations.
- CNBC joins the parade of investigations into Santos, this time showing his campaign may have committed fraud when a staffer allegedly posed as a member of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s team on fundraising calls.
- Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.
- For example, Central Bucks schools in Bucks County, which I think is where Deliverance was filmed, have banned teachers from displaying Pride flags or other inclusive materials in classrooms, thanks to a school board dominated by right-wingers.
- Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.
- Texas’ Department of Agriculture issued a report stating that climate change threatens the state’s food supply. Of course, Gov. Greg Abbott, when he’s not busy spending Texas citizens’ money on busing migrants to northern cities, has blocked local attempts to fight climate change.
- In other performative political stunts, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) banned state officials from using the gender-inclusive term “Latinx.” She also signed an order banned state schools from teaching critical race theory, which I hope some Arkansas journalist asks her to define.
- Alabama, fighting for the title of America’s biggest backwater, is now claiming (via its Attorney General) that women there who use abortion pills obtained from out of state will be prosecuted, which I don’t think is constitutional but I’m not a lawyer.
- A deputy campaign manager for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) sent an email to teachers asking them to encourage students to volunteer for her re-election campaign in exchange for class credit.
- A baseball player for Northwestern has filed a defamation suit against multiple women who accused him of sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior, even one who did not make those accusations public, according to this Deadspin story.
- Scientists have observed quantum interference between two different kinds of particles – similar to entanglement, Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” which occurs between two related particles – for the first time.
- Why is cutting the U.S. defense budget such a forbidden concept?
- Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal explains why passing gun control laws is futile with an archconservative judiciary in place.
FWIW Deliverance was filmed in Rabun County, Georgia (where the hillbilly banjo player was employed until recently as a Wal Mart parking lot attendant).
I know, I was just making fun of Bucks County, because it’s pretty consistently on the wrong side of everything.
The Democrats likely gerrymandered themselves out of a House seat in my district due to that fear of a red wave: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/tom-malinowski-says-redistricting-played-a-big-role-in-his-7th-congressional-district-loss-to-tom-kean-jr/
Is the Sarah Huckabee Sanders comment supposed to be in favor or against her banning of “Latinx”? Looking at research, less than 5% of Hispanic people use the term. Many find it to be offensive. If the very people a word is invented for decry it, it seems that retiring that word should be celebrated.
Word usage can live on or die off without the need for governmental decree, so yes, this is performative attacking of something because it is gender neutral. Having grown up and gone to college in southern California, I witnessed quite a bit of overt homophobia from Hispanic people. I’m guessing that *many* of them find Latinx to be “offensive.” So no, I don’t think Sarah Huckabee Sanders should be celebrated here for a culture war performatism, especially when in the future it will come with policies that are increasingly going to harm trans people in the state.
How does the Arkansas decree differ from this article about the decision to remove words deemed offensive from Michigan state laws?
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2016/05/24/colored-persons-words-banned-list/84871884/
Opinions may differ regarding these types of laws and the individual words that are being changed or eliminated, but it’s not a new thing. While changes may span the range of overdue, controversial, or frivolous, it’s hard to argue that eliminating a word that is widely disavowed by the people it describes is a problem.
(And isn’t the word Hispanic already gender neutral? The many overtly homophobic Hispanics you know perhaps were ahead of their time!)
Hispanic and Latin American are not the same thing, Drew. Nor is removing reference to “colored people” or “deaf and dumb” from the law books compared to “Latinx,” where it hasn’t been relegated to the dustbin. As to the homophobes that I knew in high school and college being “ahead of their time” on the use of gendered language, no, intent fucking matters. This is just a bad false equivalency being used to justify anti-trans bigotry.
Then use the term Latin American, not Latinx You solved the problem yourself. My response to your comment regarding your experience regarding widespread Hispanic homophobia was only to call out your generalization of that, sorry if you missed my light hearted jab at you (hence the exclamation at the end.)
Anyone is free to justify the use of a term for people that the people themselves don’t feel is ok, but that’s a tough row to hoe.
All communities have homophobia and transphobia. While Latinos are more accepting than the general population (https://www.axios.com/2022/03/24/latinos-lgbtq-acceptance), it’s not hard to find *many* who are not. You seem to be the one using those to paint with a broad brush (e.g, “many find it to be offensive,” “the people themselves don’t feel is okay”) to justify transphobic culture warriorism when it’s completely unnecessary.
Also, maybe this is something that non-Latin people should sit out: https://twitter.com/JMunozActor/status/1613529470865915904
I’m not painting with a broad brush, I’m going by published studies showing Hispanics barely use the word Latinx. I am not justifying transphobic cultural warriorism, I am stating that Hispanic and Latin American people don’t use or like a word that is being foisted upon them, so making sure it’s not used is fine by me.
Simply put, I would not endorse using a term for a group of people that the people themselves don’t want to use, as that would make me feel like a bigot.
You went beyond published studies when you stated “many” are offended by it without citation. I was simply quoting that back to you.
I’ve never endorsed using Latinx or used it personally beyond typing the word here–it’s not my place. I’ve endorsed not banning it, because again, that’s also not my place. And banning it is performative anti-trans signaling, whether you would like to admit it or not.
Conservatives have bastardized the term “CRT” to be utterly meaningless. I’ve asked these questions to conservative friends before and never gotten a straight answer. How do you teach about the Constitution (specifically the three-fifths compromise) without using a racial lens? How do you teach about Dred Scott or the Civil War without using a racial lens? How do you teach about Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Ed without using a racial lens? How do you teach about the Civil Rights movement (i.e. Rosa Park, MLK, Malcolm X, etc) without using a racial lens? How do you teach about the rise of movements like the KKK post WW1 along with their reactions to various waves of immigration?
Not using a racial lens means you almost have to exclude a lot of key events in American history.
My admittedly jaded take on your questions about how may conservatives prefer to approach teaching about these issues is that they should be ignored entirely as if they never happened. We do not wish to encourage critical thinking.
Three-fifths compromise: Don’t teach about it at all.
The constitution in general? Only gun rights matter; ignore the rest of it.
Dred Scott and the Civil War: Don’t teach about these at all.
Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education: Don’t teach about these at all.
The civil rights movement: Oh god, absolutely don’t teach about this at all.
The KKK: What is that?
Immigration: It’s AWFUL that the US lets this scum in.
My impression is that many conservatives do not want to think critically about the role of conservative social institutions (like the church), government (ranging from local police to federal), and a huge swath of the population in maintaining racial oppression in the US. They would rather believe that either a small number of evil individuals were responsible, or deflect the blame to others not part of their in-group. Hence the support for idea that the cause of the Civil War was not rooted in slavery (which would mean that a large fraction of people in the South supported a racist cause), and for the superficial idea that Democrats were responsible for things like the KKK (which is true, but ignores the fact that Southern Democrats at the time were extremely socially conservative and religious). And when asked to reckon with these things, they claim that it’s revisionist history. And when asked about these things by their kids, they get really fucking pissed and claim that they were indoctrinated. Hence using CRT as a catch all for teaching about anything race-related that makes them uncomfortable. It’s not that they want history to be taught without a racial lens. It’s that they want it taught with a very particular type of lens that makes them feel better about it.
It also makes me wonder if admitting our founding fathers weren’t perfect and created a racist system (and let’s be honest legalizing slavery and making blacks in the south only count as three-fifths of a human is racist) destroys this myth that they’ve created of American exceptionalism. It’s okay to admit mistakes were made and that we’re trying to get better. That’s a sign of healthy progress.
Brian in NoVa,
Slavery being included in the constitution was racist, the three-fifths compromise was not. The states where slavery was legal wanted slaves to count fully for the census even though they didn’t have the right to vote. This would have given the Southern states more representatives in the House and made slavery more difficult to outlaw in the future. The Northern states didn’t want slaves to count at all. The three-fifths compromise was used to break an impasse in the negotiations.
Joe D, I would counter that the compromise itself was fairly racist. I’m well aware of the reasons for it but it immediately puts non-white people on the back foot in this nation’s history in terms of how they’re viewed when legally they aren’t even considered to be fully human. It takes another almost 80 years to get rid of slavery and another 100 years after that to get rid of segregation.
I think it’s fair to say no one at the Constitutional Convention cared much about the rights or welfare of Black people. The three-fifths compromise was about power.