I’m running around Florida this week and will have a draft blog post up Sunday or Monday, but for now you’ll have to just make do with my ramblings here. It’s been a fairly unproductive week on the minor-league scouting side, but better for draft scouting, which I’ll write up before Monday.
In the meantime, the links:
- Longreads first: Creative Loafing Tampa uncovers a long history of the city of New Port Richey harassing residents and business owners it deems undesirable, using dubious code violations and illegal searches.
- Copi is an invasive species in American rivers and lakes. One solution is to convince Americans to eat it more.
- Writing in Democracy, former NARAL president Ilyse Hogue argues that when we defend reproductive rights, we are also defending democracy itself.
- The Columbia Journalism Review looks at the implosion at the BBC over Gary Lineker’s criticism of a bill that even UNHCR said aimed to “extinguish” a refugee’s right to seek protection in the UK.
- UPenn law professor Amy Wax has a long history of derogatory statements about non-white people, some as public commentary, some to students directly. Should she be fired despite the protections of tenure?
- An online influencer who pushed ivermectin to his followers FAFO’d – he took a daily dose of the antiparasitic, which causes severe heart damage if taken for too long or in large doses, and died of a massively enlarged heart. Now his followers are worried about their own health. Maybe they should have listened to doctors and scientists instead of one fucking moron with an internet connection?
- Meanwhile, some parents of autistic kids are torturing their children by giving them ivermectin despite its horrible side effects. Where are all the people who claim their main goal is protecting kids when they campaign against drag shows and LGBT+ themed books?
- We now have even stronger evidence of a zoonotic origin for COVID-19, based on genetic sequences that tie it to raccoon dogs sold illegally at a Wuhan market.
- Masks are effective against COVID-19; we know this because valid scientific research tells us so.
- Comedian Russell Brand’s turn towards conspiracy theories and anti-science views is a harbinger of a grim future where those with huge digital platforms misinform their large, often younger audiences.
- A Syracuse radio station fired a sports talk show host for being insufficiently positive in his comments about the Orange’s sportsball programs.
- An activist protesting the razing of forests and green space to build a vast new training facility for Atlanta cops may have been shot by police while his hands were raised. Manuel Teran was shot and killed by cops in January and his family is now suing the city of Atlanta.
- Trump has once again called on his supporters to riot if he’s indicted, which I think is probably an attempt to deter state prosecutors from doing so. Let’s hope the relevant authorities are prepared this time around.
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R ) has moved to revoke the liquor license of a Miami Hyatt that hosted a drag show at Christmas, claiming there were minors who “appeared less than 16 years of age” at the event. At some point, aren’t the corporations he’s targeting going to push back?
- He’s also targeting Wall Street firms that use ESG (environmental & social goals) as part of their investment or other strategies, and while everyone agrees this is performative on his part, there’s a stunning lack of rejoinders from his targets.
- A Saudi trans woman appears to have killed herself after her family tricked her into returning to Saudi Arabia and forced her to de-transition. The suicide rate for trans people is extremely high, and laws that ban gender-affirming care will only exacerbate this.