Nothing new this week other than two contributions to headlines on the callups of Jordan Lawlar and Evan Carter, but I’ll be back next week with the players I got wrong column. I did hold my first Klawchat in ages, though.
On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke with Jonathan Abrams, New York Times reported and author of the 2022 book The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop, which comes out in paperback on October 3rd. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: “The Dungeons and Dragons Players of Death Row,” from the New York Times’s Keri Blakinger, is one of the best things I’ve read this year.
- Rolling Stone has an exposé on Anti-Flag lead singer Justin Sane, who now stands accused of rape by at least thirteen women. Anti-Flag and Sane (born Justin Geever) himself made feminism and progressive ideology a core part of their public images.
- A Peter Thiel-backed startup is supposedly planning to found its own libertarian city-state … somewhere, I guess. Fyre City?
- Vulture exposes the corruption behind Rotten Tomatoes’ algorithm as studios and publicists have paid small-time reviewers, who are often inexplicably included in the site’s calculations, to post positive reviews or withhold negative ones. I’m not included in RT’s metrics and I’m not paid by any studios or publicists, so you can always trust my reviews, even if they’re not any good!
- Parents of trans kids who spoke to the New York Times’ Azeen Ghorayshi spoke out against the reporter and how they felt used and misled by her actions. Ghorayshi wrote a fairly uncritical piece about the so-called whistleblower at a St. Louis clinic for trans kids, but didn’t accurately reflect the sentiments of the parents she spoke to, while the whistleblower appears to have fabricated or inflated most of her claims.
- Regulatory changes may spell the end of Airbnb and similar short-term rentals in New York City. There’s some evidence that these sites are driving down housing stock in already depressed urban supplies.
- Warming oceans due to climate change are allowing the flesh-eating bacterium Vibrio vulnificus to expand its habitat further north, killing three people in the New York area this summer.
- The Florida town of Mount Dora established a program where businesses can declare themselves safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people and display a decal in their window to that effect. Several Florida Republicans are vowing to stop the program, because they are apparently opposed to the First Amendment, or too stupid to understand why it applies here.
- Goodreads sucks. Even best-selling author R.F. Kuang says so – okay, sort of.
- Christian nationalist commentator Matt Walsh, who doesn’t understand the biology of gender, decided to dunk on a single woman for a Tiktok video about her Saturday routines, and even the National Review said it was a bit much. Walsh’s view is that women exist solely for procreation, so it’s unsurprising that Julia Mazur’s unmarried, childless lifestyle would be so confusing to him.
- One of the only pediatric cardiologists in the state of Louisiana is leaving the state because of its anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Well well well.
- The Kids Online Safety Act isn’t about protecting kids, at least not for its Republican backers – it’s about blocking LGBTQ+ content online, according to sponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R). It has broad bipartisan support, however, and I contacted both of Delaware’s Senators to voice my opposition, even though both are sponsors of the bill as well.
- Two Texas billionaires who’ve made their fortunes from fracking are using their gains to fund climate denial and conservative indoctrination sites like PragerU and the Daily Wire. Florida has now approved the use of PragerU materials in its K-12 schools. The Guardian has more on the lies and misinformation of PragerU, which is just doing what its backers pay it for.
- Prison officials fired the guard who didn’t see Danelo Cavalcante escape from Chester County Prison by crabwalking up two walls, leading to a manhunt for the convicted murderer that is now entering day ten. Another inmate escaped the same way back in May, so I’m unclear why the guard is getting the blame rather than the officials who didn’t think to, say, use anti-climb paint to prevent a recurrence?
- South Korean teachers have been protesting after one of their own committed suicide due to extensive bullying by her students’ parents.
- Astrophysicist Katie Mack uses a baseball analogy to explain quantum tunneling.
Why are viral Goodreads articles always framed through the commercial preferences of authors? (I guess the answer is “because that’s who writes those articles”). Personally I’ve found Goodreads a worthwhile way to keep up with reading (actual and aspirational) for myself and a select group of real life friends and like-minded strangers-turned-acquaintances.
I’m sure there are frustrating experiences to be found on the site for authors, but I don’t see how it’s different from BGG or letterboxd or other prominent user-review sites. The idea of erasing reviews for any reason beyond explicitly stating “I didn’t read/watch/play this and am strictly hoping to harm the creator’s commercial interests” (or hate speech) are horrifying to me. I’ve seen authors in the comments of these sort of articles regularly suggest things like reviews requiring proof of purchase, or authors being allowed to remove reviews they don’t like. A system to detect and highlight review-bombings would make sense, but the idea that some “objective criteria” should be applied to an amateur user review site is incredibly wrongheaded.
The real problem seems to have little to do with Goodreads and more about spillover from general bloodsport fandom nonsense online (I guess tiktok is the current hub?) Even that has two sides; what about the random YA author lifted from hawking indie books in a grocery store to the top of Amazon, or the out of nowhere sales boom of This Is How You Lose The Time War? I doubt those authors minded the equally tribal bandwagoning of purchases and good reviews.
I generally agree with your sentiment. I find it a good way to keep track of what I am reading, and what I will be reading. I do like providing brief reviews of the books I read. And also knowing what generally others think. Obviously this is more useful for books that are not SO popular that the reviews and responses are possibly bots, people who didn’t read the book, or some mix. Goodreads’ main problem for me as a reader is the UX and UI something out of 2005. I’ve read that Amazon has considered updating the UX and UI, but that would cost something like $150M and the ROI would not merit it. So they leave it as is. They are also apparently concerned that users would revolt if the updated the website.
All that being said, I do understand authors’ frustrations with the site. Having your book’s sales and possible career by people who never read your book must be frustrating. And if you dare to read the reviews, the reviews that crossover from just reviewing the work to personal attacks must be frustrating. I’ll even admit that I recently reviewed The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (awful book) on GR, and my review stayed focused on the book … but I could see the author being upset if she read the review. Or maybe she is just too busy counting all the cash she has brought in due to her skyrocketing fame on BookTok, and she couldn’t care less what I think.
For Keith and others who abhor Goodreads, I recommend StoryGraph. It’s UX and UI is better. It tends to only be readers. The reviews are easier to give with a lot more information being disseminated. It’s user base though is much smaller (a good and bad thing), so some of that is lost compared to Goodreads. (Note: I use both websites actively.)
I love that Theil, neo-feudalist, is funding Galts Gulch. When they have to pay a toll to get their mail, or to drive to the store, or any number of stupid insidious capitalistic money making schemes, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. I’m also positive it’ll be gazillionaires who live there then proclaim it paradise.
If they live there, they should not be allowed to enjoy the world where we socialize things and get better outcomes – ahem, looking at you Ayn Rand.
I’d somehow missed that Florida was allowing the use of PragerU videos in schools. Thanks for sharing that fresh insanity. The descriptions in this NPR article are exactly the level of nonsense I’ve come to expect from anything with Dennis Prager’s prints on it.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/14/1193557432/florida-education-private-schools-prageru-desantis
It’s fascinating how little we’ve heard about the STL “whistleblower” since parents of the kids who were treated at that clinic began speaking out. I’d say Bari Weiss should be ashamed but I doubt she’s capable of it. For whatever reason, no one seems to be able to locate a reasonable middle ground between a ban on asking even the most anodyne questions about gender-affirming care and the current MSM hackery.
Hi Keith. I have read most of your book called Smart Baseball, which I enjoyed very much. I agree with about 85% of your assertions.
I plan to write about the 15% that I do not agree with (or think there are better/simpler alternatives to evaluating MLB players). Basically, I think any major stat that is relied upon by fans and experts alike, that DOES NOT include runs and RBI has dubious value. I have an excellent analogy to make my point. I would like to discuss this with you.
I am a learned fan and follower of baseball metrics. I read Bill James book years ago, and I really think he was onto something, but it appears that the rest of the metric community did not move the ball forward.
I do not have a twitter account, so if you would be gracious enough to e-mail me at the address below, it would be much appreciated. By the way I am a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays, who it looks like was your former employer. In 55 years of watching baseball, this 2023 version of the Jays has to be amongst the most frustrating to watch!!