I updated my ranking of the top prospects for this year’s draft, going to 50 names but not without some difficulty; and posted a scouting notebook covering a half-dozen prospects in the class I saw over the previous ten days. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.
As I mentioned in my chat the other day, the Athletic spiked my podcast and cut the daily baseball show to three a week, so I’m no longer doing any regular podcasts for them. I did make a guest appearance on the Windup on Friday, talking draft and prospect stuff.
I am now appearing weekly on the Stadium streaming channel, on the 2 pm show Diamond Dreams, which is entirely about prospects, with occasional appearances on their roundup show The Rally. You can get the app here. Right now, it doesn’t appear that shows are archived, but I’m looking into it.
Once this is done, I’m hoping to get another edition of my free email newsletter out this weekend, before I head back to Chicago for the next show.
Taylor Swift is on Threads now – but I was there first. I’m on Bluesky, too. I ended up re-verified on Twitter, which makes me eligible for a cut of ad revenues around my tweets; I’m going to donate all of it to the Trevor Project. My first and only payout so far was $16.64, which I’ve already donated.
And now, pop an edible (if it’s legal where you are) and enjoy the links…
- Before I get to the longreads, this seems like the story of the week: The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal in McKesson v. Doe, which held that authorities may hold a protest’s organizer(s) liable if any attendee of the protest commits an illegal act. The decision effectively ends the right to assembly in at least three states. This should have been front-page news across the country.
- An editorial in Haaretz argues that Netanyahu’s policies, from his brutal assault on Gaza and assassination of Iranian leaders, are endangering the long-term survival of Israel.
- The billionaire co-founder of Cloudflare wanted to build an 11,000 square foot mansion in Park City over the opposition of residents. First he tried to slip a bill through the state legislature to allow the construction, but it failed. When the local paper ran stories critical of him, he bought it and installed his buddy as editor in chief.
- Brandy Zarozny of NBC News reported from the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association conference, where speakers urged attendees to seize voting machines and investigate absurd conspiracy theories.
- The New York Times reports on how Senate candidate Dave McCormick, a Republican running against Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey (D), appears to have fabricated details of his upbringing to downplay his privileged upbringing.
- PressWatchers interviewed Chris Quinn of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, who has made waves for his willingness to cover former President Trump accurately and for calling out the blatant bothsidesism happening across so-called mainstream media.
- Candace Buckner of the Washington Post had a measured take on the outrage over Gregg Doyel’s odd treatment of Caitlin Clark. I’m with her: the story isn’t a non-troversy, but the level of vitriol here is out of proportion to the infraction.
- Former federal prosecutor Terra Morehead will be disbarred in the wake of revelations that she helped a Kansas City cop frame an innocent man who then served 23 years in prison. Morehead was also a Wyandotte County prosecutor, and has been implicated in numerous incidents of prosecutorial misconduct.
- USC announced that their valedictorian will not be allowed to speak at commencement this year as the university caved to anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiment, including threats against the ceremony and school.
- A St. Louis cop who was working undercover among protesters in the city in 2017 was badly beaten by his own colleagues; a judge just awarded him $23.5 million in compensation, which, ultimately, will be covered by taxpayers.
- More fallout from Uri Berliner’s unverified column attacking NPR: The network suspended him, after which he resigned, presumably to start a Substack where he’ll rail against DEI and vaccines; while NPR’s Steve Inskeep wrote a detailed takedown of Berliner’s column, pointing out just how little fire there was behind the smoke. I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: Berliner’s argument that NPR didn’t give enough credence to the failed lab-leak hypothesis was a tell. Slate’s Alicia Montgomery, a former NPR staffer herself, has a much stronger critique of the problems at the network.
- Louisiana Republicans voted to end mandatory lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits, and reduce worker’s compensation.
- Ocean acidification and climate change are causing a fourth mass bleaching episode in the world’s coral reefs. Coral reefs are essential to the marine ecosystem – including a lot of the fish we eat.
- There are 806 billionaires in the United States. Their wealth exceeds that of the lower half of Americans’ total wealth combined, by a lot.
- The great Phil Plait wrote about the declining odds that there is a ninth planet in our solar system, given how much of space we’ve checked without finding it. This is the subject of the fantastic deduction board game The Search for Planet X.
- The Sundance Film Festival’s organizers are playing the sports stadium handout game, courting bids from cities to host the influential festival starting in 2027.
- Kari Lake (R ), running for Senate in Arizona after voters there rejected her in the race for Governor in 2022, called on sheriffs to enforce the state’s 1864 abortion ban. That same territorial law also banned interracial marriage and set the age of consent for girls at 10.
- Tennessee Rep. Scott Cepicky (R) confessed in a leaked conversation that his aim with a school-voucher bill is to “throw the whole freaking (public education) system in the trash.”
- Dr. Allison Neitzel has become a target of anti-vaxx trolls for her pro-vaccine and pro-science activism; she responded on her newsletter with the wonderfully titled missive “I Will Continue to Piss Off Men.” If you want to read more about what amounts to harassment campaign against her from the soi-disant “journalist” Paul Thacker, you can go here. Thacker seems to focus on women in the pro-science movement, and I think it’s fair to ask if he’s really just a misogynist.
I don’t understand the logic in the Vox article. Sotomayor’s statement basically says the court’s decision in Counterman supercedes the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, making Counterman is the good law here, not the whatever the Fifth Circuit said. Which means the right to protest is not “abolished” or anything like it.
If we take the 5th Circuit’s decision to its logical conclusion, a certain individual who appointed several 5th Circuit judges is responsible for a lot more crimes than we even realized. I almost hope someone tries to use that argument.
I’m sorry your podcast is no longer on the Athletic. They’ve cut several great podcasts in the past year.
I wish the Mother Jones piece wouldn’t contribute to econ9mic illiteracy with its headline. The bottom half of households having no or negative wealth isn’t a story: considering the neg net worth of young adults living in their own for the first time, especially recent college graduates entering the work force with no assets and college debt there are likely individual retirees living on SSI when more net worth then the bottom 10%.
The bigger story is that the bottom class managed to double their net worth in 7 years even though the covid shutdown and interest rate and inflation/wage growth/low unemployment headwinds should have made that more difficult.
I’m confused by the point of your comment here. “The bottom half of households having no or negative wealth isn’t a story: considering the neg net worth of young adults living in their own for the first time, especially recent college graduates entering the work force with no assets and college debt”
Why is the expectation that young people should already be in debt, with no assets, when they enter the work force? Isn’t that a sign of something wrong with our economy? Go back several decades and young people could save up money through high school, work in college, and leave not with debt but with a positive net worth. People age 18-25 should not be expected to have 0 to negative net worth when we have hundreds of people with billions in net worth. Our society has an incredibly amount of wealth and it is being hoarded by a few.
I like Steve Inskeep and am NPR guy, but I did not find his response to Uri’s criticism particularly persuasive. It felt like the spent half of it disparaging the critique before offering red herring arguments – like the no party affiliation evidence that ignores the actual claim made. Curious if you found it more convincing than I did.
I did find it convincing, as Berliner clearly had his thumb on the scale for the party affiliation argument, and most of his criticisms of NPR haven’t held up under scrutiny.
Thanks Keith. I gave it another read after Inskeep’s critique. Maybe this is why I found the critique wanting, it spent half of it creating a strawman (that Berliner asserted the newsroom had only Democrats) when 1) Berliner’s claim is about three quarters deep into his article and hardly the most important assertion and 2) it never precludes ‘no party’ affiliates. Given the amount of ink he spent on that alone just felt like grasping. For context, this still as far as I know is a true statement: “In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.”
Also have to admit, I rolled my eyes at Inskeep on this one: “Above all, Uri calls for “viewpoint diversity” but did not seem to embrace it for this article. He didn’t seek comment from anyone or otherwise engage anyone who had a different point of view. The failure to vet the story may explain why the errors and omissions all go in one direction, toward confirming the writer’s pre-existing opinions.” Is he applying an organization’s editorial standard to an individual’s opinion piece? I respect Inskeep too much to think he’s this obtuse. Also, see above, not as convinced his “omissions” were as great of sins as made out to be.
On the other hand, I will say that I find Berliner’s decision to now leave NPR a hit against his credibility.
Wonderful to see you supporting The Trevor Project and giving it a bit of a plug here!
Tony, sorry if I was obtuse, and looks like I had a large error I meant to top when I said bottom, it is a huge issue that the top tier managed to grow while others lost in the last 7 years. However, FRED data shows us that as far back as 1992 the bottom 50% only had 3.5% of total wealth.
Chris Quinn is getting all kinds of props for his attention-seeking columns about Trump and unfortunately no scrutiny for the otherwise awful news product he oversees. When much smaller competitors in Cleveland beat him on stories, he goes out of his way not to credit them and then blames lack of resources, leaving out the fact that he dedicates newsroom positions to covering the sale of sports memorabilia and concert tickets — read: ADVERTISEMENTS — and a veteran staffer who only rewrites news releases about restaurant openings and product recalls. He’s hardly the journalistic heavyweight he makes himself out to be.