Uncategorized — Page 114

→ December 4, 2017
→ By keith

Smoke.

I can’t remember where I first heard about Dan Vyleta’s novel Smoke, which I think falls somewhere in between the YA and adult literature genres, but I’d had it on my shopping list for a year when the paperback version appeared in June for under $10. Offering a gothic-themed setting in an alternate reality where sin is revealed as visible Smoke emanating from the sinner’s body, Smoke follows its trio of compelling characters through a physical and metaphysical journey that leads them to question everything they’ve been told by their parents, teachers, and every other moral authorities in their lives.

Set some time in the late 19th century, Smoke begins, as so many young adult books do, in a boarding school, where we meet Thomas, a volatile child with hidden rage and some sort of secret in his family background; and Charlie, his new best friend at school, a more mild-mannered, rule-abiding kid. The school is for children of the upper class, who send their kids there to learn to avoid producing Smoke – easier said than done, as it turns out – as part of the complex social hierarchy that has evolved to protect those who don’t smoke, the gentry, from those who do. The opening scene, which does a wonderful job of pulling you right into the story, sets Thomas up against his antagonist for the remainder of the book, Julius, a Malfoyesque character who runs the school’s unofficial but apparently tolerated inquisitorial squad. What appears at the start to be a conflict among boys, two good against one evil, takes a hard and unexpected right turn when they visit Thomas’s aunt and uncle over the holidays, only to find themselves plunged right into the heart of the mystery of Smoke and on a quest to try and solve it, to save Thomas’s life and perhaps overturn the entire autocracy the aristocrats have constructed with Smoke as their weapon.

Vyleta takes the story from there into some surprising places, and does well to create a panoply of opponents for the two boys and Thomas’s cousin, Lydia, as they work on unraveling the knot of Smoke. There are some agents who are clearly evil, but many others who are working at opposing purposes to the kids for independent, moral, or even banal reasons. Eventually, we need and get a showdown with the worst of the baddies, but it is not central to the book the way it is to so many YA fantasy novels. (I’ve seen it referred to in video games, especially for RPGs, as the “Kill the Big Foozle” plot device.) It’s the other stuff that makes Smoke … um, sizzle, because the varying motivations and understanding of what’s actually going on beneath the skin, literally and metaphorically, open up the characters to natural discussions about right and wrong, moral authority, and historical revisionism. The most obvious target of Vyleta’s satire is the Church – Catholic, Anglican, you pick – although much of Smoke‘s subversive subtext works quite as well when applied to the pernicious effects of classism, environmental racism, or how people respond to totalitarian regimes.

By setting up a multi-threaded conflict, Vyleta set up a delightfully unconventional ending with plenty of tension, including the big fight that some readers will demand, but also resolving other plot threads in unexpected ways, not always thoroughly (by design) but at least hinting at what the End of Smoke might entail for whole groups of people whose identities are tied to the status quo. The book itself was inspired by a line from Dickens’ Dombey and Son, but the vibe of Smoke is much more along the lines of Lev Grossman’s superb trilogy The Magicians: It’s a bit dark, but not overwhelmingly so, and there’s plenty of humor and empathy to balance out the sinister elements. It’s too well-written to call it a true YA novel, but the themes would be appropriate for teens.

Next up: I read James Gould Cozzens’ Pulitzer-winning novel Guard of Honor, and it was just so bad – boring in story and prose – that I’m not going to bother with a full review. I’m now 2/3 of the way through Bessel Van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, which is $2 right now for the Kindle.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alternate history, canadian literature, contemporary novels, dystopian, young adult literature

→ December 3, 2017
→ By keith

The Florida Project.

The Florida Project is the best movie I have seen so far in 2017. Granted, it’s December 3rd, and there are many movies left to be seen, but I will go out on a limb and guess that when I’ve seen all the likelies I will still end up with this bold, empathetic film at or very near the top of my list. The movie takes a look at a small bit of the American underclass, delivering a slice-of-life story that becomes so much more because of the living, breathing characters that populate it and the script’s obvious regard for its denizens.

The title is a play on words of sorts; it takes place in the Magic Castle, one of the welfare motels around Walt Disney World, a place where residents pay by the week and often must vacate the premises for one night, moving to a neighboring flophouse, because the apartment’s management won’t let anyone stay long enough to establish residency. (I presume Florida has a consecutive-days threshold where a transient guest becomes a tenant and acquires additional rights.) The property manager is Bobby (Willem Dafoe), who plays an important role in the lives of the two central characters, single mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her daughter Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), as they live through a period of a few weeks at the start of Moonee’s summer break from school.

The movie shifts focus frequently, but the bulk of the story is told from the eyes of the kids, Moonee, her friend Scout, and new friend Jancy, with whom the first two get acquainted when they are caught spitting on Jancy’s mother’s car – because that’s the sort of thing you do all day when there’s no school, little money, and lots of time to fill. The three head off on daily adventures in the neighborhood, which is mostly filled with other low-end housing complexes and tacky stores selling Disney paraphernalia, finding trouble when it doesn’t find them first.

The struggles of the adults in their lives play out right in front of them, including the central struggle, paying the rent. Much of what happens in The Florida Project mirrors the problems Matthew Desmond covered in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: paying the rent means working, which means someone has to watch the kids, which either costs money or means leaning on neighbors, friends, even strangers, so some people don’t work. Halley is an unemployed stripper whom we see selling knockoff perfumes to tourists for cash and who eventually (and inevitably) starts turning tricks to pay the rent, which precipitates the crisis that turns this movie into a routine slice-of-life piece into a story with an arc and a conclusion. Her background is never discussed, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume she’s a victim of something traumatic, especially given her disproportionate responses to even minor disappointments. Halley feels like a fictional incarnation of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s “people who won’t help themselves,” but while she’s unsympathetic on the screen, it’s also quite easy to see how she could feel thoroughly trapped by her environment. There’s no path for her out of poverty, and she’s basically one mistake away from losing her home and/or her kid.

Moonee is the real heart of this movie, and Prince, who was six at the time of filming, gives one of the best performances of the year. She’s mischievous, vivacious, and perceptive, adept at manipulating adults and navigating their world, often tumbling out adult words that you don’t expect to hear from a six-year-old’s mouth. She’s the ringleader of the three kids, and is almost totally unflappable, even when crises seem to unfold around her; when they cause real trouble, she’s the one trying to come up with the cover story. You can see glimpses of the impact this life is having on her, but she’s also still at an age where she’s resilient to setbacks, and her bond with Bobby, while seldom directly referenced, is one of the best emotional threads in the story. (Prince, who reminds me a bit of English actress Honeysuckle Weeks, and her two young co-stars did an adorable interview about making the film with Variety.)

Dafoe also delivers the best performance I’ve seen from him, even though Bobby is probably a bit too good to be true – he’s likely poorly paid, constantly dealing with tenants who are late on the rent or causing trouble, and often doesn’t have the money to undertake needed repairs, but he’s still got a heart of gold, especially where Moonee is concerned. The scene where he sees a non-resident adult talking to a group of the project’s kids as they play is one of the film’s most gripping moments, giving insight into Bobby’s character and setting his temperament apart from the more labile personalities living in the building.

Director/co-writer Sean Baker employs some subtle perspective shifts, some just varying the distance to the characters, but getting particular value from dropping the camera to the kids’ level even when the adults are the center of the scene. The Florida Project would be utterly joyless to watch without the kids – even though it would be true to life – and Baker uses the kids’ storyline both to provide some needed relief from the depressing reality of Halley’s life and to show how the wonder of childhood isn’t tied to wealth or possessions, but to time and that sense of adventure. That contrast between Moonee’s view of the world and Halley’s parallels the other, unspoken contrast between the story in this movie and the fantasy world in the shadow of which the film occurs. The Magic Castle may not quite be the Unhappiest Place on Earth, but it feels close when we see it through Halley’s eyes. The movie ends on a perfect note, as well, as the climax itself, which was not just inevitable but which I would say was the only possible outcome of what had come before in the script, gives way to an utterly priceless concluding sequence. Yes, we know it’s temporary, and we all know what will come afterward, but for that one last moment, we see the characters leave the world behind and run for joy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 movies, highly recommended, movies, potential oscar nominees

→ December 2, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/2/17.

My Insider post on Shohei Ohtani is finally up, with a scouting report compiled from aggregating opinions of multiple scouts who’ve seen him hit and pitch, and thoughts on what MLB’s rigging of the rules against him really signals. Between the lack of significant activity in the hot stove and the fact that I got quite sick in the middle of the week, that’s been my only baseball content since Thanksgiving. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday.

For Paste, I reviewed the train game Whistle Stop, a mid-weight title that’s among the best new board games I’ve played this year. My ranking of the top ten games of 2017 will go up the week of December 10th. EDIT: My first piece for Ars Technica is up now – a look at a beta version of Catan VR, an upcoming digital port of the global bestseller from Asmodee Digital.

I’ve taken an unintentional hiatus from my free email newsletter, but will resume this week. The holiday, PAX Unplugged, and that virus I had have all conspired against me, I swear.

Smart Baseball is out now in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats, perfect for your holiday shopping! Buy one or forty copies, your call.

And now, the links…

Longreads: The Cut has a piece from a woman who wasn’t told her unborn child would have cystic fibrosis, and thus wasn’t given the opportunity to even consider an abortion.
A video, not a longread, but worth the twelve minutes: The New York Times went to hurricane-ravaged Barbuda, which was completely evacuated before the second of the two category five hurricanes hit in September. There’s a rising fear now that the government in Antigua will use the evacuation as an excuse to overturn the Barbudan way of life, which has not included private ownership of land over 300 years of settlement.
I am old, because I don’t really understand why a person of no apparent talent would be a “Youtube star,” but that is where we are as a culture today, and the fans of one particular persona, Alissa Violet, caused serious real-world consequences for a Cleveland business and several individuals they doxxed.
A scare campaign by science deniers, aided by credulous Japanese media, has all but eliminated HPV vaccinations in Japan, ostensibly an educated nation. A Japanese doctor who spoke out against these anti-vaxxers and faced death threats for it has won this year’s Maddox Prize for her work.
If you live in Florida and have school-aged children, well, I agree with this Tampa Bay Times piece decrying a Republican-supported bill to block ‘objectionable’ topics from curricula. If a parent complains – say, an evangelical Young Earth creationist dad – then material like the theory of evolution could be knocked out of a high school biology class.
Vanity Fair asks if we will soon see the end of the social media era. I doubt it; they’re too pervasive to just go away, but as with every wave of technology, they will likely be superseded by something (or things) that borrow elements of social media and add new features or capabilities to pull people away. None of this will address the biggest concern around social media – the speed with which they allow falsehoods, from fake political news to anti-science bullshit, to spread around a country or even the world. To stop that, we need more education to protect us from ourselves.
The Deseret News points out that advocates of so-called “religious freedom” should look at the prevalence of laws against blasphemy, which derive (in Judeo-Christian countries) from a Biblical commandment.
Should Lauri Love, a Finnish-British hacker with a lengthy list of mental and physical health problems, including depression and Asperger’s syndrome, face extradition to the US for stealing confidential data during a lengthy (and obviously planned) campaign of intrusions into American government systems? It’s not quite as clear cut as it might sound, even though I still think he should be extradited after reading this piece.
ProPublica looked at a $1900 ear piercing at a Colorado hospital as part of a longer story on why health care costs so much.
Roy Moore, who still seems very likely to win this month’s special election for the open Alabama Senate seat, wrote in a textbook that women shouldn’t be allowed to hold office. As much as the news cycle has focused on his history of sexual misconduct, his history of anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and anti-women positions and statements are a more direct concern for how he would act as a legislator.
Meanwhile, here’s the Washington Post‘s original story on a right-wing group’s fraudulent story on Moore, attempting to trick the paper into running a false accusation against him.
More Moore: One of the Alabama evangelical ministers loudly supporting him was himself convicted of blocking an investigation that his son molested orphans in Honduras. And the New Yorker interviewed Alabama women for their thoughts on Moore’s behavior and comments on women, including their unworthiness for public office.
Republican Thomas Kean, who served two terms as New Jersey’s governor and now heads up the Environmental Defense Fund, argues that Trump needs to fire EPA head Scott Pruitt.
John Kennedy, a Republican and the junior Senator from Louisiana, has come out against several unqualified nominees for the federal judiciary. This isn’t about policy positions, but about pure qualifications. I do not expect to agree with this administration’s nominees on questions like strict or loose constructionism, but I think it is reasonable to still expect the nominees to hold sufficient experience and to pass established ethical standards.
A woman I went to high school with questioned why Matt Lauer’s first accuser waited so long to come forward. The NY Times has an explanation from psychologists about why that and other myths used to doubt victims are false.
One of my Senators, Chris Coons, wrote an op ed on the benefits of bipartisan tax reform, a few weeks ago. It doesn’t mention anything about small-hours votes on unread, handwritten bills, though.
More Delaware news: the 76ers are teaming up to build a new facility for their developmental league affiliate … with unspecified funding from the state and the city of Wilmington. I’ve already contacted one of my two legislators to voice my total opposition to any use of public money for a private sports facility.
A new treatment for migraines, using antibodies to alter the brain chemicals thought responsible for the crippling headaches, has shown tremendous promise in early tests.
This Washington Post piece provides a solid, balanced look at net neutrality, which has become a bit of a catchphrase. I favor net neutrality, but there are reasonable arguments that the companies making last-mile investments are more than just dumb pipes. Meanwhile, FCC chairman Ajit Pai is mad that people are mean to him on social media and seems to be arguing for regulating such sites.
Cities are lining up to hand power over to Amazon to land the company’s second US headquarters. Dave Zirin argues that this is the consequence of publicly funded sports stadiums becoming the norm over the last thirty years.
The BBC has a piece authored by two women who were both ‘gaslit’ by the same psychologically abusive boyfriend.
I reviewed the film Lady Bird on Thursday; actress Beanie Feldstein, who played Juliet, wrote asking people to stop complimenting her on her weight loss, given how hard she worked before that to learn to accept her body as it was.
Will Leitch asks in New York magazine if we are looking at the end of the NFL.
A hate group calling itself the Alliance Defending Freedom is fighting transgender student rights across the U.S.. The link lists specific states where the group has been active, often via filings in court cases, if you’d like to oppose a group of people who refer to a young transgender student as “a girl who perceives herself to be a boy.”
UPROXX’s Brian Grubb argues that The Muppet Christmas Carol is the best adaptation of the Charles Dickens story. I tend to agree, but for many different reasons, and I don’t share Grubb’s perturbation/obsession with the process or results of Muppet sex.
Asmodee Digital has been busy, releasing Carcassonne for Android and Steam this week, and announcing a port of the new-ish game Gloom (not related to Gloomhaven) due out in March.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: apps, boardgames, links, stick to baseball, the swamp, vaccines

→ December 1, 2017
→ By keith

Music update, November 2017.

Solid enough month for new tracks, including a bunch of early releases from albums due out in the first two months of next year (which might presage a poor December for new releases). I’ll do my annual music rankings, songs and albums, after the winter meetings, so we do get a few more weeks in for new songs to appear.

If you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can access the playlist directly here.

The Wombats – Lemon to a Knife Fight. A new Wombats song is an automatic inclusion for me. I loved Glitterbug and am thoroughly excited for the new album.

Hatchie – Sure. Noisey called Hatchie’s music “shoegaze with a dream pop edge;” I think there’s more dream pop here, with a very strong early Cranberries vibe. She has released two singles so far, this song (my favorite of the two) and “Try.”

Shy Technology – Déjà Vu. Shy Technology made my top 100 in 2015 with “High Strung,” and this lead single from their next album provides more of what I liked from that earlier single, which has a singer-songwriter vibe with the fuller arrangement of a large band. They remind me of tons of bands I liked in the early mid-90s, including James, Ben Folds Five, Better than Ezra, and Our Lady Peace.

Django Django – In Your Beat. We have a release date – January 26th – for the Mercury Prize-nominated British act’s third album. Marble Skies.

Van William – The Country. Dodgers fan & WATERS lead singer/songwriter Van Pierszalowski – yep, still have to check that spelling every single time, because of AJ Pierzynski – will release his first solo album, Countries, on January 19th.

Gillbanks – A Walk in the Park. A new London-based quintet with just four one-off singles to their name, Gillbanks reminds me a bit of Gardens & Villa if they’d gotten stoned and listened to Disintegration on repeat.

Ride – Pulsar. Ride went 21 years between albums, released Weather Diaries in June, and now are already back with a new, non-album track, this one in a similar vein, shoegaze but with clear vocals mixed more towards the front. The lads are aging quite nicely.

Thrice – Red Telephone. Not technically a new song, “Red Telephone” is a B-side from their 2009 album Beggars and was just re-released ahead of their mini-tour with Circa Survive.

The Fratellis – The Next Time We Wed. It’s no “Chelsea Dagger,” but it’s certainly catchy in more of a pop/rock way and less of a “we’re all drunk at 1:30 am” fashion.

Black Honey – Dig. Black Honey, an indie quartet from Brighton, England, showed up twice on my top 100 last year with poppy tracks that reminded me of vintage Velocity Girl; this song is slower, almost mournful, although it sneaks up on you with a heavy guitar riff about 2/3 of the way through.

WAVVES with Culture Abuse – Up and Down. WAVVES’ Nathan Williams is one of the most prolific writers in music today; I swear he releases a new song somewhere every couple of weeks. This new track, with Bay Area punksters Culture Abuse (of whom I’d never heard of until this song appeared), sounds quite a bit like WAVVES’ most recent album, You’re Welcome.

HAERTS – No Love for the Wild. HAERTS put out a great EP in 2013, a strong album with those same four songs in 2014, and since then it’s been just random singles. This song came out in May, and there’s another one, “The Way,” due out next Friday (the 8th), so I’m hopeful we’ll get a full record some time early next year. It’s long overdue.

The Big Moon – Love in the 4th Dimension. The Big Moon’s album, of which this is the title track, was nominated for the Mercury Prize this year, but lost out to R&B/electronic singer-songwriter Sampha. I think I like the Big Moon’s sound more than their individual songs, as the album is consistent but could use some stronger hooks.

Stars – Hope Avenue. Stars had the #40 song on the first real year-end song ranking I ever posted on this site, my top 40 songs of 2012, with “Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Get It.” Their latest album, There is No Love in Fluorescent Light, doesn’t have anything so catchy, but has several … um, “pleasant” sounds like a backhanded insult, but I don’t mean it that way. This was my favorite song from the record.

Quicksand – Fire this Time. Is this the fifth straight playlist with a Quicksand song on it? Their comeback album Interiors feels like a lock to make my ranking of my favorite albums of 2017, however long I choose to make the list this year.

Corrosion of Conformity – Cast the First Stone. Legit thought these guys had broken up a decade ago … which they did, and then came back with a different lineup for albums in 2012 and 2014 that I missed entirely. I really remember CoC mostly from their earliest work, which had a stronger hardcore influence, while this is more of an aggressive stoner-metal track, like QotSA with a hint of Pantera.

Joe Satriani – Thunder High on the Mountain. I admit to being a guitar geek back in the day; I absolutely wore out Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare. Satriani had his moments too, including “Summer Song,” but that whole subgenre of music fell out of favor pretty quickly with the expansion of extreme metal on one side and of garbage rap-metal demon spawn on the other. This song, which features two distinct movements of great guitar hooks, is a nice throwback to the heyday of instrumental shredder albums, with a nice nod to the heavier style more in vogue today.

Godflesh – Post Self. I have a strong memory of seeing a capsule review of Godflesh’s seminal 1989 debut album, Streetcleaner, that borrowed a line from Poltergeist: “Godflesh knows what scares you.” Often lumped erroneously in with the contemporaneous grindcore movement, Godflesh is a founder of the subgenre of industrial metal, and if their music brings “teh fear” it’s because of their repetition of droning phrases and harsh percussive sounds. This is the first song and title track from their latest album, released on November 17th.

Tribulation – The Lament. This Swedish melodic death-metal band’s 2015 album Children of the Night took the group out of the generic extreme-metal sounds of their first two albums and brought far more of a classic-rock vibe, with obvious influences from Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, as well as some thrash riffing and a generally stronger sense of musical proficiency. This song rocks in a way that even a lot of truly melodic songs in this area don’t; it’s like a great driving song that happens to have death growls instead of the high-wire vocals of a Halford or a Dickinson. It’s a good sign for their upcoming fourth album, Down Below, due out on January 26th.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 in music, alternative, death metal, metal, Music, progressive metal

→ December 1, 2017
→ By keith

Lady Bird.

Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, Lady Bird, has been in the news this week as it set a record on Rotten Tomatoes for the most positive (“fresh”) reviews received without a single negative (“rotten”) one, 184 such reviews and counting. It’s a coming-of-age story, incredibly well-acted throughout, with a number of truly hilarious moments in it, enough that I’d join the chorus (if my review counted) of positive reviews … but the movie has its flaws too, particularly in the way the adult characters are written, as if Gerwig, who also wrote the script, put her primary efforts in the teenagers at the heart of the film.

Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) is Christine McPherson, who has chosen “Lady Bird” as her nickname and repeatedly crosses out or corrects Christine whenever it’s used to refer to her, a high school senior in Sacramento who comes from “the wrong side of the tracks,” a family of four living in a somewhat run-down house and dealing with the economic insecurity of many Americans in the lower and lower middle classes. Her father’s company keeps laying people off; her mother is working double shifts as a psychiatric nurse; her brother and his wife live in the house as well, both working grocery store jobs despite their college degrees. Lady Bird yearns to break free of the social and financial constraints of her life, to go to college in the Northeast, to experience more than her small* town can give her, so she embarks on a number of small misadventures while also secretly applying to prestigious east coast schools. (*Small is her perception; the Sacramento MSA has 2.5 million people, and the scene near the end where a college student from the east coast has never heard of it is rather ridiculous.)

Ronan is marvelous in the title role, and I would be shocked if she weren’t nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars and just about every other awards ceremony for this year. The script gives her the best material by a wide margin, including the quick emotional shifts of adolescence, and Ronan manages to inhabit this volatile world completely. Lady Bird chafes under any restraints, whether it’s her Catholic high school, the social boundaries of teenaged life, or her domineering mother. Ronan manages to inform her character with the optimism that is part of Lady Bird’s nature and allows her to succeed in spite of all of these obstacles without turning the part into a saccharine caricature.

Her mother, played by Laurie Metcalf, is really problematic – and not because the character isn’t realistic. She’s controlling, narcissistic, overly critical, manipulative, even vindictive. She also reveals in a line that appears to be a throwaway that her own mother was “an abusive alcoholic.” She herself is clearly a victim of trauma, and tries to control her environment – including her daughter – as an ineffective coping mechanism. She obsesses over clothes being put away, over Lady Bird using a second towel after her shower, over her grammar or spelling in a handwritten note, over anything that threatens the precise calibration of her life. The writing and the performance are strong and consistent enough that it’s then hard to accept moments near the very end of the film where she tries to show her love for her daughter; they seem to come from a totally different character. Metcalf delivers the best performance of all of the actors playing adults in the film, but I found Tracy Letts, playing Lady Bird’s father, more compelling because his character doesn’t have the improbable personality split of the mother.

The adults, though, are the film’s biggest problem. Lady Bird has the Dawson’s Creek habit of reversing the kids and the grown-ups: The teenagers are the ones who have it all figured out and the adults are the ones still screwing things up or just generally not understanding. It’s truer of the side characters, but it doesn’t do the central character any favors to have her appear more insightful than every adult she encounters. The kids receive the best dialogue and the more accurate worldview – other than Kyle, one of the boys Lady Bird dates, who is busy fighting the battle of who could care less – and in many cases, like Lady Bird, her best friend Juliet, or Danny, another boy she dates, they’re truly three-dimensional and believable, to the point where you could build new stories around any of them (although Juliet does fall into the Fat Best Friend cliché).

The movie soars on the performance and writing of its lead, enough to overcome some of the more hackneyed elements of her environment, and I think that’s why it managed to set that Rotten Tomatoes record – even if you identify the flaws in the script, the core of the movie is so good that it more than mitigates the negatives. Watching this precocious but naïve character navigate her last year of high school and deal with an emotionally abusive mother while stretching for an unlikely escape across the country is more than enough to make Lady Bird worth recommending. I may just be outside the consensus that this is among the year’s very best films.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 best actress nominees, 2017 best picture nominees, 2017 movies, character studies, movies

→ November 30, 2017
→ By keith

Klawchat 11/30/17.

My latest boardgame review for Paste covers the mid-weight train game Whistle Stop, which is one of my favorite new games of 2017.

Keith Law: A loaf of bread, a quart of milk, a stick of butter, and Klawchat.

Scherzer’s Blue Eye: Can you do something to at least warm up this Ice Cold Stove season?
Keith Law: One agent speculated to me that teams were waiting till December 1st to try to cool off prices for early signings. I have no idea if that’s true, but I’m at least hoping that tomorrow we’ll see something.

Drew: What would you rather, vote for Curt Schilling into the HOF or eat an entire Fruit Cake
Keith Law: I’d vote for Schilling, although I think at the moment he might not make my top 10 (it’s at least debatable). There are maybe 15 guys on the ballot I’d put in, so I’ve had to leave candidates toward the bottom of the list off – I’ve said, for example, that because Manny Ramirez failed two PED tests, I wouldn’t put him in my top 10 right now. If the logjam is ever cleared, he’d eventually get on the ballot.

Lilith: Taylor Trammell or Jesus Sanchez? Who do you prefer and why?
Keith Law: Trammell’s the better all-around player. Sanchez has more hit tool, which of course is the one that trumps them all, but I think I’d rather gamble on Trammell’s total upside.

Kevin: Learn anything new from your Thanksgiving cooking this year? Loved the periscope chat btw, first time I’ve logged on for that.
Keith Law: I went mostly with dishes I’d made before. Smaller gathering this year, and I just wasn’t up for my usual extravaganza.

Jim: Hi Keith, I’ve seen you talk in the past about Ohtani not being a major league regular level hitter, but I’m wondering what specifically is the issue. Is it the hit tool? Or is the power not what it appears to be?
Keith Law: It’s the very long swing and poor contact rates. Then he’s going to come here and play 40% of the time, or less. People who think he’s going to be a legit two-way player are wishcasting, or just pushing clickbait.

Jerome: What do you think of the Dbacks trade for Boxberger?
Keith Law: Fine reliever. Taylor’s a prospect, though, no-brainer for the Rays for two years of control.

Kevin: Do you expect Michael Baez to appear in your Top 100 next year?
Keith Law: I haven’t done any sort of preliminary rankings yet.

Paul: Does Baez have more upside than Gore at this point?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

leisurefriar: Where is Ohtani going to end up?
Keith Law: I have no idea. Really, no idea at all. When it happens, we’ll discuss it, but I have only asked people what they think of him as a player, not where they think he’ll land.

Daniel: Do you see Chance Adams or Justus Sheffield making the majors in 2018? Could you provide some detail if yes.
Keith Law: Adams finished in AAA; there is no doubt he’ll see the majors this year if he’s healthy at all. Sheffield is the better prospect by quite a bit, though, and if they need a real starter, he’s the one to recall.

Chris: Your thoughts on collecting baseball cards and other baseball memorabilia? Also, do you have any special pieces of memorabilia from your career working in baseball?
Keith Law: Haven’t collected cards when I was a kid. Not a memorabilia guy at all.

derek: If the Giants trade for Stanton, what’s a realistic return for the Marlins? And as a Giants fan, should I be terrified?
Keith Law: One rumor had the Giants taking the entire contract. That should terrify you. It could hamstring their team for a decade.

CJ: Is there any reason a team shouldn’t do it’s due diligence on Ohtani, filling out the questionnaire, etc.?
Keith Law: No reason, but I know several teams have chosen not to participate.

Alex P: Hey Keith, thanks for the chat. How far do you see the Phillies form being a playoff team? And how would you balance their spending on FA’s vs allowing for development?
Keith Law: Two to three years. They should definitely be targeting FA this winter – and Ohtani, while a longshot since they’re NL, would be a perfect fit. They have nothing like him (as a pitcher) in the system, and he’s the same age as much of their roster anyway.

Dutch: Ketel Marte’s mini-breakout last year legitimate? Had great ABs in the playoffs. Kinda backed up his strong walk and K rates.
Keith Law: I’m in.

Mike Fichera: Is Dom Smith better on defense and with the bat than he’s shown? weight concerns aside.
Keith Law: Yes. Tiny sample. Obviously needs to maintain conditioning.

Sam: Some of the stove being so cold has to be because teams are waiting to see on Otani, right?
Keith Law: MLB sources indicated to me that they don’t believe that is true.

Josh in DC: I read something about Matt Lauer’s last contract renewal — that he cashed in on the fact that viewers of morning shows don’t like change. Is there any reason to believe that *sports* fans are more interested in watching the same guys year after year, that (separate from winning and losing) attendance and TV ratings might be correlated with roster continuity?
Keith Law: It’s been a while since I saw fresh research on this, but my understanding is that attendance, ratings, and revenues correlate with winning, often with a one-year lag, and nothing else.

Mike: Seeing a lot of talk on twitter about Ohtani’s speed. Some people are saying it’s somewhere between 70-80. How insane would that be for a pitcher or even a DH?
Keith Law: I had some idiots – and I mean that in the not-nicest possible way – saying it was wrong, or impossible, on Twitter last night. Multiple scouts have told me they personally clocked him under 4 seconds, one under 3.9 and the rest just above that, and that includes a time in August when he was, in theory, hobbled by the ankle/quad and still got down the line in under 4. He’s an 80 runner. Anyone who tells you otherwise should be dismissed.

Tyler: If you’re Alex Anthopoulos, do you make a splashy trade or signing this offseason to get the focus back on the team instead of the cheating scandal?
Keith Law: That’s a really terrible way to run a team.

Fred: What advice would you give to a mid 30s person looking into changing professions and starting from scratch?
Keith Law: Acquire a critical skill that should directly lead to employment.

Ricky H. : Ronnie Dawson had a big 2nd half in the Astros system. Back on track as a future regular?
Keith Law: Was he ever on track to be a regular? He was too old for low-A and spent the whole year there save 13 games.

Andy: Do you see the White Sox ultimately trading Jose Abreu this offseason? Your opinion on what teams are the best fit/have the pieces to make sense for the White Sox?
Keith Law: They should but the market might be thin, given all the 1b/dh types in free agency & also in the trade market.

Chuck: Would you vote for Edgar if you had a ballot?
Keith Law: I tweeted this on November 20th: “I don’t get one till next winter, but if I had a vote: Mussina, Bonds, Clemens, Vlad, Edgar, Chipper, Thome, Rolen, Schilling, Walker.”

Anthony: I recall you saying you had family (parents perhaps?) that lived in the ashburn va area…having just moved to ashburn, do you know of any good restaurants or food spots in the area? it doesnt seem like a big foodie town.
Keith Law: Voltaggio’s new place at One Loudoun is supposed to be pretty good – i went when it was Family Meal, but he’s since switched the concept. Also some good spots in Leesburg, including King Street Coffee & Doner Bistro.

Dutch: I can’t figure out for the life of me why Daniels would rather let Profar rot on the bench or in the minors than cash him in. They have to trade him right?
Keith Law: They might not be getting reasonable offers.

Jock: As a long time A’s fan, I remain somewhat puzzled by their selection of Austin Beck in that he seems the opposite of the kind of player that they usually target in the 1st round. What do you think of him as a player and do you see his selection as a sign that the A’s are shifting to an emphasis on more athletic/higher upside players. Thanks!
Keith Law: They are never getting a player like Beck – huge tools, athleticism, raw but with star upside – in free agency, and even in trade that’s hard to get. You have to have something huge to deal, and right now I don’t think they have anyone who’d get a return like him, or like a Gleyber or an Eloy or a Sheffield/Frazier package. So shooting for the moon made sense, even with the huge risk; I might not have done it because Beck’s hit tool really concerned me, but that’s strictly a subjective matter.

Zo: How important is having managerial experience. Do you think Boone or Beltran would hurt the yankees in the short run?
Keith Law: MLB managers without any managerial experience at any level have fared very poorly as a group. It’s a bad strategy, and we all know it, and teams keep doing it anyway.

Willie G: Rangers fans are growing impatient with Nomar Mazara, who has been below average the past two years and has seemed to have stagnated. Is he someone you think can be a core piece for a team going forward, or is his long-term role as a platoon or role player?
Keith Law: This is truly an ex post criticism, but I wonder now if promoting him so quickly in 2016 has hurt his development at the plate. Now the situation reminds me of Jose Guillen, who went pretty much from A-ball to the majors, and ended up a fine player, but never developed his approach at all and didn’t reach his ceiling. Again, I didn’t say so at the time, so this is strictly hindsight.

Josh in DC: I’m sure you’ve answered this before, but what you would do with Ohtani (if he actually can hit and pitch at a very level, that is)? How much would you worry about the injury risks from various baseball activities?
Keith Law: I have a long column on him running on Saturday. He’s a starting pitcher who can swing it a little. He is not going to be a starting pitcher and a regular position player on his days “off.”

Patty O’Furniture: Would a Matt Adams for Mike Fiers deal make sense?
Keith Law: I think Atlanta has plenty of guys who can deliver what Fiers would deliver but for the minimum salary.

Dutch: Fair to say Snell has #2 upside? FB and CB look sick. Even saw him get some whiffs on his changeup.
Keith Law: Yes, that’s fair.

Matt: Now that Tillerson and his surprising competence looks to be on the way out, are we in for a very long 11 months until change can actually be voted in?
Keith Law: It’s kind of appalling how mercurial these cabinet decisions have been. Pruitt’s reign of error might be the worst of all, with many Republicans weighing in on how disastrous his decisions have been, but if they won’t vote Democrat or just stay home, it’s not going to change until 2018 or more likely 2020.

Daniel: Will Mike Mussina make the Hall of Fame?
Keith Law: Eventually yes. Not this year.

Stan: Albertos or De la Cruz? (Or neither…)
Keith Law: Albertos. Alzolay is their best pitching prospect. De la Cruz has no track record of health.

Henry: Is this the year Xander Bogaerts hits 30 homers?
Keith Law: Let’s get his hands healthy again and say 20 homers.

Sam: One of the interesting points from Rany Jazayerli’s piece on the Bill James/WAR debacle was about how FIP fails to capture that some pitchers are worse out of the stretch, making hit clustering more a function of skill rather than luck. Is there any truth to that?
Keith Law: Most pitchers are slightly worse out of the stretch. Pitchers who are drastically worse out of the stretch tend to be either relievers or 4A guys. If you can’t pitch with men on base, it’s a tough road. So while FIP-based WAR does have issues, that’s not a significant one.

Scherzer’s Blue Eye: Jim Bowden said Ohtani is going to hit .300 with 30 HRs and win 15 games…
Keith Law: Yeah.

Jim: Kind of amazing that the Braves made out with AA here. What do you think he’ll do as first order of business there? He keeps saying the defense is his biggest concern and that seems to me that Kemp AND Markakis are goners.
Keith Law: I think he’ll focus on using the prospect inventory – still good, just not what it was, not #1 overall any more – to upgrade the major league roster. He’s of the mindset that you keep the absolute best prospects and trade the rest. That’s what they need now anyway. That could mean a top-line starter, a good corner outfielder (or two), or a real third baseman.

Ukulele Sue: Elvis Andrus is due $58M over four years after 2018. Yes, he’s had two good years in a row, but wouldn’t it be a mistake for him to opt out after 2018 and try to get more money, given how loaded the free agent class will be?
Keith Law: FA class will be loaded, but not loaded with shortstops. I think he’d be smart to opt out.

James: How close are Santana and A. Jones to getting your vote? Do you think they’ll at least hang around for a couple of years?
Keith Law: No on Johan. Andruw is probably a no, but near the border for me. Guy was basically finished at 30, and if you consider character at all, he loses a lot of points there too.

Bob: Matt Carpenter is a way better hitter than Eric Hosmer, right?
Keith Law: Yes.

Ben: I sous vide a brisket for Thanksgiving using Kenji Lopez’s recipe. Wow, was it good.
Keith Law: Sous vide is a game-changer. I didn’t use it this holiday, but that was mostly because I didn’t cook meat besides the turkey itself, which I spatchcocked and roasted.

Jim Nantz: Quick thoughts on the Doug Fister signing?
Keith Law: Yawn.

Arnold: Juiced baseballs aside, is MLB concerned about hgh? Versions now get out of your system in 72 hours. Take it after a Thursday night, clean by Monday…
Keith Law: Available research found no benefit to using HGH in men under age 50. It’s not magic.

RSO: Manny Machado for Gleyber Torres who says no?
Keith Law: I’m assuming the Orioles would, but that’s actually not a bad deal for them. Six years of a plus regular at short for one year of Machado? You ask for more, but it’s not a crazy deal.
Keith Law: Assuming Gleyber’s elbow is fine, and it should be.

Chris J: Any new (to you) boardgames you discovered and enjoyed at PAX Unplugged?
Keith Law: Majesty, Istanbul dice game, Ticket to Ride France, Ex Libris (review coming), Evolution app/video game, Seikatsu.

Jshep12: Is it Ohtani or Otani or O’tani?
Keith Law: Ohtani.

Jeff: Do you see the things Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose were accused of happening at ESPN?
Keith Law: We are prohibited from discussing internal company matters. I say this all the time, and people still ask.

Birddog: Highest probability of success: Chance Sisco, Austin Hays or Anthony Satander?
Keith Law: Sisco. Big positional advantage.

PHM: Better bat: Bregman or Devers? Thanks!
Keith Law: Hit only? Bregman.

Rahn: Presented for your comment: Huntington said last night the Pirates are hoping to show Otani that the team is a great option for him.
Keith Law: Good for them. Won’t happen, but still, good for them.

Raphael: Legitimate question: is it really so wrong to disqualify known PED users from the HOF (either by positive tests or other evidence like the Biogenesis case)? The media and generic public may exaggerate the effects of them, but they’re strictly against the rules and have a known profound effect on being able to recover from injuries and work outs quicker. (Though I’m definitely not advocating the amphetamines users be treated any differently, just that I don’t get the outrage over disqualifying known rule breakers)
Keith Law: So take Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth out. Also, amphetamines are PEDs. Saying otherwise is a false dichotomy.

Jackie: What went wrong with Mark Appel? Is he still salvageable?
Keith Law: Finished the year hurt. Hasn’t been the same since the half-year in Lancaster and changes Houston made to speed him up to the plate. There’s a causation question – did delivery changes wreck his command? lead to injury? or all separate? – but those are factors.

Brian: Trade: Padres trade Hand, Quantrill, Arias, De Los Santos To NYY for Gleybar. Who says no?
Keith Law: Yankee fan, eh?

Joe: Made no sense to protect Loaisiga, right? Only chance he has to make the majors is as a reliever now since he will run out of options if he continues to develop as a starter.
Keith Law: He would have been taken.

Chris: Am I insane to argue that categorizing pitchers as “closers” is ridiculous? People treat a pitcher that “closes” a game almost as a separate position, and teams not only sign players accordingly, but play them as such. If you’re the best pitcher coming out of the bullpen, you should be pitching in the highest-leveraged situations regardless of inning. It’s what a little-league coach does, so why should MLB be any different? I hear this non-stop in Chicago about replacing Wade Davis as a “closer” and it drives me crazy. [end of rant]
Keith Law: Relievers are just failed starters. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true: If you can throw even 150 major-league average innings, you’re going to start. You can have a hierarchy in your bullpen, but this elevation of the Proven Closer is how we end up with stupidity like Trevor Hoffman’s 28 WAR likely entering the Hall of Fame.

JPro06: When is/are you doing your top prospect lists next? End of the year or just before the season next year?
Keith Law: Late January. Same every year.

Rob: Do you think Robert Stephenson could stick in the Reds rotation this year and be successful? You were one of the first writers to say that he was a bullpen guy.
Keith Law: Don’t think I said that. Has three pitches to start, longtime trouble with command/control.

Giants Fan: How much credence do you give to the theory that stitching on the balls made WS pitching so ineffective?
Keith Law: Don’t believe it. The balls were not manufactured separately for the World Series (or the playoffs).

John: Why are voters and fans so eager to get behind closers for the HOF, but are so reluctant to get behind DHs? Someone like Edgar provides almost 100% of the value of a HOF position player, but Hoffman provides 50% of the value of a fringe HOF starting pitcher.
Keith Law: Because SAVEZ.

Chris: grimes vs. chvrches? who do you draft first?
Keith Law: Grimes has more upside. CHVRCHES higher floor. I’ll take Grimes.

Wally: It feels to me that the players, while paid well on a societal scale, don’t get enough of the total revenue pie in MLB. Do you think that’s right, and if yes and you had the ability to run the MLBPA, what would you do to address it?
Keith Law: Push for higher minimum salary, fight for protections for players from service-time manipulation to delay free agency or arbitration.

Andy: Where do you stand on the Bill James WAR argument about taking actual wins into account? I’m worried that it goes down a GWRBI rabbit hole pretty quickly.
Keith Law: That’s a hard no for me. Win Shares are dead. Leave them in the ground.

EL: Can Jose Miguel Fernandez help a team? I was surprised the Dodgers released him.
Keith Law: It was put him on the 40-man or release him. He should get a solid deal somewhere, probably a major league contract from somebody. Just no room on LAD’s roster, I guess.

Josh L: How hard will it be for the Braves to move Matt Kemp? Similar to the Upton/Kimbrel move a few years back? Does he have any value in the NL any longer?
Keith Law: Kemp has no value, period. I would release him.

Rob: Would you trade Raisel Iglesias if you were running the Reds at this stage of the rebuild? He should be able to net a nice return but they do not have many good bullpen options.
Keith Law: Yes. Unnecessary for rebuilding team to have a good ‘closer.’

Chris: Do I need to spend $1000 on a new, super-automatic espresso machine? i’m ok at the $500 mark, but I don’t want to sacrifice too much in taste or other things (ease of use, cleaning, etc.). It’s just for 2 people too.
Keith Law: I would not, and I love espresso and the machine I own.

Scott: What do you suggest to get away from the depressing crush of the news cycle? I enjoy using Twitter, but it also gives a lot of anxiety.
Keith Law: Get out of the house. Seriously – it’s easier to ignore the world, especially the online world, if you’re out doing stuff.

Drew: As the son of a lifelong foreign service officer, I can tell you that Tillerson has been far from competent. The State Department is in the worst shape I’ve seen it in 35 years, and officers current and retired are despondent with what Tillerson and Trump have done.
Keith Law: Thanks. So State is just like every other department, then. Yay us. Oh, and we’ve alienated most of our strongest allies, including the UK just this week over some retweets of fake news.

Marc: Will Xander’s lack of exit velocity mean he won’t get to 20 HRs?
Keith Law: This is exit velocity obsession. If your hands are injured, your exit velocity will be down.

Eric: Mussina not in the hall is my go to complaint about hall voters? is there another player that deserves or deserved enshrinement that voters didn’t get behind?
Keith Law: He is the best non-Bonds/Clemens player on the ballot. And those two guys have their baggage; he doesn’t.

Jason: Re: Ohteni, what if he insisted on being given 300 PA as a DH or position player? Even though you might not want to use him as a two-way player, he may still choose his team based on that criteria.
Keith Law: Are you willing to lie? Tell him he’ll get 500 AB, then change your mind in March? Such agreements are unenforceable.

Rahn: GM hat time: Should the Pirates deal Cole and/or McCutchen before the season begins to maximize value and recognize they’re in a phase of rebuild?
Keith Law: I would, and included both in my ‘trade market overview’ piece last month.

Andrew: Any thoughts on PAX Unplugged? How was the experience?
Keith Law: Had a blast. Brought my daughter to Kids’ Day on Sunday, and she didn’t want to leave (the show was closing, so we had no choice). Absolutely planning to attend again next year.

Matt: So what are the Yankees doing? It seems like they canned Girardi for the sake of canning him w/o giving nary a thought to whom the new manager will be.
Keith Law: I would agree with that outside assessment.

Mike (Toronto): Were/are you a fan of R.E.M.? With Automatic for the People’s 25th anniversary this month, I just wondered. I think they’re among the most important American bands ever (not that I’m trying to sway you).
Keith Law: Peak REM, yes, up to and including that album. Falloff from there was quick. Their 1980s output, which didn’t sell quite as well, was tremendous and I think remains influential today.

Brett: Are you of the opinion that sports gambling should be legal in all 50 states?
Keith Law: I don’t have a yes/no answer to that. I think such activities should generally be legal – gambling, prostitution, marijuana – but that they create externalities that require regulation. Gambling, especially casinos, leads to rises in bankruptcies, domestic violence, and other crimes. Who pays those costs?

Joe : Can the royals contend next year?
Keith Law: I can’t see how.

Ed: Love all of your work Keith. Is Hudson Potts being overlooked as a prospect ? At 18 he had the best fielding % in the MWL and clearly was able to make adjustments at the plate in the second half. What should we look for in High A this year as the numbers will be inflated in the Cal league? Increased patience at the plate?
Keith Law: Solid prospect but fielding percentage is beyond worthless for minor leaguers.

Todd: Was at the Braves season ticket deal today where McGuirk talked about a “Rogue Employee in the Dominican” today. I asked to be sure I heard it right but that’s what I heard. Thoughts ?
Keith Law: Someone needs to ask McGuirk what he knew and when he knew it.

Ryan: Would you recommend Ex Libris for fans of heavier games?
Keith Law: It’s medium-weight. I like it quite a bit.

Justin R: Wouldn’t the best Red Sox move be to find a low-cost 1B with some power and assume Benitendi/Betts/Boegaarts hit for more power in 2018?
Keith Law: Hosmer is a terrible fit for Boston; they need power and he has never slugged .500.

JR: I know there’s still a month left (which means 20 more books for you to read), but what were the 3-5 most enjoyable books you read this year?
Keith Law: I Contain Multitudes. Evicted. Betaball. The Erstwhile (part 2 of The Vorrh trilogy). The Fifth Season. Mister Monkey. The Underground Railroad. Not a Scientist. The Last Days of Night. The Cooperstown Casebook.

Justin R: What would be your ideal tax plan for the US?
Keith Law: I would prefer to see tax reform that simplifies the tax code, reducing the government’s cost to collect it and society’s cost to calculate and file it, rather than this current bill that is a giant sop to corporate and wealthy donors and that ignores the recent history of such tax cuts. (The GOP is tweeting how the JFK tax cut boosted the economy. They’re full of shit: The top marginal rate was 91% before that tax cut. It’s 39.6% today. That makes all the difference.)

Matt: What about cortisone shots? Players take them all the time yet no one says anything. It’s a steroid.
Keith Law: Of course. It’s a legal steroid. Is LASIK a PED? (PEP?) We draw arbitrary lines to suit our purposes.

Jshep12: Adderall is the most often prescribed amphetamine. 10% of MLB players are using it because it is prescribed for their ADHD. Only 4-6% of the population is prescribed this drug. Is this a problem? Is this a problem MLB can do anything about?
Keith Law: If you can go to Dr. Nick Riviera and get a diagnosis, and MLB grants you a therapeutic use exemption, you’re clear. They could crack down on TUEs, but I doubt they’d do so, or that the union would stand idly by.

Craig: Does Nate Pearson have a chance to make your next top 100 prospects?
Keith Law: No.

Jshep12: So, based on what you said about Hoffman, does Rivera deserve to be in the HOF?
Keith Law: These two are not comparable, and people who ask me this sort of question are guilty of not doing even the most basic homework. Rivera threw 194 more innings and gave up 32 fewer ER, despite pitching in the AL East. Hoffman spent his entire Padres’ career in pitchers’ parks, often with park factors at -10%. They’re not the same. If you think they’re the same or even close, then wake up – the saves fairy is just something your parents made up so you’d feel better about the 9th inning.

Rahn: Do you see the Pirates’ prospect pool thinning? And can you give me someone to keep my eye on this year that you will be monitoring as well?
Keith Law: The system as a whole had a down year; other than Keller, all their major guys stagnated or took steps backward. Still a lot of ability in the system, but they have numerous guys who’ll need a strong 2018 to maintain prospect value or stay on track for the majors.

Gorman: Why do you need three pitches to start, but only 2 to relieve?
Keith Law: Oversimplifying a little, but relievers don’t face batters twice in a game, and can generally survive with platoon splits where starters can’t. If you’re a starter and can’t get opposite-side hitters out consistently, well, you’re not a starter.

Phil: What is Gohara’s ultimate upside? He’s the best Braves pitching prospect I’ve seen during rebuild to-date IMO and by fairly large margin
Keith Law: #2 starter upside. And 350 pound upside too. Gotta worry about the long-term health there.
Keith Law: I love Gohara as a prospect though. That’s just pointing out the obvious downside.

Heather: Cardinals are planning on going with at least two rookies in their rotation (choose from among Flaherty, Reyes, and Weaver). Can you have two rookies pitching that much, and still consider yourself a true playoff contender?
Keith Law: Sure. Why not? Better question might be if those rookies are good enough, but I don’t see rookies as automatically worse than veterans.

Gorman: Not trying to be flippant on Kemp, but doesn’t he at least profile as a slightly above average player on offense?
Keith Law: I have his Fangraphs page open now. 0.0 Batting Runs, which is league average, but doesn’t account for position. For a corner outfielder, that’s below average. It’s below average for a DH too.

Adam Trask: Speaking of pitchers and running, I heard that Aroldis Chapman used to beat Billy Hamilton in spring training sprints. Could that be true?
Keith Law: I’ve heard that too. Also was told way back when that Clay Buchholz beat Jacoby Ellsbury in sprints in instructs.

Chris: Can we expect a year-end list for music this year? I miss your album reviews.
Keith Law: I do them every December after the winter meetings, because there’s still new music coming every Friday.

KEvin Bo: Hey Keith, how in the world does it make sense for the supposed cash strapped Mets to be thinking about allocating their “minimal” resources to a 1B. Why not let Smith play it out as a cheap homegrown option.
Keith Law: I wonder if that was meant to motivate Smith to work on conditioning, or if someone took a quote out of context. You’re right that it’s foolish, and also, the best thing they could do for all their young players is already done: They fired the manager.

Brett: Keith, I’ve always admired your intelligence, but your above comment to Drew has me shaking my head. Some person named “Drew” says the State Department is the worst it has been in 35 years, without citing any evidence to prove this claim, and you buy into it? Dangerous.
Keith Law: I ‘buy into it?’ Overreact much? This is a chat, not a fucking grand jury hearing.

Steve: Should Franken step down?
Keith Law: Yes. Conyers too. I don’t care how you’ll vote; if you assault, harass, or abuse women, you’re out.
Keith Law: And it’s never just one victim. We see this again and again – after the first Franken story, after the first Moore story – oh, it’s just one woman, she’s lying, it happened the one time so many years ago, but then other women feel empowered enough to come forward with their own stories of assaults.

Adam Trask: Do you have your best San Diego restaurant recommendations in one place?
Keith Law: I do indeed: http://klaw.me/29EChkJ I haven’t gotten to Herb & Wood yet but hear it’s wonderful. I’d also put a hard ‘no’ on Marea coffee.

Dallas: Yovani Gallardo threw a very good curveball when he was the Brewers best starter. He got cutter happy in Texas and went away from the curve. In 2017, he brought the curve back a little bit and it rated fairly well via FG pitch values (3.3). His fastball ticked up 1 MPH this year. If he went Rich Hill, curveball/fastball do you think this would work for him?
Keith Law: Maybe if he also moved to the extreme end of the rubber like Hill did? But for Hill it made him deadly vs LHB, who tend to have bigger platoon splits. Not sure it’d have the same benefit for a RHP.

AJ: Just wondering if you read baseball novels and if so, which ones do you recommend. I am a great fan of Roth’s “Great American Novel” (if you can get past the misogyny). Have heard very good things about “The Celebrant.”
Keith Law: Don’t care for baseball in fiction. I read very little sports content for leisure; that is work, and I don’t like work to come into my hobbies.

Justin R: Have you seen “A Handmaid’s Tale”? Any interest?
Keith Law: Loved the book (and cringed through it). Not sure I would enjoy a long series of that.

Rahn: Top Chef is coming up. Still excited, even though recent seasons have played up the cheftestants squabbles and irritating behavior more than the food? And I saw that John Besh is still on the season description. I guess you can’t drop him from an episode of reality contest TV after it’s been shot. Will be interesting to see how they handle that gross guy’s presence.
Keith Law: I didn’t love the last season, and I’m just not going to watch a Besh episode at all.

Chris: HOW IN THE WORLD IS IT LEGAL TO USE TAXPAYER TO SETTLE A HARASSMENT CLAIM AND KEEP THE AGREEMENT CONFIDENTIAL?!?!
Keith Law: If only there were some way to change that …

Drew: As a response to Brett: I speak from anecdotal evidence, and know a large number of Foreign Service Officers who have worked under various administrations, serving their country regardless of which party was in office. They are feeling incredibly downtrodden right now, in large part because the President has no understanding of, or interest in learning about global affairs. Add to that the number of positions open and career public servants being pushed out of their positions, and it’s bleak.
Kim Last: My dad works for the State Dept and he said morale is much better than the last 8 years and things are going great.
Keith Law: So, I’m not vetting comments for authenticity. Do with these what you will.

Chris: What’s one band/singer that is no longer together/alive that you never saw live that you wish you could have?
Keith Law: Soul Coughing.

Jerome: No one actually paid a 91% tax rate in the 50s, so well done with the red herring
Keith Law: Politifact disagrees with you: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/15/bernie-… Also, the point is not the specific 91%, but that the benefit of cutting the top marginal rate is intrinsically connected to the actual top marginal rate before the cut.

Andre: What’s your take on the criticism of those who are saying women have taken too long to come out with accusations of sexual assault? I held my tongue at some Thanksgiving gatherings–and got upset at others–but I find it abhorrent that anyone would suggest that any amount of time is too long to be credible.
Keith Law: A woman I went to HS with was defending Matt Lauer (after the first accusation … see above for how that works) by saying she had it in for him by coming forward now. I might have lost my shit. Victims are traumatized. They may fear retaliation. They may feel shame or blame themselves. They may wish to just move on with their lives. IT IS NOT UP TO US TO SAY WHEN A VIC TIM IS ALLOWED TO COME FORWARD. Praise the women who do, but support the ones who don’t.

Ethan: I opened Matt Kemp’s same FanGraphs page because I love actual examples to try and understand these advanced ideas, so can you help explain this–why does Kemp have such large negative values across the line (Batting, Fielding, Base Running, etc.), but “only” a -.5 WAR. It doesn’t add up to me.
Keith Law: I believe those double-count the positional adjustment.
Keith Law: Also, those Runs figures are averages, WAR is vs replacement level.

Chris: So you’re a grad assistant receiving a stipend for tuition, and under the new tax bill the amount of tuition (which can hit $80,000/yr) will now be taxed. Just lovely.
Keith Law: Yep. Because the last thing we would want as a country is a more educated populace.
Keith Law: That seems like the right way to end this chat. Look for the Ohtani column on Saturday and a Lady Bird review here later today. I should be back to chat next week before the winter meetings, likely on Thursday.
Keith Law: Thanks as always for reading and for all of your questions. Have a safe weekend!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ November 28, 2017
→ By keith

Icarus.

Icarus, a documentary now available on Netflix, covers the Russian state-sponsored doping program for Olympic athletes from the most direct, personal angle possible: The director was working with the architect of the program on a completely different project when the story broke in a German documentary, The Doping Secret: How Russia Makes its Winners. So instead of merely following the chronology of the program’s execution, the leak to the press, and the subsequent drama around the WADA recommendations to ban all Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympics and the IOC’s decision to give WADA the finger, Icarus gives it to viewers in real time from the perspective of one of the whistleblowers who ends up fearing for his life.

Filmmaker Bryan Fogel decided, on what appears to be a whim, to race in a Haute Route cycling event, a seven-day endurance test across difficult terrain, this time in the Alps of southeastern France. (They also hold similar events in the Pyrénées and in the Rockies.) He finishes in the top 20, but his body just gives out near the end, so he does what any normal person would do in response – he decides to start doping to see how much a little artificial help will improve his performance. (He notes that the event bans performance-enhancing drugs but doesn’t bother testing for them.) He contacts the former head of the main U.S. testing lab, who agrees to help but eventually reneges and refers Fogel to Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of the Russian Anti-Doping Centre, a World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory that would test athletes for PED usage. Rodchenkov also knew quite a bit about the benefits of the various PEDs available to Fogel and helped him design a protocol, with the help of an “anti-aging” doctor here in the U.S., to improve his performance in a second shot at the Haute Route.

That second race doesn’t go as well as planned, but it becomes thoroughly secondary to the film’s real story: The German documentary exposes the Russians’ state-run doping program, claiming many of the country’s medals in recent Olympics, including Sochi, were achieved by athletes who should have failed PED tests but didn’t. Rodchenkov was actually running the doping program on the side, even while he was running the anti-doping facility, and during the filming of Icarus, he begins to fear that the government is watching him and possibly preparing to arrest him, so he flees to the U.S. and tells his everything to the New York Times for a piece that ran on May 12, 2016. That article blew the doors off the scandal and led to a longer WADA investigation, which the IOC chose to ignore because of reasons we can only imagine – as Rodchenko makes it clear that he believes Vladimir Putin, who approved the doping program, will stop at nothing to silence his enemies. We learn that one of Rodchenkov’s associates died, allegedly of a heart attack, in February 2016, shortly after the German film aired; another died the same month, with both men former directors of Russia’s anti-doping agency.

There is so much to unpack in Icarus, which is thoroughly gripping even though you invest the first 40 minutes or so in a story that doesn’t matter. (It’s never really clear why Fogel is willing to subject his body to the doping regimen, whether it’s a desire to win, a desire to show what doping can do, a Morgan Spurlock-style attitude to filmmaking, or something else). What was a weird but intriguing documentary that looked at the history of doping and the cat-and-mouse game between the athletes who use such drugs and the labs that try to catch them turns into a darker, real-life spy thriller. The film doesn’t bother with bothsidesism; Rodchenkov’s credibility isn’t questioned, nor are we given any reason to question it, and he provides Fogel with detailed notes on specific athletes’ regimens that seem to immediately convince a group of appalled members of WADA who walked into a conference room believing that this kind of program was physically impossible. (The KGB manages to tamper with WADA’s tamper-proof caps, among other tricks.) And a subsequent special investigation, led by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, found that over 1000 Russian athletes had doped in events over the time period covered.

Two angles in particular stand out from this. One, relevant to those of us here with an interest in baseball, is that a sufficiently determined and organized group can defeat even a sophisticated testing program. This isn’t about masking agents, or super-secret new drugs that haven’t hit testing protocols yet, but about physical exchange of dirty samples for clean ones that won’t test positive. It shows how difficult such a scheme would be to pull off … but also that it was pulled off, successfully, for years, and therefore is at least feasible.

But I don’t know how you can watch Icarus now without drawing the obvious parallel: Vladimir Putin approved a program to interfere with a competition that went beyond his own borders to try to engineer the results he desired – and even when given irrefutable proof of what he did, he just dismisses it as, in essense, fake news. He even gets away with it, despite those meddling kids, because I’ve seen jellyfish with stronger spines than the IOC, which just gave carte blanche to any major power to dope the hell out of its athletes. There’s even a scene where we see a Russian TV show airing emails between Fogel and Rodchenkov – emails obtained via hacking. We’re fighting someone who appears willing to do anything, perhaps even kill, to achieve his goals, and who thus far has proved immune to any penalty or retribution. It’s a grim projection for the future of international sport … and our elections, too.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 best documentary feature nominees, 2017 movies, documentaries, movies, netflix

→ November 28, 2017
→ By keith

Last Men in Aleppo.

The Syrian Civil Defense, better known now as the White Helmets after a documentary short by that name won the Oscar in that category this past February, is a volunteer organization that has operated in Syria since 2014, providing rescue and medical services in the wake of airstrikes in the failed state, including in the major city of Aleppo before and during the siege of the town in 2016. Last Men in Aleppo follows the group, focusing on two of the volunteers, Khaled and Mahmoud, as they race around the city, trying to rescue victims buried under rubble, while also trying to live their lives, like Khaled worrying about medicine for his daughter, or Mahmoud trying to coax his brother to flee. The film is available via iTunes or to rent/buy directly from the distributor.

Filmed in cinéma vérité style, Last Men in Aleppo has no narration or overarching structure, and simply follows the two men and some of their colleagues from airstrike to airstrike, mixing in scenes of almost mundane daily life, including an outing with their families to a playground – which, of course, is cut short by the sighting of government warplanes. (All of the airstrikes shown or discussed in the film are either from Syrian government jets or Russian jets.) The rescue scenes are gripping and horrifying, since they find more dead bodies than survivors, and are often pulling children from the wrecks. The survivors are often shown wracked by grief as they realize most of their family members are dead – and there’s no editing here to soften the impact on the viewer. The camera observes, nothing more.

That editorial decision makes the movie somewhat hard to follow, as there’s no story to track, and the pacing is as uneven as the pacing of real life. We see the men in their regular lives, or the facsimile thereof in a city under siege, interrupted by a bombing and a phone call, and they race to the scene with their comrades and the construction equipment they use to excavate the wreckage of bombed-out buildings. There’s a ton of disturbing footage in here, including corpses of babies, body parts, head injuries, and even a badly wounded cat. It is utterly draining, and simultaneously honors the bravery and altruism of these men while reminding the viewer of the enormous suffering of the people of Aleppo and Syria in general, suffering that the United States has done very little to stop.

That last bit was the biggest takeaway from Last Men in Aleppo for me – the lives of ordinary people have been discarded by a dictator’s brutal efforts to retain power over his country, even if there are very few people left in it, supported by another dictator whose warplanes are helping bomb innocent civilians, sometimes appearing to even target the White Helmets while they work. The west at least intervened to stop a government-led massacre in Libya during that country’s version of the Arab Spring, although the end result has been a failed state there as well. In fact, it’s unclear that western intervention can do much of anything except to avoid the direct killings of airstrikes and ground invasions, as the one true success story of the Arab Spring, Tunisia, succeeded without any involvement from the west. Libya is close to a failed state, as is Syria. Yemen is suffering from famine and a cholera outbreak with nearly a million victims. Egypt overthrew its dictator only to end up with a military autocracy. So maybe we couldn’t have done anything to help any of these countries transition to democracy or peace. It’s just hard to watch Last Men in Aleppo without thinking that anything we do would have been better than the nothing we’ve done.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 best documentary feature nominees, 2017 movies, documentaries, movies, syria

→ November 26, 2017
→ By keith

The Square.

I imagine Sweden’s national tourism board is rather unhappy with the country’s portrayal in The Square, as writer-director Ruben Östlund has crafted a dense, multilayered, nonlinear, unfocused narrative that depicts Stockholm’s art community as a bunch of loonies. It’s fascinating, even gripping, frequently cringeworthy, twice offensive, too long by about ten minutes, and incisively satirical. Östlund doesn’t land all his punches, but the ones he lands hit hard. The film is mostly in Swedish, with subtitles; it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year and is Sweden’s submission for the 90th Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film honor.

Claes Bang plays Christian, the director of a modern art museum in Stockholm that tries to present edgy, post-modern installations, but often falls short of its own pretensions, a fact established and skewered in an early scene where American journalist Anne (Elizabeth Moss) asks him to explain a description from the museum’s official site. Christian is also dealing with an outside marketing agency to develop advertising for an upcoming installation, called The Square, that is just a lit square on the ground and a plaque explaining what the square is in vague philosophical terms – not exactly the most media-friendly piece of art. Christian is also robbed of his wallet and phone in an early scene, leading to a comically disastrous plan to recover the goods when his tech guy, Michael (Christopher Læssø), helps him locate the phone via GPS tracking.

Other plot threads and details appear late in the film, enough that mentioning them would spoil the effect even though they’re not plot twists – they’re just stuff the script forgot to mention earlier on in the proceedings. That gives the entire film a sense of unreality, which I’d compare favorably to the hysterical realism of Zadie Smith or Paul Beatty, and unfavorably to the failed experimental novel The Unconsoled, which also concerned an artist, by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro’s narrative makes sharp, jarring turns that lack narrative or thematic connections, and subplots are dropped without resolution, never to return. It’s unclear if the main character is even awake for some scenes, or dreaming, or hallucinating. The Square walks a similarly tortuous path, with more clarity that it’s all (probably) real, instead simply bouncing Christian from bad decision to bad decision, and introducing details – like the end of the performance art piece at the banquet, or the whole thing with Anne’s roommate – that are just never explained. This is hysterical realism bordering on the transgressive, with mixed results, but still earning high points for ambition.

Christian himself is part narcissist – to the extent that someone can be only partly narcissistic – and part idiot, calling to mind Sherman McCoy of The Bonfire of the Vanities, another antihero who does something incredibly stupid, only to have it come back around and ruin his life. McCoy had it coming, while Christian isn’t quite so loathsome, just governed too much by his instinct for self-preservation and a little too in love with the power of his position. He gets small chances for redemption near the end of the film, and largely takes them, although it can’t thoroughly rehabilitate his character or atone for the wrongs he’s done some other people (a la Ian McEwan’s Atonement).

The targets of this film’s satirical side are numerous, from the art world, especially modern art, to consumer culture to our willful ignorance of others’ suffering to the anachronisms of the upper class to sex, the last rather thoroughly demonstrated by one of the most joyless sex scenes I can remember seeing. The movie’s pièce de résistance, the aforementioned performance art scene at a banquet for the museum’s chief benefactors, manages to tear down multiple targets, including the fatuous nature of such self-congratulatory dinners, the idea of the artist being ‘totally’ committed to his work to the point of madness, the animal nature of man, and the bystander effect, the last two coming in the scene’s culmination of a physical and attempted sexual assault. Again, after the scene ends, there isn’t so much as another reference to any of it – it’s yet another disaster for the museum, but everyone proceeds the next day as if it never happened.

The Square is bursting with ideas, and many of them fail to hit their marks or are pushed via metaphors that are just too strong or on the nose. The modern art mockery is fish in a barrel stuff – really, that could have been one of the museum’s installations. The simian allusions are similarly too easy. But then there are scenes like the overhead shot of Christian rifling through garbage where the camera is high enough that his white shirt and brown hair just look like two more bags in the sea of trash, or the spiraling shot of a staircase (also top-down) as Christian climbs multiple floors but appears to make no progress.

No idea comes across more consistently in the film, however, than our numbness to the suffering of strangers, even when it’s right in front of us. Banquet goers put their heads down even as there’s a physical attack happening in front of them. Commuters ignore beggars in the street, the mall, the train station, and ignore the charity worker asking people if they’d stop for a minute “to save a life.” The video produced by the marketing agency, which is an obvious disaster along the lines of the SB Nation puff piece on rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, turns the idea inside out by preying on people’s sympathy for a fictional character crafted to maximize the viewers’ emotional reactions. It’s the one truly pervasive theme in the movie, and the closest thing the script has to a unifying element.

For all of that weightiness, The Square is also very funny, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes more “I can’t believe this is happening” funny, but even with its bleak view of humanity, the movie does go for some big laughs. There’s a fight over a condom, an argument interrupted by an art installation that keeps making noise at inopportune moments, another installation damaged in comical fashion by a night cleaner, and the sheer idiocy of the marketing agency bros. At nearly two and a half hours, it needs some levity to keep it moving – and many scenes in the first half go on a few beats too long – but the film will likely keep everyone who sees it thinking about all of its ideas for days.

But seriously, what is the deal with Anne’s roommate?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2017 best foreign language film nominees, 2017 movies, cannes winners, movies, swedish films

→ November 25, 2017
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 11/25/17.

The biggest piece I wrote this week was actually right here, the tenth annual ranking of my top 100 boardgames, including a list (at the bottom) of my favorite titles for two players. And you’ll see in the comments there are still plenty of good games out there I haven’t played.

For Insiders, I broke down MLB’s penalties for Atlanta, looking at the players set free and the impact of the league’s actions for the long term, and also looked at how the top few free agents might end up overpaid this offseason. My next scheduled piece will cover Shohei Otani and will run December 2nd, the day he hits the market for real, assuming there isn’t another roadblock between now and then.

No Klawchat this week on account of the holiday.

Buy Smart Baseball for all your loved ones this holiday season! It makes a great gift. By which I mean it’s great for me when you give it as a gift.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New York Times found that civilian casualties from the U.S. airstrikes against ISIS are much higher than reported. I can’t shake the notion that the last fifteen-odd years of bombings, especially by drone, are merely incubating a new generation of potential terrorists who hate us.
Buzzfeed blew the doors off the Congressional fund that pays off sexual harassment complaints against legislators and certain other federal employees, with $17 million paid out over 264 complaints. There’s so much wrong here, including the allegations against Rep. John Conyers (who needs to resign immediately), including the fact that taxpayers are covering this expense, and that settlements aren’t automatically made public.
The Washington Post interviewed 25 North Korean defectors about life under the current dictator, Kim Jong Un, who has slightly liberalized the economy while further cracking down on any semblance of individual rights. The biggest takeaway for me: It’s no longer famine driving people to defect, but an increased awareness of the freedom of the world outside of North Korea’s borders.
The Guardian has a long, entertaining, and wide-ranging look at the British prepared sandwich industry, which is a much bigger deal than I realized. The lack of time to eat a proper meal, however, is an issue here and in many other developed economies, even though it’s probably hurting our physical and mental health.
Forbes, that bastion of liberal economic thought, says the current GOP tax bill “will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history.” I rarely discuss economic policy here, feeling rather unqualified to do so, but I will say that I think this bill is a poor facsimile of a failed macroeconomic policy proposal, trickle-down economics, that instead is merely a massive transfer of wealth to the highest income earners. I might actually benefit from the bill, depending on the fine print, but I thoroughly oppose it, because it will make so many people worse off and drag our country into a length economic malaise it will be tough to escape. (Also, tax breaks on private jets? What possible rationale is there for that?)
The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’s analysis also shows the bulk of the benefits going to higher income brackets, with the biggest gainers those in the 95th to 99th percentiles for income.
Fake news in action: You’ll see many alt-right accounts (bots) and sites pushing the story of a Saudi princess whose tell-all interview with Le Monde revealed tales of orgies, white slavery, and other debauchery among the Saudi ruling class. The problem, according to Le Monde, is that the interview never happened (article in French). The fabrication is so pervasive that the esteemed French newspaper felt compelled to author a refutation, blaming the Iranian news service and a Sri Lankan paper for promulgating the lie.
People with diabetes are dying because they can’t afford insulin, a situation created by the current nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. While Azar headed up Eli Lilly, he more than tripled the cost the company’s insulin product over ten years, even though the product’s patent expired. The company is also under investigation for price-fixing, and settled a set of cases over off-label marketing of its drug Zyprexa for over $1.4 billion.
The Administration and the conservative wing of the Republican Party are trying to pack the courts with conservative judges, a threat to civil liberties and more for decades, even after the current occupant of the White House is out.
The Attorney General of New York says the commenting process on net neutrality was compromised, and the FCC won’t provide the documents to help him investigate it. One researcher claims over a million of the comments were fake. It doesn’t really matter; Ajit Pai, the new FCC head, was going to axe net neutrality regardless of the public reaction. One of the minority Democrats on the FCC board wrote a piece imploring the public to keep the pressure on by contacting other board members. We should all do this, but you’ll have to forgive my cynicism: if the three conservative board members can physically get to the vote on December 14th, net neutrality is dead.
Media consolidation erodes the myth of “liberal” media as large conglomerates pull major outlets to the right, according to Poynter.
The Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan has banned all gay assemblies in the capital, Ankara, including forums, festivals, and film screenings, part of an ongoing crackdown on LGBT rights in the supposedly secular nation. Also, our current President loves Erdogan.
Another tyrant, Robert Mugabe, has resigned after ruling Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980. The problem is that his successor was implicated in one of Zimbabwe’s deadliest massacres. The new boss is the same as the old boss.
The hell is wrong with western Canada? One family of anti-science nutters lets their kid die of meningitis without seeking medical treatment, and they’re still raving about their rights. Now another mother is going to jail for failing to get medical help for her son, who had strep throat – easily treatable with antibiotics, as Streptococcus doesn’t readily develop resistance – and died after she treated it with bullshit. Yes, the story says “holistic remedies,” but there is no such thing, and the Tribune Media Wire author(s) behind the piece should be fired. Meanwhile, a “naturopathic doctor” (no such thing, folks) in Medicine Hat is pushing the “sanitation and hygiene” crap while ranting against vaccines on Twitter. I don’t know Canadian law, but if there’s a licensing board in Alberta, someone should ask them to strip his.
Conservatives and the highly religious are more likely to endorse myths about rape, including victim-blaming, disbelieving accusers, or saying it’s only rape if the victim fought back. Pro tip: If your religion tells you that a woman can ask for rape, or that date rape is acceptable, then it’s time you found a new religion or none at all.
The “Church” of Scientology covered up the rape of one of its members by actor Danny Masterson, telling her it wasn’t rape because they were in a relationship. I’d say this is yet another point in favor of stripping the cult of its tax-exempt status.
I reviewed Ed Yong’s wonderful book I Contain Multitudes, about the microbiome in our ecosystem and all over our bodies, back in March. In a later chapter, he discusses the proposal to release male Aedes albopictus mosquitoes infected with a strain of the Wolbachia pipientis bacterium into the environment; when they mate, the eggs laid by the female mosquitoes won’t hatch because of the bacterial infection. Earlier this month, the EPA approved a proposal to do just that in 20 states and Washington DC. It could prove a game-changing advance in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. (Malaria is transmitted by a different genus of mosquito, Anopheles.)
Coral researchers are coping with the effects of watching the reefs they cover die out as a result of ocean acidification and climate change.
Three cups of coffee a day may have health benefits. I could confirm this, but I’d be in the bathroom all day long if I tried.
If you know someone who’s both celiac and anti-GMO, ask them if they’d eat gluten-free flour made from genetically modified wheat that can’t form the key proteins that appear to trigger celiac disease. The genetic modification comes via CRISPR rather than gene transfer from an unrelated species.
I travel quite a bit every year, enough to get premium status on at least one airline, and I’ve begun carrying a refillable water bottle on every trip now that many airports have refilling stations of filtered tap water, including the Philadelphia airport, which doesn’t have a ton to recommend it but does have a lot of these fountains.
A leader of the Indian ruling party, as a bit of an overreaction to the forthcoming film Padmavati, has offered a bounty for anyone who beheads the star actress and the film’s director.
The FBI and Department of Justice are investigating the St. Louis police force’s conduct during protests in September after the acquittal of a white officer who killed an unarmed black man in 2011. The police department is also under a temporary order blocking the use of chemical agents and dispersal orders, pending mediation.
The Baseball Project is a supergroup comprising five well-known musicians who happen to be big baseball fans, including REM’s Peter Buck and Mike Mills and two former members of the Dream Syndicate. The fifth member, Scott McCaughey, had a significant stroke earlier this month, and there’s a GoFundMe to help cover his medical expenses. McCaughey is/was also a member of the Minus Five and the Young Fresh Fellows.
The Verge looks at an ongoing Venmo scam that has netted the crooks over $100K, largely because the victims hear a chance to get a guaranteed, immediate profit, and don’t demand cash or use a more secure payment system.
Bad headline, good piece: A NY Times editorial examines the increasing desire to find balance between our digital and analog lives.
WIRED profiled one of New York’s most successful professional Dungeon Masters, known to D&D players as a “DM.”
At PAX Unplugged last week, I met with a rep from a company called Shapeways that allows you to create your own meeples and dice.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: climate change, coffee, Economics, Food, links, rpgs, science, stick to baseball, taxes, vaccines

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