Uncategorized — Page 26

→ November 2, 2022
→ By keith

Music update, October 2022.

October was a big month for new releases, but the one I was probably most excited to hear, Arctic Monkeys’ The Car, was a huge, boring disappointment. I wasn’t that enamored of the new albums from Dry Cleaning or Alvvays, to say nothing of larger acts like Taylor Swift or Tegan & Sara. But for lesser-known acts it was a great month, including a bunch of artists I heard for the first time. As always, if you can’t see the widget below, you can access the playlist here.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6K4bRVCxkcTXo4TrMkqT2q?si=72309fd0f0b54e64

Anxious – Where You Been. This Connecticut punk quintet just dropped their first full-length, Little Green House, and it’s one of the year’s best records, including the 2022 single “In April” (#76 on my top songs of 2021 ranking), “Sunsign,” “Call from You,” and “Let Me.” It’s hard-edged but with a strong melodic sense, too heavy to be punk-pop but too rough-and-ready to be post-punk.

The Lathums – Say My Name. Anthemic indie rock from Wigan, reminiscent of the Amazons but maybe a bit less slick? Their debut album came out last September, but this is the first track from them I’ve heard, from their upcoming LP From Nothing to a Little Bit More, due out February 24^th.

The Reytons – Avalanche. That opening riff … it’s Royal Blood, Turbowolf, the Amazons, Death from Above 1979. I can see why this south Yorkshire band are rising stars in the UK. As with the Lathums, they’re new to me, but had an album out last year called The Kids Off the Estate; this is from their upcoming album What’s Rock and Roll?

The Rills – Landslide. Merseyside lads who nod to the Arctic Monkeys and the Libertines as their primary influences. The B-Side, “Spit Me Out,” is almost as good, and maybe the title is a nod to the refrain of the Monkeys’ “Fake Tales of San Francisco?”

Crawlers – I Don’t Want It. This Liverpool band reminds me quite a bit of their neighbors The Mysterines, both led by women singers with powerful voices and crunchy guitar rock behind the vocals.

Black Honey – Out of My Mind. I’ve been on Black Honey’s wavelength since day one, with “Hello Today,” and this track reminds me of a few of their earliest tracks, with a crisper melody and less of the harder edges (which also work) from their second album or this year’s “Charlie Bronson.”

CVC – Good Morning Vietnam. That opening melody line sounds familiar to me, like it might be almost borrowed from something else, but I’m still in on this new Welsh band’s updated psychedelic rock sound.

Inhaler – Love Will Get You There. I feel like Inhaler has produced enough good new music that we can stop talking about who anyone’s father is, although if you listen to any of their tracks you’ll probably realize how much the lead singer sounds like his dad. I love how their sound feels like an evolution of you-know-who without sounding derivative; here it sounds like they’ve been listening to a bit of Lord Huron, incorporating that kind of folk-rock shuffle into their normal style.

Autre ne Veut – Okay. Arthur Ashin’s first new music in seven years, “Okay” is a lovely track that somehow manages to sound lush without coming off as overwritten or overproduced. Critics tend to describe their music as some form of R&B, but I think that sells it a bit short, with jazzier elements and more electronic work in the backdrop.

Cumulus – Teenage Plans. “Can you please slow it down?/It’s too much change to take.” There are so damn many songs about being a teenager and trying to slow down time to appreciate the moment – or being older and wishing you’d thought more like that when you were that age – that it’s rare for something else to break through the monotony, but this new track from Alexandra Lockhart does so, notably with the melody in the chorus.

John-Allison Weiss – Feels Like Hell. I think I liked Weiss’ previous single, “Different Now,” better, but this is also some great indie-pop ahead his 2023 album The Long Way.

The Wombats – I Think My Mind Has Made Its Mind Up. The second track from the Wombats’ forthcoming EP Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This?, which will be their second release this year after the full-length LP Fix Yourself, Not the World, which all puts them on track to put out the most good new music of any band this year.

Sports Team – Fingers (Taken Off). Gulp! is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, the second full-length album from this London band who just sound so very English between the vocals and the offbeat lyrics.

The Cool Greenhouse – Get Unjaded. Singer/lyricist Tom Greenhouse has a way with words and packs them into this tight post-punk track, talk-singing his way through a track that slithers like a tritone in search of its resolution.

The Go! Team – Divebomb. The Go! Team have been around for 22 years, so I’m rather remiss in that this was the first song of theirs I’ve heard. Their mix of samples and various pop styles reminds me a bit of the Space Monkeys’ “Sugar Cane” and the more contemporary Bad Sounds.

Young Fathers – I Saw. Heavy Heavy is due out on February 3^rd, with this the second very promising single from the Mercury Prize-winning trio, who’ve moved away from their original alternative-rap style to a more experimental lo-fi electronic sound instead.

Archers of Loaf – Screaming Undercover. Reason in Decline is the first new album in 24 years from this Chapel Hill band, who had a brief run of critical success and built a cult following in the mid-90s with their hard-edged indie rock sound.

Crystal Axis – Black AF. This is the third single from Crystal Axis, a Nairobi Afro-punk band whose lyrics are a mix of Swahili and English. I found them via this BBC profile.

Pinkshift – nothing (in my head). One of two tracks from this Baltimore trio’s new EP i’m not crying you’re crying. If you wondered what Paramore would sound like if they didn’t suck, this is a pretty good approximation. The title track from the EP is solid too.

Quicksand – Felíz. Another remnant from the Distant Populations sessions, but man, if this is what you leave on the cutting room floor, you are doing something very right. This thing rocks with this giant muscular riff that frames the sludgy chorus, where they sound most like the post-hardcore icons they are. They’re on tour right now with Clutch and Helmet, in case you wanted to wonder what year it was.

Blessed – Anything. This Canadian art-rock band announced their second full-length album, Circuitous, and released this lead single, which has a very doom- or sludge-metal feel without the big crunch.

Gojira – Our Time Is Now. I’ve been listening to less metal overall this year, but I will stop traffic for a new Gojira song, and this track has a glorious opening followed by some intense riffing in the verse before the bottom-heavy chorus.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, hard rock, Music, post-punk, progressive metal

→ October 29, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/29/22.

One new post for subscribers to the Athletic this week – a fairly quickly-written post on what the Yankees could do this winter to fix their club, notably their offense. I’m about ¾ of the way through the top 50 free agents rankings, which will run the day after the World Series ends.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the trick-taking game Cat in the Box, which takes the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment as its inspiration. Cards have numbers but no suits until they’re played – as in, when they’re observed. Apparently my review was so positive the game has sold out everywhere!

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Joe Posnanski, who helped me preview the World Series, talk a little about the highs and lows of the playoffs so far, and talk a little about free agency. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and at some point I’ll send another one out. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: ProPublica has the best story yet on how the couplpe that owns the shipping materials behemoth U-Line uses their profits to fund all kinds of extreme right-wing causes, from election denial to anti-LGBTQ+ laws to anti-abortion laws and more. They oppose anything that might improve workers’ rights or raise taxes on the ultra-rich, too. If you get a box made by U-Line, contact the shipper and ask them to use someone else. I’ve done this many times and only once have I gotten a negative reply – and I won’t do business with that company again.

This Atlantic story about a realtor in Michigan who was convinced he’d cracked the state lottery’s algorithm is a great illustration of our innate tendencies to see patterns in randomness – and how we can convince ourselves of almost anything.

Music journalist and author Caryn Rose ranked all 234 U2 songs for Rolling Stone. I found myself agreeing with most of the top of the list, although as someone who first encountered the band through MTV’s heavy rotation of “New Year’s Day,” I think that one is too low.

MLB.com writer Matthew Monaghan wrote a lovely piece for Travel + Leisure on revisiting his late wife’s favorite vacation spot, Bermuda. It’s a tough but beautiful read.

Texas no longer requires a permit for handguns, leading to more spontaneous shootings. It sounds like police – the blue we’re supposed to back – don’t seem to like this new lawless reality.

The massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, again, a state that decided that anyone can carry a gun without a permit, has made an activist out of one of the 10-year-old survivors.

Why didn’t St. Louis police take the gun from the kid who killed a teacher and another student in a school there last week, since he failed a background check?

At The Verge, Nilay Patel writes how Elon Musk can’t possibly adhere to his stated “free speech” goals and run what was already a “disaster clown car company” profitably. It’s not hard to agree – Twitter hasn’t been growing, its ad revenues lag behind any competitors, it faces a tangle of regulations and pressure from markets where Musk’s Tesla wants to grow, and the site has never figured out how to deal with harassment and abuse. I’m not leaving, but I’ve already been engaging less on the site, and if a viable alternative emerges I’ll gladly check it out.

Meanwhile, conspiracy theories spreading on the farcical social media app Truth Social have led to actual armed idiots “patrolling” around ballot boxes to try to spot voter fraud.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to three scientists for their work on quantum entanglement, which Albert Einstein once derided as “spooky action at a distance.” Author John Horgan writes of the beauty of this work and how it seems to defy common sense for Scientific American.

Physicist Peter Fisher gave a talk at my alma mater about the search for dark matter and the theory that WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) are what make up this missing mass.

The Washington Post reports on the network of people helping direct pills to terminate pregnancies to people in states where abortion is now illegal.

Disinformation dealer Dinesh D’Souza’s publisher deleted defamatory details after recalling his new book 2000 Mules, even though he’d promised to name names. What a ding-dong.

As President, Trump had his hotels charge the Secret Service – and thus, all of us who pay taxes – five times the maximum room rate allowed by federal law, and then he lied about it.

I don’t link to the Federalist, a disinformation-spewing site funded by the owners of U-Line, very often, but this piece arguing that conservatives should fight for stronger government and more intervention in all areas of society certainly seems to remove the mask from the extreme right, because that is not conservatism – it’s fascism.

In good Administration news that seems to be flying under the radar, President Biden is moving to cancel a program to develop a new submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile, which wouldn’t have been ready until 2035 and which the administration says is redundant with existing weapons. Some anti-nuclear weapon groups say Biden hasn’t gone far enough. The military, meanwhile, wants all the weapons.

As the parent of a teenager, I often feel like part of my job is try to reduce the stresses she faces in school and life, because we hear so much about how much stress our kids are under and I have a natural instinct to want to protect her. Psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour argues instead that we should teach our teenagers to embrace stress so they’re better equipped to handle it throughout their lives.

Longtime Philly Inquirer writer Stephanie Farr wrote a fun piece on Philadelphia sports fandom.

Over 250 writers signed a letter to Penguin Random House protesting the publisher’s $2 million book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, given her pivotal role in removing a fundamental right from tens of millions of Americans.

Board game news: Aegean Sea, the newest game from Glory to Rome co-designer Carl Chudyk, is up on Backerkit with 12 days to go.

Oh My Brain!, a new game from Bruno Cathala and Theo Riviere, is now up for pre-order at $5 off on 25^th Century’s website.

The Queen’s Dilemma, a standalone sequel game to the Spiel-nominated King’s Dilemma, is closing in on $400K raised on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, guns, links, longreads, misinformation, missouri, parenting, philadelphia, social media, stick to baseball, texas, the swamp

→ October 27, 2022
→ By keith

The Red Cathedral.

The Red Cathedral slipped through the cracks of my reviews over at Paste, as it came out at the very end of 2020, and I didn’t get a copy until Gen Con of 2021, so it missed my 2020 best-new-games list but was ineligible for the 2021 list. I’ve played it a few times now, including its very good solo mode, and I have to say it’s one of the best games of its weight (sort of medium-heavy) I’ve ever played, and is both great value at under $35 and for such a small box.

Players in the Red Cathedral will work to construct the building of the game’s title, which has six sections per player and varies slightly in shape in each game, with base, middle, and top sections that can be accentuated with different ornaments. Players move dice in six colors around a rondel to gather resources they can use to build sections or ornaments, or to collect coins, but choosing which die to move isn’t as simple as just figuring out what resource you want – you can get much more stuff if you pick the right one, or you might not move a die to prevent your opponents from getting an even bigger windfall. You gain points mostly for building cathedral sections and ornaments, although there are other ways to gain a point here or there.

There are two scoring tracks in The Red Cathedral, although they’re overlaid on each other and you don’t have to keep track of two separate point totals (like in Rajas of the Ganges, although I like how that determines the end of the game). There’s the Reputation point track, which just looks like a regular scoring track around the edge of any game board; and the Prestige track, which starts out with a marker every 4-5 spots, but those gaps quickly drop to 3 spots and then 2, eventually lining up with the Reputation track in the 40s. This matters a lot early in the game, because you can drop down one Prestige point to gain two coins, and because placing ornaments gains you one or three Prestige points depending on whether you add one gem or two (in the two colors) to the cost. You can only build an ornament on a section that’s already completed, although you can do so on someone else’s section. You’re limited to four ornaments, two for middle sections and one each for the top and bottom sections.

The dice rondel is the real heart of the game and its most clever aspect. There are eighteen spaces on the circular track, divided into six zones. At the start of the game, the five dice go into five separate zones after someone has rolled them all. On your turn, you may pick any die and move it forward the number of zones shown on its face (1 to 6). Then you collect the reward for that zone, resources, coins, or points, times the number of dice currently in that zone, which can be up to three – so you might get, say, 6 bricks, or 3 green gems. Then you re-roll all dice in that zone for the next player.

Each zone also has a “guild” card next to it that offers you a choice of two benefits when you move a die to that quadrant of the rondel. For most of those cards, which change every game, you can choose either something for free, or you can pay coins/exchange resources for something better. Thus every time you choose moving a die as your main action, you have to consider where the other dice are, what resources you’ll get, what guild card is there, and how this might leave the dice for the next player.

Your other choices of actions are to place one of your six banners on an unclaimed segment of the cathedral or deliver resources to a building site to complete a section or build an ornament. Four of those six banners start out in spaces in your inventory, which can hold up to ten resources when all the banners are placed, so you have a strong incentive to get out and claim some sections early on to free up room on your board. Delivering resources is the one frustrating part of the game: you can only deliver up to three resources in one turn, but many sections require four or five resources to complete, so it’ll take you two separate turns to do it. You can, however, deliver to multiple sites at once, so a little more planning can make this less inefficient.

The game ends when someone completes their sixth section, after which you add up the scores. Most of your points come from completing sections, which vary in their returns and may give you some coins but fewer points rather than just a higher point total; and ornaments, which, as I wrote above, come in the form of Prestige points and are more valuable earlier in the game. Ornaments only require one or two resources to build, but if you can also spend one green and one purple gem when building one, you max out your turn with three Prestige points.

The box suggests a game time of 80 minutes, which is probably true when everyone knows the game; the last time I played, with two friends who hadn’t played before, we ran closer to two hours for the full game, although I can say all three of us felt like it was a great game. (I lost, though.) There is a smart solo mode here that works well to mess with you by limiting your options, although I think it’s far more satisfying to play this with at least one other person so that the competitive aspect of dice selection comes into play.

There is an expansion called Contractors that came out earlier this year, which adds a lot of new elements, including another game board, diamonds as a wild resource, an additional (black) die, and more. The more games I play, the more skeptical I become of the majority of expansions; a few are good, like Pandemic’s On the Brink, Ticket to Ride’s 1910 (even if just for the full-sized cards), or Carcassonne’s Traders and Builders, but most just complicate the original’s game play without making it truly better. I can’t tell you if Contractors does that, because I saw it on a table at Gen Con and watched a little bit of game play, after which I thought, “I don’t need that.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, complex games, dice games, highly recommended, strategy games

→ October 24, 2022
→ By keith

The Anomaly.

Hervé Le Tellier won the Prix Goncourt, the French equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 2020 for his psychological thriller The Anomaly, which was subsequently translated into over three dozen languages and became a worldwide bestseller, an uncommon outcome for a literary prize in a language other than English. It’s an impressive combination of a page-turning plot with a fascinating thought experiment in speculative fiction, crafted in expert fashion so that the twist comes late enough in the novel that you’re already engaged with its diverse characters.

The Anomaly opens with a series of what appear to be unconnected short stories about various people around Europe and the United States, all of whom happened to be on the same Air France flight Paris to New York that encountered severe turbulence on its way into JFK. Each of those stories ends with police approaching those individuals, for an unknown reason, and given how different each of these characters and their lives are, it’s especially foreboding. Anything else would just be a spoiler.

Le Tellier tries to accomplish two very different goals in The Anomaly, and succeeds on both counts. The story picks up the pace and intensity as it goes along; he wisely starts out the novel with a section on a contract killer, which sets a specific tone that doesn’t last but immediately grabs the reader’s interest. You’re already on edge before you even get to the second character, so despite the fact that this isn’t a novel about a hit man, that opening sets up the possibility that anything might happen. By the time you find out what’s actually going on, you’re already flying through the book (pun intended), and that’s when Le Tellier really messes with your head.

There’s a real philosophical question at the heart of The Anomaly, centering on identity and the nature of self, along with more modest questions of personal rights and ownership in a modern capitalist society. Once we find out why the police are gathering everyone who was on that flight, we’re thrown into the existential crisis that’s about to face the passengers, turning what seemed like a potboiler murder or spy mystery into a work that explores deeper and unanswerable questions through the actions and reactions of its characters. It’s a hard line to travel, but Le Tellier manages to do so because he’s set up a collection of characters who would naturally respond differently to the massive shock they receive.

Le Tellier has a solid sense of humor as well, working in a couple of misfit scientists who were first called in by the feds in the wake of 9/11 to come up with a packet of recommendations for the response to all manner of improbable events, only to have them befuddled by this impossible event and responding in kind – by making it up as they go along. There’s a slew of pop culture and other contemporary references, which might not age that well but do give the novel an added sense of realism that balances out the unreality of the latter half.

Whether this novel ultimately works for you will probably come down to your willingness to suspend disbelief for the thought experiment in the latter half. I had no issue with this because it’s so well crafted, even before we get to the reveal, and because the novel does not wallow in the details or make the event itself the center of the story. This is a humanist story – although there’s a brief detour into a meeting of religious leaders that is wryly funny – that has characters at its heart, with Le Tellier writing believable reactions for each of them and representing a broad range of emotions in the process. I found it incredibly compelling from start to finish, even as the author leaves some questions unresolved.

Next up: I’m reading this year’s Hugo winner, Arkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: contemporary novels, french literature, highly recommended, philosophical novels, prix goncourt, psychological thrillers

→ October 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/22/22.

My second and much longer notebook on guys I saw in the Arizona Fall League went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Craig Calcaterra, writer of the excellent Cup of Coffee newsletter and author of the book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and maybe I’ll send another edition out this week. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

My friend and former colleague at ESPN Sarah Langs announced a few weeks ago on Twitter that she has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mandy Bell of MLB.com set up a GoFundMe for Sarah, if you’d like to join me in contributing.

And now, the links…

Climate change could cause the collapse of Antarctica’s ice shelves even sooner than forecasted, in case you were feeling too good about anything this week.
Two stories of women who nearly died because anti-abortion laws denied them access to medical care, one in Texas who suffered a miscarriage and had to wait so long she developed sepsis before doctors would intervene, and one in Missouri whose own state Senator referred her to an anti-abortion clinic. The latter woman had to go to Illinois to get medical care to save her life.
Parker Molloy wrote about how the English press, buoyed by transphobic parents, bullied a schoolteacher who came out as trans into suicide. One of the main writers who attacked Lucy Meadows was Richard Littlejohn, who is still alive and writing twice a week for the Daily Mail, which ignored calls to fire him for his role.
WIRED has an excerpt from Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow’s new book Chokepoint Capitalism on how streaming services control what we hear and what music gets made, abrogating the promise that the technology would democratize music.
A Supreme Court case around copyright law, fair use, and an Andy Warhol piece may permanently alter the landscape of American art.
Florida’s state Surgeon General issued new guidance around COVID vaccines based on research that produced howls of derisive laughter from actual experts. Here’s one takedown of its many, many flaws. Charles Pierce put it well when he wrote that Florida will just keep “asking questions” until it gets the answer it wants ($).
Dr. Mehmet Oz, currently running for Senate, met a gun-violence victim at a campaign stop, but failed to disclose that she works for him and has received over $2100 from the campaign. The Associated Press reported on the encounter without noting the conflict. Do your fucking jobs, AP.
While on TV, Dr. Oz also promoted Joseph Mercola, long one of the biggest purveyors of anti-vaccine and other forms of medical misinformation online. Mercola has been selling supplements by denigrating evidence-based treatments since at least the 1990s, when I first came across his site’s claims that aspartame caused multiple sclerosis and all sorts of other health problems that it doesn’t cause at all.
Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, accused the super PAC Democratic Coalition, run by Scott Dworkin, of misleading donors into thinking their money is going to support candidates like him.
Will Leitch wrote about the abysmal media response to Tua Tagovalioa’s second head injury in five days.
Slate’s Evan Urquhart defended Jon Stewart’s interview with and humiliation of Arkansas’s bigoted Attorney General, where he makes it clear she’s either ignorant of the facts on the issue of gender affirming care or just denying them.
How did social media content moderation become such an issue in the culture war?
This is sort of old news by now, but if you haven’t heard the racist comments by members of the Los Angeles City Council, you should check it out. Only one of the three people making those comments, Nury Martinez, has resigned, as calls mount for the other two to do the same.
Wildfire smoke doesn’t just pollute the air, but it can carry bacteria and fungal spores across long distances, thus potentially expanding the area where Valley fever and other diseases of rural/desert areas into more population regions.
Research published in Polymers showed microplastics in human breast milk.
Many artists are pushing for more student debt relief, as the $10,000 offered is a “drop in the bucket” compared to their debt loads.
An Oklahoma teacher encouraged students to call a special-needs student in the class the f-slur. The school district dragged its feet, so the state is investigating while many parents are calling for the teacher’s removal. This is the lowest bar, really.
Is hip-hop’s dominance in American popular music finally slipping? Billboard spoke to industry executives who believe it is, and I would point to the lack of innovation in the space as a reason – and streaming may be the cause, as seen above.
A terrorist group calling itself a branch of ISIS is attacking villages in northern Mozambique, killing men and raping women, while threatening one of the most important natural gas supply lines in Africa.
Amidst news of ethnic cleansing in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the Economist called for sanctions against Eritrean dictator Issaias Afwerki ($), calling him “equally malign” as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Randy Kaufman, running for the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board and who said he wanted to “protect our children from the progressive left,” suspended his campaign after he was arrested for masturbating in his car near a preschool. Always be wary of those who doth protest too much.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) refused to say whether she would accept the election results if she loses.
Republicans in Congress have introduced a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit schools, libraries, and other institutions that receive federal money from teaching children about, well, anything related to sex, gender, gender identity, and so on, and would allow parents to sue if they did. The Human Rights Campaign has denounced it. The end result of bills and laws like this is more youth suicides, and if that’s your goal, we’re not going to agree.
George M. Johnson wrote about his experiences seeing his book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir of growing up Black and queer in America, become the second-most banned book in the country.
Michigan Republicans introduced an anti-trans bill that would jail parents for life if they sought gender-affirming care for their kids. This is the totalitarian playbook: demonize a small, vulnerable minority to rally your adherents and get them to the polls.
Florida Times-Union columnist called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ closed-door selection of Sen. Ben Sasse, both Republicans, as the new President of the University of Florida, the “crowning achievement of the DeSantis-led effort to defile” the college, questioning Sasse’s qualifications and his intentions.
A Texas sheriff certified that the nearly 50 migrants DeSantis trafficked to Massachusetts are “crime victims,” creating the possibility they could receive special visas to stay in the U.S. Unintended consequences FTW!
In the wake of Hurricane Ian, DeSantis relaxed voting restrictions in three heavily Republican counties, but not in heavily Democratic Orange County.
Police body camera footage shows officers arresting people for so-called voter fraud, as DeSantis proudly announced a sweep and emphasized the criminal records of the arrestees, who were overwhelmingly Black.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist James Causey called Sen. Ron Johnson’s comment that his opponent this year, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), has “turned on America” and “finds America awful” a “cheap shot,” saying that you can love America and still criticize it. Johnson’s campaign has also run ads that darkened Barnes’s skin tone and claimed he’ll be soft on crime.
South Carolina’s medical licensing board has yet to discipline any physicians for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 or the vaccines that help prevent it, apparently for fear of backlash from the conservatives who run the state government.
Marin County in northern California was once a haven for highly educated anti-vaxxer parents. COVID-19 vaccines changed that, and the county now has one of the highest uptake rates in the country at 91%.
Jazz Chisholm was impressive in his brief stint on MLB Network’s studio coverage of the first round of the playoffs.
A new property, the Hotel Lyra, is trying to revive a nearly-abandoned town in Croatia called Licko Petrovo Selo. The town, which is near the country’s scenic Plitvice Lakes National Park, was destroyed during World War II, rebuilt by the Yugoslav government, and then heavily damaged during the Balkan wars, with most of the population, especially its Serbs, driven out.
The white nationalist teenager who opened fire outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia had posted anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and white replacement views on Twitter and 4chan. The Anti-Defamation League says in response that Twitter and similar sites don’t do enough to moderate hate speech.
Board game news: Rock Manor Games, run by my friend Mike Gnade, has a Kickstarter up for its new role-playing game The Few and the Cursed.
BoardGameTables, who make tables for board games (!) and have also published titles like On Tour and Sequoia, have a Kickstarter up for three small-box games, including Pollen, a re-theming of Reiner Knizia’s Samurai: The Card Game.
Rising Waters, the historical co-op game about the 1927 Mississippi Flood and the racial disparities it exposed, just funded in the last few days, with about a week and a half to go in its Kickstarter.
Race to the Raft, a cooperative game from Isle of Cats designer Frank West, is already about 8x funded on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, africa, arizona, arkansas, art, baseball, board game news, california, climate change, croatia, florida, football, frauds, hip-hop, lgbt rights, links, los angeles, missouri, Music, oklahoma, pennsylvania, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, wisconsin

→ October 21, 2022
→ By keith

Arizona eats, Fall 2022.

The best new place I ate on the trip was the first: CRUjiente Tacos, an upscale taqueria just east of the Biltmore and north of Arcadia, featuring tacos with non-traditional fillings. I went with three – their Korean fried chicken taco, a fish taco, and a garlic mushroom taco. To my surprise, the last one was the best, by a lot: garlic-roasted mushrooms with chèvre and a jalapeño lime aioli, served on a fresh blue corn tortilla. I could have had three of those and considered it a good meal, although I would have regretted not trying others. The fish taco was solid, although the fish itself (halibut?) was a little underseasoned. The ancho tartar sauce and citrus slaw provided just about all of the flavor. The fried chicken taco was disappointing, as the dominant flavor was fish sauce, and it didn’t have the powerful spice/umami balance of real Korean fried chicken. I was ravenous that day, so I started with the chips and three salsas. The habanero salsa was barely spicy at all, but the avocado-tomatillo salsa was excellent.

Phoenix Coqui is a food truck turned brick-and-mortar site, serving homestyle Puerto Rican food from a central Phoenix location. They offer the usual array of stewed meats in mofongo, mashed plantains that can form an edible bowl in which the meat is served … but I’ve had mofongo multiple times in Puerto Rico, and I have realized it’s just too heavy for me. So I went for two of Coqui’s empanadas instead, one chicken and one mushrooms. The crust is the real standout, crispy but not greasy and shockingly thin. The chicken was a little dry, probably because it was shredded white meat that ended up cooking twice; the mushrooms were better but probably could have used some acidity. I also ordered the bori fries, served with a garlic-mayo sauce (which I think also includes ketchup, a popular dipping sauce in Puerto Rico) that I ended up using with the empanadas. The fries were fresh from the freezer, unfortunately.

Sushi Sen popped up on an Eater list of the best sushi places in Phoenix, which, yes, I understand that’s like being the tallest man in Lilliput, but there are a few very highly-regarded sushi places in the Valley, like ShinBay, which is omakase only.Sushi Sen is a la carte and offers a ton of over-the-top rolls, which I admit should have been a sign for me. The sushi here is just fine, but not something I’d go out of my way to eat, and it’s definitely better value than quality. I think it’s better than “average” sushi, but I also think average sushi isn’t worth eating (or depleting the oceans), so take that for what it’s worth. The non-sushi items were a mixed bag – the cucumber salad with octopus was solid, the calamari tempura was rubbery – while the various nigiri I had were all about the same except for the maguro (tuna), which had a flavor I couldn’t identify but that I definitely did not like. The portions on the nigiri are enormous, which is a mixed bag, I suppose. If you try it, I would suggest the striped bass, which comes in a ponzu sauce; the chunky spicy tuna, which isn’t just the scrapings off the skin of a tuna loin but much larger pieces (and I didn’t detect that same off flavor, so maybe the sauce muted it); and the yellowtail.

I took one for the team and tried Café Lalibela, a modest Ethiopian café and shop in Tempe that has shown up on multiple best-of-the-Valley lists. Ethiopian food isn’t always my friend, and after eating it I feel like I am sweating berbere out of my pores, but I love the food – it just doesn’t love me back. It’s also a tough cuisine if you don’t eat (most) red meat, so I went with the one chicken option, doro wat, along with their spicy collard greens (gomen), along with injera, the teff-flour pancake that you use to eat the food, tearing off pieces and wrapping bits of the food in it. I’ve got limited experience with Ethiopian food, as you might imagine; the last time I had it I was scouting Josh Bell as a high schooler, and he just homered in the World Series, so it’s been a while. I thought the doro wat was fantastic, a little spicy but nothing I couldn’t handle, with a deep, earthy flavor from the berbere’s coriander and caraway. I found the collards to be too bitter, though, in part because they had so little salt.

Tampopo Ramen is a tiny ramen bar in Tempe, not far at all from the Cubs’ ballpark, and after CRUjiente it was the best new place I tried. Their tonkotsu ramen is mellower than most I’ve tried, in a positive way – same flavor profile, but less overwhelming. I might have done with more salt, but if you haven’t noticed, that’s a thing of mine. Anyway, the noodles are the real standout, as they’re made fresh in-house every day. I added wakame and kikurage (mushrooms) to the main tonkotsu ramen, but when I go again, I’d like to try the miso ramen to see if it gives me more of that salty kick.

I tried to sneak into Pizzeria Bianco for lunch on my last day there, but Chris Bianco’s appearance on Chef’s Table: Pizza has generated new interest in his flagship restaurant, so I ended up at Blanco, a mostly-in-Arizona chain of Mexican restaurants. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat here, but the grilled mahi-mahi tacos were completely adequate, and I was surprised by the quality of the fish. As chain food goes, you can and will do worse.

As for places I went that I’d been before: Hillside Spot, Crêpe Bar, Matt’s Big Breakfast, Noble Eatery, Soi4, Cartel Coffee, Press Coffee, Frost Gelato. Sometimes, it’s good to just play the hits, and they didn’t disappoint. I was disappointed I couldn’t slip over to FnB, my favorite restaurant in the Valley, but I would have been pushing it on time.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: arizona, ethiopian cuisine, japanese cuisine, phoenix, puerto rican cuisine, ramen, restaurants, scottsdale, sushi, tacos, tempe

→ October 20, 2022
→ By keith

Klawchat 10/20/22.

Starting at 1 pm ET. I have two posts up (one and two) covering about three dozen players I saw in the Arizona Fall League, both for subscribers to The Athletic.

Keith Law: You’re calling all the shots. Klawchat.

James: Dave Roberts did nothing to warrant losing his job, right ?
Keith Law: Right. Really don’t understand the hand-wringing over the Dodgers losing a short series to a very good team.
Keith Law: This is the playoffs. We have upsets. It’s not about crowning the best team, but about crowning a champion. You have to accept that distinction or stop watching.

Jimmy: Team farthest away from being a playoff team?
Keith Law: The Rockies, for me.

Jimmy: Julio Wander or Witt next 10 years?
Keith Law: A healthy Wander. But I would bet all 3 make many All-Star teams.

Heather: What will you miss the most about the Liz Truss Era?
Keith Law: The lettuce.

Turner: Do you plan to read Cormac McCarthy’s new novels when they come out this fall?
Keith Law: I wasn’t aware he had any new novels coming, if that says anything.

Turner: The Orioles have a lot of hitters and few pitchers in their system. Is turning some of those hitters into an established frontlineish type starting pitcher something that can actually be pulled off or does it just sound reasonable in theory.
Keith Law: I think they have to do this, and it’s feasible. They have surplus at a couple of spots, including shortstop and the outfield. They’re not going to be able to get at bats for all of them if these guys all continue on their current trajectories, so converting a package of 3-4 of their hitting prospects into an above-average starting pitcher would be ideal.

RD: Kirby or Gilbert long term?
Keith Law: Kirby, given equal health.

Ken from Entertainment 720: Question on BABIP. How do I know when it is skill or luck. If a player is hitting .325 and has a certain BABIP how do I know if that .325 is based on skill versus luck on an elevated BABIP. If his BABIP is sitting at .425 okay I get it it is luck (or the next Ted Williams) but if his BABIP is say .340 what factors do I use to determine luck versus skill here.
Keith Law: For starters, it depends on the hitter’s history of BABIPs – if he’s got a .340 BABIP this year, is that higher than his career norm? Much higher? OK, is he hitting the ball consistently harder? Or have some groundballs become line drives? Has his swing changed? Andres Gimenez went from under .300 in his first two stints in the majors to .353 this year. He changed his swing and started making much harder contact. That increase is some skill and some randomness. In his case I think it’s more of the former, based on what we see and what the data say.

barbeach: Hello KLaw! Thanks for the chat. What are your thoughts on what you’ve seen in the MLB so far from the Yankees’ Oswald Peraza and Oswaldo Cabrera (SSS alert, I know!)? Thanks much.
Keith Law: Peraza barely played. Cabrera showed similar skills to what we saw in the minors; he’s a low-OBP guy with power. Probably not a regular for the Yankees.

xxx(yyy): big picture – was Kumar Rocker the right or wrong choice for the Rangers at #3? not asking if they should have taken another specific player, just if you think the process they went through to end up with Rocker was sound in your opinion
Keith Law: It truly depends on what’s going on with his arm, and I just don’t know the answer to that. If his arm turns out to be fine, it’ll be a solid pick. If not, meaning Texas evaluated the issue incorrectly or ignored/undervalued it in choosing him, then that was the wrong choice with Collier, Termarr, Green, etc. all still on the board.

addoeh: Being compared to Daniel Vogelbach only sounds bad if you think you have Anthony Rizzo 2.0.
Keith Law: Agreed. It was also very strange to get that kind of reaction about a prospect in a system that’s loaded with guys who are top 100 prospects or banging on the door – PCA, Triantos, Alcantara, Made, etc. It’s not like it’s Mervis or nothing over there.

Alex: With some luck, I can see the Pirates’ position players forming the core of a contender but it seems like their best young pitchers have #2/#3 ceilings. Do you think the Pirates can build a playoff-worthy rotation out of their system if their window opens in the next few years?
Keith Law: That’s probably right on the upper minors pitching. We’ll see how guys like Chandler and Solometo come along in the next year or two. This was their first full pro season, and both looked very good in limited time.

AM: I wasn’t a big fan of the Bucs picking Nick Gonzales and I worry that Termarr Johnson is similar- no clear defensive home and some questions about the projectability of the offensive tools given they’re a bit undersized. Am I overreacting?
Keith Law: Very different players. Gonzales was a college guy, so less risk for that reason and less upside. He also played at altitude, 4000 feet above sea level, which really skewed his performance and data. Termarr was a high school draft, so more risk there, but a better athlete with a better present hit tool on draft day. I’d be very surprised if Termarr didn’t become a better defensive 2b than Gonzales is.

Jibraun: Do you have an ETA on when Masyn Blaze Winn could be called up to the majors? Is mid-2023 too optimistic?
Keith Law: I think that’s too optimistic. You asked about Herrera taking over as catcher – I would like to think that’s their plan, and then Walker comes up later, and then Winn after that or even in 2024. He’s very talented but nowhere near as far along in his development as Walker.

Yankees Homer: Hey Klaw, what do the Yankees do about the left of their infield next year? IKF and the Racist are clearly not the answer. Is Volpe ready next year? How about 3B? Thanks!
Keith Law: I’m a Volpe guy. I’d try to get him 120 games or more in the majors next year. Even if he struggles at the start I believe he has the aptitude and athleticism to make adjustments.

Scott: It came up in your last chat that you haven’t seen Miguel Bleis yet. I had noticed he wasn’t mentioned in your preseason prospect summary on the Red Sox. Is that because he’s so far away? The consensus seemed to be that he was the best FCL prospect this year. I’m curious if you’ve heard enough from your sources that he might be in consideration in your next top 100.
Keith Law: He was only in the DSL in 2021 and didn’t stand out in performance or to scouts I know who saw that league. Different now that he’s played in the US against better competition and in front of more people.

Sage: You spent any time with Steve Stone?
Keith Law: Not really. Met him once over a decade ago. He was very friendly.

Jeff: I wonder if the Dodgers “failures” in the postseason are more due to approach and strategy towards a short series more so than anything else. They seem to have a bullpen game in virtually every series including the most recent game 3 which was after not playing in round 1 and a day off between games 2 and 3. I know the postseason is a small sample size so its not entirely indicative of who is the best team but when you have so much talent and you lose more than you win, something has to be the cause other than the randomness of the outcome of a baseball game/series.
Keith Law: How could we truly distinguish that from the randomness of a short series? I don’t know if we could. I also kept thinking the series might have been different with a healthy Buehler, although that’s all hypothetical (and then don’t you have to ask the same about Padres/Tatis?).

Alex: The Giants have been fairly clear they expect Kyle Harrison to be part of their rotation next year. Maybe not at the start of the season but sometime during the season. Is this a realistic expectation and what do you see as his ceiling/floor? Thanks for all the great content and taking my question.
Keith Law: During the season seems very realistic to me.
Keith Law: Ceiling/floor is the kind of thing I will discuss at length in offseason prospect rankings. He’ll be on the top 100 again, and was on the midseason rankings.

Dave: So if gender identity is not metaphysical, but rather a matter of observable biological reality with (as you say) “clear scientific evidence” then shouldn’t we be able to test for it? That would allow us to prevent “false positives” and separate the truly trans from the future detransitioners, who are an ever-growing group of mostly-young people and whose stories are genuinely heartbreaking.
Keith Law: Autism is a matter of observable biological reality with clear scientific evidence, and we can’t test for it in the sense you mean. The last clause of your question is anti-trans propaganda.

Aaron C.: Did you hit up any new restaurants in the valley during the AFL or did you opt to play the “greatest hits” instead?
Keith Law: I have either four or five new ones to write up.

JT: Have we seen a statistically reliable post season series yet this year?
Keith Law: Is that a thing? Is it even desirable?

Greg: Hey Keith, do you see Justyn-Henry Malloy as a future every day left fielder or is he not at that level?
Keith Law: Yes.

Philip: Jackson merrill top 30 prospect now?
Keith Law: My gut is no, but I also haven’t sat down to start that exercise of ranking the top guys yet.
Keith Law: Top 100, sure, that’s an easy call. Top 30 is a very different question.

James: predictions for both series ??
Keith Law: I said Padres and Astros for the site.

Mo: Is it a fair criticism of the Cardinals that they seem to do very well in developing mid-level talent from out of nowhere, but have struggled to develop stars the last decade?
Keith Law: Is it? Flaherty would qualify as a star for me. I guess you’re not giving them Gallen, which is fair given where he became an actual star. Who have they had prior to Carlson/Gorman and the next wave who should have become a star, though? They had the 2017 draft where they had no picks till the third round. Prior to 2015 they had a lot of reach picks and have always drafted late in the first round anyway. I see a lot of value produced in the system overall but not many “he should have been a star but isn’t” guys.
Keith Law: If Carlson and Gorman flop, then the question is different.

Aaron C.: 30 years ago, guys like Todd Van Poppel and Brien Taylor were considered top prospects despite the lack of secondary pitches and an astronomical walk rate, respectively. Was there a singular turning point (a failed prospect, a draft year, an organization?) that opened the door to your predecessors/peers getting smarter?
Keith Law: The advent of the data era. We went from teams ignoring even basic performance data in the 1990s and prior to now teams hunting for tiny advantages in more granular data, finding a lot of hidden value but sometimes missing the forest for the trees.
Keith Law: I’ll take this mode of thinking over the old way, though.

Mo: What kind of slash line do you see from Masyn Winn when he gets to the majors? Will the bat a weapon or will he be a glove-first guy?
Keith Law: The glove will be valuable before the bat is.

Dave: As the only Cubs fan not currently furious with you, what did you see from Owen Cassie at AFL? I promise not to throw a tantrum if the answer isn’t to my liking.
Keith Law: I wish I’d seen more, actually. I liked him in the spring, but didn’t get many swings from him in the AFL.

Adam: Do you see Hunter Brown as a starter (top or bottom of rotation) or bullpen arm long term. Been very impressed so far.
Keith Law: Reliever, due to command.

Zac: Is Kerry Carpenter anything more than a 4th outfielder?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

nelson: every postseason i’m struck by how seemingly fragile a starting rotation is. in your opinion do teams generally do a good job with pitching strategy in the postseason? it’s often so different than what you would see in the regular season. is there anything that could better prepare them for success?
Keith Law: I don’t have a good answer to that.

Michael: Thoughts on the potential of Kodai Sanga?
Keith Law: He’ll probably get paid to be a starter, but I know a lot of folks question whether he can be a starter over here. He’ll be on my free agent rankings when they run next month, but isn’t in the top tier of guys.

Mason: So when do we cancel the playoffs and annoiunt the LAD rightful champs?
Keith Law: That was such a bizarre column – the first one, at least – and then someone tried to pit me against that writer on twitter, which I am not interested in doing at all.
Keith Law: And then other people piggybacked on this stupid idea. I think the Dodgers were the best team in baseball in 2022. The best team doesn’t always win – not in the playoffs, not in a series, not in any particular game.

James: Do padres have a legit shot to win it all ??
Keith Law: Don’t all four teams still in the playoffs have a legit shot? Once you’re in, you have a shot.

Jason: I got my (senior) parents Everdell last year and they play it daily, often four times or more in a day. Any suggestions that could follow the style of game but with a new/different play style? They love the fact that there’s so many ways to play.
Keith Law: That’s great to hear. Wingspan has a good bit of that too – you can win lots of ways, and often your best strategy is based on your starting cards, requiring you to play differently each time – and I think Lost Ruins of Arnak has some too, although that game is about twice as long as Everdell (2-player Everdell can be 35-40 minutes).
Keith Law: Raiders of the North Sea might fit too.

Aaron: First you criticize the Cubs for getting overly cute in the draft and taking a pitcher in a top-heavy hitting class. Then you trash an UDFA with a short track record of success. Why do you hate us so???
Keith Law: Heh. To be fair, I didn’t trash Mervis. I explained what I saw, which is consistent with the data from his time in the high minors AND with what other scouts who’ve seen him told me. I think he has some big league value.

JT: How ridiculous is the count the rings means of ranking individual players?
Keith Law: Doesn’t Clay Bellinger have three rings? So he’s miles better than Ernie Banks, right?

Chris: Do you think Carlos Correa would stay healthier at 2b? And do you think he’d be a good 2b or would he be better at 3b? Asking as a mariners fan whose president said yesterday they are looking to sign a SS who wants to move to 2b
Keith Law: I’d try third base if I wanted to move him. Second base isn’t necessarily a better position for staying healthy – the double play is always more hazardous for a 2b than a SS.

grobaba: How often do you buy frozen vegetables?
Keith Law: We always keep a supply in the freezer. Peas are the #1 choice, but we usually have that, corn, broccoli, one or two other things.

JT: Is there any chance that the Truss produce fail signifies a potential end to reckless austerity programs and small government?
Keith Law: Seems unlikely, no? But I don’t know British politics well at all.

Appa Yip Yip: What would you do with the Jays catcher situation? I’ve seen people floating the idea of playing Moreno at 3rd and the outfield but that seems like a poor use of resources.
Keith Law: I wouldn’t move Moreno. Defense is a huge part of his value. They could try to mix and match him & Kirk this year, and then trade one for something else they need.

Steve: Can Gorman hit enough for 2b or is he a DH going forward?
Keith Law: Oh his power will play anywhere. Are you asking if he can handle 2B defensively? I always thought he would.

Justin: Hi Keith. The Pirates currently have some pieces in place and coming soon like Cruz, Hayes, Reynolds, Bae (f*** him, but just reality that he’s here and decent at baseball), Endy Rodriguez, Henry Davis, and some decent pitching. Their payroll projects around $45 million next yr. Do you think the better path would be to do something like trying to catch lightning in a bottle by getting payroll to $90 mil with additions like Jose Abreu and a few decent SP, or to just tank again with the cheap team they have?
Keith Law: If the owner were willing to spend – stop laughing – I’d go more for up the middle than an older corner bat like Abreu. You probably want to be more risk-averse in free agency, and more risk-loving in amateur player acquisition.
Keith Law: And yeah, some innings guys might help.

Chaz R: Verlander will likely opt out of his contract and become a FA. Should Astros resign him? If so what do you think the contract would look like ?
Keith Law: Yes, any contender should be interested, and given what he’s said about chasing wins milestones they’d remain a good fit.

Chris: Is Jake McCarthy real player? And who from the outfield mix is the odd guy out in Arizona? I know all players won’t develop and it’s not a surplus but who gets the chances?
Keith Law: Yes, he’s legit, and I wonder if Alek Thomas ends up elsewhere.

Ana: Regarding your claim that the sex binary is a myth, how is that true? Are you using “sex” to define something other than gametes? Every mammal is the product of *two* parents, one providing a small mobile gamete (sperm) and one providing a large stationary gamete (egg), and nobody produces both. This is fundamental science and the basis of complex evolution, which requires heritable traits that get passed down from *two* parents to their offspring. Two parents, two gametes = sex is binary. Any attempt to complicate beyond these facts is no longer an attempt to define “sex” but rather something else entirely. It’s a semantic game.
Keith Law: That’s just wrong. Biological sex is determined by chromosomes, not gametes, and there are more than just the two most common combinations (XX and XY). (Ana and Dave are the same user.)

Jim: Keith, what are your thoughts on the draft lottery in place for 2023? On the one hand, it should somewhat lessen the urge to tank (with only a 16.5% chance of the worst team getting the top pick). On the other hand, with it being instituted late in the off-season (well, in the middle of what should have been ST), does it unduly punish teams that may have planned the season under the old rules?
Keith Law: It seems like it has altered teams’ behavior, so I’m a fan.

JR: What has been the most disappointing adaptation of a beloved book into movie/TV show for you? For me, it’s Pachinko (which I believe you’ve read) for two reasons: 1) they tried to tell all facets of the story at same time by sharing a little bit of each era each episode; and 2) instead of using the book story as season one, they went it it with the idea it would be a 3-4 season story, so added a ton of extra details/characters/back stories (which I get you have to do in TV), but overall a huge disappointment to me – and I loved the book.
Keith Law: American Gods. Book is amazing. I never bothered with season 2 after the disappointing first season.

Henry: The NBA has established a great model by canceling all games on Election Day, and encouraging voting. MLB has done nothing, and their equity marketing is abysmal. What’s it going to take for MLB to catch up?
Keith Law: The players. The NBA and even the NFL are ahead because the players pushed it. In MLB, that’s not a thing. I’d guess a nontrivial minority of MLB players believe in the Big Lie.

Mike Trout: Should the Mets prioritize Nimmo? Of all their free agents he seems most likely to live up to his next contract.
Keith Law: Does he? Two full healthy seasons as a big leaguer. I’d be concerned about durability.

Bob: Is Endy Rodriguez a regular or is there more ceiling? Seems to be some question about his power. What days KLaw?
Keith Law: At least a solid regular.

Guest: In your estimation, what went wrong in the development of Corey Ray? I thought he was a near “can’t miss” prospect
Keith Law: Great question and I don’t have a simple answer. I do think it’s telling, and was probably a sign, that someone with his speed and athleticism couldn’t handle centerfield and wasn’t even very good in left. I do wonder if another organization might have handled him differently when he struggled right out of the gate, too. Eventually he changed his swing to get to power but at the cost of contact, and at that point he was pretty much finished.

Insert Witty Name Here: Oh been so long since I can get to a live Klawchat. My wife and I have been discussing the whole transgender issue, and we have a question we want a third party to answer: what’s the threshold for a percentage of a population to where their rights become a “priority”. Example: black people represent 16% of our population, I should prioritize their civil rights. Transgender people are about 5%. While I personally believe that everyone should be treated fairly and with respect, is 1 in 20 people enough to where we need to prioritize their struggle? I believe you even said so yourself that it’s really a political strategy to demonize a small minority to rally up the base, is that correct?
Keith Law: What does “prioritize” mean to you here? Black Americans, gay Americans, women, trans people … they’re asking for the same rights as everyone else. Nobody is trying to give trans people more rights than cis people. However, a large movement – which is demonizing a small minority to rally their base, with the complicity of most of the national media – is trying to deny trans people basic rights, and to deny women basic reproductive rights, and so on. I do not lose anything when other people have the same civil rights that I do. I think I gain, because our society is better when we treat others as equals, and extend kindness rather than fear, ignorance, and hate.

TomBruno23: Unless you want to play a best of 75 it is not possible to have a statistically reliable postseason series, whatever that means.
Keith Law: Yep.

JJ: The stat line says that Nick Yorke took a solid step backwards this season. He was viewed as a reach when the Sox took him in the first round in 2020, but he had a big 2021. Is he still the second baseman of the future?
Keith Law: Maybe? I am uncertain after a not-great look in the AFL. He still has a great fucking swing, though.

addoeh: When you went to Alaska, did you do a cruise or just fly into Anchorage? Did you go to Denali?
Keith Law: Only to Sitka for a weekend while I lived in Seattle. I would love to go to Denali and other parts of Alaska. My wife has never been so it’s on our short list of trips we’d like to take.

James: Do you do these chats at a coffee shop ??
Keith Law: I have, but I’m home right now.

Jon: How confident do you still feel about Dylan Carlson? I know you were high on him I’m still hopeful but this year was a tough one for him
Keith Law: I’m still in. The history of my breakout picks (he was one of mine for this year) says he’ll break out in 2023.

Scott (nyc): this may be a dumb question, but catchers seem to be the worst hitters, but shouldn’t seeing so many pitches as a catcher help them recognize spin and break while hitting?
Keith Law: Don’t catchers usually know what’s coming? Aside from the angle being so different, catchers know the pitch type, so they’re not using part of their brains to decipher that, while hitters must.

Ryan: Should we be concerned about Geraldo Perdomo? His average exit velocity is in the second percentile. It seems like he just needs to get physically stronger.
Keith Law: Yes, I share that concern, for that reason.

Kruk93: more surprising Phillies squad – 1993 or 2022?
Keith Law: I think 2022. The 1993 team won the NL East.

Steve: What would be your prescription for the Rays to improve their anemic offense? Seems like they should trade one of Glasnow/McClanahan/Rasmussen/Springs for hitting (the latter two more likely). A healthy Wander will obviously help but even aside from him and a couple others (Arozarena, Y.Diaz) it’s a wasteland, and guys who were supposed to inject some life into it (J.Lowe, Brujan) haven’t looked like they can hit much at the big-league level.
Keith Law: When you’re below the league median in both OBP (barely) and SLG (by a fair amount), you’ll be below the league median in runs per game. So fix one or both of those things. Wander will help. They may have to be patient with Lowe and Brujan. And going out to get a thumper wouldn’t hurt.

Marvin: How aggressive should the Yanks be with Jasson Dominguez next season? He seems to have shown the ability to make adjustments.
Keith Law: They already have been – he finished the year in AA and the AFL as a 19-year-old. He’ll start next year in AA in his age-20 season and I bet he’ll be in AAA by the All-Star Break.

TomBruno23: Aaron C…check out Bobby Witt’s numbers in college and in the minors. Man.
Keith Law: Funny, that’s exactly the name that came to mind. Zero chance he goes in the top ten today (he went third overall).

xxx(yyy): was Evan Carter just a guy who fell through the cracks and would in a “typical” year, or just a result of a COVID year draft?
Keith Law: Scouts saw a lot of swing and miss from him in high school. Texas took him high, so I don’t think he fell through the cracks – we don’t know if a bunch of other teams were waiting in the wings on him, either. I still think he’s too passive at the plate.

Jon: Assuming Cruz moves off SS, is Liover Peguero a guy or a GUY?
Keith Law: More of a guy. Disappointed in multiple looks at him this year. Needs to get stronger, but also his approach was behind where I thought it would be.

Sharlott: Gut on what Judge signs for (whether its the Yankees or not)? Even with the superb season, I just don’t see him getting astronomically more than he turned down because of the age/injury-risk, no?
Keith Law: I think he gets more years than is prudent, but a lower AAV.

James: Do you like Joe Davis broadcasts or do you still watch on mute ?
Keith Law: Joe is fantastic. I’m very happy any time I hear his voice. Unfortunately I have not found the app that lets me hear him and mute Smoltz.

James: Thoughts on gas prices, inflation, direction of economy ? What grade would you give Biden so far ?
Keith Law: I don’t think any President has much if any control over gas prices or inflation, unfortunately. Lot of things a President can affect, but gas is a global commodity, and we are subject to the whims of the market. When the Saudis choose to cut production – and that’s a whole can-open-worms-everywhere situation – we’re largely at their mercy. I also think inflation would be less of a concern if wages were keeping pace, and that is something that the President could do more to help when his party controls Congress.

Tracy: Book question: any recommendations of mysteries? Thanks!
Keith Law: The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz.

JR: Are tommy john surgeries/serious pitching injuries trending down? The past season or two feel like there have been less. Perhaps all the steps organizations are taking to protect arms are working? O
Keith Law: I don’t think TJs are trending down across the whole sport, but I believe that other significant arm injuries are down.

Chris: About how much of your boardgame time is spent replaying tried and true games from your collection vs trying new ones? Back when I first started playing games, we’d get a lot of plays in on a smaller set of titles and really get to explore the different strategies and meta-strategies that develop from repeated plays. It’s much harder to do that now when folks around the table want to try the shiny new thing (and the collection has gotten much bigger as well).
Keith Law: Way more playing new stuff. I would prefer to balance it more with family favorites, but I get so many new games to review and I want to try them all.

Nick: Thanks for the chat. Did you get a chance to see any of the Tigers contingent in AZ? Meadows appeared to make some improvement this year and Keith was off to a good start before the injury.
Keith Law: Meadows wasn’t good for me. Keith also had a rough week.

TomBruno23: Ryan Loutos…not exactly a top prospect although his background as a Wash U pitcher on the doorstep of the majors is cool. Also cool is the scouting analyst who signed him is Julia Prusaczyk. Women in Baseball. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/cardinals-righthander-ryan-lou…
Keith Law: 93-95 with what I thought were two distinct breaking balls. Reliever all the way. He’s something, though.

Michael Bluth: Where does Bryan Reynolds settle in as a player? 3-4 WAR most years? Better than that? And defensive metrics hated him in CF, is that likely to change at all?
Keith Law: I think a 3-4 WAR corner outfielder is about right.

Billy: How does Jordan Lawlar look in the Fall League? AZ Republic quoted a scout who said he looks better than all the rest of the Dbacks players. That’s incredible, since Carroll looks like a stud.
Keith Law: He was in my first AFL notebook, linked at the top of this chat.

JT: “Two parents, two gametes = sex is binary. “

Remind Ana that there aren’t only two eye colours, too, hey? How two gametes mix has to produce an I/O sitch?
Keith Law: It’s a rather weird, new to me transphobic argument. Just leave other people and their bodies alone. It’s not your business.

John: To what extent does WAR take into account how often a player is on the field? I assume it doesn’t. But if I sign a high WAR player with an injury history (thinking Correa), then I really need to make sure I have a relatively strong utility player who can fill the gaps. Viewed through that lens, would it be preferable to sign a player with a slightly lower WAR but who stays on the field more (e.g., Bogaerts, if we ignore that his WAR was slightly higher than Correa’s this year)?
Keith Law: Of course it does – if you hit at the same rate in 80 games vs 160 games, your WAR for the latter total (ceteris paribus) will be a lot higher.

Swinging A’s: Zack Gelof, just a guy or a GUY. Thanks Keith
Keith Law: I’m in. He’s a GUY.

twinkie town: Did you get a chance to see Edouard Julien in Az? If yes, your impression?
Keith Law: All I saw was him taking pitches. My gut reaction was that he is also too passive.

Michael: “When should I prioritize their civil rights?” What a joke. How about not try to willfully hurt anyone?
Keith Law: Do unto others, no? I thought that was in that book the transphobes are so fond of?

Todd: Thoughtrs on Will Warren Yankees? Legit MLB starter?
Keith Law: Reliever. Wrote him up in August.

Mike: Do you think it’s a coincidence that Bader, Donaldson and Torres will all have their contracts run out when Volpe, Peraza and Dominguez should be ready for MLB full time?
Keith Law: I do not think it’s a coincidence, at least around Volpe. I’m pretty sure they were low key betting on him being ready for 2023, recognizing that the free agent market would probably cover them if he wasn’t (and that’s before we knew Correa would get an opt out).

Ollie: Did you have Daulton Varsho becoming an elite defensive outfielder on your 2022 bingo card? Because I sure didn’t! Wow, he’s such a good athlete.
Keith Law: I absolutely, 100% did not have that.

Michael: Hey James, check out how inflation is in other countries compared to the US. Much lower here
Keith Law: The Euro zone is around 10%, almost 200 basis points above ours.

Insert Witty Name Here: By prioritize, I mean changing my usual behavior. For example, is a pronoun really a rights issue? If I mistakenly call a “they” a “him”, that person gets upset. Is 5% of the population a large enough sample size to where I have to be fully cognizant of what language I use? And if so, what’s the threshold for us to have to worry about everyone preferences? 2%? 5%? 10%?
Keith Law: Using proper pronouns is a hardship?

Dave: You’re running the Orioles. Do you spend on a starter and let the young position players play?
Keith Law: Yes, and see above for more on what I would do (and expect them to do).
Keith Law: I don’t think they were actually as good as their record this year, but I also think they will be a flat-out better team next year even without outside help. So give them outside help and they might be a 90+ win team.

Kevin Made: Did you get Cristian Hernández and I mixed up in your earlier response to the Mervis question?

Also thoughts on Jordan Wicks’ new slider? Stuff+ loves it. Does it bump his ceiling up?
Keith Law: I did not confuse the two of you.

TomBruno23: Interesting episode of The Daily this morning about how Republicans are using Inflation, Crime and Immigration as the issues to sway swing voters. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000583…
Keith Law: I saw a ridiculous number of political ads and billboards in Arizona, and the two most common themes for Republican candidates were the border (overblown, but at least they’re a border state) and … fentanyl. It’s like some focus group told campaign managers that fentanyl was a new four-letter word or something. Nobody is putting fentanyl in your kid’s Halloween basket. You can’t get sick just by touching it. All these myths about papers soaked in fentanyl and fentanyl wiped on car doors … they’re hoaxes, and also ridiculous, because what user or dealer is just throwing the stuff away anyway?
Keith Law: You know what I didn’t see mentioned anywhere? The pandemic, which has killed over a million Americans. Or wages.

Mike: Global inflation is the product of 10+ years, and multiple adminstrations, artificially depressing interest rates by increasing the money supply. Inflation at some point was a mathematical certainty – it was just a matter of when and how high.
Keith Law: Good point.

Michael: Hey Keith- I know changing of a manager is usually not worth more than a couple wins. Was there something specific in the change from Girardi to Rob T that made it such a huge impact on the Phils season? Or are you not buying that the change was the reason for the subsequent success. Post hoc ergo propter hoc or no?
Keith Law: I am more inclined to believe such a change mattered when specific players improve after the change in meaningful ways – like Stott.

Appa Yip Yip: If you meet someone named Thomas and they’re like actually I prefer Tom is it a hardship to call them Tom?
Keith Law: Don’t a lot of people get irrationally upset if they’re called ma’am instead of sir or vice versa?

ChrisP: How soon before Neto gets to the big leagues? His skill set seems like he might be a quick mover
Keith Law: I would guess by mid-2024.
Keith Law: Although it’s the Angels, he might be up next week.

Guardians: What do we have in Nolan Jones? Future big leaguer?
Keith Law: Big leaguer, more likely a platoon or bench guy than a regular.

Insert Witty Name Here: You’re not getting the point of my question. We haven’t been using “they/them” for that long as a social issue. Because they only represent 5% of the population, is there another population of people that represent 5% to where we have to change our usual behavior to their preferences because of their feelings? If I call a they/them a him because they look like a typical man, why should I feel bad about that?
Keith Law: The singular they/them has existed for centuries. Just ask people and try to use their pronouns. Also, I’m 1000% certain that the biggest issue for LGBTQ+ folks isn’t pronouns. It’s their right to exist.

TomBruno23: Has Mike Matheny managed his last MLB game?
Keith Law: Nothing personal against the guy, but I think that is for the best.

xxx(yyy): what is your at home coffee routine/process?
Keith Law: I either use a V60 pour-over or make an espresso macchiato (so a double shot with a small amount of foamed milk). I go back and forth. The former has more caffeine because I use about 20% more coffee by weight, so sometimes that’s the determining factor. Today I needed that extra 20%. And then that’s usually my only coffee for the day.

James: Did you watch the Pizza show on Netflix ? With Bianco in it
Keith Law: No but I need to. I tried to go to the original location when I had an unexpected window on Saturday and they had a four-hour wait – it hasn’t been like that in years. Great for them. Less so for me.

Todd: How much of a concern is it that after the November elections, Republicans will have so much control that a plain sight coup is actually possible? Validate elections that only benefit them
Keith Law: Everyone should vote their conscience. I do believe that our democracy’s health is very much at stake this November, though.

Tracy: Too many books, so little time?
Keith Law: Absolutely. I’m about 3 behind in reviews now, too. And I have the Hugo winner (A Desolation Called Peace … what a pretentious title) checked out from the library, and would like to get the Booker winner soon too. Plus I bought seven books at Changing Hands in AZ.
Keith Law: I could live in a very small house if I didn’t have all the books and board games.

Todd: Piggy backig off the above, how far removed from Trump’s mere existence do we have to be to actually get back to pre Trump politics? Or a sense of rationality
Keith Law: Last question for this week … No political movement is going to go away if it works. If voters reject a movement, it’ll die off, and in our case the party in question will swerve to something else. That’s true for either party, for any movement. Trumpism will endure as long as it wins elections. When that stops, the Republican Party will shift to a different set of ideas or policies, or perhaps another candidate. The same would be true for Democrats – it’s not the same thing, but the party abandoned a lot of its principles during the Clinton era for the sake of retaining power. I don’t think this is any big insight.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week’s chat. My next big post for the Athletic will be my free agent rankings, which will run after the World Series ends, maybe the next day depending on the schedule. Thank you as always for reading and for all of your questions!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ October 20, 2022
→ By keith

Athena.

Athena is the newest feature from Romain Gavras, son of Oscar-winning writer and director Costa-Gavras, who has a great eye for action sequences and can put you right on the edge of your seat, starting out this film with a literal and figurative bang. The script has Shakespearean aspirations, but the story doesn’t work well enough to achieve its goals or to match the quality of the action sequences.

Athena is the name of a housing complex in an unnamed French city that is home to a large population of Algerian-French citizens, and as the film opens, we see one of them, a police officer named Abdel (Dali Benssalah, who was in No Time to Die), asking for peace in the wake of the death of his 13-year-old brother Idir. A video has gone viral showing Idir’s beating death at the hands of several men in police uniforms, which serves as the spark in the powder keg of Athena; Abdel has barely finished speaking when the camera spans to the crowd, where we see a young man, Karim (Sami Slimane), lighting a Molotov cocktail that he’ll throw into the police station. This leads to a daylong standoff between Athena residents, led by Karim, who is Idir’s and Abdel’s brother, demanding the police deliver Idir’s killers to them, and the French police, with Abdel caught in the middle, distrusting his superiors and trying to avoid any further harm to his family.

The action sequences in Athena are fantastic, starting with that Molotov cocktail and Karim’s followers invading the police station to try to loot it of weapons. It ends in one of several memorable shots, this one with Karim and company standing or sitting at the edge of one of the roofs in the complex, all steely-eyed and determined and also too young to be doing this. His side will end up taking a police officer hostage, something telegraphed from the very beginning of the film, further ratcheting up the tension amid the uncertainty whether he’s going to survive, or whether any of the brothers – there’s a third, a drug dealer with anger management problems named Moktar – are going to either. It’s a grim view of modern French society and the relationship between the police and the people, although it may be a realistic one.

The script seems more concerned with keeping the tension cranked up to 11 than with advancing the plot in a meaningful way, or saying anything beyond, hey, there’s a lot of anger out there, you know? The film isn’t making an actual statement on police violence, as the police in the film respond to Abdel by saying they believe Idir’s killers were in fact far-right agitators wearing police uniforms to try to light the match and usher in some kind of race war; the uncertainty around that is enough to muddle the narrative even as it also casts Abdel’s choices in a different light.

The brothers are all Muslims, as are most of the residents of Athena, but the film does next to nothing with this information. This feels like a huge omission – the rights of Muslims in France remains a contentious issue, on top of decades of discrimination against Algerians, and Athena just ignores it. The police shown in the film are at least somewhat diverse, with Black and white officers, and of course Abdel as a Muslim officer, which could be fodder for multiple subthemes, but the movie can barely handle Abdel’s dual role as a cop and an Algerian resident of the Athena complex, with no energy left for anything else.

Even as an action movie, with plenty to recommend it on that score, Athena feels a bit like empty calories because it can’t stick the landing at all, choosing a slam-bang finish over a meaningful or even a sensible one. It’s just my inference, but I certainly thought the way the film ends indicated pretensions towards Shakespearean tragedy, but in this case, the tragic deaths are just not earned, not one of them. It just ends up aggravating you because you can’t help but feel like all that buildup was for nothing. It’s 80 minutes of a sugar rush and 20 minutes of insulin shock. For a film that starts with a ton of promise, and features some incredible cinematography and memorable shots, it ends in a disappointing fizzle.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 movies, action films, disappointments, french films, movies

→ October 10, 2022
→ By keith

Behold the Man.

Michael Moorcock has a huge bibliography of fantasy, science fiction, and some literary fiction, while also writing lyrics and even singing on a couple of tracks for bands like Hawkwind and Blue Öyster Cult, and I’d never heard of him until I came across one of his books in the London bookstore Hatchard’s in August. Moorcock won the Nebula Award for Best Novella for Behold the Man, which plays with a small but interesting conceit: A time traveler goes back to the time of Jesus, only to find that the ostensible Messiah isn’t, and that John the Baptist and his followers think the time traveler might be the promised savior.

Karl Glogauer is a man adrift in his world in the early 1970s, dabbling in studying philosophy, engaging in and sabotaging various romantic relationships, never finding an actual job or calling, or anything that might anchor him in society. He ends up falling in with a mad scientist who claims to have developed a time machine, which we know actually worked – once – because Karl crash-landed in AD 28 in the device, which was damaged badly enough that there’s no hope of a return trip. Because he arrived in a strange box in a flash of light, the people who saw him think he must be supernatural, and of course word spreads that someone who might be the Adonai.

You can sort of see where the book is going early on, even though Jesus doesn’t actually appear until past the halfway point, but in this case the plot isn’t the point. I’m sure some readers would find it sacrilegious, but this is more a character study than an attack on religion. Karl is a man without a purpose, with multiple neuroses, even told by at least one of his girlfriends that he has a messiah complex. Moorcock intertwines the 1970s narrative with the Nazarene one, so you can see the character developing as you watch his reactions to the Jews of Christ’s era trying to ascertain if he is the Chosen One – and then trying to convince him that he is. Karl goes from trying to dissuade John the Baptist and other followers that he’s anyone special to becoming a peregrinator to taking deliberate steps to fulfill the events of the Bible, not out of faith or obligation, but because it gives him a sense of purpose.

Whether this novella works for you will depend on what you think of Karl, and perhaps how much you know of either the Gospels or the works of Carl Jung. I know a bit about the former but very little of the latter, other than that he was influential early in the days of psychiatry and believed in a lot of stuff we know now as woo. The novella does subvert the hero’s journey in multiple ways, from the way that Karl knows exactly what he has to do, since it’s already been written, to the fact that he’s deceiving everybody he meets, either because he’s a narcissist, or because he believes he’s doing the right thing by fulfilling the Scriptures.

Moorcock’s prose style is very easy to read, even with the frequent time-shifting and differences in dialogue styles between the two settings, and the author doesn’t overburden the prose with background information, such as more about Jung’s beliefs. There’s a somewhat disjointed passage about Karl having a fling with an older man, which I think makes the mistake of the time period of conflating homosexuality with a clear case of abuse, that hasn’t aged well. Beyond that, it was more than good enough for me to look into more of Moorcock’s oeuvre.

Next up: Still reading Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: nebula award, novellas, science fiction

→ October 9, 2022
→ By keith

Wired for Love.

Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo spent her early career researching the neuroscience of love, even as she privately doubted that she’d ever find it in her personal life. Then she did, in a whirlwind romance with Dr. John Cacioppo, an esteemed researcher on the effects of loneliness who happened to be 20 years her senior. They married inside of a year, and spent almost seven years together before a rare salivary cancer took his life in 2018. Her new book Wired for Love: a Neuroscientist’s Journey Through Romance, Loss and the Essence of Human Connection is part memoir, part popular science tome, a brief but engaging look at the subject of her research, interspersed with the story of her life with John.

The Cacioppos’ story together is bittersweet, wonderful at first until it turns tragic, even more than you might expect from a marriage of two people separated by over twenty years. John even warns her before they marry that they’re not likely to have that many years together, and he worries about ‘leaving’ her too soon, but that can hardly prepare them for what’s about to befall them. It would seem like the plot of a Nicholas Sparks novel if it weren’t someone’s actual life: Their areas of research were already similar, and they met and fell in love despite the huge age gap and the fact that they lived on different continents, after which they published several joint papers in a field that needed more attention, only to have him die of a rare, aggressive cancer before he turned 70.

The real interest in the book is her work on the neuroscience of love, and if anything, I wish there were more of it. Some of the content revolves around how little interest there was in the topic when she began her academic career, with almost no research on the subject, and substantial institutional and individual objections to her attempts to undertake this research. (I’m sure much of it was worse because she was a young woman trying to research this, which I’m sure elicited eyerolls from the men who ran the neurology departments and IRBs who had to support and approve those proposals.)

Eventually, she did get published, and her research came to more public notice, earning her the moniker “Dr. Love,” which I couldn’t read without hearing Paul Stanley’s voice. Her published papers include works on the “toxic effects of perceived social isolation,” an fMRI analysis on the interactions in the brain between sexual desire and love, and multiple papers on the neurology of loneliness that she co-authored with her husband. It’s important work that has helped highlight the large health cost of loneliness, or perceived loneliness, which others, including current Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, have identified as an “epidemic” with large medical and social costs.

Wired for Love only scratches the surface of Cacioppo’s work, to the detriment of the book; it’s not a book about loneliness or the neuroscience of love, per se, but it could have used more in the science half to balance out the tragic romance story of her personal life. It’s even more powerful knowing that her story starts and ends with her being alone, which could have led to some discussion of the neuroscience of grieving, or how to cope with the loneliness after the death of a loved one. The half of the book about her whirlwind romance and too-brief marriage with John Cacioppo was beautiful, but it didn’t educate readers as much as it could have given her body of work as a researcher and the importance of the subject. I was left wanting a good bit more on the science side.

Next up: I’m three books down the road already, but right now I’m reading Hervé Le Tellier’s novel The Anomaly, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 2020.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: history of science, memoirs, neurology, non-fiction, science

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