new hampshire

Stick to baseball, 11/4/23.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents this offseason went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic, and we’re updating it as options and other news (e.g., Clayton Kershaw’s shoulder surgery) affects the list, since it ran the day after the World Series ended. I’ll be breaking down any major signings where a player changes teams as well as any significant trades this offseason.

After a four-month hiatus, I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter today, with some scattered thoughts on this World Series as well as a more thorough rundown of things I wrote in October.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This Atlantic column by Simon Sebag Montefiore on the decolonization narrative around Gaza and Israel has been shared, critiqued, attacked, and so on more than anything else I’ve seen on the conflict. I don’t think it’s perfect, and I don’t agree with every point the author makes, but it is thoughtful and does make some very good points. The twenty minutes it took me to read it was time well spent, and I can’t say that about many things I read in general, certainly not on a topic as fraught as this one. Adam Serwer, also in the Atlantic, wrote a shorter piece arguing that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. By the way, the staid Financial Times’ editorial board called for a humanitarian cease-fire this week.
This harassment case at UC Berkeley is absolutely bonkers, yet there are students protesting in favor of the professor who harassed a colleague so extensively that she’s been banned from campus – apparently because she’s a person of color and her victim is not?
The Verge’s Amanda Chicago Lewis does a deep dive on “the people who ruined the internet,” search engine optimization (SEO) consultants, asking if they ruined search or if search is even ruined at all.
When LibsofTikTok, the anti-LGBTQ+ Twitter account run by former realtor Chaya Raichik, tweets about a hospital, a school, a library, or a private individual, threats of violence follow. USA Today built off research from the liberal group Media Matters to find over two dozen incidents where bomb or death threats followed a LibsofTikTok tweet. She’s particularly targeting public schools, with USA Today identifying at least twelve incidents where a school received threats after she tweeted about it.
The New York Times has the story of a French case where a 15-year-old girl falsely accused a 17-year-old boy, the son of Moroccan immigrants, of raping her, only to recant 23 years later. This very humanist retelling looks at the toll the false accusation took on Farid El Haïry’s life even though he only spent a year or so in prison, and how difficult it still is for him to move on.
JAMA has yet another study showing that masks work in limiting the spread of SARS-CoV-2. I do still wear one when traveling, at least, since it’s the one time I’m in proximity to a lot of strangers. Very few others do, even on airplanes.
There’s a rising trend of hidden MLMs on TikTok, pushed by self-styled ‘experts’ selling detoxification products for kids. Just a reminder that for almost every human, the liver handles detox responsibilities. You don’t need anything else.
Increased belief in false health information is driving vaccine acceptance down. Looking forward to the return of preventable childhood diseases!
STIs are on the rise as states found out they’re not getting the last two years’ worth of a $1 billion federal program to fight these infections as the program was cut during the debt ceiling deal.
A new preprint (meaning it’s not peer-reviewed yet) available on the SocArXiv server argues that merely platforming extreme right-wing actors normalizes their viewpoints even in the face of critical interviewing or coverage. In other words, sunshine may not always be the best disinfectant.
Related: Stew Peters, who hosts a program on Rumble and has a sizable following on Twitter, called for shooting Catholic Charities workers who help would-be immigrants to the United States. Peters has had some prominent figures as guests on his show, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Arizona Republicans Kari Lake, Andy Biggs, and Paul Gosar.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams is now under investigation for possible illegal campaign donations from the Turkish government.
Mayor Adams and new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have something in common – both believe, and say, that they were put in their positions by God. God is, as the article says, unavailable for comment.
Several House Republicans introduced a bill to expel Palestinians from the United States, because it’s 1933.
WIRED covers some myths and truths about smartphone batteries.
Littleton, New Hampshire, is considering banning public art because some folks didn’t like a diversity mural that was partly organized by a local Pride group. One of the town’s three council members makes no bones about bringing her religion into her government job, saying that the Bible says that “homosexuality is an abomination.”
Speaking of bans, Republicans are trying to Newspeak their way out of their abortion-banning policies – the word “ban” appears at least six times in relation to abortion in the Republican Party platform – by pushing back on the use of the word “ban” at all. They’re testing this out in Virginia, which has legislative elections on Tuesday, and if they succeed there, they’ll roll this out nationwide for next November.
A lawsuit in Texas, filed there by an anti-abortion activist to try to get the most favorable court possible, could bankrupt Planned Parenthood by making specious claims that the nonprofit needs to return reimbursements to Medicaid.
An Alabama mayor and pastor killed himself after he was outed as LGBTQ+. A right-wing news site posted photos of F.L. “Bubba” Copeland in women’s clothing and claimed he referred to himself as a trans woman.
HBO CEO Corey Bloys used sockpuppet and burner accounts to try to troll and deride critics of the channel’s programming or of him personally.
There’s a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe caused by a lack of access to clean water.
The BBC examines the dark side of touch-screen tipping, and some of the psychology involved in why we tip more on these platforms.
Over at Field of Schemes, Neil deMause exposes how Jackson County, Missouri, might actually give the Royals over $6 billion in funding for a new stadium the team doesn’t need.
I linked a few weeks ago to the dubious reason that Target was giving for the closure of some Seattle stores, citing rising crime. Popular.info found data showing those stores were affected less by crime than those in surrounding areas. Do not just take corporations’ words as gospel.
The wonderful, quirky Weckerly’s Ice Cream in Fishtown, Philadelphia, is closing in December.
Here’s a nice palate cleanser: GQ interviewed Danny DeVito.

Stick to baseball, 11/17/18.

My one piece for ESPN+ subscribers this week looked at some major names on the trade market this offseason. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

I appeared on the Pros and Prose podcast to talk about Smart Baseball and other topics related to the book and reading/writing in general.

I’m back to sending out my free email newsletter every week to ten days or so, as the spirits move me. The spirits usually include rum, of course.

And now, the links…

The Guardian long read looks at the new backlash against plastics, notably against the use and creation of plastic microbeads, which have quickly become pervasive in our environment.
Bloomberg investigates how 7-Eleven is using ICE raids to battle its own franchisees, with lawsuits in both directions, all in the wake of the guilty plea of a Long Island franchisee in 2013 to wire fraud, harboring illegal immigrants, and stealing parts of their wages.
Baltimore County used something called “exceptional clearance” to mark a statutory rape case as successfully closed despite failing to even charge the 29-year-old assailant, who went on to rape another underaged girl in Wisconsin. The practice is common across police departments nationwide.
The Cut has the strange story of “The Watcher,” a stalker who hounded a family out of a million-dollar New Jersey house by writing threatening letters. The writer hasn’t been caught, while some neighbors indulged in conspiracy theories that the victims wrote the letters themselves.
Kevin Alexander writes about the effect best-of lists can have on small restaurants after the burger joint he wrote was the best in the United States closed just five months after the list went up.
Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale has made it his mission to document all of the lies President Trump tells, amounting to thousands just since the vulgar talking yam took office. Dale writes in the Washington Post that fact-checking these lies is easy, since Trump tells the same lies over and over, and uses the same bad rhetorical devices when telling them. Dale also calls out U.S. news outlets for still falling for the same shit over and over again.
The terms of the subsidies Amazon will receive for its two new headquarters locations are out, and they’re quite generous given how profitable the company is. What I have not seen yet is an analysis of whether, say, New York City would be better off if they took the $1 billion in subsidies they’re giving amazon and plowed it into a less exciting investment like upgrading its subway system. Meanwhile, NYC gave amazon land that would have gone to affordable housing instead.
An L.A. musician concocted an elaborate scheme to schedule a European tour for his barely-real band, posing as a promoter, buying Facebook followers, and editing together concert footage to make it appear that his band was playing to big, raucous crowds.
A 19-year-old woman won election to the New Hampshire legislature this month, two years after an old, white, male legislator mocked her efforts to raise the minimum age for marriage in the state (which, I must add, Republicans keep blocking).
A 31-year-old speech therapist got so mad watching Betsy DeVos bumble through her confirmation hearings that she ran for the Superintendent of Schools job in Arizona as a Democrat – and won. She replaces Dingbat Diane Douglas, who wanted to introduce creationism into the public school science curriculum, and becomes the first Democrat in this job in over 25 years.
This month’s Blue Wave in the Midwest could mean a 2007 agreement for midwestern states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions gets a new lease on life.
Former naturopath Britt Hermes, who realized that naturopathy was bunk and blogs about bogus treatments in that field, won this year’s John Maddox Prize, given annually to one or two people for their efforts in standing up for science in the public sphere. She shared it with a researcher who documented the effects climate change and ocean acidification are having on coral reefs.
A new study found that eating less protein may improve the bacterial population of your gut, although the researchers caution that it’s just a single study and needs further confirmation. That said, most of us consume more protein than our body needs, and growing enough animal protein to feed the U.S. has deleterious effects on the environment.
The EPA refuses to enact a proposed ban on a dangerous paint remover that has killed more than 50 people over the last 40 years, but retailers are voluntarily choosing not to carry these products.
The BBC podcast The Inquiry asked how we messed up antibiotics as we head into a post-antibiotic future.
The Polish legislature rejected a “citizens’ bill” that would have abolished rules requiring schoolchildren to be vaccinated against infectious diseases, a bill that would have led to the deaths of hundreds of Polish kids had it passed. Warsaw is suffering from a measles outbreak due to foolish parents who skipped the MMR vaccine. Of course, major autism sites hailed the bill when it was introduced, despite mountains of studies showing no link between vaccines and autism.
Peter Hotez, author of the new book Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, looks at the map of U.S. counties with the most kindergarteners who skipped vaccinations. The maps of states and counties he shows are interesting, but the county map tracks population a little too well – highlighted counties include the third, fourth, thirteenth, and fifteenth-most populous in the U.S.
Vice-President Mike Pence stood up for Burma’s Rohingya minority, condemning State Counsellor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to stop or oppose ethnic cleansing efforts by the military government against the Muslim minority.
MLB is butting heads with regional sports networks over the rights and payments around in-market streaming of live games, potentially bad news for baseball fans who just want to watch their home teams’ games and are willing to pay for that right.
Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods spoke to a Taiwan blog about the Taipei food scene.
Someone used fake social media accounts to give the impression of fan support for the Ottawa Senators in the wake of a controversy around players who were filmed mocking the team and its coach.
Tasty Minstrel games has a Kickstarter up for a reissue of Luna, a Stefan Feld game from 2010, in a new “deluxified” edition.
There’s also a Kickstarter for a new game based on the animated series Oddbods, aimed at kids 7 and up.
Finally, the tweet of the week is probably not a true story, but I want it to be:

OH MY GOD ?? pic.twitter.com/CHh24Xy13A

— Daniel Pryor ? (@DanielPryorr) November 16, 2018

Stick to baseball, 11/4/23.

Stick to baseball, 11/17/18.

Tags

Archives