{"id":6644,"date":"2018-05-20T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T19:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2018-05-20T15:12:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T19:12:05","slug":"stick-to-baseball-5-20-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/20\/stick-to-baseball-5-20-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 5\/20\/18."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was busy this week, including posting <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2wO6QCu\" target=\"_blank\">another first-round mock<\/a> for next month&#8217;s MLB draft (Insider). <\/p>\n<p>For <em>Vulture<\/em>, I <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2GuJdP0\" target=\"_blank\">ranked the 25 best board game apps for mobile devices<\/a>, considering anything available for iOS or Android. Steam-only titles were not eligible.<\/p>\n<p>For <em>Paste<\/em>, I reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/2rLA7sx\" target=\"_blank\">the light deduction\/puzzle game Automata Noir<\/a>, a fun filler title that lets you do a little more than most deduction games where you&#8217;re just trying to guess who&#8217;s the bad guy.<\/p>\n<p>PennLive asked fifty Pennsylvania librarians for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/life\/2018\/05\/best_beach_reads_50_recommenda.html\" target=\"_blank\">their summer beach read recommendations<\/a> and one kind soul recommended my own <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/9780062490223\/?utm_source=Keith+Law&#038;utm_medium=athremail&#038;utm_campaign=Smart+Baseball\" target=\"_blank\">Smart Baseball<\/a><\/em>, now available in paperback.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be appearing at <a href=\"https:\/\/politics-prose.com\/event\/book\/keith-law-smart-baseball-story-behind-old-stats-are-ruining-game-new-ones-are-running-it\" target=\"_blank\">Washington DC&#8217;s Politics &#038; Prose<\/a> on July 14th along with Jay Jaffe to talk baseball &#038; sign our respective books (or I can sign Jay&#8217;s and he can sign mine, whatever you fancy).<\/p>\n<p>And now, the links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One question I posed near the end of <em>Smart Baseball<\/em> and in the new afterword is whether we actually know if Statcast metrics actually predict better performance going forward \u2013 that is, it sounds great that a pitcher limits exit velocity or has a higher spin rate on his fastball, but does it lead to better results? Jonathan Judge looked at MLB&#8217;s x-stats like xwOBA, which are derived from Statcast data and used in much of MLB&#8217;s content, and found that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseballprospectus.com\/news\/article\/40026\/prospectus-feature-siren-song-statcasts-expected-metrics\/\" target=\"_blank\">they don&#8217;t seem to predict future performance well at all<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>This long-ish read from <em>WIRED<\/em> looks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/sam-harris-and-the-myth-of-perfectly-rational-thought\/amp#click=https:\/\/t.co\/YWt5viLAVF\" target=\"_blank\">the myth of purely rational and non-tribalist thinking<\/a> promulgated by Sam Harris, who likes to tell you he&#8217;s not subject to these extremely pervasive, human biases \u2013 but falls prey to them all the time, just as you and I do.<\/li>\n<li>Are SNL cold opens <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/9kgexy\/snl-cold-opens-are-unfunny-elitist-pieces-of-liberal-propaganda\" target=\"_blank\">just hackneyed, unfunny pieces of elitist-liberal propaganda<\/a>? I think that <em>VICE<\/em> piece asks several separate questions, and they don&#8217;t necessarily all have the same answers. I also think the liberal\/conservative dichotomy is kind of dead at the moment; this isn&#8217;t about liberal positions, but opposition to kakistocracy.<\/li>\n<li>A Qatari investor and former government official claims that <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/05\/16\/michael-cohen-qatari-investor-ahmed-al-rumaihi-michael-cohen-solicited-a-million-dollars-from-me\/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Cohen asked for a million-dollar bribe after the 2016 election<\/a> in exchange for information on and potential access to the president-elect. Meanwhile, the Middle East blockade of Qatar is about to enter its twelfth month.<\/li>\n<li>The Basque terrorist group Eta, which waged a nearly five-decade long separatist terror campaign in Spain, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av\/world-europe-43991090\/eta-says-it-has-completely-dismantled\" target=\"_blank\">claims it has completely dismantled<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Cape Town&#8217;s water crisis <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-43989106\" target=\"_blank\">never quite reached Day Zero, but there are still important takeaways<\/a> from the barely-averted catastrophe, including that we can live on just 50 liters of water a day.<\/li>\n<li>E-books were going to kill off physical books; then we heard that dead-tree editions were making a comeback and e-books were fading. <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/1240924\/are-ebooks-dying-or-thriving-the-answer-is-yes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Neither is quite true, as self-published authors are driving strong e-book sales<\/a> that don&#8217;t always show up in industry reporting because Amazon, like Netflix, doesn&#8217;t release data on internal content.<\/li>\n<li>The American Association of University Professors <a href=\"http:\/\/journalstar.com\/news\/local\/education\/political-pressure-at-the-very-heart-of-lecturer-s-dismissal\/article_f2c41c1d-a39b-5f9b-bb8c-e608320f8163.html\" target=\"_blank\">says the University of Nebraska violated a professor&#8217;s rights<\/a> when the school fired her for protesting an alt-right organization&#8217;s event on campus. <\/li>\n<li>An idiot white high school student in Montana is claiming he has a right to wear a Confederate flag shirt (note: isn&#8217;t that &#8216;disrespecting&#8217; it?) to school; <a href=\"http:\/\/missoulian.com\/news\/local\/mcps-lawyer-schools-can-ban-confederate-flags\/article_33860b37-d585-57a6-9392-ff7f61a64bfe.html\" target=\"_blank\">the Missoula County school district says they have a clear right to ban such clothing<\/a> based on court rulings in other states. You couldn&#8217;t wear a swastika shirt to any school without repercussions; this is no different, as the Confederate flag has always been a symbol of slavery.<\/li>\n<li>The Trump Administration is considering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2018\/5\/11\/17319614\/trump-abortion-planned-parenthood-domestic-gag-rule-title-x\" target=\"_blank\">a rule banning some doctors from even <em>discussing<\/em> abortion with some patients<\/a>. The rule would cover doctors who receive Title X federal funds, which go to low-income patients, which in turn would mean providing worse medical care to poor people \u2013 all to satisfy evangelical voters, who make up just a quarter of the American population.<\/li>\n<li>The White House is very mad about all the leaks, so <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/trump-white-house-leakers-leak-about-leaking-dae05b8e-e792-41a7-bb74-c2756b542cd0.html\" target=\"_blank\">Axios talked to some of the leakers about why they leak<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Kickstarters! Paradox Interactive is bringing four popular video game titles to tabletop in partnerships with various board game publishers. The first of them, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/1192053011\/crusader-kings-the-board-game-lead-your-dynasty-to\" target=\"_blank\">Crusader Kings<\/a>, hit Kickstarter yesterday and is already more than fully funded. I played a demo of this on Friday in Stockholm and liked what I saw.<\/li>\n<li>Greenbrier Games&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/mightyboards\/posthuman-saga?ref=492383&#038;token=900efaaa\" target=\"_blank\">Posthuman Saga<\/a> Kickstarter has already quintupled its original goal in just five days.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was busy this week, including posting another first-round mock for next month&#8217;s MLB draft (Insider). For Vulture, I ranked the 25 best board game apps for mobile devices, considering anything available for iOS or Android. Steam-only titles were not eligible. For Paste, I reviewed the light deduction\/puzzle game Automata Noir, a fun filler title [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[582,938,959,190,1010,870,940],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-board-games","tag-books","tag-first-amendment","tag-links","tag-spain","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-the-swamp","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6645,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions\/6645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}