No Idea What the Red Sox Are Doing, but I'll Take It
Hello, again. As terrible as things are in my country right now, the No Kings marches gave me optimism. And then the San Francisco Giants made me extremely happy. LFG.
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Just Following Orders
Murder Is Bad
Rafael Devers to the Giants?!?!?!?!
Denzel Clarke is Incredible
Why Do High School Sports Exist?
You Do Not Need a Truck
A Moment for Some Star Wars FanFic…
Make Things Yourself
Greed Is Terrible
What Comes After Podcasts?
Just Following Orders
When you see the American federal government attempting to wage war on its own cities and sending plainclothes thugs to snatch people off the street, remember that they are able to do this thanks to back office workers who push paper and do logistics work that enables these atrocities. Those folks can dress it up any way they like, cheerfully explain that they have orders which they follow, that it’s totally normal to accept tips from neighbors and business competitors with an axe to grind, and act as if they’re just doing regular government knowledge worker stuff, but in the end, they’re actively contributing to evil.
Murder Is Bad
Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated this weekend, and her husband, Mark, murdered at the same time. State Senator John Hoffmann and his wife, Yvette, were shot at their home, apparently by the same assailant. As of this posting, the latest information is that the suspect was politically motivated, which sure seems like an especially-cautious way of saying the guy targeted these politicians because they’re Democrats.
All that said, it’s wild that for some people, it’s worth repeating that murder is bad. Utah Senator Mike Lee seems to think Hortman’s assassination is an opportunity to mock his enemies by posting an image of the suspect and writing, “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way” and “My guess: He’s not MAGA” [both sic]. There’s a good chance he’s being sincere with his sentiments, but more likely he’s online-poisoned to the point that he can’t actually think or feel anymore. Disgusting and shameful.
Rafael Devers to the Giants?!?!?!?!
Just before I was set to post this, I found out my beloved San Francisco Giants traded with the Boston Red Sox for Rafael Devers. The Giants are, apparently, taking on Devers’s entire salary over the rest of his huge contract, that lasts through 2033, and they’re giving up Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks, prospect James Tibbs III, and another prospect to get the 28-year-old three-time All Star.
My initial reaction is that the Red Sox are out of their minds. The whole point of getting prospects is to perhaps end up with a player as good as Devers! Worse, they signed Devers to a huge deal just a short time ago, which was widely seen as making up for failing to give Mookie Betts a big deal and trading him away, and now they’re trading away another player at the front end of his prime.
And on top of that, the Giants don’t have a particularly deep farm system. James Tibbs III was the organization’s first-round pick last year, and Fangraphs has him as just outside their Top 100 prospects. Just a thought: Did the Red Sox ask the New York Mets if they were interested? Cost wouldn’t be an issue for the Mets, and they have a glut of MLB starting pitching. Unless the Red Sox rate the Giants’ players much more highly than everyone else, I bet you could put together a better deal from the Mets. Would the Tigers pay Devers’s salary? Would the Angels?
Tough shit! None of that matters because the Giants got him! And they probably get to keep Bryce Eldridge, too!
Denzel Clarke is Incredible
If you’re a baseball fan, you’ve probably seen Sacramento Athletics center fielder Denzel Clarke’s ridiculous home run robbery against the Angels. Whether you’ve seen it or not, it’s well worth watching again. As a purely aesthetic experience, it’s a glorious catch.
For its sheer athleticism and audacity, I still rank Victor Robles’s catch in San Francisco (which I saw in person) as the best defensive play of the year, but that Clarke catch is going to live on in highlight compilations for a long time.
Why Do High School Sports Exist?
AB Hernandez is a high school track athlete targeted by President Donald Trump because she is trans. She is talented enough and has worked hard enough to compete at the state championships level, and that simply was too much for some people to deal with, so the president posted on social media about her and the California Interscholastic Federation caved and changed its rules in an attempt to show… well, I’m not sure precisely what its leaders wanted to show other than that they were willing to deny a high schooler’s humanity in order to appease a bigoted politician. Most, if not all, of her competitors at the meet seemed to understand how shitty that is.
There has been an avalanche of takes about what all this means, but one aspect I wish came up more in the discourse is that so many people take for granted that high school track is Very Important in a way that saddens me. For what it’s worth, Hernandez and her mother seem to treat high school athletic competition as primarily about self-improvement and community, but that’s definitely a minority perspective. Fundamentally, I believe high school sports should exist to give opportunities to students to compete and improve themselves, and, pointedly, not so that society can determine champions or schools can build an “athletics program” that self-perpetuates as better athletes gravitate to those schools that win more.
You Do Not Need a Truck
One of my favorite insights about American car culture, that illustrates how aesthetic is far more important to regular car buyers than anything else, is that something like 90 percent-plus of people who buy trucks would be better off with a Toyota Sienna minivan, except that they really like the idea of a truck, and that feel they are more of a “truck person” than a “minivan person”.
I’m sure there’s evidence for trucks being masculine-coded and minivans being feminine-coded, plus any number of other factors, playing into the wide discrepancy in popularity between the two categories of vehicle. However, I would like to lay out in succinct terms how trucks can’t keep up with the usefulness of minivans, and I’ll do it using two recognizable vehicles: the Ford F-150 and the Toyota Sienna.
First, there’s a mountain of evidence that most American full-size truck drivers don’t actually haul anything, but for those who do, I’m sure they start by pointing to the F-150’s 98”x51” truck bed (max size) as a valuable selling point. However, what if I told you that the Toyota Sienna’s maximum cargo bed space was 96”x50”? The seats are designed for easy removal, and in the empty configuration it matches up with the F-150’s cargo space almost perfectly. Moreover, when one is not hauling stuff, one can put seats in the minivan in order to carry passengers comfortably. To be sure, the suspension on the F-150 is probably better-suited for especially heavy loads — like stacks of tile? — and because it’s not enclosed, there are some loads that an F-150 can carry that a Sienna can’t, but those are outlier tasks for non-professionals, and even professionals who use their vehicles for work might find that a Sienna meets their cargo needs perfectly well.
Beyond essentially matching practical cargo capacity, though, the Sienna also obliterates the F-150 in gas mileage. Where the latest F-150 averages about 18 miles per gallon, the Sienna clocks in at about 34 miles per gallon. If you’re a contractor, perhaps you need a truck in order to carry heavy lumber, but if your work requires you to bring lighter supplies and multiple toolboxes, especially over longer distances, you’d be spending a lot more money on gas than necessary. And if you’re not hauling stuff for work, you’ve got a big flat bed for little reason.
Ford knows this! They sell the Ford Transit, which has much more cargo space than either the F-150 or the Sienna, specifically because a good number of people who use their vehicles for such work are interested in a purpose-built vehicle that isn’t designed primarily to signal social affiliation to the detriment of actual performance.
All that’s for the small slice of people who use their vehicles for work. For everyone else, the Sienna wins, hands down. Better gas mileage, more seating, more comfortable seating, easier access through sliding doors, more indoor cargo capacity even with all that seating, shorter length than the smallest F-150 meaning it’s easier to park, and shorter height ensuring it actually fits in most garages all adds up to a better vehicle.
Unless you feel more like a Truck Person for reasons that always seem to be beyond articulation.
Related: If you truly needed a truck for work, would you use a kei truck? Why or why not?
A Moment for Some Star Wars FanFic…
With the end of “Andor,” I renew my call for more Star Wars stories that have little or nothing to do with the Skywalker saga. Even though I bailed on “The Mandalorian” — in large part because keeping up with the lore started feeling like homework — I appreciate how it represented a step away from recycling Star Wars IP.
What I would really love to see is an animated show aimed at teens/adults that dramatizes elements of Wookiees’ first contact with the rest of the galaxy. It could be stylized in any number of ways, but the main thing is that if you commit to no subtitles, it would be an animators’ playground since a good deal of the early action would lay out Wookiee culture and then the next episodes would involve a Wookiee or Wookiees meeting creatures who don’t necessarily speak English.
So, my main pitch: The opening scene is a bunch of Wookiees watching a hologram show of Chewbacca at the medal ceremony from the end of “A New Hope”. One of the youths asks why Chewy didn’t get a medal, and an elder gathers the youth and several others into another room, where they sit and the elder begins telling the story. I’m no expert on what’s been canonically established about Wookiee culture and history so far, but I understand some of it has been touched on in books. That said…
The first episode can establish a thriving and comfortable civilization with a taboo about contacting outsiders. Two young Wookiees go out into a forest alone on a camping trip and come across a downed ship, something they’ve never seen before. Their first instinct is to run back, but they investigate. There, they find another creature working on fixing it. At first, everyone is scared, but eventually they build trust. The young Wookiees return multiple times and become friends with this guy, helping teach him what to eat and sneaking him supplies to repair his ship.
Just when it looks like he’s ready to leave, another ship appears. It has been hunting our new friend, who we’ll eventually discover isn’t just some innocent traveler. They manage to hide the ship and help the friend hide, but the hunters capture one of the Wookiees and fly away with him. The remaining Wookiee impresses upon the friend that they must find the other Wookiee and bring him home, and the friend, after quick consideration, offers the remaining Wookiee the first mate’s seat, leaving immediately, without telling anyone, because the hunters could be back soon.
The broad arc of the series would show how our Wookiee’s choices changed everything for his species, some for the better, some not (the hunters can be representatives of the Czerka Corporation, perhaps), but that the core Wookiee values of loyalty and care for others serve them well in all contexts.
Make Things Yourself
This TechDirt piece, titled “Empowering Users, Not Overlords: Overcoming Digital Helplessness,” is super-easy to understand and well worth your time. The money quote, to my mind, is: “The whole promise of the internet (and, arguably the promise of democracy) was that it was supposed to be about devolving power to the people at the ends of the network, rather than centralized authoritarian control.”
What it all boils down to is that you should make things. Make them yourself. If you’re unable to make a thing that works, learn how. Putting a public page on the web — one that you own and control entirely, is extremely simple.
For my websites, I generally rely on Google tools, which makes things easy to manage. Recently, I stripped them down to a bare bones simplicity — not quite full Brutalist, but close. Functionally, my sites are just lists of links and pages with text. Do they need to be more?
Greed Is Terrible
As illustrated by a classic psych experiment.
What Comes After Podcasts?
“The rise of video podcasts baffles me.” So said a Defector comment on an excellent post about the end of WTF with Marc Maron (a podcast that steadfastly avoided video) that popped back into my brain upon reading a recent Garbage Day newsletter that opined, “It’s also probably worth thinking about what comes after podcasts now. There will be something, it’s just unclear what.”
My prediction: Ultimately, I think the corporatization of podcasts will eventually lead television networks to realize that they can replace their daytime and late-night productions with podcasters (an early harbinger being Pat McAfee), and streamers to realize they can do what Spotify has done and strike exclusive deals with big names. Maybe Pablo Torre gets offered more money than God to exclusively stream on YouTube. Maybe Bomani Jones does The Right Time in exactly the same way as he does it today, but on HBO Max. Maybe Kelly Clarkson dispenses with the audience and the stage and transitions her show entirely into interviews with celebrities speaking into visible studio microphones.
Kids born today will see a production like The Tonight Show as unfathomably decadent production value.
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Thanks for reading, you crazy kids. Let’s do this again, sometime.
(Photo: "Rafael Devers" by Ian D'Andrea. Used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.)