Pretty Good Links — January 2023

Your monthly roundup of good stuff from around the web

In case you missed the unofficial, first edition of PGL, the last post of every month here is a set of interesting things to read. Whether through their public accounts, emails, or direct messages, friends will often share things they find funny, compelling, educational — writing worth reading, for any number of reasons. For those of us reducing use of other social networks, Hopefully this can serve as a repository for items that you might have discovered in one of those places in the past.

It’s been a minute since the last set of Pretty Good Links, so I’ve collected quite a backlog of articles. But I’m always on the lookout for items for next month, so feel free to leave anything of interest in the comments, or to drop me a line directly if there’s something you’d like to share with everyone for next month, be it your own work or just something you think folks should read.

Recommended Newsletter

There are few topics more pressing than our collective failure (so far) to meaningfully address climate change. And there are few places on the web that tackle the many reasons for that better or more directly than Emily Atkins’ Heated newsletter, which I have subscribed to since its inception.

Other Links

Given the lag, some of these links are from December (or even earlier), but I felt all were worth sharing in their own right. And don’t worry about whether you have the time to read all of these. This story, from NPR, shows that even the people responsible for keeping time understand that it’s all just a construct.

If you’ve found yourself surprised by how publicly Elon Musk has floundered at the helm of Twitter, it’s likely because you haven’t been exposed to just how much his many investments rely on hype over substance for their financing. This old, but very funny (and prescient) essay from The Baffler tackles another one of his unfulfilled promises.

Back in 2019, I interviewed Dr. Meredith Wills about her research into baseball’s home run explosion that year. She has continued her work, and recently helped Bradford William Davis with his own investigation into MLB’s use of different baseballs this year. The headlines in the aftermath of this story focused on Aaron Judge’s pursuit of the American League home run record, but don’t sleep on the intimidation tactics allegedly used against players to keep them from participating in the research.

Have you ever heard of the Carrington Event? In 1859, there was a solar surge so strong you could see the aurora borealis in the Caribbean, an event that could well cripple our global communications systems if it happened again today. A good reminder of how much we truly don’t know or have any control over.

In more serious, pressing news, this Project on Government Oversight report reveals that hundreds of Oath Keepers — a far-right militia group — are current or former members of the Department of Homeland Security. That’s a very grave, often swept-aside component of our growing political divide.

Also from NPR, a great look at how power companies are creating “news” sites to attack critics, highlighting our growing national crises of both local news deterioration and news literacy.

The Guardian published a scathing report on how carbon offsets are, as many environmental advocates have said for years, basically worthless.

And despite my many issues with The New York Times, I would be remiss not to draw your attention to this truly excellent, painstaking use of multimedia journalism, which details how and why Russia has largely floundered in what it expected to be a simple and successful invasion of Ukraine.

My Links

If you’re not a Baseball Prospectus subscriber, and therefore were paywalled from reading it the first time around, my essay on baseball and crypto was picked for the 2022 Best of BP. That means you can read it for free right here and, while you’re there, check out the rest of the Best of entries.

That essay included this warning about the blind optimism around regional sports networks (RSNs), a business model I identified as a bubble years ago, but which didn’t start to fully burst until this week:

Speaking of BP, the Annual — the print backbone of the operation — is now available for purchase. It includes analysis and essays for each team, including mine on the Chicago Cubs, on how their status as a legacy team is at risk as they continue to chip away at the pillars that elevated them to that status in the first place. If you’re a baseball fan and don’t have a subscription to BP, now’s a great time to fix that.

I’ve got some other pitches in the works, but things may be a little quiet on this front for a bit as I work on other things (like this newsletter…and my day job). That said, I’m always looking for interesting freelance stories, so if you know of something I should cover, drop me a line. See you all next month.