I published two things on Friday last week and couldn’t get a Friday recap together then, but I have one now. We’ll cover a few things from last week that caught my eye but mostly this week.
Video and podcasts hopefully demarcated as such. Items behind a paywall marked with ($).
Work I Produced:
The cost of the Vikings win over their division rivals ($) and how it provides the pain of the familiar for Vikings fans.
I also reached out to a number of experts to evaluate Josh Dobbs ($).
Podcast: I interviewed Charles McDonald on the Norse Code Podcast to preview the Atlanta Falcons game
Podcast/Video: I was on the Minnesota Football Party to discuss Josh Dobbs and Jaren Hall
Work I Liked (Sports):
I really liked this piece from Bob McGinn at Go Long on Trent Williams ($). McGinn and Tyler Dunne specialize in longform original football journalism that produces stellar work like this fairly regularly.
This piece on how DraftKings has taken over the sports gambling market from Front Office Sports caught my eye, too.
A little bit has changed since this piece was published, but Ari Wasserman taking Iowa to task for nepotism ($) was an incredible read.
Podcast: Brandon Thorns’ 2023 Midseason Offensive Line All-Pro Team with guest Andrew Whitworth.
Work I Liked (Non-Sports, Non-Middle East):
There was a dust-up in September after the New Yorker published a piece on Hasan Minhaj, alleging mistruths and misrepresentation. I didn’t pay it too much mind because Minhaj is not really in my sphere of consumed entertainment. But I did read through it and so I was interested when he released a 21-minute response on YouTube. For the most part he did well, but I think he didn’t capture a lot of journalists because he didn’t identify how he meant to respond to the piece. Slate, for example, was unconvinced. To me, I think Minhaj was responding to the tone and framing of the piece, where facts were used by the New Yorker in ways to characterize Minhaj in inaccurate and unfair ways, which is what his response does — providing context for the truths and justifications for the mistruths (with the New Yorker ignoring the common practice of comedians often lying about specifics in stand-up specials to communicate broader truths). It is what it is, I suppose.
Podcast: How Canada Became a Nazi Haven
Ari Drennen of Media Matters launched a new Substack that provides quick answers to common questions asked of trans people or common misconceptions about trans people. Her first post, “Is Being Trans a Mental Illness” is up.
My friend runs a Jeopardy Substack, which has recently restarted following the resolution of the writer’s strike. Here’s her piece ($) on the time Brad Rutter won the 2001 Tournament of Champions and when Ken Jennings’ record-breaking win was pre-empted by an election.
Political historian Kevin Kruse has a lot of context for newly elected GOP speaker Mike Johnson, including the kind of history Johnson reads and how it informs his philosophy.
Erin Reed talks about how anti-trans documentaries operate and how they often trick trans people and pro-trans activists to appear in those documentaries.
Video: Innuendo Studios’ latest video on the Alt-Right Playbook is on another tactic used by online right-wingers, this time it’s begging. It’s two minutes, so after that I recommend all the other videos.
Video: CCK Philosophy released a new video as well on the weird online discourse on what types of workers get to be called proletarian.
Video: Wendover Productions went over deep-sea diving submersibles and how they survive.
Video: The economics of “free stuff” — it’s good!
Video: Tech CEOs are bad, but not just the ones you know about.
Work I Liked (Non-Sports, Middle East):
America Loves Its War Criminals, a piece by Karim Zidan on honoring George W. Bush while another conflict flares up in the Middle East.
From Saree Makdisi on attempting to humanize Palestinians after seven decades of misrepresentation, No Human Being Can Exist. This to me is a must-read.
This piece on the Hill examining the differences in coverage when Israeli newspaper Haaretz says something and Harvard students say the same thing.
This political history of the Israeli cabinet from Ettingermentum doesn’t pull any punches and is well worth the read. It’s excoriating.