Michael Rosen

2 days ago | culturematters.org.uk | Michael Rosen

Image courtesy of Newcastle Universityby Michael Rosenfor Keir Starmer and his ‘Island of Strangers’I lay in bedhardly able to breathebut there were people to sedate me,pump air into mecalm me down when I thrashed aroundhold my hand and reassure meplay me songs my family sent inturn me over to help my lungsshave me, wash me, feed mecheck my medicationperform the tracheostomypeople on this ‘island of strangers’from China, Jamaica, Brazil, IrelandIndia, USA, Nigeria and Greece.

2 days ago | newhumanist.org.uk | Michael Rosen

Ceasefire, 20th century: a temporary suspension of fighting, usually between two armies One of the peculiarities of wars is that at some point they come to an end. Before a peace agreement is signed, there is usually a ceasefire. As you can see, it’s a compound noun, combining the two major sources of modern English – French and Old English – with “cease” coming from French (and before that, Latin) and “fire” from Old English.

5 days ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Michael Rosen

In the introduction to their 2023 Saberseminar presentation, Scott Powers and Vicente Iglesias hit on a fundamental truth about pitching: The variable that bests predicts the outcome of a pitch is the location where it crosses the plate. For a case study, look no further than this tweet from MLB.com’s David Adler about Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s splitters.

6 days ago | thefederalist.com | Michael Rosen

As luck would have it, I found myself in Amsterdam last November the night a pogrom broke out. My six-hour layover coincided with a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam, after which North African immigrants hunted down and violently assaulted Israeli fans. I was safely at the airport during the worst of the attack, but the jodenjacht, or “Jew hunt,” as its perpetrators gleefully called it, resulted in the brutal beating of dozens of fans and the hospitalization of at least ten.

1 week ago | blogs.fangraphs.com | Michael Rosen

Random relievers can do crazy things in small samples. Who can ever forget Nationals right-hander Justin Miller striking out 57.9% of the hitters he faced across a three-week stretch of 2018? Or Kody Funderburk’s legendary whiff explosion to close out the 2023 Twins season? Guardians reliever Hunter Gaddis is on one of these incendiary strikeout runs, and it’s driving me to madness. Gaddis might not strike you as operating at the same level of random as Miller and Funderburk.