Rates & Barrels - Let's Try to Listen to Each Other

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

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Inside or outside, on stairs, on the road, or your treadmill, climb your way. Join us for an opening ceremony, and then take on your climb with our heart-pumping playlist. Join us on June 13th from coast to coast as we come together to climb, conquer, cure. Register at lls.org slash bigclimb. Join us on June 13th from coast to coast as we come together to climb, conquer, cure. Register at lls.org slash bigclimb. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 100. It is Tuesday, June 2nd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Eno, this is just an unusual time in life right now in America, around the world right like things are just broken all

over the place and i i've run into this this loop where i wake up every day i turn on twitter i read about what happened the night before i read about all sorts of things, and I find myself going from anger to frustration to sadness to feeling powerless. And that's how every day has been starting for several days at this point. Several days at this point. And I think what I'm really looking for at this point is the path forward. I'm looking for that distraction. And it's not there anymore. It's on hold. The distractions that keep us from dealing with these problems, which have been here forever, for years, for decades, for generations.

They're not going away anytime soon. And my coping mechanism, and maybe many people's coping mechanism, is to watch sports and dive into other things in life that simply are not there right now. So I've just really struggled. The times that we spend recording our pods, even when the distraction has been gone, those have been the only moments where I've felt good and normal. And it's been difficult every show for a while to kind of get into the right headspace,

knowing what's happening around us. Yeah, man. I'm hurting a little too. I, you know, I was, I was pretty affected by, um, Ferguson. Um, one of the things that really, uh, hurt me about that was, um, you know, I used to, You know, I used to steal stuff. You know, I used to steal candy, baseball cards. I used to steal stuff. And I know that wasn't necessarily relevant to whether or not, you know, he should have died.

But Michael Brown, whether or not he had actually stolen anything, it's not relevant. That was my personal way in. I could have been that kid.

You know, I could have like rightly somebody could have thought I'd stolen something because I did. I stole stuff. You know what I mean? In fact, one time my aunt turned me in because she's like, where'd you get those cards? I was at the store with you. in because she's like where'd you get those cards i was at the store with you she turned me in and we had a meeting with the cops and the store and they had me write an essay i wrote an essay um and i have to tell you, man, I was like a precocious kid, and it did not teach me a single thing.

Because I wrote that essay in about five minutes. And my cousin was having trouble with it, and I wrote his essay in five minutes. And that was two white kids. You know, that was privilege. And I'm getting some pushback, like, oh, privilege doesn't exist, and, you know, that was privilege. And I'm getting some pushback, like, oh, privilege doesn't exist. And, you know, you know, racism, the state of race relations in America, we were elected a black president, we state of race relations in America are overblown,

racism is overblown. And like a lot of people, I turn to ice cream in these times. Ben and Jerry's. I'm not making this up. Ben and Jerry's has a great one-pager about systemic racism and how it's real. And it's current. And it's stat-based. And it's basically just facts, man. It's facts. And for people that, like, it's hard to see this necessarily, maybe, but, I mean, let me just list off some facts to you, because these facts are as painful to me

as the fact that, like, I skated. I i skated so often i got in trouble in high school and they looked the other way they let me have positions of leadership even though i had been i've been suspended for drinking they uh you know they they literally looked the other way in the dorm in my in my in my dorm when i was when i was obviously stoned as a kid. Because they said, I literally heard teachers say, just keep getting your A's. Which I know is more complicated than just the fact that I'm white or not, but it's part of it.

But these stats, they hit me as hard, man. For every $100 white families earn in america black families earn 57 white people own 90 of the wealth in america black unemployment has been consistently twice that of whites over the past 60 years blacks with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as other graduates um let's see here black kids make up 50 percent of suspensions um how about this if you're driving you're 30 percent more likely to be pulled over if you're black uh let's see uh and then obviously the criminal justice one i these facts i think are are stark but there's been a lot of memes that kind of muddy the water and and and there's a lot of people who say oh no just you know there's back there's more black people committing more crimes but that you can you can you can account for that how about

this when a black person a white person are convicted they're both convicted they both did the crime blacks are 20 more likely to be sentenced to jail and 20 longer sentences so you know when i say like 40 of the prison population is black instead of 13 of the regular population and i say that's a problem then you might say well they're committing more crimes no if they are if they're both convicted a black person is 20 attorneys weren't likely to be sentenced to jail so i mean these are real complaints man and it's it's it's about the police but it's it's about everything it's about the police, but it's about everything. It's about the systemic situation.

And it's being brought to bear because of the coronavirus. Because right now, for example, a hyper-current piece of information is that white unemployment is up, yeah, 14%. Black unemployment is higher, 17%. Black unemployment is higher, 17%. And we're seeing so many people out of work, especially in the service economy, that it's not necessarily true that just unemployment and the stimulus and all this are helping people get by. Some people are not getting by. are helping people get by. Some people are not getting by.

And you throw it together along with yet another image of a white cop with a knee on the neck of a black person. I mean, eight minutes, man. He had his knee on his neck for eight minutes. They knew each other. That cop had a history 17 times. He'd been cited. So I don't know, man. It just, I'm sad about it. And I just wanted to push back on this idea that

like we've solved stuff and everything is a okay right now. I mean, it's obviously not. and everything is a-okay right now I mean it's obviously not and I think that the I think the large percentage social media is kind of a another thing you're talking about waking up to Twitter like we kind of see it's kind of like the bubble we see slanted viewpoints and it's really hard to change your mind when you only see things that fit what you've seen. Early on, here's an episode, here's something that I did change my mind on. Early on,

there was reports of outside agitators. Jacob Frey, I think his name is, the mayor of Minneapolis, said that one night, the first night of riots, whatever, everyone they arrested was from out of town. And I saw that as, in a way, sort of lending legitimacy to all the nonviolent protesters.

So I saw that as an interesting factoid that was like, hey, you know, not all the people who are protesting are doing the violence. But I do know that there is a history of blaming outside agitators for these things and saying, oh, George Soros bust all these people in. They're not real protesters. And I know this has happened on the other side, too. Like, you know, we've blamed Soros and we've blamed, in this place, in this time, we're blaming, to some extent uh white supremacist groups uh for the violence and so um I guess another thing that I've learned over

this is that you know solidarity is key unity is key expressing yourself um as much as some people will call it uh you know uh what's it called um when you're you're signaling virtue signaling yeah yeah as much as that's a hateful term uh and and and it may appear as such what you're doing is you're signaling solidarity um and you're signaling a willingness to listen and the willingness to improve uh improve. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, I think you have to admit what we're seeing right now is not good, that it must be expressing a deeper problem and that we need to work on that deeper problem. That seems to me like a nonpartisan,

you know, sort of fact-based approach to this. So, I don't know. Somebody might be listening to this and shove it all the way with virtue signaling, but I'm just trying to come to terms with my own history within this, our collective history, and see some sort of way forward, which is tough right now. Yeah, a few more statistics that I saw recently. Ben Palmer from The Pitcher List put up a very helpful thread. There was a study from UC Davis, which found that the probability of being black,

UC Davis, which found that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average. There was another stat from, this is analysis from the Washington Post. The only thing that was significant in predicting whether someone shot and killed by police was unarmed was whether or not they were black. This is our reality. We've been living in this reality every day we've been on this planet. And I have not done even what is a tiny part to help make it better. I, in this odd way, I feel like I have not done nearly enough to help make this go away, to help make this better, to be part of the solution. And I really think it is a

common reaction to be outraged, to be mad, to be sad, and to forget. And it has to be different this time. It just has to be. Yeah. I mean, I think it will because there's nothing going on. But, you know, it's, you know, like someone literally yawned at our colleague's piece when I shared it about the racism they'd suffered. It was a white man. Of. That was a white man. Of course it was a white man. But how can someone yawn at this? The anger is tough. There's an obvious first step,

which I've talked about, sort of of communicating i don't think it is necessarily communicating uh with your friends um there's been some you know people have like you know my friend came over on sunday and he's black and he was like i got the email from one of our our our, uh, our collective friends. And, um, I don't know if that's necessarily the right way. Cause what you're doing also is kind of maybe asking your black friend to absolve you, um, of your guilt perhaps, and also putting a strain on your, on your relationship. And, um, I mean, maybe if you can find a way to to open up a conversation but um i think those are uh i'm not sure that that it seems to be like undue burden it's not

your black friends you know he doesn't have to be your like basically be your psychotherapist on this you know no no like not at all not at all i think it's i think it's a little bit more helpful like i think actually i think it actually in this case like a public um expression of solidarity is more helpful because um it kind of puts you out there as a friend to the cause. It, it, uh, communicates to the people that you are communicating to that you are friendly to this cause. And, um, it's a pretty nonviolent and non-intrusive way of being like, Hey, um, I agree with this, uh, that this is a a problem and then the other thing is like actual boots on the ground type stuff so you know minnesotafreedomfund.org

um just helps people uh that are in trouble um uh that have that were probably nonviolent protesters, you know, makes bail payments, um, and, uh, does other, uh, does other organizational stuff. Um, so I think I like the Minnesota Freedom Fund. Um, I also had a thread that, um, I was looking at from Samuel Sinyangwe, who his Twitter handle is S-A-M-S-W-E-Y. And he has a thread about what actually helps, what we can do about police violence in particular. And it's fairly simple. More restrictive state and local policies governing police use of force have worked. Demilitarization has worked. Police union trying to negotiate them in good faith and negotiate more often and put stuff in the contract about force, that works. And then on a higher level, there's predictive policing on the police.

And Rob Arthur has written about this too. It is to some extent true that there are some bad actors within the police force and so predictive policing can basically find people like this guy uh chauvin who had 17 complaints and remove them um from the chance of doing so again um it also it's also true that they spread their ideas around at the police force. So there is some sort of high-tech predictive policing type stuff that can do that. But invest in alternatives to police as crime prevention strategies. For every 10 additional organizations in a city, they reduce the murder rate by 9%. They reduce the violent crime rate by 6%. They reduce property crime rate by 4%. So, you know, there are things that work. Um, and, um, you know, we just have to

kind of get to those things and, and work on them. Um, and not really like turn away in horror at the violence that we see and just label everybody that's protesting. My homeboy Robert Sanchez was out there in Denver, and that looks super calm and nonviolent with thousands and thousands of people. thousands of people. We see one window broken and we hear about that on social media and we hear about that on the news more than these thousands of people that are coming together across all races

and being non-violent. There are some things we can do concretely. And I think what makes it all the more difficult to absorb and navigate is disinformation it's everywhere i mean it's it's a rampant problem in and of itself that is continually shaping the way people see what's happening and interpret what's happening. It's just so dangerous.

And there's really no sign of that ending anytime soon either. Yeah. I mean, there was a, and it's going to get worse too with the election season coming. I mean, there was a, an Antifa account with a bunch of, a bunch of followers that was purported to be a leader of a local Antifa.

A group that turned out to be a white supremacist using it to to urge Antifa followers onto violence. And Twitter, like, had to come out and say this and admit it. I don't know i will say that as backwards as some of the twitter policies and and as as much as they could be maybe abused in the future and as much as um they seem to be dragging their feet on it like you know the fact that there's a fact check thing is kind of interesting i would like to see how that, the fact that there's a fact check thing is kind of interesting. I would like to see how that goes. The fact that they did, that they will, you know, sometimes, I don't know if it, I don't, haven't seen stats on how often they do it and how good they are at doing it,

but the fact that they do sometimes, you know, out these accounts and, and deal with it, it seems a little bit more than what Facebook is doing. And so I guess kudos to Jack. Jack also, the Twitter guy who came out against police violence. And I don't know, it could all just be lip service. It's really hard to know what's true. And that's another thing that I think, you know, as people who are listening to this who are into data you know and into trying to use data to figure out what's right um i think what's frustrating is that aspect of what's going on right now and what's going on in the world is yeah the disinformation and the how hard it is to um to kind of go through and and get the numbers. I've talked about it a little bit with coronavirus. Like I was really surprised when I tried to find research,

proving certain things that we thought were totally true and, and just trying to find good numbers. Like I talked about how like using case numbers is not a great way to, to, to judge how the state of an outbreak, because we, the, the taste, the, the because the status of testing in that region is always in flux. And the CDC was actually adding antibody tests

to the swabs and stuff. So that doesn't make any sense because those are two separate populations. So the data that we have, like we're getting more and more data and it's just, it's really hard sometimes to see through to the important stuff and see through to the, to the right data. And I don't know that I have an easy kind of go to this link answer for that one. I don't, I don't know if there is such a thing that it truly exists i mean that's just the the world that we're we're in right now we don't we don't have that that clarity and

it's just maddening on on so many levels yeah it is interesting that the role of the coronavirus in this, in, well, you know, first it, like, it seems like these, uh, gatherings of people are definitely, like, could be super spreading events. Like,

I don't know. I don't see a lot of masks on. So, um, I wonder what that is going to do. Uh, but then also just like, we have nothing else.

We have nothing else to look at, to do. We've watched every single Netflix show that there is. Yeah, it's a sad truth. But again, our colleague, Levi Weaver, had a very, I thought it was a very on-point message. I think it was over the weekend. He tweeted, maybe it's good. We don't have sports right now.

Maybe a distraction is the last thing we need. Maybe we all need to see this with very focused and open and extremely uncomfortable eyes. There's a lot of truth in that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah,

difficult to, uh, for us to, as you can probably hear in our voices, um, not, uh, not our normal show,

not the, uh, show we had envisioned for 100. No, not at all. Um, we'd hoped to, uh,

we'll push it. We'll, we'll do some of this in the future we hope to look back on some of our favorite moments of the first 99 episodes and um we'd hoped uh a while back that we would have uh we'd be able to discuss the upcoming season that there would be news um good news in that regard um I guess there is some. Two things that I see as hopeful in the most recent negotiations are that the owners have switched to arguing about how much they're going to pay in terms of per game as into how many games they'll pay for um and so they're talking about 50 and 40 games and the the players are talking 110 and amazingly if you look at the midpoint it's 82 yeah shocking right that that's that's the middle ground it but it's it's like watching the wealthiest person you've ever met in your life haggle over a used t-shirt at a garage sale.

That's what they're doing. I'm using a different analogy. That one's way better. But this is what people's livelihoods all hang in the balance too, which just makes it all the more frustrating. It's ridiculous. Yeah. So I was born in Jamaica.

When I used to go back there i used to bring somebody with me every time and um you know my relationship with the hagglers and the the sort of uh the people who were selling their wares was uh i normally didn't buy it um and if they would yell at me about not buying it i would yell back at them in jamaican and um everything would be fine you know um but then the worst was when i brought uh friends that uh would haggle and i'd be like dude you're trying to buy that shirt for five dollars us and you're you're trying to get it down to two dollars us can you just can you just buy it for five dollars us and not make me feel super uncomfortable next to you like i know you have the five dollars you know um so that's that's

a it's a really good analogy that you've come up with um also the uh the other one i was having was like you know the worst uh the worst guy in your fantasy league that's trying to offer you their worst player for your best player. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. I think it's easy to make the – it's like the keeper league where maybe you've got Mike Trout, but you're not going to win the league this year. So you put him up and you say, hey, Mike Trout's available.

And someone comes up and is like, I'll give you $3 Omar Narvaez for Mike Trout. And you're just like, come on. Just start closer. That's what it felt like at first when the players and the owners were coming at each other. Just like, revenue sharing. Come on, you know we're not going to do revenue sharing? We had a strike about that.

We had a strike about the cap. Nobody's doing a revenue sharing cap situation. We had a strike about the cap. Nobody's doing a rev-sharing cap situation. And then the players came back and like, oh, you want to cut the games we want to play? We're going to play 120 with double headers. Yeah.

That's not going to happen either, but it's the way those two sides engage each other. I don't know why it has to be that way. I think it's actually a lesson for how we engage on Twitter and how the left and the right engage. It seems like we're all zero-summing and pushing forward and saying the most ridiculous thing to try and get whatever concession we can get. It's really unfortunate because that's a, that's a stratification that's, it's really harder, much harder to find the middle if you're, you're both coming at it from crazy angles like that. Um, but the other, the other piece of hope I got was, um, the beginning of a discussion of deferred money um so i know that uh deferred money is not the same as current money however in the current economic environment deferred money does not hurt as much it does not

hurt the players as much and does not hurt the the owners as much as current money. So it actually is an ideal outcome because inflation is very, very low right now. And that's usually, inflation is what robs future money of its value, right? If I give you $5 now or $5 50 years from now, you can understand that one pretty quickly. Yeah, that one's pretty straightforward. Right. But $5 now and $5 next year is actually, there might be deflation depending on how bad the economy gets.

And there's been some evidence of some deflation in certain consumer goods. So if the $5 next year is even worth more, and then from the perspective of borrowing interest rates are super super low um so uh it's deferred money the the i think the player said something like if there is no postseason um we'll let you defer 100 million dollars in salaries i think that's a um that's a good start i think that if they upped the deferred money portion of their offer and the owners get to $80 pro-rated, 80 games pro-rated, then I think we'll have an agreement. And then the last thing that is somewhat hopeful, but is kind of lawyery, and I can't speak to and I can't speak to how great of a foundation this is, but Martino, Andy Martino had a piece about it. And basically it's this, there is an agreement. In the agreement, there might be language that says that they can renegotiate. However, if there is no new renegotiation of a deal,

then the current deal on the table, the standing deal, is the March deal. I think this is true as contractual law goes. The current standing deal is that the commissioner can set the schedule whenever he wants, and that it's going to be prorated salary. So that's why they're arguing about how many games it's going to be, because if the current agreement stands, the commissioner could say, we're going to have a 10-game season, and it's all going to be postseason. He could, which would be really weird for fantasy that would be very weird that would make it a dfs season yeah uh but um i don't know i think those three things are somewhat

hopeful um and so i think i'm pushing um my likelihood of the season to 70%. Do you think you could put a number down? Yeah, I was around that number. I was probably a little lower on it when the first proposal came out because I had a very emotional, even though I wasn't surprised, I had a very emotional response to it. I would say 70% seems like an accurate gauge of where things are at. Because if you just think about the basic timeline for however they're going to put it together,

if they're going to have a season, it's going to take about a week after an agreement is reached to get players to wherever they're going to train for spring training, which we presume to be the major league cities in which they play it's going to take about three weeks after that one week passes to get players near the point where they can play in games that count so you know add four weeks to the current day and that gives you an idea of the most reasonable possible opening day. And if you said one, two, three, four, four weeks from literally today, June 2nd, you're talking about June 30th.

So the July 1st target that we've been talking about, geez, since March, that's still in play, but it's going to have to be one of these situations that changes very quickly if that's going to be a reality. I mean, if July 4th opening day, if that's the reality, then a negotiation has to be wrapped up. An agreement has to be reached by the end of this week. That's four weeks from this coming Saturday. has to be reached by the end of this week.

That's four weeks from this coming Saturday. So I think there has been progress in the very slow way that these two sides work. And I do think it's more likely that we have a season than not. And all along, I think just even estimating how long it would take to do things without any sort of economic considerations, July is about when we expected a season to begin, if there were ever going to be a season.

So everything's still in this chaotic way with baseball season, still on the most likely path that we were looking at 10 weeks ago. 10 weeks ago. Let's hope in the meantime we use this time to think about what we advocate for and what we really think. I think the Samuelson and Angwe tweet thread is very interesting for people

who follow data and want to want to look at data about policing um men and jerry's lots of links on that page man um lots of ways to kind of look at the data uh and see if you think that there is systemic racism and if you think there's systemic racism and there's something to do about police violence, then there's ways to donate to people who are doing the things that Sinyangwe is talking about. There's ways to donate and help and lend your voice to these groups that are doing good.

So I don't want anyone to get it twisted. I don't think all cops are bad. I don't want anyone to get it twisted. I don't think all cops are bad. I don't think all white people are bad. None of these... Don't put me in a box on any of that. There's no straw man here. Don't... I don't think that looting is great.

No. No one does. No reasonable person thinks that. I think that's why the Twitter fights and Twitter arguments, they frustrate me to the point of just walking away from the keyboard because it's just like yelling at a wall. That's what it feels like. Yeah, the stink stays with you too.

And then I'm like walking around, my kids are wondering why I have a sour look on my face. There's someone wrong on the internet. Yeah. There's, you on the internet. Yeah. On the baseball side, there's some corollaries here a little bit. Because I want baseball does not mean that I want people to be sick. No. Obviously not.

Because I think that the players could defer some salary or even take like a 5% pay cut or something on top of what they've done does not mean that I'm pro-owner you know and I'm not like I don't think I necessarily consider myself a centrist

but I do wish that people came come to the center politically but just I wish that people came come to the center politically but just I wish that people could find that common ground more often I don't know that's I don't know if we've lost that

or if we never had it but finding common ground is important I don't think we've had it in my adult lifetime i'm 35 so i've been an adult for 17 years i don't think we've had it i think in my time as an adult politics are yankees red socks they theyx. They're just a heated rivalry. And it doesn't even matter

what the other side is actually saying. It's perceived as noise. And there's no actual listening happening. Like they hear noise, but they're not listening to the words. And you see that in the ways that people in both parties politicians in both parties the way they respond to basic questions the deflections are incredible just mind-numbing like yeah this is this is an example from where i live it's on my screen literally right now

the senator ron johnson in my state he's a republican was asked about the president's photo op at saint john's on monday and his answer was didn't really see it and i find it utterly ridiculous that someone would just blatantly lie that way you didn't really see it so you did see it but you didn't really see it for what it was and again people are going to say dvr they're republicans listen to your show too i'm not i don't think the two political parties in America are working for us as citizens. And I'm constantly frustrated and outraged and annoyed at them. And again,

it's another area where I'm frequently distracted by something else and it keeps me from following through and doing something about it. Yeah, the screens are just... I'm so addicted to my phone right now, and it's so bad. It's so bad. If there's anybody that should do this Blackout Tuesday thing, it's me, man. Maybe I will from now on. I just... It just seems so consequential dude you know um and you know as data scientists or I'm not a data scientist but

as people who are into data like you're trying to make sense of baseball as a world you're trying to make sense of the world as a whole um and you hope that by kind of you know focusing on data like then you can be like see things clearly and regardless of party um but then you have this guy who like did that really ridiculous covid thing for the white house where he like fit a cubist uh he did like a cube oh my god it was really really bad stats where he just like fit a line on top of the covid and said look we're gonna have zero covid in in may in like the second week of may or something i'm like nope, disinformation and manipulation. And so, I don't know. You got to see through to the right data too,

which is even for myself. For example, with that learning about outliers and how they're used, that's almost a data conversation where I had to come to terms with it in my own way and figure it out. So I don't know. I guess there's no way to end this one without a dot, dot, dot. But I honestly, you know, this is the first time in my life

I've ever been accused of spreading conservative propaganda this year. Okay. Normally I'm conservative. I'm being accused of being a communist pinko, whatever. You can only be one of two things, really, in this world, right? Yeah. I would just say that let's just try to listen to each other. Let's just try to listen to each other.

Let's try to figure out what the best way forward is and do that. We've got major problems with the environment, with public health, and with racial interactions. There's got to be things that work. There are people that study this. There's data out there.

Let's read it. Let's highlight it and let's support people that are that are working that way that's I think that's a a non-partisan

statement hopefully and I hope everyone listening is doing okay I'm not but we're doing our best

and see you guys soon I'm not. But we're doing our best. And see you guys soon. Yeah, that is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Stay safe. We're back with you Thursday. Thanks for listening.