I jumped off the Sox bandwagon after it lost a wheel or two sometime in April or May. Now I’ve scrambled back on after eight straight wins and last night’s spectacular walk-off homer by Ceddanne Rafaela. … Rafael Devers? Rafael who? … Could the Devers trade of 2025 be the turn-around equivalent of the Nomar trade of 2004? … OK, now I’m definitely getting carried away. … FYI: Rafael without an ‘a’ is now the subject of trade talk involving the Yankees. But he’s having disk-injury problems in SF. We’ll see.
Month: July 2025
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Sox Bandwagon Update: Rafael Devers? Rafael who?
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Boston Consulting Group’s deepening Gaza crisis
The WSJ reports on the ongoing controversy at Boston Consulting Group, where two senior partners this week stepped down from leadership roles over their ties to a Gaza aid-distribution initiative. The project started as a pro bono venture but somehow morphed into a paid gig that reportedly included “developing a postwar financial model to determine the cost of relocating Palestinians out of Gaza.”… Getting involved in Gaza? Teaming up with a security firm with ex-CIA agents? Riling up a U.K. parliamentary committee? Not very smart. … Many BCG staff, clients and others are furious at the Boston-based firm.
Update — 7.12.25 — The Financial Times explains the UK angle. Meanwhile, the NY Post and Aljazeera are jumping on the story, among others.
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Permitting hell: It took how long to build a Stoneham apartment complex?
The BBJ reports on the opening of a new 259-unit apartment complex in Stoneham – a project that took 11 years and one month to come to fruition. The permitting challenges included the usual: 40B appeals, stormwater and wetlands concerns, etc., etc. … I’m not sure if it’s a NIMBY-delay record. But it has to rank up there. … California’s rollback of its environmental laws does pop to mind.
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Market Basket Controversy 101
Suffering from Market Basket overload? Too much bland soap-opera reporting that doesn’t add much to what you already know, i.e. that the Demoulas family running the beloved supermarket chain is profoundly dysfunctional? I’m with you. My eyes glaze over most Market Basket stories these days. But … but I do recommend reading Larry Edelman’s recent Globe piece on the Market Basket controversy. It’s a good primer on the family feud that’s slowly tearing apart Market Basket – and it provides new information about how and when the most recent battlelines were drawn between the “ticked-off sisters” and the “imperious CEO.” …
… My own conclusions: 1.) Arthur T. Demoulas is admirably a true believer in his “all stakeholders” approach to governing the company 2.) he’s his own worst enemy when it comes to corporate-suite diplomacy 3.) the Demoulas sisters brought in the PE/M&A/CRE reinforcements for a reason – and it wasn’t to enhance the company’s “all stakeholders” programs.
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Short takes: Snake bite … Letting defendants go. … White Stadium cost increase … Save the Brutalists! … Harvard publicity stunt … And more
— Is there anyone in charge here? Hello? “More Massachusetts criminal defendants released amid bar advocate strike” (Herald)
— It’s still a seller’s housing market but this is encouraging: “Inventory Increases Putting Pressure on Sellers” (B&T)
— My worst nightmare when weeding my garden or mowing my lawn: “Attleboro residents warned after venomous snake reported to have bitten 3 dogs, 1 fatally” (WCVB)
— There’s plenty more disappointments where this came from: “Federal funding for I-90 Allston project in jeopardy” (CommonWealth Beacon)
— The politicization began well before RFK Jr.: “How Public Health Discredited Itself” (Atlantic)
— Come to think of it, maybe Dems should embrace Elon: “Musk’s America Party could split Republicans, Trump allies fear” (Telegraph)
— And they just sent me a subscription renewal form: “America’s Test Kitchen lays off seven employees and will cease publication of Cook’s Country magazine” (Globe)
— They got a deal compared to Apple: “Longtime Newbury Street retailer Ralph Lauren buys its building for $38M” (BBJ)
— Michelle Wu knows the feeling: “NYC Real-Estate Execs Throw Money Behind Adams to Counter Rise of Mamdani” (WSJ)
— Suddenly, I find myself rooting for Mamdani: “Trump threatens federal takeover of NYC if ‘communist’ Zohran Mamdani wins mayoral race” (NYPost)
— Creeping slowly but surely toward that ‘worst-case’ scenario: “Wu says White Stadium costs for city will ‘likely’ exceed $91 million estimate” (Globe)
— It’s part publicity stunt, part pressure tactic by people with very small minds: “Trump administration takes aim at Harvard’s accreditation status” (WBUR)
— They do have their redeeming qualities: “Healey administration looks to redevelop Brutalist building downtown” (BBJ)
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Grok, meet Hal: how AI can go rogue
The WSJ has an absolutely fascinating story about why Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by Eon Musk’s xAI, has lately gone ‘rogue,’ recently telling millions of people on X how to break into the home of an actual 39-year-old attorney and assault him. Of course, there’s the wild incident on Tuesday in which Grok went on an antisemitic tear, praising Adolf Hitler and suggesting genocide might be an appropriate response to hate aimed at white people, as the NYT reported. … How and why did this happen? Well, it turns out that even the experts who build AI chatbots aren’t quite sure how they generate specific answers to questions, the WSJ reports. But it does have something to do with “guardrails” inserted into chatbot models, such as telling Grok to give answers with a little “wit” or telling Grok to give politically incorrect answers as long as they’re accurate. … In other words, there’s a vague power of suggestion at work here – or “guardrail” instruction – that tracks back to the human builders and that give chatbots the leeway to interpret instructions. And the results are unpredictable. …Reading the Journal story, I thought of the famous scene in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ in which Hal goes rogue on Dave. See video above. …
Update — 7-12-25 — The Grok update didn’t work. From The Atlantic: “After praising Hitler earlier this week, the chatbot is now listing the ‘good races.’”
Update II – 7-12-25 — Zeynep Tufekci at the NYT confirms that the updated Grok is still spewing antisemitic trash – and explains why Grok and other chatbots are so prone to these types of outrages. And it can only get worse, she warns.
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MCCA dismantles ‘well-intentioned’ programs that led to racial divisions
It seems programs meant to promote inclusiveness ended up segregating employees along racial lines at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority – and now they’re dismantling the acronym mess and starting over. The BBJ has the details. … There’s a human-behavioral case study somewhere in this policy-gone-haywire tale.
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Does the president now have an effective line-item veto over the budget?
So any president can now come into office, object to certain programs previously passed by Congress, stop funding those programs and then lay off the workers involved, effectively killing off the programs the president doesn’t like? Sounds sort of like a president wielding a line-item veto, post-passage of a law. … Is it my imagination, or isn’t this the power that SCOTUS just bestowed upon the president? … I get the idea behind clipping the wings of lower-court judges. I really do. But I’m with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on this one. The nation’s high court is allowing a president to effectively proceed with “the dismantling of much of the federal government as Congress has created it.”
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Democrats and immigration, Part II: Healey on the defensive
Appearing on Jon Keller’s ‘Keller at Large’ over the weekend, Gov. Healey defended her immigration record amid mounting criticism from two GOP gubernatorial wannabes. The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld thinks the governor is trying to rewrite history. I don’t know about that. She deserves blame for not acting fast enough on the migrant/shelter fiasco. But she did break with most progressives by criticizing federal (i.e. Biden) immigration policies before last November’s election and she eventually backed common-sense limits to the fiscally insane shelter program. … Her main problem is that all Dems are getting tarred with the same immigration brush these days, thanks to Joe Biden. See related post here and below.
Update — The Globe’s Joan Vennochi has a good column on the same subject.
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John Hancock: ‘More Than Just a Pretty Signature’
Via Dan Kennedy, the NYT has a largely positive review of the new “John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America’s Independence,” by historian Willard Sterne Randall. It’ll be on my reading list soon. … But what I found equally interesting was Dan’s recollection of local historian Bill Fowler’s long-ago biography of Hancock, ‘The Baron of Beacon Hill,’ which also sounds enticing. But not at $286.80 for a hardcover copy. Maybe a lower-priced copy will pop up somewhere.
Hub Blog 