Rob Arthur

New this week -- Taking stock of crime in the US as we enter the home stretch of 2026: Murder is down a lot, property crime is down a lot, and overall violent crime is down (though not quite as much). My summary of where things stand: jasher.substack.com/p/crime-has-...

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Quick article at BP about how the landscape of Japanese talent flowing into MLB has changed. It was hard to translate and project from NPB based on outcome metrics; it's much easier with things like fastball velocity and bat speed. www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

This Wave Of Japanese Talent Is The Beginning Of A Pipeline by Robert Arthur (@robarthur.bsky.social) www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

Thanks to all of our attendees and presenters for another successful Saberseminar! You guys are the main attraction and the community that makes our event welcoming, fun, and interesting, and we are so grateful to all of you. ❤️

they tried forcing science to align with ideology in the USSR. It didn't go well. www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

We'll be converting all ticket sales to *late registrations* (at a higher fee) soon. Buy your tickets now! events.ticketleap.com/tickets/sabe...

Excited about Saberseminar but not able to make it this year? Always wanted to buy a sweatshirt, mug, or hat with the logo? Check out our online store for another way of supporting the event. If there's any particular color/item combo you want, let us know. www.bonfire.com/store/sabers...

Using the DOJ's own data, I found that they're pursuing fewer criminal charges that aren't related to immigration. They're winning the cases they are pursuing less often, and at least in DC, it looks like they are declining to charge some serious offenses. no-little-plans.ghost.io/trumps-doj-i...

Get your tickets now! blogs.fangraphs.com/instagraphs/...

1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.

1/ I looked at 20 years of Supreme Court decisions and found that for the first time, all nine justices decided more cases by secret ballot — aka the “shadow docket” — than it did for cases argued in open court last term. 🧵:

this is such great work from @bwd.bsky.social. He was kind enough to share some other emails where Sword et al. discussed my work, which was funny. Major props to Bradford for thinking to use public records law to get at some of this correspondence.

This passage from @davidlat.bsky.social perfectly captures the false dichotomy you see so often from the Supreme Court's defenders: The Court is held out as "independent" because it doesn't *always* rule for Trump. That whitewashes (1) how often it *does*; & (2) its bad behavior in non-Trump cases.

In 2019, an MLB exec told Rawlings the league wanted its baseball to perform to what he called a ‘target leaguewide home run rate’ The next year, MLB started making and using two baseballs in at least three consecutive seasons. What could this mean for the 2026 rocket ball? issa new [eyeblack]

The weather in this afternoon's game between France and Paraguay in Philadelphia will be interesting, so I made a video about it for the brand new @weatherapplied YouTube Channel. If you want to see us make more such videos, subscribe to the channel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRA5...

In other "excellent news from religious bodies", the US Presbyterian General Assembly has formally voted to start the process to (correctly) declare white Christian nationalism a theological error incompatible with the teachings of Jesus: pres-outlook.org/2026/07/pcus...

Movie stars are looking younger and younger relative to their actual age, and this trend has been going on since at least the 1970s. no-little-plans.ghost.io/the-top-10-e...

Unfortunately I'll not be attending this year due to a conflict. But I encourage all my baseball followers out there to attend. Saberseminar has always been one of the great forums for learning about the latest baseball research and connecting with other like-minded people. Do not miss it!

This is exactly why DEI efforts are not anti-meritocratic, as some critics claim. The base playing field is *severely* tilted against people of color, so efforts to push against that preexisting bias effectively just make promotions more fair and more meritocratic. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/u...

Excited to announce that general ticket sales for Saberseminar 2026 are open now! We've got a great lineup of speakers that we'll reveal soon, but you can expect more of the fantastic research and discussions we've had in past years. events.ticketleap.com/tickets/sabe...

That's a shame. There was a lot of really good, sometimes academic-quality research on the site. (There was also some terrible stuff.) There's nothing to be gained by taking it offline.

This is free to read, but if you enjoy reading it, you may also want to consider subscribing. Got some cool stuff coming up, some baseball, some more movies, some politics, and more.

Just 3 DAYS LEFT to submit your abstract for Saberseminar 2026! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

The acting head of the CDC has canceled the publication of a study that found that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency visits last winter, a Health Department spokesman said.

Which of y'all are submitting something for Saberseminar this year? Which of y'all are attending? Which of you hate baseball and knowledge and good hangs? docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...