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Part of the fun of spring training is watching the list of non-roster invitees and seeing if any can grab a big league spot out of camp.

While the Brewers seem to have most of their starting spots outside of third base figured out heading into camp, theres still a chance someone forces their way into the conversation the way guys like Ji-man Choi, Jesus Aguilar and others have in the past.

Heres the list of guys who are getting a chance this spring without being on the 40-man roster:

RHP Brad BoxbergerRHP Jordan ZimmermannLHP Blaine HardyLHP Hoby MilnerLHP Clayton AndrewsLHP Aaron AshbyRHP Zack BrownRHP Jake CousinsRHP Thomas JankinsRHP Miguel SanchezLHP Ethan SmallLHP Quintin Torres-Costa

3B Travis Shaw1B/3B Zach GreenSS Brice TurangC Payton Henry3B Travis Shaw

LF/RF Dylan CozensOF/IF Pablo ReyesOF/IF Jace PetersonOF Tristen LutzOF Garrett Mitchell

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Pitchers and Catchers report: Milwaukee Brewers non-roster invitees looking to win a spot - Brew Crew Ball

Photo: Chalabala (Getty Images)

Canada is no longer lending the United States its best celebrities. At one point, its most famous cultural ex-pats were actors like Ryan Gosling, Sandra Oh, Michael J. Fox, and Keanu Reeves or musicians like Drake, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and the members of bands like Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Wolf Parade. More recently, though, Canadas most notable exports have been dominated by people like Gavin McInnes and Jordan Peterson, Lauren Southern and Stephan Molyneux, and, the latest celebrity to garner international attention, the guy who tweeted about not realizing he was using dog shampoo for several months.

The person in question is Jonathan Kay, a well known figure in Canadian media whose current job is senior editor of the right-wing reactionary rag Quillette. Unable to resist needlessly posting the transcendent self own that hes been washing his hair for the last few months with dog shampoohe assumes this is common because of the 4-pt typeface labelling it for pets next to the photo of a happy dogKay found himself the butt of many internet jokes.

Rather than ignore the mockery, Kay took the tweeting through it approacha risky move that almost always, as it did here, makes the initial embarrassment worse. In this case, it led fellow Canadian Seth Rogen to tweet a reply to Kay that reads: youre stupid.

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When Kay tried to turn the insult into another joke, Rogen replied that he wasnt trolling Kay, adding, for good measure, This was objectively stupid.

Undaunted, Kays continued in a desperate attempt to salvage his internet reputation by tweeting more and more about it, changing his profile picture to a photo of the dog shampoos dog, and basically just doing everything possible to ensure that he will forever be known as the guy who washed his hair with dog shampoo.

Kays mom, also a very well known Canadian media figure, even tried to help her son, making everything worse in the process. And then last night, to ensure that even those without Twitter would know exactly how goofy this all is, Kay appeared on Fox News to cement his reputation.

To nobodys surprise, the segment, including its chyron Adult Journalists Mom Defends Him From Seth Rogen, has given fresh attention to the fact that Jonathan Kay will forever be known across the world as the dog shampoo guy.

Wed like to think this is the end of the whole thing, but, having seen how things have gone so far, a few weeks from now will probably see Kay appearing in a dog shampoo ad, helping Arm & Hammer in a bid to advertise its products as human-friendly.

Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com

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Guy who got roasted for using dog shampoo really wants to be known as "the guy who got roasted for using dog s - The A.V. Club

At Substack, one of an increasing number of independent news and opinion sites, lawyer and civil rights activist Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in journalism today. The rise of the journalist as tattletale and censor, rather than investigative reporter:

A new and rapidly growing journalistic beat has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.

Whereas an investigative reporter succeeds by getting the story right, tattletales can succeed even if they get the story wrong. Censors can succeed even if their concerns are wholly misdirected quite apart from whether censorship is a valid enterprise anyway.

Greenwald (pictured) cites a number of recent instances:

A star New York Times tech reporter, Taylor Lorenz, falsely accused tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen of having used the slur world retarded in an online discussion of Reddit activities. In fact, a woman in the discussion room had used the wordit is a self-description on the part of some Redditors. Without offering any apology for failure to listen carefully, Lorenz lectured the world about insensitivity, then locked her Twitter account. She likely faces no consequences.

Forty-five-year veteran New York Times science reporter Donald McNeill, on a field trip with high school students in Peru, used the n-word while discussing with a student whether it was fair that one of her classmates was punished for using it in a video. Greenwald: McNeil used it not with malice or as a racist insult but to inquire about the facts of the video so he could answer the students question. New York Times management was inclined to issue only a reprimand but dozens of Times journalists insisted on much more serious punishment, so he was fired.

Greenwald cautions that these widely publicized examples are by no means isolated ones:

These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. And they are not confined to those three outlets. That far more robust censorship is urgently needed is now a virtual consensus in mainstream corporate journalism: its an animating cause for them.

Indeed. One might also cite the recent, almost incomprehensibly vicious attack on Jordan Peterson, author the bestseller 12 Rules for Life, by Decca Aitkenhead of the Sunday Times of London. She interviewed Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila, who has seen her father through serious health problems over the past two years (her mother is recovering from a battle with cancer). Under the circumstances, the family would hardly seem appropriate subjects for a full-on assault. But thats what happened.

Mikhaila Peterson released the unedited transcript for the world to see how grievous the misrepresentation has been. But not everyone is so lucky and Aitkenhead likely faces few consequences other than the approval of like-minded colleagues.

Then there was the 2019 misrepresentation by George Eaton at New Statesman of British philosopher and writer Roger Scruton (19442020) as a racist as the result of an interview. The misrepresentation led to his being unceremoniously dumped from a government committee.

Author and commentator Douglas Murray, suspecting that Sir Roger would not really have said those things, began a search and eventually came into possession of the tape and transcript. He notes, What the tape showed beyond doubt is that George Eaton misled his readers to try to destroy the reputation of Britains foremost conservative thinker. Readers and listeners can listen to and read the interview themselves and find their favorite examples of Eatons dishonesty. He offers a few favorites of his own. (National Review, April 29, 2019)

Murray comments, To say that this is the sort of thing that has degraded public discourse is to wildly understate things.

Well, yes, but whats behind it? Greenwald offers, regarding the new breed of journalists,

They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve. So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways is all they have. Its all they are. Its why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them.

How did we get here?

Ive been in the news business fifty years. Heres my view: The single biggest factor in all this is that traditional media are no longer a necessary institution.

In the 1970s, one needed a newspaper to find out the weather, the scores, and who had a bicycle for sale. Hit pieces sometimes appeared, of course. But generally speaking, the investigative journalist was, well, investigating, not plotting to take someone down just for the sake of it. There were plenty of bad landlords, corrupt officeholders, shoddy builders, etc., to focus on. It was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.

But we have specialty web sites and consumer groups for all that today. Its all online.

Today, the newspaper (along with generic TV and radio) are echo chambers for opinion for cultural reasons, that usually means progressive opinion. When an institution is no longer needed, its mission usually changes. The people attracted to it change too.

One suspects that Greenwald is right: The sort of people who would launch baseless attacks and refuse to apologize, destroy colleagues careers over misunderstood conversations, and ridicule or misrepresent old or sick men probably could not do an exhausting eight-month, on-the-ground investigation into corruption at the Municipal Housing Board. So, increasingly, they do what they can: Misrepresentation and speech policing.

One outcome of the increasing prevalence in media of the type of people Greenwald describes is a very great decline in the perceived value of freedom of speech and of the media. Twenty years ago, media people understood freedom of speech to mean, I want the right to report, with evidence, that the mayor fixes drunk driving tickets for upper class twits. Today, many in media understand it to mean I want the right to spout hate against visible and sexual minorities. Because that truly is all they do understand it to be. And they want a crackdown. Until then, they will act as police themselves.

Increasingly, the organizations many new journalists work for are owned by companies eyeing the Chinese market. That entails the need to get along with a totalitarian state. Perhaps it is best for them to get used to the mentality first. It is best for the rest of us to view their output with a skeptical eye and seek out smaller, alternative, independent sources of news.

You may also wish to read: Escaping the news filter bubble: Three simple tips. Spoiler: Reduce the amount of information big providers have about YOU. (Russ White)

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In Big Tech world: The Journalist as Censor, Hit Man, and Snitch - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to the weekend.

Settle down with a cuppa and catch up on some of the best content from our premium syndicators this week.

Happy reading.

Hours after the United States voted, President Trump declared the election a fraud a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.

A New York Times examination explores the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration.

ALSO READ: Key takeaways from Trump's effort to overturn the election Trump's sleight of hand: Shouting fraud, pocketing donors' cash for future

I thought this was going to be a normal interview with Jordan Peterson. After speaking with him at length, and with his daughter for even longer, I no longer have any idea what it is. I don't know if this is a story about drug dependency, or doctors, or Peterson family dynamics or a parable about toxic masculinity. Whatever else it is, it's very strange.

Decca Aitkenhead of The Times talks to the superstar psychologist and his daughter about how he unravelled and their bizarre journey to find a cure.

Dave Grohl has done so much throughout his career drummed for Nirvana, arguably the biggest band of its generation; led Foo Fighters, one of the most successful acts of the past three decades; sold out Wembley Stadium, twice; played on the White House lawn; interviewed the sitting president of the United States; broke his leg during a show and finished the show with the broken leg; entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with another induction likely on the way; recorded with both living Beatles; appeared on The Muppets, also twice that when you ask him what's left, he takes a moment.

Jeremy Gordon of The New York Times talks to Grohl about the band's history and their latest album.

Guy Babcock vividly remembers the chilly Saturday evening when he discovered the stain on his family. It was September 2018. He, his wife and their young son had just returned to their home. Babcock still had his coat on when he got a frantic call from his father.

"I don't want to upset you, but there is some bad stuff on the internet," Babcock recalled his father saying. Someone, somewhere, had written terrible things online about Guy Babcock and his brother, and members of their 86-year-old father's social club had alerted him.

Babcock got off the phone and Googled himself. The results were full of posts on strange sites accusing him of being a thief, a fraudster and a paedophile.

Outrageous lies destroyed his online reputation.

But as The New York Times reports, when he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.

ALSO READ: Here's a way to learn if facial recognition systems used your photos

The Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was smiling as he made his way towards his country's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on the afternoon of October 2, 2018. He was happy. He was in love. He was planning a wedding.

The smile would not have lingered long on Khashoggi's face when he saw who was there to meet him inside the consulate a 15-member hit squad of Saudi government agents. After the Saudis suffocated their victim, a government physician dismembered him with a bone saw in the consulate "media room". His remains have never been found.

Khashoggi's fiance, Hatice Cenzig, talks to Matthew Campbell of The Times about the assassination that shocked the world.

The online trading app Robinhood became a cultural phenomenon and a Silicon Valley darling with a promise to wrest the stock market away from Wall Street's traditional gatekeepers and "let the people trade" making it as easy to put millions of dollars at risk as it is to summon an Uber.

Last week, in the middle of a market frenzy pitting amateur traders against hedge fund bigwigs, that veneer began to chip. As it turned out, Robinhood was at the mercy of the very industry it had vowed to upend.

The New York Times looks at how the highflying startup suddenly became an overwhelmed, creaky company.

ALSO READ: 'Let them trade': Washington struggles with Robinhood politics Robinhood's CEO is in the hot seat Opinion: Can we please stop talking about stocks, please?

In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.

She considered conceiving through a fertility clinic, but the cost was prohibitive for her. Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, his name was Jonathan Jacob Meijer.

In 2017, when she decided to conceive again, she reached out once more to Meijer.

Even before then, however, van Ewijk learned some unsettling news. Meijer had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands through numerous fertility clinics, a tally that did not include his private donations through websites.

One man, hundreds of children and a burning question: Why?

On May 4, a new cruise ship called the Spirit of Adventure is due to leave the English port of Dover on a maiden voyage like no other.

The vessel's owner, Britain's over-50s holiday and insurance group Saga, is one of the first large businesses to make Covid jabs mandatory for its customers. No one will be allowed on board unless they are fully vaccinated against coronavirus or rather, almost no one.

In a sign of the fraught situation employers around the world face, the shots will be compulsory for passengers but not the ship's crew.

A few companies have introduced 'no jab, no job' policies, but as the Financial Times reports it is unclear if such steps are lawful.

The nearly 426 metre tower at 432 Park Ave., briefly the tallest residential building in the world, was the pinnacle of New York's luxury condo boom half a decade ago, fuelled largely by foreign buyers seeking discretion and big returns.

Six years later, residents of the exclusive tower are now at odds with the developers, and each other, making clear that even multimillion-dollar price tags do not guarantee problem-free living.

The New York Times looks at some of the significant design problems facing the luxury high-rise industry.

The news that Jeff Bezos would step aside as Amazon's chief executive was a surprise, but there were signs it may have been on his mind for some time.

With little sign of a horse race, Andy Jassy, the current head of Amazon's cloud computing division, will step up to be the new chief executive.

Amazon insisted that Bezos, as executive chairman, would only be involved in what it described as "one-way door" decisions, from which there is no turning back.

The Financial Times looks at how investors are reassured by the succession plan.

Officials in Australia moved mountains to make the country's annual professional tennis swing happen.

That will be far more difficult after the tour leaves the isolated, island nation, The New York Times writes.

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77 days of Trump's lies and other premium stories you may have missed this week - New Zealand Herald

In response to your January 25 story Houses Divided, which asks, In the wake of the events of January 6, will the Big Five think twice about publishing conservative authors?, its important to clarify what publishers mean when they say conservative and why it is that your article and the phrase conservative publishing misrepresents exactly what critics take issue with. The fact is, while it may have taken Simon & Schuster a little over 24 hours to change course on its publication of Josh Hawleys forthcoming book The Tyranny of Big Tech, it took exactly seven business days for Regnery Publishing, which coincidentally is distributed by Simon & Schuster, to acquire it.

Hawleys response to his contract cancellation included an accusation of the violation of his First Amendment rights. This is a sentiment echoed by some in the industry, who view the responsibility to publish a wide range of viewpoints as a First Amendment issue. S&S is not the American government or a public institution and therefore does not fall under the protection of the First Amendment.

As cultural institutions, publishing houses certainly have a responsibility to document the many faces of society, including the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump. However, the framing of these viewpoints is an even more daunting task. From an innocent pat on the former presidents head by a late-night television host to the publication of a noted transphobic professor, the output of cultural institutions has an impact on the collective consciousness of American society. When the messenger upholds the dehumanization of Black, Indigenous, racialized, LGBT+, and disability communities, their message can and has led to violence against these communities.

For many years, publishers have been quietly profiting off of this violence and vitriol, all the while systematically excluding those on the receiving end from the publishing world. And even in the last decade when strides have been made, largely led by a new generation of publishing professionals and smaller indie publishers, to be more inclusive of minority communities both in books and offices, these controversial authors have continued to be published under the cloak of conservative presses.

The demise of conservative publishing is being framed as an issue of liberalism v. conservatism or left v. right. This is not only wrong but dangerous rhetoric. Younger industry members are not calling for the halt to reprints of Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman or the muzzling of Grover Norquist, for a more contemporary example. Conservative houses and imprints like Regnery are responsible for publishing and giving a platform to a particular brand of conservative: far right and inflammatory.

Grouping the Norquists of conservatism with Josh Hawley, Jordan Peterson, and former president Trump and his administration normalizes the spread of misinformation and harmful stereotypes. It continues to frame the discontent of the critics of these titles as silencing opinions rather than forcing publishers to contend with the actual harm that is done when they give a platform to these writers. Finally, it also builds a readership that publishers are profiting from while turning a blind eye to the culture they have chosen to curate.

Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin Random Houses conservative Sentinel imprint spells it out: Publishing to the opposition presents us with a huge opportunity. That opportunity is profit over people.

Elham Ali and Anita RagunathanECW Press, Toronto

A version of this article appeared in the 02/08/2021 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Letter to the Editor

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Letter to the Editor: We Need to Define 'Conservative Publishing' - Publishers Weekly