Matt Waldman’s Reads Listens Views is back in a slightly new form. This post is devoted to recommended reads of the week. 

Welcome

If you’re new to the Rookie Scouting Portfolio blog, welcome.  Every Friday, I post links to pieces that I’ve found personally compelling or to content I hope will eventually scratch that itch when I get around to reading it.

You may not like everything listed here, but you’re bound to like something.

The Reporter Who Won’t Let the NFL Go off the Record

“Mark Leibovich spent years digging under the skin of Washington, D.C.’s power brokers. When he turned his attention to the world of pro football for a new book, he found an awfully familiar set of characters,” Bryan Curtis writes while delivering a worthwhile profile of Leibovich and the unflattering parallels between sports and political coverage. I love the NFL players and the quality of the game. I dislike the way it’s governed. You’ll get a sense why I feel that way — if you don’t have your own strong opinion already — from this feature. I found it fascinating (and sad) that Justis Mosqueda tweeted this article and the only responses to it at the time were selfish football-related questions that had nothing to do with the topic. Link.

LEGO Built A Drivable Bugatti Chiron Out of A Million Pieces of Technic Bricks

“Made from more than a million pieces, it’s the first fully functional, self-propelled life-size LEGO Technic car ever built. In fact, LEGO says it’s the first non-glued LEGO Technic model of such complexity ever made.” Even the engine is made of Technic bricks, which of course means the car only tops out at 5.3 horsepower and 12.4 mph compared to the 1,500 horsepower and 261 mph of its conventionally-manufactured counterpart.  Link. 

We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of the St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage

This is an in-depth and true horror story that, if you care about the welfare of children, is a must-read. As difficult as a read as it was, it’s a reality of how people remember (or block out) physical and sexual abuse as well as a portrait of how insidious the abuse is.  If you want to be a part of the solution, you have to gain some understanding of the problem. This is the type of article where you should look at your family afterward and appreciate that everyone is ok. And if they aren’t, do something about it. Link.

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