I generally agree that liberals cried wolf throughout most of Trump’s first term, which is unfortunate because even just a few days into his second term, he’s already far more unhinged. I’m not interested in getting into the policy weeds of arguing about DEI or whatever else, but pardoning the January 6 defendants is nothing short of granting license to an attack on the constitutional order and our tradition of the peaceful transfer of power at Trump’s behest, and I genuinely do find it to be a very worrying sign (whataboutism about Biden’s also-shameful but far-less-dangerous use of the pardon power not accepted)
You're trying to talk sense to people who think it's great that Trump has a meme coin that already cost his followers a 30% loss. I'm not sure you'll find much objective analysis anywhere right now. Which is why I say we need to let Trump do his worst instead of trying to put checks on him. Hell, let's get RFK jr in there and let's ban ALL vaccines! Dems to this day are paying for the fact that the Jan 6 mob didn't actually get to guillotine Mike Pence. If they had managed to pull that off, everything would be a lot different.
Wonder if Obama's campaign lies for Kamala or guilting and shaming black men to vote for Kamala because " she's black" is part of the pragmatism Nate respected.
It's abundantly clear Nate is unable to discuss Obama with hindsight or objectivity. This ruins him as a guest for me because I view ESS and the HOS as a place where thinkers come together and share ideas, not remain pigeon-holed to selfish beliefs.
PS - I like Nate and tell my friends still into hoops about his product, but dude doesn't know how to handle Obama and Trump. Not at all. Lol
Always love hearing Nate’s thoughts, one of my favorite recurring HoS pod guests.
You guys mentioned how destabilized you felt since the election, for me it’s the opposite. The 2024 election is maybe the most stabilizing moment in domestic politics in my lifetime. For the last ten years the US has been subjected to a left wing cultural, tech and political hegemony that was never as popular as its adherents insisted and, worse, was simply enforced through dictats.
Interesting discussion, but boy oh boy how can you not see what is going on right in front of you?
Orange Cthulhu isn't Hitler, but he is an authoritarian demagogue hell-bent on centralising power in himself without checks and balances. He is firing all the experts - the people who know in granular detail how things actually work* - and either cancelling their positions altogether or filling them with yes-man cult loyalists to tell him his foolish ideas are revelation. Next it's about score-settling, hounding and persecuting anyone who ever crossed him, which he's already started to do. Maybe you don't think that's fascism, but most of the rest of the world does.
And the irony is he is simply a puppet of the Project 2025 crew - the anti-government Randian ghouls who make up the ultra-Right thinktanks. They've been trying to destroy government since the 1950s to usher in their "every man for himself" vision of society (they don;t actually believe society exists). If you don't know about them you need to read some history. He is signing all kinds of decrees he knows little to nothing about, and certainly hasn't read the detail - you can see that any time he is asked a question about the detail and instead goes off on one of his victim-bully rambles about how terrible the other side is (and I think the other side are also shit btw, just not as shit as the fascists).
This isn't just happening in Murica of course, it is sweeping across Western democracies. It is the fallout from Steve Bannon's grand idea - Alt-truth - that empowers people to reject evidence and expertise and instead make up anything that pleases them and call it truth. This is not a path that leads to a good outcome for humanity.
I despise cancel culture and culture war bullshit in general, from both extremes of the political spectrum. But rejecting the Enlightenment and the obvious principle that government policy should be dictated by evidence, not personal whim, is an unmitigated disaster that hurts the entire planet.
*great example of this is the "send all the water from northern California to the south" bullshit he's been hammering on about. The actual reason they don't do this is if you pump too much water out of the Delta Estuary you destroy the entire ecosystem because the outflow no longer holds back the sea water. You have to keep the system in balance or it dies. But does Cthulhu know this? Of course not, he's too stupid to understand anything about esturine ecology or why it's important. He simply wants to settle a score that began back in 2016 when someone in Cali told him "sorry, but we can't do that". And btw, the reason there was no water in the hydrants in LA had nothing to do with not having enough water - the electricity went down so the pumps stopped working. That is a problem in and of itself, but it has nothing to do with Cthulhu's senseless vendetta.
All I did was hoop growing up... Hours and hours indoors, outdoors, leagues, pickup... etc...
I spent SO MUCH mental bandwidth thinking about that stretch last weekend where I hit five straight shots in a game and how to replicate it ...What did I do different? It was the harder flick. The next weekend I cast my eyes higher and that made all the difference. Two weekends ago I was jumping out of my shoes but this Friday night I'm gonna relax my arms and straighten my posture and not jump so high...on and on.
I loved it so much man. I wouldn't want to steal that from my kids by submitting to the tyranny of standardized coaching
The medium is the message and tech is now the dominant paradigm.
One side has gone all-in on tech ethos/ language through the absorption of the tech right. The other side is struggling to adjust (and may never). So culture at large lacks the friction that generally denotes a predictable range of outcomes and everything feels like a free for all/wipeout.
The other part that got people turning on Rose was him saying he doesn’t know what consent means. Most people took that as meaning he had no regard for consent when it could’ve been he just didn’t know what the word meant. This is someone who had to cheat on their SAT so he could get into Memphis
For Matt Ariaza, given what the allegations were, I honestly can’t blame the bills for letting him go and for Ariaza having to take care of that on his own time. I do agree it’s weird that there basically no revisiting of it once he was proven innocent though. I’m glad he is back in the league once the innocence was proven
Great discussion. It was a little all over the place, but I think the podcasts with Nate are usually good because they seem for lack of a better term agenda-less, just two friends trying to figure out whatever broad topic is on the agenda.
One thing that I think might be affecting the way Trump is being considered is how Obama is remembered collectively by both people who supported him and by the general public. As someone who was pretty engaged in politics and on the right, I remember a similar attempt to use shock and awe at the beginning of Obama's first term. A lot of was less showy and only covered by right leaning press, though, unlike now where Trump is deliberating trying to provoke.
Obama always has operated best in more indirect ways with cover from left media, it would be interesting if any of that would change if the Aniston rumors turn out to be true.
Interesting discussion on trajectory of cultural / political discussions and how it impacts sports. I think there will still be plenty of online pushback to Musk - NBA Reddit with 13m subscribers decided this week to ban links from Twitter and Instagram. They cite Musk and hate speech but try to couch it as long standing discussion to ban sites that require login (Altho also banning screenshots) and concerns over privacy and x-rated material. I am not aware of these concerns being prominent previously (but I could be wrong). They encourage users to use bluesky. Curious what percentage of users actually complained (obviously Reddit will skew further left) or is it as was discussed today - listening to the fringe when there is not a mandate. Will be interesting to see if NBA teams and leagues - while trying to stay apolitical - join bluesky and whether that will be seen as a political statement. Also, as Amazon gets into the NBA broadcasting game, will NBA Reddit have similar objections since Bezos attended the inauguration with Zuckerberg and Musk and is “falling in line” with Trump.
I generally agree that liberals cried wolf throughout most of Trump’s first term, which is unfortunate because even just a few days into his second term, he’s already far more unhinged. I’m not interested in getting into the policy weeds of arguing about DEI or whatever else, but pardoning the January 6 defendants is nothing short of granting license to an attack on the constitutional order and our tradition of the peaceful transfer of power at Trump’s behest, and I genuinely do find it to be a very worrying sign (whataboutism about Biden’s also-shameful but far-less-dangerous use of the pardon power not accepted)
You're trying to talk sense to people who think it's great that Trump has a meme coin that already cost his followers a 30% loss. I'm not sure you'll find much objective analysis anywhere right now. Which is why I say we need to let Trump do his worst instead of trying to put checks on him. Hell, let's get RFK jr in there and let's ban ALL vaccines! Dems to this day are paying for the fact that the Jan 6 mob didn't actually get to guillotine Mike Pence. If they had managed to pull that off, everything would be a lot different.
"He's too pragmatic" - 😆
Wonder if Obama's campaign lies for Kamala or guilting and shaming black men to vote for Kamala because " she's black" is part of the pragmatism Nate respected.
It's abundantly clear Nate is unable to discuss Obama with hindsight or objectivity. This ruins him as a guest for me because I view ESS and the HOS as a place where thinkers come together and share ideas, not remain pigeon-holed to selfish beliefs.
PS - I like Nate and tell my friends still into hoops about his product, but dude doesn't know how to handle Obama and Trump. Not at all. Lol
Always love hearing Nate’s thoughts, one of my favorite recurring HoS pod guests.
You guys mentioned how destabilized you felt since the election, for me it’s the opposite. The 2024 election is maybe the most stabilizing moment in domestic politics in my lifetime. For the last ten years the US has been subjected to a left wing cultural, tech and political hegemony that was never as popular as its adherents insisted and, worse, was simply enforced through dictats.
Interesting discussion, but boy oh boy how can you not see what is going on right in front of you?
Orange Cthulhu isn't Hitler, but he is an authoritarian demagogue hell-bent on centralising power in himself without checks and balances. He is firing all the experts - the people who know in granular detail how things actually work* - and either cancelling their positions altogether or filling them with yes-man cult loyalists to tell him his foolish ideas are revelation. Next it's about score-settling, hounding and persecuting anyone who ever crossed him, which he's already started to do. Maybe you don't think that's fascism, but most of the rest of the world does.
And the irony is he is simply a puppet of the Project 2025 crew - the anti-government Randian ghouls who make up the ultra-Right thinktanks. They've been trying to destroy government since the 1950s to usher in their "every man for himself" vision of society (they don;t actually believe society exists). If you don't know about them you need to read some history. He is signing all kinds of decrees he knows little to nothing about, and certainly hasn't read the detail - you can see that any time he is asked a question about the detail and instead goes off on one of his victim-bully rambles about how terrible the other side is (and I think the other side are also shit btw, just not as shit as the fascists).
This isn't just happening in Murica of course, it is sweeping across Western democracies. It is the fallout from Steve Bannon's grand idea - Alt-truth - that empowers people to reject evidence and expertise and instead make up anything that pleases them and call it truth. This is not a path that leads to a good outcome for humanity.
I despise cancel culture and culture war bullshit in general, from both extremes of the political spectrum. But rejecting the Enlightenment and the obvious principle that government policy should be dictated by evidence, not personal whim, is an unmitigated disaster that hurts the entire planet.
*great example of this is the "send all the water from northern California to the south" bullshit he's been hammering on about. The actual reason they don't do this is if you pump too much water out of the Delta Estuary you destroy the entire ecosystem because the outflow no longer holds back the sea water. You have to keep the system in balance or it dies. But does Cthulhu know this? Of course not, he's too stupid to understand anything about esturine ecology or why it's important. He simply wants to settle a score that began back in 2016 when someone in Cali told him "sorry, but we can't do that". And btw, the reason there was no water in the hydrants in LA had nothing to do with not having enough water - the electricity went down so the pumps stopped working. That is a problem in and of itself, but it has nothing to do with Cthulhu's senseless vendetta.
All I did was hoop growing up... Hours and hours indoors, outdoors, leagues, pickup... etc...
I spent SO MUCH mental bandwidth thinking about that stretch last weekend where I hit five straight shots in a game and how to replicate it ...What did I do different? It was the harder flick. The next weekend I cast my eyes higher and that made all the difference. Two weekends ago I was jumping out of my shoes but this Friday night I'm gonna relax my arms and straighten my posture and not jump so high...on and on.
I loved it so much man. I wouldn't want to steal that from my kids by submitting to the tyranny of standardized coaching
You guys should go on Shark Tank together.
The medium is the message and tech is now the dominant paradigm.
One side has gone all-in on tech ethos/ language through the absorption of the tech right. The other side is struggling to adjust (and may never). So culture at large lacks the friction that generally denotes a predictable range of outcomes and everything feels like a free for all/wipeout.
The other part that got people turning on Rose was him saying he doesn’t know what consent means. Most people took that as meaning he had no regard for consent when it could’ve been he just didn’t know what the word meant. This is someone who had to cheat on their SAT so he could get into Memphis
For Matt Ariaza, given what the allegations were, I honestly can’t blame the bills for letting him go and for Ariaza having to take care of that on his own time. I do agree it’s weird that there basically no revisiting of it once he was proven innocent though. I’m glad he is back in the league once the innocence was proven
Great discussion. It was a little all over the place, but I think the podcasts with Nate are usually good because they seem for lack of a better term agenda-less, just two friends trying to figure out whatever broad topic is on the agenda.
One thing that I think might be affecting the way Trump is being considered is how Obama is remembered collectively by both people who supported him and by the general public. As someone who was pretty engaged in politics and on the right, I remember a similar attempt to use shock and awe at the beginning of Obama's first term. A lot of was less showy and only covered by right leaning press, though, unlike now where Trump is deliberating trying to provoke.
Obama always has operated best in more indirect ways with cover from left media, it would be interesting if any of that would change if the Aniston rumors turn out to be true.
Interesting discussion on trajectory of cultural / political discussions and how it impacts sports. I think there will still be plenty of online pushback to Musk - NBA Reddit with 13m subscribers decided this week to ban links from Twitter and Instagram. They cite Musk and hate speech but try to couch it as long standing discussion to ban sites that require login (Altho also banning screenshots) and concerns over privacy and x-rated material. I am not aware of these concerns being prominent previously (but I could be wrong). They encourage users to use bluesky. Curious what percentage of users actually complained (obviously Reddit will skew further left) or is it as was discussed today - listening to the fringe when there is not a mandate. Will be interesting to see if NBA teams and leagues - while trying to stay apolitical - join bluesky and whether that will be seen as a political statement. Also, as Amazon gets into the NBA broadcasting game, will NBA Reddit have similar objections since Bezos attended the inauguration with Zuckerberg and Musk and is “falling in line” with Trump.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1i7kyff/announcement_rnba_will_no_longer_permit_links_to/
Reddit moderators are very tanky in their moderation. Lol