The NFL dominates because they make their product scarce: the best teams play 21 times per season. Every single play, individual performance matters. Yes, basketball players can in fact play so much more often — the grind of a football game is obviously much more difficult.
If NBA teams played everyone in their division twice and scheduled 8-12 more games, it would close the gap between the regular season and playoffs (which are nearly two different sports, the way the NBA is constructed currently).
You've written about the NBA's Twitter-ization of roster and player movement — this would put every single performance under a microscope like we do in the NFL. Twitter booms, sports betting booms, fantasy basketball booms, ticket prices boom, players are less likely to get injured.
I have a trillion other thoughts on this, but this is the basis.
For years, I've been on the bandwagon of taking the approach of reducing the number of games to whatever equates to 2 games per team per week, game played on a regular schedule, say, Wednesday and Saturday/Sunday. This allows you to own the broadcast space on these days as much as is possible, allow for better fantasy/gambling engagement, steady media coverage, and most importantly, create scarcity. Scarcity should greatly alleviate the load management challenge, allow players to heal, and be ready to bring energy to the floor. NFL games have stakes. NBA games do not. Players know the lack of stakes. Fans know the lack of stakes. More than anything, what scarcity does is fill the vacuum of stakes that have sucked the soul out of all but a few NBA regular season games. Any and all other attempts at bringing stakes to the NBA regular season amount to futile, deck chair rearrangements.
NFL games have stakes. NBA games do not. More than anything, what scarcity brings is stakes that are sorely missing from the NBA regular season. Players know it. Fans know it. Scarcity fixes it.
I'm confident improved ratings with fewer games would ultimately more than offset the lost eye balls due to reduced games. However, it would take time and it's not 100% guaranteed to work. Therefore, I'm sure that owners would never agree to any reduction in the number of games that's not backfilled with some other source of ratings(midseason tournament, etc). We'll never be able to get from 82 to 72 games, never mind getting down to the range (< 50 games?) where scarcity would be reaped.
Like a lot of structural problems in American professional sports, from a practical perspective, they are completely unfixable without creating an entirely new league with a potentially vastly different legal structure.
I think your idea is a little too severe, but a season of 58 games where each team plays each other twice (home and away) makes a lot of sense. It would shrink the season enough to make every game much more consequential, balance the schedule, should eliminate most resting, and still provide the teams with a lot of games to make money.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely to ever happen because the system everything involving money operates within is all about maximising profit, and that unfortunately equates to volume over quality in the heads of those making the decisions. This is true across the entire global economy btw, although that is an enormous topic. Simply though, imagine a world where the primary goals are quality and efficiency, not quantity and profit! It would transform everything we do, and the scale of many of the problems we face would be diminshed. There would also be unintended consequences of course, but that is a discussion for another day.
Someone explain to me how wearing shoes in your residence is not utterly disgusting. How many times have you stood in someone else’s urine and you know what flakes in a public restroom? You do so frequently, so take your shoes OFF.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, but also have gotten so used to not taking my shoes off when I walk inside that it feels too late to develop the habit.
Breakfast is NOT the most important meal of the day. When you need to go so far out of your way to promote a meal, maybe that is a meal you should skip. Fuck breakfast!
The situation between Jacob Panetta and Jordan Subban and its aftermath is detrimental to race relations in hockey, but not in the way most media institutions have been framing it.
TL;DR - Last Saturday in the ECHL (minor league hockey), Panetta (who is white) and Subban (who is black) were chirping on the ice after a play. Panetta taunted him with a pose that he says was a Hulk/muscleman pose and Subban perceived a monkey pose and thus a racial insult. Subban's brother P.K. retweets a video showing the incident which gains over a million views on Twitter. Within one day, Panetta gets dragged online, receives a suspension from the league for 38 games, and is cut by by his team. Panetta posts an apology maintaining his pose was not racially motivated, while also understanding Subban's perception of it as such. A couple days later Panetta's former teammates issue a statement in support of his character and stating that they have seen Panetta do that pose to white players multiple times. No follow-up from either of the Subbans since the day of the gesture.
I've seen 2 different angles of the incident and neither gives me reasonable certainty that Panetta was impersonating a monkey. Much of the conversation, early and ongoing, has been about if Panetta's intent in making the gesture matters. Most sports outlets, including The Athletic have said that Panetta's intent is irrelevant and, "that's a good thing." I've seen suggestions that Panetta, at the very least, should have been wise enough to not make the flex pose to a black player, knowing that it could be misread as a monkey pose. I find that take to be a little too full of hindsight, but Panetta himself, in his apology, acknowledged Subban, and all black hockey players, have had to endure racial slurs hurled their way on the ice and he understands why Subban took it the way he did.
I think all this is bad to race relations because it's another example of optics winning out over growth and understanding. Panetta was released without any known investigation into the incident or his character, which is in-line with the ethos of 'intent doesn't matter.' Younger white hockey players will remember this and engage less with black hockey players in fear of what they do or say being misperceived. We should be encouraging MORE engagement*, having more conversations (offline preferably), and having a greater understanding of each other's different experiences. Having Panetta and Subban sit down and talk about what happened, covering all aspects of this misunderstanding including the crap Subban has had to endure through his life leading up to it, would do a hell of a lot more to end racism in hockey than sending one minor-leaguer into the sun.
*This should go without saying but I'll say it anyway: "More engagement" is not code for more exposure to racism. It's more shared experiences.
Ethan, I know you don't typically cover hockey, but I immediately thought of you when I heard about this story because of its intersection of sports, culture, and journalism. If you do end up doing something about this, I'd love to read it.
1) Racism virtually doesn’t exist in America today. I say virtually, because it will probably never completely go away. On a scale of 1-100, with 100 being during slavery, racism is at around a 10-15. And most of that comes from older people and people living in poor, rural areas.
2) There should have been zero Covid mitigations in the world after June 2020, when we had one month of data showing that places opening up in early May saw no spike in cases. If we could go back in time, by June 1 we should have returned to 2019 life — no restrictions, including mask requirements.
I think racism is more prevalent, just not in the way we traditionally think about it. White vs black racism is probably around that 10-15 mark. Hangout with some black, hispanic, or asian people and listen to how they talk about other groups. It's crazy
‘Racism’ is just noticing group traits. It should be encouraged, because if we are going to happily in a multi-ethnic society (hard enough!), we’re gonna need to have some comedic outlets. Political correctness and its ugly step sister wokeness is a war on noticing. The only group, that at present is allowed to be ‘noticed’, is (Christian) white males.
Ethan, I always enjoyed your Warriors coverage and love your substack. Could college football be barreling down the path to a structure that might look a lot like the relegation system of the English Premier League? The 8-12 most powerful schools join together to form the premier league. A second tier of schools form a second division?
Every time I hear someone mention "hey, why doesn't American professional sports league X consider adopting the relegation model of the EPL?", I scoff. Owners bought franchises that were valued based on a static set of teams in the league, a league that they can never be jettisoned from. They're never going to agree to putting their franchise value at risk by introducing relegation. This is absolutely laughable and will never happen. File this under things that will only happen if an an entirely new league sprouts out of nowhere.
However, college football isn't a franchise system. Once you take the NCAA out of the equation, anything is possible.
Is this an indication that we've reached an inflection point where America is actually losing the soft war to China? Or is this a product of the uniqueness of San Francisco's educational system / culture / environment that's so anti-American that someone born here and educated here decides that they would rather represent a communist country?
NFL teams who don't have a good QB should use ~50% of their draft capital on QBs and carry up to 6 QBs on their roster to evaluate and develop them until they find the guy.
The Expanse - mostly ignored by the mainstream for some inexplicable reason - is both the best hard sci-fi ever made, and up there with the great shows of all time like The Wire and Breaking Bad. The quality of the writing is superb, the character arcs meaningful, the continuity consistent, the foreshadowing immensely powerful (eg. something in S1E1 forshadows the entire arc from S5 onwards), and the space battles are easily the best ever put on a screen. Sure, there are a few tropey scenes in the first few episodes, but from S1E4 onwards it only gets better, deeper and more impactful. And what's more, it is simultaneously an incredible commentary on the state of our world today (think Earth is US/EU, Mars is China, the Belt is the developing world), and a plausible scenario for what will happen if humans discover a fusion drive in the next few hundred years, assuming we make it out of this century. Push through the initial resistance and watch it, I guarantee you will be hooked once you work out what the hell is happening.
Why are people writing so many articles and crying about “cancel culture” so much, when it affects basically nobody except a few rich folks with really offensive takes (who then go on to make millions crying about it on the “I was cancelled” tour)? It’s nothing more than the public saying, “hey, that’s a really crappy thing to say/do”. And it’s never been easier in all of human history to have your voice heard, what with social media. Nobody’s actually getting “cancelled”.
Then there’s barely a whisper about the literal government in states (with bills proposed in over 35 states the last I checked) passing laws telling teachers what can and can’t be taught in in history and English classes. This affects millions and millions of kids not learning actual history and facts, and it’s putting muzzles on hundreds of thousands of teachers. How many people know that Indiana has 10 bills in the works or that Missouri has more than 15? This stuff is *literally* the government trying to erase the public’s knowledge of history. But we’ve all heard *so much* about “cancel culture”? Why so much disparity in coverage In favor of a made up issue that doesn’t involve any abuse of power vs a real thing that the force of government is doing?
You’re probably right. I don’t read slate so I have no idea what their specific biases are. When I refer to mainstream institutions I’m referring more to the primary pillars of society like universities and big corporations as well as major media institutions and governmental bureaucracy- all of which have grown much less tolerant of dissent.
He’s a perfect example - because he’s not canceled. He’s very much still expressing his views. He’s still very much being heard. As far as what I’ve read about the issue, it sounds like he and Slate mutually agreed to part ways after he continued to bring up issues that made his coworkers uncomfortable (when it’s OK or not OK to use the “n-word”). Happens all the time - people don’t get along with other people at work so they move on. How is that “news”? Slate also sold him his podcast, The Gist, correct? He’s still being heard, thus he’s not canceled.
However - what is “news” is when governments use their power to silence people. Bills are being proposed in 33 states and many have been passed. Thus teachers will not be allowed to accurately teach history. In many states. Because the power of the government is being brought to bear. This is a brief summary of how many bills in the last year: https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/
This is standard right wing authoritarian BS. Invent a controversy that doesn’t really affect people and use it to bring down the hammer of the government. See “voting fraud”, “Antifa is behind all the BLM protests”, “the caravans of immigrants are coming to replace us”, or “cancel culture”. The history of the WORLD is littered with governments that used some fake controversies and rose to power and committed terrible atrocities.
By feeding into and elevating this cancel culture BS, you are doing exactly what the right wing wants. You’re providing cover for them to enact serious totalitarian measures.
I’m sure you’ll be talking a lot about “cancel culture” with Mike Pesca. It’s a great way to make money. Guaranteed to feed the trolls. Why not have Michael Hobbes on to provide a counterpoint?
Also - Since the amount of kids who won’t be taught accurate history is orders of magnitude greater than anybody who is actually canceled (and Mike isn’t) and the history *will be* actually canceled in those schools by the *power of the state*, let me ask you this: will you have significantly more podcasts on these actions by the state to suppress information? It significantly affects far more people.
This all just seems like a 2015 argument to me, no offense. Those observing reality have kinda moved on and noted that there's a massive chilling effect per describing it in media. "It’s a great way to make money" because audiences have taken notice as well. And personally, I'm proud of the audience at this newsletter. They aren't perfect, some are probably crazy, but on balance, a smart, informed group. They aren't, on average, "the trolls." As for what should constitute school curriculum in red states...that sounds like a different topic?
I’ll look into michael Hobbes if you can recommend something. I’m not familiar with him - but what I think is typically missed by the “cancel culture doesn’t exist” crowd is that it’s not about the number of people who are “canceled” which will always stay small but more about the signal it sends to others that dissent will not be tolerated has a huge impact.
At the risk of sounding cliche I’ll point out that the primary enforcement mechanisms in authoritarian systems (from Maoist China to Scientology) isn’t the explicit power structures but community enforcement to squash wrong think. When people worry about cancel culture I think this is the biggest concern - not that one or two people lose their job but that an entire generation will shy away from dissent to avoid any potential backlash.
The right wing cancel culture you describe around CRT is the same thing and that’s why I think both should be condemned equally and entirely.
I agree that passing laws to stop certain topics from being discussed is not a good solution. I don't agree that the 1619 project and other current topics being taught in school is "actual history and facts". America, like every other place in the history of the world, has positive and negative aspects to its history. Both should be taught.
I strongly disagree that "cancel culture" is not an issue. It effects way more people than just "rich people". The largest issue is its used as an example of what not to talk about or you'll get cancelled as well. If they can cancel powerful, culturally relevant people, the average person is just going to keep their mouth shut. That is where the real issue takes place. So even if it is just a "few rich people" who get cancelled (which it's not), it signals to everyone else to shut up.
It seems to me to me that things like the 1619 project should be treated like creationism. I’d prefer it not be taught but if it they want to teach it I’m happy to spend some time explaining to my kids why they’re stupid ideas.
Creationism is not based on fact. It’s based on faith. Faith is accepting something in the absence of facts - you just believe it to be true. It doesn’t make faith good or bad. It just is what it is.
The 1619 project is fact. Name one thing from it that isn’t a fact. Equating something based on faith vs something based on verifiable provable facts is nonsense.
Have you read those articles? A bunch of “whataboutisms”. Other people were enslaved too, so African American enslavement isn’t a big deal. The whole point of 1619 was that slavery as a undeniable fact affecting America’s foundation has been glossed over. I never learned about slavery back then. Did you? And it’s not saying that slavery is the “only” thing driving the Revolution. Just that it’s one of many. Something as complicated as why the Revolution occurred is not a binary option.
If you think the 1619 Project is completely factual, and any counternarrative is mere “whataboutism,” we may have a failure to communicate.
The statement “slavery [w]as a[n] undeniable fact affecting America’s foundation” is so anodyne and uncontroversial that no one could turn it into a Pulitzer Prize-winning “project.” That is not the thesis of the 1619 Project. The thesis of the 1619 Project is that the Revolution was fought *primarily* to preserve slavery against imminent British abolition, and that virtually all of the United States’s unique qualities flow from the fact of chattel slavery. This is why Nikole Hannah-Jones has repeatedly referred to 1619 as the US’s “true founding.”
Of course, mainstream (read: non-ideological) historians have repeatedly criticized this thesis as a gross overstatement. Virtually nowhere did the revolutionaries refer to the preservation of slavery as a rationale for the uprising. (Contrast this with the Confederates, who repeatedly and proudly declared that slavery and the supposed inferiority of blacks were the root cause of their attempted secession.) It is made up almost out of whole cloth. Note, too, that Britain wouldn’t ban slavery until 50 years after the revolution, and that beginning in 1619 until its abolition in 1833, Britain engaged in slavery in the Americas for more than two hundred years. The US had slavery from 1776 to 1865, less than ninety years and less than half the time Britain did.
And good lord, I can’t imagine where you went to school and didn’t learn about American slavery. I learned about it as a schoolkid in Missouri, hardly a hotbed of leftwing pedagogy. And it was certainly prominent in my high school US history course in California. I seriously doubt there is a public school system anywhere in the US in which slavery is not explicitly discussed as part of the history curriculum. I mean, you couldn’t even begin to teach the Civil War or its runup or aftermath without squarely addressing it….
I agree. My biggest issue is if you’re going to teach it (or anything for that matter) you should also teach the other side with people who don’t agree with the 1619 project and what it’s trying to teach. Then you’d at least allow the kids to make up their own mind on who made a stronger argument.
Yea I agree with the principle of this for sure. Unfortunately I think the reality is that teachers are people too and come with their own baked in biases. If they mimic the larger population I’d say about 80% are fully consumed by ideology (not hard to guess on which side) and it’s not realistic to expect them to attempt to teach with real nuance. I mostly think parents on both side are setting their kids up to fail by insulating them from alternative ideas and worldviews. If we want to create a more educated society we should try to teach them how to think and not what to think. The problem is most people on both sides seem to prefer to raise good ideological activists rather than critical thinkers.
It’s not “bias” nor “ideology”. It’s verifiable, provable facts. It’s history. It *happened*. The fact that you are calling it “bias” and “ideology” shows that you weren’t taught history. Which is what all these states are trying to make even worse by passing laws muzzling teachers.
Selectively choosing which facts to focus on is an entirely ideological exercise. Did you know, for instance, that the first antislavery society was founded in America in 1775? And that its president was later Benjamin Franklin? Now why would an anti-slavery founding father like Benjamin Franklin participate in the Revolution if its primary purpose was the preservation of slavery?
What’s the “other side” to the 1619 project? That America didn’t have slaves? That banks and governments didn’t restrict loans based on race? That governments didn’t create certain areas of the cities for ghettos? Because, news flash, America did have slavery. There are Mountains of evidence and documents, etc. that show banks and governments did that.
What is “getting cancelled”? Seriously. What is it? Josh Hawley said he was “cancelled”. And then he went on tv show and tv show to talk about how he was “cancelled”. It’s nothing. Nobody is getting cancelled. Everybody has the freedom to express their opinions. And everybody has access to lots of ways to express their opinions. What people call “cancel culture is just people disagreeing with other people. Which has happened throughout history.
I didn’t mention the 1619 project, you did. But since you did, it is actual facts. It was written by lauded historians from the best universities in the nation. Name one thing from it that isn’t fact.
Josh Hawley is a moron. I’m not interested in talking about his stupid political stunts.
Saying the 1619 project is “actual facts” probably means you haven’t done much research on it. I’d guess maybe you haven’t even read it in it’s entirety.
Here’s part of an interview with Gordon wood who is considered the most expert historian on revolutionary America:
I read the first essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which alleges that the Revolution occurred primarily because of the Americans’ desire to save their slaves. She claims the British were on the warpath against the slave trade and slavery and that rebellion was the only hope for American slavery. This made the American Revolution out to be like the Civil War, where the South seceded to save and protect slavery, and that the Americans 70 years earlier revolted to protect their institution of slavery. I just couldn’t believe this.
Being unfamiliar with the backlash against the 1619 project betrays your bias because it shows you didn’t go looking for any dissent and stayed in an echo chamber of ideas you already believed.
The core thesis of the 1619 project is B.S. Virtually all the serious american historians have denounced it and rigorously taken down its claims (that 'the revolution was about protecting slavery' amongst others). It's a purely progressive anti-racist, anti-capitalist spin on history. It's not a history project, it's a racialist project.
That’s one person. One. And it was a company making a business decision for a show whose ratings were falling. There are 320 million people in the US. You can find one example of *anything*. That doesn’t make it news.
Now compare that to the millions and millions of kids not being taught history and hundreds of thousands of teachers being muzzled by the power of the government. So why virtually no articles about governments abusing their power.
If cancel culture doesn't exist do you think Ethan could write the articles he does on this substack on ESPN or the Athletic? If he did do you think he would be fired? I doubt he can even cover topics at all at those places. Why is that? Is that not cancel culture?
If you think the 1619 project is "fact", there is no point even having a further discussion. A simple search of "historians argue the merits of the 1619 project" will bring up numerous articles on the arguments of the projects merits. Also considering none of the authors of 1619 are historians themselves it seems weird to argue it is 100% the truth.
The Athletic and ESPN are sports sites. Ethan wanted to write about things other than sports. He’s said that quite publicly. That’s why he left. Would you coach football in an ocean?
Ok, there’s also Jon Gruden. I would say he was “cancelled”. My understanding of CRT is that it’s not history per se but an ideology that systemic racism affects every aspect of our society today. Students are still learning about historical facts. Not sure what state you live in, but are students not being taught about slavery, the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks etc?
Did you read the comments Gruden made? Over and over? Covering many years? It’s insane that he was allowed to keep his job at ESPN for so long. They covered for him for *years*. And he’s currently earning millions and millions of dollars not to coach. There is oceans of material about the racism in our country’s history that were never taught to me. Tulsa massacre. Red lining on and on. If you think states aren’t trying to limit this, just follow this thread for 10 minutes and then tell me you don’t think it’s a problem. 8 states have already passed bills restricting history. 33 states have bills in the works. That’s over 2/3 of the country. https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1485650309871460357?s=21
This website keeps a list of people who are “cancelled” both by the left and the right. You’ll notice that the majority of the list are not the few celebrities you’ve heard about but regular people with regular careers who have run afoul of orthodoxy and been punished harshly. These aren’t people who have gone on the “I got cancelled tour” and cashed in, but people who have lost their ability to make a living because of ideas that are deemed taboo.
These lists of who’s been canceled are all filled with inaccuracies. Run a fact check. The majority of the people who are actually fired/etc. are people saying really fucked up things, pissing off their coworkers, being asked to stop, refusing, and then finally being asked to leave. Even if 1,000 people are canceled for this reason, that’s an insignificant number of people compared to the 320 million people (less than 1/10 of 1%). It’s insignificant compared to all the states (the majority of the states) using their power to limit what teachers are allowed to teach and students to learn. To deny history. And authoritarian governments all around the world - time after time have risen to power this way and eventually committed atrocities against millions of people over and over. It’s their playbook. Comparing, “these few people lost their jobs because they were jerks to their coworkers”, to the power of the state is insane. This thread and the links inside detail just how expansive this effort to cancel history has become. https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1485650309871460357?s=21
I doubt anyone here understands just how extreme these abuses by the state have become. It’s bills in over 2/3 of the states in America. No random list of names of people who lost their jobs can compare. Anecdotes aren’t “news”. 2/3 of states dealing with bills to use the power of the state to silence thought is absolutely news.
You keep talking about a lack of articles but a simple search of the Washington post and NY Times pulls up tons of articles about the anti-CRT bills. I assume these are sources you consider authoritative. I do for the most part. There are also very mainstream conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and David French constantly talking about the danger of these laws.
It seems to me that these are the same things on opposite sides. The approaches are different - one side is using social media shrieking to attempt to silence people they disagree with. The other side is using the governmental apparatus to silence people they disagree with. We should all condemn both of these as anti-speech excesses. Unfortunately it seems our societal political biases push us to believe one is noble and one is a threat to society. If we all tuned out of the culture wars and stopped making them good political fodder we could probably push the conversation away from them.
They are absolutely NOT the same thing nor are they two sides of the same coin. Calling it that is 1) utterly missing my point and 2) giving legitimacy to the utterly bogus takes about cancel culture. Cancel culture is just people expressing their opinions and it affects *almost nobody*. Governments using their power to muzzle teachers from teaching actual historical facts DOES affect millions of kids and hundreds of thousands of teachers. Two completely different things with VASTLY different orders of magnitude. In terms of actual impact on society: if cancel culture is a penny, then governments *using the power of the state* to muzzle teachers is Jeff Bezos’ net worth.
Given these facts, why are we bombarded with cancel culture takes day and night, yet nobody knows about all the laws that states are passing to hide historical facts?
A lot of the debate on whether the government should forgive student loan debt overlooks the most important point: how did we get here in the first place and what do we do to prevent such a large debt problem going forward? Giving out loans to pay for any old institution that will give someone a diploma is moral hazardy at best, predatory lending at worst.
Yep. The problem is rent seeking, both monetary and ideological. Look at the administrative class and what they've done to higher education. This essay was written by a professor at my alma mater. Key graf:
"Summary overview: the number of students at Pomona has increased 12 percent from 1990 to 2016; the number of faculty has increased 3 percent; tuition has increased 253 percent; the number of administrators has increased 384 percent. Pomona now employs far more administrators (271) than faculty (186) to fulfill its small college, nonprofit educational mission."
as a graduate of Middlebury College this rings true to me. I understand that my liberal arts education is supposed to make me prepared for many professional endeavors that are my own choices, and that part of the "value" cannot be measured as it shapes who you are as a person, but that aside I don't think anyone is ever sitting there asking themselves, if a student comes here, pays full tuition without scholarships or parents help, does reasonably well, and then goes out and gets a job, is that student going to find their salary justifies the loans? If the answer depends on the degree obtained, then how many degrees offered pass that test? If its just the economics degree because they all become bankers, that's bad news.
I think the moral hazard is buried kind of deep is the problem. The kids arent going to make prudent fiscal decisions. The federal govt ends up owning the majority of the student loan debt and they want to incentivize college attendance.
We need to think about 1. how to reduce existing debt burdens. 2 which players can actually be made to take on risk in the process to actually reduce how many people are allowed to take on debts they cant pay off 3. How the heck are we going to have any social workers if we actually solve this thing?
Taxing the youth to fund leftist’s ‘long march’ through the collegiate education system was brilliant (for the elites). The only solution left is to end all student loans and let the bubble burst. Degrees are mostly worthless anyways, legalize IQ testing for employers
There is no prohibition on employers giving IQ tests. Any company can administer, and some do. Notwithstanding the foregoing, they probably aren't used more because they are generally not helpful at determining if a person can do a job, and often terrible indicators of intelligence outside a narrowly-defined type of intelligence that may or may not be helpful for the job at hand. Also, as you may guess from my other posts I do not share your leftist/collegiate view, but given I doubt this is a topic where a debate would lead to any one changing their minds, I'll sidestep this comment and simply say, even if I were to accept that as true, I'd say the federalist society and conservative movement to appoint federal judges has been far more successful and influential than any liberal elite collegiate scheme.
agree with this, and also, the goal seems to have been get a college degree, and that's it. Obviously, the real goal is what a college degree gets you, and generally it leads to better professional prospects, either financially or perhaps lifestyle. But the degree itself is useless, it's what the degree gets you. I'm not sure what system needs to be in place to properly value degrees (e.g. these are useless, these are cyclical and the market is saturated, these are valuable enough you have a reasonable chance at obtaining salary after graduation to manage this debt, etc.), but asking the government to make that decision is fraught with peril. Avoiding that conversation...leads to what we have now...
Defense is really important for improving viewership numbers and health of a sport. This helps create parity and make a sport more interesting.
For example, in cricket, especially test cricket which is mainly played by the commonwealth countries. till 2017 it was drab and one sided affairs with conditions being suited for batting and bowling (or pitching) was at a low point, leading to reduced viewership. In 2018, ICC and the boards informally decided to help improve conditions for bowlers and this has resulted in more parity amongst the teams!
Though everyone in the media keeps talking about the death of test cricket, this is perhaps the time people watch it more since the 1970s and every team is competitive.
There is no imminent collapse of Honey Bees in America. Key points:
1.) The introduction of varroa mites in 1987 was thought to kill all feral honey bee colonies. (very recently, a few feral colonies have been found in upstate NY which seem to have an adaptation to survive the mite.)
2.) Honey bee populations have remained steady over the last 30 years despite the varroa mite and other unknown ailments.
3.) The market forces driving sustained bee populations are mostly pollination fees for almonds in California, not honey production.
So if you really want to save the supposedly endangered honey bees, ditch the bumper sticker, buy almonds, and if you live near a commercial beekeeper, buy him a drink (it's a tough life).
Tom Brady is mythologized as a tough leader, but the guy walked out on his pregnant girlfriend and couldn't get along with the greatest nfl coach of all time.
Criminals and gangsters will find a way to profit off NIL. NIL just feels rife for organized crime somehow (money laundering?), not sure how, not that smart. Would love to hear you talk NIL with an expert on callin.
Slot machines on phones will just be the tip of the iceberg (astute insight from one of your callin guests). Getting the female, non-masc male, LGBT/gender community, grannies, etc. into gambling is the next move. If they could somehow find a way to gamble on animal crossing they could print money. Is there a way to fuse K Pop with gambling? You get the picture.
The NBA are consistently dropping the ball when it comes to the international development of the league. The Premier League recently agreed a broadcast contract in the USA worth $2.7bn per annum. The NBA's current domestic contract, the main breadwinner, is worth around $3bn. One league has learned how to build their offering and maximise international revenues while the other was left heavily dependent on a partnership with just one country, China.
It is genuinely staggering that the NBA has been so poor at 'growing the game' and building their own revenue streams. English is the lingua franca of the world and the NBA has a saleable product that is littered with international stars. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Luka Doncic. You can sell all of these players and give people a reason to watch the product.
My other hot-take is that the NBA's product can be pretty shit. I enjoy watching the game of basketball and seeing the nightly contests between teams but man can it be difficult. The frequent stoppages, the lengthy time outs (ad breaks) and drawn out foul reviews take all of the rhythm out of the game. It also means that a quarter which should take 12 minutes ends taking 45 minutes. By that point, the viewer's attention is elsewhere and they have disengaged from watching the game.
The NBA also completely craps on their product by lacking flexibility when it comes to scheduling. Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies are super fun to watch and yet they barely ever play on national television. A team like the Grizzlies or Cavaliers have broad appeal to nearly every demographic. Basketball nerds can appreciate lesser known stars getting their chance to show out. An underdog team like Memphis also appeals to families; everybody likes an underdog. Selling the hottest, most exciting team in the league is a strategy that should not really go wrong.
And yet the NBA have persisted with their strategy of ensuring that teams like Boston, the Lakers and the Knicks are constantly on our TV screens. All three teams are dreadfully mediocre and lack any real sense of excitement. The only excitement around these teams is the drama that circles the roster and that is not a reason for people to tune in and watch games.
I'm a Thunder fan and I have been for five years. I will be the first to say that this year's roster is young, inexperienced and will make you tear your hair out but these dudes are fun as anything. Why not put SGA or Giddey on TV for people to enjoy?
Replace the NFL draft with free agency for incoming rookies. To make up for the missing entertainment aspect, turn it into a TV show like Shark Tank, but with multiple teams trying to pitch to top prospects.
To help out struggling teams now that they aren't getting high draft picks anymore, teams that miss the playoffs get a little extra cap space.
Yes, happened while I was sick. Had a few thoughts. It's a goofy/ideological article, but it identified an interesting trend in Dallas. Obvious aspect they miss is Cuban's penchant for partying with the talent.
I have general anxiety. I believe not every mental health issue needs to be treated with gentle compassion. In many cases, a kick in the ass — some tough love — is more effective.
Anxiety is based on fear, and I believe people are more capable of facing and overcoming their fears than they give themselves credit for. So sometimes when other people are overly gentle in trying to help, they're kinda enabling that person's anxiety.
I've done Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is based on exposing yourself to situations that cause you stress and anxiety. It's pretty effective.
Appreciate the insight Tom and Reuben. I did a bit of CBT myself and whilst I found it helpful, what really turned my life around was getting on the right drug.
I found I was feeling overly anxious for example before going for a run after suffering a panic attack before a race. And I was running marathons at the time and training as such. Just exposing myself wasn't the entire solution.
Agree re a push is sometimes better than dancing around an issue. As a Sixers fan, I think we can all see how that has derailed Ben Simmons.
At least - it can be fought intellegently, and we can make progress towards actually reducing the bad effects of drugs.
But we would need to actually think about what we're doing, where the harm comes from, and how to prevent it.
Some examples:
Heroin - does not cause people to commit crimes, except to acquire it. Give people drugs and clean needles, we are not eradicating it.
Weed - we need to think ahead. When it is legalized nationally, we could have huge corps with large amounts of power, advertising during the super bowl, insanely cheap prices with minimal taxes. That is if we do nothing.
Alcohol, cocaine, Meth - the people committing crimes from using these drugs are almost all going through the justice system. We should be getting 90% off those drugs and into a stable environment with a job, routine, etc.
As far as I can tell, the whole discussion of drugs in this country is either "drugs bad" or "drugs ok"
You make one good point - grouping different drugs together under one umbrella is idiocy because use of different drugs has vastly different causes and outcomes. But your understanding of drug policy is lacking. Research the harm minimisation model applied in Portugal for a start - the key point is not that "drugs are okay", it is that they are a health and social issue not a law and order issue, and should be treated accordingly. It is a deep and complex subject and needs to be treated as such.
Social credit scores will be introduced in “progressive” cities to incentivise people to not steal. That’s the only thing I can think of why petty theft is essentially legal in some cities.
I'm late on responding to this, but I used to absolutely love everything about the olympics. You could not change the channel for two weeks every couple of years. I couldn't get enough of it and would watch anything and enjoy it. And that's all I talked about with my friends, family and co-workers. For gods sake I would stop everything just to watch curling! Now I don't know what has happened. I could care less now and only watch a token USA hockey match or womens floor gymnastics competition. I can't be the only one. NBC's ratings are in the toilet.
I actually don’t have a take per se on the JRE and the hot air around it at the minute. But just floating the topic out there so as to see if you will explore it soon!
Take: I think Giannis’ win in Milwaukee actually has shown some preliminary signs as being a trendsetter in regards to NBA Stars wanting to create a legacy via being adorned in one city/franchise. Dame was already doing this…but there are signs of Ja, Beal.
My guess is that you were trying to determine something like......what subjects people would talk about most or how they would talk about particular subjects or perhaps if people would turn it into an online discussion of those topics.
Was this about gauging the interests of your readership to inform your future writing?
How exciting!
The data show that people mostly got caught up in a debate about a particular take.
I was expecting more humour overall, although there were some funny ones.
Bone-in Pork Chops are better than Bone-in new york strip when both are cooked with equal spices and both are cooked appropriately in a cast-iron skillet. This can also be a hot take about steak being the most overrated meat. Crispy livers are better. Lamb is much better. Steak is a tough meat that needs a lot of other things to happen in order for it to be optimally made. My must-haves with steak right now are kale and mushrooms (cooked obviously, with soy sauce, pepper, paprika and Italian seasoning{herbs}).
Daycare is good! TBH I think a lot of team blue doesn't want to let go of a lot of the education myths because that causes the whole meritocracy to fall apart and they'd have to admit we need heavy redistribution. (and admit a lot of the PMC got there via immutable qualities, not bc of their grind) Totally Freddie pilled on this topic.
This fact that early child care programs don’t have much effect on academic test scores has been known for several years. It isn’t new information. Any effect is gone by 2nd/3rd grade. But what early childhood care does do is help in all sorts of other good life benefits: less likely to be arrested, get addicted to drugs, more likely to graduate college, etc. Here’s an article from 2018 about that. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2018/10/16/17928164/early-childhood-education-doesnt-teach-kids-fund-it
Hmm, message in a bottle. Maybe it would be interesting to revisit that time Sting performed at the All-Star game. 2016 feels like an inflection point for the NBA, among other things, in retrospect.
The NBA should adopt an NFL-style season.
The NFL dominates because they make their product scarce: the best teams play 21 times per season. Every single play, individual performance matters. Yes, basketball players can in fact play so much more often — the grind of a football game is obviously much more difficult.
If NBA teams played everyone in their division twice and scheduled 8-12 more games, it would close the gap between the regular season and playoffs (which are nearly two different sports, the way the NBA is constructed currently).
You've written about the NBA's Twitter-ization of roster and player movement — this would put every single performance under a microscope like we do in the NFL. Twitter booms, sports betting booms, fantasy basketball booms, ticket prices boom, players are less likely to get injured.
I have a trillion other thoughts on this, but this is the basis.
For years, I've been on the bandwagon of taking the approach of reducing the number of games to whatever equates to 2 games per team per week, game played on a regular schedule, say, Wednesday and Saturday/Sunday. This allows you to own the broadcast space on these days as much as is possible, allow for better fantasy/gambling engagement, steady media coverage, and most importantly, create scarcity. Scarcity should greatly alleviate the load management challenge, allow players to heal, and be ready to bring energy to the floor. NFL games have stakes. NBA games do not. Players know the lack of stakes. Fans know the lack of stakes. More than anything, what scarcity does is fill the vacuum of stakes that have sucked the soul out of all but a few NBA regular season games. Any and all other attempts at bringing stakes to the NBA regular season amount to futile, deck chair rearrangements.
NFL games have stakes. NBA games do not. More than anything, what scarcity brings is stakes that are sorely missing from the NBA regular season. Players know it. Fans know it. Scarcity fixes it.
I'm confident improved ratings with fewer games would ultimately more than offset the lost eye balls due to reduced games. However, it would take time and it's not 100% guaranteed to work. Therefore, I'm sure that owners would never agree to any reduction in the number of games that's not backfilled with some other source of ratings(midseason tournament, etc). We'll never be able to get from 82 to 72 games, never mind getting down to the range (< 50 games?) where scarcity would be reaped.
Like a lot of structural problems in American professional sports, from a practical perspective, they are completely unfixable without creating an entirely new league with a potentially vastly different legal structure.
I think your idea is a little too severe, but a season of 58 games where each team plays each other twice (home and away) makes a lot of sense. It would shrink the season enough to make every game much more consequential, balance the schedule, should eliminate most resting, and still provide the teams with a lot of games to make money.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely to ever happen because the system everything involving money operates within is all about maximising profit, and that unfortunately equates to volume over quality in the heads of those making the decisions. This is true across the entire global economy btw, although that is an enormous topic. Simply though, imagine a world where the primary goals are quality and efficiency, not quantity and profit! It would transform everything we do, and the scale of many of the problems we face would be diminshed. There would also be unintended consequences of course, but that is a discussion for another day.
Love this. And not just for the NBA. I'm a big NHL fan, but the games are basically meaningless until March.
Water, better with no ice
The current gambling ads are the modern day equivalent of the 1950s “more doctors smoke camels” cigarette ads.
Someone explain to me how wearing shoes in your residence is not utterly disgusting. How many times have you stood in someone else’s urine and you know what flakes in a public restroom? You do so frequently, so take your shoes OFF.
Lol this reminded of Paulie on the Sopranos talking about wet shoe laces.
This is in the absolutely true but for some reason i still won't do it category
I wholeheartedly agree with this, but also have gotten so used to not taking my shoes off when I walk inside that it feels too late to develop the habit.
No hot take to report here, just wanted to say thanks to Ethan for the substack and glad he's feeling better after Covid.
Thanks Larry.
Why does it seem the biggest voices in criminal justice reformer are also the loudest for severe punishments for social justice taboos?
Bring back Radio Ethan
Breakfast is NOT the most important meal of the day. When you need to go so far out of your way to promote a meal, maybe that is a meal you should skip. Fuck breakfast!
100% agree
Very true. Need to normalize breakfast food for other meals though.
The situation between Jacob Panetta and Jordan Subban and its aftermath is detrimental to race relations in hockey, but not in the way most media institutions have been framing it.
If you haven't heard about this story, watch this video and see if you can tell what starts the scruff at around 50 seconds: https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/sf1zok/full_incident_alternate_angle_subban_panetta/?ref=share&ref_source=link
TL;DR - Last Saturday in the ECHL (minor league hockey), Panetta (who is white) and Subban (who is black) were chirping on the ice after a play. Panetta taunted him with a pose that he says was a Hulk/muscleman pose and Subban perceived a monkey pose and thus a racial insult. Subban's brother P.K. retweets a video showing the incident which gains over a million views on Twitter. Within one day, Panetta gets dragged online, receives a suspension from the league for 38 games, and is cut by by his team. Panetta posts an apology maintaining his pose was not racially motivated, while also understanding Subban's perception of it as such. A couple days later Panetta's former teammates issue a statement in support of his character and stating that they have seen Panetta do that pose to white players multiple times. No follow-up from either of the Subbans since the day of the gesture.
I've seen 2 different angles of the incident and neither gives me reasonable certainty that Panetta was impersonating a monkey. Much of the conversation, early and ongoing, has been about if Panetta's intent in making the gesture matters. Most sports outlets, including The Athletic have said that Panetta's intent is irrelevant and, "that's a good thing." I've seen suggestions that Panetta, at the very least, should have been wise enough to not make the flex pose to a black player, knowing that it could be misread as a monkey pose. I find that take to be a little too full of hindsight, but Panetta himself, in his apology, acknowledged Subban, and all black hockey players, have had to endure racial slurs hurled their way on the ice and he understands why Subban took it the way he did.
I think all this is bad to race relations because it's another example of optics winning out over growth and understanding. Panetta was released without any known investigation into the incident or his character, which is in-line with the ethos of 'intent doesn't matter.' Younger white hockey players will remember this and engage less with black hockey players in fear of what they do or say being misperceived. We should be encouraging MORE engagement*, having more conversations (offline preferably), and having a greater understanding of each other's different experiences. Having Panetta and Subban sit down and talk about what happened, covering all aspects of this misunderstanding including the crap Subban has had to endure through his life leading up to it, would do a hell of a lot more to end racism in hockey than sending one minor-leaguer into the sun.
*This should go without saying but I'll say it anyway: "More engagement" is not code for more exposure to racism. It's more shared experiences.
Ethan, I know you don't typically cover hockey, but I immediately thought of you when I heard about this story because of its intersection of sports, culture, and journalism. If you do end up doing something about this, I'd love to read it.
Well, this story is fascinating. I also need a full study done on why Canada is like if the U.S.A was crossed with a liberal arts college.
Toronto is like Manhattan if nobody J-walked and you aren't supposed to put your trash on the sidewalk.
Two from me:
1) Racism virtually doesn’t exist in America today. I say virtually, because it will probably never completely go away. On a scale of 1-100, with 100 being during slavery, racism is at around a 10-15. And most of that comes from older people and people living in poor, rural areas.
2) There should have been zero Covid mitigations in the world after June 2020, when we had one month of data showing that places opening up in early May saw no spike in cases. If we could go back in time, by June 1 we should have returned to 2019 life — no restrictions, including mask requirements.
I think racism is more prevalent, just not in the way we traditionally think about it. White vs black racism is probably around that 10-15 mark. Hangout with some black, hispanic, or asian people and listen to how they talk about other groups. It's crazy
‘Racism’ is just noticing group traits. It should be encouraged, because if we are going to happily in a multi-ethnic society (hard enough!), we’re gonna need to have some comedic outlets. Political correctness and its ugly step sister wokeness is a war on noticing. The only group, that at present is allowed to be ‘noticed’, is (Christian) white males.
Would subscribe to your Substack (‘Brettstack’), Brett.
You are gone love Ethan!
The government is not in control of your life; you are.
Ethan, I always enjoyed your Warriors coverage and love your substack. Could college football be barreling down the path to a structure that might look a lot like the relegation system of the English Premier League? The 8-12 most powerful schools join together to form the premier league. A second tier of schools form a second division?
Every time I hear someone mention "hey, why doesn't American professional sports league X consider adopting the relegation model of the EPL?", I scoff. Owners bought franchises that were valued based on a static set of teams in the league, a league that they can never be jettisoned from. They're never going to agree to putting their franchise value at risk by introducing relegation. This is absolutely laughable and will never happen. File this under things that will only happen if an an entirely new league sprouts out of nowhere.
However, college football isn't a franchise system. Once you take the NCAA out of the equation, anything is possible.
Ethan, curious if you're following this story ...
https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/33160624/olympics-2022-freeski-star-eileen-gu-delicate-balancing-act-china-us
Is this an indication that we've reached an inflection point where America is actually losing the soft war to China? Or is this a product of the uniqueness of San Francisco's educational system / culture / environment that's so anti-American that someone born here and educated here decides that they would rather represent a communist country?
NFL teams who don't have a good QB should use ~50% of their draft capital on QBs and carry up to 6 QBs on their roster to evaluate and develop them until they find the guy.
Disagree. Go all in on the DLine. Comparative advantage etc
Nathan Peterman & Chase Daniel agree with this take.
The Expanse - mostly ignored by the mainstream for some inexplicable reason - is both the best hard sci-fi ever made, and up there with the great shows of all time like The Wire and Breaking Bad. The quality of the writing is superb, the character arcs meaningful, the continuity consistent, the foreshadowing immensely powerful (eg. something in S1E1 forshadows the entire arc from S5 onwards), and the space battles are easily the best ever put on a screen. Sure, there are a few tropey scenes in the first few episodes, but from S1E4 onwards it only gets better, deeper and more impactful. And what's more, it is simultaneously an incredible commentary on the state of our world today (think Earth is US/EU, Mars is China, the Belt is the developing world), and a plausible scenario for what will happen if humans discover a fusion drive in the next few hundred years, assuming we make it out of this century. Push through the initial resistance and watch it, I guarantee you will be hooked once you work out what the hell is happening.
I'll look into it.
Why are people writing so many articles and crying about “cancel culture” so much, when it affects basically nobody except a few rich folks with really offensive takes (who then go on to make millions crying about it on the “I was cancelled” tour)? It’s nothing more than the public saying, “hey, that’s a really crappy thing to say/do”. And it’s never been easier in all of human history to have your voice heard, what with social media. Nobody’s actually getting “cancelled”.
Then there’s barely a whisper about the literal government in states (with bills proposed in over 35 states the last I checked) passing laws telling teachers what can and can’t be taught in in history and English classes. This affects millions and millions of kids not learning actual history and facts, and it’s putting muzzles on hundreds of thousands of teachers. How many people know that Indiana has 10 bills in the works or that Missouri has more than 15? This stuff is *literally* the government trying to erase the public’s knowledge of history. But we’ve all heard *so much* about “cancel culture”? Why so much disparity in coverage In favor of a made up issue that doesn’t involve any abuse of power vs a real thing that the force of government is doing?
Good time to mention that Mike Pesca is stopping by HoS pod next week!
he’ll attest to how well received contrarian opinions are in our mainstream institutions.
I agree with a lot of your other comments, but Slate is very left wing, not mainstream.
You’re probably right. I don’t read slate so I have no idea what their specific biases are. When I refer to mainstream institutions I’m referring more to the primary pillars of society like universities and big corporations as well as major media institutions and governmental bureaucracy- all of which have grown much less tolerant of dissent.
He’s a perfect example - because he’s not canceled. He’s very much still expressing his views. He’s still very much being heard. As far as what I’ve read about the issue, it sounds like he and Slate mutually agreed to part ways after he continued to bring up issues that made his coworkers uncomfortable (when it’s OK or not OK to use the “n-word”). Happens all the time - people don’t get along with other people at work so they move on. How is that “news”? Slate also sold him his podcast, The Gist, correct? He’s still being heard, thus he’s not canceled.
However - what is “news” is when governments use their power to silence people. Bills are being proposed in 33 states and many have been passed. Thus teachers will not be allowed to accurately teach history. In many states. Because the power of the government is being brought to bear. This is a brief summary of how many bills in the last year: https://pen.org/steep-rise-gag-orders-many-sloppily-drafted/
Here’s a thread detailing what’s happening in Indiana. Also mentions that 71 such bills have been proposed in the last 3 weeks. https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1485650309871460357?s=12
This is standard right wing authoritarian BS. Invent a controversy that doesn’t really affect people and use it to bring down the hammer of the government. See “voting fraud”, “Antifa is behind all the BLM protests”, “the caravans of immigrants are coming to replace us”, or “cancel culture”. The history of the WORLD is littered with governments that used some fake controversies and rose to power and committed terrible atrocities.
By feeding into and elevating this cancel culture BS, you are doing exactly what the right wing wants. You’re providing cover for them to enact serious totalitarian measures.
I’m sure you’ll be talking a lot about “cancel culture” with Mike Pesca. It’s a great way to make money. Guaranteed to feed the trolls. Why not have Michael Hobbes on to provide a counterpoint?
Also - Since the amount of kids who won’t be taught accurate history is orders of magnitude greater than anybody who is actually canceled (and Mike isn’t) and the history *will be* actually canceled in those schools by the *power of the state*, let me ask you this: will you have significantly more podcasts on these actions by the state to suppress information? It significantly affects far more people.
This all just seems like a 2015 argument to me, no offense. Those observing reality have kinda moved on and noted that there's a massive chilling effect per describing it in media. "It’s a great way to make money" because audiences have taken notice as well. And personally, I'm proud of the audience at this newsletter. They aren't perfect, some are probably crazy, but on balance, a smart, informed group. They aren't, on average, "the trolls." As for what should constitute school curriculum in red states...that sounds like a different topic?
I’ll look into michael Hobbes if you can recommend something. I’m not familiar with him - but what I think is typically missed by the “cancel culture doesn’t exist” crowd is that it’s not about the number of people who are “canceled” which will always stay small but more about the signal it sends to others that dissent will not be tolerated has a huge impact.
At the risk of sounding cliche I’ll point out that the primary enforcement mechanisms in authoritarian systems (from Maoist China to Scientology) isn’t the explicit power structures but community enforcement to squash wrong think. When people worry about cancel culture I think this is the biggest concern - not that one or two people lose their job but that an entire generation will shy away from dissent to avoid any potential backlash.
The right wing cancel culture you describe around CRT is the same thing and that’s why I think both should be condemned equally and entirely.
I agree that passing laws to stop certain topics from being discussed is not a good solution. I don't agree that the 1619 project and other current topics being taught in school is "actual history and facts". America, like every other place in the history of the world, has positive and negative aspects to its history. Both should be taught.
I strongly disagree that "cancel culture" is not an issue. It effects way more people than just "rich people". The largest issue is its used as an example of what not to talk about or you'll get cancelled as well. If they can cancel powerful, culturally relevant people, the average person is just going to keep their mouth shut. That is where the real issue takes place. So even if it is just a "few rich people" who get cancelled (which it's not), it signals to everyone else to shut up.
It seems to me to me that things like the 1619 project should be treated like creationism. I’d prefer it not be taught but if it they want to teach it I’m happy to spend some time explaining to my kids why they’re stupid ideas.
Creationism is not based on fact. It’s based on faith. Faith is accepting something in the absence of facts - you just believe it to be true. It doesn’t make faith good or bad. It just is what it is.
The 1619 project is fact. Name one thing from it that isn’t a fact. Equating something based on faith vs something based on verifiable provable facts is nonsense.
"Name one thing from it that isn’t a fact."
Only the entire premise. But don't listen to me, listen to those reactionary, um, socialists.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/09/06/1619-s06.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/17/holt-s17.html
Have you read those articles? A bunch of “whataboutisms”. Other people were enslaved too, so African American enslavement isn’t a big deal. The whole point of 1619 was that slavery as a undeniable fact affecting America’s foundation has been glossed over. I never learned about slavery back then. Did you? And it’s not saying that slavery is the “only” thing driving the Revolution. Just that it’s one of many. Something as complicated as why the Revolution occurred is not a binary option.
If you think the 1619 Project is completely factual, and any counternarrative is mere “whataboutism,” we may have a failure to communicate.
The statement “slavery [w]as a[n] undeniable fact affecting America’s foundation” is so anodyne and uncontroversial that no one could turn it into a Pulitzer Prize-winning “project.” That is not the thesis of the 1619 Project. The thesis of the 1619 Project is that the Revolution was fought *primarily* to preserve slavery against imminent British abolition, and that virtually all of the United States’s unique qualities flow from the fact of chattel slavery. This is why Nikole Hannah-Jones has repeatedly referred to 1619 as the US’s “true founding.”
Of course, mainstream (read: non-ideological) historians have repeatedly criticized this thesis as a gross overstatement. Virtually nowhere did the revolutionaries refer to the preservation of slavery as a rationale for the uprising. (Contrast this with the Confederates, who repeatedly and proudly declared that slavery and the supposed inferiority of blacks were the root cause of their attempted secession.) It is made up almost out of whole cloth. Note, too, that Britain wouldn’t ban slavery until 50 years after the revolution, and that beginning in 1619 until its abolition in 1833, Britain engaged in slavery in the Americas for more than two hundred years. The US had slavery from 1776 to 1865, less than ninety years and less than half the time Britain did.
And good lord, I can’t imagine where you went to school and didn’t learn about American slavery. I learned about it as a schoolkid in Missouri, hardly a hotbed of leftwing pedagogy. And it was certainly prominent in my high school US history course in California. I seriously doubt there is a public school system anywhere in the US in which slavery is not explicitly discussed as part of the history curriculum. I mean, you couldn’t even begin to teach the Civil War or its runup or aftermath without squarely addressing it….
I agree. My biggest issue is if you’re going to teach it (or anything for that matter) you should also teach the other side with people who don’t agree with the 1619 project and what it’s trying to teach. Then you’d at least allow the kids to make up their own mind on who made a stronger argument.
Yea I agree with the principle of this for sure. Unfortunately I think the reality is that teachers are people too and come with their own baked in biases. If they mimic the larger population I’d say about 80% are fully consumed by ideology (not hard to guess on which side) and it’s not realistic to expect them to attempt to teach with real nuance. I mostly think parents on both side are setting their kids up to fail by insulating them from alternative ideas and worldviews. If we want to create a more educated society we should try to teach them how to think and not what to think. The problem is most people on both sides seem to prefer to raise good ideological activists rather than critical thinkers.
It’s not “bias” nor “ideology”. It’s verifiable, provable facts. It’s history. It *happened*. The fact that you are calling it “bias” and “ideology” shows that you weren’t taught history. Which is what all these states are trying to make even worse by passing laws muzzling teachers.
Selectively choosing which facts to focus on is an entirely ideological exercise. Did you know, for instance, that the first antislavery society was founded in America in 1775? And that its president was later Benjamin Franklin? Now why would an anti-slavery founding father like Benjamin Franklin participate in the Revolution if its primary purpose was the preservation of slavery?
What’s the “other side” to the 1619 project? That America didn’t have slaves? That banks and governments didn’t restrict loans based on race? That governments didn’t create certain areas of the cities for ghettos? Because, news flash, America did have slavery. There are Mountains of evidence and documents, etc. that show banks and governments did that.
What is “getting cancelled”? Seriously. What is it? Josh Hawley said he was “cancelled”. And then he went on tv show and tv show to talk about how he was “cancelled”. It’s nothing. Nobody is getting cancelled. Everybody has the freedom to express their opinions. And everybody has access to lots of ways to express their opinions. What people call “cancel culture is just people disagreeing with other people. Which has happened throughout history.
I didn’t mention the 1619 project, you did. But since you did, it is actual facts. It was written by lauded historians from the best universities in the nation. Name one thing from it that isn’t fact.
Josh Hawley is a moron. I’m not interested in talking about his stupid political stunts.
Saying the 1619 project is “actual facts” probably means you haven’t done much research on it. I’d guess maybe you haven’t even read it in it’s entirety.
Here’s part of an interview with Gordon wood who is considered the most expert historian on revolutionary America:
I read the first essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, which alleges that the Revolution occurred primarily because of the Americans’ desire to save their slaves. She claims the British were on the warpath against the slave trade and slavery and that rebellion was the only hope for American slavery. This made the American Revolution out to be like the Civil War, where the South seceded to save and protect slavery, and that the Americans 70 years earlier revolted to protect their institution of slavery. I just couldn’t believe this.
Being unfamiliar with the backlash against the 1619 project betrays your bias because it shows you didn’t go looking for any dissent and stayed in an echo chamber of ideas you already believed.
The core thesis of the 1619 project is B.S. Virtually all the serious american historians have denounced it and rigorously taken down its claims (that 'the revolution was about protecting slavery' amongst others). It's a purely progressive anti-racist, anti-capitalist spin on history. It's not a history project, it's a racialist project.
I would say Rachel Nichols was “cancelled” for her private comments about her job. Her show is no longer on the air.
That’s one person. One. And it was a company making a business decision for a show whose ratings were falling. There are 320 million people in the US. You can find one example of *anything*. That doesn’t make it news.
Now compare that to the millions and millions of kids not being taught history and hundreds of thousands of teachers being muzzled by the power of the government. So why virtually no articles about governments abusing their power.
If cancel culture doesn't exist do you think Ethan could write the articles he does on this substack on ESPN or the Athletic? If he did do you think he would be fired? I doubt he can even cover topics at all at those places. Why is that? Is that not cancel culture?
If you think the 1619 project is "fact", there is no point even having a further discussion. A simple search of "historians argue the merits of the 1619 project" will bring up numerous articles on the arguments of the projects merits. Also considering none of the authors of 1619 are historians themselves it seems weird to argue it is 100% the truth.
The Athletic and ESPN are sports sites. Ethan wanted to write about things other than sports. He’s said that quite publicly. That’s why he left. Would you coach football in an ocean?
Ok, there’s also Jon Gruden. I would say he was “cancelled”. My understanding of CRT is that it’s not history per se but an ideology that systemic racism affects every aspect of our society today. Students are still learning about historical facts. Not sure what state you live in, but are students not being taught about slavery, the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks etc?
Did you read the comments Gruden made? Over and over? Covering many years? It’s insane that he was allowed to keep his job at ESPN for so long. They covered for him for *years*. And he’s currently earning millions and millions of dollars not to coach. There is oceans of material about the racism in our country’s history that were never taught to me. Tulsa massacre. Red lining on and on. If you think states aren’t trying to limit this, just follow this thread for 10 minutes and then tell me you don’t think it’s a problem. 8 states have already passed bills restricting history. 33 states have bills in the works. That’s over 2/3 of the country. https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1485650309871460357?s=21
http://www.canceledpeople.com/cancelations
This website keeps a list of people who are “cancelled” both by the left and the right. You’ll notice that the majority of the list are not the few celebrities you’ve heard about but regular people with regular careers who have run afoul of orthodoxy and been punished harshly. These aren’t people who have gone on the “I got cancelled tour” and cashed in, but people who have lost their ability to make a living because of ideas that are deemed taboo.
These lists of who’s been canceled are all filled with inaccuracies. Run a fact check. The majority of the people who are actually fired/etc. are people saying really fucked up things, pissing off their coworkers, being asked to stop, refusing, and then finally being asked to leave. Even if 1,000 people are canceled for this reason, that’s an insignificant number of people compared to the 320 million people (less than 1/10 of 1%). It’s insignificant compared to all the states (the majority of the states) using their power to limit what teachers are allowed to teach and students to learn. To deny history. And authoritarian governments all around the world - time after time have risen to power this way and eventually committed atrocities against millions of people over and over. It’s their playbook. Comparing, “these few people lost their jobs because they were jerks to their coworkers”, to the power of the state is insane. This thread and the links inside detail just how expansive this effort to cancel history has become. https://twitter.com/jeffreyasachs/status/1485650309871460357?s=21
I doubt anyone here understands just how extreme these abuses by the state have become. It’s bills in over 2/3 of the states in America. No random list of names of people who lost their jobs can compare. Anecdotes aren’t “news”. 2/3 of states dealing with bills to use the power of the state to silence thought is absolutely news.
You keep talking about a lack of articles but a simple search of the Washington post and NY Times pulls up tons of articles about the anti-CRT bills. I assume these are sources you consider authoritative. I do for the most part. There are also very mainstream conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and David French constantly talking about the danger of these laws.
It seems to me that these are the same things on opposite sides. The approaches are different - one side is using social media shrieking to attempt to silence people they disagree with. The other side is using the governmental apparatus to silence people they disagree with. We should all condemn both of these as anti-speech excesses. Unfortunately it seems our societal political biases push us to believe one is noble and one is a threat to society. If we all tuned out of the culture wars and stopped making them good political fodder we could probably push the conversation away from them.
They are absolutely NOT the same thing nor are they two sides of the same coin. Calling it that is 1) utterly missing my point and 2) giving legitimacy to the utterly bogus takes about cancel culture. Cancel culture is just people expressing their opinions and it affects *almost nobody*. Governments using their power to muzzle teachers from teaching actual historical facts DOES affect millions of kids and hundreds of thousands of teachers. Two completely different things with VASTLY different orders of magnitude. In terms of actual impact on society: if cancel culture is a penny, then governments *using the power of the state* to muzzle teachers is Jeff Bezos’ net worth.
Given these facts, why are we bombarded with cancel culture takes day and night, yet nobody knows about all the laws that states are passing to hide historical facts?
I'm with Paul. Enough with the right wing snowflakes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/28/tennessee-bans-maus-snowflake-red-states/
A lot of the debate on whether the government should forgive student loan debt overlooks the most important point: how did we get here in the first place and what do we do to prevent such a large debt problem going forward? Giving out loans to pay for any old institution that will give someone a diploma is moral hazardy at best, predatory lending at worst.
Yep. The problem is rent seeking, both monetary and ideological. Look at the administrative class and what they've done to higher education. This essay was written by a professor at my alma mater. Key graf:
"Summary overview: the number of students at Pomona has increased 12 percent from 1990 to 2016; the number of faculty has increased 3 percent; tuition has increased 253 percent; the number of administrators has increased 384 percent. Pomona now employs far more administrators (271) than faculty (186) to fulfill its small college, nonprofit educational mission."
https://isi.org/modern-age/somewhere-between-a-jeremiad-and-a-eulogy/
as a graduate of Middlebury College this rings true to me. I understand that my liberal arts education is supposed to make me prepared for many professional endeavors that are my own choices, and that part of the "value" cannot be measured as it shapes who you are as a person, but that aside I don't think anyone is ever sitting there asking themselves, if a student comes here, pays full tuition without scholarships or parents help, does reasonably well, and then goes out and gets a job, is that student going to find their salary justifies the loans? If the answer depends on the degree obtained, then how many degrees offered pass that test? If its just the economics degree because they all become bankers, that's bad news.
I think the moral hazard is buried kind of deep is the problem. The kids arent going to make prudent fiscal decisions. The federal govt ends up owning the majority of the student loan debt and they want to incentivize college attendance.
We need to think about 1. how to reduce existing debt burdens. 2 which players can actually be made to take on risk in the process to actually reduce how many people are allowed to take on debts they cant pay off 3. How the heck are we going to have any social workers if we actually solve this thing?
Taxing the youth to fund leftist’s ‘long march’ through the collegiate education system was brilliant (for the elites). The only solution left is to end all student loans and let the bubble burst. Degrees are mostly worthless anyways, legalize IQ testing for employers
There is no prohibition on employers giving IQ tests. Any company can administer, and some do. Notwithstanding the foregoing, they probably aren't used more because they are generally not helpful at determining if a person can do a job, and often terrible indicators of intelligence outside a narrowly-defined type of intelligence that may or may not be helpful for the job at hand. Also, as you may guess from my other posts I do not share your leftist/collegiate view, but given I doubt this is a topic where a debate would lead to any one changing their minds, I'll sidestep this comment and simply say, even if I were to accept that as true, I'd say the federalist society and conservative movement to appoint federal judges has been far more successful and influential than any liberal elite collegiate scheme.
agree with this, and also, the goal seems to have been get a college degree, and that's it. Obviously, the real goal is what a college degree gets you, and generally it leads to better professional prospects, either financially or perhaps lifestyle. But the degree itself is useless, it's what the degree gets you. I'm not sure what system needs to be in place to properly value degrees (e.g. these are useless, these are cyclical and the market is saturated, these are valuable enough you have a reasonable chance at obtaining salary after graduation to manage this debt, etc.), but asking the government to make that decision is fraught with peril. Avoiding that conversation...leads to what we have now...
Defense is really important for improving viewership numbers and health of a sport. This helps create parity and make a sport more interesting.
For example, in cricket, especially test cricket which is mainly played by the commonwealth countries. till 2017 it was drab and one sided affairs with conditions being suited for batting and bowling (or pitching) was at a low point, leading to reduced viewership. In 2018, ICC and the boards informally decided to help improve conditions for bowlers and this has resulted in more parity amongst the teams!
Though everyone in the media keeps talking about the death of test cricket, this is perhaps the time people watch it more since the 1970s and every team is competitive.
There is no imminent collapse of Honey Bees in America. Key points:
1.) The introduction of varroa mites in 1987 was thought to kill all feral honey bee colonies. (very recently, a few feral colonies have been found in upstate NY which seem to have an adaptation to survive the mite.)
2.) Honey bee populations have remained steady over the last 30 years despite the varroa mite and other unknown ailments.
3.) The market forces driving sustained bee populations are mostly pollination fees for almonds in California, not honey production.
So if you really want to save the supposedly endangered honey bees, ditch the bumper sticker, buy almonds, and if you live near a commercial beekeeper, buy him a drink (it's a tough life).
Tom Brady is mythologized as a tough leader, but the guy walked out on his pregnant girlfriend and couldn't get along with the greatest nfl coach of all time.
Bon Jovi > Bruce Springsteen.
Criminals and gangsters will find a way to profit off NIL. NIL just feels rife for organized crime somehow (money laundering?), not sure how, not that smart. Would love to hear you talk NIL with an expert on callin.
Slot machines on phones will just be the tip of the iceberg (astute insight from one of your callin guests). Getting the female, non-masc male, LGBT/gender community, grannies, etc. into gambling is the next move. If they could somehow find a way to gamble on animal crossing they could print money. Is there a way to fuse K Pop with gambling? You get the picture.
Will a memphis-cleveland nba final be a good or bad thing for NBA?
One of them involved could be good long term. Two is tough
The NBA are consistently dropping the ball when it comes to the international development of the league. The Premier League recently agreed a broadcast contract in the USA worth $2.7bn per annum. The NBA's current domestic contract, the main breadwinner, is worth around $3bn. One league has learned how to build their offering and maximise international revenues while the other was left heavily dependent on a partnership with just one country, China.
It is genuinely staggering that the NBA has been so poor at 'growing the game' and building their own revenue streams. English is the lingua franca of the world and the NBA has a saleable product that is littered with international stars. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Luka Doncic. You can sell all of these players and give people a reason to watch the product.
My other hot-take is that the NBA's product can be pretty shit. I enjoy watching the game of basketball and seeing the nightly contests between teams but man can it be difficult. The frequent stoppages, the lengthy time outs (ad breaks) and drawn out foul reviews take all of the rhythm out of the game. It also means that a quarter which should take 12 minutes ends taking 45 minutes. By that point, the viewer's attention is elsewhere and they have disengaged from watching the game.
The NBA also completely craps on their product by lacking flexibility when it comes to scheduling. Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies are super fun to watch and yet they barely ever play on national television. A team like the Grizzlies or Cavaliers have broad appeal to nearly every demographic. Basketball nerds can appreciate lesser known stars getting their chance to show out. An underdog team like Memphis also appeals to families; everybody likes an underdog. Selling the hottest, most exciting team in the league is a strategy that should not really go wrong.
And yet the NBA have persisted with their strategy of ensuring that teams like Boston, the Lakers and the Knicks are constantly on our TV screens. All three teams are dreadfully mediocre and lack any real sense of excitement. The only excitement around these teams is the drama that circles the roster and that is not a reason for people to tune in and watch games.
I'm a Thunder fan and I have been for five years. I will be the first to say that this year's roster is young, inexperienced and will make you tear your hair out but these dudes are fun as anything. Why not put SGA or Giddey on TV for people to enjoy?
The world would be a better place without the internet. We should destroy the internet.
The Breaking Bad finale was quite bad
True.
Millennials are simply Baby Boomers + Internet.
Replace the NFL draft with free agency for incoming rookies. To make up for the missing entertainment aspect, turn it into a TV show like Shark Tank, but with multiple teams trying to pitch to top prospects.
To help out struggling teams now that they aren't getting high draft picks anymore, teams that miss the playoffs get a little extra cap space.
In the NFL i think this is a great idea. The number of players involved and the league's parity in terms of revenue by market makes it doable.
In the NBA it would be a disaster
Have you seen this hot NBA take? Would love to hear your perspective on it. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/21/the-dallas-mavericks-are-consistently-white-in-a-black-league-why
Yes, happened while I was sick. Had a few thoughts. It's a goofy/ideological article, but it identified an interesting trend in Dallas. Obvious aspect they miss is Cuban's penchant for partying with the talent.
I have general anxiety. I believe not every mental health issue needs to be treated with gentle compassion. In many cases, a kick in the ass — some tough love — is more effective.
What was it about the kick in the arse, that was more effective in your view?
Anxiety is based on fear, and I believe people are more capable of facing and overcoming their fears than they give themselves credit for. So sometimes when other people are overly gentle in trying to help, they're kinda enabling that person's anxiety.
I've done Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is based on exposing yourself to situations that cause you stress and anxiety. It's pretty effective.
Appreciate the insight Tom and Reuben. I did a bit of CBT myself and whilst I found it helpful, what really turned my life around was getting on the right drug.
I found I was feeling overly anxious for example before going for a run after suffering a panic attack before a race. And I was running marathons at the time and training as such. Just exposing myself wasn't the entire solution.
Agree re a push is sometimes better than dancing around an issue. As a Sixers fan, I think we can all see how that has derailed Ben Simmons.
All cheap fried calamari is actually Chitterlings. Big Chitterling doesn't want you to know that.
The War on Drugs can actually be won.
At least - it can be fought intellegently, and we can make progress towards actually reducing the bad effects of drugs.
But we would need to actually think about what we're doing, where the harm comes from, and how to prevent it.
Some examples:
Heroin - does not cause people to commit crimes, except to acquire it. Give people drugs and clean needles, we are not eradicating it.
Weed - we need to think ahead. When it is legalized nationally, we could have huge corps with large amounts of power, advertising during the super bowl, insanely cheap prices with minimal taxes. That is if we do nothing.
Alcohol, cocaine, Meth - the people committing crimes from using these drugs are almost all going through the justice system. We should be getting 90% off those drugs and into a stable environment with a job, routine, etc.
As far as I can tell, the whole discussion of drugs in this country is either "drugs bad" or "drugs ok"
You make one good point - grouping different drugs together under one umbrella is idiocy because use of different drugs has vastly different causes and outcomes. But your understanding of drug policy is lacking. Research the harm minimisation model applied in Portugal for a start - the key point is not that "drugs are okay", it is that they are a health and social issue not a law and order issue, and should be treated accordingly. It is a deep and complex subject and needs to be treated as such.
LBJ ordered the Israelis to sink the USS Liberty as a false flag to get us into the Six Day War
Social credit scores will be introduced in “progressive” cities to incentivise people to not steal. That’s the only thing I can think of why petty theft is essentially legal in some cities.
And then be cancelled because of disparate impact.
I'm late on responding to this, but I used to absolutely love everything about the olympics. You could not change the channel for two weeks every couple of years. I couldn't get enough of it and would watch anything and enjoy it. And that's all I talked about with my friends, family and co-workers. For gods sake I would stop everything just to watch curling! Now I don't know what has happened. I could care less now and only watch a token USA hockey match or womens floor gymnastics competition. I can't be the only one. NBC's ratings are in the toilet.
Joe Rogan…
I actually don’t have a take per se on the JRE and the hot air around it at the minute. But just floating the topic out there so as to see if you will explore it soon!
Take: I think Giannis’ win in Milwaukee actually has shown some preliminary signs as being a trendsetter in regards to NBA Stars wanting to create a legacy via being adorned in one city/franchise. Dame was already doing this…but there are signs of Ja, Beal.
Can you find out what actually happened to Micheal Wright?
Nice guy when I knew him. What happened?
Experiment, fun!
What was your hypothesis?
My guess is that you were trying to determine something like......what subjects people would talk about most or how they would talk about particular subjects or perhaps if people would turn it into an online discussion of those topics.
Was this about gauging the interests of your readership to inform your future writing?
How exciting!
The data show that people mostly got caught up in a debate about a particular take.
I was expecting more humour overall, although there were some funny ones.
What did you get out of the exercise Ethan?
woke mob is full of bums
Sparkling Mineral Water makes you cum harder.
Bone-in Pork Chops are better than Bone-in new york strip when both are cooked with equal spices and both are cooked appropriately in a cast-iron skillet. This can also be a hot take about steak being the most overrated meat. Crispy livers are better. Lamb is much better. Steak is a tough meat that needs a lot of other things to happen in order for it to be optimally made. My must-haves with steak right now are kale and mushrooms (cooked obviously, with soy sauce, pepper, paprika and Italian seasoning{herbs}).
If you’re complaining about something on social media your life is not that bad
Looks like early childhood education programs don't work in terms of promoting later academic or behavioral achievement: https://seliger.com/2022/01/26/the-effects-of-early-childhood-education-programs-dont-look-good-a-large-randomized-pre-kindergarten-study.
We should give up pretending they're "academic" and admit they're daycare.
Daycare is good! TBH I think a lot of team blue doesn't want to let go of a lot of the education myths because that causes the whole meritocracy to fall apart and they'd have to admit we need heavy redistribution. (and admit a lot of the PMC got there via immutable qualities, not bc of their grind) Totally Freddie pilled on this topic.
This fact that early child care programs don’t have much effect on academic test scores has been known for several years. It isn’t new information. Any effect is gone by 2nd/3rd grade. But what early childhood care does do is help in all sorts of other good life benefits: less likely to be arrested, get addicted to drugs, more likely to graduate college, etc. Here’s an article from 2018 about that. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2018/10/16/17928164/early-childhood-education-doesnt-teach-kids-fund-it
NBA groupies
Hmm, message in a bottle. Maybe it would be interesting to revisit that time Sting performed at the All-Star game. 2016 feels like an inflection point for the NBA, among other things, in retrospect.
I don't remember what happened with that.
Underrated aspect of Joe Rogan's success: He's cool.
I didn't, unfortunately. Too much parenting while sick.