Two 15-year-olds have played in the NWSL this season. The Washington Spirit’s Chloe Ricketts became the youngest-ever player to sign a league contract, a milestone covered in March by NewsForKids.net. She has since turned 16. Later in March, Melanie Barcenas broke Ricketts’ record and became the youngest NWSL signee, committing to the San Diego Wave at 15 and 138 days old.
JC is the only player that isn't a pick based on the highest overall stats, but I love how my Sparkles are playing this year, so don't @ me.
In January, Clara Wu Tsai flew to Turkey on a trip that altered the balance of power in the W.N.B.A.
Wu Tsai, who owns the Liberty with her husband, Joe Tsai, went there to chase Breanna Stewart, the off-season’s most coveted free agent. Accompanied by her team’s coach and general manager, Wu Tsai pitched Stewart in the middle of her Euroleague season with a team in Istanbul.
But Wu Tsai left the rest of the team’s brass behind as she made the final push. She rented an 80-foot tour boat and took Stewart, Stewart’s wife, Marta Xargay, and the couple’s 1-year-old daughter, Ruby, for a cruise. Gliding through the Bosporus, Wu Tsai reeled in Stewart, the two-time league most valuable player, with questions.
“It was just her curiosity that grabbed me,” Stewart told me during an interview this month. “She wanted to know what I needed, what we needed as players, to perform at our best. She wanted to improve the league as much as I do.”
the responses i’ve seen to shiv’s ending seem very quick to write her off as just another sad victim of the cycle, which isn’t without truth BUT!!! that is not even remotely the summation of shiv’s story.
i don’t think she votes yes to “save kendall” or to try to finally set her brothers free. and i don’t think her main concern was that ken was becoming their dad. she absolutely noticed and didn’t love it, but that was not her motivation in betraying him. she was thinking about herself.
it’s tempting to make a martyr out of her as she is the only female child and we see her suffer the onslaught of misogyny that comes with that. but to make her into a saintlike figure who got beat takes away the power and intelligence behind her decision.
at this point she’s stuck between two non ideal choices, but she recognizes that they have accidentally made her the single most important player in the game. because while she can’t have the outcome she’d prefer, she has the power to decide the fates of everyone else. the written off lone woman now holds in her hands the fate of every man in her life.
so she thinks about the long term benefits of both options and realizes that one side leaves her completely without any leverage.
her brothers have proven to her multiple times in the last few days alone that they will cut her out and walk all over her the first chance they get. siding with them leaves her nothing to bargain with. she would just have to hope that ken would actually take care of her. and that level of vulnerability is not only unacceptable to her, it’s stupid. and shiv fuckin roy is not stupid.
so she thinks about the other side and about what she actually wants for her life. and against her better judgment, it’s becomes unfortunately clear that she wants tom. the way she wants him is not altogether loving or even good but it is necessary to her. she sees relationships as having winners and losers and she chose this man specifically so that she could be confident in her ability to win. except now he’s grown some balls and made himself unavailable to her.
she may not like the way her husband is evolving but she already placed her bets on him, so she’s sure as hell not losing to him now. there’s also a part of her that feels intrigued by this new man she’s married to. it’s interesting to have a sparring partner in him instead of having to looking for excitement outside of their marriage.
so for maybe the first time ever, she processes what tom has said to her and thinks about what he actually wants.
he needs her to prove that she cares. he needs to know that she is capable of sacrifice. if she can’t find it within herself to do this for him, then she will lose him, and by extension, she will lose.
siding with tom gives her the opportunity to once and for all make a grand-stand gesture of love, but more importantly, it creates leverage for her. never again will he be able to hold the moral high ground over her head. never again can he say she doesn’t love him. never again can he call her selfish or uncaring. above all, he can never betray her again, because she just removed all of his moral justification for turning on her. he doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s just taken back all the power in their relationship. just in a more subtle way than she’s used to operating.
and just like that, she has the ceo of a multi billion dollar company in her pocket, while situating herself as the only descendant of logan roy to still be playing the game, having removed her brothers from the equation permanently. she may still be far from the top but she’s creating a path for herself to climb.
so yes, she’ll let tom play king for a day, and she’ll have his baby and say “congratulations,” and play the gracious wife, but tomorrow is a new day with lots of room to maneuver. and when her husband puts out his hand, she’ll place her own on top. but she won’t grasp it because she doesn’t need to.
Very much agree with this. People are also underselling what she saw in the boardroom. Kendall is not taking this seriously. He acts like the cat who caught the canary and is so smug as to not even make a case for himself.
He's not a captain of industry; he's the spoiled eldest boy. And ultimately, he's willing to do whatever it takes to take this position, including lying to his siblings about the most candid and raw thing he has ever shared with them.
He can't be CEO because, as Logan said, he is not a serious person. Ultimately, none of them are but Shiv is only that way because no one takes her seriously (except Tom).
Also:
Thanks to the show for that little sliver of hope that Mencken likely won't be president in their warped version of the world.
My college girlfriend was from the town next door. They talked cash trash about Antioch, with good reason, I see.
The aesthetics of a female are different from a male. A female can take you somewhere you might not take yourself. You always need that guidance, like from that mother or that grandmother. That’s the key to my push and my drive. Strong women are going to put you in strong places.
With “Nutbush City Limits,” an earlier recording with Ike Turner, she experimented with a rock-country hybrid and soul as well, which talked about a country experience and the experience of growing up in a small town. “Nutbush City Limits” is about the experience of walking a thin line, being under surveillance, as Black folk and as a Black woman. There was a sense of tension underneath the surface for many Black folks in general, but especially for Black performers in the Seventies and onward. There was a pressure to distance oneself from Black migration and Southern experiences and represent a more slick image.
—Joseph Hudak says Tina Turner has earned her Country music bonafide
As a professional vocalist, Turner knew her scales. But I’m sure the scales knew her, too — Richter, Kelvin, Decibel, Fujita-Pearson (that one’s weather for “tornado”). If we’re talking about her doing the Acid Queen in “Tommy,” then the scale must be pH. Her energy built a wing of rock ’n’ roll where you can hear a body. Other singers — tremendous, foundational, godly singers — could belt. Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Tina grew up around Pentecostals. She could scream. Loder makes the astute point that Turner arrived in 1960, near the dawn of amplified sound. They were made for each other.
Tina Turner in Bob Mackie
I was a bouncer for nine years—it was all I knew how to do—and my training was to not talk loosely, reveal my [stuff] to strangers. That’s still my thought process all these years later: Shut your mouth, watch your back, and keep working till your [butt] falls off.
—Vin Diesel in a story about how he got his name
“When you read the output of ChatGPT, it’s important to remember that despite its apparent fluency and despite its ability to create confident sounding strings that are on topic and seem like answers to your questions, it’s only manipulating linguistic form. It’s not understanding what you asked nor what it’s answering, let alone “reasoning” from your question + its “knowledge” to come up with the answer. The only knowledge it has is knowledge of distribution of linguistic form.”
Source: medium.com
Despite the loss, I was hyped for this game. The Sparks look so much better this year. A coach that has a game plan and prepares his team for each opponent? Who woulda thought.
They disrupted everybody on the Aces in the first half except Jackie Young, which worried me, especially as they started running out of gas in the second half.
I love Zia getting minutes, but these savvy veteran guards are keying on her. Chelsea's eyes grew big every time Z was on the floor and bullied her. She rarely stayed tight on Jackie and left her wide open several times when she was the hot hand. Cooke is a gamer, but she's still a rookie. I look forward to her getting in the weight room and building those tree trunk legs and broad shoulders that KP and Jackie Young have built since their rookie tours.
Layshia running the offense and being a defensive menace is a good look right now. Lexie is playing with such confidence. So is Chiney, who must finally be 100% healthy.
I'm curious about their appearance when Jasmine Thomas and Stevens enter the rotation. Azurá could've been the difference maker in this game, with both A'ja and Candace frustrated.
This is a good team with a lot of potential to be great.
until I find time to blog about it, please enjoy these thoughts from Tiffany!
"A while ago, I heard on the 'Hidden Brain' podcast that it takes the average 40-year-old several months to laugh as much as a child laughs in a single day. That night, Corey gave me a child’s density of laughter, and I ran up my steps, whispering, 'Please don’t let this be regression to the mean.'"
"It wasn't."
Our culture sees [postcards] as tiny, pale shadows of the far superior originals hanging on the walls a few meters away. Still, our encounter with the postcard may be deeper, more perceptive, and more valuable to us, because the card allows us to bring our own reactions to it.”
Framed in this way, chaotic cooking openly subverts mainstream rules for how to cook and what tastes or looks good playfully and intelligently. To cook chaotically means to channel the challenges and the possibilities of daily life into your meals, with the same goal of any passionate cook: making delicious food.
—Rachel Baron on a style of cooking I don't think I'm ready for
The TL;DR:
A.I. can complement human labor rather than replace it.
Workers can focus on different tasks.
New technology can lead to new jobs.
I listened to the audio of this while on vacation. Harrowing and sobering.
This paragraph has stuck with me:
"Chris Nowinski was driving with his family in Florida about a year after his old roommate’s funeral when his phone rang. The father of an Olympic ice dancer was calling to discuss the ongoing symptoms of his daughter’s concussion. Then another call: A kid who had played seven years of football needed a psychiatrist. Another: the parents of a Division I women’s basketball player whose coach insisted on playing her despite lingering concussion symptoms."
Haven't we recently had two versions of this dramatization in the last five to ten years?
Seems unnecessary.