In fairness, I'd say that hockey is the sport that needs the most intentional help to ensure that anyone who wants to participate is able to do so. It is simply impossible, as a sport requiring lots of specialized equipment that is played in a climate-controlled location, to make hockey affordable. That means that only the relatively wealthy can participate, and that hockey is missing out on potentially great talent who are getting shoved into more affordable sports for purely economic reasons.
I feel like the prevalence of hockey players with Slavic or French Canadian sounding names points to it being a more popular sport in colder climates. I don't see a lot of wealthy southern kids playing hockey.
Meh. It's not like young football players have to pay for all their gear. . . .
Do hockey players in places where hockey is both popular and has a climate that makes it easily playable have to pay for all their own gear? Or only players in areas where it'd be prohibitively expensive to run a program due to warm weather, not enough interest, etc?
I think you're off by a bit....in 2018 the percent of white high school football players was like 30%.
Regardless, the imbalance in pro sports is likely due to the relative lack of opportunity for the dominant demographics. If you've got solid academics and professional opportunities, you're less likely to put in the physical effort and academic sacrifices required of college and professional athletes. . . particularly because the short term and life time earning potential of that career is typically quite low. Even if you do make the cut.
Did you mean 30% non-white because otherwise that makes no sense. 70% of people in the US are white, so it would be very odd indeed if they didn’t make up a majority of high school football players.
It's in the article with link to the original study.
> African-American youth are nearly three times more likely than White youth to play tackle football. That gap reflects a trend also seen in high school football. According to the New York Times, in 2006, 70% of high school football players were White and 20% were African-American; by 2018, those figures were 30% White and 40% African-American.
The article also states that the main motivation is dreams of playing pro.
Here’s the NYT article it links. It does not say that. There’s a chart about races and eyeballing it (there’s no axes), it looks more like 60% white, 20% Hispanic*, 20% black. So your article is just wildly off.
It pretty clearly says black and hispanic players make up a plurality now.
> The people who play the game are changing, too, with the number of white players diminishing as black and Hispanic players increasingly make up a larger plurality of the player pool.
I don't have a subscription and don't see the chart you're referring to.
But I found this Atlantic article referencing about the same numbers...BUT phrased differently. And probably identifies where the Aspen Project reporter got it wrong
This data seems suspect. First of all, it’s *job* data, nothing to do with high school, and second of all, who is being counted as a “football player” here? It’s clearly not NFL, since the average salary is $50k, and the US doesn’t really have a semi-pro or AAA football league. Also, the average age is 39? This seems totally made up.
Those are jobs. I linked to the article that references the original study and source.
> African-American youth are nearly three times more likely than White youth to play tackle football. That gap reflects a trend also seen in high school football. According to the New York Times, in 2006, 70% of high school football players were White and 20% were African-American; by 2018, those figures were 30% White and 40% African-American.
For youth sports, tackle football in particular, 30% white, 40% african-american.
The article I linked (and first read) got it wrong and I continued to dig and found the correct source. (below is paraphrased from that thread)
-------------
But I found this Atlantic article referencing about the same numbers...BUT phrased differently. And probably identifies where the Aspen Project reporter got it wrong
They say 30% of white kids play, while 44% of black kids play tackle football. It's the proportion of each that plays, not the proportion of players as in the first article.
*edit*
Regardless, from your response it's clear you're an asshole.
I was actually hoping that Jesse would dig into the studies about gas stoves and asthma being touted in the press—they seem to be pretty shoddy, and the supposed outcomes vastly overstated (which the media of course ran with). He often reports on how the media does a poor job in representing scientific findings, so this seems like it should be in his wheelhouse.
Agree with this. Also, they implied (mostly tongue in cheek, but still) that the people outraged think that Biden is going to come into their house and take their gas stoves. No good faith person is saying that. Stoves don't last forever, so if they ban the sales of new gas stoves, they won't have one or if their state bans new hookups, they won't be able to have one if they buy a new house. (I won't even go into Katie liking cooking on an electric stove more ;) )
The big issue that I have with this whole controversy too is that no one had heard about this issue until this last week. So when this (seemingly overstated) report came out, progressives on twitter all came out acting high and mighty as if they knew about this for years and not that same day. And there is also a great thread that someone posted tons of politicians calling for the ban of gas stoves with pictures of them using gas stoves.
There really does seem to be a trend of politicians and activists doing the very things they're telling the public not to do. And then explaining that it's okay for them to do those things.
Me too! I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I discovered they were just doing a bit and it wasn’t a topic. Maybe Jesse will look into it, though. Both the study itself and the media coverage have been sadly lacking.
I like how gas dryers are just quietly sitting in the corner, hoping nobody notices them.
By all means, though. Switch LA to all electric appliances, run 240v lines to everyone's kitchen, ban the sale of internal combustion engines and see what the grid does.
Yeah, IIRC, these studies found an association between gas stoves and a diagnosis of asthma but not symptoms of asthma like wheezing. That suggests that there is likely a confouding factor at play.
Asthma is also one of those diseases that is included in the hygiene hypothesis. Your risk of developing asthma is lower if you grow up in a rural area or with pets. I wouldn't be surprised if people in rural areas were less likely to have gas stoves. If studies don't measure or adjust for these factors correctly, you can get inaccurate results. There was also some data showing that children of people who grew up in parts of the world with a high infectious disease burden were more likely to develop allergic diseases like asthma. I don't know what the literature says now but that could be another factor given that gas stoves are not randomly distributed.
That said it doesn't mean that gas stoves don't raise the risk of asthma. It's still a plausible hypothesis.
Shoddy is an understatement. These organisations know exactly how the media will represent their findings. The associated press releases and the endorsement quotes get the headlines.
I thiiiiiink I sort of understand the NFL-is-racist argument, in that black men are the majority of NFL players. Owners, coaches, and managers tend to be white. Except for a few players, the coaches and owners really have all the power. So in that sense, it is white men holding power over black men. And I guess the other argument is that these black men are getting hurt playing for these white men, and I guess the argument is that their, ahem, bodies matter less than if they were white men. The problem of course is that this has ALWAYS been an issue with the NFL, back when more players were white. And they were nowhere near as well compensated.
And as for earning in the mid did figures. That is HELLA good money, much more than the vast majority of us would hope to make. It is possible that so many football players go broke because they graduated with useless degrees. But I remember watching some ESPN doc about tue NFL, and it also seemed like the players spent like the money would always be there.
But also. Can we NOT with the "we have progressed a little" in terms of race? There has been so much progress. There is so much to be done. But let us keep in mind that where we are now compared to where we were in the 1960s is worlds apart. And maybe if we focus on the progress we have made and what was effective, we can continue to improve
I'd argue that, to the extent college matters for football players, the degrees they get aren't as important as the fact that most of them aren't actually learning anything in college. They don't have time, even if they have the ability. If you're playing for a Division 1 school, your day is taken up with practice and training. Players have tutors for most classes and universities will find a way to pass them if they mess up.
And I think there is something uncomfortable about how we (as a Society, man...) have decided that it's okay to take a group of young men - many of them black, probably a good amount from lower-income families - and pretend to let them go to college while making sure they don't have time to really do the work, so that a few of them can have a chance to keep playing a children's game for our entertainment. Then we get to act surprised when they run out of money a few years after retiring, when they were never really given the chance to learn how to manage their own money and plan ahead. It's a weird system and it feel vaguely unfair, but it's also hard to feel bad for people who get fame and fortune for playing the aforementioned children's game. (Okay, maybe "children's game" is unfair. But it's something that was meant to be a recreational activity, not a vehicle for social mobility.)
I think children's game is unnecessarily condescending. Athletic competition (and crazy high compensation for the best) is as old as human history. I'm not sure "supposed to be recreational" is even completely accurate.
I don't really agree with your post but I totally see where you're coming from. I will note if the article had said this, it would've been a different conversation. The problem was that the article was terrible.
The other thing is that when you give a bunch of young men who have never managed their own finances a huge amount of money they don't always make the best decisions about how to spend it. They're at the peak age for risk-taking behaviour, the money feels bottomless, they're often not tied down yet to a spouse and children, old age feels like it's eons away, they want to fit in with their teammates and flex on the people back home. Why would they save when it feels so much more gratifying in the moment to buy a $60,000 watch or $200,000 car? Why would they plan for the future when they can have so much fun in the moment? There are certainly exceptions, but for a lot of pro athletes, the big paydays give a a false sense of financial invincibility.
There is a whole thing, right? If they didn't play football, would they have gotten into college? Or. If they didn't play football, would they have had the time to have good grades?
Players have agents, let's not forget. That their careers are likely to be short--average length of NFL career is 3.3 years, that their likelihood of injury is 100%, this is all well-known. Everyone thinks they will be the exception.
Another thing to remember is that while coaches may make millions, owners are almost all billionaires. They're not in the same ballpark.
Is it ethical to lead men into live a lifestyle that will slowly kill them yet provide them with glory, enjoyment and (to some extent) meaning in the process? It's a tricky enough question on its own, depending on one's ideas of freedom and the meaning of life. No way anyone viewing it through the broken lens of race can get to any interesting insights on this.
I think that is a really good question though I am not sure what that has to do with race. Except I guess the high percentage of black men in college football. .
There’s a big confounder in there though: the majority-black players are there because they earned the right to be drafted or signed by a team, and then chose to play for those coaches and owners rather than pursue other vocations. Those elements of choice and merit-based selection make any attempt to frame violence (which is inherent to the game) in football as a racial issue look exactly like what it is: sophistry and grandstanding to gain meaningless crumbs of online virtue points.
I think the racial argument is that if one is from an impoverished community, which black people are far more likely to be, then one has limited opportunities to escape poverty. So in that sense playing football is not as much of a choice.
My problem with the football is racist argument is that football is safer now than when it was a majority white sport and they are being paid a hell of a lot more.
It’s still 100% a choice though, and the percentage of Native Americans and Hispanic Americans growing up in poverty rivals the numbers for black Americans. If the financial motivation was a factor, we’d expect to see the league dominated as much by Cubans and Mohawks as black players.
Besides, if the goal is to get out of poverty, a less violent, higher-success percentage, and close to as remunerative path would be entering the tech field, so there are always options.
All of this is at-will employment fundamentally still; even if people don’t *feel* as if there are other ways to escape poverty, there are. Racially unjust systems do not provide that out-clause.
Not wanting to go overly deep on medicine, but the difference between a “heart attack” and a “cardiac arrest” is important and not intuitive. Damar Hamlin did not have a “heart attack”.
The term “heart attack” (myocardial infarction) means that a piece of your heart died, because it lost its blood supply. Could be a big part or a small part. In a heart attack, the rest of your heart is theoretically fine and keeps beating. Obviously, if a large enough part of your heart dies, the rest of it will fail and you will die (from cardiac arrest). However, many people with smaller heart attacks are relatively okay. Sometimes they have classic crushing chest pain. Sometimes they have other symptoms (women in particular are more likely to have pain elsewhere). Sometimes they don’t notice anything at all. If you have a heart attack, you need immediate medical help to try and save as much heart tissue from dying as possible and to prevent complications. You don’t necessarily pass out, and you don’t need a defibrillator as long as you are conscious.
Conversely a cardiac arrest means that your heart is not beating. This is sometimes used as the definition of “death” (there’s some ambiguity on this). If you have a cardiac arrest, you are not getting blood to the rest of your body, you pass out in seconds, and you are gone. A heart attack is one reason to have a cardiac arrest, but there are others, so the heart muscle is not necessarily damaged, it just isn’t pumping. Sometimes, the heart can be restarted (this is what a defibrillator is for). CPR replaces the function of a beating heart, marginally and for a short time, to buy time to get the defibrillator going. Damar Hamlin had a cardiac arrest. He got CPR and defibrillation, which restarted his heart.
As far as I know, it’s still unclear what caused this incident, and the role of COVID shots in heart issues is a complex topic that is the subject of rigorous debate. Just want to clear up the basic terms here.
Ha! But since he was also a US Army scout in the Indian Wars and then a massive cultural appropriator in his Wild West shows, the name must be "problematic".
Some additional background on Dungy. He was the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl (Super XLI - played against his former assistant coach Lovie Smith, another Black man). Many of the Black coaches in the NFL for a long time were former assistants of his and he has arguably has done more to bring Black men into the top coaching positions in the NFL than any other individual. After he retired, he dedicated much of his time to prison ministry (https://www.prisonfellowship.org/2013/04/thirty-minutes-tony-dungy/).
His "conservative bent" became controversial when he started funding campaigns in favor of Proposition 8 back in the aughts. LZ Gunderson, a Black gay writer who was working at ESPN at the time, had a good article about how he reconciles all the good Dungy did for Black men with the homophobia that hurts gay men.
And Jesse, didn't Julian Edelman play on the Patriots for years?
I love football (particularly collegiate football) but I've always been deeply bothered by how the highschool-to-pro pipeline seems to be set up to just let people fail in the long term. I've watched so many kids get drafted out from the colleges I follow into the NFL without a degree or a real plan for when they won't be able to play, only to get injured and run out of money in really short order. And the introduction of the college portal is only going to make the problem worse- football is an incredibly demanding sport, but the worst part is how it just chews people up; three years isn't a career, it's a phase, and if you have comparatively few options after you're done, then what's the point? Not everyone can go into coaching or land brand deals. It's kind of a tangential point, but it especially hits players who just haven't had real money before and don't know what to do with it, and I honestly think that's the biggest disservice in the whole sport. College and the NFL fail players routinely in this way and it's just sad.
Yes I think the real issue here is the younger players in high school (and earlier) who are subjecting themselves to significant harm but not being compensated at all.
The sometimes shambolic “education” that athletes receive in the name of college sports is a problem, but they’re getting the signaling value of a degree and the experience of being in college, and if they want to they can do more than the academic minimum. J+K didn’t note that it was a Supreme Court decision that allowed players to get some money separate from the scholarship grants, though they’re correct that the number of stars getting that money is small.
Likewise the pros are getting a ton of money and lifetime benefits (more so after the CTE litigation). If they bankrupt themselves, it doesn’t strike me as that much of a tragedy.
But the kids who suffer severe injuries or CTE or who simply devote their lives to becoming part of the NFL’s pipeline rather than doing something more productive with their lives I think are the real tragedy. There might be an element of race in there, but to me the gender element is clearly bigger. No way would we let girls do this to themselves.
There are plenty of physically demanding sports though- soccer, wrestling, hockey, etc- that kids will play regardless; football gets a ton of attention because it's just big in our culture, particularly down here in the southeast. People will play them because people like sports. The question isn't "why don't people do something more productive with their lives"- it doesn't entertain everyone, but football is entertaining and has a strong element of community attached to it, it does carry value for spectators and players beyond the monetary- it's "why do we allow people to move through a rigorous system of athletics only to reach a stage in life they will likely be entirely unprepared for?", and I don't think you have to sacrifice sports or academics to turn out a well-rounded, prepared student athlete either for post-college life or a pro career.
The problem with collegiate athletics in particular right now is that it's gotten popular, and with popularity comes money, first for the schools and coaching staff and more recently for a handful of players. Most D1 schools make a *ton* of money off of these programs, and in the process collegiate football becomes detached from academics and students aren't encourage to stay at one school (like with the portal) and aren't encouraged to complete a degree that could still serve them and mean something because these are, ultimately, academically competent schools (the NFL draft). This is also, coincidentally, why money should stay out of high school football unless you want it to also become a similar cess pool.
So by the time these players reach the draft- and this pool has been significantly narrowed down, not everyone recruited by a school ends up going pro, and not everyone ends up recruited- they've gone through a program that's only barely connected to an academic one that could actually give them skills for when their money runs out because nobody has taught them how to manage it. Even with the nice health insurance and benefits, bankruptcy is bankruptcy, and that basically amounts to having someone pour their whole life into something and remain unrewarded in a very important way.
And maybe the solution to this is tweaking the play schedule so there are fewer games and creating an academic program that's focused on long-term planning and financial stability, instead of just letting these guys play a full schedule while they half-complete a hospitality degree, I don't know, but the NCAA and NFL aren't going anywhere, so maybe they should all address this.
The gender component is a non sequitur- most modern, popular sports are just set up to favor males (Roger Pielke Jr wrote a good post about this a while back, though it pertains mostly to olympic sports), and women's sports just aren't as popular and don't command as much prestige; our sports culture is still very much male-oriented. The incentives simply are not there, and in the mean time, men and boys won't stop playing football.
That Battletech scammer is a scummy, lying fantasist, but because he brought down a right-winger, it’s all okay?! And the hint of transness/not transness look like a way to avoid any criticism. Does anyone else remember that American student who pretended to be an Iranian lesbian about 10 years or so ago? He just disappeared, but nowadays he’d probably be lauded for brining attention to the plight of queer Iranians. Just so damned ridiculous!
I don't blame him for being mad nor do I think he should've been fired... But bitching about Confederate monuments and writing some fantasy about the People's Republic of CHAZ while being a fanboy of someone who actually tried (extremely badly) to overthrow the government isn't a good look...
Robert Heinlein he ain't and he probably should've parted ways with Catalyst before he started writing weird stuff (of his own volition).
"Hey, we've got this out of touch wackadoo on our staff that alienates more than half our market, come back our Mercenaries Kickstarter!"
The whole "they" thing in the Battletech PC game was pretty divisive but is probably less unpopular than MAGA nonsense. If he'd stayed sane he'd probably still have a place there.
Why the glancing critique of Elon for letting Rebecca Jones back on Twitter? If it’s truly going to evolve into a royal rumble of competing ideas, then this is a sign that things are working properly.
If she’s really an obvious, easy-to-detect fraud and a grifter, then the absolute best thing to do is give her a megaphone and let her speak freely. That’s what Twitter is.
As usual, the biggest harm comes from institutional actors: the NPR journalists and others who first gave her a platform and uncritically amplified her bogus messages.
I still see people posting about the oppression of Rebekah Jones on Facebook. I think it’s just become part of the anti-DeSantis canon (people really really want to believe that DeSantis policies caused some kind of massive death wave).
If the NFL (or any other industry for that matter) was 70% white, the same people would see that as clear evidence of systemic racism and oppression.
Oh absolutely. Look at NASCAR. Or better yet NHL. Also. I am not sure how the NFL is evidence of systemic racism. At all.
NHL is all in on DEI
https://www.nhl.com/community/diversity-and-inclusion
In fairness, I'd say that hockey is the sport that needs the most intentional help to ensure that anyone who wants to participate is able to do so. It is simply impossible, as a sport requiring lots of specialized equipment that is played in a climate-controlled location, to make hockey affordable. That means that only the relatively wealthy can participate, and that hockey is missing out on potentially great talent who are getting shoved into more affordable sports for purely economic reasons.
I feel like the prevalence of hockey players with Slavic or French Canadian sounding names points to it being a more popular sport in colder climates. I don't see a lot of wealthy southern kids playing hockey.
Meh. It's not like young football players have to pay for all their gear. . . .
Do hockey players in places where hockey is both popular and has a climate that makes it easily playable have to pay for all their own gear? Or only players in areas where it'd be prohibitively expensive to run a program due to warm weather, not enough interest, etc?
Curling. Beach volleyball.
High school football is nearly 80% white!
I think you're off by a bit....in 2018 the percent of white high school football players was like 30%.
Regardless, the imbalance in pro sports is likely due to the relative lack of opportunity for the dominant demographics. If you've got solid academics and professional opportunities, you're less likely to put in the physical effort and academic sacrifices required of college and professional athletes. . . particularly because the short term and life time earning potential of that career is typically quite low. Even if you do make the cut.
https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/news/african-american-youth-more-often-play-sports-to-chase-college-pro-dreams
Did you mean 30% non-white because otherwise that makes no sense. 70% of people in the US are white, so it would be very odd indeed if they didn’t make up a majority of high school football players.
It's in the article with link to the original study.
> African-American youth are nearly three times more likely than White youth to play tackle football. That gap reflects a trend also seen in high school football. According to the New York Times, in 2006, 70% of high school football players were White and 20% were African-American; by 2018, those figures were 30% White and 40% African-American.
The article also states that the main motivation is dreams of playing pro.
Here’s the NYT article it links. It does not say that. There’s a chart about races and eyeballing it (there’s no axes), it looks more like 60% white, 20% Hispanic*, 20% black. So your article is just wildly off.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/08/sports/falling-football-participation-in-america.html
*which includes white hispanics
That's only 1/2 the link -> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/08/sports/falling-football-participation-in-america.html
It pretty clearly says black and hispanic players make up a plurality now.
> The people who play the game are changing, too, with the number of white players diminishing as black and Hispanic players increasingly make up a larger plurality of the player pool.
I don't have a subscription and don't see the chart you're referring to.
But I found this Atlantic article referencing about the same numbers...BUT phrased differently. And probably identifies where the Aspen Project reporter got it wrong
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/football-white-flight-racial-divide/581623/#
They say 30% of white kids play, while 44% of black kids play tackle football. Not that's a proportion that plays, not the proportion of players.
Your number is completely and radically off - https://www.zippia.com/football-player-jobs/demographics/
This data seems suspect. First of all, it’s *job* data, nothing to do with high school, and second of all, who is being counted as a “football player” here? It’s clearly not NFL, since the average salary is $50k, and the US doesn’t really have a semi-pro or AAA football league. Also, the average age is 39? This seems totally made up.
Those are jobs. I linked to the article that references the original study and source.
> African-American youth are nearly three times more likely than White youth to play tackle football. That gap reflects a trend also seen in high school football. According to the New York Times, in 2006, 70% of high school football players were White and 20% were African-American; by 2018, those figures were 30% White and 40% African-American.
For youth sports, tackle football in particular, 30% white, 40% african-american.
the heading is "FOOTBALL PLAYER STATISTICS" I dunno what to tell you.
Go watch any high school football. It's mostly white because students are mostly white. All this in service of stats that you *know* aren't correct?
If you want to stand by this nonsense, I can only assume you're an idiot.
The article I linked (and first read) got it wrong and I continued to dig and found the correct source. (below is paraphrased from that thread)
-------------
But I found this Atlantic article referencing about the same numbers...BUT phrased differently. And probably identifies where the Aspen Project reporter got it wrong
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/football-white-flight-racial-divide/581623/#
They say 30% of white kids play, while 44% of black kids play tackle football. It's the proportion of each that plays, not the proportion of players as in the first article.
*edit*
Regardless, from your response it's clear you're an asshole.
I was actually hoping that Jesse would dig into the studies about gas stoves and asthma being touted in the press—they seem to be pretty shoddy, and the supposed outcomes vastly overstated (which the media of course ran with). He often reports on how the media does a poor job in representing scientific findings, so this seems like it should be in his wheelhouse.
Agree with this. Also, they implied (mostly tongue in cheek, but still) that the people outraged think that Biden is going to come into their house and take their gas stoves. No good faith person is saying that. Stoves don't last forever, so if they ban the sales of new gas stoves, they won't have one or if their state bans new hookups, they won't be able to have one if they buy a new house. (I won't even go into Katie liking cooking on an electric stove more ;) )
The big issue that I have with this whole controversy too is that no one had heard about this issue until this last week. So when this (seemingly overstated) report came out, progressives on twitter all came out acting high and mighty as if they knew about this for years and not that same day. And there is also a great thread that someone posted tons of politicians calling for the ban of gas stoves with pictures of them using gas stoves.
Yes, it really bothered me how it felt like all of a sudden, everyone had "always known" that gas stoves were bad for health!
And Reason has written about how this cycle of legislation over things like shower heads and dishwashers is a real phenomenon that consumers hate
There really does seem to be a trend of politicians and activists doing the very things they're telling the public not to do. And then explaining that it's okay for them to do those things.
Wait until progressive Twitter hears/always knew about radon.
Me too! I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I discovered they were just doing a bit and it wasn’t a topic. Maybe Jesse will look into it, though. Both the study itself and the media coverage have been sadly lacking.
I like how gas dryers are just quietly sitting in the corner, hoping nobody notices them.
By all means, though. Switch LA to all electric appliances, run 240v lines to everyone's kitchen, ban the sale of internal combustion engines and see what the grid does.
Yeah, IIRC, these studies found an association between gas stoves and a diagnosis of asthma but not symptoms of asthma like wheezing. That suggests that there is likely a confouding factor at play.
Asthma is also one of those diseases that is included in the hygiene hypothesis. Your risk of developing asthma is lower if you grow up in a rural area or with pets. I wouldn't be surprised if people in rural areas were less likely to have gas stoves. If studies don't measure or adjust for these factors correctly, you can get inaccurate results. There was also some data showing that children of people who grew up in parts of the world with a high infectious disease burden were more likely to develop allergic diseases like asthma. I don't know what the literature says now but that could be another factor given that gas stoves are not randomly distributed.
That said it doesn't mean that gas stoves don't raise the risk of asthma. It's still a plausible hypothesis.
Shoddy is an understatement. These organisations know exactly how the media will represent their findings. The associated press releases and the endorsement quotes get the headlines.
I thiiiiiink I sort of understand the NFL-is-racist argument, in that black men are the majority of NFL players. Owners, coaches, and managers tend to be white. Except for a few players, the coaches and owners really have all the power. So in that sense, it is white men holding power over black men. And I guess the other argument is that these black men are getting hurt playing for these white men, and I guess the argument is that their, ahem, bodies matter less than if they were white men. The problem of course is that this has ALWAYS been an issue with the NFL, back when more players were white. And they were nowhere near as well compensated.
And as for earning in the mid did figures. That is HELLA good money, much more than the vast majority of us would hope to make. It is possible that so many football players go broke because they graduated with useless degrees. But I remember watching some ESPN doc about tue NFL, and it also seemed like the players spent like the money would always be there.
But also. Can we NOT with the "we have progressed a little" in terms of race? There has been so much progress. There is so much to be done. But let us keep in mind that where we are now compared to where we were in the 1960s is worlds apart. And maybe if we focus on the progress we have made and what was effective, we can continue to improve
I'd argue that, to the extent college matters for football players, the degrees they get aren't as important as the fact that most of them aren't actually learning anything in college. They don't have time, even if they have the ability. If you're playing for a Division 1 school, your day is taken up with practice and training. Players have tutors for most classes and universities will find a way to pass them if they mess up.
And I think there is something uncomfortable about how we (as a Society, man...) have decided that it's okay to take a group of young men - many of them black, probably a good amount from lower-income families - and pretend to let them go to college while making sure they don't have time to really do the work, so that a few of them can have a chance to keep playing a children's game for our entertainment. Then we get to act surprised when they run out of money a few years after retiring, when they were never really given the chance to learn how to manage their own money and plan ahead. It's a weird system and it feel vaguely unfair, but it's also hard to feel bad for people who get fame and fortune for playing the aforementioned children's game. (Okay, maybe "children's game" is unfair. But it's something that was meant to be a recreational activity, not a vehicle for social mobility.)
I think children's game is unnecessarily condescending. Athletic competition (and crazy high compensation for the best) is as old as human history. I'm not sure "supposed to be recreational" is even completely accurate.
I don't really agree with your post but I totally see where you're coming from. I will note if the article had said this, it would've been a different conversation. The problem was that the article was terrible.
It's about as childish as playing Battletech...
The other thing is that when you give a bunch of young men who have never managed their own finances a huge amount of money they don't always make the best decisions about how to spend it. They're at the peak age for risk-taking behaviour, the money feels bottomless, they're often not tied down yet to a spouse and children, old age feels like it's eons away, they want to fit in with their teammates and flex on the people back home. Why would they save when it feels so much more gratifying in the moment to buy a $60,000 watch or $200,000 car? Why would they plan for the future when they can have so much fun in the moment? There are certainly exceptions, but for a lot of pro athletes, the big paydays give a a false sense of financial invincibility.
There is a whole thing, right? If they didn't play football, would they have gotten into college? Or. If they didn't play football, would they have had the time to have good grades?
Players have agents, let's not forget. That their careers are likely to be short--average length of NFL career is 3.3 years, that their likelihood of injury is 100%, this is all well-known. Everyone thinks they will be the exception.
Another thing to remember is that while coaches may make millions, owners are almost all billionaires. They're not in the same ballpark.
Is it ethical to lead men into live a lifestyle that will slowly kill them yet provide them with glory, enjoyment and (to some extent) meaning in the process? It's a tricky enough question on its own, depending on one's ideas of freedom and the meaning of life. No way anyone viewing it through the broken lens of race can get to any interesting insights on this.
I think that is a really good question though I am not sure what that has to do with race. Except I guess the high percentage of black men in college football. .
There’s a big confounder in there though: the majority-black players are there because they earned the right to be drafted or signed by a team, and then chose to play for those coaches and owners rather than pursue other vocations. Those elements of choice and merit-based selection make any attempt to frame violence (which is inherent to the game) in football as a racial issue look exactly like what it is: sophistry and grandstanding to gain meaningless crumbs of online virtue points.
I think the racial argument is that if one is from an impoverished community, which black people are far more likely to be, then one has limited opportunities to escape poverty. So in that sense playing football is not as much of a choice.
My problem with the football is racist argument is that football is safer now than when it was a majority white sport and they are being paid a hell of a lot more.
It’s still 100% a choice though, and the percentage of Native Americans and Hispanic Americans growing up in poverty rivals the numbers for black Americans. If the financial motivation was a factor, we’d expect to see the league dominated as much by Cubans and Mohawks as black players.
Besides, if the goal is to get out of poverty, a less violent, higher-success percentage, and close to as remunerative path would be entering the tech field, so there are always options.
All of this is at-will employment fundamentally still; even if people don’t *feel* as if there are other ways to escape poverty, there are. Racially unjust systems do not provide that out-clause.
Jesus Christ Katie and Jessie, "Buffalo Bills" is word play on the famous name, "Buffalo Bill."
I'd never actually checked that fact, but: https://www.buffalobills.com/news/important-dates-in-bills-history-how-the-bills-got-their-name-16401977
Jesse is a pervert for nuance...unlessssss he’s talking about a conservatives or Republicans
✅
You know who else liked cooking with gas? ADOLF HITLER. Yeah. That’s who you monsters are aligning with. Do 👏 better 👏.
I bet they drink water just like hitler too. 👏🏽
AND DURING JEWISH PRIDE MONTH
Not wanting to go overly deep on medicine, but the difference between a “heart attack” and a “cardiac arrest” is important and not intuitive. Damar Hamlin did not have a “heart attack”.
The term “heart attack” (myocardial infarction) means that a piece of your heart died, because it lost its blood supply. Could be a big part or a small part. In a heart attack, the rest of your heart is theoretically fine and keeps beating. Obviously, if a large enough part of your heart dies, the rest of it will fail and you will die (from cardiac arrest). However, many people with smaller heart attacks are relatively okay. Sometimes they have classic crushing chest pain. Sometimes they have other symptoms (women in particular are more likely to have pain elsewhere). Sometimes they don’t notice anything at all. If you have a heart attack, you need immediate medical help to try and save as much heart tissue from dying as possible and to prevent complications. You don’t necessarily pass out, and you don’t need a defibrillator as long as you are conscious.
Conversely a cardiac arrest means that your heart is not beating. This is sometimes used as the definition of “death” (there’s some ambiguity on this). If you have a cardiac arrest, you are not getting blood to the rest of your body, you pass out in seconds, and you are gone. A heart attack is one reason to have a cardiac arrest, but there are others, so the heart muscle is not necessarily damaged, it just isn’t pumping. Sometimes, the heart can be restarted (this is what a defibrillator is for). CPR replaces the function of a beating heart, marginally and for a short time, to buy time to get the defibrillator going. Damar Hamlin had a cardiac arrest. He got CPR and defibrillation, which restarted his heart.
As far as I know, it’s still unclear what caused this incident, and the role of COVID shots in heart issues is a complex topic that is the subject of rigorous debate. Just want to clear up the basic terms here.
A Buffalo Bill is a talented entertainer with money issues and marriage problems.
So perfect for a football team.
Ha! But since he was also a US Army scout in the Indian Wars and then a massive cultural appropriator in his Wild West shows, the name must be "problematic".
The Cowboys and the Indians coming together to commodify their culture for money.
Don’t you mean the acowboys and Washington Football Team?
Commanders, thank you very much.
Some additional background on Dungy. He was the first Black head coach to win a Super Bowl (Super XLI - played against his former assistant coach Lovie Smith, another Black man). Many of the Black coaches in the NFL for a long time were former assistants of his and he has arguably has done more to bring Black men into the top coaching positions in the NFL than any other individual. After he retired, he dedicated much of his time to prison ministry (https://www.prisonfellowship.org/2013/04/thirty-minutes-tony-dungy/).
His "conservative bent" became controversial when he started funding campaigns in favor of Proposition 8 back in the aughts. LZ Gunderson, a Black gay writer who was working at ESPN at the time, had a good article about how he reconciles all the good Dungy did for Black men with the homophobia that hurts gay men.
And Jesse, didn't Julian Edelman play on the Patriots for years?
Katie, the old joke is a "NYT's headline" - "World ends tomorrow, women, blacks hit hardest"
This delightful quote from Hilary Clinton:
“Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.”
I love football (particularly collegiate football) but I've always been deeply bothered by how the highschool-to-pro pipeline seems to be set up to just let people fail in the long term. I've watched so many kids get drafted out from the colleges I follow into the NFL without a degree or a real plan for when they won't be able to play, only to get injured and run out of money in really short order. And the introduction of the college portal is only going to make the problem worse- football is an incredibly demanding sport, but the worst part is how it just chews people up; three years isn't a career, it's a phase, and if you have comparatively few options after you're done, then what's the point? Not everyone can go into coaching or land brand deals. It's kind of a tangential point, but it especially hits players who just haven't had real money before and don't know what to do with it, and I honestly think that's the biggest disservice in the whole sport. College and the NFL fail players routinely in this way and it's just sad.
Yes I think the real issue here is the younger players in high school (and earlier) who are subjecting themselves to significant harm but not being compensated at all.
The sometimes shambolic “education” that athletes receive in the name of college sports is a problem, but they’re getting the signaling value of a degree and the experience of being in college, and if they want to they can do more than the academic minimum. J+K didn’t note that it was a Supreme Court decision that allowed players to get some money separate from the scholarship grants, though they’re correct that the number of stars getting that money is small.
Likewise the pros are getting a ton of money and lifetime benefits (more so after the CTE litigation). If they bankrupt themselves, it doesn’t strike me as that much of a tragedy.
But the kids who suffer severe injuries or CTE or who simply devote their lives to becoming part of the NFL’s pipeline rather than doing something more productive with their lives I think are the real tragedy. There might be an element of race in there, but to me the gender element is clearly bigger. No way would we let girls do this to themselves.
There are plenty of physically demanding sports though- soccer, wrestling, hockey, etc- that kids will play regardless; football gets a ton of attention because it's just big in our culture, particularly down here in the southeast. People will play them because people like sports. The question isn't "why don't people do something more productive with their lives"- it doesn't entertain everyone, but football is entertaining and has a strong element of community attached to it, it does carry value for spectators and players beyond the monetary- it's "why do we allow people to move through a rigorous system of athletics only to reach a stage in life they will likely be entirely unprepared for?", and I don't think you have to sacrifice sports or academics to turn out a well-rounded, prepared student athlete either for post-college life or a pro career.
The problem with collegiate athletics in particular right now is that it's gotten popular, and with popularity comes money, first for the schools and coaching staff and more recently for a handful of players. Most D1 schools make a *ton* of money off of these programs, and in the process collegiate football becomes detached from academics and students aren't encourage to stay at one school (like with the portal) and aren't encouraged to complete a degree that could still serve them and mean something because these are, ultimately, academically competent schools (the NFL draft). This is also, coincidentally, why money should stay out of high school football unless you want it to also become a similar cess pool.
So by the time these players reach the draft- and this pool has been significantly narrowed down, not everyone recruited by a school ends up going pro, and not everyone ends up recruited- they've gone through a program that's only barely connected to an academic one that could actually give them skills for when their money runs out because nobody has taught them how to manage it. Even with the nice health insurance and benefits, bankruptcy is bankruptcy, and that basically amounts to having someone pour their whole life into something and remain unrewarded in a very important way.
And maybe the solution to this is tweaking the play schedule so there are fewer games and creating an academic program that's focused on long-term planning and financial stability, instead of just letting these guys play a full schedule while they half-complete a hospitality degree, I don't know, but the NCAA and NFL aren't going anywhere, so maybe they should all address this.
The gender component is a non sequitur- most modern, popular sports are just set up to favor males (Roger Pielke Jr wrote a good post about this a while back, though it pertains mostly to olympic sports), and women's sports just aren't as popular and don't command as much prestige; our sports culture is still very much male-oriented. The incentives simply are not there, and in the mean time, men and boys won't stop playing football.
That Battletech scammer is a scummy, lying fantasist, but because he brought down a right-winger, it’s all okay?! And the hint of transness/not transness look like a way to avoid any criticism. Does anyone else remember that American student who pretended to be an Iranian lesbian about 10 years or so ago? He just disappeared, but nowadays he’d probably be lauded for brining attention to the plight of queer Iranians. Just so damned ridiculous!
I'm kind of amazed he's not a real troon... Definitely the worse of the two, but the Battletech author doesn't come out looking great.
I don't blame him for being mad nor do I think he should've been fired... But bitching about Confederate monuments and writing some fantasy about the People's Republic of CHAZ while being a fanboy of someone who actually tried (extremely badly) to overthrow the government isn't a good look...
Robert Heinlein he ain't and he probably should've parted ways with Catalyst before he started writing weird stuff (of his own volition).
"Hey, we've got this out of touch wackadoo on our staff that alienates more than half our market, come back our Mercenaries Kickstarter!"
The whole "they" thing in the Battletech PC game was pretty divisive but is probably less unpopular than MAGA nonsense. If he'd stayed sane he'd probably still have a place there.
Again though, he didn't deserve what he got...
Cincinnati Bagels eh Jessie? Good team!
I don't know, didn't they get shmeared the other day?
Why the glancing critique of Elon for letting Rebecca Jones back on Twitter? If it’s truly going to evolve into a royal rumble of competing ideas, then this is a sign that things are working properly.
If she’s really an obvious, easy-to-detect fraud and a grifter, then the absolute best thing to do is give her a megaphone and let her speak freely. That’s what Twitter is.
As usual, the biggest harm comes from institutional actors: the NPR journalists and others who first gave her a platform and uncritically amplified her bogus messages.
I still see people posting about the oppression of Rebekah Jones on Facebook. I think it’s just become part of the anti-DeSantis canon (people really really want to believe that DeSantis policies caused some kind of massive death wave).
Enjoying the updates on old stories!!!