Blog/newsletter by David 29 Sunset •
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April 17, 2020
Michael Jordan was a great basketball player. I’m not about to truther that he transformed the NBA, let alone argue that being the best player on six championship teams in eight seasons is less than incredible.
However, on the eve of The Last Dance, an ESPN documentary that has already prompted a bunch of retrospectives on Jordan’s career that mark him as the most important basketball player of all time, and will almost certainly prompt another avalanche of canonizing takes, it’s worth trying to head off at least one myopic line of discussion: Whether Jordan would have dominated today’s game, or, for that matter, if today’s stars would have dominated the NBA of Jordan’s prime.
April 13, 2020
The other day, I noticed Splash is included with Disney+ and since my little one is in a mermaid phase thought it might be worth watching. But upon starting the movie, we were greeted with a notice that the film had been modified for content, so we didn’t bother.
I haven’t seen Splash, but a quick online search suggests Disney+ only includes a version of the film that removes some non-sexual nudity. After further poking around, it became clear that there are a lot of movies on Disney+ that have been edited for content without an up-front notice.
April 10, 2020
As the crisis deepens and the president seems more interested in putting on a daily television performance than managing an effective public health response, there hasn’t been enough attention paid to how the modern Republican party has insufficient answers because all their proposals depend on attributing outcomes to individuals’ choices alone.
Cutting unemployment benefits and refusing Medicaid expansion were common GOP policy priorities from before the pandemic that now threaten millions of vulnerable people facing down the worst effects of a sudden recession. In the before times, leftists could argue that reducing unemployment benefits doesn’t actually encourage people to get a job faster, and the nature of health care is such that ensuring more people have care reduces costs for everyone, but it’s hard to use large-scale economic effects in a discussion with someone who’s relying on an instinctual principle. How do you explain to someone that life outcomes are heavily correlated with when, where, and to whom he was born when the air he breathes tells him he alone is responsible for everything he has, and that if people are wanting it’s because they, personally, are lacking?
