more reading and listening

I subscribed to Tom Ziller’s Good Morning It’s Basketball daily newsletter this week. I was not going to at first, but his work and coverage and curation on this newsletter has been really stunning. I don’t always agree with his opinions (Trae Young is definitely an NBA All-Star, dude) but I really enjoy that he curates a list of super interesting articles at the end of the newsletter. This article about The Washington Wizards being good when they should definitively be bad is one of those articles he linked that I like a lot.

I’m waitlisted for Baby Rose’s concert in NYC next month, and I wanna go so bad. She has an incredible voice. Even through recordings her voice transmits chills, her vulnerability communicates through her vocal trembles… Here’s “All To Myself,” where her voice doesn’t give up over an equally tenacious and demanding piano.

There’s been a lot of NFL coaching change news over the past two weeks, with Matt Rhule and Joe Judge being the particulary craziest headlines. Jemele Hill highlights the biggest issue among all these coaching changes at The Atlantic, emphasizing that the Rooney Rule isn’t a fix-all solution. Hill’s article also makes me feel blessed to be a Miami Dolphins fan, with Chris Grier, Brian Flores and Jim Caldwell heading the team’s strategies. I thought this complementary Undefeated article about how the Rooney Rule has worked in Oregon was good, too, highlighting the importance of simply presenting minorities a chance.

If you’ve run out of free The Atlantic articles for the month, Hill’s article links to this news study about being black in corporate America that is definitely worth looking at. Good quote:

Black full-time professionals find another flaw in D&I’s (diversity and inclusion) design: they are far more likely than White full-time professionals to see White women as the primary beneficiaries of D&I efforts… We’ve heard many times from D&I leaders that their company must “solve for women’s challenges first” because there are more established solutions there, and it is easier to gain C-suite buy-in. Yet there is consensus across race and gender that White women do not pay those gains forward.

Been listening to a lot of Chief Keef and Future while I work, via Noz’s best of the decade lists. On “Kills” Keef says “smoking thoinky oinky you know I got that thoinky on me” and it’s so, so hard. I think A$AP Rocky’s “Praise Da Lord” directly rips off this song’s flow.

South Florida’s rocket dockets are a good thing, it’s still sad that these efforts have to take place to undo the injustices set by those in the evil Florida State House. Here’s essential reading from the Brennan Center on Florida’s “cash register justice,” about Florida’s long history of punishing ex-offenders through fees and keeping them in a cycle of debt.

I got concert tickets to see Mavi and Medhane next week, and SOB x RBE in March (no Yhung T.O, tho ☹️ ). Mavi’s Let the Sun Talk was my second favorite album last year (first place goes to Sada Baby’s Bartier Bounty, no doubt) and Medhane makes music that makes me contemplate the passing of time and who I bring along with me. Everyone knows SOB x RBE, so here’s a 2018 DaBoii song that I hope he does (he probably won’t).

rest in peace 5th Ward Weebie