It's interesting to me how the conversations around certain things never seem to change? This was the same argument about femininity and athleticism that was being had about Simone Biles, which was of course made worse by her being a Black woman.
I didn't know that a big part of the conflict between the two was that one was seen as the perfect woman, and the other was portrayed as white trash
But you can transport that to the cases of Serena and Sharapova, and how Sharapova was described against Serena's "agrression" and "masculine" frame, and which saw Sharapova making more than Serena at one point without having nearly the same success.
You know, what I loved so much about Mesut Ozil at his best was the sense of possibility that existed whenever he played. Something that you notice more when he's absent than when he's on the field and his flaws are easy to latch onto.
Even when things went well without him, it seemed so standard and systematic. There was a plan and the players executed it well. The journey to goal is straightforward. The practiced patterns are brought to life in the match. It's great, but you can almost predict everything.
But for example, Ozil used to dummy the ball a lot. He's receiving the ball from underneath, and he runs past it so the pass goes to a teammate above him. Or he fakes to the pass and then curls around the defender, and then suddenly a set of non-trained combinations open up.
"Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look."
Susan Sontag:
"The greatest effort is to be really where you are, contemporary with yourself, in your life, giving full attention to the world. That’s what a writer does. I’m against the solipsistic idea that you find it all in your head. You don’t."
You know, one of the things I've been thinking about during this time of unimaginable grief has been bereavement leave, and how the little time given for grief points to the marginal space human life is given in the world we live in.
I've commented before that so much of the positive thinking or mindfulness seems to be part of a culture that not only personalizes so much struggle but creates this absurd place where your world could be falling apart yet you're encouraged to continuing performing as if it's not
So you have this really absurd existence where it's seen as embarrassing to speak or openly experience the natural and conditioned tragedies of the world, big and small. You lose somebody and after a while, people see it as a drag that you're still sad or not working again.
I wrote almost weekly about him and it was my secret hope with the team as it is now, that he would return to that form. But it doesn't seem that he will be that way again. Still, what a tremendous season that was. It seemed like he was on a mission to break basketball.
2015-16 Curry is one of the best cases for why we need to talk more about the sense of wonder when it comes to athletes. It's hard to appreciate him otherwise. The rebuttals are always numbers about his effectiveness in the years after. Dumb nerd shit. He was awe-inspiring then.
Sony making the PS5 incompatible with non-approved Bluetooth devices is such a hilarious scam to make people buy their headphones. I know it was a slow transition but it's incredible how the gaming world is basically about milking the most money out of people now.
(Please don't explain to me how to connect a Bluetooth device. I know.)
Beyond the Bluetooth thing, every game now is like $60 for the standard version, and then having to purchase expensive packs afterwards for more content that you could have usually unlocked in the regular game for free as a reward for beating it.
When Trump said Hope Hicks testing positive was bizarre because she had tested negative a few times before, it seemed like the stupidest thing, considering that she was still going to social events and rallies, but apparently that's also how people have been living lately.
There's been a lot of "I consistently tested negative, which apparently meant that I can be social as if the pandemic doesn't exist, and now somehow I've tested positive?" stories coming out this holiday season
Wouldn't even be so wild if people were just seeing one or two others, but some are in full parties and events as if a negative test is a mark of blood to protect them from the virus