You should read them all, but here are my five favorites:
Asking “what-if?” about your past is a waste of time; asking “what-if?” about your future is tremendously productive.
Where you live—what city, what country—has more impact on your well-being than any other factor. Where you live is one of the few things in your life you can choose and change.
When you are stuck or overwhelmed, focus on the smallest possible thing that moves your project forward.
Strong opinions, clearly stated but loosely held, are the recipe for an intellectual life. Always ask yourself: what would change my mind?
Always be radically honest, but use your honesty as a gift, not as a weapon. Your honesty should benefit others.
The Boston Celtics’ first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs begins in about a minute. They must contend with their playoff rival, the Miami Heat, who defeated them last year in the Eastern Conference Finals and forced them to trade away the heart of their team, Marcus Smart, to make a major upgrade in their interior.
This season’s Celtics team is among the best the franchise has ever had. They won 71.8% of their games, putting them fifth overall in the franchise’s storied history. Only one of those teams, the ’72-’73 team (which has the highest winning percentage in the team’s history, by the way), did not win a championship (they lost in the ECF to the Knicks, who went on to defeat the Lakers in five games).
This season’s Celtics also have the best record in the NBA, ensuring home-court advantage all the way through the Finals (should they make it).
To say expectations are high in Boston would be an understatement.
But there are also doubts. While it’s true the Celtics only lost 18 games this season (two of those losses came after they clinched the #1 seed and took their foot off the pedal), they lost to teams they may face in the playoffs:
Denver Nuggets (0-2)
Milwaukee Bucks (2-2)
Indiana Pacers (3-2)
Oklahoma City Thunder (1-1)
Los Angeles Lakers (1-1)
Los Angeles Clippers (1-1)
Minnesota Timberwolves (1-1)
Cleveland Cavaliers (2-1)
New York Knicks (3-1)
Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers (3-1)
Of course, many of those teams are facing each other in the first round, so the only team the Celtics have to worry about right now is the Miami Heat, whom the Celts defeated all three times they met this season.
Additionally, they’ll be without their superstar (and Celtics nemesis) Jimmy Butler, who will be out for several weeks with an MCL injury. They’ll also be without former Celtic “Scary” Tery Rozier, who is “week to week” with a neck injury and will miss at least Game 1.
But if there’s one thing I learned from watching Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown play basketball together these past several years, it’s that they both know how to play flat when it counts.
Here’s a reminder. Game 7 of last season’s Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat in Boston, when Brown committed eight turnovers and went 1-9 from 3PT range:
Thankfully, Brown has improved his handles this season, especially with his left hand (which got uber-exposed last season). He decreased his turnovers from 197 last season to 168 this season, reducing his average per 36 minutes to 2.55 turnovers (for comparison’s sake, Lebron James averaged 3.52 turnovers per 36 minutes).
Unfortunately, the trend is going the other way when it comes to Jayson Tatum in clutch time. According to ClutchPoints.com, Tatum is ranked “dead last among 25 players with a minimum of 45 field goal attempts in clutch situations.”
Over the past three seasons, in fact, his clutch shooting has gotten downright abysmal. He’s gone from shooting 75% in his rookie season to shooting 26.9% when the shot is crucial to the outcome (the clutch squared stat below, which measures shooting percentage when the shot is the top 1% in potential win probability impact):
Hopefully, clutch shooting won’t matter in the first round when all signs point to a Celtics sweep (based on the current odds of Game 1, if a person bets $10 on the Celtics to win, they’ll only net 83¢ in winnings). But we’re gonna need some clutch shooting if we face Denver, Oklahoma City, the Pacers, or the Knicks.
And then there’s our coach.
While head coach Joe Mazzulla won two Coach of the Month awards this season and one last season (becoming only the seventh head coach in NBA history to earn at least three Coach of the Month awards in their first two seasons with a team) and was a finalist for the Coach of the Year last season, his youth, relative inexperience, and apparent arrogance (e.g., he sticks with his game plan even when it’s not working) make him perhaps the weakest link in the entire organization.
He has demonstrated time and again that he can’t compete with high-quality coaches. The Celtics outgun the Heat at every position and all down the bench, but if these games somehow come down to the wire, I have zero faith in Brown’s ball handling, Tatum’s clutch shooting, or Mazzulla’s ability to outcoach Miami’s tried and tested multi-championship winning coach, Erik Spoelstra.
Then again, the Celtics are the winningest team in the NBA. They’ve locked down home-court advantage and only lost four games at home all season.
With all my doubts, the reality is that if the Celtics are going to win their 18th banner anytime soon, they’re going to win it this season.
Earlier this week, Caitlin Clark — arguably the best pure basketball player ever in the NCAA (men’s or women’s basketball) — was selected by the Indiana Fever as the first pick in the WNBA Draft. She is, as many have said, a generational talent, and the attendance numbers for her games demonstrate her draw.
Iowa broke the women’s basketball all-time attendance record for a single game, with 55,646 on hand for its exhibition game against DePaul in Kinnick Stadium, home to the Iowa football team
Seventeen of Iowa women’s basketball’s 19 all-time sellout crowds inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena have occurred during the past three seasons
Away from Iowa City, the Hawkeyes have helped sell out or break an attendance record in 30 of 32 games this season.
On average, schools that have hosted Iowa have seen an attendance increase of over 150% compared with their other home games
The top five most in-demand NCAA women’s games this year have featured Iowa
The average price of tickets for the Hawkeyes since Clark joined the team in 2020 is up 224%
The average distance traveled by a fan to watch Iowa play is up 34% from last season
According to ESPN, the Fever’s regular season opener saw “a price increase of 91% since Clark declared for the draft,” and the Fever had to take “the unprecedented step of pre-selling single-game tickets to two games per day over a 15-day stretch” (i.e., you couldn’t buy a ticket to every game in a single transaction, but had to come back each day for 15 days). Further, “the average Fever resale price for home games is [as of April 11, 2024,] $182 — a 136% increase from 2023.”
The WNBA has also selected the Fever to have 36 of its 40 games broadcast on national television or by its streaming partners. Last season, they only had 22 games on national television.
Road teams are seeing an equal interest in games against the Fever. The Las Vegas team had to switch its venue for their July 2 game against the Fever to the larger T-Mobile Arena to account for all the excitement around seeing Clark.
Paying A Generational Talent
What does Caitlin Clark receive from all of this? Well, she gets sponsorship money, of course. According to one analysis, Caitlin Clark’s “name, image, and likeness (NIL)” is worth just under $1 million (for comparison’s sake, Lebron James’s son, Bronny, has a ridiculous NIL value of $7.4 million, despite not even being in the top five best players on his team!).
Before signing her contract with the WNBA, Clark had already made deals with NIKE, Gatorade, State Farm Insurance, Buick, Topps, and Panini America trading cards. More deals will obviously follow.
But from a pure salary level for playing basketball, what does this generational talent get?
Look at that again, especially on a yearly level.
For the 2024 WNBA basketball season, Caitlin Clark—one of the best college players to ever play the game—will be paid about the same as a mid-level corporate employee.
Comparing The Rookie Salaries of Generational Talents In the NBA & WNBA
This disparity between talent and pay is causing a lot of discussion about the finances of the WNBA.
For comparison’s sake, last year’s #1 draft pick in the NBA was Victor Wembanyama.
Wemby is a 7’4″ basketball god who is, without a doubt, the future face of the league. Like Clark, he is also a generational talent capable of single-handedly driving ticket sales for his team’s away games.
While Clark received a four-year contract worth $338,056, Wemby received a four-year contract worth $54.4 million.
The reason behind this is obvious. The NBA generates about $10 billion in revenue, while the WNBA generates about $60 million. The average attendance for an NBA game is about 17,000 people; for the WNBA, it’s about 5,500 people.
To continue the comparison, the NBA’s current highest-paid player, Jaylen Brown, will earn more in salary during the 2026-2027 season than the WNBA’s combined yearly revenue.
There are deeper, systemic reasons as well. Though women’s sports are healthier than ever, investments in them are still a drop in the bucket compared to those in men’s sports. While Deloitte predicts that 2024 will be the first time ever that the revenue generated by elite women’s sports will surpass $1 billion for the first time, the NFL alone generates roughly $22 billion in revenue per season. That difference in wholesale investment is going to reduce the earning potential of a woman’ athelete.
My Argument Isn’t What You Think It Is
I think Caitlin Clark’s salary is relatively appropriate.
I think Victor Wembanyama’s salary is wildly inappropriate.
It’s Not About Differences in Revenue
The NBA Player’s Association negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that ensures the players receive about half of all of the league’s “basketball-related income.” WNBA players receive about the same (provided certain revenue markers are hit). With the huge disparity in revenue (remember, $10 billion against $60 million), salary differences between the leagues will reflect that disparity.
With a difference of almost a million people watching your average regular-season NBA game vs the peak viewership of the WNBA Finals, your #1 rookie NBA player is, of course, going to make way more than your #1 rookie WNBA player.
It’s About Maximum Salaries FOR EVERYONE
Caitlin Clark is 22 years old. Her annual base salary coming out of college for the Indiana Fever is comparable to an account manager’s average base salary in Indianapolis, a position that often requires about three years’ experience in customer service.
She’ll earn this salary by playing the game of basketball for forty minutes a game at a maximum of 53 games a year (if her team makes the finals and every round of the playoffs goes the distance).
Her job isn’t just to play in those games, however; she needs to practice and condition, perform public relations for the team and league, and be available basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week for whatever the team or the league needs from her.
A survey of the Internet suggests that professional basketball players work over sixty hours per week and receive about two to four vacation weeks per year.
In return for that, Caitlin Clark will receive a guaranteed income of $76,000 as a 22-year-old college graduate.
I’d suggest that’s a fair income (give or take $10,000) for a sixty-hour-a-week passion-based job that includes plenty of perks and a union-negotiated benefits package.
And it’s about what Victor Wembanyama should receive as well.
Wemby and the other players split roughly 50% of that revenue. Where would the rest of those billions go if we dropped NBA contracts so they were comparable to the WNBA?
What if the money went to the states/regions/cities where the teams were located?
Imagine If You Will…
The Boston Celtics, who are above the NBA’s salary cap, still made roughly $88 million in profit last year. Their team payroll (players only) is about $183.6 million. If we reduce that to the WNBA’s team salary cap of $1.5 million and add the difference to the team’s profit, we get about $182.1 million in profit.
Let’s do the same for the team’s owners, executives, coaches, trainers, etc, all the way down to janitors, reducing each salary as we go and making the highest paid salary (assuming it’s the owners’) to $1 million a year.
According to RealGM.com, the Celtics have 157 staff and executives. Let’s wipe away some of the difficulties between roles, be generous, and give all 153 non-owner members of the organization the same as the players ($125,000 a year) and the four owners $1 million a year, bringing us to about $24 million a year, plus the $1.5 million in total player salaries.
I don’t know what the Celtics pay in salaries now for their staff and executives, but I have to imagine we just took a couple of million out of their total payroll and turned it into profit.
So now the Celtics have, maybe, $185 million in profit each year.
Imagine if that money, instead of going to the players or the owners, went to the city, region, and/or state.
The Boston Public School system just announced that it has to cut staffing at 70% of its schools next year. Some schools will lose up to 18% of their staff.
Now, the total budget for BPS is over $1.5 billion. Adding the Celtics’ profit would increase it by about 12%. That amount of money wouldn’t “save the day,” but it would make a significant difference.
Unfortunately, instead of doing good in the community, it’ll go into the pockets of single individuals.
That’s roughly $33.7 billion in profit from just 10 companies in Massachusetts. The total budget for my entire home state of Vermont is $8.5 billion.
Remember, the profits we’re talking about are obscene. None of it should belong in private hands, and all of it should be captured by the people.
Back to Caitlin
So, what are we really talking about when we discuss Caitlin Clark’s $76,000 salary? Sure, it’s a decent wage for a rookie in the WNBA. But this isn’t just about basketball or even sports—it’s about fairness, equity, and the absurd distribution of wealth in our society.
The enormous financial gap between the NBA and WNBA is just a part of the story. The deeper plot is how we, as a society, deal with the obscene amounts of money funneling into the pockets of a select few.
Instead of padding the bank accounts of the uber-rich, that money should be funneled into our schools, hospitals, and crumbling infrastructure.
We need to ask harder questions about why we’re okay with the stark inequities highlighted by Ms. Clark’s contract—not just in sports, but across all industries.
Let’s stop being spectators and start changing the game.
You can picture the high jinks. In fact, a small army of designers, animators and demolition experts spent years imagining them. Those people want their work to be seen. A sizable audience wants to pay money to see it. Yet that mutuality isn’t enough. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours went into creating something that could simply vanish into accounting.
Should you buy this thing? That one’s easy. Nope. Nuh-uh. No way. The AI Pin is an interesting idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways that I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription.
After ripping the Pin apart, the reviewer goes on to say:
Still, even after all this frustration, after spending hours standing in front of restaurants tapping my chest and whispering questions that go unanswered, I find I want what Humane is selling even more than I expected. A one-tap way to say, “Text Anna and tell her I’ll be home in a half-hour,” or “Remember to call Mike tomorrow afternoon,” or “Take a picture of this and add it to my shopping list” would be amazing. I hadn’t realized how much of my phone usage consists of these one-step things, all of which would be easier and faster without the friction and distraction of my phone.
Reading that made me wonder if The Verge hadn’t heard of the Apple Watch. Those one-tap tasks are what I use the Apple Watch for, though I don’t even use one tap; I just say, “Hey Siri…”
Raise wrist. “Hey Siri, ask my wife if she needs anything at the grocery store.”
Raise wrist. “Hey Siri, remind me to put the library books in my bag when I get home from work.”
Raise wrist.”Hey Siri, what song is this?”
Raise wrist. “Hey Siri, call my dad.”
Sure, Humane promises that its Pin will be able to do all kinds of cool things in the future. Unfortunately, for now, as The Verge found, “The AI Pin doesn’t work. I don’t know how else to say it.”
The Apple Watch can already do most of the Pin does, and Apple isn’t standing still.
Back then, solar eclipses were cloaked in scary uncertainty. But a Greek philosopher was said to have predicted the sun’s disappearance. His name was Thales. He lived on the Anatolian coast — now in Turkey but then a cradle of early Greek civilization — and was said to have acquired his unusual power by abandoning the gods.
I’m cataloging the albums I add to my Apple Music library each month. I’m not sharing any singles, just the LPs and EPs. I review each album in a couple of paragraphs (for the most part), but I can recommend virtually all of them, since the albums I don’t like get removed from my library as soon as the judgment is made.
If you missed previous posts, here are the ones for January and February.
This month, I’ve arranged the albums by the order of release date, with the older albums at the top.
Live at the Regal
By B.B. King
I can’t remember where, but I came across a list of the Best Live Albums of All Time, and B.B. King’s Live at the Regal was the only one on the list I hadn’t heard before. So I added it to my library.
B.B. is at the height of his powers here. The crowd is on fire, and his voice is as great as ever. From the opening notes of “Everyday I Have the Blues” to the closing squelch at the end of “Help the Poor,” Lucille sounds great, as she always does under the fingers of her blues master.
My only complaint is that, since this was recorded in 1964, most of the songs come in under four minutes, with a couple of them lasting less than three minutes and one stretching only as long as a minute and forty-five seconds. When B.B. and Lucille sound this great, and the band is cooking, my modern ears want songs that last seven to ten minutes. Alas, wax records could only hold so much noise.
Ampgrave
By Lullabye Arkestra
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again until the end of time: my favorite band is Do Make Say Think. Lullabye Arkestra was formed by Justin Small, the drummer of Do Make Say Think, and bassist Katia Taylor. Sometimes, the band is nothing more than a duo; at other times, it contains over 20 musicians playing everything from keyboards to a full horn section. The vocals come from punk rock, and Taylor’s bass is angry and strong, but the instruments are anthemic, rocking, and rolling.
This album from 2001 is fantastic, but some of it might scare off the normies.
Two for Joy
By Ruby Rushton
This experimental jazz quartet from the U.K. contains a rotating cast of musicians led by saxophonist and flutist Ed Cawthorne. They fuse jazz, Afrobeat, hip-hop, and electronics into a groove that digs into your bones. Cawthorne was originally a DJ who often sampled jazz in his work. In 2007, he taught himself soprano saxophone, and instead of sampling jazz, he began creating it. After hooking up with other musicians who could push and expand his sound, Ruby Rushton gained prominence on the scene. Two for Joy was recorded live in a single day, and it showcases the tremendous musicianship of this fantastic quartet.
Raw Cause
By 1000 Kings
Released in 2018, Raw Cause is the one album this month that I just keep coming back to. The opening number, “The Drop,” is infectious and joyous, and the band doesn’t let you go as it moves its way through the next seven tracks.
If you’ve read my previous posts this year, you know I’ve been falling hard for the many iterations of Shabaka Hutchings. His bands The Comet is Coming, Shabaka and the Ancestors, and Sons of Kemet have totally upended the music I’ve listened to this year.
Well, guess who plays saxophone with 1000 Kings?
Shabaka strikes again!
Brahja
By Brahja
Brahja, from 2019, is the other album I keep coming back to from March. Led by the multi-instrumentalist Devin Brahja Waldman, this jazz cooperative of mostly Montreal musicians creates an atmospheric saxophonic masterpiece grounded by cymbals, piano, bass, and synthesizer. The band had been playing together for over a decade before recording this album in a de-sanctified church in Quebec, and their ability to play off each other and build whole sonic environments that swirl in and out of each other’s solos proves once again that time is the best maestro.
Ginger Ale (EP)
By SOYOUZZ
This 2019 EP of five songs delivers just over 22 minutes of funky grooves put together by a group of six young musicians from Montpellier, France. If you like Herbie Hancock’s more infectious grooves, hop aboard SOYOUZZ’s rocket of a debut release. You won’t be able to stop your head from bopping. The horns hit together like the best of Maceo’s bands. The guitar rips deep into the funky bassline, and the electronica comes at you like so many meteors, flung from all directions and perfectly aimed to make you bop.
There’s not a single sleeper on the EP. It’s a perfect album for cooking a multi-course meal in your kitchen with a glass of red wine sloshing around as you dance.
Resavoir
By Resavoir
Another album from 2019, Resavoir’s self-titled debut revealed this experimental indie jazz collective as one to watch. The Chicago band’s leader, trumpeter Will Miller, has lent his sound to artists such as Lil Wayne and A$AP Rocky while finding influence in post-rock and indie rock. He developed this album by sketching out songs at his house, then reworking them with his Chicago friends, adding harp and saxophone to his drums, guitar, keys, and trumpet.
This is a relatively mellow album compared to some of the albums above—the second song, also titled “Resavoir,” has the calls of seagulls on it, for example—and there’s a distinct lack of funk, but that’s not what Miller is going for here. Instead, we get a full mid-tempo sound that supports his well-composed flights of fancy.
If SOYOUZZ’s Ginger Ale is great to cook too, this one makes great background music for cleaning the house.
Solo Ballads
By Pasquale Grasso
Do you like the idea of a classically-trained Italian-born jazz guitarist who was once named the Jazz Ambassador of the United States and toured on behalf of the embassy to places such as Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Lithuania, and Ukraine applying his incredible fingers to jazz standards such as “Embraceable You,” “Over the Rainbow,” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” rendering them unfamiliar while also turning them into the perfect versions of their pure selves?
If so, give this one a listen.
You’ve cleaned your house to Resavoir, cooked the meal to SOYOUZZ, and now it’s time to sit down and eat with the one you love, romancing them with candlelight, pasta, red wine, and Pasquale Grasso.
Could We Be More
By Kokoroko
Another U.K. based jazz and Afrobeat band, Kokoroko is an eight-piece group formed in 2014 and named itself after a Nigerian Urhobo word that means “be strong.”
That strength is present from the banging first notes of Could We Be More. The percussion brings the West African vibe, but as the band explained in an interview, “What would our traditional [West African] music sound like coming from London, where there is a massive melting point of cultures? And what would it sound like if it came through our perspective? We can’t escape London being a part of our musical DNA: it’s what we grew up listening to. It’s our sound. It belongs to us.”
Kokoroko, along with having the best band name of this month’s additions to my library, does something unique with its vocals. The voice is another instrument in the mix, not the lead.
If you enjoy Fela Kuti filtered through London, you’ll dig these folks.
Cowboy Carter
By Beyoncé
I listened to Cowboy Carter on the day of its release. That morning, I had to be in the car for 90 minutes, driving through the early spring landscape of the Valley of Vermont, perhaps one of the more beautiful regions east of the Mississippi River. The sun rose over the Green Mountains, burning the morning fog off the lake, river, and fields as I drove past, but not even the beauty of nature could compare to the sound of Beyoncé coming out of my speakers.
She calls this her country album, but the whole concept of musical genres cannot begin to cover what she does on this album.
Cowboy Carter is another entry in an incredible discography that includes Lemonade, The Lion King: The Gift, and I AM…SASHA FIERCE, reminding all those TayTay fans that Queen Bee is not done with her throne.
Frameworks
By Scheen Jazzorkester, Cortex, & Thomas Johansson
Thomas Johansson is a Norwegian jazz trumpeter and composer. For this album, he brings together two of his ensembles—Scheen Jazzorkester and Cortex—for a night of live music in the winter of 2022.
The band contains two trumpets, tenor, alto, and baritone saxophones, trombone and bass trombone, two double basses, two sets of drums, and an electric organ.
More than anything, the sound reminds me of Charles Mingus’ compositions, with some fantastic trumpet solos thrown in. I enjoyed the album, but I didn’t find myself coming back to it.
Happiness Bastards
By The Black Crowes
First, let’s get real. This is not a “Black Crowes” album. It’s an album by the band’s two founding members, Chris and Rich Robinson, the singer and lead guitarist, respectively, a pair of brothers who didn’t talk to each other for about 15 years and who finally started playing music again back in 2019. The Robinson brothers are accompanied by their long-time bassist, Sven Pipien, who joined the band on their fifth album in the late nineties, and three new members: a rhythm guitarist, drummer, and keyboardist.
So, this isn’t the band that released the first three seminal Crowes albums, Shake Your Money Maker, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, and Amorica.
But the Robinson brothers have always been the heart and soul of this southern rock outfit, and it’s nice to have them playing music again. Chris Robinson’s instantly recognizable voice sounds better than ever, and Rich’s blues-rock-influenced guitar stylings still have the power to get your toes tapping.
It may not be the original band, but for the Black Crowes to put out this solid of an album exactly forty years after their founding is quite the accomplishment, and the brothers should be celebrated for their work.
Speak to Me
By Julian Lage
Julian Lage is one of my favorite guitarists of all time. If he releases an album, I’m downloading it on Day One and playing it non-stop on my Writing playlist for at least a week straight.
Speak to Me sees him playing with his latest trio of Jorge Roeder on bass and David King on drums, but they’re joined on a few of the tunes by Patrick Warren on piano and keys, Levon Henry on reeds, and Kris Davis on piano.
The album covers a broad range of styles and genres. It opens with an acoustic “Hymnal” played on a Spanish guitar before waking up with the electric guitar and horns on “Northern Shuffle.” Warren’s rock sensibilities keep the rhythm moving, bringing a 1950s vibe to the piano’s driving force. The third track, “Omission,” has a folk-rock sound to it, with Western-style guitars calling up images of wild horses roaming the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
This is one of Lage’s most accessible albums. It’s all instrumental, sure, but it’s not jazz, not rock, not classical. It’s everything, played beautifully in six minutes or less.
Visions
By Norah Jones
I’m a sucker for Ms. Jones. I’ve had a crush on her since her debut smash, Come Away With Me, was released in 2002. Her latest album, Visions, doesn’t stray far from what she’s great at. Her songs mix sensibilities from jazz vocalists, pop, and adult mid-tempo rock.
But you don’t listen to Norah Jones for musical extravagance or genre-bending instrumentation experiments.
You listen because her breathy voice evokes your heart to love, grieve, and soar.
