Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla May Win the NBA Finals, But He Lost Something More Important & Trump's "Meandering" in Meeting with CEOs
AI Beauty Pageant Just as Destructive as the Human Ones, NY Gov Bases Public Policy on Customers at Diner, Trump Funnels Campaign Money into His Own Businesses, Adam Bałdych & Leszek Możdżer Play Jazz
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Why we hate losing more than we love winning.
2024 NBA Finals: Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla's unwillingness to discuss race a complicated issue: Mazzulla is a great coach, but he blew a chance to be a great role model. Sadly, he thinks he has.
CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘meandering’ and ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’: He was preaching to the choir but the choir didn’t understand what he was saying.
Trump’s Campaign Is Funneling Cash Back to His Businesses: A fool and their money are soon parted. That’s especially sad when it’s a fool taking the money.
Trump: Pilots as ‘Beautiful’ as Tom Cruise Told Me UFOs May Exist: Trump only listens to “handsome, perfect” people.
Kareem’s Video Break: Everyone should experience this kind of happiness at least once a day.
How Governor Hochul Decided to Kill Congestion Pricing in New York: This is the kind of political pandering reasoning that no one should accept.
Fake beauty queens charm judges at the Miss AI pageant: The sacred quest to dehumanize women as fantasy objects continues.
Adam Bałdych & Leszek Możdżer Play “Passacaglia”: This fusion of classical and jazz is unlike anything you’ve heard. Unforgettable.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
I hate to lose more than I love to win.
Jimmy Connors, former world No. 1 tennis player for 268 weeks
It would be easy to dismiss Connors’ statement as the sad confession that proves winning doesn’t bring happiness. That conclusion actually misses the point. Sure, super competitive people live in a different stratosphere than most where the air is thin and icy and scratches the throat. Where everything happens both too slowly and too fast at the same time.
Competing is about so much more than winning. For the highly competitive, winning is merely a measure of the success of their will, not a measure of their success as an athlete or as a person. It is a reward, but not necessarily rewarding. That’s because competing is not binary: there’s so much more attached to the game than winning or losing.
Athletes from marginalized groups understand the extra pressure of not losing because they represent their community to change perceptions of bias. Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali were among the legions who knew this pressure. Every loss confirms the bigot’s opinion that the group—Black, LGBTQ+, women, Muslim, Jew, etc.—aren’t as good and therefore not deserving of equal rights or respect. They are always battling the endless versions of the Great White/Cis Hope sent to reclaim the rightful racial or gender dominance. In these circumstances, losing feels like you’re letting down an entire people counting on you to prove the bigots wrong. In such cases, winning doesn’t feel like a vindication, just a relief of not losing.
Like most highly competitive people, I approached each game believing we would win. If we did win, that merely confirmed my default setting. But when we lost, the surprise was bitter. None of that is rational, just the mindset necessary to compete at high levels almost every day over three decades.
Losing is a great lesson about living with what you can’t control. Anyone who has played on a team, whether it’s football, basketball, soccer, or pickleball doubles, knows the frustration of being brought down by a teammate’s poor performance. There are games when you feel like you’re strapped in the passenger seat of a car driven by a drunk escaped convict with a death wish. Nothing you do will change the outcome. That’s where the test of character comes in. Pouting, grumbling, throwing the ball, breaking the racquet, or giving your bumbling teammate the death glare tell us that winning is how you receive personal validation that you have worth. Sadly, needing validation by a faceless group is an addiction that can never be satiated.
“Loss aversion” is a psychological and economic concept that explains why people are more sensitive to losing than winning. One theory postulates that losses are felt with twice the impact as gains. This makes us wonder why we are willing to risk feeling bad when losing just for a tepid feeling of victory. It’s like betting someone on the flip of a coin, only you’re putting up $100 and they’re only wagering $50.
In 1999, Maurice Ashley became chess’s first Black American Grandmaster. In his book, Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard, he devotes an entire chapter to losing: “Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Defeat and losing clarify so much, or have the potential to do so. Embrace it. Don’t try to run away from it.” What he’s saying is that winning confirms what you already know, but losing reveals what you need to know. Like watching Jeopardy! reveals what you don’t know. The elite competitor cherishes that knowledge because it will push them to become better. Winning isn’t the ultimate goal. Better is.
2024 NBA Finals: Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla's unwillingness to discuss race a complicated issue (Yahoo! Sports)
SUMMARY: Race is one of the defining issues in this country, and it's not easy to talk about, but when one avoids it, it adds fuel to an already complicated fire.
For the first time since 1975, the NBA Finals has a Black head coach on each sideline, with Dallas’ Jason Kidd facing off against Boston’s Joe Mazzulla. Al Attles (Golden State) and K.C. Jones (Washington) did it last in a series the Warriors won 4-0.
Kidd and NBA commissioner Adam Silver both talked about the importance of the accomplishment and the symbolism it can represent for the forever-long struggle of Black coaches in these leadership positions and what it means to them personally.
Mazzulla, who’s mixed race, preferred to sidestep it, giving deference to his religion more than his racial identity.
“I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches,” Mazzulla said when asked Saturday, essentially, if two Black coaches in the NBA Finals meant anything to him.
There was stunned silence in the room because it felt like an awkward answer, at the very least. Shockingly, and this may come as a surprise to the Celtics coach, it is possible to be both Black and Christian.
He didn’t expound on it, he didn’t elaborate what it meant for him to be a Christian in this spot. He brought religion to the party but didn’t choose to explore the conversation.
MY TAKE: In 2023, the NBA had 15 head coaches of color (out of 30 teams), with two Black coaches battling head-to-head in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1975. Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks and Joe Mazzulla of the Boston Celtics are excellent coaches. But I’m not going to discuss coaching philosophies—they were both in the finals, that’s all we need to know.
We might discuss the fact that both men are bi-racial, but in America that means Black to the average person. Why not White? The implication is that the Black blood somehow dominates the White blood. It is racist shorthand, a warning that there might be danger. What are his insights to this issue?
We might discuss the perils and pressures a Black NBA coach faces both in becoming a coach and in keeping the job. We know that statistically Black coaches in the NFL are fired faster than White coaches, even when they have a better season than the White coach. Thoughts?
So, when Mazzulla decided to ignore a legitimate question about race that might have been illuminating and inspiring for others, and instead decided to virtue signal by answering, “I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches.” The answer is strangely aggressive since Christians are not discriminated against but, as a group, are more likely to discriminate against others (“Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious”).
This echoes his 2022 comments about the time when Prince William and Princess Catherine attended a Celtics game. When a reporter asked if he’d met with “the Royal Family,” Mazzulla deadpanned, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?” When pressed, he explained, “Oh no, I did not. I'm only familiar with one royal family. I don't know too much about that one.” Perhaps he thought he was being witty or clever (he wasn’t). Nor was he conveying Christianity in a favorable light. First, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary would have balked at being referred to as royalty, even symbolically, since it contradicts their plain origins, which is the point. Second, his comment suggests a myopia regarding his religion when he celebrates his ignorance of the world around him. One can respect the culture of another country without compromising one’s own religious beliefs.
We get it: you’re super devout. Unfortunately, whatever spiritual message he’d hoped his answer would convey wasn’t in the words he used. Rather it was a missed opportunity to express Christian compassion by being a responsible spokesman for other people of color struggling to find their place. He might have been a mentor and a spokesperson for those struggling to find their place. Instead, all that came across was smug self-righteousness, which is the opposite of Christ’s teachings.
Congrats on winning the Finals. But you lost a real opportunity to win hearts and minds.
This Week in Trumpland, The Realm Beyond Reason
I know many of us have Trump fatigue and would prefer to bury our heads for a few months. But this is the time when we need a final push to make sure the embodiment of everything that is morally repugnant and politically destructive is banished. Here are a few reminders of why.
CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘meandering’ and ‘doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ (CNBC)
SUMARY: Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.
“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals, that person said.
Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.
Meeting attendees and people who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.
The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.
“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him, Sorkin said.
…Trump’s energy in the meeting was also noticeably subdued, according to two people who were in the room. At no time during his remarks was there any noticeable applause for Trump, two attendees told CNBC.
…“At one point, he discussed his plan to bring the corporate tax rate down from 21% to 20% … and was asked about why he had chosen 20%,” Sorkin said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “And he said, ‘Well, it’s a round number.’”
“That unto itself had a number of CEOs shaking their heads,” Sorkin reported.
MY TAKE: The article concludes with “Wall Street has bristled over the past three years under President Joe Biden’s aggressive antitrust enforcement, pharmaceutical price caps and progressive tax policy.” These are all policies I’m relieved that someone dares to pursue because they are about protecting the American people even at the risk of alienating Big Business CEOs and their billions.
What is especially concerning here is that Trump was unable to impress an audience predisposed to support him because he has no real policies, just soulless spouting of cliches his followers want to hear. Worse, these people will probably support him anyway because they will be assured in private by Trump’s camp that sounder minds will guide policy the way the CEOs want. Trump is just a figurehead, a bloated balloon outside a car dealership to hook the suckers.
Did this gathering of CEOs ask about social policies to assure equal opportunity and the protection of individual rights or the protection of the health of their workers and customers? Nah. Just how can we get rid of those pesky regulations and protections so we can squeeze a few more bucks out of people?
I want business to thrive—but not at any cost.
Trump’s Campaign Is Funneling Cash Back to His Businesses: Report (The Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: Money raised by Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is being sent right back into the former president’s pockets in various forms, according to a new report from Forbes based on Federal Election Commission records. Trump has not donated any money personally to his 2024 presidential campaign, but he is certainly charging others for it, according to the records, which show $4.6 million worth of campaign money has been transferred to his business empire. Much of that money, the Forbes report claims, has been sent to Trump’s aviation company, Tag Air. The Secret Service forked out $800,000 in airfare to travel with the former president. Though Trump has charged the campaign for services in prior elections, this year is different, according to Forbes. The 77-year-old is expected to rake in more cash than ever this election cycle and will continue to use his private jet as he makes his way along the campaign trail. When approached by Forbes about the transactions, a spokesperson “deflected,” and took aim at Joe and Hunter Biden instead. On top of the payments to his aviation company, the campaign spent $332,000 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence. Another $20,000 went to Trump National Doral, a Trump-owned golf resort in Miami, while $36,000 went to the Trump hotel in Las Vegas.
MY TAKE: Writing about Trump’s transgressions is like spitting into the wind. The wind doesn’t change direction and all I have is a face full of spit. Trump supporters are the wind in this metaphor and spit is the truth about him. Nevertheless, as the evidence piles up about his scamming of America we might take a closer look at how so many may be willing to give so much for so little.
Part of the problem is plain old ignorance of the news—especially regarding Trump. A recent Yahoo/YouGov survey found that only half of those queried knew what Trump had been indicted for, with 16 to 21% certain he was NOT indicted for the crimes he was indicted for. Other revelations:
1 in 5 voters in the Yahoo/YouGov survey said either that they didn’t know about Trump’s Manhattan verdict, that Trump was not guilty or that the trial was ongoing. That includes 2 out of every 5 registered voters under the age of 30.
A majority of independents have said they’ve heard only “a little” or “nothing at all” about Trump’s classified-documents indictment, according to Marquette University Law School polling.
Just 1 in 5 voters in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were familiar with Trump having said that purported voter fraud in the 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Republicans, especially, will often tell pollsters things about Donald Trump and his legal problems that are simply wrong.
Voters also believe strikingly wrong things about the economy, including a majority believing we’re in a recession and half thinking unemployment is at a 50-year high. (Unemployment has actually been at 4 percent or below for its longest stretch in those 50 years.)
We just honored the military veterans who gave their lives in defense of the country and celebrated Flag Day to further proclaim our patriotism. But that is “show patriotism,” the kind that makes one feel good about themselves without acknowledging their hypocrisy. Real patriotism is educating oneself with the facts—not just what one wants to hear—to make smart choices. But people prefer to arm themselves with guns rather than books or newspapers. Reading and critical thinking are the weapons that will protect this country from internal destruction. That takes effort and commitment. That takes a love of country.
Trump: Pilots as ‘Beautiful’ as Tom Cruise Told Me UFOs May Exist (The Daily Beast)
SUMMARY: Donald Trump thinks there “could be” alien life in the universe—in large part because U.S. pilots he met while president, who he found to be “like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller,” told him they saw unexplained things in the sky.
“I met with pilots… like beautiful Tom Cruise but taller—handsome, perfect people,” Trump told Logan Paul in an interview on the YouTuber and mixed martial arts fighter’s podcast, Impaulsive.
MY TAKE: Go ahead and cringe. Shake your head. Not at the prospect of alien life—with an infinite universe, other life forms are statistically inevitable—but at the possibility of a president whose opinions are based on how attractive the person giving their opinion is. “Handsome, perfect people.” They are perfect because they are good-looking. He went on to say that “a lot of very smart and very solid people” believe there may be alien life forms, but he’s “never been convinced, even despite that” because “for some reason, it’s not my thing.” So, he’s willing to ignore smart people whom he respects because it’s not his “thing”? Now, apply that same “logic” to the advice he might get about international relations and social policy. Be afraid.
Kareem’s Video Break
The joy these little best friends feel when they meet up produces a happy dance that needs no choreography. This is how I want everyone in the world to feel at least once a day.
How Governor Hochul Decided to Kill Congestion Pricing in New York (The New York Times)
SUMMARY: In the last few months, Gov. Kathy Hochul has privately exchanged anxieties about moving forward on congestion pricing with business leaders, political advisers and, in her telling, a great number of ordinary New Yorkers in diners.
But she never shared them with the group that would be most affected by the program: the public at large, which had every reason to believe that the new tolling structure would be in place in Manhattan later this month.
The move to abandon a plan that was decades in the making jolted lawmakers, real estate leaders, transit advocates and other stakeholders. The governor said she was reluctant to deter people from driving to New York City when its economic recovery was still fragile; critics called it an election year ploy to help Democrats in suburban districts where congestion pricing is notably unpopular.
Ms. Hochul’s announcement was particularly jarring given her past championing of the plan. Indeed, as recently as this year, the governor stressed the need to get vehicles off the road — a dissonance that has fed a sense of duplicity and a feeling of betrayal among those who considered her an ally.
On Friday, Jon Orcutt, a longtime congestion pricing proponent and a consultant for Reinvent Albany, described Ms. Hochul’s about-face as “a fundamental sense of betrayal, like, inner-core rock bottom.”
“It would be one thing if she inherited the thing and said, ‘This isn’t my priority,’” he added. “But we got to, not the 11th hour, but 10 seconds before midnight.”
The effects of Ms. Hochul’s decision were immediate. New York City was left without a plan to address the crippling gridlock that has long choked its streets and polluted its air.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that would have received funding from the congestion pricing program, suddenly had a $15 billion hole in its budget, likely forcing it to mothball long-planned capital projects like signal upgrades to focus on bare-bones operating needs.
MY TAKE: I don’t have a problem with the congestion fee for travel, nor do I have a problem with the governor canceling the fee. But I have a problem with the reasoning she’s giving, which is insulting to both sides. She claims to have asked people in diners for their opinion and their disapproval has driven her decision.
She told reporters that even more than any particular data point or study, her certainty came from interactions with business owners and diner patrons that gave her “a real pulse on what New Yorkers are thinking.”
“I encourage you to go to the next diner with me, I’ll probably be there in the morning,” she said. “Sit with me and watch the people come over and thank me.”
How folksy. Chatting in a diner gives the public a nice woman-of-the-people visual, but she’s more likely influenced by the polls. An April survey showed that New York City residents were against congestion pricing, 64 percent to 33 percent. [Side note: What percentage of the patrons actually thank her? If it’s less than half, should she abandon her policy? And how many show up at the diner because she’s there, which skews the response.]
First, let’s remove the polls. Either the fee is a good idea or it’s not based on its stated objective of alleviating gridlock and funding the $15 billion for the subway system. But she gives no clear alternative plan for fixing the problem. So, the problem remains.
Second, her salt-of-the-earth razzle-dazzle is irrational thinking. Policy is not made by asking people in a diner. It’s too small of a small sample. Even if we include the polls, most people are not going to volunteer to pay money if they can get out of it. The governor makes an impassioned defense based on lost commerce if there is a fee. But commerce is also lost if the subways aren’t safe and if there is a reduced schedule that can’t get people to their jobs on time or shoppers to the shops.
Politicians are elected to lead, not follow to get reelected. They have to make unpopular decisions using their access to information and assess the pros and cons of possible solutions.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll drive over to Denny’s and ask around.
Fake beauty queens charm judges at the Miss AI pageant (NPR)
SUMMARY: Beauty pageant contestants have always been judged by their looks, and, in recent decades, by their acknowledging deeds and winning personalities.
Still, one thing that’s remained consistent throughout beauty pageant history is that you had to be a human to enter.
But now that’s changing.
Models created using generative artificial intelligence (AI) are competing in the inaugural “Miss AI” pageant this month.
The contestants have no physical, real-world presence. They exist only on social media, primarily Instagram, in the form of photorealistic images of extremely beautiful young women — all of it created using a combination of off-the-shelf and proprietary AI technology.
Some of the characters can also be seen talking and moving in videos. And they share their "thoughts" and news about their "lives" mostly through accompanying text on social media posts.
In one video, Kenza Layli, created by a team from Morocco, speaks in Arabic about how happy she is to have been selected as one of finalists for Miss AI.
"I am proud to receive this nomination after only existing for five months, especially since this invention is Arab and Moroccan 100%," the AI model said.
In another, the Brazilian entry, Ailya Lou, lip-synchs and bops around to a song.
Even though these beauty queens are not real women, there is a real cash prize of $5,000 for the winner. The company behind the event, the U.K.-based online creator platform FanVue, is also offering public relations and mentorship perks to the top-placed entry as well as to two runners-up.
According to a statement from the organizer, a panel of four judges selected 10 finalists from 1,500 submissions. This is the first of a series of contests for AI content creators that FanVue is launching under the "The FanVue World AI Creator Awards" umbrella. The results for Miss AI will be announced at the end of June.
MY TAKE: There’s a good reason for the declining viewership and public support for beauty pageants: They tend to promote male fantasies of women that are stereotypes of young, attractive, thin, and non-threatening to their male ideal. A few weeks ago, Miss USA and Miss USA Teen, both from 2023, resigned citing overbearing pressure from the organizations (“Why are pageant queens resigning? Miss USA controversy, explained”).
Sally-Ann Fawcett, one of the AI Beauty Pageant judges, claimed she was hoping to change these stereotypes “from the inside” by focusing on the messaging (ocean conservation for one, LGBTQ+ issues for another) attributed to these fake people. “I would like to see somebody of a different gender, somebody larger, somebody older, somebody with flaws,” Fawcett said. “There's such a big scope. But I think because it's the first year, everyone's adhering to that typical stereotype of beauty.”
Sure, but some people said the same thing about the live beauty pageants. That they should expand the meaning of the word beauty beyond the ability to elicit sexual desire in men and envy in women. Never happened. This AI Beauty Pageant takes the worst qualities of beauty because those are the most commercial—remember, this is all about promoting their skills to get jobs. In this case, it’s not AI corrupting society that we need to worry about, the real villains are the technicians wielding AI without any clue about the damage they’re causing.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Adam Bałdych & Leszek Możdżer: “Passacaglia”
Today’s featured song may be a slight departure but you’ve probably come to expect that from me on occasion. I enjoy a vast spectrum of music and I enjoy sharing that with you.
This exciting fusion of jazz and classical music by two Polish jazz musicians is a revelation. If you’re wondering why we see multiple pianos it’s because they are tuned differently for a more subtle sound contrast. They are famous for their improvisation within the confines of the song to create a more vibrant and spontaneous experience.
The song makes me think of sitting on my sofa on a relentlessly rainy day. As the persistent sound of rain surrounds me, it also lulls me deep into my thoughts about past, present, and future and what each means to the other. It is a zen experience of internal gardening.
Another well-written but depressing read about the state of US politics...
I at least had a minor win this week - a student admitted that basing their opinions on the Arab-Israeli conflict upon what Tik-Tok feeds them is giving them a skewed view of the conflict. They made a commitment to wider reading about the background of Arab Israeli conflict and then reassess. I 100% agree that we need to encourage all people to develop critical thinking skills.
I recently had a student ask me 'why are we learning this shit?' My answer? "This 'shit' is not important in itself but forms part of a wider skillset in which I hope you will be able to leave school with the ability to read some information, form an opinion from that information and then defend it when others question it. In short, have the skills to become a rational, informed citizen'
Loved——- “ I may be wrong- let me go to Denny’s and ask around “
Perfect humor and irony in response to gutless leadership refusing to make hard choices because they fear not getting reelected.