How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
Gotta lead today with….the weather!
Almost an entire week of short sleeves and sunshine (Saturday morning haze be damned).
The line from a centuries-old farmer’s rhyme, “April showers brings May flowers” never seems more prescient than this year.
National Weather Service said that only one day in April could be categorized as “clear and sunny.” The Chicago area saw about 1.5 more inches of rain than when compared to a normal April (spring sport participants, pet walkers and outdoor fitness enthusiasts can attest to that stat).
Bottom line, the month of April sucked big time.
But this week, the skies have opened, we got a super early 90 degree day and the rest of the month trends hotter than average.
Let’s all go play. Outside.
But first, let’s proceed with the Six.
Military Contemplates Funding Athletic Scholarships.
There’s a ton of news in the college athletic space today. Much of the conversation revolves around money. How much should athletes be compensated? I believe they should be but not at the expense of the college degree. That still matters, even in an age of million-dollar deals for “amateur” players. This article from Sportico reveals how the U.S. Military is actively engaged in talks about funding athletic scholarships for football and basketball players. The catch? Those athletes must join the service. We are only at the beginning of a complete overhaul and transformation of collegiate athletics. This story provides another example.
Not as much national discourse this past week on abortion as previous, but the conversation around the topic of reproductive rights isn’t going away anytime soon. In the early 19th century, abortion was more common than one would think. It was "a way for women of every race and social class to limit family size, manage resources, and protect their health.” Contraception was felt to be more unnatural; "a disturbance of a woman’s natural balance.” Ending a pregnancy before the "quickening" thought to occur at four months was an accepted, even common, solution. An interesting story from American Scholar that takes an historical lens on abortion in America.
The Dying Off of the Office Snack.
One victim of the pandemic — and the tax code — is the humble office snack, which is going out of style amid the shift of many workers to a hybrid work structure. As this article from Vox explains, snacks are actually a somewhat recent phenomenon: In 1977, just 11 percent of Americans were having three snacks or more per day, a figure that leapt to 42 percent in 2002, and by 2019 a study from the snack industrial giant Mondelez found 59 percent of adults liked snacks more than actual meals. And while the pandemic definitely shook up the snack status quo, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may actually be the real dagger for office snacking: That law made office snacks that were once 100 percent deductible expenses down to just 50 percent deductible.
In The Court of the Liver King.
The Liver King — the TikTok superstar and supplement magnate who is the self-described “CEO of the ancestral lifestyle” — is living life out loud. And here’s one way he proves it: he claims to eat a pound of raw liver a day. Oh, and he balances all that raw liver with massive doses of vitamins A and B, folate and iron. “I’m not a hospital, I’m not a doctor, this is not medical advice,” he declares on his website. “I do, however, have a degree in biochemistry.” Enough with the spoilers — this terrific profile from GQ must be read to be believed.
Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, a silkscreen image of Marilyn Monroe by artist Andy Warhol, sold for $195 million this past Monday in the most expensive sale ever of a work by an American artist at auction. It’s also now the most expensive work from the 20th century, and beat Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled which sold for $110.5 million in 2017. The buyer went unnamed, so congratulations to the financial titan, princeling or oligarch who presumably made off with the decorative tax shelter and inflation hedge.
Yellow Cardinal Spotted in Florida.
A nature photographer was walking through a wooded area on the campus of the University of Florida and voila! – spots a yellow cardinal. These colored birds are extremely rare, and this particular cardinal found in Florida even more so. “I've seen many cardinals in my life - but apparently not enough. Scientists believe this is a one-in-a-million genetic mutation," a bird nerd group wrote on Facebook. Scientists say only 10-15 yellow cardinals exist in North America, compared with millions of red cardinals. The discovery of a lifetime by this nature photographer.
Thanks for reading everybody and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.