NIL Rulings Do Not Change for High School Student-Athletes

From the National Federation of State High School Associations:

The much-anticipated changes to the fundamental structure of college sports occurred last week when the NCAA suspended its longstanding amateur rules to allow college athletes to monetize their success and profit from their own Name, Image and Likeness (NIL).

This action by the NCAA was expected after several state laws were set to take effect July 1. In less than a week, many current college athletes have already enacted plans to earn money from their NIL. This monumental change to college sports comes on the heels of the previous week’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Alston case in which the Court ruled that the NCAA cannot restrict a school’s spending on an athlete’s education.

While it is not our position to debate the merits of current college athletes earning money from their NIL, it should be understood that these changes do not affect current high school student-athletes. Current high school student-athletes CANNOT earn money as a result of their connection to their high school team.

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The Insurrectionist

* This novel reads like Andy Nowicki’s fantasy of a woman coming along and inspiring him to save the world.

* I’m struck by how Andy writes like he talks (wordy, meandering, conspiratorial). He badly needed an editor. I would have liked more vivid scene-by-scene construction using realistic dialogue, multiple points of view, and paying close attention to status details.

* I didn’t experience much emotion while reading the book except for some mild amusement at times — Nowicki has a good ear for how news is disconnected from truth, how religion often sells out to the status quo, and the absurd ways our betters lecture us.

* There are three types of characters in the book — the good guys, the bad guys and the indifferent. There’s not much nuance and not much empathy. All truth and righteousness lies with one side (those out of power).

* A turning point in the story is an interview that goes off script, a bit like the one Andy and I did July 15.

* The book concludes with a noble rebellion in progress against the globalists. “…a sleeping giant seems to have been awakened. And that sleeper’s hate exceeds all bounds; indeed, it can scarcely be contained. Great Lucifer, beneficent ally, please have mercy upon us in our time of need!”

* At just 67 pages, I was able to read the book in less than an hour.

* Like Brave New World, it’s a novel primarily about ideas rather than story. If you liked Brave New World, and if you think Covid is some kind of sinister hoax perpetrated by our elites to amass power, then you’ll like The Insurrectionist. I don’t think most readers were mesmerized by the story in Brave New World, but those who loved the book were stimulated by the ideas in it. Similarly, nobody is going to be thrilled by the story in The Insurrectionist, but you might like the ideas and you may be amused by its commentary on life in 2021.

Here are some highlights from this novel by Andy Nowicki:

* You stood on my door that day (whatever day it was), wearing a resplendent smile that caught me up short. Despite my unprepossessing appearance and slovenly disposition, I somehow felt bold enough to invite you to come inside, though not without lowering my eyes with a certain mortification, painfully aware that my hovel-like apartment was not a fit resting place for such a creature as you, not even for the span of a moment…

* It was revealed to me then, how puny and ineffectual I had proven to be in most respects.

* …I had opted to visit a friend of mine in Nashville. He dwelt in a squalid little apartment, worked a series of menial retail jobs, and in his spare time dreamed of making it big in the country music industry…I too had musical aspirations… We would craft a type of music that could finally bring people together after years of engineered crises had everyone at one another’s throats.

* Global Government Quorum… had managed to forge a historic alliance between nations across the world as a culmination of a proclaimed need for “greater federated authority” in the wake of the social unrest which had grown exponentially during the present “age of plague,” with one mysterious virus after another breaking upon the populace for the span of nearly a decade, creating a crescendo of panic that seemed to be ever-cresting and never receding…

Eventually, there came to be a great clamoring, at least among many holding official positions in federal, state, and municipal bodies of governance, for humanity to “finally to answer the perennial call to unite and centralize” so that the problems of perpetual pandemics and sporadic rioting in cities, based on one inexplicable upheaval after another, might finally be brought under control, in order that the much sought after principle of world peace might at long last become reality, and a reign of righteous order could be summoned forth after all these uneasy years of chaos and revolt.

* I had, after all, always been the misfit of my family; they had never understood, nor even cared to attempt to understand me…I had long resented how they had tended to view me with a combination of concern and annoyance. I was, after all, a college dropout, never able to hold down a decent job, trying but so far failing to be a writer/musician…

* I was now tormented, feeling that my anger and contempt, having been aroused by my family’s general rejection of my ideas and ambitions, had somehow, in some way, played a role in igniting their destruction. My parents and my sisters had been practical people, with concrete minds, while I gravitated toward more of an ethereality of temperament.

* Earlier that day, my friend and I had joined others in the streets for what amounted to one desperate, collective cry for our earthly rulers to level with us for once, concerning what was really going on…

* …a sector-wide edict had been issued, solemnly instructing people to remain inside for an indefinite period in order to prevent further unrest. Once more, the many and varied major media outlets sang an identical tune, using the exact same words and phrases, with only minor variations; they all implied strongly that the best decision for us to make as a human race was simply to “stay put” in our homes and “wait for further instructions,” which “would be dispensed at the appropriate time.”

* What I was seeing on the news bore little to any resemblance to reality…

* People wanted to join in the war effort against the Overlords in any and every way possible, yet the rulership of the world refused even to field a war effort; moreover, they depicted such a notion as pathological and destructive, even subversive and treasonous.

* “Such self-appointed ‘militias’ fetishize the concept of freedom and shamelessly weaponize the grief, anger, and sense of loss that many humans share during this time of unprecedented difficulty. “According to Dr. Rebecca Schlossberg, a well-regarded practicing psychiatrist and professor at McGill University in Montreal, such incidents as these are commonly driven by ‘men who feel themselves possessed of a kind of savior complex. “’They think that the world needs to be ‘rescued from ruin,’ and that they are the ones who need to do the rescuing…such people, while believing strongly in their own righteousness, are also prone to adopting a simplistic, binary, black-and-white, ‘us-against-them’ mentality,’ Dr. Schlossberg explained. ‘They see themselves as self-sacrificing would-be heroes. Yet at the same time, they clearly operate from grandiose motivations that are actually quite selfish and self-centered at heart.’

* “Yes, you lost so much,” she allowed, with a trained facade of pseudo-sympathy, “but, perhaps you could just sit with the possibility that these ‘theories’ you have developed about the government and so forth could simply be an outgrowth of your trauma?”

* Having grown up Catholic, albeit in a lax if not lapsed family, my attention at times had been drawn to occasions in history when the Church had stood boldly against novel impositions of unholy customs…

* I had quite naively believed that I would find refuge from the barrage of indoctrination and lies within the hallowed halls of Mother Church…

* …I felt stirred by the notion that I almost seemed to be playing a different character, as an actor might in a movie or a play. And I thought to myself: might it indeed be possible to become an entirely different person under different circumstances?

* I had rarely taken to social media, for example, and when I did, it was only for personal, not political ends. I hadn’t transformed into a dissident until the post-catastrophe days, during which I didn’t bother with such pathetic trifles as social media; as a result, I would have no electronic paper trail testifying against me should I emerge as one claiming to be friendly to the principalities and powers in the age of the Overlords.

* In no time, I became a playboy and a player…

* I hated, despised, and loathed all of this “in crowd” that I now courted so successfully. They were supposed to be the crème de la crème, but in fact they were mostly dumb as dust. True, a few brains hovered amongst this horde of elite trash, and naturally enough, they were the ones to whom I devoted most of my attention. I learned to speak their language while at the same time to refrain from seeming to pander; in short, it was simply a matter of “letting the game come to me,” and not being overly anxious about attempting to accelerate the process of my ascendency.

* At this point, everyone on the transmission team had become aware that something was afoot, that things had gone astray. Yet all felt strangely paralyzed. If they abruptly called off the interview, the damage done would be incalculable. The PM had been challenged, and the challenger, having been quite insolent and underhanded in his method and manner, would certainly have to be dealt with. Yet in order to salvage things, the PM had to show herself to be equal to the challenge.

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Do Whites Have Civil Rights? (7-21-21)

00:00 Do whites have civil rights? https://www.takimag.com/article/do-whites-have-civil-rights/
22:30 THE FINAL BOSS OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO THE DISSIDENT RIGHT, https://affirmativeright.blogspot.com/2021/07/shortpod-66-final-boss-of-what-actually.html
35:00 Am I a laughing stock? The answer might shock you. https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=141266
38:00 ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients, https://www.al.com/news/2021/07/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-on-treating-unvaccinated-dying-covid-patients.html
41:00 U.S. life expectancy fell by 1.5 years in 2020, largest drop since World War II, https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-20/us-life-expectancy-in-2020-saw-biggest-drop-since-ww2
45:00 Alabama doctor’s emotional plea for people to get a COVID-19 vaccine: ‘It’s too late’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRBtwH4N87s
1:03:00 Youtube voice, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/that-weirdo-announcer-voice-accent-where-it-came-from-and-why-it-went-away/395141/
1:14:00 How should an influencer sound? https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/7/13/22570476/youtube-voice-tiktok-influencer-sound
1:21:00 That Weirdo Announcer-Voice Accent: Where It Came From and Why It Went Away, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/that-weirdo-announcer-voice-accent-where-it-came-from-and-why-it-went-away/395141/
1:23:40 Covid Variants and Sectors Returning to the USA | Peter Zeihan, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwJEcfQncDY
1:29:30 The Fall of China | Peter Zeihan
1:38:00 Life After The End Of The World | Peter Zeihan Interview
1:51:15 Tucker Carlson on January 6 Capitol Hill riot

NBCNews: Whites have civil rights, too, they say in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas. For Black farmers and civil rights groups, that’s a proposition that defies reality—and yet they are taking it very seriously, with generations of civil rights law potentially in the balance.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/behalf-white-farmers-trump-allies-wage-legal-war-against-equity-n1269737

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News: ‘I’m sorry, but it’s too late’: Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients

Report:

Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

…For the first year and a half of the pandemic, Cobia and hundreds of other Alabama physicians caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients worked themselves to the bone trying to save as many as possible.

“Back in 2020 and early 2021, when the vaccine wasn’t available, it was just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy,” Cobia told AL.com this week. “You know, so many people that did all the right things, and yet still came in, and were critically ill and died.”

In the United States, COVID is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated, according to the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Alabama, state officials report 94% of COVID hospital patients and 96% of Alabamians who have died of COVID since April were not fully vaccinated.

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

More than 11,400 Alabamians have died of COVID so far, but midway through 2021, caring for COVID patients is a different story than it was in the beginning. Cobia said it’s different mentally and emotionally to care for someone who could have prevented their disease but chose not to.

“You kind of go into it thinking, ‘Okay, I’m not going to feel bad for this person, because they make their own choice,’” Cobia said. “But then you actually see them, you see them face to face, and it really changes your whole perspective, because they’re still just a person that thinks that they made the best decision that they could with the information that they have, and all the misinformation that’s out there.

“And now all you really see is their fear and their regret. And even though I may walk into the room thinking, ‘Okay, this is your fault, you did this to yourself,’ when I leave the room, I just see a person that’s really suffering, and that is so regretful for the choice that they made.”

I notice a lot of right-wing Christians say we’re over-reacting to Covid. Well, what is the appropriate reaction to 4.1 million deaths and counting from a virus? What would Jesus say? No big deal, bro, it’s just the flu?

I interviewed Christian intellectual Andy Nowicki last week.
Luke: “When did you start to take Covid seriously?”
Andy: “Never.”

Most dissident right Christians I know take the same attitude. I think this is a mistake for them as individuals, as Americans and as Christians because this nonchalance is decidedly at odds with the deadly facts on the ground.

Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2021:

U.S. life expectancy fell by 1.5 years in 2020, largest drop since World War II

U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II, according to report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The decrease for both Black Americans and Latino Americans was even greater: three years.

Close to 74% of the overall life expectancy decline was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, far more than any other year in U.S. history, with COVID-19 accounting for about 11% of those deaths…

Killers other than COVID-19 played a role. Drug overdoses pushed life expectancy down, particularly for whites. And rising homicides were a small but significant reason for the decline for Black Americans…

For decades, U.S. life expectancy was on the upswing. But that trend stalled in 2015 before hitting 78 years, 10 months, in 2019. Last year, the CDC said, it dropped to about 77 years, 4 months.

Other findings in the new CDC report:

• Black life expectancy dropped to 71 years, 10 months. It has not been that low since 2000.

• White life expectancy fell by roughly 14 months to about 77 years, 7 months. That was the lowest life expectancy for that population since 2002.

• COVID-19’s role varied by race and ethnicity. The pandemic was responsible for 90% of the decline in life expectancy among Latinos, 68% among white people and 59% among Black Americans.

• Life expectancy fell nearly two years for men, but about one year for women, widening a long-standing gap. The CDC estimated life expectancy of 74 years, 6 months, for boys versus 80 years, 2 months, for girls.

More than 80% of last year’s COVID-19 deaths were people 65 and older, CDC data show. That reduced the pandemic’s toll on life expectancy at birth, since it is swayed more by deaths of younger adults and children than those among seniors.

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Integrated: Living Beyond the Sex Trade (7-20-21)

00:00 Integrated: Living Beyond the Sex Trade by Deanna Lynn, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0995YDK3B/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1626170152&sr=8-3
03:00 Purchased: Leaving the Sex Trade By Deanna Lynn (12-8-20), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=135668
04:00 Purchased: Leaving the Sex Trade By Deanna Lynn (9-2-20), https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=134246
06:00 The experience of being interviewed
24:00 Work ethic
26:00 Going from the smartest person in the room to…
29:00 The Book of Revelation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation
34:00 God’s plan
35:00 Deanna’s favorite Bible book is Leviticus, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Leviticus
36:00 Biblical Inerrancy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
38:00 Proof texting, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prooftext
41:30 Dealing with others’ jealousy
43:20 An appropriate use of social media
45:50 Porn addiction in religious community
51:00 Attachment theory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory
53:00 From being a star to being a worker among workers
1:01:00 How trauma informs our theology
1:04:30 Making friends in recovery
1:07:00 Sponsorship
1:11:00 Self-loathing
1:13:45 Why An “American Nation” Cannot Be Salvaged, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv8gmEY27G4
1:24:00 Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=139670

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