Random News and Notes 20 July

Your Editor doesn’t usually cover the WNBA. If I’m being honest, I’d rather cover JuCo mens basketball as it’s a superior product. However, in this instance he will make an exception. For those who weren’t aware – and that included this Editor until about 10 minutes before I started on this piece – last night was the WNBA all-star game. Like 85% of the rest of the country, this wouldn’t have been more than a blip to this Editor if it weren’t for the warmup tees the ‘ladies’ wore. They were emblazoned with the words “Pay us what you owe us”.

The WNBA – a subsidiary of the NBA – has lost money every year of its existence. It had been losing around $10 million a year until recently. In 2024 it lost $40 million and is on track to lose $50 million this year. For reference, the NBA brings in about $12 billion a year in profit. And all women’s sports worldwide – that is every women’s sport in every country – bring in about $2 billion or about the same as MLS.

If the WNBA players were being paid what they were owed, they’d be getting a bill. A substantial one at that.

As a side note, when I googled the total losses of the WNBA, google refused to give me a straight answer. The closest it got was what you see above. I suppose if I dug deep enough, I would have found it, but it is the WNBA. . .

I don’t know if any of you are following the kiss-cam saga that caught Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and ‘chief people officer’ Kristin Cabot canoodling at a Coldplay concert. Anyway, they are (were?) married to other people when they were shown on the big screen all wrapped up with each other. The response has been glorious. The best so far has been that of the Philadelphia Phillies. Watch the whole thing:

The company has announced that both of them are gone. Some guff about ‘company values’. I’m sure both are going to need divorce attorneys in the near term as well.

You may see talk of a measles outbreak here in the US. I suppose it could be called an outbreak given that measles was considered eradicated in the US back in 2000. At last check, there were ~1260 active measles cases in the US. Sounds bad right? Well, let’s take a look at our neighbor to the North, Canada. With a population around 15% of that of the US (~40m v ~350m) Canada has nearly triple the number of measles cases. Ontario accounts for two thirds of that number with a population of ~15m.

Also of note, there have been other outbreaks since 2000, particularly in 2014 and 2019.

In 2014 there were 667 confirmed measles cases in the US. Most of those cases were connected to Disneyland in Califonia. 2019 saw 1261 cases. It should be noted that nearly all of the cases in both years were linked to foreign travelers here in the US spreading it to unvaccinated individuals.

It appears this outbreak is tied to illegal migrants, but the data is inconclusive and frankly intentionally obscure.