Online Sports Betting Next Fentanyl Crisis?!, Breakfast Cereal on Trial Before Congress, Keanu Reeves Returns as John Wick, New Marvel Movie Inspired by Terminator?! (The Five for 09/27/24)l
Plus, horror classic sequel being shot exclusively on iPhones. Nintendo's next console leaks. Spin Magazine launches a record label, 00's pop-punk outfit first signees.
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
This week, The Atlantic (a publication I used to subscribe to, before it was pure garbage) seethed and raged because [checks notes] somebody dared say that the food dyes in children’s breakfast serials might be bad for them…considering other countries ban much of the ultra-processed ingredients we consume in the U.S.
From the article Titled “The Woo-Woo Caucus meets”
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were president, this is the kind of Cabinet he might appoint: Vani Hari, a.k.a. the “Food Babe” influencer; The Biggest Loser’s Jillian Michaels; the conservative psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and his daughter, the raw-meat enthusiast Mikhaila Peterson Fuller; and 18-year-old Grace Price, a self-identified citizen scientist.
The former Democrat turned spoiler presidential candidate served as a headliner for a four-hour roundtable presentation yesterday on Capitol Hill. Moderated by Senator Ron Johnson, a hard-right Republican from Wisconsin, the event was titled American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion—an apt name, given that the whole thing had a very do-your-own-research vibe.
When Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump for president last month, the two forged an alliance that Kennedy has begun referring to as MAHA (Make America Healthy Again). The partnership has produced a super PAC; also, hats. The alliance was the natural culmination of a broader trend in American politics that has seen the Trumpian right meld with the vax-skeptical, anti-establishment left: Woo-woo meets MAGA, you could call it, or, perhaps, the crunch-ificiation of conservatism. Since dropping out of the presidential race, Kennedy has been angling for a role in Trump’s orbit, because he—like others in the room yesterday—is desperate for any vehicle toward relevance. And so far, allegiance to Trump has offered more of a spotlight than anything that came before.
In the 90’s and 00’s, Democrats were the party questioning pesticides, excessive vaccines and chronic prescription drug use, and all the chemical crap in foods. Give it a couple of decades, and voices on the left are constantly pushing out headlines like “Maybe Ultra Processed Foods Aren’t That Bad” (Time).
I’m far from an expert in science (in fact, I pretty much hate the topic, with the exception of science around hunting, farming and outdoor stuff), but even I can see the huge difference in Canadian vs. American Froot Loops…
What’s funny about the Corporate Left going so hard on experts speaking up…is that they’re eating their own. Mathematician Eric Weinstein and his brother Brett Weinstein, both PhD’s and Harvard and University of Michigan grads, respectively, have recently questioned the COVID vaccines and been called out as “far right,” despite both being on the left side of the aisle.
The same goes for Jillian Michaels, the reality TV show host who was never “far right” until she said that maybe there shouldn’t be so much chemical crap in our food.
Michaels brought down the house in her Congressional testimony this week.
By the time I was 13, in 1987, I was already 170 pounds, and only 5'1 officially, clinically, obese. And from the year I was born to the year I turned 21, obesity rates had tripled. Today, in 2024, as we've said now numerous times, it's estimated that roughly 75 percent of our adult population is obese or overweight.
The entirety Almost. Of my generation, along with the two generations that followed, have fallen victim to America's unchecked obesity crisis and over 170 comorbidities that go along with it. I don't know about you, but I've watched my friends jabbing themselves every day with fertility drugs, praying for a pregnancy, my friends getting up at the crack of dawn to get radiated where the lump was found in their breasts, my friends swallowing fistfuls of pills to manage their debilitating anxiety and depression.
The decades between 1980 and now didn't beget a genetic quantum leap in which our DNA inexplicably mutated to make American bodies expand and fall ill at an unprecedented pace. And while Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z have our problems, 75 percent of us are not stupid, weak or lazy. So hopefully you are wondering, what happened to us?
And we're here to tell you. In the late 70s and the early 80s, a sinister series of events converged to change food and subsequently health in America indefinitely. A plague that crept like a fog while we slept, literally and figuratively, blindly trusting that the powers that be would never betray us. I mean, it seemed unthinkable to question whether a corporation would poison us for profit.
The internet went HARD after Michaels, claiming that she was either far right, or that her TV show was being threatened by the widespread adoption of Ozempic.
For the record, Michaels is worth $20 million, and holds business interests across books, workout programs, apps, celebrity endorsements, and a new podcast deal with Bill Maher’s network.
All of this is pushing a certain subset of moderates and/or politically apathetic, towards the Trump camp. If Dems lose in November, you’ve gotta wonder if they’ll think defending “Trisodium Phosphate” in Count Chocula was a hill worth dying on.
[two]
…and since RFK Jr’s calling out the health crisis lit the aflame this week, a forgotten op-ed by then-President-Elect JFK in Sports Illustrated is making the rounds on social media…and his words from 1960 should haunt us.
But the harsh fact of the matter is that there is also an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies—whose physical fitness is not what it should be—who are getting soft. And such softness on the part of individual citizens can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation.
For the physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources. If we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow it to dwindle and grow soft then we will destroy much of our ability to meet the great and vital challenges which confront our people. We will be unable to realize our full potential as a nation.
But no matter how vigorous the leadership of government, we can fully restore the physical soundness of our nation only if every American is willing to assume responsibility for his own fitness and the fitness of his children. We do not live in a regimented society where men are forced to live their lives in the interest of the state. We are, all of us, as free to direct the activities of our bodies as we are to pursue the objects of our thought. But if we are to retain this freedom, for ourselves and for generations to come, then we must also be willing to work for the physical toughness on which the courage and intelligence and skill of man so largely depend.
If he were alive today, sounds like the most famous Democrat of the 20th century would be called “Far Right” on Twitter…
[three]
If you’re not paying attention to the numbers, it’s easy to miss just how far Marvel has fallen in the pop culture lexicon. For reference, Avengers: Endgame (2019) pulled in nearly $3 billion, while The Marvels (2023) LOST nearly $75 million.
The problems are pretty obvious—too much slapstick humor, not enough stakes in the storylines, an overabundance of preachiness and political messaging that turned off a good chunk of the audience.
Still, the fall from grace was…epic. The MCU went from being one of the biggest forces in pop culture, to near irrelevance.
But perhaps pulling inspiration from 90’s movies will set the franchise right?
Marvel’s Thunderbolts trailer dropped this week, and looks like it’s drawing equally from 90’s X-Men, The John Wick Franchise, and even an homage to T2: Judgement Day (with the Bucky/motorcycle sequence).
Marvel superfans will hate me for saying this, but the MCU rebrand feels more serious and focused, shot on a more muted color pallet…feels like 2010’s DC movies under Zack Snyder (seriously, compare this trailer to Batman vs. Superman and then The Marvels-—the latter overdoses on bright colors and slapstick).
For the first time in years, I have an urge to see an MCU flick in theaters.
There’s also at least a 50/50 chance I’ll regret that decision, as Marvel movies have been mostly crap for a half decade now. But if the brand is going to make a comeback, it had better to it with this one.
[four]
For the most part, I’m not a fan of “nanny state” laws…but in this case, but the legalization of sports betting—particularly online sports betting—is causing significant harm to the U.S.
What he found was for every $1 deposited into online sportsbooks, those households reduce their investment allocations by $2. The doubling effect — from $1 to $2 — comes from the additional spending outside of the bets to support their gambling. Think extra streaming services or more sports bar tabs to watch games.
Additionally, sports betting increases the number of times households overdraw their bank accounts, Balthrop found. These effects were worse for financially constrained households, which also reduced their credit card payments while increasing their balances.
"The core of this effect is taking place in households that may not have budgetary slack," Balthrop said.
Davide Proserpio and his colleagues found similarly concerning findings in their study. Overall, the average credit score in a state fell by 0.3% after legalizing sports gambling. That figure triples to 1% if the state permitted online sports gambling.
The fact the study took the average credit score of a state's entire population likely dilutes the real impact on a bettor's personal credit score, Proserpio, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Southern California, said.
On top of that, bankruptcies, debt consolidation loans, and debt collections increased in states that legalized sports betting, especially online betting — to the point that Proserpio found that lenders restricted access to credit to protect themselves. Low-income young men were more likely to be affected.
"It's not just gambling is affecting, on average, consumer financial health," he said, "it is also affecting a part of the population that is already low income and probably has other types of [financial] problems."
Unfortunately, I’m not sure what there is to do about this. The sports betting Genie isn’t going back into the bottle…and this may have nearly as much negative impact on the poorest Americans as Fentanyl, which has killed 275,000 Americans since 2020.
It’s easy to say “well, they just shouldn’t gamble if you can’t afford it.” But the same crowd would not say “but people just shouldn’t get addicted to prescription pain pills” when it’s often doctors who jumpstarted the addiction crisis by over-prescribing opioids.
In 2018, CNN broke the story that 54% of doctors who prescribed Opioids were getting financial kickbacks. The opioid crisis was not born out of genuine medical mistakes, but of massive corporate greed.
The same is true of the gambling addiction that’s already beginning to destroy America’ working and lower class. Just like the opioid crisis, we’re ignoring the moral plight of preying upon the most vulnerable Americans to reap massive profits.
Last year, leaders FanDuel and DraftKings made their parent company, Flutter Entertainment, more than $14 billion in revenue.
But states with online sports betting have up to a 30% increase in household bankruptcies. Which means we’re harvesting scant resources from the poor to engorge faceless corporations.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Leaks of the the alleged Nintendo Switch 2 have leaked, with experts calling the new dual-screen device “almost certainly real.”
Paramore’s Hailey Williams caused quite the controversy on Sunday night when she went on an anti-Trump rant mid-song at the iHeartMusic Festival, streamed from Las Vegas.
It wasn’t long before cell phone footage leaked, showing Williams’ reading the speech from cue cards, immediately to the right of the camera she was speaking into.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Haley doesn’t believe in what she said, but in an era where celebrities are rapidly losing influence…it certainly doesn’t help her case.TV NOTES: After a negative comments from the first round of press, The Penguin, a “super hero free” mobster show connecting Robert Pattison’s The Batman plot with it’s upcoming sequel, now has nearly universal acclaim from reviewers and fans alike. Check it out on HBO Max. Also worth noting The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol is earning similar praise..so if you haven’t dipped into the zombie universe in a bit, there’s one to add to your list. The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix returns 10/17, and looks great (trailer).
MOVIE NOTES: 28 Years Later, the long-awaited sequel to the Cillian Murphy horror/zombie classic 28 Weeks Later, was shot ENTIRELY on iPhones, despite a $75M budget. ‘Years Later’ drops next June, the first of three planned films to expand the zombie universe. Den of Thieves, the 2018 cops and robbers flick led by Gerard Butler (300, Olympus Has Fallen) and O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton, Godzilla: King of the Monsters) didn’t seem like the kind of movie that would get a sequel…but it is, and it looks cool (trailer).
The Last of Us returns for season 2 in 2025. which is pretty terrifying (as far as 2 minute videos go).
This will likely be the last outing for the unexpected HBO hit, as the show is based on an iconic PlayStation IP…of which there are only two games.
I’m always up for a great boxing film. The Fire Inside, a biopic on the life of Detroit native Claressa Shields changing the face of women’s boxing.
Catch it Christmas Day.
Woah. The John Wick spinoff Ballerina not only features Ana De Armas (Knives Out, No Time to Die), but also Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead, The Boondock Saints) as well as Keanu Reeves reprising his role as Wick.
And that’s not the only thing thing Keanu is up to…
I’m a HUGE fan of Graham Handcock, a rogue journalist who searches for ancient civilizations (think real life Indiana Jones).
Handcock has been publishing thoroughly researched books on evidence for advanced ancient civilizations from the Ice Age since 1996.
He has several debates against traditional academics (like this one) which are worth checking out…but Handcock didn’t really blow up in pop culture until Netflix featured him in a docu-series.
Now, that series is getting a second season, with none other than Keanu Reeves making an appearance.
[new music]
Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music
Oklahoma pop-punk outfit All American Rejects dominated the charts in the Myspace era, but have been (mostly) inactive for more than a decade…until a dead-on cover of 90’s power pop band Harvey Danger announced AAR’s re-formation. This time, the band is the first artist signed to Spin Magazine’s new record label.
[read & learn]
Per as usual, The Free Press, founnded by ex-NYT staffer Bari Weiss, continues to churn out some of the most interesting coverage around the upcoming election. This week, a journalist went on the ground in Michigan, a swing state that’s dead-locked, to look at how two neighboring towns, one predominantly Jewish, one predominantly Arab Muslim, are re-orienting politically in the wake of the Middle East wars, and the shifting landscape of Republican/Democrat planforms in 2024.
This one is far too long and complex to summarize as a feature story, but if you’ve got 10 minutes, it’s a fantastic read.
Until the next one,
-sth