Mike’s Manifesto .018
THOUGHTS ON SPORTS, MUSIC, TECH, AND THE LIFE IN BETWEEN - Captain’s Log .018
"Always look ahead, but never look back”
— Miles Davis
THE OPENING
A new week to get things right. But first, getting healthy is always the priority. Some weeks I am not going to have the energy for the opening so take heed to the words because the impact is in the passages. It is not how you start, it is how you finish.
🏀THE GAME—SPORTS THROUGH A CULTURAL LENS
The W Takes Over Chicago
Chicago was the backdrop for the most recent WNBA All-Star Weekend for 2026. It provided a glimpse of what the future could be and what the league can do to bring more eyes to the product.
The United Center hosted a record 19,783 fans for the All-Star Game, more than twice the capacity of Wintrust Arena, where Chicago last hosted this event in 2022. That number matters in more ways than one. When you give the WNBA the right stage, the right city (which matters but is subjective), and the right investment, the people will come. They always were going to come.
But attendance records and highlight reels only tell part of the story. If the WNBA is serious about sustaining this momentum, the work starts now. Player salaries are reflecting the increase in viewership and the sport is growing with the caliber of competition on that floor. And yet, some of the biggest stars are not being pushed like they should be. The marketing has to be year-round, not just All-Star weekend bursts of energy followed by months of silence. Merchandise needs to be more accessible, more visible. The league has the talent. It has the makings of a great culture. What it needs is the consistency of investment to match both.
The best and probably most entertaining aspect of the weekend was the StudBuds Live Stream. Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman brought back their 72-hour Twitch live stream which, this time sponsored by AT&T, and immediately pulled in over 7,000 viewers from the jump. Seeing them gallivant around downtown Chicago, spotting their own Twitch billboard, poppin’ out of the car to take photos, and, calling other W stars to see who calls who back first, and FaceTiming their parents. The best part was the KeKe Palmer and Issa Rae interactions but also, how they captured EVERYTHING from the weekend. Which presents a look into what transpires in a All-Star weekend. You would never see this from the NBA.
The WNBA’s future is bright. All-Star weekend in Chicago proved that. But the league has to stop treating these moments as peaks and start building them as floors.
🎵THE SOUND—MUSIC AS MEMOIR AND MOOD
A Supreme Blue
This is one of the projects I was most looking forward to once it was announced. I will listen and support anything Butcher Brown. Even more so when they have Nicolas Payton attached and the two powerhouses created a marvelously, terrific sounding oasis of musical genius.
I am trying to avoid giving reviews of album, especially ones that were just recently released. You can get caught up in the hyperbolic nature of the rush of new music and something refreshing. If you couple in the fact that this album is an ode to two of the most influential and important albums to Jazz music, John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and Miles Davis’s “Kind Of Blue”, you must understand the gravity of transforming classic pieces. Infusing them with flair and gravitas from today’s ethos of jazz music is an incredible feat.
The standout songs for me from this project are: Blue In Green which takes a more Butcher Brown feel as the song progresses, but you can hear Payton’s imprint all over it as well. It feels like the cries for love and peace all while sitting with regret and taking accountability for what was lost; Flamenco Sketches is another awesome piece that eases your nervous system while placing you in a jazz and supper clubs from the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s.
Nicholas Payton nor Butcher Brown can do no wrong musically in my eyes so this project will stay in rotation for a while, and hopefully you will add it to yours as well.
📡THE DOWNLOAD—TECH THROUGH LIVED EXPERIENCE
Too many things, not enough impact
It feels like every week we get the same news in Tech. It really is just rinse and repeat from the industry in today’s world. The race for the best A.I. model is taking more precedence than the actual issues we have with technology.
AMD & Anthropic just signed a multi-billion-dollar agreement to produce 2 gigawatts of accelerators by 2027. Nvidia is trying to enhance their safety requirements for their newly announced partnership. I just wonder when companies are going to place resources where they should go instead of what is going to cost them less to build.
In other news, Oura, has the new Oura Ring 5 out which has a slightly higher price tag but has enhanced features and they also released this product a bit sooner than expected. Curious to see and read the reviews on the new ring and see if it worth the purchase.
❤️THE REAL—LOVE, GRIEF, GROWTH, COMMUNITY
Stop Shrinking
You ever feel yourself in conversation with someone and notice yourself holding back from saying the thing you want because it might not land properly. Or better yet because you know that peace in this situation resonates better than resentment. Or sometimes, just being the lone African American in a room with no one to relate to humanistically.
That is what we call shrinking. And most of us have been doing it so long we stopped recognizing it as a choice.
Shrinking is not always pronounced. It does not always look like silence or submission. Often times, it looks like laughing at something that was not actually funny. Acquiescing with something you fundamentally disagree with just to keep peace or make the other person happy. Softening your truth so the other party can digest it more comfortably. Obscuring the full wholeness of who you are so the room doesn’t have to adjust to your presence. We do not even notice, but that is a learned behavior that is so subtle even we get lost in it. Over time it becomes so automatic that you become a completely different person that you yourself cannot even identify.
In friendships it shows up as the conversation you never have because you do not want to disrupt the dynamic, better yet lose said friend. You digest the frustration. You absorb the imbalance. You keep showing up with your whole self for people who only bring a fraction of theirs. All the while convincing yourself that’s just the nature of the relationship. But what you’re really doing is teaching people how much you are willing to endure to stay in the most unsettling of company. Setting a boundary that even the most selfish of person can violate persistently. And that lesson is hard to unlearn once it’s been ingrained.
Within family dynamics it runs even deeper because the roots go back further. Family shrinking is inherently generational. It is the thing you learned at the Sunday dinner before you had the language to name it. The opinion you stopped sharing because it was always dismissed. The gatherings you missed because you were better off not around. The boundary you stopped setting because it was never respected. The version of yourself you left at the door every time you walked into a family gathering because bringing your full self-created more conflict than connection. And so you edited. You managed. You became the version of yourself that kept the peace even when the peace was costing you, everything.
In relationships and marriages, it is perhaps the most dangerous place to shrink because intimacy requires the opposite of smallness. A relationship cannot sustain itself on the curated version of who you are. It requires the unedited truth of you: your needs, your wounds, your desires, your weaknesses. When you shrink in love you do not just lose yourself. You build a connection on a foundation that was never fully honest. Eventually the weight of everything unvoiced becomes heavier than the relationship can hold. Your spouse falls in love with the version of you that performs stability while the real you is quietly disappearing. The version of you that they still hold memory of the better times. That is survival dressed up as love.
The moment you acknowledge the shrinking is the most important moment. What is releases is the awareness that No you cannot fix everything all at once but providing you the insight that you cannot change what you refuse to see. Once you see it you must decide about what you are willing to repossess. Reclaiming the old version of you comes at a cost, because some parts of that previous version are the reason we end up in this position in the first place. Take the good and incorporate in with the new. Some people in your life benefited from your smallness. They were comfortable with the version of you that didn’t push back, didn’t demand more, didn’t take up the space you were entitled to. Your expansion will not be celebrated by everyone. Some relationships will not survive you becoming whole. That is not a loss, that is a revelation about what those connections were built on. God did not build us to be small, but to be God-Like. And before every breakthrough and victory, God shifts everything.
Moving forward means finding your voice. It does not have to be harmful. It should not resemble hate or anger. It should be based on a foundation of wisdom. But with the understanding that your truth deserves a seat at the table in every room you occupy, especially the ones where you are the only one who looks like you. It means setting the boundary even when your voice shakes. It means choosing the discomfort of honesty over the false comfort of a peace that was never really peace to begin with.
We are never meant to be small. Not in our friendships. Not in our family structure. Not in the love we give or the love we receive. The fullness of who we are is not a burden to manage. It is the entire point.
Stop shrinking. The right people will make room.
WESS RECOMMENDS — 3 LINKS THIS WEEK
SUBSTACK
The fear of all black adults wanting children always sits at the crossroads of how do we keep them protected. Great piece that is worth the read.
SONG
Nicholas Payton, Butcher Brown — “Blue In Green”
Beautiful rendition of a classic piece by one of legends in Jazz.
READ OR WATCH
The Night Agent
A good series with a lot of twist and turns heading into its 4th season.
“I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.” — John Coltrane
— WESS
Brilliantly written. Thank you for the Butcher Brown reco!