Saintel Daily: ICYMI Last Week

Technology

Starting in November, Disney’s streaming service will offer the best of its extensive library at an incredible price. Disney+ will not only be the home of the studio’s blue-chip movies but also host a number of exclusive TV series and pictures. The $7 a month price tag is going to make it affordable for most households, but what does this mean for Netflix? Disney+ will be the biggest competition Netflix has seen since Amazon Prime.

Disney+ will hosts family-friendly and educational content parents will love, while Hulu, like Buena Vista and Miramax before it, will become Disney’s repository for material it doesn’t want its name on. Disney is hoping to score around 90 million subscribers by 2024, a conservative target given that Netflix currently has 139 million.

Sports

The NFL and NFL Players Association have added 11 helmets to their joint list of approved equipment for 2019. In addition, they have eliminated a grace period for other models that have fallen short in laboratory testing.  That means, approximately 32 players were wearing now banned helmets during last season.  Of course, this is a huge health and safety concern for the players, so it definitely makes sense to update the equipment. Each team’s equipment manager has been instructed to remove all banned helmets, which are listed on a poster that has been distributed to teams. If a team is found to have known about a player wearing a banned helmet or to have facilitated the use of one, it will be subject to league discipline.

Politics

You might not know, but Elizabeth Warren used to be on the opposite side of the political aisle.   For many years before she entered politics, the woman now at the forefront of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party was a Republican. County governments in New Jersey and Texas, where Warren lived in the 1970s and ’80s, could not locate Warren’s voter registration records, and the senator herself hasn’t been forthcoming about her political past. But records from the time Warren spent living in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts make clear that she was a registered Republican for at least several years of her adult life. It was not until 1996—when Warren was 47 years old and a newly minted Harvard law professor—that she changed her registration from Republican to Democrat.

Music

Barack Obama wrote a tribute to Nipsey Hussle that was read during the late rapper’s memorial service at the Staples Center this week.  You can read an excerpt of the tribute below:

Dear Friends and Family of Nipsey:

I’d never met Nipsey Hussle, but I’d heard some of his music through my daughters, and after his passing, I had the chance to learn more about his transformation and his community work.

While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets and despair, Nipsey saw potential. He saw hope. He saw a community that, even though its flaws, taught him to always keep going. His choice to invest in that community rather than ignore it — to build a skills-training center and a coworking space in Crenshaw; to lift up the Eritrean-American community; to set an example for young people to follow — is a legacy worthy of celebration. I hope his memory inspires more work in Crenshaw and communities like it.

President Barack Obama

Television

Tatiana Maslany has signed on for a lead role in the upcoming Perry Mason series with HBO.  The former “Orphan Black” star joins previously announced series lead, Matthew Rhys. Maslany will play Sister Alice, the leader of the Radiant Assembly of God, preaching three sermons a day to a congregation and a radio audience that spans the country. To be clear, this isn’t quite the same as the Perry Mason of old.  This particular series was ordered back in March and it follows the origins of how Mason got his start.