Alecbugg

Will you be watching?

The NFL recently held polling on their Facebook page for fans to vote on their favorite team's most memorable games in franchise history. The results are in and now the league will upload three full-length games to YouTube for each team. The videos are expected to be available in August. Below are the three games that Philadelphia Eagles fans will be able to watch for free.

2010 Week #15 -- Eagles vs. Giants (60%)

DeSean Jackson PR TD.

2003 NFC Division Playoff -- Eagles vs. Packers (16%)

Fourth and 26 Eagles convert to win 20-17 (Freddie Mitchell catch).

1980 NFC Championship Game -- Eagles vs. Cowboys (11%)

Eagles 20-7 win to go to Super Bowl.

The Miracle at the Meadowlands "Num-ber two!" was an obvious choice. That's probably the most amazing sports game I've ever watched. 4th and 26 is arguably the most memorable single play in Eagles history so it's not surprising to see that here as well. The 1980 NFCCG win marked the first time the Eagles went to the Super Bowl in franchise history.

These three games aren't the only ones that feature the Eagles. If you're a masochist, you can watch the Birds lose to: the Rams in the 2001 NFCCG, the Buccaneers in the 2002 NFCCG, and the Cardinals in the 2008 NFCCG. Oh joy.

So what do you think? Do you like the three games that were picked for the Eagles? Would you have the NFL take one of them out and upload another instead?

(via llim)

Elon Musk thinks it's almost certain that we are living in a computer simulation.

In short, we are characters in an advanced version of The Sims — so advanced that it creates, well, us.

I understand the instinct to treat the idea as absurd, and to ignore people who suggest these things. It’s what happens when you challenge the common beliefs about reality, kind of like Aristarchus of Samos, who first thought the Earth wasn't at the center of the universe — almost 2,000 years before Galileo.

But these ideas push us to think more rigorously about what we accept as reality. We are reminded, time and again, that what we see and what we know are quite limited. And we have to devise increasingly clever experiments to see more of the unseen.

This cartoon is about laying down the logic of the simulation argument.

Understand it first, and then dismiss it — or, better yet, don't. It doesn't argue that we are necessarily in a simulation. It just says it's one of three possibilities for the future of humanity.

Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote the definitive paper on this, so we're essentially walking through his piece.

Let's go back 40 years!

In the early 1970s, the most advanced game was Pong — two rectangles and a circle, bouncing around.

Fast-forward to 2000, and we have The Sims — animated characters that interact with each other, with objects, and with their own feelings.

Now we have 3D headsets, like the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. You are the character, and your body can interact with the simulated world. We've tricked our minds into thinking that pixels are real.

With modern computing, we're also able to forecast weather and simulate how chemicals in our body work, among many other complex things. We’ve come a long way in a short time.

So let's fast-forward 10,000 years!

We went from Pong to headsets that transport our minds into fantasy worlds — in just 40 years. So even if our speed of technological advancement slows down, in 10,000 years we should be able to run simulations of ourselves. (That is, if we're alive, of course. But more on that later.)

It's not just that the graphics will be better or the mechanics will be better. No, it's that we'll be able to simulate the individual synapses in the human brain, much like The Sims kept track of how hungry your character was.

We can simulate these things because, according to scientific evidence, everything that makes us human is physical processes. Presumably we will understand all of it in 10,000 years and then recreate these processes in a computer simulation, much like how we can recreate the way a ball bounces.

So in 10,000 years, computers could simulate the entire world.

(This dome is only a representation of these simulations, which would occur computationally — not inside domes. But it’s a great visual, right?)

And how do we get the computing power for this? Bostrom says we can send tiny robots to other planets, which will self-duplicate and turn the planet into a huge computer.

So if we can build world simulators, we’ll probably simulate our past selves

If we can simulate human worlds, then presumably future humans will run simulations of their ancestors — us!

And because simulating the entire mental history of humans would cost a tiny fraction of future humans' resources, they'll run it again and again — maybe millions or billions of times:

But what if the people in the simulations create their own simulation?

If we've run billions of ancestor simulations, surely a lot of them would reach the stage when they can create their own simulations.

But if we are creating billions of simulated, conscious humans inside a computer — and they have the same capabilities as us — then that means our consciousness is no different from that of our simulated humans.

That means we could be characters in a simulation

In fact, if there are zillions of conscious humans, and far fewer humans living in "base" reality, it's almost likely we are in a simulation right now, as you read this story.

But another possibility: We kill each other before then

The other possibility is that humans go extinct before we reach that stage.

Maybe it's global warming. Maybe it's killer pandas. But Bostrom says the most "natural" interpretation is that we develop a technology that is misused — like self-replicating nanobots that are essentially a mechanical bacteria, which end up killing all life on the planet.

And another possibility: Future humans just don't want to run ancestor simulations

This could be because they find it unethical, since they would have to make conscious simulated humans go through the suffering of, well, life — especially life before their innovations.

Or it’s possible that future humans don't have any desire to run ancestor simulations, because they're more concerned with advancing for pleasure.

So the simulation argument is: One of these things must be true

That means we’ll end up using technology for pleasure and we don't even care about simulating ancestors, we’ll end up killing ourselves, or we’re living in a simulation.

Musk thinks it's almost certain we're in a simulation. Bostrom believes there is about a 20 percent chance that we're in a simulation, but thinks it is subjective.

But both believe one of these three possibilities will happen.

The coolest part of all of this: It helps us ground fascinating conversations, even about the metaphysical

There's a reason Elon Musk and his brother talked about this so much that they had to ban it from the hot tub.

Bostrom, in the introduction to his paper, wrote something beautiful about this argument:

Apart from the interest this thesis may hold for those who are engaged in futuristic speculation, there are also more purely theoretical rewards. The argument provides a stimulus for formulating some methodological and metaphysical questions, and it suggests naturalistic analogies to certain traditional religious conceptions, which some may find amusing or thought-provoking.

If we are in a simulation, then there exists some higher-level being — albeit very different from an all-powerful, benevolent one. But that being is us, or a future version of us.

And that brings up the fascinating question of where base-reality humans come from — the ones not in a simulation.

Perhaps our overlords are still asking the same thing. Perhaps they’re running these ancestor simulations, hoping one of us finds out first.

Pitchers dinging and donging at the plate is old news; let’s honor some position players who can deal from the mound.

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Back in the summer of 1996, in the wake of co-creator Larry David’s departure, Seinfeld writers Alec Berg and Jeff Schaffer were pondering where the popular NBC comedy should go next. George’s patient but luckless fiancée, Susan, had been killed off by poisoned envelopes at the end of the seventh season, and the writers also needed “something new and fun” for career-hopping Elaine Benes to do. What Berg and Schaffer came up with was Seinfeld’s eighth season premiere, “The Foundation.” Perhaps the best remembered element of that classic episode was a strange bit of Mexico-inspired apparel called the Urban Sombrero, supposedly a product that Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) had devised for her employer, catalog maven J. Peterman (John O’Hurley). The patently ridiculous Urban Sombrero proved so popular for so long with Seinfeld viewers that as recently as April 2016, there was a failed Kickstarter campaign to make ...

I know we’re a day or so late on this, but this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen, even if it’s fake as shit. This is my greatest fear, the TV going out during a crucial moment in a big sporting event. As I’ve said before, this is one of the main reasons why I haven’t cut the cord. If my feed had gone out during the final seconds of the National Championship Game, I would’ve, no joke, suffered irreparable harm to my mental well-being. Cable, still, is most reliable, but there’s nothing we can do, as a society, to protect against this. You can take all safeguards – backup stream, sports bar, Sling TV emergency backup from a friend – but if your power goes out, a cell tower goes down, or the sports bar you’re at didn’t bother to pay its waiters tips and they revolt and rip the cord out at the big moment, you’re SOL. For real, imagine Brad Lidge delivering the 0-2 and then your TV cutting to color bars or some shit. What would you do? How would you go on knowing that you missed the clinching moment of the only sports championship in 30 years? Do you just shut it down as a sports fan after that? Heartbreak even in glory? I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it. So, I feel for the Turkish guy… even if he didn’t miss anything. Turkey lost to Croatia, 1-0.

Video: Raccoon Family Uses Teamwork to Climb Over Wall

Video: T-Rex Destroys ‘American Ninja Warrior’ Course

Whether it is played in the back of a college cafeteria, at a bachelor party, or during a Black cookout—not a barbecue, because barbecues are different from “cookouts”—no activity solidifies the bonds of melanated people like a game of Spades. The internet will claim that Spades is a member of the “Whist” family of card games and was invented in the 1930’s, but the game actually predates all recorded history. Amateur researchers like myself speculate that ancient Sub-Saharan African tribes chose their kings from Spades tournaments, and when archaeologists excavated the secret rooms in the Egyptian pyramids, they found that members of the royal courts were buried with a hand of 13 cards in each sarcophagus. The Pharaoh always had the Big Joker.

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Nobody likes trick shot videos anymore. If you watch enough bros in backwards hats throw a football into a moving trash can or whatever and yell, “Bro, sick!” as the beat drops, you’ll eventually find yourself wanting to flee the earth to live in outer space. But thanks to the power of memes, trick shot videos do still provide some value: they are here to be pilloried by the “Haters gonna say it’s fake.”

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Somewhere in between the shift from DVDs to Blu-Ray streaming everything you can and pirating what you can't we lost something valuable, the often overlooked commentary track. Sometimes insightful, sometimes lazily recorded by celebrities with no active memories of the actual filming, it was an "added value" bonus that went overlooked for most of the movies that ever made it onto our IKEA shelves.

What got us feeling wistful about this bygone era of home entertainment was this twitter post by @u_sylvie who casually linked to this moment of cinematic history (update: probably because it was the lead of this Cracked article, whomp whomp) that's been sitting on the commentary track for Michael Bay's 1998 popcorn paragon "Armageddon":

For the sake of fairness, (and to give you a really stark gaze into the mind of Michael Bay) here's another clip of Bay talking about the challenges he overcame while making the movie:

Also clutch, unlocking Easter Eggs by dicking around in the dvd menus. Someone bring that back.

Scientists with the LIGO collaboration claim they have once again detected gravitational waves — the ripples in space-time produced by objects moving throughout the Universe. It’s the second time these researchers have picked up gravitational wave signals, after becoming the first team in history to do so earlier this year.

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In 1997, when Guy Fieri and three of his friends released hit single “Walkin’ on the Sun,” they knew they’d finally made it. What they didn’t know, however, was that they’d be beating anonymous Twitter eggs over the head with this fact for the rest of their lives. This is Smash Mouth’s burden.

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He’s so proud of himself. (via biticonjustine)

SpaceX is set to launch a pair of satellites this morning, just two-and-a-half weeks after its last successful rocket launch and landing in May. It’s SpaceX’s sixth launch this year, and this time, the company’s Falcon 9 rocket will be lifting two communications satellites into orbit — one for the French company Eutelsat and the other for Bermuda-based company ABS. The vehicle is scheduled to take off at 10:29AM ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, but if for some reason the rocket doesn’t go up right away, it can launch anytime afterward for 45 minutes.

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This one had me ALOL (Actually Laughing Out Loud).

Get you a dog that could do it all. pic.twitter.com/is7kkzRfov

— SoaR Thief (@SoaRThief) April 28, 2016

The post Truly Man’s Best Friend appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

(via ashley banks)

owlturdcomix:

Let this be a warning.

image / twitter / facebook / patreon

We've shown you the supervillains and heroes of the internet, but sometimes you have to leave your house to understand the monstrous depravity of the human race.

via

Thanks Cari

The post Good Save appeared first on Bits and Pieces.

After seeing a promo for ESPN’s upcoming O.J. Simpson documentary, Jeff Van Gundy decided the time was right to tell an incredible story about the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase, one that he and Pat Riley apparently held onto for two decades. I don’t know that I believe it, but I desperately want to.

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