They call him the Bearded Wonder. Okay, no one actually calls him that (that we know of), but they should. He’s the greatest living Scrabble player in the world, and he’s at the height of his powers. Tennis has Serena Williams. Golf has Jordan Spieth. Soccer has Lionel Messi.

Scrabble has Nigel Richards, and he’s arguably more dominant at his game than any of these other athletes are at theirs.

On Monday, July 20, Richards—a native of New Zealand—won the French-language world Scrabble championship. He does not speak a word of French. It’s Nigel Richards’s world, and we’re all just Scrabbling in it.

“He doesn’t speak French at all, he just learnt the words,” Liz Fagerlund, a friend of Richards’s, told The New Zealand Herald. “He won’t know what they mean, wouldn’t be able to carry out a conversation in French I wouldn’t think.” Richards reportedly memorized an entire French dictionary in the two months leading up to the competition.

Richards, 48, is the #1 ranked Scrabble player in the world. According to the ratings (which are similar to Elo ratings for chess), the gap between him and #2—Paul Gallen of Northern Ireland—is larger than the difference between Gallen and the 12th ranked player in the world. The King’s Cup in Thailand is one of the biggest Scrabble tournaments in the world, and Richards has won the last three.

He has also won tournaments in the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Poland, and countless other locales. Wherever there is Scrabble, there is Richards. He is an unstoppable force—a cross-national, cross-cultural, and, apparently, a multi-lingual menace; the verb virtuoso, the genius of gerunds.

Here is an example of his wizardry, from a 2014 story on FiveThirtyEight:

In a game in 1998, then-newcomer Richards had a rack of CDHLRN? (“?” denotes a blank tile). There was an E available on the board; Richards could have played CHILDREN for a bingo and a 50-point bonus. Instead, Richards played through two disconnected Os and an E. The word? The 10-letter CHLORODYNE.

Richards is markedly reclusive, and little is known about him outside the Scrabble arena, apart from his love of cycling. Stefan Fatsis, an author who has written about the competitive Scrabble world, described Richards’s zen-like qualities to New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times in 2010. “He’s the best in the world at what he does, yet there’s no bravado, no ego, no aggression,” Fatsis said. “He just plays the game then rides his bike off.”

In an extremely rare interview (video) following his victory at the 2011 World Championships, Richards—soft-spoken, humble, concise—said it best: “I’m not sure there is a secret,” he said. “It’s just a matter of learning the words.”

If only it were that easy for the rest of us.

The quintessentially American sport of baseball is becoming increasingly popular internationally, and US teams have established development centers all over the world to cultivate new athletes. Executives from Major League Baseball, the US professional league, are particularly excited about the game’s future in China: “All the ethereal things about baseball—no clock, the sacrifice, the journey around the bases that starts and finishes at home—it all resonates in Chinese culture,” said MLB executive Jim Small.

Xu “Itchy” Guiyuan has become the first athlete from one of the MLB’s three development centers in China to sign a contract with an MLB team in the US. The 19-year-old is joining the Baltimore Orioles under an international free agent deal.

The last China-born athlete to play in the US major leagues was Henry Kingman, the son of Christian missionaries, who played for the New York Yankees in 1914.

The MLB development centers in Wuxi, Changzhou, and Nanjing, China, have been churning out players for Chinese university teams since 2010. Xu is skipping university-level play to go straight to professional baseball. His contract with the Orioles will start with an assignment to one of the team’s minor league affiliates after being evaluated at the Orioles’ spring training camp in February 2016. Until then, he will keep training in China while finishing his high school coursework.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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In this essay/review of a book on UK intelligence officer and Soviet spy Kim Philby, Malcolm Gladwell makes this interesting observation:

Here we have two very different security models. The Philby-era model erred on the side of trust. I was asked about him, and I said I knew his people. The "cost" of the high-trust model was Burgess, Maclean, and Philby. To put it another way, the Philbyian secret service was prone to false-negative errors. Its mistake was to label as loyal people who were actually traitors.

The Wright model erred on the side of suspicion. The manufacture of raincoats is a well-known cover for Soviet intelligence operations. But that model also has a cost. If you start a security system with the aim of catching the likes of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby, you have a tendency to make false-positive errors: you label as suspicious people and events that are actually perfectly normal.

From Recode's 450 KB interview article:

“Global user growth looks strong as do early returns on recent monetization efforts. User growth and revenue are the oxygen for any successful company so we’ll be looking to double down on this traction,” he wrote. “My job is to lead and scale this great team through the next phase of product and revenue growth, and to preserve Evernote’s unique culture while evolving it over time.”

Then later:

In his new role, Libin said he will turn to working day-to-day on the product. One big priority, he said, will be to build new features — and even a new line of products — aimed at workplace collaboration. “If there is one thing I wish we would have done sooner is taking the collaborative uses case for Evernote much more seriously,” he said. “We’ve been working on it a lot recently but I wish we would have done it three years earlier.”

Wow. That sounds like what Evernote was missing for me. I guess it was just dumb luck that it never really solved any of my problems.

The Verge has a 2 MB piece that says less with 354 requests, if you really just want the pull quote.

For just a dollar, you can send your first message to Valerie, a 22-year-old college student living in southern Georgia. If she responds, you can spend more money to keep chatting. Every dollar you spend will help her pay her tuition.

Valet User Experience

Founded and based in San Francisco, Luxe is a new service that sends valets to park for you, wherever you are — it's fast, affordable and convenient. The service is available in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston, and soon in Austin, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.

Design by: In-house: Dan Petty (Luxe creative director)
Out-of-house, Logo: Mackey Saturday

Opinion/Notes: The previous logo would have been great as a spin-off from Renault. It wasn't a bad logo at all, it said luxury but without being too prepotent. The new logo takes advantage that the name is so short it can almost become a monogram… a really long one, so maybe not a monogram, but you get the point. In theory all signs point to yes, this works, but the "UX" ligature is too forced and demands too much attention without anything in return to the viewer. It's as if I want to see a FedEx arrow-type shape in the counterspace but there is nothing. I want to like it because, in essence, the execution is solid but there is something off about it. It also lost a bit of the luxury aspect of it but maybe that's a good thing, so that the service feels less of the 1% and more of, say, the 25%.

Related Links: Luxe blog post
Macky Saturday dribbble shot

Select Quote: At its core, Luxe is a simple word, four letters long and comprised of two shapes (the half circle) and a straight line. Rather than continuing to build equity in a logo in addition to our name, we felt that simplicity and boldness would come from letting our name be our icon. The logo is about simplicity and convenience, how our users should think about parking everyday.

xoverit:

DeepDream maps of the state of Washington, Puget Sound, Seattle, Mt Rainier, Oregon, etc. My first thought when I heard about DeepDream was to try it out on some maps!

Created using Dreamscope with the inception painting, trippy, botanical dimensions, and other filters.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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We hold hands and make direct eye contact until orgasm occurs. It’s very spiritual and only happens every other solstice. 🌞

ICv2 has just released its hobby game rankings for Spring 2015, based as always on a survey of retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. The top three positions are exactly the same as the previous Fall/Holiday 2014 positions - D&D followed by Pathfinder, followed by FFG's Star Wars line of products. Following that, Numenera and Fate have been displaced by Shadowrun and Iron Kingdoms (the latter presumably based on Privateer Press' recent, highly promoted Iron Kingdoms Unleashed boxed set). As always, I've added this latest ranking to my

s-l-i-t-s-c-a-n:

GRID Systems Corporation: Compass

designed by Bill Moggridge, 1979

hack the gibson

vgjunk:

Samurai Shodown II, Neo Geo.

stagandserpent:

“The Black King” (2015)

submitted by jr98664 to Portland [link] [20 comments]

archatlas:

Building a Micropolis: SimCity in 1989 

“oh, OH”

Louisiana is in trouble. The Mississippi River Delta is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 16 square miles a year, some of the fastest land loss on the planet. The bayou lands are crucial to the nation's fisheries, as well as regional oil and gas supplies. Perhaps ironically, activity by the energy industry is helping to destroy its own infrastructure.

Getting your dinner to your door is now easier than ever, and thanks to the Internet, almost no human interaction is required.

Comics can be a scary, intimidating medium to an outsider. The breadth and depth of history, brands, universes, events, and movie and TV adaptations make getting into comics seem like more trouble than it’s worth. But take it from us, comics are well worth diving into, and you don’t need spend hours reading background and history to enjoy yourself.

Midwest Library Service, a major academic and public library bookseller, seeks a self-motivated Sales Representative for an established territory. The successful candidate has 3+ years current library sales experience, lives in or will relocate to the ass...
Employer: Midwest Library Service
Location: West Coast
Posted: 07/20/2015

I got it. I got it. I don't have it.

Being a MLB fielder is really hard. Much harder than the professionals make it look. There are baseballs flying at you at high speeds, not to mention battling the sun, bad hops and more. Oh, and the spin -- never forget about the spin. Atlanta Braves first baseman Joey Terdoslavich learned a lesson about spin the hard way.

The ball went down the line … made a left turn … IN MID-AIR, mind you. http://t.co/q8Smz31ozg pic.twitter.com/dg3ZfPbV36

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) July 21, 2015

Off the bat that looks like a simple two-hopper and likely double play. Then it decided to take a left turn, turning Terdoslavich into a statue in the process.

The Spurs are the champions of the Las Vegas Summer League after defeating the Suns on Monday night.

The new NBA season won't start for another three months, but the San Antonio Spurs can already call themselves champions. Of Summer League, at least. The Spurs outlasted a talented Phoenix Suns team, 93-90, in the title game of the Las Vegas Summer League on Monday night behind a strong all-around effort from league MVP Kyle Anderson.

Anderson had 15 points, seven rebounds and four assists in the win. His behind-the back assist in the first half was one of the prettiest plays of Summer League:

Treveon Graham (20 points) and Jonathan Simmons (23 points) also helped pace San Antonio's offense in the win. Point guard Mike James -- the only member of Phoenix's starting lineup who wasn't a first round draft pick -- led the Suns with 32 points. Simmons was named the MVP of the championship game.

Here's Simmons catching another beautiful pass from Anderson -- this one a halfcourt alley-oop:

Hammon and Anderson celebrated the win after the buzzer:

#SummerSpurs pic.twitter.com/mgyPgaWza5

— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) July 21, 2015

While you can only take so much from Summer League, it's undoubtedly an impressive run for Becky Hammon, who became the NBA's first ever female head coach at Summer League. Hammon led the Spurs to a 6-1 record in Summer League and showed off the great basketball mind that made her appealing to San Antonio:

Becky Hammon already showing a little of Gregg Popovich's on-court interview characteristics. @alaforce pic.twitter.com/oqqTHZfDDq

— Andrew Jerell Jones (@sluggahjells) July 21, 2015

First, the Spurs beat out Phoenix for LaMarcus Aldridge. Now San Antonio did it again in Summer League. You can't blame the Suns if they're terrified of the Spurs just like everyone else.

The Rockies first baseman became the latest to forget how many outs there are in an inning.

Colorado Rockies first baseman Ben Paulsen suffered a moment Monday evening he will want to forget. 

During the top of fifth inning of the Rockies' game against the Texas Rangers, Paulsen recorded the second out of the inning when Prince Fielder grounded to first, driving home Nick Martinez from third base. Paulsen mistakenly thought he had recorded the final out and started jogging into the dugout. That sudden lapse of judgement allowed speedy youngster Rougned Odor to score and give the Rangers two runs on a groundout.

Oops. http://t.co/21gyVkxqSl pic.twitter.com/jedUCQIdQ3

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) July 21, 2015

Oops indeed.

Tor/Forge Books seeks a highly-motivated and creative Publicist to join its publicity team. The ideal candidate will have three to five years publicity experience, possess excellent writing and organizational skills, be familiar with key print, broadcast ...
Employer: Macmillan
Location: New York, NY
Posted: 07/20/2015

alinktothecake:

I SAID NO CAPES