The Dutch Court of Appeals in The Hague has now confirmed (Google Translate) what the Internet has long known: blocking The Pirate Bay is ineffective. The court ruled Tuesday that the Pirate Bay block at Dutch ISPs XS4ALL and Ziggo must be lifted immediately.
The case against The Pirate Bay had initially been brought back in 2009 by BREIN, a Dutch intellectual property rights group.
“[The decision] is good for Dutch citizens, good for the Internet, and good for ISPs who can keep fulfilling their role neutrally,” XS4ALL spokesperson Niels Huijbregts said in a statement, as translated by PCWorld.
it wouldn't be a Neko Case tour if it didn't have as many tour dates in Manitoba and Saskatchewan as the entire US west coast
Neko Case has announced a run of North American tour dates, including stops at New York's Governors Ball and the Coachella festival. Her full run of dates is below, but for those who can’t make it to any of them, there are a couple more opportunities to see or hear Case’s chatting and/or singing face in the near future.
This Saturday, Feb. 1, Case will appear on Garrison Keillor’s long-running hoedown A Prairie Home Companion, then stop by Conan on Feb. 3, and pop up on public radio show Wits on Feb. 7. But perhaps Case’s most interesting upcoming appearance comes Feb. 6, when she’ll be a panelist on Chris Hardwick’s Comedy Central show @Midnight. While Case is certainly funny on Twitter, that guest spot should give her a chance to show off her joke-telling skills live (or live to tape, at ...
Many obituaries of American folk singer Pete Seeger, who died on Jan. 28 at age 94, detail his civil rights support, his run-ins with the US’s anti-Communist campaigns of the 1950s, and his penning or popularizing of songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Turn Turn Turn.”
But if, like this writer, you’re an American born well after those events, and particularly one who grew up in the Hudson River Valley, where Seeger made his home, the song you may most closely associate with him is the folk anthem “This Land Is Your land,” which Woody Guthrie wrote and Seeger re-introduced to several new generations after Guthrie’s death in 1967. (Seeger loved it so much, he even added two verses.)
The song was a fervent sing-along staple during Seeger’s summertime Clearwater Festivals. He performed it with Bruce Springsteen during president Barack Obama’s inauguration, and for his own 90th birthday party at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Its descriptions of the natural majesty of the US and equality as an inherent American right (“This land was made for you and me”) also made it a required part of middle-school chorus repertoires across the country in the 1970s and 1980s.
That makes it all the more depressing that since 1967, the year Guthrie died and the earliest inequality data became available, the Gini coefficient—a measure of wealth distribution—has risen sharply (a higher coefficient means more inequality):
Maybe that explains why at age 92, Seeger joined the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in New York.
WASHINGTON—Delivering his weekly address to members of the press Tuesday, acting U.S. Surgeon General Boris Lushniak advised all Americans to be 19 years old with $100 in their wallets and the rest of their lives still ahead of them. Lushniak, the n...
would almost prefer to spend a day with Keaton than Bill Murray
_almost_
One of the most beloved actors in the history of American cinema wakes up early, drinks coffee, shoots a bird, sees some friends, drinks whiskey, and tries to make a little sense of the world.
the Skullis website is amazing in several different ways
This incredible skull featured over on Skullis was carved using an agate and amethyst geode, measuring 7.6 inches long, front to back, and weighing just over eight pounds.
this was kind of inevitable in light of Ghost's release
The blogging platform Svbtle is opening up to everyone. For nearly two years now, Svbtle has garnered attention for its simple and beautiful blog designs, but membership has been quite exclusive, at times requiring interested members to actually apply for access. Svbtle creator Dustin Curtis says he originally limited the platform's users in order to both ensure that the site was primed with strong content and to test that the platform actually worked. Now that he's confident that both have been accomplished, he says it's finally time for Svbtle to open up.
Svbtle can maintain a gorgeous style for everyone, but not necessarily great content
Svbtle will certainly appeal to those looking for just a barebones blog: its layouts have a clean and distinct style, and Curtis says that this extends from the forward-facing blog all the way through Svbtle's backend and writing prompt. Its composition screen is built around drafts, with the layout meant to encourage users to jot down ideas as they arrive and slowly work those drafts into pieces worth publishing. That plays into Curtis' goal for Svbtle to house content a lot more meaningful than what's found on the average personal blog — a goal that may be harder to maintain now that it's been set free.
The platform will have plenty of competition from existing blogging platforms — but then, Svtble may not be hoping to draw straight from their crowd. The service's intent is perhaps most similar to Medium, a blogging platform that launched just months after Svbtle and also focuses on curating smart and engaging content from any writer who wishes to contribute. Medium has done fairly well by bringing strong content to the forefront and making good design available to everyone — the very formula that Svtble is working with. Svbtle may have fallen behind Medium in opening its platform up to everyone, but now it'll have a chance to catch up on content.
Another day, another round of headlines about China’s butchering of rare species. Today’s bloodbath bulletin concerns whale sharks, which feed on plankton and can grow up to 40 feet (12 meters)—about the length of four station wagons. The shark is so vulnerable to extinction that most countries forbid fishermen from catching them.
That’s not stopping a factory in China’s Zhejiang province from slaughtering 600 whale sharks per year, according to Hong Kong-based conservation group WildLifeRisk. The factory pays up to 200,000 yuan ($31,000) per whale shark (pdf), as WLR reports, and there’s now a global network of fishing boats that will sell them to the factory that WLR investigated.
Why? Whale sharks feed the growing market for fish oil used in supplements and cosmetics sold in the US and Canada (paywall), reports the New York Times.
WildLifeRisk
The plant exports at least 300 tons (272 tonnes) a year in oil leached from the livers of whale, blue and basking sharks, the manager, Li Guang, told WLR in this video (it’s not clear he was aware that he was being recorded). The oils are blended at a Hainan factory (paywall), which exports the substance to the US and Canada in capsule form, says WLR’s Paul Hilton. Shark processing is legal in China, though not for the three species in question, which is probably why the manager records the oil as coming from tilapia, as the NYT reports.
The North American fish oil industry has boomed in the last decade, helping push prices to $2,100/tonne in Aug. 2013, compared with $620/tonne in early 2009 (a trough due partly to the global financial crisis). In 2013, US consumers bought $1.2 billion in fish oil supplements. The product’s surging popularity is thanks to research on the cardiovascular benefits of consuming omega-3 fatty acids, which fish oil contains. Other research purports to show improvements to brain and nerve tissue and health benefits for pregnant women and infants (pdf, p.60-61).
Here’s a look at US and Canadian imports of China-made fish oil products:
Note that fish oil is imported for both human consumption and animal feed; this data doesn’t differentiate.
That said, not all fish oil contains whale shark; the fish oil products that came from this factory are a small portion of the overall fish oil market. The vast majority of fish oil capsules shipped from China contains oil that’s refined elsewhere, even when it’s labeled ”Made in China.”
Aside from fish oil products and cosmetics, whale shark is sought after domestically for its fins and for a delicacy in southern China called “shark lips.” Meanwhile, meat is exported to Sri Lanka and to Chinese restaurants in Italy and France, Li told WLR.
To put any dent in the slaughter of of whale sharks, consumers of fish oil and shark meat both will have to demand stricter labeling. Though Canadian regulation of fish oil supplements is stricter than the US’s, the industry is largely self-regulated (pdf) when it comes to quality control.
Hot sauce is having more than just a moment; it’s having a decade.
The US hot sauce market has grown by 150% since 2000, which is more than that of BBQ sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard—combined.
America’s fast-growing palate for hot sauce has a lot to do with the country’s rising immigrant population. The influx of Asians and Latinos, both of which traditionally have higher tolerances for spice, has helped to make spicy food more conventional. “Young Americans aren’t shying away from spicier food,” Matt Hudak, a US food industry expert for Euromonitor told Quartz.
But hot sauce has also been riding the coat tails of hot wing sales. “There’s been enormous growth in the popularity of hot wings,” Hudak said. “Sriracha, Tabasco, and Frank’s Red Hot, in particular, have really benefitted from that.” Americans now eat some 25 billion chicken wings per year.
Chili pepper is basically creeping into every foodstuff in the US these days. Spicy snack chips, spiced soups and chili chocolate are all derivatives of the country’s hot sauce craze.
Rap Genius today launched an official iOS app that lets users dig into the site's massive archive of song lyrics, poetry, news articles, and other text, along with the many annotations that have been added by the Rap Genius community. "This app has long been our users’ most-requested feature, and we’re pumped to finally deliver," said co-founder Tom Lehman. The company — fresh off a temporary rift between itself and Google — boldly describes its Genius mobile app as a "pocket guide to human culture." According to Lehman, it represents something of a new beginning for Rap Genius. "This is the true launch of Rap Genius," he said. "Right now, more than half of our traffic comes from mobile devices. Soon, it will be 100 percent."
Once you install Genius, it will immediately pull together lyrics for all of the music in your iPhone or iPod touch library. The app also includes a Shazam-like feature that instantly offers up annotated lyrics after briefly "listening" to and identifying music that's playing around you. Unfortunately for Android users, Genius is yet another app that's launching first on iOS — with no firm release date for Google's mobile OS. There's also no iPad version at this point. Genius is available now as a free download from the App Store.
January 25 marked the 40th anniversary of the world’s most iconic role-playing games, Dungeons and Dragons. Even if you’ve never known the pleasure of wiling away an afternoon bashing Orcs with your 4d6 warhammer, odds are you or someone you know has internalized the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons, either by actually rolling its unique polyhedral dice or, for younger players, through one of the countless video games that use its system of experience points, items and talent classifications.
It’s easy to look at Dungeons and Dragons and think that it’s all about the mythical, Tolkien-esque world in which it was set. But the real attraction of the game was the way it boiled down human experience—or at least the experience of growing older, buying stuff, and using it to kill things—to pure numbers. Its ordered universe, built on integer values for various skills and their interaction with other numbers, is catnip to teenage geeks who are trying to make sense of the adult world.
It’s an open question whether the numerical system that drives Dungeons and Dragons is a fair (if simplified) simulation of the world or whether it has so shaped generations of teens that they now see the world in terms of D&D stats. Either way, here’s everything I learned about how to manage a team—and I have been responsible for many—by playing Dungeons and Dragons.
1. Preparing for performance metrics and the quantified self
Play as practice for quantifying our performance as adults.
AP Photo/Kevin P. Casey
We can now measure more aspects of workplace performance than ever. This makes it possible to rank and compare people and give them feedback, in real time. All these are components of video games and are integral to the D&D system. Meanwhile, outside the workplace, more and more of us are also strapping on activity monitors that measure our every footstep, encouraging us to meet specific goals or just to tell us when we’re slacking off.
While the paper-based version of Dungeons and Dragons was limited by the patience of its players in terms of how many stats it could track, the game popularized real-time measures like “hit points” (how much more damage you can take until you’re dead) and “mana” (how much magical ability you have left to cast spells). And then there’s inventory management—how many arrows do I have left, and what kind are they? Am I going to run out of light if I don’t find another torch soon?
It’s not easy to get adolescents to think about managing scarce resources—both material and personal—and tracking them in the mental equivalent of a spreadsheet, but D&D made it seem normal. What better preparation could there be for the world of work?
2. There is no such thing as the perfect employee
You wouldn’t ask a mage to do the job of a warrior—or a data scientist to write marketing copy.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
The creation of a new character in D&D is a surprisingly good analogy for how skills are distributed among humans in the real world. The only real difference is that the former involves rolling dice and the latter comes from the interaction of genes and environment. In D&D, you roll the dice for each of a dozen different “stats”—strength, intelligence, etc.—that your character possesses. Each of these is modified by the character’s race and class—elves get more intelligence, warriors more strength—but no matter what character you are, a complete set of “perfect” stats is vanishingly improbable, and most of the time you’ll have a mix of strong and weak ones.
The same is true in real life: People who are exceptional at one thing may be lousy at others. Often, the best candidate for a given job isn’t the one with the highest skill for the job’s primary requirement, but is someone more well-rounded. Soft skills—getting along with other team members, being consistent—also matter.
3. A diverse team is essential to survival
A mixed bag of talents and predispositions is the only way to cope with the variability of the real world.
AP Photo/Kevin P. Casey
In D&D, a “party” consists of a group of different characters who together face the trials of the adventure to come. It’s basically impossible to win unless you’ve got a warrior to beat things up and take damage, a wizard to deal with magical foes and occasionally drop the hammer on something big, a cleric to heal your party members, and so on.
It’s the same in the modern workplace. It’s not enough to hire in order to fill distinct roles within a company. It’s just as important to realize that different backgrounds are valuable as well. This is perhaps the one place in the D&D mythology in which Tolkien’s implicit racism actually counts in favor of the series: Orcs might be swarthy and villainous, and elves Nordic and haughty, but at least a successful D&D party requires a little bit of every race and creed of Middle Earth.
4. Understanding probability is not an optional skill
Smart managers see exceptional events for what they are—and recognize how to shift the median of the results of their team in the right direction.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
None of the lessons in probability that teens pick up from playing D&D are terribly complicated, but that doesn’t mean they’re unimportant. First, there’s the fact that every roll of the die is independent of every other roll. In the real world, a company is never “due” for any particular success or failure—all you can do is weight the odds in your favor.
Rolling multiple dice at once also provides an intuitive window into the nature of statistical distribution—and how counter-intuitive it can be. This is as significant for understanding the characteristics of a group of customers as it is for evaluating how long someone will live with a cancer diagnosis.
5. Prepare for major goals by treating them as “boss battles”
If you think this guy’s scary, try meeting your annual growth target.
AP Photo/Casey Rodgers
It’s not the everyday slog that defines the success or failure of a team, but the way it handles the big, ambitious launches or the major setbacks. In D&D, how you prepare for a battle with an exceptionally powerful foe—a “boss battle”—determines whether you’ll win or be wiped out. This means giving your characters tons of practice against easier foes so that they can gain experience. In other words, employee development is key.
D&D also teaches that even average team members can do exceptionally well with the right tools. Plus, managing a party requires that you optimize your workflow as a leader, and then optimize some more. This is so important that the current head of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, has talked extensively about how he honed his management skills by playing World of Warcraft, a direct descendent of D&D.
6. Workplace romances are just awkward
Tempting… but no.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
When two people play D&D who are dating in real life, it’s a lot like dating in the workplace. If two co-workers start helping each other out (or worse, taking revenge on one another) as a consequence of their romantic entanglements, others in the office feel like the rules of the workplace are being broken. And in Dungeons and Dragons, forget it—how do you fairly divide up the loot from a slain dragon when your elvish cleric and your dwarvish warrior are not-so-secretly in love?
Trailrunner7 writes "A group of six Congressmen have asked President Barack Obama to remove James Clapper as director of national intelligence as a result of his misstatements to Congress about the NSA's dragnet data-collection programs. The group, led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), said that Clapper's role as DNI 'is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs.' Clapper is the former head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and has been DNI since 2010. In their letter to Obama, the group of Congressmen calling for his ouster said that he lied to Congress and should no longer be in office. 'The continued role of James Clapper as Director of National Intelligence is incompatible with the goal of restoring trust in our security programs and ensuring the highest level of transparency. Director Clapper continues to hold his position despite lying to Congress, under oath, about the existence of bulk data collection programs in March 2013. Asking Director Clapper, and other federal intelligence officials who misrepresented programs to Congress and the courts, to report to you on needed reforms and the future role of government surveillance is not a credible solution,' the letter from Issa, Ted Poe, Paul Broun, Doug Collins, Walter Jones and Alan Grayson says." "Misstatement," of course, being the favorite euphemism for "lie."
image comics just dropped a boat load of free #1 issues including PRETTY DEADLY, LAZARUS, EAST OF WEST, DEAD BODY ROAD, RAT QUEENS, ROCKET GIRL, SATELLITE SAM, SEX CRIMINALS and ZERO.
all of the issues are drm-free and are available as .cbr/,cbz files, .pdf files or even .epub files and are yours to own, not licensed like most other digital comic distributors
check them out here: https://www.imagecomics.com/content/view/i-is-for-introduction
WHY THE HELL IS IT THAT IF I SAY “NO THANKS, I DON’T LIKE ORANGE JUICE” PEOPLE ACCEPT THAT AND NEVER OFFER ME IT AGAIN
BUT AS SOON AS I SAY “NO THANKS, I DON’T LIKE BEER/WINE/ALCOHOL” PEOPLE TAKE THAT AS AN INVITATION TO TRY AND FORCE IT ON ME AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY
NO, I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND I DO NOT LIKE THE TASTE I DON’T WANT TO “GET USED TO IT” OR “ACQUIRE THE TASTE” JUST LEAVE ME ALONE STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO DRINK
The original Legend of Grimrock‘s setting was pretty, you know, grim and also predominately made of rocks. But Legend of Grimrock 2? It’s a terrible, terrible lie. The isle of Nex looks like a glorious vacation getaway. With monsters. And traps. And ancient ruins. So the greatest vacation getaway ever, basically. I see a few rocks here and there, but I’m not convinced. Grimness and rocks were the core pillars of the first game – definitely not wicked yet rewarding difficulty, puzzles, character building, and blender-mouthed snail monsters, all of which will be returning in spades in the second. Developer Almost Human has clearly lost its marbles. A Grimrock match-three Facebook casino game can’t be far off.
I am absolutely joking. Legend of Grimrock 2 looks like a sight for every sort of eye, whether sore, flat-out infuriated, or just mildly irritable after a long day at work. In a new blog post Almost Human noted that the island allows for variety in stage settings, so expect to see everything from glistening, dew-soaked woodlands to steamy swamps to dingy dungeons and caves.
Once again, the game will star four prisoners flung into a land of untold horrors against their will, and it’ll be your job to help them live to tell about it. “The story of Grimrock 2 will not be a direct continuum to Grimrock 1,” wrote Almost Human, “but will be a completely new story with new characters that will expand the Grimrock universe.”
In the “Hurrah!” category, monster AI is getting a complete overhaul, so expect plenty of brains to go along with beasties’ considerable brawn.
“One of the few things some reviewers criticized about Grimrock 1 was monster behavior in combat. We have attacked this problem directly and rewritten the monster AI entirely. As a result monsters are now smarter and they know how to use their larger numbers to their advantage. The repertoire of tricks they know has been expanded greatly. For example, some monsters can call other monsters for help and can use group tactics against you. Of course the behavior of monsters depends on their intelligence so the most stupid and most fierce monsters are still, well, fierce and stupid as they should be. And talking of monsters, there will be lots of new monsters with some of the old, familiar faces making an occasional appearance for old times sake.”
They did not, sadly, address our relative ability to talk to the monsters. Awwwww.
Character progression and item systems are also getting completely redone, with a per-level perk-buy system taking the place of skills (“The design goal is make each level up meaningful and at the same time contain a tough choice”) and new secondary powers being added to items.
While there’s a new character class on the way, mages will be pulling quite a few tricks out of their hats as well. Almost Human explained:
“The new spellcasting panel allows mouse gestures to be used to cast spells. Spells are cast by holding the mouse button down while doing a swipe with the mouse on the correct sequence of runes. Talking of magic, the Mage character class has also been redesigned. The requirements to cast spells of different schools have been relaxed so that mages can cast larger variety of spells. In Grimrock 2, mages need not be one trick ponies.”
But enough meaningful details. Time for some HARD NUMBERS. Grimrock 2 will have over a hundred new items, 22 new monsters, one day/night cycle (unless plot twists strand you on another planet or something), and [???] new environments to explore.
There are a few new screenshots over on Almost Human’s page. Go drink them in. Suck the marrow from their bones and know them more deeply than you would the back of your own hand or the billions of frighteningly unsanitary bacteria on your cell phone.
This feels like its bordering in the group attack territory. It is not okay to insult someone just for wearing a particular article of clothing, nor is it okay to use it to judge their character. Adding special conditions in which you decide said article of clothing is okay, does not change this at all.
Being somewhat associated with MRA's doesn't change this. My Little Pony is also associated with MRA's in a lot of places on the internet, but it's not okay to call My Little Pony watchers "douchebags". (for good reason too)
BUt this kind of stuff gets brough up endlessly on tangency whenever MRA's or fedora's are mentioned in general. And I don't think that's okay, nor is it within the spirit of the rules here. (at least how I have been lead to believe the intentions of the rules are supposed to be)
Since all the summaries are so willfully obtuse: This is a story about mental illness. The fact that "artisanal toast" took off is just a happy accident.
'At first, Carrelli explained Trouble as a kind of sociological experiment in engineering spontaneous communication between strangers. She even conducted field research, she says, before opening the shop. “I did a study in New York and San Francisco, standing on the street holding a sandwich, saying hello to people. No one would talk to me. But if I stayed at that same street corner and I was holding a coconut? People would engage,” she said. “I wrote down exactly how many people talked to me.”
The smallness of her cafés is another device to stoke interaction, on the theory that it’s simply hard to avoid talking to people standing nine inches away from you. And cinnamon toast is a kind of all-purpose mollifier: something Carrelli offers her customers whenever Trouble is abrasive, or loud, or crowded, or refuses to give them what they want. “No one can be mad at toast,” she said.
Carrelli’s explanations made a delightfully weird, fleeting kind of sense as I heard them. But then she told me something that made Trouble snap into focus. More than a café, the shop is a carpentered-together, ingenious mechanism—a specialized tool—designed to keep Carrelli tethered to herself.'
Nerval's Lobster writes "On the same day the world discovered Western intelligence agencies were siphoning user information from Angry Birds and other popular smartphone apps, a leading antivirus developer revealed hackers are doing the same thing with one of the most popular open-source applications on the Internet. Maliciously modified versions of the popular FTP application FileZilla look and act just like the real thing, but include extra code that steals the login data typed in by users and sends it to an unauthorized server using the same FTP operation launched by the user without going through a firewall that might spot what it's doing, according to an alert posted this afternoon by antivirus developer Avast Software. The malicious version is fully functional, uses the same graphical interface and component file names as the original, and masks itself further by avoiding any suspicious entries in the system registry, overt attempts to communicate with outside servers or other changes, according to the Jan. 27 alert from Avast. The most obvious differences are that the poisoned version of filezilla.exe is 6.8MB smaller than the real thing and there are two DLL libraries included in the fake that are not present in the original. They are labeled ibgcc_s_dw2-1.dll and libstdc++-6.dll, according to Avast. The official version's Nullsoft installer is v2.45-Unicode; the evil twin uses v2.46.3-Unicode. Automatic updates also fail on the poisoned version 'which is most likely a protection to prevent overwriting of the malware binaries,' Avast added."
(Est. 1478) "Oxford Dictionaries are trusted around the globe as the definitive source on language and the first point of reference. This authority is based on meticulous research into the living language and draws on the largest language research programme in the world. Oxford University Press is proud to publish the definitive record of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)."
Design by: N/A
Opinion/Notes: The old logo was mostly a non-logo, just a typesetting seemingly carried out from the cover of the dictionary product. The new logo, while bright and colorful, is fairly dull. Well done, but dull. I do appreciate that it's an "O D" monogram. Comparisons to Beats by Dre in 3, 2, 1…
not sure if I've seen a basketball player have such control and range in his momentum as Durant, it's ridiculous
he literally moves like a NBA Jam player; he doesn't accelerate or decelerate, he's either moving or totally still while everybody else obeys bullshit rules like physics
The extent to which Kevin Durant is lighting up the league is unreal.
What do we even call what Kevin Durant is doing now? Calling his recent performances incredible or dominant doesn't even to capture it. Calling him unstoppable is obvious. Look at his game-winner from Monday night again, look at how every Atlanta Hawks defender has his eyes on Durant, how three of them contest the shot, how none of them make an impact at all:
Correct, Official Atlanta Hawks Twitter Feed! Now look at Durant's shot chart from the last six games, a stretch where he is averaging 39.8 points, 6.7 rebounds, 6.5 assists and has a true shooting percentage of .765:
What even is that? That's stupid. The man has scored 30 or more points in 11 straight games and 14 of his last 16. He has five 40-point games in January, a month where he has a .714 true shooting percentage in the last five minutes of games when the scoring differential is within five points, per NBA.com. If you were watching the Oklahoma City Thunder play the Hawks, you weren't the slightest bit surprised that he led them back after trailing at the end of three quarters. You expected him to hit that game-winner, as well as the huge stepback jumper he made 24 seconds prior to it.
Take away his late-game explosion against the Portland Trail Blazers, his triple-double against the Philadelphia 76ers and his 54-point game against the Golden State Warriors and he'd still be the Player of the Month in a landslide. No one is even close.
"There are very few people in the world who have the ability to do what he's doing," Oklahoma City forward Nick Collison said, via the Oklahoman's Darnell Mayberry. "He's playing great, the best I've ever seen him play."
Perhaps Nicolas Batum expressed it best last week.
"He is the best player in the world right now," the Blazers forward said. "What can you say about him? He is the MVP. He is the MVP. I have been six years in the league, and I've never seen something like that."
Durant was playing at an MVP level before this month. He was playing at an MVP level even before this season. This is a whole different thing, though. His PER is now 31.15, and LeBron James is in second place at 28.74. Durant didn't want to put his run in the same category as similar streaks by Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and James, but it's just as crazy as any of them.
It's not like Durant needed to find another gear, but with Russell Westbrook out of the lineup, he has. It's putting everyone at a loss for words.
"There's nothing more to say," Thunder head coach Scott Brookstold reporters on Monday. "He's a special player. He's going to be an MVP candidate until he decides to retire."
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