Ryan Mustard

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Gaming peripheral company Wikipad has announced an iPad mini version of its Gamevice mobile game controller, reports Slide to Play (via TouchArcade).


The Gamevice sports a form-fitting design that cradles the iPad mini, and features console-style controls including dual-analog sticks, a directional pad, face buttons, shoulder bumpers, and triggers. The accessory is compatible with all iOS games that feature controller support, which currently includes titles like Limbo, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and The Walking Dead.

The Gamevice's reveal comes after last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, where a surge of new iOS controllers appeared. The introduction of so many new iOS controllers comes as rumors surrounding the gaming capabilities of the next-generation Apple TV have ramped up in recent months. Some have speculated that Apple could utilize iOS gaming controllers, a set-top box and an App Store ecosystem to become a major force in the console gaming industry.
Wikipad's Gamevice controller for the iPad mini is expected to be released later this year. Interested customers can sign up at the accessory's official website for more information.

How one coach's retirement set off a nationwide chain reaction

From Grantland's Mike Goodman, a guide to nerding out about soccer, using the language already spoken by American sports nerds.

What exactly is a good shot in soccer? The nascent field of soccer analytics is hard at work trying to figure that out. It won't surprise anybody to learn that closer is better, and using your feet is much, much better than using your head. So, much like getting into the lane is of paramount importance in basketball, getting the ball at your feet in front of the goal is just about the best thing you can do in soccer. Getting to the byline (baseline) in the corner of the penalty areas (like where Maicon was in the above video) is a hot destination. That's where you can cut the ball back for a teammate to have one of those coveted close shots. Hey, look at that - it's like basketball again: Get to the goal or get to the corners.

Tags: how to   Mike Goodman   soccer   sports

This summer in London, Secret Cinema will build a replica of the fictional Hill Valley town seen in Back to the Future:

Fabien Riggall, founder of Secret Cinema which has presented more than 40 immersive cinema screening events, said: "We shall play heavily on the innocent dream-like world of 1955 and the nostalgic pre-mobile phone world of 1985. We want the audiences to forget their current world and take an adventure."

The recreation will include a DeLorean "time machine" to shuttle audience members between 1985 and 1955 sections of the town, and an "Enchantment Under the Sea" afterparty. Tickets cost £53.50, or about $90 US.

It's fascinating to watch the Back to the Future movies now not for their nostalgic depiction of the 1950s or jokey guesses at life in 2015, all hoverboards and flying cars, but as a vital document of the 1980s. After all, next year, we'll be as far removed from 1985 as the filmmakers were from 1955. The first film especially fixes that time's preoccupations and possibilities in amber.

(Via Paleofuture/Gizmodo.)

Tags: 1980s   Back to the Future   movies

David Yanofsky, writing for Quartz:

At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference today the company rolled out a new look for its web browser, Safari. Apple executives didn’t point it out, but sharp-eyed observers have noticed one significant change to the interface. The address bar truncates URLs to the domain-name level.

This means that a URL such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams will show up as en.wikipedia.org.

Seems like something that ought to be a preference setting. (Maybe it already is, but if so I haven’t found it.)

The NCAA announced this morning that the Texas-Houston Super Regional will be in Austin

Texas will host Houston for the Super Regionals. Games are Friday at 4, Saturday at 2, Sunday at 2. #HookEm

— Texas Baseball (@Texas_Baseball) June 3, 2014

I don't know what it means in terms of Texas' chances of winning, as it was pointed out many times over the weekend that the Longhorns bat .050 better on the road than at home. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for not having to travel and getting the chance to advance to Omaha from your home ballpark, and the NCAA has seen fit to give Texas that opportunity.

Much more on Houston this week, but for now suffice it to say this will be a matchup of strength vs strength. The Cougars are a team built on pitching and defense, as are the Longhorns. One interesting question will be the rotation for Texas this weekend. At Rice, Augie Garrido went with Nathan Thornhill in Game One to beat the Aggies and saved Parker French for the top-seeded Owls. Neither of the top two (non-injured) starters is a lefty, which is a shame since Houston tends to do better against right-handers.

Still, both have been throwing very well lately; and after Chad Hollingsworth's complete-game dominance of A&M yesterday, it no longer feels as if Dillon Peters' absence requires the Longhorns to win the first two games if they want to advance.

As Jeff texted me last night: what odds would you have given at the beginning of the season for Texas not to host a regional but to host a Super Regional? 10,000 to 1? Hop in that time machine, Marty, and go place a bet. See you at the Disch, Cougars--I trust those of you lucky enough to live in Austin will pack the place to the gills.

Halelujah!

One of the last remaining vestiges of the Mack Brown era for the Texas Longhorns has apparently been removed, as the Austin American-Statesman is reporting that head football academic advisor Brian Davis will not be back for the fall semester.

The Longhorns posted a perfect APR of 1,000 in football for the 2012-13 academic year, one of only two schools in the country to achieve that feat along with Louisville, but three football players were ineligible for the Alamo Bowl against Oregon due to problems in the classroom. The loss of running back Jalen Overstreet was not particularly significant, but it was a major blow to lose wide receiver Daje Johnson and offensive tackle Kennedy Estelle, the latter the starter at right tackle for most of the season.

The transcript issues faced by offensive tackle Desmond Harrison last year and linebacker Tevin Jackson in 2010 after his signing were two more significant failures by Davis.

Davis was a perfect example of the organizational malaise and misplaced loyalty that afflicted the end of the Mack Brown era. It was former strength and conditioning coach Jeff Madden who took most of the heat from fans, but the knowledgeable segment of the fan base knew that Davis was equally dismal at his job.

Back when he was also in charge of the basketball program, the academic issues of PJ Tucker prompted the former administration to elevate Randa Ryan into the role of executive senior athletics director for student service, a fancy way of saying that she has been responsible for overseeing the academic support staff and student services for all sports with the exception of football.

In other words, she was essentially elevated over Davis, who was left his own little fiefdom as someone who had followed Brown from North Carolina. Under Brown, such relationships seemingly made people nearly untouchable, with only gross incompetence like the 2010 season from Greg Davis and the sexual harassment suit brought against Cleve Bryant capable of breaking those ties.

And apparently the elevation of Ryan over Davis didn't play particularly well with Davis, as the Statesman reports that the two feuded after new athletic director Steve Patterson put her in charge of all sports after his hiring, which must have reduced the role Davis played in overseeing the academic support of the football program.

Of course, the reputation of Ryan has also took a recent hit with the ongoing investigation concerning purchase orders made over a number of years from the store that she co-owns with her husband, though the fact that she has not been placed on administrative leave probably bodes well for her continued employment at Texas.

In any case, the removal of Davis and the increased attention by the new coaching staff should result in fewer academic issues for Texas moving forward, especially in the area of making sure that prospective student-athletes have their transcripts in order so there are no delays in starting their careers.

The Charlie Strong era is truly getting under way.

Apple is buying Beats Electronics and the Beats Music streaming service for a total of $3 billion. The acquisition is the largest in Apple's history and is the biggest move by CEO Tim Cook since he took the reins from Steve Jobs several years ago.

Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will join Apple as full time employees, with both reporting to iTunes head Eddy Cue. In an interview with The New York Times, Cook said Iovine and Dre were "really unique" and that "it's like finding the precise grain of sand on the beach. They're rare and very hard to find."

Cook said that "of course" Apple could have built a subscription music service rather than buying one, just like the company could have built all the technologies that it has acquired over the years. "You don’t build everything yourself. It’s not one thing that excites us here. It's the people. It’s the service."

In the Times, Cook promised new features for Beats that will "blow your mind" as well as "products you haven't thought of yet". He promised the team would "take music to an even higher level than it is now."

Jimmy Iovine, Tim Cook, Dr. Dre and Eddy Cue
In an interview with Re/code, Cook said that Apple felt Beats was the first subscription music service to "get it right:

We get a subscription music service that we believe is the first subscription service that really got it right. They had the insight early on to know how important human curation is. That technology by itself wasn’t enough — that it was the marriage of the two that would really be great, and produce a feeling in people that we want to produce.

[...]

But mostly, backing up — it’s because we always are future-focused. So it’s not what Apple and Beats are doing today. It’s what we believe pairing the two together can produce for the future.

Apple has seen rumors of a interest in a subscription music service for close to a decade, with Jobs saying in 2007 that customers "don't seem to be interested" in music subscriptions. The New York Post said in 2010 that Apple was negotiating with record labels on such a service, though nothing ever came of it.

Earlier this month, Spotify reported that it has 10 million paying subscribers to its music service, showing that many customers are now interested in such a service.

The Wall Street Journal says Iovine will quit as chairman of Interscope records to work full time at Apple. Dr. Dre will continue to produce music but do "as much as it takes" for Apple. The two men's titles will reportedly be "Jimmy and Dre". In a letter to employees, Tim Cook confirmed that the entire Beats team will be joining Apple under Eddy Cue and noted the company's commitment to curated content.

Both Apple and Beats believe that a great music service requires a strong editorial and curation team, and we will continue to expand what we do in those areas. The addition of Beats will make our incredible iTunes lineup even better, extending the emotional connection our customers have with music.

Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine will appear tonight on stage at the Code Conference.

The acquisition will include $2.6 billion in cash and another $400 million that will vest over time. Apple expects the transaction to close sometime next quarter. The Beats Music iOS app has been updated with an extended 14-day trial period and a price drop to its yearly subscription to $100 from $120.

Beats Music is a free download for the iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

Anthony Jeselnik sounds like an asshole.

He jokes about, in his own words “all the awful things,” including rape, domestic violence, the Holocaust, the mentally retarded, cancer, and suicide. The ultimate sacred cow, children, are often referenced in horrific fashion: “Yesterday I accidentally hit a little kid with my car. It wasn’t serious. Nobody saw me.” On the other end of the spectrum is a joke about the elderly: “My grandfather turns 100 years old next month. Maybe.” Christians are sure to appreciate this joke: “Who do you think was smarter, Jesus or Buddha? I mean, just in terms of not letting themselves get crucified.” Often, he switches (or multiples) taboos in one joke: “I’ve got a long history of suicide in my family. The good news is it skips a generation. So if I’m lucky, my kids will do it.”

I love Anthony Jeselnik. Not because his jokes are “shocking” or “edgy” or whatever. Jeselnik’s reputation as a douchebag comic—like Daniel Tosh—is undeserved. Jeselnik
deserves a different rep: as a precise, talented joke writer who created a memorable, perfect character.

There are two keys to understanding Anthony Jeselnik: comedy legend Jack Handey and deceased wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude. Handey and Rude don’t have much in common—unless Handey can dance like a stripper or Rude wrote for Saturday Night Live—but their influence combined to inform one damn great comedian.

The Handey influence, which Jeselnik has mentioned in numerous interviews, can be seen in the precise, writerly nature of Jeselnik’s consistently surprising jokes. Many have a Handey-like brevity, as in this joke that starts out chivalrous and ends up anywhere but: “I would never hit a woman, even if she had a knife—or a stutter.” A strong candidate for Jeselnik’s Best Joke Ever starts off as the premise of a revenge movie: “I’ve spent the past two years looking for my ex-girlfriend’s killer. But no one will do it.” Jeselnik is an absolute master of leading you down the garden path and then whacking you in the crotch with a hoe, just like Handey does with his Deep Thoughts, New Yorker pieces, and loony novel The Stench of Honolulu. Jeselnik is one of the best one-liner comics ever—in the same class as Stephen Wright, Mitch Hedberg, and Sarah Silverman—and, like Handey and Jerry Seinfeld, he has a surgical precision with language. Every word counts. It should surprise no one that this wordplay-loving comic was an English major.

In a Splitsider interview—aptly titled “Anthony Jeselnik is Not an Asshole”—Jeselnik reveals a another key inspiration: “I’m very arrogant and mean. I’m almost like a bad guy professional wrestler. I always thought it was hilarious when Ravishing Rick Rude would come out into the ring and everyone would boo him. He’s at Madison Square Garden standing up and saying ‘New York City is the worst city in the world!’ and everyone’s just throwing things at him. To me that was so hilarious and I thought if you could push that and still be funny that would be the way to go.” Through this key inspiration, plus trial and error, Jeselnik created his own version of a wrestling villain, the kind of character who wears his douchebaggery on his popped collar in jokes like this: “My girlfriend makes me want to be a better person. So I can get a better girlfriend.”

In The Humor Code, Peter McGraw and Joel Warner identify benign violation as the key to humor. For something to be funny, it needs to find its sweet spot between “Noooo!” and “Everything’s cool.” Jeselnik hits that sweet spot in a unique way. He says things that are objectively horrible (with a high violation quotient) but he says them within clever jokes and a clearly artificial bad-guy persona (making everything OK). It’s damn brilliant.

My pick for Jeselnik’s Best Joke Ever plays with his persona in a way that’s characteristic and uncharacteristic at the same time: “I think my friend Jeff is gay. I don’t know. I’m so bad with names.”

Knowing his reputation for offensiveness, most listeners will cringe after hearing “I think my friend Jeff is gay.” I certainly did when I heard this joke about a year ago at The Vic in Chicago, where Jeselnik was filming his Caligula show. I was bracing myself for a punch line that might take homophobia to a new level.

“I don’t know,” creates a nice bridge, building anticipation and worry. Then the punch line is a shockingly non-shocking shocker: “I’m so bad with names.” Surprise! This joke has nothing to do with gay people at all: it’s about Jeselnik’s bad memory. Or, to be more accurate, it’s about language, because the joke hinges on the word think. We can say “I think he’s gay” and “I think his name is Jeff,” and Jeselnik makes the most of both meanings. Once again, he leads you down the garden path before smacking you in the head with a gnome.

Jokes like this show Jeselnik isn’t an offense machine: he’s a word magician. And he’s not a douchebag—he just plays one on TV.

Steven Frank:

Like everyone else, I wasted a lot of my parents’ quarters playing Dragon’s Lair and lasting for about 2 minutes before losing all five lives. Fortunately, the local grocery store had a Dragon’s Lair cabinet, as well as a couple of other games, so I got many occasions to practice.

One day I was sitting in our apartment reading a video game magazine (nerd!), and in the back was a little section of classified ads. My eye was caught immediately by the words “Beat Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair!” For a few bucks, you could send away for this random guy’s strategy guide, which listed all the moves and when to make them.

Please realize there was no residential internet. We had a computer, but no modem. There was no just going to Google for an FAQ or walkthrough. If you didn’t know the moves, you just didn’t know them, unless you knew someone else who knew them, which of course you didn’t.

What a great story.

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“Just a sec” = 5 minutes

“Just a minute” = 10 minutes

“Pick your brain” = 17 minutes or, in rare cases, 90 seconds

“Quick chat” = 48 minutes

“No more than five minutes” = 1 hour

“End of day” = 2 hours after the delivery guy brings dinner

“Quick meeting” = 3 hours

“Deep dive” = in the time it takes to eat half a bag of baby carrots

“Exploratory” = only the intern knows for sure

“Brainstorming session” = the entire afternoon, but everyone involved gets to sneak out early

“Could use a hand” = 1 week

“Could really use a hand” = 1 week + the weekend

“Onboarding” = 3 weeks that felt 3 three years

“Stint” = 2-3 weeks

“Gig” = 3-4 weeks

“Boondoggle” = 1 month of hotel food and daydreaming at strange buildings

“Pitch in” = 1 month here and there

“Help out” = 1 month + 2 harrowing weeks

“Assist on” = 3 months + 1 month plotting an escape

“Build-out” = why those tech people make shitloads of money

“Ramping up” = must happen before the end of the fiscal quarter

“Gearing up” = really should happen before the end of the quarter, but don’t hold your breath

“Strategize” = don’t ask, don’t tell

“Cool little project” = 6 endless months

“Wonderful opportunity” = 8 months

“Interesting opportunity” = 2 years

“Immediate need” = still hasn’t been resolved

“Got my start at” = too long or too short to fully explain

“Job” = holy shit, has it really been X years?

“Current job” = 1 more year and then I’m out

“Career” = 15 years trying + 5 years coasting + 15 years wondering if all that trying was worth it + 5 years just sitting there, collecting a paycheck, fondly reminiscing about the coasting

“Let’s revisit this later” = never shall we speak of this again

“Loop back” = 50/50 chance we shall speak of this again

“ASAP” = unquantifiable

The cobbler’s children have no shoes, and don’t get me wrong, I was always proud of my dad for being a cobbler—it’s an important job with a fascinating history, it lets people forestall the purchase of new footwear, which can be a huge personal financial drain—but going to school barefoot for twelve years really did a psychological number on me and my siblings. Two of them aren’t speaking to him anymore; one blames him for her drug addiction. I don’t know. I suppose I can see what he was thinking at the time, but that doesn’t excuse him. At any rate, that’s probably why, when I started my own family, my priority was making sure they wore shoes at all times, even in the shower. When the old man visits, I can tell he’s judging me, but I’m like, fuck you, this is what a real father does for his kids.

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Welcome to Hollywood. Let's all stay on script.

The reactions to LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling's TMZ released audio recordings have been vocal and outraged.

Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo Sports.

SB Nation's Tom Ziller.

Those were the calm ones.  They're understandable instant reactions, but I've yet to see many in the media advance the story beyond the obvious and unanimous.  One Los Angeles columnist tried, suggesting that Sterling might feel more comfortable owning a hockey team, missing the point impressively and proving she's incapable of scoring against an empty net.  Sterling pulled his goalie on a power play and she managed to drill the puck into her own forehead.

The Background

Sterling's former mistress - a half-black, half-Mexican woman more than forty years his junior recorded conversations with Sterling in which she baited the 81 year old owner into expressing neanderthal racial views, mostly centered around his insecurity for her "broadcasting" associations with black men.  Reading Yahoo's Dwyer (who is usually fun and entertaining) paint her as a victim of misogyny was chuckle-worthy, but it keeps the narrative uncomplicated, the flows of outrage within the boundaries of the accepted banks.

Sterling operates a franchise in a black-dominated league and this creates, as the marketing types who make quote signs in the air with their fingers are wont to say, "bad optics."  The league's 30 owners are mostly white, their 400 elite employees are mostly black, but everyone's mistresses span the color palette like a Benetton ad and they're all united by green.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by Sterling's comments.  Sex and jealousy have long been vehicles for dredging up unexamined racist feelings that men spew in a fit of impotent anger...

Much like driving in LA.

If a bile-spewing NBA billionaire chiding his bi-racial mistress for being seen with other minorities isn't strange enough, Sterling's unlikely defender - his current wife - contends that he was entrapped by a gold-digging opportunist with multiple aliases and a history of seducing rich men; a woman who had vowed "to get even with him" in part because of an on-going lawsuit filed against her by Sterling's wife for Donald frittering away 1.8 million dollars in community assets on said mistress.

Reassuringly, the audio's validity has been thoroughly investigated by the crack journalists at TMZ and apparently everyone is satisfied that it's as reliable as a Lohan up-skirt video.

The truth is that Sterling has a lengthy history of reptilian behavior and no one is particularly interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.  He's Loathsome Rich Guy straight from central casting.  A propensity for wearing silk shirts unbuttoned to his navel while festooned in gold chains, a generally horrific history of ownership and a long record of these sorts of incidents does not help his Q score.

In short, Donald Sterling is a creep.  We get that.  Writing that article isn't terribly hard.

But boy, it's everywhere.

We can do better.

The Divine Right of Kings

Do racist creeps have the right to own a basketball team?

They do.  But it's in the best interests of the league that they do not.  Or to do it much more discreetly.

The query freezes other NBA owners in their tracks. While they may not like Sterling, will curse him for his stupidity and will roundly condemn him for jeopardizing labor relations, they're also not very interested in their peers impinging upon their privileges when they act badly.

Former NBA commissioner David Stern, for all of his condescending bluster, was terrified of Sterling's litigating prowess and never had the courage to tackle him.

Donald's previous offenses never created a coalition of outrage sufficient for action.  Adam Silver has a clear coalition for action and the lifetime ban was a necessary use of that power.  The NBA leadership didn't suddenly grow deep principles.  This is self-preservation.

Will the owners vote a 3/4 supermajority to force a sale?

Generally, kings don't support revolutions against other kings. Even bad ones.  Keep up the charade of divine rule for all or it may be your head on the guillotine one day.  Precedent is a dangerous thing.  Instead, they'll lock him in a dark tower in an iron mask.  Banishment should suffice.

Cry Me A Rivers

While Sterling's deep dive into his primal brain reveals ignorance, who are his victims? His victims in various housing discrimination lawsuits are clear enough.  Who are they here?

Who did Sterling harm?

I mean beyond the general societal sense of rhetorical pollution poured into the commons.  Or himself.

According to most of the media, the specific harm is to his players, his coach and NBA players in general.

Let's be clear about one thing: Sterling's reputation is well known and assiduously documented.  For every public story - and there are plenty - there are a dozen more in the NBA grapevine.  The latest orgy of outrage is a day late and a pound sterling short.

Sterling has had a long record of hiring black executives (Elgin Baylor had a two decade run as his GM) and coaches (Paul Silas, Dennis Johnson, Alvin Gentry, Don Chaney, Doc Rivers) and his player composition was never classic Bostonian.  Whether in basketball or mistresses, clearly Sterling can compartmentalize.  He was also cheap, small-minded and terrible.  When the cheap part changed and the Lakers tanked, suddenly working for Donald Sterling didn't seem so bad after all.

This clearly informed the talent market.

A respected black head coach, Doc Rivers, chose the Clippers because they had great players, he had no interest in a Celtics rebuild and SoCal is a fun place to be wealthy.  We're to believe that this was the first time a 30 year NBA (playing & coaching) veteran had heard of Donald Sterling's issues?  He didn't ask around before taking the gig?

Are we really going to play that game?  If we are, the necessary partnering assumption is that Doc Rivers has an IQ close to his old jersey number.  Nope.

What about the Clipper players?

In 2012, Blake Griffin chose to extend with the Clips for five years and ninety five million dollars.  Chris Paul chose to come there and play Pied Piper for other free agents.  He just extended in 2013 for five years and one hundred and seven million dollars.  These are two smart, aware guys who understand their brand.  They didn't know about Sterling? They've never seen a newspaper?  There's no institutional knowledge in the NBA?

This is not a plantation.  This is a market.  With intelligent, informed labor performing their own calculus of risk and reward and choosing the best organizational expression for their amazing talents.  Spare us the junior college sociology exploitation diatribe.  It fails on every conceivable level.

Everyone in the Clippers organization knows the deal with Donald Sterling.  So does everyone in the NBA.  No one is shocked right now, whatever their pantomime for the press.  They may be pissed.  They may be disappointed.  If they're hurt, it's because the cold exchanges of the market have been laid bare before a finger-wagging press and they're now expected to do something besides work hard and cash checks.  You'll see something symbolic tonight meant to heal us all.  I'm sure some will find it poignant.

The affirmative choice by black coaches and players to work for the Clippers with free agency - in every sense of that phrase - describes the real complexities of this league and human interactions.  These are grown men who clearly believed Sterling is a distant buffoon with minimal impact on their day-to-day lives.  The owner's actions broke his part of their implicit agreement - he was supposed to keep his ignorance manageable.  Before the latest incident, they found his behaviors relatively inconsequential compared to the money, the promotional opportunities and social connections of playing in LA as part of a legit title contender.

There are Apple employees who performed a similar calculus the first time Steve Jobs bounced a crumpled piece of paper off of their heads and called them idiots.

The Clippers players and coaches were never there to vouch for Donald Sterling's character.  Nor are they his victims.  They don't need protection or pity.  They're smart professionals who went to work for an awful boss and underestimated his ability for public suicide.  The eventual upshot is a better organization once the trash gets taken out.

Spare us the violin music.

The Opportunity

Fortunately, there's an opportunity here.  Sterling's lifetime ban effectively denies him enjoying the privileges of ownership to such an extent that his only way out is a sale - quite possibly to Magic Johnson's ownership group - a fitting coup de grace and a nice lesson about what real empowerment looks like.  Sterling has little leverage and Magic can now put the negotiating screws to him.  Johnson is already banging Twitter so that the owners will force Sterling out within a specific time frame, robbing Donald of even a shred of leverage and the chance for competing bidders to ready their best pitch.  Magic still sees the court better than everyone else and he knows how to break down a defense.

Justice is best served cosmic.

Tolerance Lessons By After-School Special

The same theater and concern for optics that underlies so much of this was at work when the Los Angeles NAACP recently rescinded their offer of Sterling's second Lifetime Achievement Award.  That's right - the word preceding Lifetime Achievement was SECOND.  Revealing that the Los Angeles NAACP has trouble understanding the concept of a lifetime as much as the concept of achievement.

The concept of tolerance is most often talked about in its elevated, abstract, groovy forms and once admirable but now corrupted organizations are too often our societal anointing agents.  But a grittier, real world form of tolerance is more crucial for societies and markets to work - tolerance for that which we find distasteful but does not actually harm us, particularly when the benefits outweigh the negatives.

The Clippers and the NBA exercised tolerance for Sterling's prejudice because it was largely inconsequential next to the larger merits of his franchise, just as Sterling "tolerated" paying black men to run his basketball empire because of their skills and genius.  A billionaire who may privately think poorly of the millionaires in his employ isn't necessarily harmful to them without consequential actions behind it.  If revealed, the harm is only perceptual.   But perception drives markets and undermines confidence.  We all see that now.  Sterling forgot it.

Every day we transact with people whose views - particularly if they were revealed to us through the prism of their calculating ex-mistress - would startle and offend us.  But we don't need to love, to like or approve of someone to find use in them when we enter into consensual agreements that benefit both parties.  We're also free to shun them. And sometimes should.  This is the real world of grown-ups - not the staged theater of outrage.

While tabloid recordings force us to shake our heads at an insecure dinosaur and we bate our breath for V Stiviano's sex tape reality show next career move, it seems for many in the media that their real discomfort is in moving beyond easy outrage and exploring a much more interesting world beyond.

Donald Sterling is being forced out of the NBA - but he will receive a nice parting gift -a 700 Million return on investment.

Donald Sterling, a breathtaking blend of incompetence and bigotry, is being told by the NBA to GTFO.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced Tuesday that the owner of the San Diego Clippers will be fined $2.5 million and is banned for life from the NBA.

Sterling, 81, long known inside professional sports as an idiot owner who also held contemptible views on race, outed himself this past week  with the help of his 31-year old mistress.

Siver announced that he would recommend that the NBA Board of Governors elect to force a sale of the Clippers as soon as possible.

Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $12 million. Estimates are that the Clippers, in the 2nd largest media market in the US, are worth at least $750 million.

After running the franchise into the ground for most of the past 33 years, Sterling will be forced out of the league with a $700 million ROI.

Is this a great country or what?.

The best advice I received after graduating from college. Also, a mnemonic for the coordinating conjunctions (yet, or, nor, so, but, and, for).

This week’s setup interview is with Preshit Deorukhkar. Preshit is man behind Beautiful Pixels, an excellent site that features apps that stand up as great examples of visual design.

✚

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Jim Koch is the co-founder and chairman of The Boston Beer Company, brewer of the Sam Adams beers. Part of his job is to drink professionally and he does so without getting completely sloshed. What's his secret? Eating a packet of dry yeast before tying one on.

You see, what [expert brewer] Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain.

"And it will mitigate - not eliminate - but mitigate the effects of alcohol!" Koch told me.

Could have used this tip last night. Does this mean no hangovers as well?

Update: I got two kinds of feedback about this post:

1) What's the fun in drinking alcohol if you're not getting drunk? (Good point.)

2) Yeast doesn't really work. What does seem to work is Pepcid AC and Zantac. From Shenglong on Hacker News:

Again, I'm not a chemist or a doctor, but from my preliminary internet research and anecdotal testing (though I have quite a few different data points), Famotadine (OTC) [Pepcid], and higher levels of APO-Ranitidine (can be prescription) [Zantac] seems to slow the rate of ethanol -> acetaldehyde, balancing out the drunkness effect more, and giving you more time to process the acetaldehyde -> acetic acid. I typically go from maxing out at 2 drinks / 3 hour period, to about 11 drinks / 3 hour period on Ranitidine, given favorable conditions. I've had lower levels of success with Famotadine.

And it goes without saying, I don't recommend trying any of this at home. At the local bar on the other hand Nope, not there either. (thx, @natebirdman)

Tags: alcohol   food   how to   Jim Koch

One more action we can take.

HBO is licensing some of their shows exclusively to Amazon for streaming on their Prime Instant Video service. Here's the scoop:

Beginning May 21, Amazon Prime members will have unlimited streaming access to:

- All seasons of revered classics such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Six Feet Under, and of recent favorites such as Eastbound & Down, Enlightened and Flight of the Conchords

- Epic miniseries, including Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, The Pacific and Parade's End

- Select seasons of current series such as Boardwalk Empire, Treme and True Blood

Game of Thrones and True Detective are notably absent from the deal. But Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to stream all of the shows above for free. (via deadline)

Tags: Amazon   HBO   TV

Project Naptha is a browser extension that lets you copy text from images on the web.

Project Naptha automatically applies state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms on every image you see while browsing the web. The result is a seamless and intuitive experience, where you can highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translate the text formerly trapped within an image.

I was skeptical of this actually working, but it totally does...try it on xkcd or Frank Sinatra's "loosen up" letter to George Michael for example. The translation and editing features aren't enabled yet, but the project's creator is working on them. (via @tcarmody)

There are many versions of the game 2048 (which is itself a rip-off of Threes). There's the original, a version that plays itself, a multiplayer version, a collaborative version, a doge version, a clever Flappy Bird version, the Numberwang version, one that uses only colors, a version that uses Dropbox to save progress and high scores, a hard version that actively works against you, a version where you add tiles to thwart an evil AI, and probably thousands of other versions.

But the best one is the one where each square is an animated GIF of Beyonce.

Tags: Beyonce   video games

Find out which Longhorn skill position player has the best shake in the open field.

Ruh-roh. Remember the news last month about the detection of gravitational waves would have allowed scientists to see all the way back to the Big Bang? Well, that result may be in jeopardy. The problem? Dust on the lens. Well, not on the lens exactly:

An imprint left on ancient cosmic light that was attributed to ripples in spacetime -- and hailed by some as the discovery of the century -- may have been caused by ashes from an exploding star.

In the most extreme scenario, the finding could suggest that what looked like a groundbreaking result was only a false alarm. Another possibility is that the stellar ashes could help bring the result in line with other cosmic observations. We should know which it is later this year, when researchers report new results from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.

You may also remember the video of physicist Andrei Linde being told about the result, which seemed to confirm a theory that had been his life's work. I don't think I want to see the video of Linde being told of this stellar ashes business. Although Linde is more than aware that this is how science works...you have to go where observation takes you. (via @daveg)

Tags: Andrei Linde   physics   science

Drone Week on Kottke continues with this beautiful drone video of NYC from Randy Scott Slavin.

I found two more videos and a bunch of stories about a drone crashing a crime scene last year. (thx, noah)

Tags: drones   NYC   video