Covered this week; ‘You Are Jeff Bezos’ shows us just how much 156 billion dollars is… John Gruber’s iPhone XR review… How old are particular words? A fun website to explore… What the hell happened to Darius Miles? Britney Spears took on Megyn Kelly long before anyone else had the idea… Digging deep into some Atari Asteroids folklore… Jim Carrey lights Donald Trump up…
October 22, 2018
Jeff Bezos, the richest man alive, is worth 156 billion dollars. Trying to visualize that much money is difficult… Kris Ligman’s online text game helps to put that much money in perspective in a funny way. A little run-up from The Outline to go with it if you’re interested.
How much money does Jeff Bezos have? Yes, he has 156 billion American dollars to his name, but how much money is that really? One way of translating how much money something really is to find a thing that costs that much without going over, or a convenient multiple (Jeff Bezos could fund the first moon landing 30 times over).
October 23, 2018
So as I’m in the market for a new iPhone with my old iPhone 7 recently passing its 2nd birthday… this review brought great news. In short, the new iPhone XR, which will be available here in a couple weeks, is not only close in specs to its older siblings the iPhone XS and XS+, it’s significantly cheaper… and there doesn’t seem to be a catch, all differences seem nominal. John Gruber’s extensive review on Daring Fireball tells the whole story.
The iPhone XR is everything Apple says it is, and it’s the new iPhone most people should buy. I’ve been using one as my primary phone for the last week, and it’s a lovely, exciting device. Even some of the things I thought were compromises don’t feel like compromises at all in practice. Overall, yes, the XS and XS Max are better devices, but in a few regards the XR is actually better.
October 24, 2018
The discovery of this website caused me to think about something for the first time… which is, words we use every day, all words for that matter… when did they enter the English lexicon? This website is a lot of fun… check out which words were added to the dictionary in the year you were born.
October 25, 2018
This is a great read in that it’s basically a transcription of a conversational Darius Miles talking about his own journey in his own words. Michael Jordan, Alonzo Mourning and Shaq all make appearances.
When you pop out the womb in East St. Louis, it’s guns, drugs and danger, from start to finish. And I’m not saying that to brag or nothing. It’s just what it is. It’s the murder capital. And the thing about it is that it’s only 89 blocks.
October 26, 2018
Granted, we’re on BuzzFeed today, not our usual top shelf fare… but some things just tickle me… Do you seek Amy?
The year was 2009. Obama was president, your aunt wasn’t on Facebook posting links about Michelle Obama being the Antichrist, stuff was probably like a few cents cheaper, people used straws with no shame, and Britney Spears released her third single from her comeback album, Circus.
October 27, 2018
Between Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac Man, Missile Command, Tempest, Centipede, Galaga and Defender… I lost a significant amount of my childhood as well as much of the money I was able to conjure in my youth… but that’s alright right? This is an interesting piece on the lineage of Asteroids and how it was the first game that came along that was able to unseat Space Invaders back in the late 70’s…
When you play Asteroids, it is worth taking a step back and thinking about Logg’s knack for genius design. He tweaked and toyed with the inertia of the player’s ship in an effort to get the play just right – at one point there was no friction to the ship at all which made the game too easy. Another idea was to ramp the friction of the ship’s thrust right up – but this resulted in too many accidental deaths and a feeling that the player wasn’t fully in control of the craft. Settling on the gentle mid-point glide effect of the ship gave players just the right balance between control and danger.
Additional cool stuff… The Arcade Blogger, the site this post links to, is run by a guy named Tony Temple. Here’s a link to 3 of his posts where he details (exhaustively with great pictures) his restoration of an Asteroids cabinet and console. So fantastic.
October 28, 2018
There was a time where I thought Jim Carrey might be one of those celebrities that went off the deep end, he was with Jenny McCarthy for a while right? But over time, and especially with his semi-recent foray into being a (quite awesome) painter… my opinion has changed, Carrey now projects as one of the more thoughtful, cohesive voices amongst those with a platform… his acceptance speech at the Brittania Awards the other night illustrates this, such a contrast to our lame ass POTUS.
Jim Carrey delivered a rousing political speech at the Britannia Awards on Friday evening when the actor received the British Academy’s Charlie Chaplin Award for Humor. Hailing Chaplin as his personal “artistic and humanitarian hero,” Carrey drew parallels between the era of Chaplin and now.
Editor’s Note; Taking Halloween week next week off… back on 11/5…
