Taken from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Largest US measles outbreak in Arizona after people refused vaccinations:

Health officials in Arizona say the largest current measles outbreak in the United States is in part because some workers at a federal immigration detention center refuse to get vaccinated.

Pinal County Health Department leaders say detention staff are responsible for 9 of the 22 cases in Arizona.

In Casa Grande, a total of eight cases have been reported — the most in any one area.

Welcome to the modern world, now with double the number of idiots.

How the UFC just was purchased for four billion dollars:

The answer is simple: live events and content. UFC produces more than 40 live events annually and reaches more than 1 billion TV households worldwide. In a world where people are increasingly watching things where and when they want, UFC—like most sporting events—remains one of the few areas of programming that people actually watch while it’s happening. Which makes it incredibly valuable in terms of advertising, sponsorships, and distribution deals.

I remember a friend introducing me the UFC back in the late 90s. It was started by the Gracie family as a means to showcase the power of their style of jiu jitsu. Back then jiu jitsu was not nearly as well-known as it is today and people couldn’t understand how Royce Gracie was taking down guys much bigger and stronger than him. This early fight with Royce is incredible. In the early days there were no time limits, hair-pulling was legal, and there were no weight classes. It was truly the wild west.

It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that I got back into watching the fights. Last year I started listening to UFC commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast and I’ve been captivated at his depth of knowledge when it comes to the UFC and mixed martial arts. This has made me watch fights with an even closer eye.

One side of me is happy for UFC president Dana White, but the other side of me wonders if the UFC has jumped the shark. It seems to be more about the glitz & glamour in recent years, and less about the fighting.

All this being said, you can bet I’ll be watching the Conor McGregor/Nate Diaz rematch on August 20th.

Vice: Why Trump’s Campaign Is Such a Disaster:

Donald Trump seemed to recognize this windfall last week, raising questions about Hillary Clinton’s honesty and truthworthiness in light of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. But in classic Trump fashion, he couldn’t quite stay on message, and during a speech, he delivered a deranged defense of a six-pointed star tweet and insisted that Saddam Hussein was “so good” at fighting terrorists.

That Trump would botch such a clear opportunity to reverse his dismal fundraising and sinking poll numbers is remarkable, but also not surprising. In the two months since the real estate mogul effectively locked up the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign has shown a stunning penchant for self-sabotage, ricocheting between catastrophes of its own creation.

Keep up the downward spiral. Keep it up.

The numbers don’t lie.

Of course, we’re talking about Android users, so I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of their sexual problems.

Over at TechCrunch, Basel Farag doesn’t want you to learn to code:

There’s an idea that’s been gaining ground in the tech community lately: Everyone should learn to code. But here’s the problem with that idea: Coding is not the new literacy.

If you regularly pay attention to the cultural shenanigans of Silicon Valley, you’ve no doubt heard of the “Learn to Code” movement. Politicians, nonprofit organizations like Code.org and even former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City have evangelized what they view as a necessary skill for tomorrow’s workforce.

There may be some truth to that, especially since the United States’ need for engineers shows no sign of slowing down.

But the picture is more complicated.

Farag’s basic premise is people should learn to problem solve before they learn to code. I agree with this. Even though I’m a designer I started teaching myself how to code over 15 years ago because I have a technical side to me that thinks coding can be fun. Other times I’ve learned certain aspects of coding because of a project requirement.

As the years have gone by I touch code less and less, but my basic understanding of code and development helps me as a designer when I collaborate with front-end and back-end developers.

The question, “Should I learn to code?” is similar to, “Should I start a blog?” and “Should I start a podcast?” The answer to all these is the same: do you have a problem that coding, a blog, or a podcast will help solve?

For me, learning to code in the early 2000s made me employable in the early days of the Internet and web design. I started this blog in 2006 because I needed a place to capture my thoughts and react to news. I started my podcast in 2014 as an extension of this site.

The other very important puzzle piece to this is persistence:

It took me more than a year of self-taught study before I got a freelance gig. Even then, the pay was poor. There were countless times I was refused even an interview because I didn’t have a computer science degree.

There were times when I could not afford a place to stay and had to rely on the kindness of friends to keep me going. There were many nights when I wanted to give up. But I found the strength to keep going.

It was — and is — persistence that allows me to stay in this field.

In varying degrees, I’ve stuck with my endeavors. Some scratch an itch (podcast), while others have more impact on my career (coding, blog).

The numbers don’t lie.

via Reddit

I few days ago I explained why I’m not a fan of movie reboots.

It seems I’m not alone. News broke this past week that the character Sulu is revealed to be gay in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond and the actor who originally played Sulu, and who has been openly gay since 2005 — George Takei — is not on board with the idea:

The idea came from Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty in the new films and penned the Beyond screenplay, and director Justin Lin, both of whom wanted to pay homage to Takei’s legacy as both a sci-fi icon and beloved LGBT activist.

And so a scene was written into the new film, very matter-of-fact, in which Sulu is pictured with a male spouse raising their infant child. Pegg and Lin assumed, reasonably, that Takei would be overjoyed at the development — a manifestation of that conversation with Roddenberry in his swimming pool so many years ago.

Except Takei wasn’t overjoyed. He had never asked for Sulu to be gay. In fact, he’d much prefer that he stay straight. “I’m delighted that there’s a gay character,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate.”

Takei explains that Roddenberry was exhaustive in conceiving his Star Trek characters. (The name Sulu, for example, was based on the Sulu Sea off the coast of the Philippines, so as to render his Asian nationality indeterminate.) And Roddenberry had always envisioned Sulu as heterosexual.

As nice an homage to Takei it is, I can understand Takei’s rejection of the idea. George Takei, the person, is gay, not Sulu. Being gay is Takei’s story to tell and champion.

Pegg responded, “respectfully disagreeing“:

Pegg expressed sympathy with Takei’s sentiment that mainstream gay heroes were belatedly coming to the big screen, but rejected the idea that this meant a new character needed creating.

“He’s right, it is unfortunate, it’s unfortunate that the screen version of the most inclusive, tolerant universe in science fiction hasn’t featured an LGBT character until now. We could have introduced a new gay character, but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character’, rather than simply for who they are, and isn’t that tokenism?”

Pegg continued: “Justin Lin, Doug Jung and I loved the idea of it being someone we already knew because the audience have a pre-existing opinion of that character as a human being, unaffected by any prejudice. Their sexual orientation is just one of many personal aspects, not the defining characteristic. Also, the audience would infer that there has been an LGBT presence in the Trek Universe from the beginning (at least in the Kelvin timeline), that a gay hero isn’t something new or strange. It’s also important to note that at no point do we suggest that our Sulu was ever closeted, why would he need to be? It’s just hasn’t come up before.”

At the end of the day, the most important question will be, is the movie any good?

From a The New York Times story on the deadly shooting in Dallas yesterday where 5 police officers were killed by a sniper:

“The negotiations broke down, and we had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect,” the chief said. “We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.”

Robots and artificial intelligence are doing more and more of what we humans used to do, including kill other humans.

Over at The New York Times, Moshe Bar on the benefits of a clear mind:

Recently, I discovered how much we overlook, not just about the world, but also about the full potential of our inner life, when our mind is cluttered. In a study published in this month’s Psychological Science, the graduate student Shira Baror and I demonstrate that the capacity for original and creative thinking is markedly stymied by stray thoughts, obsessive ruminations and other forms of “mental load.” Many psychologists assume that the mind, left to its own devices, is inclined to follow a well-worn path of familiar associations. But our findings suggest that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.

I always love the stories about how Steve Jobs would go on walks a lot, either to negotiate deals with other people or just by himself.

I do it a lot myself here in San Francisco, but I think the habit got formed in my 10+ years living in Manhattan because in New York, you have to walk everywhere (why wouldn’t you want to?).

It’s amazing the ideas that pop in my head when I’m walking. If you don’t do it, you should give it a try.

Regular readers of Daily Exhaust know I’m not a fan of Microsoft. I feel this way for a lot of reasons. I think they’re always a day late and a dollar short with new products (see Windows Phone, Nokia, Microsoft Stores, etc), they historically have not valued design, and every attempt at being cool ends up being very, very, very uncool.

The latest example is a recruitment email aimed at interns (via Twitter):

You’re not cool, Microsoft, you’re fuckin’ chilly, and chilly ain’t never been cool.

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

—e.e. cummings

via Brain Pickings

Seth Godin: The computer, the network and the economy:

When a pre-employed person says, “I don’t know how to code and I’m not interested in selling,” we need to pause for a moment and think about what we built school for. When he continues, “I don’t really have anything interesting to say, and I’m not committed to making a particular change in the world, but I’m pretty good at following instructions,” we’re on the edge of a seismic shift in our culture. And not a positive one.

No, the good jobs aren’t coming back. But yes, there’s a whole host of a new kind of good job, one that feels fundamentally different from the old days. It doesn’t look like a job used to look, but it’s the chance of lifetime if we can shift gears fast enough.

You don’t have to like this shift, but ignoring it, yelling about it, cutting ourselves off from it is a recipe for a downward spiral. It’s an opportunity if we let it be one.

The mutants will survive.

This is amazing.

If you don’t get it, I can’t help you.

And shame on you too.