In Back to the Future Part II they led us to believe we’d have flying cars, hoverboards and auto-lacing sneakers by 2015.

Wrong on all counts.

We have people running around looking for imaginary Pokémon. They’re also accomplishing all sorts of other things like the woman who found a dead body behind a Holocaust Memorial in New Hampshire, the 2 California men who fell off the edge of an ocean bluff while playing, or the wonderful criminals that are using the game to rob people.

Welcome to the future.

Tracy Morgan is right.

Holy moly.

Now I know.

Consumer Reports: Samsung phone not actually water resistant:

The problem appears limited to the Galaxy S7 Active, a rugged model available only through AT&T in the U.S. The standard S7 and S7 Edge models have the same claims on water resistance and passed tests.

Consumer Reports, a non-profit organization that is well respected for its product testing, said Friday that it can’t recommend the Active because it doesn’t meet Samsung’s own claims. By contrast, Consumer Reports rates the S7 and S7 Edge phones as “Excellent” for their displays, battery life and cameras.

Nice try, Samsung.

Interesting question/answer I found on Quora.

Why did Donald Trump use the Star of David in his tweet about Hillary Clinton being corrupt?:

This is called a dogwhistle. A literal dogwhistle is a sound dogs can hear but humans can’t. A metaphorical dogwhistle is a coded message that one part of the audience understands and others do not. Or, as is more common in politics, everyone understands but some people can claim some shred of plausible deniability that it wasn’t meant that way.

Everyone on Donald Trump’s campaign knows that the six-pointed star is associated with Judaism.

This is the first time I’ve heard the term ‘dogwhistle’ used in this context.

I’m a sucker for great metaphors.

CBS Sports: Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour winning percentage is still an absurd statistic:

So that is something. Tiger’s numbers are just preposterous. If he played as much as Davis Love III, he would presumably have 175 career wins. Of course part of this is staying healthy, which Love has done and Tiger hasn’t. Also, there is no way Tiger could have kept up the intensity with which he played for 700 events, which is part of what made him who he was.

Here are the numbers (my emphasis):

• Tiger Woods: 79 wins in 324 events 24.2 percent
• Phil Mickelson: 42 wins in 542 events 7.75 percent
• Vijay Singh: 34 wins in 584 events 5.82 percent
• Davis Love III: 21 wins in 733 events 2.86 percent
• Ernie Els: 19 wins in 420 events 4.52 percent
• Jim Furyk: 17 wins in 551 events 3.09 percent
• David Toms: 13 wins in 607 events 2.14 percent
• Adam Scott: 13 wins in 259 events 5.02 percent
• Zach Johnson: 12 wins in 330 events 3.64 percent
• Justin Leonard: 12 wins in 583 events 2.06 percent
• Steve Stricker: 12 wins in 459 events 2.61 percent
• Dustin Johnson: 11 wins in 194 events 5.67 percent
• Rory McIlroy: 11 wins in 111 events 9.91 percent
• Jason Day: 10 wins in 184 events 5.43 percent

Tiger is incredible.

Well, this sucks.

I joined Weave a few months ago as a way to meet more people and grow my professional network. It’s important to meet people face-to-face and not just text like 13-year-olds.

Hey humans! It’s important to be human.

So i’ve been on a total of 2 coffee dates and then I get this in my inbox earlier today:

It seems I was too tremendous for Weave and I broke the system.

It’s too bad, I think Weave was a great service and I was way closer to upgrading to a premium account than I was for LinkedIn (especially now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn).

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