James Clear says we should do more of what already works (via TNW):

In 2004, nine hospitals in Michigan began implementing a new procedure in their intensive care units (I.C.U.). Almost overnight, healthcare professionals were stunned with its success.

Three months after it began, the procedure had cut the infection rate of I.C.U. patients by sixty-six percent. Within 18 months, this one method had saved 75 million dollars in healthcare expenses. Best of all, this single intervention saved the lives of more than 1,500 people in just a year and a half. The strategy was immediately published in a blockbuster paper for the New England Journal of Medicine.

This medical miracle was also simpler that you could ever imagine. It was a checklist.

Checklists are just as effective for those of us not in the medical field:

Of course, these answers are boring. Mastering the fundamentals isn’t sexy, but it works. No matter what task you are working on, there is a simple checklist of steps that you can follow right now—basic fundamentals that you have known about for years—that can immediately yield results if you just practice them more consistently.

This reminds me of a great book my brother recommended to me, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp.

People always want new, innovative, silver bullet shortcuts to getting shit done, when it’s really just about showing up and checking objectives off your list.

The Story Behind the Black Lives Matter Photo Seen Around the World:

Jonathan Bachman’s recent photo of a Black Lives Matter protester in Baton Rouge being arrested, which he took for Reuters, is one of those wire photos destined to become an iconic image. The woman, Ieshia Evans, seems to have a serene power over the police officers taking her into custody, and the lack of any other protesters in the frame give the photo a surreal tinge, as if it’s taken the combined might of the Baton Rouge Police Department to arrest a single black woman.

It’s an incredible photo to be sure, but what can make photos seem surreal is because of all the information not included in the frame: The sounds, smells, tension in the air, the weather. We aren’t seeing what happened leading up to and after the shot.

Photos are a paradox: their power resides in both what they show and what they leave out.

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.