Allegory of the Cave is one of my favorite stories in philosophy. This visual essay is an interesting interpretation of it.

I would not have guessed what it was inspired by if I hadn’t been told.

via Laughing Squid

Everything is a remix.

Over at DOD Buzz, Matthew Cox reports the, “U.S. Army Special Operations Command is dumping its Android tactical smartphone for an iPhone model“:

The iPhone 6S will become the end-user device for the iPhone Tactical Assault Kit — special-operations-forces version Army’s Nett Warrior battlefield situational awareness tool, according to an Army source, who is not authorized to speak to the media. The iTAC will replace the Android Tactical Assault Kit.

The iPhone is “faster; smoother. Android freezes up” and has to be restarted too often, the source said. The problem with the Android is particularly noticeable when viewing live feed from an unmanned aerial system such as Instant Eye, the source said.

When trying to run a split screen showing the route and UAS feed, the Android smart phone will freeze up and fail to refresh properly and often have to be restarted, a process that wastes valuable minutes, the source said.

“It’s seamless on the iPhone,” according to the source. “The graphics are clear, unbelievable.”

“Open always wins,” right?

Maybe not.

via Daring Fireball

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.