PicoBlog

NBA draft classes typically leave long-lasting legacies either as a result of being uncommonly loaded with talent (1984, 1996, 2003), or marked with dismal failure (2000). The 2001 class produced a variety of quality NBA players like Zach Randolph, Shane Battier and Richard Jefferson; a couple who had remarkable peaks in Gilbert Arenas and Joe Johnson; and cornerstones of championship teams, Pau Gasol and Tony Parker. No one from the 2001 class was transcendent, but it’s a strong group overall.

“He is beating everyone up in the gyms,” confided someone to me. “You should do a video with him,” said another. Curmel Moton is the most talked about American fighter, who isn’t an Olympian in some time. With coach Bobby McRoy live streaming the backstage events of Moton’s second fight that was somehow off-television, the feeling is simple. A lot of people look at Moton’s build, frame, aggression, and relationship to Floyd Mayweather and see Gervonta Davis 2.

Today, for the next couple days, we celebrate the curious life of a Mount Washington legend, Marty Engstrom, who passed away yesterday at the age of 86. What, you may ask was Marty famous for? Was it his climbing or skiing skills? Nope. Marty was known across New England for primarily one thing, and it’s a hell of a legacy. You see, Marty was known for his smile. A couple years ago, I had the very great honor of spending the day at Marty’s farm in Maine.

This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. The Goemon series is one that Konami, for a couple of decades, was impressively dedicated to. The first game, Mr. Goemon, appeared in arcades in 1988: Konami would release 22 more mainline games (including remakes and mobile titles) by 2005, with seven spin-offs in that same stretch for an even 30 games total.

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To read more of my feature stories, as well as posts from my longform project, Masters of Disruption: How the Gamer Generation Built the Future, please subscribe below. Thanks! Continuing my stories on the dawn of cyberwar, here’s a piece I did about the hunt for Stuxnet, the malware that stymied Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment program. It originally appeared in IEEE Spectrum in February 2013. Computer cables snake across the floor.

Creating connections through stories on breastfeeding, high-risk pregnancies, raising a kiddo with a disability, navigating hospital stays, finding your way, and running. If you've experienced all or one of these - you don't walk (or run) alone. Not right now! - MomncG1vNJzZmismJq5psDDqK6nZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonw%3D

One aspect of Britain’s policy of nuclear deterrence has long fascinated me: the Letter of Last Resort. Since the late 1960s, Britain has maintained a fleet of four submarines, each equipped with several ballistic missiles with thermonuclear warheads. Of the four submarines, at least one is always deployed – for half a century, Britain has maintained its Continuous At Sea Deterrence.   It functions, effectively, as a dead man’s switch: were Britain devastated by a nuclear first-strike, and its government decapitated, it could still launch a retaliatory strike.

In last week’s essay on Žižek, I mentioned that my dissertation—the core argument from which was eventually adapted into this book—was about the Liar Paradox. If you’re curious enough about philosophy to be reading this Substack, there’s a decent chance that you more or less know what that is—but you might not really get why it’s philosophically interesting enough for people to continue to put out books about it in the third decade of the twenty-first century.