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Folks, Tom Cruise Was The Real Mummy ALL ALONG
The author, like his subject, rejected consumer capitalism and travelled to Israel to find a more meaningful Jewish life. But problems arose One day before the outbreak of the first world war, a precocious boy called Gerhard Scholem burst into a room at home and began the rite of symbolically castrating his father. Papa, I think I want to be a Jew, he exclaimed. He was planning to learn Hebrew, study the Bible and become a Zionist. His father, an assimilationist German businessman who despised his Jewish heritage, was appalled: You want to return to the ghetto? he asked. Youre the ones who are living in the ghetto, his son snapped back. Only you wont admit it. Scholem meant that his father had established the family in a gilded bourgeois Jewish prison within a hostile German society his friend, Walter Benjamin, who grew up in a similarly privileged west Berlin milieu, described it as something of a ghetto held on lease. These rebellious sons turned out to be unwittingly prescient. Such Oedipal confrontations were common in German-speaking lands during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as the privileged sons of Jewish businessmen rebelled against their fathers devotion to bourgeois accumulation and deluded patriotism for a Wilhelmine polity that denied Jews equal rights. Some rebels such as Gerhards brother Werner (who would die in 1940 in Buchenwald) became communists. Others, Scholem for one, were attracted by the Zionist hopes advanced by political activist Theodor Herzl and philosopher Martin Buber. Scholem kept a portrait of the former on his bedroom wall, and felt a jolt of electricity when he heard Buber lecture and identify Jews as Orientals for whom the priority was mutuality and community, processes and relationships against the atomised, petrified western man of the senses. He dreamed that the Jews could replace, as George Prochnik puts it, the attitude of impotent suffering with rambunctious perilously naked self-expression. Instead of being strangers in European lands, Jews could go home and become themselves not hobbled melancholics of the diaspora, nor spiritless worshippers of degrading consumer capitalism. from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/stranger-in-a-strange-land-by-george-prochnik-review-gershom-scholem-and-zionism/
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Death, taxes, and AAA video game sequels: the only inevitable things in this world. If we didn’t get a new Call Of Duty or Assassin’s Creed this year, we would take it as an omen of Ragnarok — which is why it’s all the more tragic that some of the best potential sequels ever envisioned will never come to pass. Like … #5. Fallout Online Got Lost In A Legal QuagmireLong before Fallout 4 brought the mighty porn industry to its knees, pun remorselessly intended, the Fallout games put a lot more emphasis on the role-playing side of things, giving you a birds-eye view of a game that looks like it could be run with the processing power of an unusually large potato. Not even an Idaho one — more like a Wisconsin-grown potato. The early Fallout games were considered some of the finest RPGs ever made. But in 2007, Interplay, its creator, sold the franchise to Bethesda Softworks, the company of 10,000 artists and three voice actors. Part of the deal was that Interplay got to keep the rights to develop an MMO based on Fallout — think World Of Warcraft, but with super mutants instead of orcs. A huge improvement on the sexiness scale. This wasn’t just a pipe dream — large chunks of the map had been developed, the guts of the gameplay were functional, scenarios had been written, players had the ability to create and run their own towns, and Interplay had developed a “game-worldwide meta-puzzle,” where the entire player base would have to come together to solve an elaborate mystery that spanned the apocalypse. Basically, you know how all your friends won’t shut up about their Fallout 4 adventures? Fallout Online would have allowed you to have those adventures together, although it also would have vastly increased the likelihood of employers across the country seeing through your fake illness when you inadvertently grouped up with them. The Stupid Reason It Was Cancelled: That deal we mentioned? It came with the condition that Interplay had to start getting serious about working on Fallout Online by 2009. All those words we just said up there implied that they had, but Bethesda disagreed and took Interplay to court. Long and complicated story short, Bethesda lost more decisions than the Washington Generals, but eventually managed to settle out of court, giving Interplay 2 million bucks and permission to continue developing their game — as long as they stripped every mention of “Fallout” from it. Their knock-off Nuka-Cola would have been nothing but raw Definitely Not Fallout Online was then handed over to another developer who ran a crowdfunding campaign to rustle up even more money, after which they, uh, vanished from the face of the Earth, taking every hope of a Fallout MMO with them (and also the money of all those loyal fans). Dickheads? Dickheads never change. #4. A Completed Star Fox 2 Was Canned Because Of The Console WarsStar Fox, the game that birthed a generation of furries, and Star Fox 64, the game that birthed a generation of frog-hating barrel roll enthusiasts, are both universally regarded as classic Nintendo games that look like the aftermath of a drunken polygon party by today’s standards. But another game was supposed to have come out in-between them, appropriately titled Star Fox 2. And it looked pretty damn good … Instead of just being a linear series of ship battles, Star Fox 2 would have had you flying around the solar system to contain an invasion force. You had to pick your battles, defend your home planet from missiles, and retreat from fights to dive into others that needed you more, adding strategy and exploration to a game whose only weak point was its on-rails nature. There was also a multiplayer duel option, and the Star Fox team would have expanded to include a tomboy lynx and a fashionable poodle girl. And we think everyone can agree that the male-dominated Star Fox team needed some ladies to balance out the space combat gender gap and help guide some animal-loving players through a very special time in their lives. Someone’s about to make a Slippy in their pants. Once you tear your eyes away, you may start wondering why basically everything is known about a game that got the ax. Well, the game was all finished and set to be released in the summer of 1995 until it was abruptly cancelled, which is like watching your mom pull a fresh batch of chocolate-chip cookies out of the oven, only to dump them in the garbage bin and cover them with cat vomit. The Stupid Reason It Was Cancelled: Star Fox 2 was all set to be a hit, partially because Nintendo in the ’90s could have slapped their name on a box of venomous centipedes and still sold a million copies. But, the Nintendo 64 was about to come out, and Nintendo wanted a clean break between the Super Nintendo’s two dimensions and the N64’s bold new future of one more than that. A strategy that never, ever bit them in the ass. Ever. Also, the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation had just come out, and Nintendo was worried that their newfangled 3D games would make Star Fox 2 look shitty and old-fashioned by comparison, regardless of how fun it was. And so they pulled the plug, losing money and scuttling a couple years of hard work because graphics were more important than gameplay, even in an era when every 3D game you played made you feel like you had cyber-glaucoma. Rats, in this case, being Nintendo’s accountants. #3. Fez 2 Became The Casualty Of A Twitter SpatIndie game Fez, whose tumultuous five-year development earned its own Wikipedia page, was primarily powered by designer Phil Fish, who was quite outspoken about how game design may not always be kitten snuggles and rainbows. But, Fez overcame long odds to sell more than a million copies and become highly regarded as an ingenious platforming puzzle game. A sequel seemed inevitable, and, sure enough, along came a teaser video with suitably epic music … … and then Fish canned the game a month after announcing it, to the complete shock of everyone who wasn’t named Phil Fish. The Stupid Reason It Was Cancelled: When Fish refused to comment on Microsoft’s new Xbox One indie game development policies, obscure gaming journalist Marcus Beer decided that this was an egregious affront against humanity. Beer said Fish was “bitching and moaning” about having to answer media questions. He also called Fish a “fucking asshole,” a “fucking hipster,” and a “tosspot,” which we’re pretty sure is British for something along the lines of “not a great dude.” Fish responded on Twitter in the most mature and responsible way that platform allows: by telling Beer to go kill himself. Yet another stupid fight started with Beer consumption. When the dust settled, Fish declared, “I fucking hate this industry,” cancelled the game, announced his exit from game development, and took his ball home. Leaving disappointed fans to tell him where he could put it. Fish later clarified that the cancellation of Fez 2 wasn’t “due to any one thing,” implying that Beer’s comments were simply the straw that broke the fish’s back. … said the boorish fuck. But, regardless of other contributing factors, it was a stupid Twitter spat that ultimately killed the game. Seriously, social media, is there anything you don’t ruin? #2. A Mario Volleyball Game Was Cancelled For Violating A Vague Honor CodeMario is one of the greatest athletes to ever fictionally exist. From golf, tennis, and go-karting to baseball, basketball, and more, he has mastered countless sports, despite looking like his favorite is amateur hot dog eating. So, when Next Level Gamers started working on a Mario volleyball game with the premise of “Hey, Mario hasn’t played volleyball yet,” they must have felt pretty good about their odds of success — especially since they had already made their mark with two Super Mario Strikers games that were praised for combining the tedium of soccer with the physics of Space Jam. At least it gives Waluigi something to do in between bouts of never doing anything. Then, they threw in elements of professional wrestling and game shows to make the weirdest hybrid this side of a stoner’s kitchen. Nintendo’s beloved characters were going to spike balls into faces and pile-drive each other into the floors of electrified rings in the insane genre mash-up you never knew you wanted. At best, it would have been a glorious, surreal combination of ideas that monopolized your weekends like so many go-kart races and tennis matches before it. And, at worst, it would have provided fleeting amusement before your inevitable demise, which is all we can really ask of a video game. It honestly makes about as much sense as actual wrestling, so why not? The Stupid Reason It Was Cancelled: Nintendo felt that “certain aspects of [the game’s] premise clashed with the company’s code of honor,” because Nintendo apparently operates under the same principles as the French Foreign Legion. Just what Nintendo meant is vague, but we do know that they were uncomfortable with the level of violence in the game and considered it “dishonorable” to be able to hit characters that were already down. Behold the incredible, stomach-churning combat that Nintendo found unsettling: What happened to wholesome entertainment, like ripping turtles Their objections mostly just raise further questions, considering one of their most successful franchises is all about having their most popular characters mercilessly pummel the absolute shit out of each other. Maybe volleyball is just really unpopular in Japan. Or, maybe the video game industry is terrifyingly arbitrary, and it’s a wonder anything ever gets made at all. Or, maybe both! #1. Silent Hills Was Cancelled Because Konami Thinks Mobile Gaming Is The FutureDoubly so if they included an alternate skin of his fashion model days. The hype train gained further steam with the release of P.T., a playable teaser (oooh, we just got that), where you stroll through the same hallway repeatedly and watch your home slowly get more and more horrifying. Home Alone took a dark turn once Kevin found Buzz’s stash of mushrooms. There was no combat, almost no dialogue, a simple plot, and little interaction beyond discovering what fucked-up thing was now in your bathroom. And it was still widely considered one of the best horror games of the year. That’s like a movie trailer beating actual movies for the Best Picture Oscar. It was a legitimately terrifying experience and, if the full game was able to match its intensity, it would have been an instant classic. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to devour my flesh and feast on my soul.” And then it was cancelled, the ability to download P.T. was removed, and developer Konami is now hunting down anyone who still references its existence and sending them to re-education camps. Run! Save yourself, before it’s too late! The Stupid Reason It Was Cancelled: Konami thinks traditional games just aren’t worth the effort anymore. This is the Silent Hill game they decided to make instead. Yes, that’s a Silent Hill-themed slot machine set to music that’s rocking junior high schools across Midwest America. We completely understand if you need a minute for the tears to stop. Konami actually makes more money from their casino games than they do from video games, and they think mobile games represent the only profitable future in the latter department. Three Pyramid Heads nets you 50,000 points and your grandma’s head on a pike. OK, so it’s a cold yet rational business decision. Disappointing, but understandable. But, wait a second — Metal Gear Solid V, a game that was anticipated as much as Silent Hills, made more money in its opening weekend than Jurassic World and Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Combined. It’s a massive hit, leaving Konami’s logic inscrutable. Between deciding they don’t like making games anymore, cutting ties with long-time collaborator Kojima, and making Del Toro say that he’ll never work on a video game again, it’s like Konami’s having a midlife crisis where they quit their job, divorce their spouse, alienate their friends, and hit the open road on a brand-new type of motorcycle that runs solely on spite. Ready to see the kind of shit we got instead? Then check out Seanbaby’s The 20 Worst NES Games Of All-Time and The 6 Worst Games Ever Farted Out By Beloved Franchises. Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-awesome-game-sequels-that-were-screwed-over-canned/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/05/01/5-awesome-game-sequels-that-were-screwed-over-canned/ Elvira “Vera” Montez, 81, is an avid runner, but when her daughter suggested she try and run a beer mile, Vera hesitated. She hesitated not because she didn’t think she could finish, but rather because she prefers scotch. Vera told the El Paso Times,
But on December 1, Vera laced up her running shoes alongside her daughter for the2015 FloTrack Beer Mile World Championships. She finished her mile, and the requisite four beers, in20 minutes and 24.62 seconds, a full minute faster than her daughter. Think that’s impressive? This is actually Vera’s second beer mile. Last year she completed it in 20 minutes and 44 seconds, making the 2015 race her personal record. Of this year’s beer mile Vera’s daughter, Renee Reynolds, told the El Paso Times,
After the race, Vera apparently took her daughter to Hooters for chicken wings and scotch. Vera additionally told Runners World, she will return next year and plans to train by drinking beer on her treadmill. Way to stay badass, Vera! Source: http://allofbeer.com/this-81-year-old-grandmother-crushes-the-beer-mile-like-a-true-champion/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/this-81-year-old-grandmother-crushes-the-beer-mile-like-a-true-champion/ There are some health “facts” that many people have heard so many times that they just assume they are true, ideas like “juice is healthy” or “gum will stay in your stomach for years. But many of these “facts” are really myths about health. Here’s what the science really says about these health myths. There’s something about health and nutrition folk wisdom that’s resistant to truth. Common health “facts” include the ideas that MSG will make you sick, that a juice detox is just what you need after a week of indulgence, and that sports drinks like Gatorade are totally fine since you need the electrolytes. None of these things are true. They, like many other folk sayings and tips, fall into the category of health myths that are totally — or at least mostly — wrong. Here’s the truth behind some of those health claims you’ve heard all your life, but might not hold water at all. MSG in Chinese food will make you sick. The myth that MSG is bad for you comes from a letter a doctor wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968, where he coined the term “Chinese restaurant syndrome” to describe a variety of symptoms including numbness and general weakness. But though the doctor blamed these feelings on monosodium glutamate, MSG, the research doesn’t back it up. The scientific consensus according the American Chemical Society is that “MSG can temporarily affect a select few when consumed in huge quantities on an empty stomach, but it’s perfectly safe for the vast majority of people.“ And this makes sense — MSG is nothing more than a common amino acid with a sodium atom added. The placebo effect is more than strong enough to account for the negative effects sometimes associated with MSG. Coffee stunts your growth. There isn’t a whole lot of evidence on this, but most research finds no correlation between caffeine consumption and bone growth in kids. In adults, researchers have seen that increased caffeine consumption can very slightly limit calcium absorption, but the impact is so small that a tablespoon of milk will more than adequately offset the effects of a cup of coffee. Interestingly, advertising seems to be largely responsible for this myth. A breakfast cereal manufacturer named C.W. Post was trying to market a morning beverage called “Postum” as an alternative to coffee, so he ran ads on the “evils” of Americans’ favorite hot beverage, calling it a “nerve poison” that should never be served to children. Bundle up or you’ll catch a cold. Being physically cold isn’t what gets you sick; exposure to a cold virus does. There’s no evidence that going outside with wet hair when it’s freezing will make you sick by itself — provided you avoid hypothermia. But there are some scientifically sound explanations for why people catch more colds in winter. Because we spend more time in close quarters indoors, it is more likely that we’ll cross paths with a cold-causing virus spread from another person during the winter. And for several reasons, we may have a harder time fighting off cold and flu virus particles in winter. But being cold itself isn’t what makes sick, and some argue that cold exposure can actually improve your health. The chemical tryptophan in turkey makes you sleepy. Who doesn’t love the post-Thanksgiving nap? We frequently consider those naps inevitable, since turkey contains tryptophan, an amino acid that is a component of some of the brain chemicals that help you relax. But plenty of foods contain tryptophan. Cheddar cheese has even more than turkey — and cheddar is never pointed out as a sleep inducing food. Experts say that instead, the carbs, alcohol, and general size of the Turkey-day feast are the cause of those delicious holiday siestas. Taking your vitamins will keep you healthy. Vitamins sound like a great idea. One pill that can provide you everything you need to be healthy! If only they worked. After decades of research on vitamins, most reviews don’t find any justification for our multivitamin habit, and in some cases, vitamins have actually been associated with an increased risk of various cancers. Malnourished people might benefit from some supplements, but most of us should just get our vitamins naturally from food. Beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, you’re in the clear. We’re all heard it: “beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.” But while it’s very true that overdoing it with booze might leave you praying to the porcelain gods, there’s no need to place the blame on the order you consume the beverages in — alcohol is alcohol, and too much of it will make anyone feel sick. However, there are some strange ways this piece of advice can make sense. People who switch from beer to mixed drinks (with senses and judgment already dulled) may be less likely likely to monitor their alcohol consumption and thus drink more. And some research shows that your body metabolizes mixed drinks faster than higher-concentration alcohol (a shot of whiskey, say). So adding liquor to a stomach-full of beer could, in theory, create a sort of mixed drink that would metabolize faster than one or the other on its own. We’ll call this one partly true, but chalk up the “never sicker” part mostly to bad decision making. You lose 90% of your body heat through your head. Not necessarily. You lose body heat through anything uncovered, according to Dr. Aaron E. Carroll and Dr. Rachel C. Vreeman, authors of “Don’t Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health.” Your head is not special in that way — it’s just more likely to be exposed. “Most of the time when we’re outside in the cold, we’re clothed,” Richard Ingebretsen, MD, PhD, told WebMD Magazine. “If you don’t have a hat on, you lose heat through your head, just as you would lose heat through your legs if you were wearing shorts.” Wait an hour after eating to swim or you’ll drown. Some parents say no swimming for 30 minutes after eating, some say an hour, but many of us may remember waiting out the clock before returning to the pool or beach. The theory behind this seems to be that digesting food will draw blood to your stomach, meaning that less blood is available for your muscles, making them more likely to cramp. But there’s no evidence to support this claim. In fact, many sources say there are no documented cases of anyone ever drowning because they’ve had a cramp related to swimming with a full stomach. Cramps do happen frequently when swimming, but they aren’t caused by what’s in your stomach. If you do get one, the best policy is to float for a minute and let it pass. It takes 7 years for gum to digest if you swallow it. When it got out that Trump press secretary Sean Spicer chews and swallows two and a half packs of chewing gum by noon every day, many people had the same question: Couldn’t that maybe do some harm? Probably not. Gum is mostly indigestible, meaning that it usually passes through your intestines and exits the other side, like most of what your body doesn’t need and can’t digest. “On rare occasions, large amounts of swallowed gum combined with constipation have blocked intestines in children,” Dr. Michael Picco of the Mayo Clinic writes. Still, he says swallowing gum generally isn’t harmful. When you’re drunk on gin, you get mean. There are plenty of alcohol-related myths out there, and the idea that different alcohols have different effects on you is a big one. Some people claim wine makes them sleepy while whiskey makes them want to argue. In short, experts say this is bunk. “Alcohol is alcohol whichever way you slice it,” pharmacologist Paul Clayton, a fellow of Oxford’s Institute of Food, Brain & Behaviour, told The Guardian. So why do people insist that tequila makes them crazy? One very strong possibility is that we experience the effects we expect when we drink (or consume most substances). Scientific research going back to the 1960s shows that we “learn” how to behave while drunk, and that our actual drunken behavior is a direct reflection of our expectations. Although many people may become violent while intoxicated, people who have never associated drunkenness with conflict don’t show the same behavior. So by that same token, if we expect that vodka will make us want to sing karaoke, we can perhaps turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. A juice cleanse will ‘detox’ you after an unhealthy eating binge. The myth of the juice cleanse is a stubborn one — and one frequently promoted by celebrities — but it’s both wrong and unhealthy. First of all, your body naturally removes harmful chemicals through the liver, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract — there’s nothing about juice that will hurry that process along. Secondly, juicing is mostly a way of removing helpful fiber from fruits and vegetables — many sugary fruit juices are as bad for you as sodas. You’re making the fruit less healthy by “juicing” it. Everyone should drink eight glasses of water a day. Hydration is very important, but the idea that eight glasses of water is essential is a strange one. In healthy people, researchers haven’t found a connection between fluid intake and kidney disease, heart disease, sodium levels, or skin quality. People get a lot of their water from foods and other beverages in the first place, but there is a good reason to drink more water. It’s a calorie free alternative to other beverages (especially sugary ones), and people who drink water instead of those beverages consume fewer calories overall. But in general, drink when you are thirsty — you don’t need to count the glasses. It’s fine to eat something if it’s been on the floor for less than 5 seconds. It’s the worst when something you really wanted to eat falls on the floor. But if you grab it in five seconds, is it okay? Sorry, but the five-second-rule isn’t a real thing. Bacteria can contaminate a food within milliseconds. Moist foods attract more bacteria than dry foods, but there’s no “safe duration.” Instead, safety depends on how clean the surface you dropped the food on is. Whether you eat it or not after that is up to you, but if the people that walk on that floor are also walking around New York City, for example, we wouldn’t recommend it. Vaccines can be risky. This idea comes from a now thoroughly-debunked (and retracted) study of 12 children that appeared in 1998 in The Lancet and claimed there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. It turned out that study wasn’t only flawed, it also contained false information that was necessary to make its point. Since then, numerous studies that have analyzed data from more than a million children have shown that there’s no connection between vaccines and autism. But fears about that connection have persisted, partially spurred on by public figures making false claims about vaccines. This has led to scary diseases like measles coming back. Yogurt will help put your digestive system back in order. This is one of our modern health myths. Yogurt is frequently marketed as having benefits for digestion and as something that’ll keep people slim because of probiotics, or the “good bacteria” that’s living inside it. Researchers have found that the bacteria in our bodies are very connected to our metabolism and obesity rates, among other things, so it seems like there’s a logical connection here. But we don’t yet understand how the trillions of bacteria in our bodies work well enough to manipulate them in this way. Despite the fact that the probiotic business was worth $23.1 billion in 2012, we can’t make yogurt that will repair our inner bacterial balance. That’s not to say that yogurt is unhealthy, just that its benefits are oversold. Plus, a lot of yogurt is packed with sugar, which we do know contributes to obesity and other problems — so if you enjoy yogurt, find a version that isn’t full of additional unnecessary calories or it might have the opposite of the intended effect. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples are good for you, packed with vitamin C and fiber, both of which are important to long-term health, but they aren’t all you need. And if certain viruses or bacteria get into your system, an apple will unfortunately do nothing to protect you. So go ahead and get that flu shot, even if you eat apples. Eating ice cream will make your cold worse. If you’re home sick with a cold, you can totally go ahead and comfort yourself with some ice cream. The idea that dairy increases mucus production is very fortunately not true, according to researchers and a doctor at the Mayo Clinic, who says “in fact, frozen dairy products can soothe a sore throat and provide calories when you otherwise may not eat.” Praise be. Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis. Fortunately, this isn’t true either. Cracking your knuckles may annoy the people around you, but even people who have done it frequently for many years aren’t any more likely to develop arthritis than those who don’t. Starve a fever, feed a cold. There’s a good reason you may have heard this said multiple ways, either “starve a cold, feed a fever” or “starve a fever, feed a cold.” Despite a slew of headlines claiming that starving a fever wasn’t a myth in response to a tiny and largely misinterpreted study in 2002, there’s no real evidence to back this up. Limiting your caloric consumption may actually hurt your immune system more than helping it, and it would certainly be a bad idea to not eat during the 6-8 day duration of a cold. Instead, doctors say to go ahead and eat if you can. The more accurate expression, as Scientific American notes, would be “feed a cold, feed a fever.” And make sure to get plenty of fluids. It’s fine to drink sports drinks to rehydrate. We all know that soda and similarly sugary drinks like lemonade are bad for us (right?), but what about sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade? Sports-focused advertising has successfully convinced a whole lot of people that downing a bottle of this stuff is fine, especially if you’ve gone for a jog recently — it’s replacing electrolytes, after all. But really, for most people the amount of sugar in these drinks is far more than is needed — even if you’ve been exercising. Lower calorie options, which many of the same companies have created in recent years, are much better options. Or just drink water. Drinking water can help you avoid a sunburn. New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady loves hydration and has said that drinking water helps him avoid getting a sunburn. There’s nothing wrong with hydration. But there’s no evidence whatsoever that being hydrated can prevent you from getting burned by ultraviolet radiation in any way. Only sunscreen or clothing will do that. Go ahead and drink enough water to quench your thirst. But if you’re going to be out in the sun for a while, don’t forget to cover up. Coffee and beer dehydrate you, since caffeine and alcohol are diuretics. In sufficient quantities, caffeine and alcohol can have a diuretic effect. But the amount of caffeine in a typical cup of coffee or alcohol in a beer isn’t enough to really have this effect, according to one recent study. A moderate amount of either coffee or beer hydrates people just about as well as water does. Milk does a body good (and protects your bones)! This is an incredibly successful bit of advertising that has wormed its way into our brains and policies — the US Department of Agriculture tells us that adults should drink three cups of milk a day, mostly for calcium and vitamin D. However, multiple studies show that there isn’t an association between drinking more milk (or taking calcium and vitamin D supplements) and having fewer fractures. Milk is fine, but it’s not a magical health drink. Surprisingly, however, milk is particularly hydrating — similar to pedialyte, both even more hydrating than water. You shouldn’t eat too many eggs, since it’ll raise your cholesterol. Eggs have lots of cholesterol in them. For most of us, that’s not an issue, since a growing body of research shows that dietary cholesterol (from foods you eat) doesn’t really have much of an effect on blood cholesterol in the vast majority of people. Thank goodness. Eating fat will make you fat. The tide has started to swing back the other way on this one, but recommendations for low-fat foods remain common. The decision to demonize fat for its caloric density and heart-clogging effects was largely the result of shady science influenced by a sugar trade group. It turns out that the society-wide decision to cut saturated fat from diets led to increased consumption of sugar and processed trans fats, all of which were most likely less healthy overall. We need a moderate amount of fat — especially healthy fat — in our diets. Read the original article on Busines Insiderer. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Copyright 2018. Read next on Business Insider: 10 delicious and healthy dairy-free milk alternatives to try — whether or not you’re lactose intolerant Source: http://allofbeer.com/25-health-facts-that-are-totally-wrong/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/25-health-facts-that-are-totally-wrong/ SABMiller Plcs board unanimously recommended Anheuser-Busch InBev SAs improved $104 billion takeover offer, paving the way for the biggest acquisition in the history of the beer industry and capping a tumultuous week in which the Budweiser maker bowed to pressure to sweeten its offer. The board of London-based SABMiller proposed that its two biggest shareholders, Altria Group Inc. and Bevco Ltd., be treated as a separate class of stockholders and allow other SABMiller investors to vote on the new offer separately, the company said in a statement. AB InBev said it welcomed the recommendation, in a separate statement. SABMillers board faced the choice of backing a bid that Chairman Jan du Plessis said was at the lower end of what he deemed acceptable, or risk letting the industry-transforming combination fall apart. AB InBev gave in to some investors when it raised its bid once more this week to factor in the pounds plunge in the wake of the U.K.s Brexit vote that put minority and institutional shareholders at a disadvantage. The boards decision was difficult, du Plessis said in the statement. Various factors have affected the value of the offer, most importantly the impact of the Brexit vote on the value of sterling and the re-rating of comparable companies. This has made the Boards decision more challenging. More DifficultSABMiller shares rose 2.1 percent to 44.14 pounds Friday in London, while AB InBev rose 4.6 percent to 115.30 euros in Brussels. I think this is a further step towards successful completion, but by splitting the shareholders into two groups, it makes it somewhat more difficult to gain the necessary level of acceptances, Andrew Holland, an analyst at Societe Generale, said by phone. You need a higher percentage of SABMiller shareholders to get it done than if the shareholders hadnt been split into two groups. For a Gadfly commentary on the Megabrew deal, click here AB InBevs latest cash offer was 45 pounds a share, 1 pound more than the prior proposal. It also increased the cash in a cash-and-stock alternative designed for Altria and Bevco, the value of which rose to more than 51 pounds a share after the pounds plunge. The deal was tested after SABMiller suspended integration of the two brewers following resistance from shareholders who said they hadnt been compensated enough for sterlings fall. But major SABMiller shareholders then signaled they favored AB InBevs sweetened bid, which received a further boost Friday by getting regulatory clearance from China, the last major antitrust hurdle after it was approved in the U.S. and South Africa in recent weeks. Complex DivestmentsPart of the approval process includes a complex set of divestments around the globe. Molson Coors Brewing Co. is set to acquire SABMillers stake in the MillerCoors brewing venture, while Japans Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. has agreed to buy the Peroni and Grolsch brands in Europe. Shares of Molson rose 4.5 percent to $102.16 in New York on Friday, marking their second straight jump after tumbling earlier in the week. The deal to merge SABMiller and AB InBev, termed Megabrew by analysts, would create a behemoth controlling about half of the industrys profits. The combined company will have the No. 1 or No. 2 positions in almost all of the worlds biggest beer markets, and provide AB InBev its first toehold in Africa, where about 65 million people are due to reach the legal drinking age by 2023. Source: http://allofbeer.com/sabmiller-board-recommends-ab-inbevs-new-104-billion-offer/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/sabmiller-board-recommends-ab-inbevs-new-104-billion-offer/ Valentines Day is the actual worst. Its not just bad for single people who get their singleness rubbed into their face for a day/weekend. Its also kind of miserable for people in relationships or the quasi-what-are-we-even?-relationships. Even the most chill betches have been known to get their hopes up for Valentines Day only to be sorely disappointed by their significant other when the 14th rolls around. Heres what to do to not make yourself pathetic and sad this year. Ew. Instagram isnt realSomeone probably really boring and wise once said Comparison is the thief of joy. Most of the time, comparison should bring you joy because your fucking awesome life looks pretty, well, fucking awesome compared to the lives of all the other basics out there. On Valentines Day though, just dont hang out on social media unless you have the greatest day of all time and need to show off. That probably wont happen, though. Your boyfriend is probably not going to bring you six-dozen roses or a Cartier Love bracelet. What he gives you is probably special in its own way, and you can never fault a guy for trying, but his acts of affection wont stack up to that Tumblr and Instagram nonsense. Dont think youre getting engagedIf youve been in a seriously relationship for a while, dont think Valentines Day is THE DAY youre getting engaged. I can think of nothing more pathetic than a V Day engagement, well, maybe other than a Christmas Day engagement. Gross. You should be praying your boyfriend is more original and less of a hack than that. Keep it low-keyDont overwhelm yourself trying to make your entire day look like a sentimental love-fest that could make Nicholas Sparks jealous. Also, dont be a fucking idiot and spend a bunch of money on shit you cant afford in order to make yourself look or feel loved. If you arent feeling the love without the stupid holiday madness, maybe its time to reevaluate your relationship. Best advice: Care very little about what happens on Valentines Day and you wont be disappointed if it doesnt stack up to your wildest dreams. Also, remember to care about what actually does happen. If a dude goes out of his way to make you feel special, thats pretty impressive by itself. Say thank you. Do what you loveMy motto for Valentines Day is similar to that of birthdays, if youre doing what you love, you probz wont be disappointed. If you dont like going to a prix fixe meal and eating by candlelight, dont fucking think you need to do that because Jessica in accounting thinks thats the only way to go. If you think hiking and drinking beer with your lover is the best, do that. If you think brunch and a solid hookup sesh is great, do that. Dont do something you hate because it will look cool on Instagram. Just do you. Thats the betch way/best way. Source: http://allofbeer.com/how-to-manage-your-valentines-day-expectations/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/29/how-to-manage-your-valentines-day-expectations/ Washington (CNN)Few reporters know deposed FBI Director James Comey as well — or have been covering him as long — as CNN’s Eric Lichtblau. Lichtblau, a new CNN’er after spending 15 years at The New York Times, has been reporting on Comey for more than a decade — all the way back to the infamous 2004 hospital confrontation between Comey and then Bush chief of staff Andy Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Cillizza: The big question is when/whether Comey will testify before Congress about his meetings and interactions with Trump — among other things. What’s your read on that?
Lichtblau: He’ll almost certainly testify, and it should be one for the history books: Newly exiled FBI director pitted against the president who fired him. Add backdrop of Russian election influence. Cue the grainy Watergate photos of Sam Ervin and Howard Baker. And remember Comey has always had quite a flare for drama, as we saw exactly 10 years ago when he testified in the Senate about his famous hospital-room showdown with George W. Bush’s White House aides at John Ashcroft’s bedside. We could get a hearing in the next few weeks, if not sooner, and my guess is that Comey will insist it happen in public, not behind closed doors.
Cillizza: Knowing what you know of Comey, what do you think the likelihood is that he told Trump, on three separate occasions, that the President was not under investigation?
Lichtblau: Close to zero. Trump made this claim in his first interview after the firing, but from the people I’ve spoken with, it’s almost impossible to think that Comey would have given the President such an assurance even once, much less three times. We’ve seen people around Comey push back on other elements of his January dinner with Trump, saying that the President demanded Comey’s “loyalty,” and Comey himself is particularly anxious to refute the claim that he told the President he was essentially out of the woods in the Russia investigation.
So how does the public judge who’s telling the truth about what the two men said? That’s where the President’s insinuation via Twitter that there were “tapes” comes into play. A recording of the dinner, if it actually exists, would help settle the question of who’s telling the truth and would be anxiously sought by congressional investigators.
Cillizza: Trump and his allies made much of the idea that Comey wasn’t well liked by the rank and file within the FBI. What was/is the main criticism of Comey within the bureau and how widespread is it?
Lichtblau: There are certainly factions within the FBI’s 13,000 agents who don’t like the job Comey did after he became director in 2013. Some agents think he went too easy on Hillary Clinton in the email investigation by not recommending criminal charges against her. Then there are others who think he led the FBI too deeply into the political muck in the email case — both in his remarkable press conference last July and again in re-examining the case just 11 days before the election.
Comey still no doubt has support inside the bureau — wide support, according to his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, who is now acting director — but it’s difficult to measure whether he has more friends or foes inside the FBI without commissioning a Gallup poll of the agents, which is about as likely at this point as a Trump-Comey beer summit. One area where there seems to be wide consensus inside the FBI, though, is the way in which Comey was fired — via a letter delivered to the bureau. Comey learned the news on TV during a trip to LA, and there’s near-universal outrage among agents over what they see as shabby treatment.
Cillizza: What’s Comey’s next move? Does he go back into the private sector? Retire? Go on TV?
Lichtblau: I don’t see him as a talking head on TV, at least not right away. A book deal might be possible, but most likely, he would go back to the private sector, where he spent eight quiet years after he left the Bush administration in 2005 first as a lawyer at Lockheed Martin, the big defense contractor, and then at Bridgewater, the hedge fund giant. That helped him amass a net worth of about $11 million, according to this financial disclosure statement in 2013. He and his wife have six children, and his paycheck in the private sector would certainly dwarf his $183,000 government salary at the FBI, which could drive a return to Wall Street or the defense industry.
Cillizza: Finish this sentence (with the understanding this is just for fun and nothing more than an educated guess): “The next FBI director will be _________.” Now, explain.
Lichtblau: The conventional pick would probably be Mike Rogers, who was both an FBI agent and a congressman who led the intelligence committee — and who has the backing of the FBI agents union, for good measure. But Trump, of course, has always loved bucking convention, and that could lead him to a dark-horse candidate — maybe a Ray Kelly, the former New York Police Department chief. Kelly has that tough-guy New Yorker bravado that Trump loves, and when he was a candidate, Trump spoke glowingly of the “stop and frisk” policy at the NYPD under Kelly, which a court struck down as unconstitutional. And he would likely be a Trump loyalist — whether he or the President wants to admit it.
Source: http://allofbeer.com/heres-what-james-comey-will-do-next/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/28/heres-what-james-comey-will-do-next/ Nobody expects every movie to be great. For every Steven Spielberg, there’s a Tommy Wiseau. For every Ridley Scott, there’s, uh, well, another Ridley Scott. No self-respecting person has the time or inclination to watch everything Hollywood craps out, so it’s quite possible that you don’t know how bad some recent movies turned out to be. Luckily for you, we have no self-respect, so let us satiate your morbid curiosity by telling you all about this year’s most baffling cinematic turds (so far). SPOILERS AHEAD! 5Folks, Tom Cruise Was The Real Mummy ALL ALONG Tom Cruise played Jerry Maguire in Jerry Maguire, Jack Reacher in Jack Reacher, and someone who was born on the 4th of July in Born On The Fourth Of July. Guess who he plays in The Mummy. Go on, guess. At first, Cruise’s character is your average U.S. Army sergeant in Iraq who seduces archaeologists to steal their maps and search for treasure. Early on, he gets into a fight with some alleged insurgents he happened to run into and orders a goddamn air strike on them — the military equivalent of asking your brother to finish the level for you. Universal Pictures Fortunately, we don’t have much time to mull over the ethical implications of all this, because the strike accidentally uncovers an ancient tomb: Universal Pictures Cruise, the guy from New Girl, and the woman whose map he stole with his penis are sent in to investigate. They discover an ancient mummy, but more importantly, the archaeologist lets us know that Cruise sucks in bed (and not in the good sense). As they’re flying the Mummy back to England, after long stretches of dialogue about sexual inadequacy, the plane crashes and Tom Cruise fucking dies. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t end there — Cruise soon wakes up in a body bag, either because of the Mummy’s magic or some kind of weird loophole in Dianetics. Universal Pictures A moment later, Cruise’s friend and two doctors walk in, and everyone’s biggest concern is that they can see the dick of this guy who just cheated death itself. Anyway, the Mummy ends up getting captured midway through the movie, a plot development that probably feels familiar to anyone who wasn’t in a coma between 2008 and now: At one point we also meet Russell Crowe, who plays Dr. Jekyll. As in the Dr. Jekyll, the one who turns into the villainous Mr. Hyde. Presumably Hyde is the one who smacks hotel clerks with phones and insists on singing in public.
The third act then finds an army of corpses rising and attacking the city — though taking into consideration how Tom Cruise is in his 50s but has jet-black hair, works out like crazy, and spends most of this movie talking about how he boned someone more than 20 years younger than him, the sight of him fleeing a sea of rotting bodies ravaged by time accidentally becomes a powerful metaphor. Then in the very end, Tom Cruise basically lets the Mummy win and use him as the host body for the god of death — but then he uses his new powers to kill her. So yes, Cruise now has ancient mummy powers, and will possibly develop an affinity for wearing toilet paper all over his body in the next movie he shows up in. 4Did You Know Harriet Tubman Knew The Transformers? It’s no secret that the Transformers series is basically the cinematic equivalent of watching a Monster Energy Drink in a paint shaker. Hell, the last movie found Mark Wahlberg guzzling a flaming bottle of Bud Light like that’s a normal thing to do. Even with the bar so low (and presumably on fire), Transformers: The Last Knight is maddeningly awful. For starters, the story is an obvious attempt to smoosh together a bunch of popular TV shows into a Transformers movie. It opens with a dragon Transformer helping King Arthur, who’s seemingly engaged in some kind of game, for some kind of throne … After a jarring time jump, we meet a scrappy gang of kids seemingly played by the Stranger Things kids’ stunt doubles:
What was that other big TV show from last year? Oh yeah, Westworld. Cue Anthony Hopkins delivering a bunch of nonsensical exposition about robots, which is apparently his jam now. Here’s where the wheels really come off before they can retract and turn into a dinosaur. Hopkins explains that he is the only remaining member of a secret society that protects the secret history of the Transformers on Earth. It turns out that these giant-ass talking vehicles were present for many famous historical milestones. We just … forgot about them? Didn’t notice? Members of the Society of Transformer Pals included Einstein, da Vinci, Shakespeare, and Stephen Hawking (who, by the way, is still alive, movie). Also a member? Harriet Tubman. That’s right, this movie is implying that Transformers helped the Underground Railroad. Which people have pointed out is a) insane, and b) you’d think giant weaponized robots could have done a touch more to help the slaves. At least the movie doesn’t raise the question of why the Transformers didn’t stop the Holocaust or some- 3There Was A Movie About The Guy From Avatar Hanging Out With God In A Shack Sam Worthington stars in The Shack, a movie adaptation of the best-selling Christian inspirational novel. The movie starts in the past, where we see our main character, Mack, and his mother being abused by his alcoholic dad. So naturally, Mack pours strychnine in his dad’s booze, probably murdering him, though it’s hard to say because this is never mentioned again.
Flash-forward to Mack all grown up and Sam-Worthington-like. But his life is still beset by tragedy, as his youngest daughter is kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer (!!!) during a camping trip. They never find her body, but Mack is told she was killed in a remote shack (a place the B52s would never in their right minds sing about). That winter, a distraught Mack receives a mysterious note inviting him to the shack, signed “Papa” — which is his wife’s nickname for God, not an implication that Ernest Hemingway is penning creepy notes from beyond the grave. Thinking this might be his daughter’s killer, a gun-toting Mack accepts the invitation and heads up to the abandoned cabin, which sadly contains no chainsaws or Necronomicons. Instead, it magically (or I guess spiritually, since Christians don’t like magic) transforms into a cozy cottage straight out of a beer commercial. Even weirder, it’s now home to Octavia Spencer, who immediately says that she’s God. Also there are a flannel-clad Jesus and an Asian lady who’s apparently the Holy Spirit. Yeah, it’s the Holy Trinity, chilling out and enjoying their Carlsberg years.
Through a series of painfully long conversations, they convince Mack not to give up on his faith, embrace life, and maybe spruce up his living room with some Crate & Barrel chairs and assorted Martha Stewart bullshit. Jesus casually walks on water: God listens to an iPod, for some reason: And they show Mack a whole bunch of psychedelic ghosts out in a pasture, like Field Of Dreams mixed with Tron mixed with MDMA. Even more like Field Of Dreams, one of the ghosts is Mack’s dad. Who, if you’ll remember, was a real piece of shit. Mack hugs him, obviously. In the end, God shows Mack where his daughter’s body was hidden, and they have a funeral for her. Which is nice and all, but maybe it would have been even nicer if, you know, his wife were there too? Or his kids? Hey, God, why is this one dude the only one who gets some damn closure? 2iBoy: Netflix’s Weird-Ass Superhero Movie While it sounds like a movie about Steve Jobs’ prepubescent years, iBoy is actually a Netflix production starring Arya Stark and … umm, some guy who knows Arya Stark. Its story of a teenage boy with an unrequited crush on his neighbor takes a sharp turn when he walks in on a gang of masked thugs sexually assaulting her (bullshit rape storylines seem to follow Game Of Thrones actors around). The kid flees, but as he’s calling the cops, he gets shot in the head.
Instead of, you know, immediately killing him, the pieces of exploded phone embed themselves in his brain … … which give him superpowers. More specifically, he can psychically read and even control smartphones. And of course the human cellphone uses his powers to fight crime like a tween-friendly Dark Knight.
You may be wondering how he actually fights bad guys. After all, having Google Maps and Shazam coursing through your cerebral cortex doesn’t necessarily mean you can kick ass. It’s simple: When he’s cornered by a cadre of thugs, iBoy psychically causes all their phones to explode:
Say what you will about Batman, but even he hasn’t been able to figure out a way to set his adversaries’ balls on fire without lifting a finger. 1Fuck You, The Book Of Henry Judging by the box office results, a lot of you didn’t see Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow’s The Book Of Henry, either because it was savaged by critics or because the poster made it look like the world’s crappiest Choose Your Own Adventure book. The film tells the story of Henry, a genius kid straight out of a script Wes Anderson started and then threw away. He spends his life making Rube Goldberg devices, playing the stock market, and generally being lauded for how brilliant he is. We never find out who his father was, though presumably his mom had a one-night stand with an anthropomorphic Screenwriting For Dummies book.
Oddly, his mom is content letting him run her entire life, which seems … unhealthy. She consults with him before financial decisions and sees him more as a sort of surrogate husband than a son. Even Marty McFly would find this dynamic unsettling. Oddly, the precious, quirky, autumn-leaf-filled indie drama soon becomes very thriller-like when Henry notices that the girl who lives next door is being sexually abused by her stepdad — meaning some genius waltzed into a Hollywood studio and pitched “Rear Window, but with kids getting molested,” and it worked. Henry’s on the case, but no one will take him seriously because the stepdad is the police commissioner (and also played by Hank from Breaking Bad). So with the school principal and child services being total dicks, Henry formulates a plan … to murder the stepdad. And by the way, we’re just getting started. Before Henry can go through with his plan, in another twist, it turns out that he has a brain tumor. The titular character dies halfway through the movie. Henry’s little brother then tells the mom about Henry’s dying wish that she read his journal, which contains the elaborate murder plan. Henry is so annoyingly smart that he even anticipated what people would say out loud after he’s dead: The mom rejects the plan at first, but eventually gets sucked in. She ends up buying a giant hunting rifle and luring her target into the woods during a school talent show:
She comes very close to pulling the trigger, but doesn’t go through with it, because she remembers that Henry was “a child.” Yeah, her arc is realizing she doesn’t have to do everything a young kid told her to. At the same time, the school principal finally decides to do something about the sex abuse. Why does she come to this conclusion? Because the girl’s dance at the talent show is just so pathos-filled.
What made The Book Of Henry a next-level debacle wasn’t simply its critical lambasting, paltry box office receipts, or “bloodstained Mad Libs you found at an abandoned bus station on Halloween” of a plot. No, it’s the fact that its utter craptitude might’ve catalyzed Trevorrow’s dismissal as the director of Star Wars Episode IX. This is why you never, ever pursue your passion projects, kids. You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter, or check out the podcast Rewatchability. If you loved this article and want more like it, please support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. We’re willing to bet the next transformers will be a movie based on a tv show based on a toy based on a USB memory stick. That USB memory stick is this. Also check out 5 Really Awesome Movies Hidden Inside Really Crappy Movies and 5 Terrible Movies With Awesome Hidden Meanings. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Scenes So Good They Make a Terrible Movie Worth Watching, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site! Follow our new Pictofacts Facebook page, and we’ll follow you everywhere. Get intimate with our new podcast Cracked Gets Personal. Subscribe for funny, fascinating episodes like “Inside The Secret Epidemic Of Cops Shooting Dogs” and “Murdered Sex Dolls And Porn Suitcases: What Garbagemen See,” available wherever you get your podcasts. Source: http://allofbeer.com/5-recent-movies-you-never-realized-were-completely-insane/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/5-recent-movies-you-never-realized-were-completely-insane/ In 2002, one of Chinas largest beer manufacturers came to Houston. The Houston Rockets had recently drafted Yao Ming, the 7-foot-5-inch Chinese center, to play for the team. As the year’s first overall NBA draft pick, Rockets owner Les Alexander predicted that Yao would be bigger than Michael Jordan. And Yanjing Beer was looking for a big crowd. So the Chinese company signed a multi-million, multi-year deal with the Rockets to become the first official international beer partner of an NBA team. It was simple: Yanjing would showcase its logo on signs around the court and arena.Viewers far beyond Houstonand the US itselfwould see those ads. The Yanjing deal was just one of many to showcase the NBA’s unique global influence. Over the past three decades, the league has expanded its reach from Paris to Mexico City to Tokyo. But the NBA’s crowning achievement as an exporterone that puts it in the same prestigious echelon as Apple and Disneyis its success in the most populous country in the world: China. Now, as China hustles down the path toward becoming the world’s largest moviemarket, among other consumer superlatives, US media companies are looking to gain traction. And they can look to the NBA as a positive precedent. But China is a complicated place that has stymied the likes of Google, Facebook, and Netflix. The NBA has worked since the 1980s to build a fanatic fanbase in China. And it started with a strategy that some of the world’s biggest, most successful tech companies have come to embrace in the decades since: it gave away its product for free.
Stern in ChinaWhen David Stern became the commissioner of the NBA in 1984, he started looking overseas. Heset up NBA offices in Paris and Tokyo. Then he set his eyes on China. Like many major American franchises, they felt they had saturated the American market, says David Lawrence Andrews, a professor at the University of Maryland who has written about the globalization of sports. But they did it earlier and more effectively than any other league. The NBA was not the first group to introduce basketball in China. Missionaries affiliated with the YMCA brought the sport there way back in 1895. Over the next century, basketball grew to become one of the country’s most popular sports to watch or play. It also became a kind of pawn in Sino-American diplomacy. In the 1970s, US basketball players went to China to play and train Chinese teams. So when Stern went to China in 1987, the market was already seeded. In Beijing,he met with government-run China Central Television, the country’s dominant television network and agreed to give away recorded telecasts ofNBA games for free. Two years later, the NBA licensed live games to CCTV. The NBA was one of the first American media companies that was able to start broadcasting on Chinese television, says Aynne Kokas, a professor at the University of Virginia, who studies media in China. Broadcasting live at the time, she says, was unprecedented.
By the early aughts, as more TV stations went on the air in China, the NBA hatched deals with them, as well19 others in all. The league adapted again as the Internet became popular in China, creating a Chinese-language NBA website that featured live game statistics in Simplified Chinese.In 2010, the NBA made a deal with Chinese media company Sina to stream games online. During this time, the league also began expanding its marketing strategy tocapitalize on Chinese stars. In 1999, the Dallas Mavericks drafted Wang Zhizhi. Then in 2002, Yao arrived. “It was a consumer phenomenon,” says Jeffrey Towson, a professor at Peking University who specializes in investments in Asia. Chinese fans loved himso much so that at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Yao carried the Chinese flag during the opening ceremony. He literally becamethe flag bearer of Chinese sports,” Towson says. Yao retired in 2011, but the NBA has continued to iterate. It marketed Asian-American point guard Jeremy Lin to Chinese audiences as the next big superstar. It locked in dealswith Chinese broadcasters. It created an official NBA Weibo account (China’s version of Twitter), which now has 31million followers. The NFL’s Weibo account, by comparison has 440,000. This summer, the league plans to open a basketball theme park called Playzone in Shanghai. Perhaps most importantly, the league didn’t waste time connecting with Chinese fans where they were spending more and more of their time: on smartphones. Specifically, it cut a deal with Tencentwhich, as Townson puts it, “is on every phone in China”to stream NBA games. Only One NBAEven Stern may not have initially realized how fruitful his efforts in China would turn out to be. Today the country is not only the most populatedin the world but also a rapidly growing economy with more than a billion entertainment-hungry consumers. So how did the NBA have the foresight to develop a strategy that has allowed it to succeed where so far Google, Facebook, and Netflix have all come up against roadblocks? For one, the Chinese already loved basketball. Three hundred million people play basketball in China, according to the Chinese Basketball Association. The NBA has fed this potential fanbase locally as well by bringing preseason games, known as the NBA Global Games, to the country nearly every year since 2004. If you love basketball, theres really only one league,” Towson says. You cant clone the NBA.” While China has had its own national basketball league, the NBA is still the unparalleled powerhouse, both in athletics and marketing. Professional sports in China are also regulated by the government, which makes them less commercialized and professionalized, saysHanhan Xue, a sports management researcheratFlorida State University.
The NBA by contrast built up an enormous fan base in the country by capitalizing on its stars. Yaowas a crucial part of this strategy, but the NBA has also sent other players to China to promote the sport. Kobe Bryant went to Hong Kong and Beijing way back in 2001, wherehe was interviewed on CCTV. LeBron James visited Beijing and Hong Kong in 2005 as an ambassador for Nike. And, for years, NBA players have participated in photo-ops at the Great Wall of China. The league has also capitalized on the Chinese governments push for a greater sports culture in the years leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The NBA has helped build basketball arenas in major cities and promoted basketball clinics and school programs. By helping foster basketball as a sport for kids in China, the NBA iscontinuing to reinforce the fanbase for professional sports. Mass MarketFor American media companies looking to gain clout in the country, the NBA serves as a kind of blueprint. That’s especially important todayas there’s an enormous demand for media in China. And yet it wont be as easy for companies like, say, Netflix, Facebook, or even NBCUniversal, to make a significant mark in China as the NBA has done. For one, most media companies dont have something no one else has that is also best served up live.Pirated films and TV shows are popular in China; why would users pay for something like Netflix or Hulu? But no one wants to watch the NBA Finals six monthsor even a few daysafter they happen.
Meanwhile, US tech companies already face tremendous competition from giants like Tencent and Alibabathat is, if the government allows them into the Chinese market at all. More recently, Chinese authorities have also starting cracking down more heavily on foreign media. So far, that protectionism has not extended to basketball. Even if, say, Netflix started streaming in China, it would still face the challenge of adapting its content to meet the strictures of government censors. Live basketball doesn’t really have that problem. Games are family-friendly fun in a way that Jessica Jones and House of Cards just aren’t. The NBA doesnt have to make promises that they wont go over any lines,” Kokas says. “The game of basketball is such that unless something crazy happens its fine. Ultimately, basketball was already something that people in China knew and liked—the NBA just offered them the best version of the sport, with the stars, merch, and tech to boot. The NBA has something Chinese consumers want, and it figured out how to work within the system. It’s a template other US companies would do well to emulate. Just one problem: none of those other companies have 7-foot giants pounding the boardsoh, or Steph Curry 3-pointers. Source: http://allofbeer.com/what-the-nba-knows-about-china-that-silicon-valley-doesnt/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/what-the-nba-knows-about-china-that-silicon-valley-doesnt/ You would think that every pop culture creation would come about one of two ways: as the result either of sudden inspiration from a creative genius, or of a laborious corporate process involving dozens of designs and focus groups. But in reality, famous creators have ideas the same way the rest of us do: via random thoughts, laziness, or last-minute desperation. For example … #6. G.I. Joe‘s Snake Eyes Was Created To Save PaintSnake Eyes, the silent ninja commando from the G.I. Joe series, has been a fan favorite ever since his debut, because children love characters who wear cool helmets and never say anything. And hell, look at him! Eat your parentless heart out, Batman. But Snake Eyes’ popularity is made all the more remarkable by the fact he only exists because a toy company was too cheap and lazy to paint a damn action figure. And somewhere, a young Quentin Tarantino gets the idea for The Gimp … G.I. Joe started as a comic, but it wasn’t long before toy company Hasbro’s profit senses started tingling, and they began to belch out action figures in a stream of screaming plastic vomit. But soon, the toys would come first, then were inserted into the comic as characters — they were simply a bunch of generic soldier designs painted different colors and hastily given names and backstories, because children don’t give a shit. The most impressive thing about Hasbro’s G.I. Joe line was their dedication to maximizing their profit margins, and nowhere is this more evident than the design for Snake Eyes. To save money, they didn’t even paint the toy. It was churned out entirely in the same shade of black as the plastic that came out of the vat. Their explanation? Oh, he’s a ninja or something. Because all ninjas carry MAC-11s and wear mini-satchels. Amazingly, in spite of the fact his creation took less effort and imagination than putting a cape on a potato, Snake Eyes went on to become one of the most beloved characters in the Joe franchise. “He’s so dark and mysterious!” Sure, kids. Oh, and look, here’s his “invisible motorcycle”! Vroom! #5. Batman’s Harley Quinn Was Created For A Throwaway Joke That Was Never UsedMost fans know that Harley Quinn, one of the most popular characters in the Batman universe, did not originate in the comics. Her first appearance was in Batman: The Animated Series, in one of the rare examples of an adaptation that donates a character to the source material, sort of like how Norman Reedus was created for The Walking Dead TV show and gradually began to appear in other movies. But in case you think that Harley Quinn was brought about by some stroke of creative genius, think again. Her creators never had anything significant in mind for her. She was made solely because the show’s writers needed the Joker to have a female henchman in order to make one gag in a single episode make sense. And then they didn’t even wind up using the joke. Or her original design, thankfully. Quinn’s first appearance in the series came in the 1992 episode “Joker’s Favor.” The idea was that the Joker would make an attempt on Commissioner Gordon’s life at his birthday party by having a girl with a gun jump out of a giant cake, effectively ruining the Commissioner’s big day. Harley Quinn was created to be the person in the cake. You may recognize this as the same role Erika Eleniak played in Under Siege. ’92 was a big year for faux-pastry eroticism. But while the episode was already in production, the writers decided that it would be funnier to have the Joker himself pop out of the cake rather than some ditzy dame, so they changed the script to make that happen. Rather than go to the trouble of removing Harley Quinn completely, since they’d already written her into the script and everything, they diminished her role to that of a background member of Joker’s gang, fully intending to never use the character again. To everyone’s surprise, viewers loved Harley Quinn, so the writers brought her back for future episodes, and her popularity grew to the point that DC comics made her part of the official Batman canon. Granted, the official Batman canon also includes Batman turning into a weretiger and the Joker becoming an Iranian diplomat, but still. #4. Shredder From Ninja Turtles Was Inspired By A Cheese GraterThe Shredder, the eternal nemesis of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is a scowling Japanese man dressed in spiked metal armor like Road Warrior Hawk and/or Animal. As best we can tell, he never takes this armor off, even when he’s just hanging around the Technodrome in between battles. When you think about it, there’s nothing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that doesn’t sound like it was inspired by a late night of pizza and beer. Every aspect of the original comic created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird can be boiled down to a conversation that begins with “Hey man, wouldn’t it be funny if …” Lots of beer. The Shredder is no exception. According to Eastman, the inspiration for the character came to him one night when he was washing the dishes. There’s no word on how astronomically high he probably was at the time, but while washing one of those flat cheese graters with a handle, he gripped it like a wrist guard and remarked to Laird about how cool it would be for a character to wear them as part of a costume. Considering how much pizza cheese that suit could generate, it’s a better design for an ally of the turtles. “We could call him the Grater,” Eastman suggested. Luckily, Laird was either less stoned or generally more level-headed, and came up with “the Shredder” instead, which sounds more like a villainous ninja and less like an irritating shift supervisor. The two then went ahead and wrote a villain into their comic who wore cheese graters all over his body, and a pop culture legend / impossible-to-find action figure was born. #3. Pac Man’s Inspiration Came From A PizzaBack when video games were first invented, brainstorming meetings resembled an insane game of Mescaline Libs — which is like Mad Libs, only played with 100 percent more mescaline. “A plumber who gains strength from mushrooms and dodges barrels thrown at him by a gorilla at a construction site? Sure, why not? Kids’ll buy any goddamn thing we tell them to.” Any random object that a programmer saw in their day-to-day life could become the central component of a video game pitch, and Pac Man started in that exact way. Back in the ’80s, Namco employee Toru Iwatani sat down to eat a delicious pizza. Upon removing the first slice, Iwatani remarked on how much the rest of the pizza now looked like a face with an open mouth. Anyone else would brush off this casual thought with the realization that sometimes stuff kind of looks like other stuff, but Iwatani’s mind started racing about the potential for a video game in which a pizza runs around a maze eating dots (see “mescaline,” above). Don’t let anyone ever tell you that all life’s problems can’t be solved with pizza. Quickly, this spark of inspiration ran through the usual hamster wheel of increasing absurdity until it became the story of a sentient pizza man eating his way through a maze while being pursued by vengeful ghosts. Iwatani pitched the idea as “Pakkuman” — “Pakku” being the Japanese onomatopoeia sound for eating. When the game was brought to the west, it became “Puck Man” (because “Chomp Man” would’ve sounded ridiculous and we are a nation of sober adults) and eventually “Pac Man.” And so, one of the most iconic characters in video game history was born — insofar as Pac Man can be called a “character.” #2. Teen Titans‘ Wonder Girl Came About Because The Writer Never Bothered To Read Wonder WomanBack in the 1960s, DC writer Bob Haney noticed that basically every major superhero on the company’s roster had a teenage sidekick, and thought it would be interesting to have them all team up. The idea became Teen Titans, and it initially starred Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad, who somehow had neither drowned nor been swallowed by a whale at this point. However, Haney eventually decided to rope in the rest of the Justice League’s abandoned plus-ones, including Wonder Woman’s lesser-known sidekick Wonder Girl. It’s in Robin’s contract that he always gets to be the most scantily-dressed team member. But Haney apparently didn’t actually read the comics that featured Wonder Girl. Otherwise, he would have realized that she wasn’t a sidekick at all. Wonder Girl was Wonder Woman back when she was a teenager. This would be like drafting a team of Back To The Future characters and treating old Marty and young Marty as two separate people. See, in the ’50s, DC put Wonder Woman in a bunch of bizarre paradoxical time-travel adventures in which she teamed up with two younger versions of herself (one as a teenager and one as a baby) and her mother, and they fought dragons and swordfish, because these are comic books and not gold-leafed tomes of literature. Remember what we said about the early video game industry? Double that for Silver Age comics. Haney evidently only glanced the covers of these issues, because he couldn’t be expected to read a comic about a bunch of women. Consequently, he wrote Wonder Girl into the Teen Titans as a completely separate character. Infant Wonder Woman (named Wonder Tot, because comic books excel at being comic books) missed out on a Teen Titans membership card for some reason. Well, maybe if Wonder Tot had stuck the goddamn landing … However, fans of Wonder Woman quickly pointed out this bizarre blunder, and DC was forced to hastily retcon Wonder Girl’s backstory. It turns out that this Wonder Girl is a different person after all — a girl named Donna Troy who developed Amazonian powers and decided to take on the mantle. Because in comics, there’s no corner out of which you cannot write yourself. #1. Where The Wild Things Are Was Created Because The Author Had Trouble Drawing HorsesOrdinarily, if you pitch a children’s book about a little boy getting stranded on an island filled with gigantic, grotesque monsters, international law requires you to phone Roald Dahl and ask for his permission first. Also, your mind’s eye will probably conjure up an image that is more H.P. Lovecraft than Richard Scarry. Author Maurice Sendak turned this concept into the beloved children’s book Where The Wild Things Are — which, incidentally, is full of illustrations that look like H.P. Lovecraft and Richard Scarry got into a fierce doodling war on the same cocktail napkin. Lovecraft won. But in Sendak’s original vision for the book, the titular “wild things” weren’t monsters at all; they were horses. He originally pitched the idea to his editor as Where The Wild Horses Are, and was given the green light to write and illustrate it. Unfortunately, several months into the project, it became increasingly obvious that Sendak couldn’t draw a fucking horse if it were the ransom of the Universe. Eventually, his editor stopped tearing her hair out and asked “Maurice, what can you draw?” The answer was, obviously, horrific inhuman monstrosities. They decided that was going to have to do, considering the amount of money they had already pumped into the project, and Sendak was given the go-ahead to draw whatever the hell popped into his mind, changing the title to Where The Wild Things Are, because “things” could be anything. Including repressed family trauma. The idea of trying to endear a platoon of nightmare creatures to children could have been a disaster, but it became one of the most enduring classics of children’s literature, and one of the most successful last-minute audibles in history. Source: http://allofbeer.com/6-shockingly-dumb-reasons-people-invented-famous-characters/ from https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/6-shockingly-dumb-reasons-people-invented-famous-characters/ |
AuthorHi my name is Samantha Roberts I am 23 years old and I just graduated with my BSN degree I love to enjoy going out with friends on my spare time and enjoying the Bachelor life. Archives
April 2019
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