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Miami Beach has run out of sand. Now what?

The beach is the centerpiece of the city’s promise of escape — escape from cold winters or college classes or family, where you can drink goblets of bright green liquor and cruise down Ocean Drive in a rented tangerine Lamborghini before retiring to the warm sand. To the casual observer, the beach…

Dec 26, 2016

Simmons vs. Gladwell: The Future of Football

theringer.com

Simmons vs. Gladwell: The Future of Football Sagging ratings, national controversy, horrifying head injuries, shameless greed: The conversation about the NFL has officially changed. Is it too late to fix it? By Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell (Aaron Dana) S immons: “Is he crying?” “He’s just…

Dec 24, 2016

The Men Who Dared To Launch A Late-Night Show In The Middle Of The 2016 Election

buzzfeed.com

Desus Nice and The Kid Mero. Viceland On the top floor of the Vice building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there is a particular conference room at the end of the hall with a high amount of traffic going in and out the door. Inside, conference room tables and any semblance of traditional office decor…

Nov 16, 2016

LeBron Is Still Painting His Masterpiece

theringer.com

A brief history of the NBA in eight fake quotes, five exclamation points and two question marks: 1946–56: “White guys, set shots, clotheslines and layups!” 1956–66: “Hi, I’m Bill, and this is Elgin, Wilt and Oscar.” 1967–76: “Things are going well, so let’s double the number of leagues, triple the…

Oct 26, 2016

Why Are Podcasters So Sensitive to Both Criticism and Praise?

splitsider.com

For a few months a while back, it sure felt like the A.V. Club, where I was a staffer for about 16 years and remain a columnist today, was mentioned on The Best Show and Hollywood Handbook on a weekly basis, and never in a positive or non-mocking light. The website, and particularly its podcast…

Oct 25, 2016

‘Desus & Mero’: No Suits. And No Canned Sketches.

nytimes.com

Desus Nice, left, and the Kid Mero on the set of their new late-night show on Viceland. An Rong Xu for The New York Times This past Tuesday afternoon, in a conference room on the third floor of Vice’s sprawling Williamsburg offices, the comic team of Desus & Mero was going through its daily…

Oct 14, 2016

The Completely Absurd and Definitive Guide to NBA Free Throws

theringer.com

The best routines, the worst shooters, the most clutch shots, and everything else you need to know Shea Serrano GIF After a long summer of topless championship parades, free-agency meetings in the Hamptons, Snapchat mishaps, and gold medals, the NBA is finally, truly, really, almost back. The start…

Oct 12, 2016

The Ballad of the Banana Boat Brotherhood

theringer.com

Celebrating the friendship of LeBron, D-Wade, Melo, and CP3 in five scenes, as told by the four themselves Getty Images/Ringer illustration After a long summer of topless championship parades, free-agency meetings in the Hamptons, Snapchat mishaps, and gold medals, the NBA is finally, truly, really,…

Oct 8, 2016

How the Upright Citizens Brigade Improvised a Comedy Empire

newyorker.com

I thought that I had reached an age at which I could opt out of embarrassing myself in public, but last year, of my own free will, I did something mortifying. I took a series of eight improvisational-comedy classes with the Upright Citizens Brigade, which has, in the past two decades, developed into…

Sep 4, 2016

Everything you wanted to know about Russell Westbrook but were afraid to ask

espn.go.com

THE RUNNING JOKE among Oklahoma City Thunder media is there are two Russell Westbrooks: the one who's wearing basketball shoes, and the one who isn't wearing basketball shoes. On the court, he's Russell Westbrook , the inferno of energy, anger and intensity. He's terse with reporters, unfriendly to…

May 27, 2016

I spent 5 weeks eating meals planned for me by startups

theverge.com

From Blue Apron to Plated, the definitive ranking of meals delivered in boxes The most unsexy, onerous, absurdly challenging task I face on a daily basis is figuring out how to put food in my body. This isn’t college — grilled cheese every night isn’t fine. This isn’t elementary school — the…

May 27, 2016

Cards Against Humanity Designer: "Graphic Design Doesn't Have A Critical Dialogue"

fastcodesign.com

Amy Nicole Schwartz is design director of Cards Against Humanity and Blackbox, a company that lets independent makers sell and ship packages on the cheap. She spoke to Doreen Lorenzo as part of Designing Women , a series of interviews with women in the design industry. Doreen Lorenzo: How did you…

Apr 16, 2016

Meet the executive-level fool who gets paid to organize Lyft’s elaborate, expensive pranks

theverge.com

The next time you call for a Lyft car and instead you get a DeLorean from Back to the Future , or a horde of hungry zombies, or a faceful of chicken feathers, you'll have one person to thank: Ethan Eyler, Lyft's resident merry prankster. While other Silicon Valley startups have recently abandoned…

Apr 8, 2016

UNC basketball coach Roy Williams prefers ‘dadgum’ to profanity

newsobserver.com

Not too long ago, the word just came out of Justin Jackson’s mouth. It wasn’t a conscious choice to say what he said. He didn’t necessarily want to say it, either. And yet there it was, slipping out in casual conversation: “Dadgum.” “It kind of scared me at first, whenever I first used it,” Jackson,…

Mar 31, 2016

The Silicon Valley Boys Aren’t Just Brilliant—They’re Part of a Comedy Revolution

wired.com

WIRED Logo The Silicon Valley Boys Aren’t Just Brilliant—They’re Part of a Comedy Revolution The games begin —as they so often do—with a poop joke. ¶ It’s a late-January morning and we’re on a giant back-lot soundstage in Los Angeles, where cast members of HBO’s dot-comedy Silicon Valley are hunched…

Mar 24, 2016

The Kickstarter Kings Who Taught the World to Crowdfund

wired.com

One cold February night in 2013, Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost ducked into a Brooklyn bar for a drink and some R&D. The two friends and designers, co-owners of a firm called Studio Neat, had both gotten into mixology recently. They were wondering what their in-home bars might be missing. Like so many…

Mar 12, 2016

Why Bryce Harper says he's the best, and why he's right

espn.go.com

Sorry Not Sorry Bryce Harper -- his play, his attitude, his hair! -- is on a mission to change baseball forever. ESPN The Magazine by Tim Keown PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER HAPAK 03/10/16 T he swing is raging and primeval, a broken dam, a convulsion. It appears to have been engineered for a different time --…

Mar 12, 2016

Can MATI, an Energy-Drink Start-up Based in Durham, Transform a Multibillion-Dollar Industry—And Make it Healthy?

indyweek.com

Email Photo by Alex Boerner Tatiana Birgisson, founder of Durham's MATI T atiana Birgisson still gets excited about the prospectof free pizza. Sitting in her small square office in Durham, the twenty-six-year-old Duke graduate has recently returned from a luncheon hosted by American Underground, the…

Mar 11, 2016

Why Standups Should Embrace, Not Revile, Improv

splitsider.com

“I hate improv.” Hang around standup comedians enough and you will hear it. This may be confusing. Many don’t know there’s a difference between the comics with microphones and the ones who go mic-less, tagging in and out of scenes in a black box theatre. It’s understandable. After all, many people…

Mar 4, 2016