I knew Kobe Bryant only as a basketball player. I remember owning a pair of his first shoes from Adidas, the Crazy 8. He was a spectacular basketball player. The only other player that came close to being considered another Michael Jordan. This article though, talks about a different side of him that I never knew existed.
Failure and even scandal are a part of Kobe’s life too. Suffering is a quick litmus test of what lies underneath all of the talent. In another interview, Kobe spoke about how he found his faith after dealing with some serious allegations of sexual misconduct. He said, “You can know [that God is great] all you want, but until you have to pick up that cross that you can’t carry, and he picks it up for you, and carries you and the cross . . . then you know.”
Man that's deep. Something that you'll only hear from someone who was weighed down with a heavy burden. A heavy cross as he says.
The Rockets did not play a traditional center in their victories over the Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans over the weekend despite having 7-foot reserves Tyson Chandler and Isaiah Hartenstein available. Houston became the first team to go an entire game without using a player taller than 6-foot-6 since the New York Knicks in a Jan. 31, 1963, win over the Chicago Zephyrs, according to research by the Elias Sports Bureau.
The link is for an article about a trade that sent Clint Capela to the Atlanta Hawks, but the quote above is the most interesting part of that article for me. I think that small ball lineups is a preview of the future of NBA basketball.
Centers playing with their back to the basket, backing down defenders is a rare sight in the NBA these days. Joel Embiid is probably the last dominant, back to the basket center the NBA has left. Most other tall centers/power forwards nowadays prefer to shoot perimeter shots anyway. Yet these same players can sometimes be too slow in defense, especially in “switch-all” defensive schemes.
Interesting read on why you should quit the news, with some history lesson thrown in as well. This one is a lengthy read (45 minutes estimate), so best to read this on your lunch break or after work.
Well, that’s easy. The goal of the news is to motivate you to keep consuming news.
This is something that I only realized the past few months when I tried decreasing my consumption of news. Now I can't stop noticing it. If you look at how they structure the presentation of news in like the morning news shows, they do it in a way to keep you hooked on news.
Same thing on news websites. They want you on their website as long as possible, nudging you to click links left and right so that you stay even longer on their site. If their job was to inform, they've done it, but do they have to try and hold my attention all day? That's the part that gets to me.
Research on deindividuation theory has been conducted in numerous settings (not just driving) and has found that when we feel anonymous, we’re more likely to disregard societal norms for behavior.
Basically, it’s easier to get mad at someone when we don’t know them because we’re less likely to be held accountable for it.
“It’s the same reason why people feel like they’re entitled to be angry on certain social media platforms,” Dr. Himanshu Agrawal (a psychiatrist at the Medical College of Wisconsin) explains.
Since we rarely know the person in the car next to us (and since we also have a box of glass/steel between us and them), driving creates that sense of anonymity, making it easier for us to lash out.
When I decided to read this article, I was doing so because I wanted to learn more about road rage and how to avoid it. I didn't expect to run into this gem. This article basically says that one of the causes for road rage, is also responsible for the sad state of communications online. If you really read into it, it does make sense.
One of my goals this year is to be able to do more pull-ups. Currently, I can only do 2 in a row. I want to be able to do 5 in a row before the end of this year. This pull-up guide from Nerd Fitness seems to be exactly what I need.
Award-winning psychologist Bruce Hood draws on research from his own lab and others around the world to explain why psychological ownership is an emotional state of mind that governs our behaviour from the cradle to the grave, even when it is often irrational and destructive. What motivates us to buy more than we need? How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it?
Timely, engaging and persuasive, Possessed is the first book to explore how ownership has us enthralled in relentless pursuit of a false happiness, with damaging consequences for society and the planet – and how we can stop buying into it.
Sounds like a very interesting book. Adding it to my “want to read” list.
Imagine my shock then, to find myself enjoying the game! Lebron and his teammates were skilled ballplayers, exciting to watch and fast on their feet. Two quarters in, my fears had lifted. Unlike fifteen years prior, this basketball arena was the site of my ultimate, God-given purpose. God had not created me to be a basketball player, but He had created me to love and support my student, Lebron.
Maybe where you are right now is not where you want to be. Or, maybe you are exactly where you need to be, to be of the greatest help to someone else.
Sometimes they accused demons of making their minds wander. Sometimes they blamed the body’s base instincts. But the mind was the root problem: it is an inherently jumpy thing. John Cassian, whose thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks, knew this problem all too well. He complained that the mind ‘seems driven by random incursions’. It ‘wanders around like it were drunk’. It would think about something else while it prayed and sang. It would meander into its future plans or past regrets in the middle of its reading. It couldn’t even stay focused on its own entertainment – let alone the difficult ideas that called for serious concentration.
Interesting read on the age old problem of distraction. It is just made worse now with all of our digital devices clamoring for our attention.
Lots of interesting goals or habits in this list, some I already do, the others I don't. Of particular interest to me is number 10, Plan Your Weekends.
Plan Your Weekends
We often think of planning only in terms of one’s workaday life (the scheduling of which can indeed be beneficial), whereas we feel that leisure time should be wholly spontaneous. But everyone’s life experience shows that good times typically don’t just happen; when left to chance, we end up surrendering our free time to inertia and don’t end up doing much at all. So take a page from Ernest Hemingway and intentionally plan out your weekends, always having an idea of a few fun things you’d like to do as you head into them. (If you’re married, we highly recommend doing this planning during your weekly marriage meeting.) You’ll have an easier time facing Monday, when you truly made the most of your Saturday/Sunday.
I'm going to give that a try this year. In fact I've already started yesterday. I created my first ever weekly spread on my bullet journal and planned the activities and tasks for this whole week.
Interesting podcast episode on the topic of fatherhood. If you are a father, or are about to become one, you should listen to this podcast. I even think it is a good one for moms to listen to as well. There's some good info on how a father can help the development of a child as they grow up.
Children of older fathers have an increased risk of having down syndrome. Children of older fathers have an increased risk of having schizophrenia.
All this time the focus is on how old a mom is when they get pregnant. Turns out, would be fathers should take notice too.
One of the things my wife always gives me a hard time on, is when I don't understand what my son is telling me. She always says, “hinde kame tan entendihan”, that we don't understand each other. Turns out, this might be beneficial to my son. Me talking to him, trying to understand him, using words he is not used to, forces him to expand his vocabulary and better understand how best to communicate with people. Apparently this sort of thing helps them do better in school. Anyway, listen to the podcast, it is an interesting one.