Mike Villar

Shot 100% on the HD HERO3+® camera from ‪http://GoPro.com. Kelly McGarry flips a 72-foot-long canyon gap at Red Bull Rampage 2013 to earn a 2nd place finish.

This is now, officially, the most badass POV MTB video I have ever seen. Kelly McGarry’s run at Red Bull Rampage 2013.

How do these people—I don’t know—NOT die?

To put things into perspective, I broke both my arms negotiating a baby jump, cried like a baby for months and became a devout Christian after.

How do these people wake up in the morning and say “You know what? Let me engage in an activity with a 90% chance of dying. Yeah, I’ll do that. But first, I need a wheelbarrow to carry my giant balls”

In late May of this year, a few weeks shy of her fiftieth birthday, my youngest sister, Tiffany, committed suicide. Six months before our sister killed herself, I made plans for us all to gather at a beach house on Emerald Isle, off the coast of North Carolina. Each of us had pulled away from the family at some point in our lives. We’d had to in order to forge our own identities. Tiffany, though, stayed away.

David Sedaris writes about his sister Tiffany’s recent suicide. In typical David Sedaris fashion, halfway through the essay, you find yourself chuckling about a topic that would’ve otherwise been macabre. 

Then you go all “THIS” over lines like:

“I don’t know that it had anything to do with us,” my father said. But how could it have not? Doesn’t the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?

After reading dozens of David’s essays and about all his published books, I feel like I know the entire Sedaris family. Tiffany isn’t exactly my favorite Sedaris sibling but I’ve always felt like nobody cared for her enough. 

Remember “Let it snow?”

Found a Flickr album  showing the progress the UK is making on their new Queen Elizabeth-class Carriers complete with CGI renders. Those islands look sleek!

Remarketing, Fuck yeah! #h8rsgunh8

A great list of pickup lines or THE GREATEST list of pickup lines?

laughingsquid:

Misheard Song Lyrics Round 3

In this round of Misheard Song Lyrics, we listen to such classics as the Beatles’ “I wanna hold your ham”, Michael Jackson’s “Feed it”, Greenday’s “American Indian” and, a personal favorite: Eric Carmen’s “Obama’s Elf”

kotakucom:

Print your own awesome game covers off. Your games will thank you.

Interesting visualization of the most popular porn-related searches by state. The data set came from pornhub and the visualization and narrative is provided by my favorite Data Scientist, Nathan Yau (@flowingdata; Grab his book, it’s worth it)

Mental Note: Retire in Montana or Oklahoma. Avoid Idaho, those people are weird and probably need Jesus in their lives.

Citing anything done by 37Signals and Amazon as good examples of how things should be done on the web almost always feels like a cop out. I try to avoid doing so as much as I can but you’ll have to excuse me for this one.

I got this page along with an email after I ended my Highrise subscription.

This is the girlfriend you broke up with using a shitty “it’s not you, it’s me”-type excuse.

She understands, skips the emotionally-charged tirades and spares you from suffering the collateral damage of her going through her Kübler-Ross phases and, instead:

1. Asks you for feedback on how she could be better on her future relationships
2. Lets you know, that after doing so, you can expect not to be bothered by her again (similar to how she explicitly filled you in on what you should expect when you opted in—or started your relationship with her)
3. Keeps the lines of communications open in regards to whether or not there are any loose ends you want to tie up with her or if there’s anything you want back? (I mean you did buy that flat screen TV, you deserve to keep it)
4. Thanks you for trying hard to make the relationship work through the years
5. Lets you know that she’s open to unattached sex the possibility of giving the relationship another try should you wish to do so.
6. Let’s you know what she has to offer outside the relationship you just ended with her and assures you that she’s open to doing business with you under those contexts without and not be resentful.

Textbook. 

We need to commit more to life.

5 minutes spent fiddling with your phone’s settings trying to get decent mobile internet speeds.

5 minutes spent checking in to FourSquare.

10 minutes spent taking Instagram photos of the venue.

10 minutes spent trying to make your massive bitching about how long the line to the concession stand is fit within a 140-character tweet.

10 minutes spent taking Instagram photos of the snack you bought from multiple angles.

10 minutes spent tagging your Facebook friends on the same Instagram photos you took for God knows why. Maybe you wish they were there with you, maybe you’re just a douche bag who likes to brag. No one really knows.

15 minutes spent trying to take an unfunny Vine video of you playing with your food and making funny faces.

The show you paid good money for starts.

It’s time to watch the entire fucking thing through a 4-inch smart phone screen.

Oh shit, I forgot to check in to Get Glue.

Sent from my iPhone

Only in the sport of Mountain Biking could this be considered a great day. #mudfest

Sorry Ben. 

Plane-Ception. What we have right here is a C5 Galaxy giving birth to one of my favorite war planes: The A10 Warthog.

In Summary: A subset of consumers want access to luxury, not ownership.

My boy Tom is on the right track after all.

Great compilation by @jowyang on The Collaborative Economy. One of the few buzzwords that make sense to me,

I remember watching the Truman Show when I was younger and how it totally fucked my shit up.

I’m pretty sure I lost a good number of friends because of how I badgered everyone around me to confess to being actors in a show where I’m the star.

Looking back, I remember soliciting these confessions from people in a progressively creepy manner starting with a joke and ending up, on more than one occasion, with me following people home to check out how they lived their “real world lives.” (All of the people I followed were great method actors. They remained in character all throughout the series it seems)

I realized there was something wrong with me when the only friend I had left was this kid named Melvin who went around campus telling people how he managed to turn into a Super Saiyan once but can’t do so again because humans have damaged nature too much to a point where he couldn’t draw enough energy from the Earth to complete his transformation.

That friendship ended when I tricked Melvin into buying a guitar pick that supposedly belonged to Kurt Cobain (this was a few years after Kurt Cobain died when every high school kid was still reeling from how he “took rock music with him to his grave”) and he punched me in the mouth after I failed to verify the pick’s authenticity. That was a turning point in my High School life and the entire thing made me realize how I needed to get over the entire Truman Show thing, start making new friends and live my life like a normal teenager would.

Fast-forward to today. I have to say that I never really fully got over the entire Truman Show thing and randomly find myself in situations where I catch myself saying “Well, that’s not what the writer had in mind” (i.e. explaining to my mom why I got kicked out of med school or explaining to a girl why I failed to achieve an erection)

The recent storm and incidents of flooding that ravaged Manila only served to rekindle and seemingly exacerbate my obsession. At the height of the storm, every medium had access to had stories that reminded me of how terrible flooding is everywhere. I was assaulted with pictures and video of major roads rendered impassable by severe flooding, houses and property damaged by floods supposedly taken by people as the events unfold. Social Media humanizes! Trending user-generated content straight from the groundswell lends the ultimate believability!

Then, I threw the writers a curve ball. I decided to drive to the city I used to live in which is a good 30kms away from where I currently live—making sure to pass by locations that typically get flooded and, exactly as I expected, no flooding, no traffic, no rain, nothing. I ate lunch, drove back to my house and then the heavy rain started to fall.

I’ve also become more aware of the people in my periphery and how they look like the same set of people executing the same routines. Case in point: that guy who passed by me five times while I was unloading things from my car earlier. But then again, that just might be the repo man coming for my car as I do have some checks that bounced over the last couple of months but whatever. I am on to you. All of you.

What made Instagram, Instagram with a B? Or DropBox. Or most recently the smashing and unstoppable success that is WhatsApp?

While many companies chased features, functions, integrations, platforms, toys, conferences … these companies quietly sharpened the saw.

Don’t even get me started on how fucking relevant this was to me when Social Media started being a thing. Great read from @msuster

Interesting stats compiled by Marketing Sherpa after asking email marketers the question: Which form data do you collect in the registration process for your email program?

70% of marketers asking for at least a name seems high as it is but considering how important this data point is as far as personalization would go and how inserting the recipient name on subject lines and actual content have proven to positively influence open rates and click through rates, I’m actually surprised why marketers don’t ask for this more.

After all, there are graceful, unobtrusive ways to ask for a subscriber’s name. One of my favorites would be how Chris Brogan solicits this information:

Some retailers actually get away with asking for much more by making the experience as streamlined as possible.

Zulily, for one integrates an account creation flow into its email collection popup it serves for new visitors via three succinct screens: (Animated GIF below)

Now, Zulily not only has your email address and your name. They could now begin tracking your activity throughout the site and use the data they collect for better-targeted email campaigns.

Lots of DataJunk in this article so I dumpster dove to present you the stats that matter:

Mobile commerce activity

• More iPhone users use mobile apps for shopping (67.5%) vs Android (43.9%) Source: Arbitron
  
  
• iPhone users are 54% more likely than Android users to use mobile commerce apps Source: Arbitron
  
  
• iPhone users spend more time with mobile commerce apps (105 min/mo) than Android (88 min/mo) Source: Arbitron
  
  
• iPhone users are more likely to engage in marketing and impulse purchases Source: Arbitron
  
  
• iPhone owners are 15 percent more likely to visit online retail sites Source: Comscore
  
  
• 23% of iPhone owners have made a mobile purchase vs. 17% of Android owners Source: Comscore

You know where it’s at.