Check out the Top 10 Plays of March 28, 2017 from Ish Smith, Kris Dunn, Kenneth Faried, Dwight Howard, John Wall, Justin Anderson, Tony Snell, Noah Vonleh, James Johnson and Hassan Whiteside!
Hassan Whiteside w/ a buzzer-beating tip-in — For The Win!
Desiigner goes Sneaker Shopping with Joe La Puma at Flight Club in Los Angeles and confirms he has an Adidas collab coming and how Kanye and Pusha T give him fashion guidance.
Nardwuar vs. Desiigner
Nardwuar interviews Desiigner at SXSW 2017 in Austin, Texas, USA! Special thanks to Tyler Williams, Melissa O'Brien and Diana C. Guadarrama! Doot doo!
When Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick designed Aeron, they combined a deep knowledge of human-centered design with innovative, never-before-seen technology to deliver a chair unlike any other. Now Aeron has been remastered—ergonomically, functionally, anthropometrically, and environmentally—for today’s work and workers.
AERON REMASTERED
ENGINEERED SERENDIPITY
When Aeron debuted in 1994 it was a chair unlike any the world had ever seen. It didn’t just change how people sat, but what they thought a chair could be. But a lot has changed since then, so it made sense that Aeron should change too.
So how did we improve one of the most iconic and beloved chairs in the world? We recruited co-designer Don Chadwick to reexamine the design criteria that led him and Bill Stumpf to the original in the context of today’s work and technology.
With stronger, smarter materials, better adjustment capabilities, new finish options, and a healthier, more comfortable sit, we didn’t recreate or redesign the Aeron Chair—we remastered it.
Just as iconic films and albums are updated for new audiences, Aeron has been remastered to meet the needs of today’s work, workers, and work environments. By coupling co-designer Don Chadwick’s vision with Herman Miller’s latest research around the science of sitting, the new Aeron works smarter than ever before—so you can too.
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How a Herman Miller Aeron Chair is made - BrandmadeTV
Is it art or an office chair? The Aeron office chair by Herman Miller is the King of the cubicle. With exceptional ergonomic design and endless customization options this chair can be tailored to fit any derrière. In fact some ten million people enjoy it’s comfort every day. To keep up with that level of demand the Herman Miller factory in Zeeland Michigan outputs a new chair every seventeen seconds.
MARK BAVARO — Fearsome tight end who won Super Bowls XXI and XXV as a member of the New York Giants. He earned back-to-back All-Pro honors in 1986 and 1987 and was inducted into the New York Giants Ring of Honor in 2011.
Does ex-Giants tight end Mark Bavaro belong in Hall of Fame? Patriots' Bill Belichick says ...
Former Giants tight end Mark Bavaro never quite gained enough traction with Hall of Fame voters to make it to Canton, but one former member of the Giants coaching staff in the 1980s made a pretty strong case for Bavaro's candidacy at Super Bowl Media Day: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Mark Bavaro a.k.a. John Rambo of the NFL
Belichick, who was a Giants assistant from 1979 through 1984, before becoming the team's defensive coordinator under Bill Parcells from 1985 through 1990, raved about Bavaro's blocking prowess in an interview on Media Day. Belichick told the Daily News that Bavaro deserves to be in Canton based solely on holding his own in one-on-one battles with Hall of Fame former Eagles defensive end Reggie White.
via the Daily News:
"I have to say this . . . Mark was as good a player as we had on the Giants and that includes a lot of players," Belichick said. "I know every time we played the Eagles and they played that 'over' he was out there on Reggie White. He blocked him without any help. He blocked Reggie White better than most tackles blocked him. There was not another tight end in the league who could do that. I think that alone should put him in the Hall of Fame. This guy was a great football player."
Mark Bavaro, a devout Roman Catholic made it a habit to 'genuflect' in the end zone and 'motion the sign of the cross' after every touchdown he scored
Belichick also recalled some epic practice blocking drills involving Bavaro and two of the Giants' all-time great defenders, linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks.
"If there's a memory in my mind of training camp, it's all the times LT and Carl (Banks) would line up across from Mark in one-on-ones," Belichick recalled Tuesday. "Those were the days back in training camp where you practiced every day in pads. There were no better battles in my entire career than watching Carl and LT go against Bavaro one on one.
"It was just awesome. All three of them were so good, so competitive, so tough, I don't think Mark has ever got the recognition that any of us who coached him or played against him know that he deserves."
Bavaro was a throwback tight end, a player who relished staying on the line and blocking as much as sprinting down the seam as a receiver. But that didn't stop Bavaro from saying that being compared to Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski — arguably the best receiving tight end in the game — is "pretty cool."
Bavaro's TD celebration varied greatly from his gridiron competitors — who normally celebrated via choreographed end zone dances
But Bavaro added that he would not have enjoyed playing in today's NFL as much because of how tight ends like Gronkowski are used. His favorite is Jason Witten of the Dallas Cowboys, who he called the best all-around tight end in the game.
"I would definitely have to adapt my football philosophy. I don't think I would like it as much," Bavaro said. "I really enjoyed being on the line. Blocking back then was 80% of the game for me. You'd hope to catch maybe three or four balls a game and have those three or four balls be important. That was the biggest goal I'd have going into a game, to make three or four pivotal catches."
In fact, one could argue that Bavaro's lack of elite receiving stats is probably what kept him from getting the Hall of Fame recognition that Belichick believes he deserves. His best season was the Giants' hallowed 1986 Super Bowl year, when he caught 66 passes for 1,001 yards with four touchdowns.
Those are good numbers to be sure, but they don't come close to touching the kind of stat lines you see tight ends like Gronkowski and the Saints' Jimmy Graham putting up. By comparison, Giants tight end Larry Donnell, hardly one of the NFL's elite tight ends, caught 63 passes and scored six touchdowns in 2014.
But Bavaro could block with the best of them, a lost art among today's tight ends. It's obviously harder to quantify than catching the ball, but it makes Bavaro's case for Canton a little more convincing. — Nick Powell | NJ.com
Sound masking technology has been around for decades, but has gotten more popular recently
Masking sound keeps office conversations private
Silence is golden, but sometimes privacy is more valuable.
And to protect your privacy, many buildings, probably more than you realize, have used a system of electronic audio devices that create a “woosh” of white noise that makes it hard to hear what is being said across the room from you, next door, or in the next cubicle.
Rich Petty, owner of AAA Sound Service & Low Voltage, 295 Mt. Read Blvd., tells clients that sound masking sounds a lot like Niagara Falls, or a heating and air conditioning system.
“It’s just a random sampling of all the frequencies in the full spectrum that are randomly played over and over so it just sounds like rushing water,” he said.
Sound masking technology, which costs about $1 to $3 per square foot of office space, is used in almost any kind of office setting, especially in law offices, doctors’ offices, hospitals, banks, and anywhere else that personal information is shared.
“In recent years there’s been an uptick in the prevalence of open office layouts, less cubicles, less hard wall office configurations. And with people sitting in closer proximity, sound masking is certainly something that’s being considered more often in those situations,” said Nathan Rozzi, an architect at Hanlon Architects, 1300 University Ave., and a member of the board of the Rochester chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Sound masking technology is used in doctor's offices, law offices, hospitals, banks, and anywhere privacy is important. It's also common in open concept office areas. Video by Bennett J. Loudon
Taking off
Even some car dealerships use sound masking systems.
“When someone is talking with their car representative about the $65,000 Lincoln they’re looking to purchase, they don’t want people that are walking around the showroom hearing their private financial discussion,” said Andrew Shepanski, an account executive at Functional Communications, 100 Victor Heights Parkway, Victor.
Sound masking experts say the technology reduces distractions and stress and improves worker productivity.
Sound masking has become especially popular in recent years because of the ways office space is now designed and constructed. So that floor space can easily be reconfigured when tenants change, interior walls often do not reach all the way to the next floor.
There often is a space above the drop ceiling that allows sound to pass from one room to another. Interior walls are often not insulated to prevent sound from passing through. And doors are sometimes hollow, which means sound also can more easily pass through.
“It’s a product that’s been around for quite a while, but it’s really taking off in the last few years for a lot of reasons,” said Mike Grant, owner of Tele Data Com Inc., 90 Air Park Drive, Chili, primarily a telecommunications cabling contractor that has been selling and installing sound masking systems for a few years.
“Sound that goes into the ceiling passes through and important conversations and things are overheard. It allows you to have those private conversations so your voice doesn’t carry,” Grant said.
Invisible to the public
Work areas are more often designed with an open space concept without any barriers, or sometimes only cubicle separators between desks.
“These call centers and these environments where everybody’s talking, the sound just travels all over the place. This deadens that sound so it creates more of a neutral environment so your voice doesn’t carry over to the next cubicle or the next office,” Grant said.
Shepanski said the general public is usually unaware that sound masking is operating.
“Probably 90 percent of people have been in sound masking offices and doctors’ offices or even just commercial buildings where they have no idea that it’s there because when they walk in the noise that they’re hearing, or not even picking up on, is just part of the natural noise of the building,” Shepanski said.
“The majority of folks, they would have no idea they are even in a sound masking area unless you were to turn it off and then they would know that dead air, that dead noise,” Shepanski said.
Using sound masking also helps medical offices comply with federal laws adopted to protect the privacy of health and medical information.
“We have it in our main waiting area, right at check in. That’s where most of the conversations and questions would take place,” said Annette Wiebeld, practice administrator at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care, 170 Sawgrass Drive in Brighton.
“We’ve noticed that it is more difficult to decipher what patients are saying. So the person who may be standing on the opposite side of them, or behind them, cannot hear,” she said.
“Hey, what happened?”
Sound masking systems usually consist of several speaker-like devices, often about the size of a shoe box, or a large coffee can, placed in the plenum space above a drop ceiling. The speakers are connected to a control system usually installed in an out-of-sight place, such as a closet. Amplifiers and equalizers or other equipment are used to create and adjust the sound.
With the system installed, Grant is no longer annoyed by a co-worker nearby who hums incessantly. Other co-workers say they no longer overhear conversations in neighboring rooms. They can hear talking, but they can’t understand what is being said.
Often, sound masking systems also can be used for paging and emergency notifications. Although sound masking is used most often in office settings, portable sound-masking devices are used in dormitories by college students and travelers in hotel rooms.
“You definitely hear it, but what happens is that you just don’t notice it. After about two hours you just don’t know it’s there. You can hear it, no question about it,” Grant said.
Grant described the noise made by the sound masking system as “sort of like a buzzing light, or a refrigerator compressor that you don’t notice until it turns off.”
“If I turn it off here people will say within 10 seconds, ‘Hey, what happened?’ It’s almost too quiet. it’s almost deafening,” Grant said. — Bennett J. Loudon | USA Today
Major labels got you art direction. Indie rappers got Pen & Pixel to photoshop them on to a pile of gold holding a Glock.
Yesterday was great because any day where I spend over an hour looking at Pen & Pixel art is a great day. First my friend Marko put up every Pen & Pixel cover he had, then I found an even bigger archive while trying to track down one Marko didn't have. It is 65 pages of photoshopped flames, lens flares and blinged-out letters from before "bling" was a cliche. It is the best thing you will see all month.
To bring everyone up to speed, Pen & Pixel is a graphic design firm based in Houston who made their name doing album art for rappers, primarily in the South and Southwest. The golden age of Pen & Pixel was the late 90's and early 00's (especially when No Limit had a new album in stores every fucking week). You know the style even if you don't know the name: a typical Pen & Pixel cover involves the artist surrounded by photoshopped cars, weapons and women usually in the hood but sometimes in a graveyard or a church, under grandiose typography depicting their name.
It's actually hard to say what a "typical" Pen & Pixel work looks like because their process is very hands-off; they are more or less happy to do whatever their clients want. Not anything, as they explained in the Ego Trip Book of Rap Lists (nobody goes on the cross!), but their concerns were about politics not taste. No amount of computer-aided thuggin or computer-aided stuntin' was over the line.
And so Pen & Pixel's legacy is some of the straight up silliest album art of all time. South Park Mexican rakes money in his front yard! BG stands amidst a rain of giant bullets! A hundred different rappers gaze pensively into the Earth they hold in their hands, in which you can see the streets they come from! A hundred other rappers loom over their city and/or some luxury cars. The most famous (as art alone) is probably Big Bear's Doin' Thangs. The album itself is totally capable late-90's Bay Area-influenced rap from Omaha. But on the cover, Big Bear sits at a table with two other bears in smoking jackets, enjoying cigars and fresh fruit. They all have gigantic snifters of brandy. One of the bears is wearing sunglasses.
I feel like I have to point out that Pen & Pixel's work graces the covers of dozens of platinum records and classic albums. Doin' Thangs is famous because it's an Internet meme and it shows up on Buzzfeed lists like "15 Album Covers You Won't Believe!" or some shit. And you may have heard of Pen & Pixel through an episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, which has the smarmy tone of a Daily Show segment where they visit a white supremacist. There's a tendency to write off anyone with a Pen & Pixel cover that isn't famous (and already known to be clownable) as terrible because apparently you can judge gangster rap by its cover (unlike books!). And that's unfortunate because Pen & Pixel thrived at a time when major labels really didn't fuck with anyone who wasn't from New York or Los Angeles.
Small market rappers had to hustle. Major labels got you art direction. Indie rappers got Pen & Pixel to photoshop them on to a pile of gold holding a Glock. Sometimes they sold millions of records, sometimes they were just the hottest thing in Little Rock in 1997. Either way, a gallery of Pen & Pixel covers is a strange trip through rap in lesser-known corners of the map. (It's also not fair to think none of the rappers were in on the joke. I think it's fair to say you are laughing with Big Bear and not at him.)
But anyways, none of this changes the glorious insanity that is Pen & Pixel artwork. Here are five covers that feature rappers in space. — Skinny Friedman |NOISEY
Snoop Dogg sits cross-legged in a jewel-encrusted throne. His right hand dangles a cigar, while his left clutches a gold cane so ornate that it might have been lifted from the Vatican. He’s in the driveway of an unfathomably expensive mansion, flanked by a scrum of pit bulls. It makes quite a first impression, but if you look closely enough, you might notice the artwork’s seams — the way the two wings of the house don’t match, the way the dogs seem pulled from different photo shoots. But with diamonds and gemstones this dazzling, why get hung up on the details? The image is the cover of Snoop’s 1998 album, “Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told,” the L.A. rapper’s first with the New Orleans-based No Limit Records. And the mise-en-scène — its flamboyant and farcical qualities, its digitally simulated grace — places us unmistakably in the realm of Pen & Pixel, the Houston-based graphic-design firm that prospered from 1992 to 2003 by bringing just this combination of menacing nonchalance and near-utopian affluence to the nation’s album covers.
The design firm set the tone for Southern rap’s near-complete takeover of the genre — to the point that Snoop would sign with a Louisiana label. It’s easy to forget that even within a genre as historically maligned as hip-hop, music made outside the familiar East and West Coast industry hubs had a fugitive, disreputable quality for many years. From the mainstream’s perspective, there was a profound otherness to these outsiders, with their strange accents and manners and slapdash production values. Pen & Pixel served as the visual counterpart to this otherness; its gaudy, dreamlike album covers were like crass, lunatic vision-boards, offering vibrant Photoshop collages of palm trees and pineapples, Hummers and helicopters, skulls and city skylines and diamond-studded goblets. There were nearly always Champagne bottles, lightning bolts and pastel-colored luxury cars, all of it arranged carefully in graveyards or deserts or swamps, on the lawns of palatial estates or on the moon. The fonts tended to be three-dimensional, seemingly cast in gold or other precious metals.
Big Bear’s ‘Doin Thangs’ cover, by the numbers:
Bears in smoking jackets: 4
Bears actually smoking cigars: 3
Fruit and nut platters: 1
Letters dripping honey: 2
The firm’s weird, pixelated decadence conveyed fantasies of kitsch and capitalism taken to their illogical extremes. In the South Georgia town I grew up in, as in scores of other economically depressed cities across the Cotton Belt, large areas of stark poverty encircled and coexisted uneasily with pockets of country-club opulence. This was the disorienting New South that Pen & Pixel seemed to respond to in its own distinctly disorienting way. What I most admired about the aesthetic was its boundless energy and unpredictability, and the way it let rappers be upfront and extroverted about their desires. The covers also perfectly complemented the music within — onslaughts of bold and abrasive sonic experimentation. Whether for canonical artists (Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne) or for radically obscure ones, Pen & Pixel covers represented a sort of promise; not a guarantee of quality, exactly, but one of imaginative humor and deliberate, playful surrealism. The firm was founded by two brothers, Aaron and Shawn Brauch. Aaron had an M.B.A. from Cornell and was a proud lifetime member of Mensa. Shawn was a scuba-diving enthusiast with multiple design degrees. Originally employed by the seminal Texas hip-hop label Rap-A-Lot, the brothers soon found themselves inundated with outside requests. They struck out on their own in 1992, their operation consisting of a computer and a dining-room table, and by 1998 they were reporting gross annual profits of $3.7 million. They started their own TV show and, as Shawn told The Los Angeles Times that year, planned a book of Pen & Pixel artwork, “including a magnifying glass, to see all the detail.”
And what detail! Rappers delved into their own psyches and dreamed up scenarios in which they tamed tigers, leveled skyscrapers with laser vision, gaped at alligators or reigned over ruined worlds engulfed in flames. The results may have started out as an affront to mainstream taste, but by the turn of the century they were practically a primary expression of it. The firm decorated the covers of 750 million albums sold, including 12 platinum and 38 gold records. It might be more accurate to say that the firm burrowed into the id of mainstream taste, stripping it for parts in a manic cut-and-paste frenzy. Its success was accompanied by the usual hand-wringing: The Brauchs were dismissed as tasteless and grossly materialistic by people who probably danced at their weddings to Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want).” The Brauch brothers have cited Napster and Sept. 11 as the twin harbingers of Pen & Pixel’s demise: Fears of file-sharing and terrorism alike apparently rendered long-distance flights to Houston to spend large amounts on artwork (which listeners may or may not even see) a hugely optional luxury. In the company’s wake, rap-album art has in large part degenerated into a kind of solemn professionalism, a zone overcrowded with nostalgia and self-serious monochromatic portraits. There’s less room today for the truly unexpected juxtaposition — no pineapples, pet cheetahs or convertibles riding waves like surfboards. What I miss most about these covers is their tendency to transform real-life injustice into a luminous and liberating absurdism; the world of Pen & Pixel was limited only by artists’ imaginations. They shared cigars with grizzly bears, recast themselves as Rambo-like war heroes and constructed still lifes out of Rolex watches and bottles of Moët & Chandon. And we were all allowed to take part, if only from a distance. — Will Stephensen | The New York Times
F.E.D.S. Inside the unofficial newsletter of urban crime culture
F.E.D.S. Magazine doesn’t offer subscriptions. It has no website or social media presence. You can’t find it at Barnes & Noble. But if you’ve lived in many of America’s poor, urban areas or been entangled in its penal system, you’re more than likely familiar with the publication. Its reputation for raw, authentic coverage of the criminal fringe has made it a staple in US prisons.
F.E.D.S. — an acronym for Finally Every Dimension of the Streets — has been owned and operated by Antoine Clark for 18 years. Antoine runs the magazine’s business operations, but he also writes many of the stories. Recently he took VICE News behind the scenes as he worked on the forthcoming issue, including a shoot with rapper Fetty Wap.
Crime may be the magazine’s main focus, but Antoine believes F.E.D.S. can actually help keep its audience out of the criminal justice system by encouraging reading and literacy. “Some people’s gonna take caution from it, some people’s gonna take glory from it,” Antoine said. — Oliver Noble | VICE News