🎮 Hip hop hooray
Pinball prohibition, small but mighty shooter, and much more...
Mornin’. As we head into August and say peace out to July—the Earth's hottest month on record so far—the list of tactics to help fight off the heat keeps growing.
A dip in the pool? Naturally.
A trip to the beach? Bien sûr.
A bucket of ice in front of a motorized fan? Our personal favorite.
A scoop of the best vanilla ice cream? Debated. (We’ll take a double.)
Here’s another one for you to jot down.
Today is National Water Balloon Day. English inventor Edgar Ellington discovered the water balloon in 1950—by accident of course—in an attempt to create a waterproof sock. Out of frustration, he slammed one on a nearby table, and the "water grenade" was born (cue Gene Wilder reax in Young Frankenstein).
In honor of this day, we suggest celebrating with a good ol’ water balloon fight. (Choose your teammates carefully.) It will keep you cool, but not quite as cool as ice.
—Marques Edge, Tim Leong, Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca
P.S. In Wednesday’s edition of the Edit, we embedded a video of the intro to the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon that was later made unavailable. To cure your shell shock, here's the "Ninja Rap" from the 1993 movie. You're welcome.
Buffed/Nerfed
What’s up and down in the world rn.
Buffed: Sampler platters. New York City restaurant Sei Less launched a new selection of dishes and cocktails to honor 50 years of hip hop. The Asian fusion restaurant is offering the menu through August. Hip hop hooray, we say.
Nerfed: Rapid rebrands. The brightly flashing X logo for the company formerly known as Twitter was taken down from the roof of its San Francisco headquarters after area residents complained. I guess X isn’t gon’ give it to ya.
Buffed: Bearing witness. To beat the summer heat, a bear was spotted chilling in a Southern California backyard jacuzzi. Like its picnic basket-stealing brethren, you could say it was smarter than the average bear.
Nerfed: Living más. A new class-action lawsuit accuses Taco Bell of overstating how much meat it offers in some menu items. (The fast-food chain hasn’t yet responded.) I guess this customer was done asking, “Where’s the beef?”
Buffed: Sorority blues. Parents are paying upwards to $4,000 to help their daughters prepare for rush recruitment. And you thought college admissions was competitive. —ME
Burning Question: Was pinball really illegal?
Asked and answered.
According to officials, there was one clear threat to the American public in the 1940s: pinball.
Wait, what?
It’s true. In 1942 pinball was illegal in New York City along with a host of other major cities across the country.
Contributing writer Aaron Morales reveals the hidden history of pinball, and how it got an extra ball, er, life.
A brief history of the world’s smallest first-person shooter
Investigations of interest.
The original size of the image above these words was 158 kilobytes. That’s a very tidy size. E-mailable, in fact. It seems impossible to imagine a first-person shooter game with that small of a data footprint.
In 2004, a band of coders decided to imagine even smaller.
They created .kkreiger, a fully playable FPS at only 94 KB.
Contributing writer Evan Lewis dives into the German art and coding culture, and explains how a band of creative coders crammed such a big game into such a small package.
Shameless Plug: A heat wave comes to ‘Call of Duty: Mobile’
It’s sun’s out, literal guns out for Call of Duty: Mobile. The seventh season of the popular free-to-play action game is here and it’s called Heat Wave.
It’s available worldwide for all players right now.
In it you’ll find the new and lively Seaside multiplayer map set in Spain. You can battle in close chambers, street markets, or even a wine cellar (careful of the Tempranillo!) alongside a robotic companion that you must escort and protect.
There are also new challenges, tournament mode updates, and trivia questions tied to a Summer Sizzle BBQ. (Bring the heat, IMO.)
Check out the Call of Duty blog for more details.
Fun Fact Friday
The perennially dominant U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) is in the headlines this week after an underwhelming 0-0 draw versus Portugal allowed it to stumble, rather than storm, into the Round of 16 at the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
The two-time defending champions resume their quest for a third straight title on Sunday when they face off against Sweden in the knockout stage.
Did you know: Of the 15 teams left in the tournament not named the U.S., only Nigeria ranks among the top 10 most populous countries in the world (at 6th, with 224 million people).
Of the five countries that are more populous, four are located in Asia: India (with 1.4 billion people), China (1.4 billion), Indonesia (278 million), and Pakistan (240 million). The fifth, the U.S., ranks third with 340 million people.
Of course, none of that matters at the World Cup, where each country registers a side of 23 players, with 11 on the field at any moment. Though sometimes just one will make all the difference. —ME
Wormhole
Click the following image and…well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.
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