Link Salad, the Feedback Loop Edition
-- Mayweather-Maidana 2: Nasty Money - Rafe Bartholomew, Grantland, Sept. 15, 2014
"Additionally, one of the sport’s virtues is its history of giving second chances to fighters with criminal pasts. Mayweather, with his pattern of abusive behavior, might be beyond redemption. But exiling every boxer who runs afoul of the law might also mean never getting a chance to witness a career like Bernard Hopkins’s. Hopkins, a current titlist at light heavyweight, served almost five years in prison for strong-armed robbery and assault, then embarked on a record-breaking, Hall of Fame-worthy career that has spanned four decades and still isn’t over. In boxing, the morally reprehensible often lives beside the uplifting and inspirational. The sport’s fans understand this; many of them seem to embrace it."
-- It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: The Pseudo-Endlessness of ‘Destiny’ - Ben Lindbergh, Grantland, Sept. 16, 2014
"To be fair, Smuggler’s Run wasn’t set on the Moon. Then again, we’re two PlayStations past where we were in 2000, in a world where the right code can create an infinite universe. Destiny didn’t have to model the whole Moon to feel acceptably epic, but it could have set the handful of missions on each planet in areas that didn’t require so much backtracking across familiar terrain, and it could have made those missions rely less heavily on recycled objectives. (Dinklage would have had half as many lines if not for the many ways he was forced to say, “Keep these enemies off me while I slowly decrypt this door.”) In its lack of lore, small cast of characters, and constrained scope, Destiny is the anti-Elder Scrolls. The sweet spot lies on a middle path between the two extremes."
"Additionally, one of the sport’s virtues is its history of giving second chances to fighters with criminal pasts. Mayweather, with his pattern of abusive behavior, might be beyond redemption. But exiling every boxer who runs afoul of the law might also mean never getting a chance to witness a career like Bernard Hopkins’s. Hopkins, a current titlist at light heavyweight, served almost five years in prison for strong-armed robbery and assault, then embarked on a record-breaking, Hall of Fame-worthy career that has spanned four decades and still isn’t over. In boxing, the morally reprehensible often lives beside the uplifting and inspirational. The sport’s fans understand this; many of them seem to embrace it."
-- It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: The Pseudo-Endlessness of ‘Destiny’ - Ben Lindbergh, Grantland, Sept. 16, 2014
"To be fair, Smuggler’s Run wasn’t set on the Moon. Then again, we’re two PlayStations past where we were in 2000, in a world where the right code can create an infinite universe. Destiny didn’t have to model the whole Moon to feel acceptably epic, but it could have set the handful of missions on each planet in areas that didn’t require so much backtracking across familiar terrain, and it could have made those missions rely less heavily on recycled objectives. (Dinklage would have had half as many lines if not for the many ways he was forced to say, “Keep these enemies off me while I slowly decrypt this door.”) In its lack of lore, small cast of characters, and constrained scope, Destiny is the anti-Elder Scrolls. The sweet spot lies on a middle path between the two extremes."