The past two weeks I’ve been in intense training that would make my 10 year old self so proud. The amount of button smashing I’ve been doing definitely made me wonder if this is truly how I’d end up with carpal tunnel syndrome, as opposed to all these years of frivolous typing on a keyboard.

On Sunday I’m competing in the very first official video game tournament of my life. I say official because I used to run the tournaments at birthday parties back in the day. I remember one year we rented a Super Nintendo console with Street Fighter 2 for my brother’s birthday and I destroyed him and all of his friends. Given he’s 5 years older than me and I want to say I was about 6-7 years old at the time, it was a pretty damn impressive feat.

At 39 years old now, I’m on a potential run of being the “old guy” to place well against, frankly, a bunch of kids. Part of me feels like this is my Billy Madison moment but the other part of me feels like this my GIMME GIMME JIMMY moment.

The game I’ll be playing is Super Smash Bros Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. I played the game forever when it first came out on the N64. Back then my character of choice was Yoshi but I have now evolved into a Kirby kind of guy. And although the top prizes for this tournament are only worth a couple hundred bucks, if I do place well, I may just make a run to become a professional gamer. HA…can you imagine?

This week's issue is a 5 minute read:

🤼‍♂️ Black Mirror bore fest

🚿 Hacking the NBA draft

👕 Zuck vs. Elon

Black Mirror wasn’t Black Mirroring

It’s been four years since we’ve gotten a Black Mirror season. Truthfully, season 1 and 2 kept me glued to my seat with the "tech is bad” themes all over the place. I somewhat skimmed through seasons 3, 4, and 5 but with it being such a long period of time since the last season AND with all that’s been going on in the tech world over the past few years, I was hyped to see how Black Mirror spun their own worlds up in ironic, techy ways.

And I was severely disappointed

According to the show’s creator, Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror was never intended to be a show about tech being bad. THEN WHAT EXACTLY WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?? Season 6 feels more like a season of adult “Goosebumps” or for my Canadian readers, “Are you afraid of the dark?” But the thing is, the episodes aren’t scary. They’re twisted in some respect but not enough to move me IF this was supposed to be a show about twisted stories that mess with your mind.

NO - I wanted some dystopian reference to ChatGPT. I wanted a billionaire who loses his mind and gets caught in his own spaceship as it blasts off to Mars. I wanted a sequel to the AI robot dog that chases the woman the entire episode. But no, we got a celebrity who turned into a werewolf and a “Truman Show”-esk episode of a woman who lives life within a streamed TV show.

I didn’t even watch the last episode and frankly, I don’t think I will. I’d rather watch my YouTube algo give me Japanese import car vloggers. If you couldn’t tell, the latest season of “Black Mirror” will throw you off - watch at your own risk but don’t expect what the show has been known for. UGHHHH!

Loopholes in the NBA draft

You might’ve heard sports stories in the past where a very unlikely person has to step in to a game, like when ex-zamboni driver Dave Ayres had to fill in as the goalie for the Carolina Hurricanes a few years ago, getting the win against the Leafs (of course against the Leafs). But have you ever heard of someone becoming draft eligible without ever playing the sport competitively? Enter Jordan Haber.

@haberjordan

Hi @NBA looking forward to going 1st overall #nba #nbadraft #nbadraft2023

By the time you read this Jordan Haber will have attended the NBA draft through a loophole he found on page 273 of the eligibility criteria within the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. To summarize the criteria, you had to be over the age of 19 in the year of the draft class, recently graduated from a U.S. school, and fill out the required documentation before the NBA’s deadline. There’s more to it but basically Jordan noticed that going through all the required documentation actually made him eligible to be listed within the 2023 draft class.

Jordan is obviously not getting drafted given he has zero competitive basketball experience. But it’s made for a really interesting story as teams, sports publications, and social media have now all buzzed over the fact that a random person has been able to get his name on the 2023 draft list.

This all said, the Miami Heat were filled with undrafted players and they made it all the way to the Finals this year. After the draft Jordan will fall into the “undrafted” category alongside a lot of players who went on to become stars. This makes me want to try to get my name on the draft eligibility list so badly now!

Battle of the billionaires

It seems like every month there’s a new YouTuber fighting some other content creator or has-been professional boxer and more often than not one of the Paul brothers is involved. “Celebrity” boxing matches have become such a common cringe thing now - like train wrecks you actually don’t care to watch. In what was inspired by Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of “Threads”, basically Facebook’s response to Twitter, Elon Musk said he’d fight Zuck in a cage match, to which Zuck responded on Instagram with…

According to UFC president, Dana White, both billionaires are DEAD serious about fighting and that this would be the world’s biggest fight ever. How’s that for hyping up a fight between two wealthy people who probably don’t need anymore attention than they already get. That said, Zuckerberg has been training jiu-jitsu for the past 18 months with legit MMA guys, whereas Elon, well, admits that he doesn’t really work out and that his main move is “The Walrus” where he just lies on top of his opponent.

Even with all the hype and chatter on the internet, nothing is official (yet) between these two. That said, if Elon is involved, you really never know what will happen. Given Zuckerberg recently did really well in a ju-jitsu tournament and the likes of Joe Rogan called him out for having some skills, I’d put money on Zuck any day of the week.