North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is not exactly known as a man of the people.
After all, this is the guy who had his own uncle shot because he somehow ran afoul of his nephew’s views. And oh yeah, many people in his country are starving to death and have nearly no rights to speak of.
That’s why the news out this morning that Kim doesn’t use public restrooms when he travels around his country but instead uses portable toilets built into all of his large vehicles is not really that surprising. But it does speak to the level at which Kim is kept inside an ivory tower in the regime.
According to the Daily NK (and republished by the Guardian), Kim is never that far away from a toilet.
“The restrooms are not only in Kim Jong Un’s personal train but whatever small or midsize cars he is traveling with and even in special vehicles that are designed for mountainous terrain or snow,” a source close to the Escort Command who guards the leader told the Daily NK. “There are multiple vehicles within the convoy so that people cannot tell which one he is in, and there is a separate car that acts as his restroom.”
Kim took power after the death of his father in 2011 and is the scion to a cult of personality that has ruled the dictatorial communist nation since 1948. As such, Kim is projected as a god like figure to the North Korean public and a source told the Daily NK that it would be “unfathomable” to imagine the Supreme Leader using a public restroom.
“He has to travel around the entire country for field guidance, so there always needs to be a personal restroom exclusively for the Suryeong [Supreme Leader] Kim Jong Un,” the source told Daily NK. “It is unthinkable in a Suryeong-based society for him to have to use a public restroom just because he travels around the country.”
More from the Daily NK story:
“The source went on to explain that preparation for ‘No. 1 events’ that involve the leader is as elaborate as can be, including his use of the restroom. Because the matter requires absolute secrecy, it can also be one of the most challenging and sensitive issues for members of the Escort Command.
Another reason why the leader uses exclusive facilities is for periodic examination of his urine and fecal matter to ensure the leader is free of illness and in overall good health, according to the source.”
In more serious North Korea news, CNN is reporting that another close advisor to Kim may have been purged in recent days, sparking additional questions about the leaders grip on power.
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Cover Photo Credit: thierry ehrmann/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Here’s How The Warriors Turned Steph Curry Into A Well Rested Bionic Superhuman
Before blossoming into the greatest shooter the sport has ever known, Steph Curry was defined by his fragile ankles.
Over the course of his first 3 NBA seasons, Curry missed 66 games, most of that coming after his initial operation, as he sprained his ankle five times while playing in 26 games the following year.
If his 2012 surgery failed, he was faced with the bleak prospect of inserting tendons from a cadaver into his ankle in the hopes that they would function better than the ones nature provided for him.
Luckily for Curry, the NBA, and anyone who ever wished that Steve Nash and Pete Maravich would have an And1 basketball baby, his last surgery is looking like it could be his last ankle surgery.
Steph’s problems were actually a pretty easy fix, as they were due to a mess of scar tissue, bone spurs, chips, and cartilage filling his joints “like crab meat.”
Dr. Richard Ferkel essentially vacuumed it all out, and the next face of the NBA was reborn.
“I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but rehabbing for two years. I feel like I’m never going to be able to play again. This ankle thing is not gonna be my life.”
Photo Credit: Golden State Warriors/ Facebook
Curry took advantage of as many resources as he could to fuel his 2nd chance in the NBA. Before every game now, Curry straps on his Zamst ankle braces (designed for post-sprain activity) and a pair of Under Armour sneakers created specifically for his feet.
Every team is looking for an edge somewhere in keeping players healthy and consistent. It is an accepted fact that this is the new market inefficiency in sports. But few organizations pursue this avenue with the vigor and resources of the Warriors.
They hired Australian sports science guru Lachland Penfold this offseason, and according to owner Joe Lacob, the goal is to “have like, a video game fatigue meter. A guy like Lachland will be able to go up to Bob and Steve [Kerr] and say, ‘Guys, he’s at a 77, and our threshold is 75 for Safe to Play.'”
The NBA’s new SportVU cameras that track and measure almost any movement on the court have combined with the GPS trackers the team wears in practice to give the Warriors unprecedented insight into their players’ health and its relation to their game.
The Warriors place a premium on their players’ mental acuity as well. Steve Kerr has made it a team goal to reduce personal stress, and the Warriors run complex drills to test their nervous system, as Curry described in an interview with Tech Insider:
“We overload our sensory system, nervous system, in our training with different lights. There are little beams that we have on the wall, and I’ll be doing dribble moves and reading the lights that are associated with different moves. Different colors mean to do a different move, and you have to make that decision in a split second and still have control of the ball.”
What do Steve Kerr, Chip Kelly, the Vancouver Canucks, and Jason Bourne all agree on? As the line from Robert Ludlum’s famous 1990 book goes: “Rest is a weapon.”
Photo Credit: Golden State Warriors/ Facebook
Before Kelly even arrived in Philadelphia three years ago, the Vancouver Canucks signed a deal in 2009 with Fatigue Science.
No professional squad has a more brutal travel schedule than the northwesternmost team in North America; the Canucks traveled one third of the distance to the moon en route to their 2011 Stanley Cup Finals loss, so it’s only natural that they would be interested in the effects of sleep, or the lack thereof, on the body.
A 2012 Harvard Study placed Fatigue Science’s armbands on orthopedic surgical residents and found that they averaged 5.3 hours of sleep per week, and because of this, the risk of medical error increased by 22%. Significant fatigue basically has the same effect on the body as being drunk.
Kelly has said that he believes that “an elite athlete needs between 10-12 hours [of sleep] a night.”
He was a college football pioneer in so many ways at Oregon, and he was practically the only college coach who was seriously investing in sport science.
As Chris Brown wrote for Grantland in 2014 about the basis of Kelly’s research (which was conducted on Australian-rules football):
“Many of those studies used heart rate, GPS, accelerometers, and gyroscope monitors worn by players in practice to determine how to train for peak game-day performance and how to prevent injuries. These studies also tracked the movements that players made in games so teams could mold practices and training to what players did on an individualized and position-by-position basis.”
The Eagles were 18th in Football Outsiders’ adjusted games lost to injury metric the year before Kelly arrived.
They invested a ton of money in his programs, placed trackers on their players’ wrists in practice, and finished 1st and 2nd in his subsequent seasons. Kelly has since been fired from the Eagles and is now the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
Top 10 teams at managing injuries over the past 5 seasons, with @ManGamesLostNFL data pic.twitter.com/Vj97MFmrWx
— Rich Hill (@PP_Rich_Hill) January 27, 2016
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan used to show up for work before sunrise. But things have changed for him.
“I thought that showed dedication and work ethic. I don’t do that anymore, because I realized it is more important to be rested and ready than it is to beat everybody to work.”
Pete Carroll has long embraced the importance of sleep, and the Seahawks now schedule their travel and training schedules to maximize their players’ sleep efficiency.
Richard Sherman has become one of Carroll’s acolytes on this issue, emphasizing how the head coach’s focus on good sleep was central to their Championship season of 2014 in an open letter for Sports Illustrated.
The pace of innovation in sports is accelerating. The Moneyball Era opened the floodgates for a reevaluation of everything.
Once available only to elite athletes, this technology that monitors players’ health and performance and helps explain their inextricably linked relationship is becoming more widespread and affordable.
If these advances could help alter the course of Steph Curry’s career, and thus, the history of the NBA, imagine the possibilities they could create in neighborhoods across the country.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. Anyone can write for us as long as you are fiercely interested in making the world a better place.
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Beyond Viral: The Actually Touching Story Behind The Drunk Guy In The Barney Costume
Brandon Priest is an unassuming 23 year old. From Brunswick, GA, Priest works at a Ebay call center and is still a kid at heart who still loves to watch cartoons and does some cartoon animation as a hobby.
He’s in a local band named Midwayer too. And oh yeah, he also has a 4 year old daughter who takes up the rest of his time.
Trust me, this is important background info.
You see, Priest is a bit of a celebrity now- well at least an online celebrity. A photo of him has been circulating around the Internet close to light speed with thousands of shares on Facebook and other social media sites.
The only problem? Priest is in a Barney the Dinosaur costume and you have no that its him in there and you certainly don’t know the great life lesson that he learned by being goofy.
It just really went to show me how much you actually miss out on when you say no to opportunity and I think it was an amazing life lesson for myself.
Here’s our strangely poignant interview with Brandon Priest, the dude who dressed up as Barney and played pool at a Georgia bar.
Rise News: What is the story behind the viral photos?
Brandon Priest (Barney): Friday I had watched the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man – the movie where he has to say yes to anything, and lately I hadn’t been getting out of the house at all. I had been just staying inside playing video games and turning down offers from hanging out with friends and the movie really reminded me how much I actually say no to things that might have ended up being fun so I basically made a post on facebook saying that I wanted to start saying yes to more crazy things and hanging out with more people that I wouldn’t normally hang out with.
Rise News: Why did you decide to dress up as Barney?
Barney: A friend of mine Mercedes actually immediately hit me up and said she had found a Barney outfit in her attic from her kids birthday party a couple years ago and asked if I would be down with wearing it around town and I just went for it haha.
I really enjoyed it. I spent the first part of the day just hugging kids and taking hundreds of pictures, riding around on the tour bike on St Simons island. I think I made a lot of people happy by just dressing up in a silly costume and that was awesome.
People kept buying me free shots and drinks when I hit up the bars and I ended up getting really drunk and some guys talked me into playing pool. I was so wasted I think I only managed to get one ball in (its also really hard to play pool when you’re in a suit that doesn’t have fingers).
Rise News: Did you post the photo on social media or how did it start to go viral?
Barney: I believe a guy named Kyle took the picture and put it on his reddit.
Rise News: What do you think about how viral it has gotten?
Barney: I had no idea I’d wake up the next morning and the picture would have 5 million views and all the facebook shares. So many sites and stuff have been hitting me up and I personally think its great. It just really went to show me how much you actually miss out on when you say no to opportunity and I think it was an amazing life lesson for myself.
Like this piece? Rise News just launched a few weeks ago and is only getting started. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date with global news. Have a news tip? Send it to us- [email protected].
Photo Credits: Brandon Priest
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Jimmy Carter Caught On Kiss Cam At Atlanta Braves Game
Former President Jimmy Carter was caught smooching his wife Rosalynn at an Atlanta Braves game earlier this evening.
Cute video alert:
Carter announced last month that had melanoma that had spread throughout his body. He looked real good tonight though.
H/T– The Hill
Photo Credit: Major League Baseball
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