Latest news with #Thurmond
NBC Sports
25-05-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Connor Williams-led Arizona State goes from 'broken' to NCAA lead
CARLSBAD, Calif. – Too much winning is often the worst thing for somebody. Those were the words of Arizona State head coach Matt Thurmond after the Sun Devils failed to qualify for the NCAA Championship as the top seed in the 2024 NCAA Ranch Santa Fe Regional and winners of three of their past four events, including the final Pac-12 Championship. 'There's just a certain psychology that comes after you've been broken,' Thurmond explained at the time, 'and it's different than the psychology that you have after you win.' The healing process for Arizona State this season has included three wins, spaced evenly throughout the season, along with five runner-up finishes, including the Sun Devils' inaugural Big 12 Championship and the NCAA Bremerton Regional, where Arizona State cruised by 26 shots over Utah, which finished sixth as the first team out. If last year the Sun Devils were 'numb to the reality of what it takes' to succeed in the postseason, then this time Thurmond's team is fully aware. They entered this week's NCAA Championship relatively under the radar and as newbies having never seen Omni La Costa. Sophomore Connor Williams is San Diego area native, though none of his 100-plus rounds here prior to this week came after Gil Hanse's re-do. 'I was a little worried after missing last year that we would be behind as far as course knowledge,' Thurmond said. 'We had never seen it until the practice round, and I didn't watch one minute of coverage last year.' And yet through 36 holes, Arizona State paces the field at 13 under, three shots better than Oklahoma and 20 clear of Illinois, which sits in ninth and is currently the first team out of match play. The Sun Devils threw out Michael Mjaaseth's 1-under 71 in Saturday's second round and boast two players in the top 5 individually in Josele Ballester (T-5) and Williams, who is tied with Ole Miss' Michael La Sasso at 9 under, four shots better than third place. Thurmond was especially pleased with just six bogeys and no doubles from his counting scorers in Round 2. 'It's nice to get that out of mind,' Thurmond added, 'that we can play this course just like anybody else.' Nobody is playing it better than Williams right now. Williams, who is from nearby Escondido, wasn't the most decorated junior player when former Arizona State player Luke Potter, who now plays for Texas, told Thurmond shortly after committing to the Sun Devils in ninth grade that he should next look at Williams. 'He's not that good yet,' Potter said, according to Thurmond, 'but he does everything right, works super hard, is an awesome guy and we want him at ASU.' 'We started watching him,' Thurmond added, 'and he committed shortly thereafter.' With Ballester and Preston Summerhays soaking up much of the attention and expectations, Williams has sneakily developed into one of the best players in the country. He's ranked 35th in the country and tallied three top-8s in the fall. But he started the spring by finishing outside the top 60 in Hawaii and T-50 at Pauma Valley, missing the Sun Devils' win at the Cabo Collegiate in between to play in the Puerto Rico Open, where he missed the cut. He struggled for the next few events until Thurmond decided to throw him into a two-man, 54-hole qualifier for Big 12s with freshman Peer Wernicke. Williams won that qualifier, then finished runner-up at Southern Hills. He followed with a T-5 at regionals. 'That was big to get through that qualifier,' Williams said, 'and then have a good week at Big 12s and gain that confidence back.' Added Thurmond: 'People have no idea how good this guy is. He wins over and over and over again in drills we do every day in practice. … He hadn't been in a qualifier like that for a long time, but he deserved it. He had to prove to himself that he was the guy that should be there, and he did.'
Business Insider
19-05-2025
- Business Insider
Is America headed for an age of dumb phones?
Count him among the "appstinent" — one of a growing number of Americans, mostly millennials and Zoomers, vowing to live a life free of endless scrolling. "Screen time was just crowding out other things," says Thurmond, who's 41. "That's not where I want to get my entertainment, and it's not really where I want to have any substantive conversation. I prefer to do that kind of stuff in the analog world." Three years ago, Thurmond became worried that his smartphone use was making him less present, less social, and less productive. He traded in his Android for a Light Phone, a so-called " dumb phone" that allows him to text and make calls but doesn't give him access to email and social media. With its simple interface and limited features, it's built to ward off phone addiction. The switch wasn't totally seamless. Thurmond, a self-professed "long-winded texter," struggled with the phone's E Ink keyboard, which can take some time getting used to. And not being glued to his phone also meant he was slower to respond to texts, which quickly became a point of friction with his now ex-girlfriend. But as he reduced his screen time, Thurmond realized he didn't need his Android as much as he thought he did, and that many of the Light Phone's inconveniences were actually "benefits in disguise." He started calling people rather than texting, which led to more satisfying interactions. He began each morning sketching out the day's goals on a whiteboard, rather than "just reacting to things" like emails. And instead of using his Android to unlock the Citi Bikes he uses to get around New York, he requested a $10 key from the company. "I was more relaxed, because I didn't have all this stuff rattling around in my brain," he says. "I was just more fulfilled by things in day-to-day life." "Appstinence," a play on abstinence, was coined by Gabriela Nguyen, a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard. Nguyen, who grew up in Silicon Valley and got her first iPad when she was 9, came to view her addiction to phones and social media as the enemy of productivity and living in the moment. She found her calling in encouraging people to wean themselves off their phones. Last year, she started a club called APPstinence at Harvard and launched a website of the same name. "After adopting this lifestyle, it felt like this incredible, secret, competitive edge that I wanted to share with other people," Nguyen says. Still, even Nguyen isn't completely phone-free. She has three dumb phones, including the Light Phone, which she alternates between based on their usefulness to whatever task she's tackling. For her, appstinence is a bridge to a healthier relationship with technology. "Leaving social media is not a resignation," Nguyen says. "It's not this idea that you've been defeated, now you have to do a walk of surrender." As evidence mounts of our collective phone addiction — and the toxic effects of social media — there's a growing appetite for the Gospel of Appstinence. Searches for dumb phones have been surging. From Amsterdam to Brooklyn, there's a growing trend of nightclubs requesting that revelers leave their phones at home — or at least keep them off the dance floor. Adults like Thurmond and Nguyen, who grew up when the internet and social media were just taking off, are perhaps the most desperate to reclaim the attention and focus that technology has taken from them. But lately, the appstinence movement has also begun to capture teens and college students, many of whom grew up seeing their phones as integral to their social lives. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that most American teens have access to smartphones — and nearly half reported being online "almost constantly." Samantha Palazzolo was in sixth grade when she got her first iPhone, and she spent most of her middle and high school years glued to it. "I would stay on social media, scrolling instead of going to sleep, even if I was tired," says Palazzolo, who's now 20. She began questioning her social media addiction during her freshman year at the University of Illinois. After waking up one morning feeling deeply embarrassed by an Instagram story she'd posted the night before, she began reflecting on how social media was consistently killing the vibe. "Going into college, everyone was telling us, 'You're going to remember these moments forever,'" she says. But her phone was distracting her from her actual experiences. "We were going out to these parties and people would just be scrolling on their phones," she says. So she and two friends bought flip phones — an old technology that was totally new to them. She loved how the antique-looking gadget served as a natural conversation starter in social situations. And to declare her newfound freedom from social media, Palazzolo turned — where else? — to social media. Her TikTok paean to flip phones went viral, garnering over 18 million views. She also joined a growing number of Gen Zers on TikTok who unbox and offer reviews of their favorite dumb phones. Cult favorites include an HMD Barbie-branded model of the Cat S22, a flip phone compatible with most apps but with a small enough screen to deter doomscrolling. Sen Killingsworth was an even earlier convert to appstinence. At 15, he traded in his smartphone and started hosting phone-free events at his high school. A few of his peers parodied his events in mocking posts on Instagram — precisely the kind of online bullying he was hoping to get away from. But Killingsworth stuck with it. Today, he runs the Reconnect Movement, which hosts phone-free events across college campuses "to create a fully engaged, uninterrupted social environment that Gen Z rarely experiences." Killingsworth, who's now 22, recently partnered with Nguyen and Jonathan Haidt, the author of " The Anxious Generation" and a leader in the growing phone-free school movement. Together, they've linked up with Truth Initiative, which advocates against youth nicotine addiction, to plan an international "day of appstinence" to encourage Gen Zers to delete their social media apps. "It's like a muscular atrophy of our social skills," Killingsworth says of our phone-centric lives. Luckily, he's found that the condition is temporary if it's caught early enough. "They come right back in 15, 30 minutes," he says. Thurmond's journey to appstinence started in 2022. Craving more in-person interactions as the COVID pandemic wound down, he began hosting monthly digital detox events, which attracted people whose phone use had exploded during the lockdowns — including one man who had spent most of his time messaging with an AI chatbot. The attendees, Thurmond realized, were far more diverse than the people in the algorithm-fueled bubbles of his social media. At one of the events, Thurmond invited Joe Hollier, a cofounder of Light Phone, to make a presentation. The Light Phone is unabashedly a niche product — a "simple device" that's "designed to be used as little as possible." Given its price tag of $699 for the latest model — $100 more than an iPhone 16e, but with far fewer features — only a true believer would consider buying one. Most of the customers are between 25 and 40. "The whole value is in it not distracting you, but giving you the peace of mind that if there's an emergency, you have a phone," Hollier says. The idea for the Light Phone came to Hollier a decade ago. At the time, he and his cofounder, Kaiwei Tang, were taking part in a Google incubator program for creatives who were developing apps. But Hollier and Tang found the experience to be more insidious than inspiring. In the world of phone apps, addiction wasn't a byproduct of success — it was the goal."If an app was sticky, then there was a business model to be made," Hollier says. He wanted to do the opposite. Hollier developed a prototype of the Light Phone while completing his bachelor's degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Since then, riding the wave of the appstinence movement, he's sold 100,000 phones. In 2023, the company collaborated with pgLang, Kendrick Lamar's creative agency, to release a limited-edition Light Phone. It sold out in less than a day. But Hollier has also witnessed the limitations of his dumbed-down phone in our hyper-online world. One couple gave a positive report after taking a Light Phone out with them on a date. Being unplugged was so refreshing, they said, that it gave them butterflies again. But the evening took a turn when they couldn't order an Uber, and they got into an argument as they tried to figure out the best way to get home. And even the biggest boosters of appstinence can find themselves pulled back into the habit of constant scrolling. Palazzolo, who just graduated from college, says she still uses her flip phone a few nights a month when she goes out with friends. But she expects to start using her smartphone more as she hunts for a job and perhaps moves to a bigger city. A dumb phone may be liberating, but a digital age requires digital tools. "It's really impractical," Palazzolo says. For those who are sticking it out, the hardest thing about liberating themselves from smartphones has been existing in a world of phone addicts. Thurmond feels this acutely when traveling around New York City and navigating hordes of people staring into their devices or using them to create content. It's like giving up alcohol while living 24/7 in a bar.
Business Insider
18-05-2025
- Business Insider
The age of dumb phones is here
Matt Thurmond seems like a poster child for tech-forward millennials. He runs an AI-assisted platform for mortgage professionals. He leads a nonprofit that connects longevity researchers, investors, and startups. He was the copresident of a technology conference at Harvard, where he got his MBA. So it's a little surprising that Thurmond is almost never on his phone. Count him among the "appstinent" — one of a growing number of Americans, mostly millennials and Zoomers, vowing to live a life free of endless scrolling. "Screen time was just crowding out other things," says Thurmond, who's 41. "That's not where I want to get my entertainment, and it's not really where I want to have any substantive conversation. I prefer to do that kind of stuff in the analog world." Three years ago, Thurmond became worried that his smartphone use was making him less present, less social, and less productive. He traded in his Android for a Light Phone, a so-called " dumb phone" that allows him to text and make calls but doesn't give him access to email and social media. With its simple interface and limited features, it's built to ward off phone addiction. The switch wasn't totally seamless. Thurmond, a self-professed "long-winded texter," struggled with the phone's E Ink keyboard, which can take some time getting used to. And not being glued to his phone also meant he was slower to respond to texts, which quickly became a point of friction with his now ex-girlfriend. But as he reduced his screen time, Thurmond realized he didn't need his Android as much as he thought he did, and that many of the Light Phone's inconveniences were actually "benefits in disguise." He started calling people rather than texting, which led to more satisfying interactions. He began each morning sketching out the day's goals on a whiteboard, rather than "just reacting to things" like emails. And instead of using his Android to unlock the Citi Bikes he uses to get around New York, he requested a $10 key from the company. "I was more relaxed, because I didn't have all this stuff rattling around in my brain," he says. "I was just more fulfilled by things in day-to-day life." "Appstinence," a play on abstinence, was coined by Gabriela Nguyen, a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard. Nguyen, who grew up in Silicon Valley and got her first iPad when she was 9, came to view her addiction to phones and social media as the enemy of productivity and living in the moment. She found her calling in encouraging people to wean themselves off their phones. Last year, she started a club called APPstinence at Harvard and launched a website of the same name. "After adopting this lifestyle, it felt like this incredible, secret, competitive edge that I wanted to share with other people," Nguyen says. Still, even Nguyen isn't completely phone-free. She has three dumb phones, including the Light Phone, which she alternates between based on their usefulness to whatever task she's tackling. For her, appstinence is a bridge to a healthier relationship with technology. "Leaving social media is not a resignation," Nguyen says. "It's not this idea that you've been defeated, now you have to do a walk of surrender." As evidence mounts of our collective phone addiction — and the toxic effects of social media — there's a growing appetite for the Gospel of Appstinence. Searches for dumb phones have been surging. From Amsterdam to Brooklyn, there's a growing trend of nightclubs requesting that revelers leave their phones at home — or at least keep them off the dance floor. Adults like Thurmond and Nguyen, who grew up when the internet and social media were just taking off, are perhaps the most desperate to reclaim the attention and focus that technology has taken from them. But lately, the appstinence movement has also begun to capture teens and college students, many of whom grew up seeing their phones as integral to their social lives. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that most American teens have access to smartphones — and nearly half reported being online "almost constantly." Constant scrolling has changed us in ways large and small. Samantha Palazzolo was in sixth grade when she got her first iPhone, and she spent most of her middle and high school years glued to it. "I would stay on social media, scrolling instead of going to sleep, even if I was tired," says Palazzolo, who's now 20. She began questioning her social media addiction during her freshman year at the University of Illinois. After waking up one morning feeling deeply embarrassed by an Instagram story she'd posted the night before, she began reflecting on how social media was consistently killing the vibe. "Going into college, everyone was telling us, 'You're going to remember these moments forever,'" she says. But her phone was distracting her from her actual experiences. "We were going out to these parties and people would just be scrolling on their phones," she says. So she and two friends bought flip phones — an old technology that was totally new to them. She loved how the antique-looking gadget served as a natural conversation starter in social situations. And to declare her newfound freedom from social media, Palazzolo turned — where else? — to social media. Her TikTok paean to flip phones went viral, garnering over 18 million views. She also joined a growing number of Gen Zers on TikTok who unbox and offer reviews of their favorite dumb phones. Cult favorites include an HMD Barbie-branded model of the Cat S22, a flip phone compatible with most apps but with a small enough screen to deter doomscrolling. Seán Killingsworth was an even earlier convert to appstinence. At 15, he traded in his smartphone and started hosting phone-free events at his high school. A few of his peers parodied his events in mocking posts on Instagram — precisely the kind of online bullying he was hoping to get away from. But Killingsworth stuck with it. Today, he runs the Reconnect Movement, which hosts phone-free events across college campuses "to create a fully engaged, uninterrupted social environment that Gen Z rarely experiences." Killingsworth, who's now 22, recently partnered with Nguyen and Jonathan Haidt, the author of " The Anxious Generation" and a leader in the growing phone-free school movement. Together, they've linked up with Truth Initiative, which advocates against youth nicotine addiction, to plan an international "day of appstinence" to encourage Gen Zers to delete their social media apps. "It's like a muscular atrophy of our social skills," Killingsworth says of our phone-centric lives. Luckily, he's found that the condition is temporary if it's caught early enough. "They come right back in 15, 30 minutes," he says. Thurmond's journey to appstinence started in 2022. Craving more in-person interactions as the COVID pandemic wound down, he began hosting monthly digital detox events, which attracted people whose phone use had exploded during the lockdowns — including one man who had spent most of his time messaging with an AI chatbot. The attendees, Thurmond realized, were far more diverse than the people in the algorithm-fueled bubbles of his social media. At one of the events, Thurmond invited Joe Hollier, a cofounder of Light Phone, to make a presentation. The Light Phone is unabashedly a niche product — a "simple device" that's "designed to be used as little as possible." Given its price tag of $699 for the latest model — $100 more than an iPhone 16e, but with far fewer features — only a true believer would consider buying one. Most of the customers are between 25 and 40. "The whole value is in it not distracting you, but giving you the peace of mind that if there's an emergency, you have a phone," Hollier says. Appstinence may be liberating. But a digital age requires digital tools. The idea for the Light Phone came to Hollier a decade ago. At the time, he and his cofounder, Kaiwei Tang, were taking part in a Google incubator program for creatives who were developing apps. But Hollier and Tang found the experience to be more insidious than inspiring. In the world of phone apps, addiction wasn't a byproduct of success — it was the goal."If an app was sticky, then there was a business model to be made," Hollier says. He wanted to do the opposite. Hollier developed a prototype of the Light Phone while completing his bachelor's degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Since then, riding the wave of the appstinence movement, he's sold 100,000 phones. In 2023, the company collaborated with pgLang, Kendrick Lamar's creative agency, to release a limited-edition Light Phone. It sold out in less than a day. But Hollier has also witnessed the limitations of his dumbed-down phone in our hyper-online world. One couple gave a positive report after taking a Light Phone out with them on a date. Being unplugged was so refreshing, they said, that it gave them butterflies again. But the evening took a turn when they couldn't order an Uber, and they got into an argument as they tried to figure out the best way to get home. And even the biggest boosters of appstinence can find themselves pulled back into the habit of constant scrolling. Palazzolo, who just graduated from college, says she still uses her flip phone a few nights a month when she goes out with friends. But she expects to start using her smartphone more as she hunts for a job and perhaps moves to a bigger city. A dumb phone may be liberating, but a digital age requires digital tools. "It's really impractical," Palazzolo says. For those who are sticking it out, the hardest thing about liberating themselves from smartphones has been existing in a world of phone addicts. Thurmond feels this acutely when traveling around New York City and navigating hordes of people staring into their devices or using them to create content. It's like giving up alcohol while living 24/7 in a bar.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
College coach escorted off range for wearing shorts at Augusta National: 'Pants tomorrow'
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Matt Thurmond made sure to leave his phone behind on Monday at the Masters Tournament. This isn't the Arizona State coach's first time at Augusta National, but it is the first time he's had a current player on the roster in the field. That would be Sun Devil senior Josele Ballester, the reigning U.S. Amateur champion. Thurmond hadn't planned on going to the Tournament Practice Area, but when he saw former ASU player Kevin Yu on the range, he wanted to say hello. Advertisement "I went out on the range without thinking, gave him a hug," said Thurmond. "After about one shot and one quick hello, they came out and said 'I'm sorry, sir, you can't be on the range with your shorts.' " When Thurmond reunited with his phone, which was in the pocket of his pants in the car, he had texts about the incident. Word had gotten around. He eventually sent out a tweet about it. "My bad, it was a mistake I made," Thurmond said while out watching Ballester play a practice round. "I want to follow the rules here when I'm at Augusta and do everything right. Lucky to be here and appreciate everything here. I just made a mistake." Advertisement Patrons can wear shorts, of course, outside the ropes. But there's a no-shorts policy for players and coaches on the course and practice areas at Augusta National. Three years ago, Masters participant Talor Gooch, then a rookie, wore shorts while working on his putting and was approached by one of the club's pros in short order. It wasn't long before a pair of rain pants arrived. This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Coach escorted off range at Augusta National: 'My bad'
Tahawul Tech
21-04-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
Tenable appoints Steve Vintz and Mark Thurmond as Co-CEOs
Tenable®, the exposure management company, recently announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously appointed Steve Vintz and Mark Thurmond as co-Chief Executive Officers on a permanent basis. Following an extensive search process that considered both internal and external candidates, the Board concluded that Vintz and Thurmond are best positioned to move the company forward. The decision reflects the Board's confidence in the strength of their leadership following a successful interim period during which they drove significant operational and strategic momentum. The Board also intends to appoint Vintz and Thurmond to the Board immediately following the company's annual shareholder meeting to be held on May 14, 2025. Vintz, Tenable's Chief Financial Officer since 2014, and Thurmond, who has served as Chief Operating Officer since 2020, bring deep industry and operational experience. Under the co-CEO structure, Vintz will oversee product, cyber security, corporate development and all general and administrative functions, while Thurmond will oversee GTM functions including sales, professional services, technical support, marketing, and customer success. Together, they will continue to guide the company's mission to help organisations understand and reduce cyber risk across their modern attack surfaces. 'Mark and Steve have demonstrated exceptional leadership and alignment during their time as interim co-CEOs', said Art Coviello, Chairman of the Tenable Board of Directors. 'Their collaborative leadership style, deep industry knowledge, and customer-first mindset have already created strong results. We are confident in their ability to continue driving innovation and long-term value for all stakeholders'. Under their interim leadership, Tenable has expanded its customer footprint, with strong adoption of the Tenable One Exposure Management platform and growing momentum behind Tenable Cloud Security. They also completed the strategic acquisition of Vulcan Cyber, advancing Tenable's product roadmap with the expected launch of a significantly expanded version of Tenable One that we believe will be the most comprehensive exposure management platform on the market. 'We are honoured to lead Tenable as co-CEOs and energized by the opportunity ahead', said Vintz and Thurmond in a joint statement. 'We have tremendous belief in Tenable's mission, team and market position, and we're excited to build on our momentum to deliver meaningful outcomes for our customers, employees and shareholders'. Coviello, a respected cybersecurity leader, will remain Chairman of the Board. Additionally, Steve Vintz will continue to serve as Chief Financial Officer, while the company conducts a CFO search. Image Credit: Tenable
