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Frank Lloyd Wright was arrogant, stubborn, and brilliant. But above all, he was a shrewd businessman who understood the importance of spectacle in keeping his business afloat. Wright put on many shows over the course of his lifetime, but arguably no performance was greater than his utopian plan to create the perfect community: Broadacre City.…
Has civilization got you down, man? Ever wanted to leave this culture behind and start over? Now you can. Producers have issued a casting call for Utopia, a new reality show that’s pretty much exactly what you think it is—15 strangers, picked to live on a farm and build their own society from scratch. “This…
According to Recode, Yahoo is trying to persuade Apple to drop Google and make Yahoo its default iOS search engine. Because that would mean more money for Yahoo and less money for Google. The free market works!
Think of all the power it takes to light up empty parking lots at night. Think of how annoying it can be when the sun goes down, yet you didn’t finish all your work for the day. Think of how great it would be if we could just extend daytime, reduce the cost of lighting…
Time bender Michael Shainblum works his time lapse magic on a place where I would totally believe magic still exists: Doha, Qatar. He shows the bustling new city of skyscrapers and constant construction next to the old world and its ancient culture. Just going around the city will feel like time traveling. “Welcome To Doha,”…
The electricity that powers San Francisco’s streetlights, schools, and international airport begins as a torrent of water inside—of all places—the supposed natural sanctuary that is Yosemite National Park. A century ago, a pristine valley was sacrificed so that San Francisco could continue to exist. The Hetch Hetchy Power System is still responsible for San Francisco’s…
A remote-controlled machine gun riot dispersal tool installed on a wall near Bethlehem, just near the border of Palestine and Jerusalem. Spotted by several Palestinian news outlets, the weapon—which is equipped with cameras and is located very close to a mosque—was reportedly installed by Israeli forces on Sunday. Update: Pictured above is a non-lethal riot…
Man it feels good to sit down at a desk where everything is in order—or so I’ve heard. Mine is always a disaster, what with the cords and cables and scattered reminder notes I’ve scrawled on bits of paper that will undoubtedly get lost in the shuffle. But this lovely specimen from Artifox looks like…
As anyone who’s driven through Middle America knows, it feels like there’s very few places in the U.S. that don’t have at least a few inhabitants. But as a map by cartographer Nik Freeman proves, there are still some amber waves of grain and fruited plains that remain. Emphasis on some. Highlighted on the Washington…
You’ve all seen the effect. There’s a picture, but inside that picture lives a thousand little pictures that create the pigment. The effect is called a photo mosaic. And it’s easier to make than you think. The Challenge Create a photo mosaic completely from your own photographs. They need not be taken this week. The…
We’ve successfully engineered giant robot arms for building cars on an assembly line. But smaller mass-produced items—like electronics—still mostly rely on the nimble hands and fingers of a human. Building and controlling robots on a very small scale is still very difficult, but a company called SRI International may have found a clever solution using…
The biggest question when you travel the world isn’t what countries you’ll visit or what foods you’ll eat or what new things you’ll try, it’s figuring out the best way to document the whole damn thing. You can squeeze it all down to a minute, you can plan out a world tour for less than…
This year, Samsung will sell (at least) two phones and a watch that don’t run Android. Instead, they’ll run something called Tizen. That’s a major departure for such an important player in the smartphone game. But what is Tizen? And will you actually want to use it? Tizen is a new(ish) operating system… Tizen is…
Walmart, the leviathan of the U.S. retail economy, has had a tough year. So tough that the company’s new CEO is prescribing a surprising strategy to slow decaying sales: Build smaller stores. And, in at least one case, put housing on top of them. Fort Totten, a neighborhood in northeastern D.C., is about to be…
In what’s sure to be the first of many to come, a 19-year-old Canadian man was arrested for exploiting the Heartbleed bug to lift taxpayer data from a government website, making this the first official Heartbleed-related arrest. According to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), the suspect, Stephen Solis-Reyes lifted at least 900 social insurance numbers…
Americans are not only walking and biking to work, they’re gaining more support from local government and advocacy groups. And they’re also making cities safer: The higher the number of people walking to work, the lower the pedestrian fatality rate, according to a new report out today. The Alliance for Biking and Walking has been…
After destroying touchscreens, stretching belt holes and greasing up all 10 fingers and maybe some toes, the vaunted Double Down from KFC—the ‘sandwich’ that served as America’s tipping point for ridiculous food creations—is coming back on April 21st for a limited time. It was last seen four years ago in 2010. Same deal as before:…
Google’s big Glass free-for-all has come and gone, but whether or not anyone actually bought the damn thing, cameras are popping up all over the place, and people are starting to get (perhaps rightfully) paranoid. Fortunately there could be tech in the future to save your screens from prying camera eyes. And Bill Gates has…
If you’re a fan of “slow hypnotic acid house” music, then this Lego automata is for you. Oxford Contemporary Music provided a grant to produce this piece of Lego technic genius. Besides the music, I’m completely mesmerized by the mechanics of the build itself. Play house is an automata that mechanically computes and performs hooky…
What could Apple possibly want with a dam in Oregon? Is raising condors with hand puppets going just a bit too far? Why should we all start eating prickly pears? Hey, it’s time for this week’s Landscape Reads. Apple Bought a Dam to Power Its Data Center When you upload your data onto iCloud, it…
