Thumbs In Place of Guns
Thumbs and Ammo posits the idea: would it be funny to replace guns with thumbs up in stills from movies?
YES!
Our Gadgets Placed into 19th and 20th Century Masterpieces
Korean Illustrator Kim Dong-Kyu on his “Art X Smart” Tumblr puts our gadgets of today in the masterpieces of our past.
Why Uber Matters
Editor's note: We are happy to welcome Sean Scott founder of WeArePlaying.It as contributor.
Over the last few months, Uber, the startup juggernaut has seemingly had missteps on a weekly basis. For those unaware, here is a quick recap:
- Senior VP, Emil Michael in a half-drunken speech talks about hiring opposition researchers against media/journalist to launch a smear campaign
- Uber comes under fire for unveiling Creepy Stalker View at party, a mode where party goers were able to see the identity of Uber customers in transit and awaiting pick up
While there has been an uproar from media and some celebrities the companies still enjoys a privileged position in Silicon Valley. The question thus arises as to why?
Simply put, it's a cash and growth machine. Let's talk numbers (via Business Insiders):
- Uber is on a trajectory to gross $10 billion in 2015. That's billion not million.
- Uber keeps 20% of that gross before paying drivers.
- At that gross, it will have a growth rate year over year of 300%. That's 300% growth in total revenues from 2013 to 2014 and again 300% total revenue growth from 2014 to 2015.
- And here is the kicker. The majority of that revenue comes from just 10 cities. Uber operates currently in 150 cities in about 46 countries. That is the definition of scale and growth potential that is hard to pass up.
With little competition that is able to execute at their level, Uber will continue to receive a pass from investors when it comes to its weekly missteps. However, its branding could be negatively affected in the long and short term if it doesn't develop a better PR strategy and a better public posture / persona.
For more insight like these on tech startup, apps and video games subscribe to the twice weekly email newsletter, Bits & Pixels from WeArePlaying.It
Design Wish - iPhone 6 Plus Cases - Help Me Pick
The official leather 6 plus case from Apple is quite nice (and expensive), but I want to look a little wider. Here are 5 options. Any of you have any of these?
Comment your choice.
1. Handmade Real Natural Hard Wood Bamboo Case
2. Slim Armor Case
3. Color Slider Style Hard Case
4. Crystal Clear Air Cushion Corners Bumper Case
5. Full Body Armorbox from i-Blason®
Utrecht's Church Tower Above The Clouds
On a foggy day, a drone was able to catch this stunning footage of the Dom Tower of Utrecht, for the Dutch filmmakers Jelte Keur and Reinout van Schie.
Super Secret Lives [Not Very SFW, albeit just comics]
Greg Guillemin imagines The Secret Life of Superheroes, and they are super secret, the sort of stuff you do too. You can purchase them as prints through Guillemin’s Society6 page.
Surfing Among Glaciers and Icebergs - Photos by Chris Burkard
Chris Burkard travels from his Central California to places like Alaska, Norway and Iceland to take these blindingly beautiful photos that aim to “portrays the humble placement of the human in contrast to nature.”
Cartoon Anamorphic Street Paintings
Anamorphic Paintings French street artists Ella and Pitr that assemble into nearly 3D images when viewed from the right vantage.
Let me sneak some beauty through all that bullshit and put some amazing things in your inbox »
Design Wish - Nomad Collapsible Hot Tub
The Nomad Collapsible Tub is an ultra-portable 225-gallon tub you can set up in 20 minutes and heat with either propane or wood fire.
Book of The Day: Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving.”
“Failure is a greater teacher than success”
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
I asked on facebook this last week "What's a book you wish more people had read?" and first among the answers was Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run with Wolves.
What book do you wish more people had read and why?
Osterich Egg Carvings
An artist who calls himself Eggdoodler chisels ostrich eggs to create these startling reliefs of animals: elephants, giraffes and rhinos.
See also Egg Shell Sculptures »
Book of the Day: Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coatzee
“One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.”
“To the last we have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the streets that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to be extinguished.”
It's one of those books that plants a seed, J.M. Coatzee's Waiting for the Barbarians certainly affected me when I read it in a literature class, but it was the disquiet that it planted deep in me that had me reaching for it again when I began to need to address more directly the distortions caused by my own privilege.
Snow Crystals In Electron Microscopes
Normally, researchers observe snow crystals at moderate levels of magnification (30X-500X). The electron microscope, however, allows for observation at over 100,000X.
click to see full sized image
50 years of Space Exploration in an Infographic
There is so much of this I hadn't the slightest idea about. It is certainly one of the great strengths of an infographic: being able to take it all in, nearly all at once.
Beautiful and Fascinating HD Images of the Sun by Alan Friedman
"My photographs comprise a solar diary, portraits of a moment in the life of our local star. Most are captured from my backyard in Buffalo, NY. Using a small telescope and narrow band filters I can capture details in high resolution and record movements in the solar atmosphere that change over hours and sometimes minutes. The raw material for my work is black and white and often blurry. As I prepare the pictures, color is applied and tonality is adjusted to better render the features. It is photojournalism of a sort. The portraits are real, not painted. Aesthetic decisions are made with respect for accuracy as well as for the power of the image."
Weapons Transformed into Musical Instruments
Mexico City based artist Pedro Reyes transformed a mass of rifles, pistols, and shotguns taken by the Mexican army from drug cartels to build the musical devices that are controlled by computers and can be pre-programmed, a fully mechanized orchestra. Titled Disarm.
900 Classic Arcade Games in Your Browser
Yesterday, the Internet Archive released 900 classic arcade games for you to play for free in your web browser.
Commander Chris Hadfield - Space Oddity Redux
UPDATE: After over a year, the rights have been secured again for this amazing version of Space Oddity. Read the story »
Commander Chris Hadfield has made his own version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, shot and recorded on the International Space Station.
I am so blown away by this guy: photographer, creative as all get out, funny, an ASTRONAUT, doing it all from his tin can. Bad ass!
POTD - After Mayakovksy by Denis Johnson
AFTER MAYAKOVSKY
It’s after one. You’re probably alone.
All night the moon rings like a telephone
in an empty booth above our separateness.
Now is the hour one answers. I am home.
Hello, my heart, my god, my president,
my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm
clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm
from darkness’s fat ear. This accident
that was my life will have its witnesses:
now, while the world lies wholly motionless
and sorry in a crapulence of stars,
now is the hour one rises to address
the ages and history of the universe;
I swear you’ll never see my face again.
Denis Johnson wrote only poems for a while, and a lot of them. His third book, Incognito Lounge, showed a voracious imagination and relentless voice. Both of these have found full expression in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tree of Smoke.
More Poems of the Day
