Signs from the Future
German futurists envision the future through advertisements, road signs, and warning labels.
Design
The Unreal, Eerie Emptiness of China’s ‘Ghost Cities’
Well, almost nobody. Kangbashi is one of hundreds of sparkling new cities sitting relatively empty throughout China, built by a government eager to urbanize the country but shunned by people unable to afford it or hesitant to leave the rural communities they know. Chicago photographer Kai Caemmerer visited Kangbashi and two other cities for his ongoing series Unborn Cities. The photos capture the eerie sensation of standing on a silent street surrounded by empty skyscrapers and public spaces devoid of life. “These cities felt slightly surreal and almost uncanny,” Caemmerer says, “which I think is a product of both the newness of these places and the relative lack of people within them.”
The Illusion of Time
Designing digital experiences comes with an ingrained obsession. The obsession of speed and performance. Amazon calculated that an increased loading time of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google loses about 8 million searches (and ad displays) when page speed decreases by just four tenths of a second — scary shit!
Liber8 BB-8!
My on-the-fly take was that there was a conceptual problem: if we made machines smart enough to provide all our services, wouldn’t those machines effectively be people, deserving freedom from servitude?
One Las Vegas builder is trying to figure out how to design a house that millennials might actually be interested in buying–and actually be able to pay for
Millennials are having a hard time entering the real estate market (because the generations before them destroyed it). This affordable, sustainable house is trying to change that.
3D-printed guns aren’t new
Individuals have been fashioning homemade firearms for as long as guns have existed. Zip guns, crude but functional weapons often made from taped-together pieces of pipe and rubber bands, were particularly popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The AK-47, one of the most widely used assault rifles on the planet, has a reputation for being a cinch to make and practically impossible to break.
Canadians Are Cutting $20 Bills In Half To Create A New, Locals-Only Currency
The demi began when a visitor from France told Zibeau and friends about two alternative currencies circulating in his hometown of Nantes, alongside the Euro. They got to talking about the ins and outs of alternative bank notes, particularly the security aspect. “We joked about [how] the Canadian dollar is pretty secure,” says Zibeau. That’s when they came up with the idea of cutting Canadian bills in half, combining the benefits of a local currency with the power of a national anti-counterfeiting plan.
Metro Makeovers for the Abandoned Stations of Paris
The ghosts of the Parisian underground could soon be resurrected if city voters play their cards right in the upcoming mayoral elections. Promising candidate, Nathalie Koziuscot-Morizet, who would become the first female to ever hold the post in the capital, has released the first sketches of her plans to reclaim the city of light’s abandoned stations.