Month: April 2014

Uber and Airbnb Resurrect Dead Capital

Just as Hernando de Soto estimated there is over $9T in dead capital globally, a non-trivial amount of the $1Ts in Americans’ non-financial household net worth is undoubtedly dead—not because of informal titles, uncertainty of ownership, or dysfunctional financial institutions, but because the owners of this capital didn’t really see what they have as capital. And even if they did, markets were too riddled with information asymmetries, barriers to entry, and high transaction costs for this capital to be commercialized.

What we are seeing now is likely the tip of the iceberg; who knows what other capital lies dormant and how entrepreneurs may find ways to use it.

Railguns

a railgun can accelerate projectiles to 8500 kph for 1% of the price of a missile. only ICBM are faster, at 24k kph. rail guns have been a SF staple for a long time.

The Navy will fire its electromagnetic railgun from a joint high speed vessel in 2016 as part of a broader effort to develop the long-range, high-energy weapon.

Bionic Kangaroo

not yet entirely convincing

NYC type foundry district

I was able to plot out the locations for every foundry that had been active in New York between 1828 (the earliest records I could find with addresses) to 1909. All of the buildings have been demolished, and in some cases the entire street has since been erased. But a startling picture still emerged: New York once had a neighborhood for typography.

Public spaces make cities work

make that 2: it turns out the high line, even the 3rd part, are under constant threat, and amanda burden, chair of the nyc planning commission, is responsible both for the highline, as well as all the revitalized waterfront. amazing. these 2 have made nyc the city with highest quality of life in the us.

The franchisable version of Gravity

Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron (“Children of Men”) originally shot an opening scene for Gravity that would have radically changed the film. Too bad the brass at Warner Bros. rejected this version.

Negative Equity

The US has the second largest population of indebted people, and US poor people are able to rack up more debt than the poor Indian person. this isn’t just a theoretical exercise either: while basic income will probably happen, i don’t see a global debt jubilee happen. which would mean that everyone in the world would have enough to eat, but people with negative equity would still not be able to live free lives because they’ll be constrained to serving their debt load.