Category: Uncategorized

Banksy Does NY

Banksy Does New York (premiering on Monday, showing on HBOGo now) is a documentary whose purpose is to show the hysteria that seemed to fill the streets of NYC during Banksy’s last visit to the “Big Apple.” The content of this documentary is promoted as coming from the people of New York themselves. Director Chris Moukarbel (in a fashion similar to what film director Kevin B. Lee did with last year’s Transformers: Premake) compiled video footage from various Internet channels (YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc.) uploaded by select Banksy “hunters” to showcase the scene found at all 31 days of Banksy’s NYC residency. It does not commit fully to its tagline of being a “user generated film”, but, even with some stumbles, it manages to provide at least some insight into the madness that was Better Out Than In.

Omnivores

In case you forgot who the top predator on the planet is.

Ever wonder what do people in other countries eat? What could be totally weird for us to eat could be a luxurious delicacy for others — and the other way around. Here are 101 of the strangest foods around the world and maybe after reading this list, you can agree that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Lifting Men

I thought it was hilarious at first when Mallory declared in a comment thread that it was her fitness goal to be able to pick up and lift a grown man over her head. Afterwards, I started noticing that other Toasties were declaring this in a tongue-in-cheek way, and I started thinking, “well, why not?” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t any more ridiculous or unlikely than any headline or superlative you catch on a mainstream fitness magazine, like “Get Amazing Abs in 16 Minutes!” I figured any program written to help a woman pick up a man and lift him overhead was going to lead to better overall health and fitness than any program written to “reveal your abs” in short period of time. The scenario I gave everyone was this: any woman, trying to pick up a 84 kg man any way she can, lifting him overhead any way she can. I chose 84 kg somewhat arbitrarily: although 90 kg men seem very normal to me, I spend a lot of time in powerlifting and olympic weightlifting gyms and realize that my concept of “normal” is very skewed. Also, the median weight class for men in those sports seem to float around 84 kg.

Cooking Alinea

Allen Hemberger cooked his way through one of the most complex cookbooks out there, the Alinea cookbook. Aside from the chefs who work in the kitchen there, Hemberger’s probably the only person to have made every single recipe. These recipes aren’t easy

Amazing Randi

For almost 60 years, he has been offering up a cash reward to anyone who could demonstrate scientific evidence of paranormal activity, and no one had ever received a single penny. But he hates to see them lose. “They’re always rationalizing. There are always reasons prevailing why they can’t do it. They call it the resilience of the duped. It’s with intense regret that you watch them go down the tubes.”

Dementia Village

Today, the isolated village of Hogewey lies on the outskirts of Amsterdam in the small town of Wheesp. Hogewey is a cutting-edge elderly-care facility where residents are given the chance to live seemingly normal lives. With only 152 inhabitants, it’s run like a more benevolent version of The Truman Show, if The Truman Show were about dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. Like most small villages, it has its own town square, theater, garden, and post office. Unlike typical villages, however, this one has cameras monitoring residents every hour of every day, caretakers posing in street clothes, and only 1 door in and out of town, all part of a security system designed to keep the community safe. Friends and family are encouraged to visit. Some come every day. Residents at Hogewey require fewer medications, eat better, live longer, and appear more joyful than those in standard elderly-care facilities.

Wealth and Happiness

In a forthcoming paper, Norton and his colleagues track the effects of getting money on the happiness of people who already have a lot of it: a rich person getting even richer experiences zero gain in happiness. That’s not all that surprising; it’s what Norton asked next that led to an interesting insight. He asked these rich people how happy they were at any given moment. Then he asked them how much money they would need to be even happier. “All needed 2-3x more than they had to feel happier”. The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that money, above a certain modest sum, does not have the power to buy happiness, and yet even very rich people continue to believe that it does: the happiness will come from the money they don’t yet have. To the general rule that money, above a certain low level, cannot buy happiness there is one exception. “While spending money upon oneself does nothing for one’s happiness, spending it on others increases happiness.”

Bioeconomy Capital

I am pleased to announce the launch of Bioeconomy Capital. Our investments so far are:

Riffyn, which is building software that provides experimental process design and analytics software to improve reproducibility and tech transfer in life science and materials R&D;
Synthace, which is increasing the reliability, quality, and scale of biological science;
RoosterBio, which is is creating exponential advances in stem cell manufacturing to provide raw materials for cell-based therapies, biofabrication, and cellular ink for 3D BioPrinting.

Lantern

Anonymous portable library that constantly receives free data from space

Lantern continuously receives radio waves broadcast by Outernet from space. Lantern turns the signal into digital files, like webpages, news articles, ebooks, videos, and music. Lantern can receive and store any type of digital file on its internal drive. To view the content stored in Lantern, turn on the Wifi hotspot and connect to Lantern with any Wifi enabled device. All you need is a browser.