Month: June 2013
As drones, CCTV cameras, and various other surveillance technologies continue to proliferate in New York City and around the world, one city has taken it a definitive, if temporary, stance against the eyes in the sky: Iowa City, Iowa. City Council voted unanimously to approve the first reading of a bill that would outlaw drones, traffic […]
If you’re the type who isn’t averse to the more Big Brother-y aspects of logging your every move on social media, you might as well d0 something useful with all that personal information you’re sending into the ether. Enter Etch, a company that makes nice-looking minimalist maps like the one above based on your Foursquare […]
Justin Wedes of Occupy Wall Street is reporting from the front lines of the protests in Turkey for ANIMAL all week. He’s also tweeting from the field continuously. So you’re watching #OccupyGezi from your laptop on the couch and want to do something about it? Here’s a novel idea: Come to Istanbul. I know. I know. That sounds insane. There’s […]
Last week, Michael Bloomberg called medical cannabis “one of the greatest hoaxes of all time,” ignoring countless scientific studies that have shown the plant’s usefulness in treating everything from cancer to HIV. We figured the mayor could use some brushing up, so we sent a packet of summer reading to his Upper East Side townhouse. […]
It’s hard to say whether this development in drone-tech is awesome or terrifying. Awesome: This drone’s got mad skillz on the b-ball court. Terrifying, because IT’S OPERATED BY MIND CONTROL. Or is that also awesome? Developed by French firm Parrot (in collaboration with an engineering team from the University of Minnesota), the thought-controlled AR.Drone quad-rotor helicopter […]
New York City recently launched its bike share program amidst a barrage of alarmist fanfare and apocalyptic predictions from the local tabloids. The naysayers claim that injuries will dramatically increase and warn that the bike docks will wreak havoc on the character of the city’s historic neighborhoods. Some even went so far as to suggest […]
It’s the vague familiarity of her shiny, fleshy subjects that make British artist Clare Chapman‘s paintings so compelling. Not quite abstract, but not entirely tangible, they seem unsettlingly biological, like disease-induced blisters, insect eggs or alien pods about to burst. Simply looking at them is enough to make you feel warm and sticky. Monstrous, disturbing, yet […]
Mark Zuckerburg is moving into 770 Broadway. Facebook just signed a 10-year lease at the olde Astor Place spot — geographically located inside NYU’s armpit, squatting on top of a K-Mart. Zuckerburg has recruited renowned architect Frank Gehry to do some re-do on the interior. Again. He’s already working on an expansion for Facebook California campus, whose mock-ups look like the classiest lost game of Jenga […]
Dungeonesse’s music owes an unabashed debt to the dance-pop of the 1990s–everything from C+C Music Factory to, like, Jennifer Paige shows up on the group’s self-titled debut, released last month. It’s hard to imagine any dancefloor-friendly act to come out of Baltimore without paying some kind of homage to that city’s ubiquitous club music, however, and though none […]
Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is a tree native to Southeast Asia. The leaves are filled with dozens of alkaloids and quite a few are psychoactive. Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine are the most important alkaloids in Kratom. They’re both opioids. Ethnobotanicals aren’t in the same category as MDPV or phenazepam but I’m starting to see too much false […]
