David Lidsky's Blog, page 2910
August 21, 2015
This Short Film Is For Every New Yorker Who's Almost Fallen In Love On The Subway
Every moment of too-hot, late-making, subway frustration is actually a love connection waiting to happen in this sweet, surreal video.
The New York subway is a magical steel caterpillar that takes riders anywhere they want to go in the city. Except when it doesn't, which is gallingly often. (Or maybe it just seems that way in Co.Create's memory. Hard to remember every instance it runs perfectly.) Adrift in the immediacy that is the city's stock in trade, New Yorkers have a tendency to laser-focus on the frustration of the moment—to the exclusion of all else. A whimsical new video suggests that by doing so we may be just missing our soulmates on every commute.
Take The Fast Company News Quiz
What happened this week? Here's our quiz for August 21, 2015.
Did you follow the news this week? Research says that one of the best ways to solidify new information is to be tested on it. Here's a chance to bolster your knowledge of current events—and earn a special emoji badge. 
Why Tig Notaro's HBO Special Is Unlike Any Comedy Special You've Ever Seen
The comedian talks about her path to the playful, glib, and ultimately life-affirming HBO special everyone will be talking about.
"I'm just a person," comedian Tig Notaro says multiple times during her new HBO special. It's both a deflection of incoming applause and a direct rebuke to peers who clearly relish soaking up those standing-Os. But here's the thing: Tig Notaro is more than just a person. She's both a living legend and someone advanced enough to hate that designation and seek to explode it.
Floating Above London, This Invisible Pool Lets You Swim Laps In The Sky
The Embassy Gardens' sky pool is made of aquarium glass to look like an overpass of water that stretches between two towers.
Infinity pools are lame. Sky pools that stretch between buildings like transparent overpasses of water? Infinitely cooler.
Like A Living Cabinet Of Curiosities, This Enchanting Installation Brings Insects To Life
Created for the London Design Festival, the Curiosity Cloud is made up of 250 hand-fabricated insects that fly around in glass bulbs when visitors approach.
The Austrian designers mischer'traxler are masters at marrying craft and technology in enchanting ways, as we've seen with their self-weaving, attention-craving basket and machine-weaved furniture that records the passing time. Now, the duo has hand made 250 tiny fabric insects and equipped them with motors and sensors for Curiosity Cloud, a new installation for London's Design Festival.
Why We're So Obsessed With Amazon's Work Culture
Behind all the hubbub is the (pernicious, groundless) worry that we should all be working like Amazonians.
The recent New York Times exposé of Amazon's white-collar Hunger Games-esque work culture struck a particular nerve with my group of tech friends in a way that, say, the terrible working conditions at McDonald's—or even at an Amazon warehouse—could not. We talked about it on the beach on Sunday and on Slack on Monday. A friend and I wondered out loud whether working at Amazon was like being stuck in a shitty relationship. And the firestorm of hot takes that flooded my Twitter feed hinted that basically everyone else who works in media and tech was doing much the same thing.
August 20, 2015
Unraveling The Enigma Of Nintendo's Virtual Boy, 20 Years Later
How the 1990s VR craze inspired an infamous—and still misunderstood—failed video game console.
[image error]The Virtual Boy and its controllerPhoto: Benj EdwardsTwenty years ago, on August 21, 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in North America. The stilt-legged tabletop gaming console, which offered a unique red stereoscopic 3D display, attempted to ride a wave of popular interest in virtual reality. It was a risky, innovative gamble for Nintendo that didn't pay off, leaving many to wonder why it existed in the first place.
Janelle Monáe's Protest Song Is A Heart-Rending Roll Call Of Injustices
For all the black men and women who've been killed by police, won't you say their names?
Soul and R&B singer Janelle Monáe released a simple yet unquestionably powerful track that will force you to remember some of the black men and women who have been murdered.
Boeing Patents Transformer-like Swimming Drone
This James Bond-worthy drone is designed with components meant to automatically separate when it hits the water.
If James Bond had a drone, it would soar through the skies in search of bad guys, and then dive-bomb into the ocean, seamlessly transforming into an underwater evil-lair-seeking submarine.
Airport Stores Agree To Stop Selling Drones After Plea From Port Authority
Drones are technically banned at airports, but Brookstone and Hudson News sold the small aircraft to travelers.
Two stores that operate at New York and New Jersey airports are removing drones from their shelves at those locations, after local authorities demanded that they stop offering the merchandise—rightfully so, since drones have caused almost 700 near collisions with airplanes in 2015, as the Washington Post revealed Thursday.
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