An architecture journal announces a competition to design hypothetical skyscrapers. Anyone can enter. 489 teams do. What could possibly go wrong? Here, then, are the 3 winners and 21 honorable mentions from eVolo’s 2016 Skyscraper Competition. One might even argue that it’s a glowing success. Sure,
If given the opportunity, what would you do to the melted clump of leftover Kraft Dinner that is Donald Trump’s visage? While this is surely a question with which much of the electorate has recently reckoned in a hypothetical sense, technology is making it tantalizingly real. Let’s start with the se
Housing is both a practical necessity—humans have to live somewhere—and a statement of values. Relationships to housing vary by country; whereas some place an emphasis on ownership, others accept long-term renting. In this respect, housing policy mixes practical, political, and (yes) moral considera
Chris Adam played a lot of golf in 2012, and that’s putting it mildly. He must have been quite good, because one could not play as many holes as Adam did while triple-bogeying left, right, and center. But how many holes did he play that year, you ask? Well, according to the world record certified by
The creative playground is under siege. Land scarcity, underfunded municipal governments, and rising costs are all impediments to constructing innovative public spaces. Moreover, parents’ concerns—some more reasonable than others—about their children’s safety increasingly shapes playground design. T
How do you solve a problem like basketball pro Stephen Curry—the guy breaking records for consistently scoring three-pointers? Note that the question here is not how to defend Curry. That’s a problem for other people, and we wish them the best of luck with that! But how do you write about a player w
I’ll tell you this much about Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe: its windows are impressively clean. I can tell you that much because many moons ago I walked into one of the buildings glass walls while on a guided tour. In my defense, the glass really was quite clean—transparent even—and is the measure
Two interviewees, both alike in aptitude, both attendant on the Internet where we lay our scene. One’s a man; the other’s a woman. You know how this goes. Two Interviewees, a narrative game created by Mauro Vanetti, does not flip the script. That’s the point, really. Equality would be a shocking nar
Hasbro has heard your cries for help and taken action. The scourge of adding up payments in Monopoly has been eradicated. Cash is no more. Monopoly Ultimate Banking Game, which will come out this fall, is set to introduce four bank cards that can be used to make payments and transfer properties. Oth
God is dead. He had a good run. He quietly passed away on Saturday afternoon, surrounded by close friends, family, and Twitter followers. God died as he lived: sending out not-at-all cryptic missives to his 2.29 million followers. He will be remembered as the leader of a major theistic cult, albeit
The Internet needs more jazz hands. That’s what Stinkdigital’s hands.wtf is for—if it has any real purpose, that is. “We created for no good reason at all,” the creative agency says. But here it is: two hands—Killer Mike and El-P are the credited hand models—floating in digital space. Type in a 3-le
How are presidents selected? — How much time do you have? A stylized sketch of how presidents are selected might go something like this: Candidates choose to run for one of two parties, raise money, compete in a series of caucuses and primaries to win delegates, and the candidate with the most deleg
The digital footprint is supposed to be an ominous concept. It’s supposed to be a reminder of all the digital breadcrumbs digital Hansels and Gretels leave in their wakes. But in practice, the digital footprint is too squishy a concept to truly resonate. How do you quantify all the little pieces of
When you think about it, kissing is pretty weird—all those sloshing fluids and semi-controllable fleshy bits. The point, I am told, is not to think about kissing. Good luck with that. You are not—I repeat: ARE NOT—going to go through life without thinking about kissing. It’s just not going to happen
Destructive Creations does not support ISIS. There is no reason to believe anyone ever suspected otherwise, but the developers behind the quasi-genocidal civilian shooter provocation that is Hatred (2015) aren’t taking any risks. In a Steam post, they say their latest game, IS Defense, is their “per
What would you do with the national security (read: espionage) apparatus at your fingertips: Would you defend civil liberties or use the reams of information collected each day to satisfy your own ends? Need to Know, the debut title from Australian developers Monomyth Games which is raising funds on
Hark, another open world, first-person game in which you traverse picturesque natural environments! That is both slightly unfair to Eastshade, a PC game that is currently in the making, and factually beyond reproach. Eastshade, as with many games before it, is all of those things, but it is also end
You shouldn’t have to carry ID when you go to grab a coffee. Coffee is not a controlled substance, though it sure is wonderful (and possibly addictive). That does not stop nominally just societies from demanding that their citizens identify themselves while out and about. Inevitably, the burden of t
How much does concrete weigh? This is, on the one hand, an insultingly simple question. Take some concrete. Put it on a scale. Record the weight. Multiply by some larger number if you’re using a sample. There you have it: concrete’s weight. It’s not really a mystery. But it’s not that easy. There’s
Top Chef notwithstanding, it is rarely advisable to see how a sausage is made. This is not a new aphorism—aphorisms are rarely new—but technology has given it new resonance. It has never been easier to distribute bonus content, to be ‘closer’ to artists, and to see heretofore-mysterious processes. A
In the battle of Bieber and One Direction, everyone wins. Clayton Purdom (CP): David, defend One Direction. David Rudin (DR): I’ll get to One Direction, I promise, but first I want to discuss Backstreet Boys and Take That, because no boy band really exists in a vacuum. We like to imagine them as suc
The common conceit associated with virtual reality filmmaking is that the technology gives you a profound insight into the lives of others. More spatial depth, the theory goes, is correlated with more emotional depth. Welcome to the magical empathy machine! This sort of technological determinism is
One might reasonably suspect that the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and New York Jets (which fans reliably inform me is spelled J-E-T-S) are fundamentally interchangeable, but last Thursday the league took this theory a bit too far. The Jets played in their customary green while the Bills wore red—or, as col
The New York Times has a new virtual reality offering—and no, it isn’t called Jayson Blair. NYT VR, which launched last weekend, is a new storytelling venture or, as The Grey Lady calls it with alarming frequency, an “experience.” Using the NYT VR app, you can view (experience?) video stories with a
