Andreasmb

(via In Orbit: Ward Shelley & Alex Schweder |) via Scott.

Thanks to an aggressive, hyperactive business strategy (not to mention a soaring market), the brothers climbed very high, very fast. “The Candy brothers are two young zealots who were quite fearless as to how they approached people and where they found money,” says Andrew Langton. “They realized that the bling was what was wanted, whether it’s a yacht or plane or an expensive apartment. There is a culture of decoration, a culture of security, of privacy, that they had understood.”

(via The Shadowy Residents of One Hyde Park—And How the Super-Wealthy Are Hiding Their Money | Vanity Fair)

FingerReader - Wearable Text-Reading Device (by Fluid Interfaces)

Magazine covers, movie posters, and book covers all have the same basic job, so it seemed proper to group these lists together: 50 [Book] Covers for 2013, The 20 best magazine covers of 2013, The 50 Best Posters Of 2013, Top [Magazine] Covers 2013, The Best Book Covers of 2013, The 30 Best Movie Posters of 2013, Best Book Covers of 2013. Lots of great work here. I still can't figure out whether I love or hate this cover of W with George Clooney on it:

Tags: best of   best of 2013   books   design   magazines   movies

The Three Reasons Countries Get Rich: Location, Location and Location | The Business Desk with Paul Solman | PBS NewsHour | PBS:

“The "poor governance” argument (often employed to explain sub-Saharan Africa’s poor development) has merit, Sachs and McCord admit, but it’s not a sufficient answer. In their analysis of variation in cross-country per capita income, they find that access to fossil fuels and average distance from a port account for 58 percent of the variation; add hyroelectric production per capita, malaria ecology, quality-adjusted land per capita and average temperature, and the authors find 75 percent of the variation accounted for. That’s a huge correlation.“

Vampire Weekend

Queens of the Stone Age

Money on the Mind (by PBS NewsHour).

53 million people living in what would be the world’s fifth-largest economy will now be participating in a “far-reaching strategic alignment to combat climate change and promote clean energy.”

On Monday afternoon in San Francisco, the leaders of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia signaled they would not wait for the United States Congress or the Canadian Parliament to act to seriously address climate change. California Governor Jerry Brown, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and (via teleconference) British Columbia’s Premier Christy Clark signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy.

The agreement is not legally binding and appropriates no money. The plan says it “is intended to spur finding new, smart ways for our governments, agencies and staff to work together,” by doing things like adding value and efficiency to climate initiatives through collaboration, while reducing “overlap and duplication of effort.” So what does it do?

The Action Plan that California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia’s leaders all signed agreed to:

1. Account for the cost of carbon, by linking existing carbon pricing programs and working to develop them in Oregon and Washington. Oregon agreed to “build on existing programs to set a price on carbon emissions,” while Washington would “set binding limits on carbon emissions and deploy market mechanisms to meet those limits.” That sounds like a carbon price and a cap-and-trade system, respectively. California has a cap-and-trade system which has sold out of all its allowances in each of the four auctions it’s held. British Columbia has had a carbon tax for five years, currently at $30/ton (Canadian). If Oregon and Washington’s plans pass and the programs successfully link, a larger market for the region’s carbon allowances would be a boon for business and economic efficiency. All four leaders said they would try to “harmonize” their greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2050 by developing mid-term targets. Washington already has a 2035 target, and the rest of the states will examine if this works for them. All states will establish the more long-term 2050 targets.

2. Implement low-carbon fuel standards in each jurisdiction, meaning again that California and British Columbia will maintain their standard and Washington and Oregon will move to implement them. Each jurisdiction hopes to merge the standards into an integrated West Coast market “that keeps energy dollars in the region, creates economic development opportunities for regional fuel production, and ensures predictability and consistency in the market.” The Action Plan agrees to work toward having 10 percent of all new vehicle purchases in public and private fleets be zero-emissions models by 2016. It also signaled support for high-speed rail infrastructure and innovation, as well as accelerating investment in other alternative fuels across the transportation section.

3. Embrace clean energy in a number of different ways. The four jurisdictions said they would promote ease of access to energy-efficient buildings, ensure climate-smart infrastructure investment, streamline approval for renewable energy projects, and work to expand the regional electric grids. Each state will also support EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from power plants, emphasizing the value of allowing state flexibility.

If they can do this, it will be an important part of getting the U.S., Canada, and the globe the right policy environment to create jobs and cut carbon pollution.

The three states and British Columbia make up a combined GDP of $2.8 trillion, which would make it the world’s 5th-largest economy. “The scientific community no longer disputes that climate change is happening and human-caused,” said Oregon Governor Kitzhaber. “But regardless of where you stand on this question, there’s another good reason to act: transitioning to a clean economy creates jobs.”

At the event, leaders from businesses like construction company Skanska USA, Cisco Systems, and Taylor Shellfish Farms spoke about how business was doing well as their state governments moved to tackle climate change.

The signatories agreed to “where appropriate and feasible, link programs to create consistency and predictability” to account for and reduce carbon pollution across the four jurisdictions. With an eye toward a global agreement in 2015, these heads of state saw commitments to reduce their own carbon emissions as a signal to national and sub-national governments that such an agreement was essential.

The Pacific Coast Collaborative was established in 2008 among the four signatory governments plus Alaska (which did not sign the Action Plan) to help them collaborate on challenges facing the North American West Coast — among them, emergency management, clean energy, and economic growth.

Ocean acidification, for example, affects everyone. But it particularly threatens the economies of coastal states. The Action Plan calls for the American and Canadian governments to work to research and monitor ocean acidification to “understand its causes and impacts.”

The Western Climate Initiative was a regional cap-and-trade agreement in 2007 between between California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and four Canadian provinces. It had been scheduled to go into effect in 2012, but with the midterm elections in the few years preceding the deadline that resulted in the losses of climate hawks, California’s AB 32 and British Columbia’s carbon tax were essentially the only two programs left standing when the dust cleared.

This new agreement could mean that efforts like this to lower carbon emissions are alive and well, depending on how each government implements the plan.

The post California, Oregon, Washington, And British Columbia Agree To Cooperate On Reducing Carbon Pollution appeared first on ThinkProgress.

Box (by The Creators Project)

“Let’s start with the Kazakhstan 5,000 Tenge (about $32), the winner of the 2012 International Bank Note Society’s Note of the Year. It has all the hallmarks of a Kazakh note: a combination of portrait (front) and landscape (back) orientation, a smattering of world-class security features woven into the art and the ink, and a sort of fever-dream-ish collage of national icons, from the Kazakh Eli monument, the president’s residence, the national emblem, national flag, and, for good measure, two doves hovering over a pair of panthers.”

(via America’s New $100 Bill Is Awesome (but Still Nowhere Near as Awesome as Kazakhstan’s Currency) - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic) via Sasha.

List of inventors killed by their own inventions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

One of many great wiki lists.

The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa, announced Thursday that it intended to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants, either by improving deep brain stimulation or by developing new technology.

Justin Sanchez, Darpa program manager, said that for scientists now, “there is no technology that can acquire signals that can tell them precisely what is going on with the brain.”

And so, he said, Darpa is “trying to change the game on how we approach these kinds of problems.”

(via Agency Initiative Will Focus on Advancing Deep Brain Stimulation - NYTimes.com)

Uplink – Hilarious 90s “hacker game” (by MCDeathAngel). Via Joseph.

(via Incredible paintings of sci-fi suburbia will make you wish you were Swedish | The Verge)

“Not long ago, researchers had thought it was rare for the cells in a single healthy person to differ genetically in a significant way. But scientists are finding that it’s quite common for an individual to have multiple genomes. Some people, for example, have groups of cells with mutations that are not found in the rest of the body. Some have genomes that came from other people.”

(via DNA Double Take - NYTimes.com)

@Horse_ebooks, the Twitter account that was until now largely thought to be a spambot, is in fact controlled by real people. And in an even more surprising twist, its random bits of text and phrases are meant to be part of a “conceptual art installation.”

(via @Horse_ebooks is a human performance | The Verge) – via Eric.

“Chicago partners would fly into New York to poach clients from their Manhattanite counterparts, holding clandestine meetings in which they would pitch themselves as less expensive and a mere two-hour plane ride away.7 When the New Yorkers invariably caught wind of these plots, they would remind clients that they were far more efficient than their Midwestern cousins. “What we would end up saying is … ‘Chicago will staff you with four partners on something we’d staff with one or two,’” recalls a former partner.”

(via Big Law Firms in Trouble: When the Money Dries Up | New Republic)

“Like Putin and Erdoğan, Orbán also views politics as a zero sum game where the winner takes all. Opponents are reviled as extremists and traitors. Whether genuinely believed or used simply as a populist tactic, paranoia about foreign plots is regularly invoked to disarm critics. Nationalist rhetoric is used to brand opponents as unpatriotic puppets of foreign powers.”

(via Eastern European autocrats pose new test for democracy | World news | The Guardian)

“So if we thought it was really important for everyone in the United States to speak English, and hopefully for a large majority maybe to speak Spanish, why shouldn’t people understand how to “speak” JavaScript? I don’t know. And how do you think about now graduating or matriculating millions and millions of kids who “speak” technology as proficiently as they speak a verbal language?”

- Managing disruptive technology: A conversation with investor Chamath Palihapitiya | McKinsey & Company

Billy was a local mafia type from a remote Siberian town that had no police and little regulation, save him and his boys. This would prove to be literally lifesaving, because we were after a very dangerous quarry in the middle of nowhere—North Korean slaves—who don’t want anyone to know they are actually there. Billy, clearly game for some hijinks, agreed to take us into the forest to find them.

At the first camp we found, the North Korean guards threatened us and tried to throw us out. Billy the Fish laughed—a great gold-toothed guffaw—and then smiled. “This is Russia,” he growled, eyes glinting. Motioning to the vast expanses around him, he declared, “This is mine.” Then to our camera crew, “Keep shooting. They can do nothing.” So we did.

(via North Korean Labor Camps | VICE United States)

Reproduced here are a bunch of scans from a fascinating erotic alphabet book printed in the Soviet Union circa 1931, made to combat adult illiteracy. By the sculptor and future People’s Artist of the USSR Sergei Merkurov [Сергей Меркуров], no less.

(via Soviet-era erotic alphabet book from 1931 [Советская эротическая азбука 1931 года] | The Charnel-House) via Scott.

(via It’s Nice That : An interview with Sam Ashby, designer of fantastic, contemporary movie posters)

(via It’s Nice That : MGMT.design and Thomas Wilder pay tribute to animals spotted in NYC)

“Our reading was that there was a deal to be done on [the refugee issue],” Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, told me. Although differences remained on all the key issues, the gaps seemed surmountable.

But Abbas didn’t sign. His refusal to do so has become twinned in the Israeli public imagination with Arafat’s outright rejection of Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David. But according to senior Israeli, Palestinian, and American officials involved, the reason was more complex. Abbas feared that Olmert, who had announced that he planned to resign in order to fight corruption allegations, wouldn’t be able to deliver on his promises. Aides to then–Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who had been nominated to replace Olmert as head of the Kadima Party before the upcoming elections, had sent messages telling Abbas not to sign. “The message was, ‘Wait for me,’” Abrams recalled. “Now, I think it was a historic mistake for him not to have signed, but it’s not crazy for him not to have signed.”

(via Israel, Palestine, and the End of the Two-State Solution | New Republic)

“Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven’t taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn’t be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.

And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them for their profligacy as they do so. It’s all utterly, completely, crazy.”

(via Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom | Deborah Orr | Comment is free | The Guardian)

“Erdoğan seems less and less inclined to tolerate any but the mildest criticism. He has urged Turks to boycott newspapers that are unsympathetic to him, and attacks individual columnists. Nuray Mert, the columnist for Milliyet, told me that after Erdoğan criticized a statement she made in an interview, a public-affairs television show that she hosted was cancelled. Two weeks ago, she was fired from her job as a columnist. She now fears for her safety. “There are a lot of things that I don’t do anymore because I am afraid,” she told me.”

(via How Far Will Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan Go to Stay in Power? : The New Yorker)

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largesttelecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

(via NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily - revealed | World news | The Guardian)

The interior of KITT, the car from Knight Rider (via Golden).

Steven Soderbergh SFIFF56 State of Cinema Address

““We are in this position as a country because we assumed that the magic of the marketplace would provide competition and provide world-class communications,” she said. “But history has demonstrated that left to their own devices, companies will gouge the rich, leave out the poor, cherry-pick markets and focus solely on their profits. It isn’t evil, it’s just the way things work.””

- Telecom’s Big Players Hold Back the Future - NYTimes.com